Under the Skin of New Year's New Body

by Kristen Cochrane

For most of us, this is the start of an antagonizing annual cycle that begins with earnest calorie restriction and a gym membership. Then we give up. I call this the New Year, New Body trope, a mysterious and torturous actualization that demands self-starvation and encourages eating disorders.

Christmas With the Kranks: A Miraculous Tour of Made-for-TV Movies

Christmas movies used to be good. Even the bad ones, which is why it was a preternatural blessing when Mariah Carey released the highly anticipated teaser for her holiday movie and directorial debut, A Christmas Melody.

Will Indigenous Voices Be Heard at the Paris Climate Conference?

In the midst of the polemical environmental debate between the reactionaries of the right and the activists of the left, an under-examined knowledge system remains neglected. As the descendants of those who carved nations out of “New Worlds” fight over contamination of the planet, ancient epistemologies are being erased, along with the peoples who existed before systematic colonization.

Reflections on Glass

I don’t know what I was expecting when I first tried glassmaking, but from the moment I gathered molten glass out of a furnace on a metal blowing iron, I fell in love with the pale fluorescent glow of glass’s heat and the sound of the furnace keeping it alive for the maker.

The Tribe and Outsider Cinema

As you arrive at a restaurant, you receive a message from your friend letting you know that they are running late. “Fine, no problem,” you reply, and it is fine, aside from wishing that they would just turn up now so those people around you looking into each other’s eyes and laughing as they eat don’t glance in your direction and think you’re here alone. The friend appears.

One Hundred

The other day, I had a nightmare. It was Wednesday afternoon and I’d been up since the night before writing a newspaper review of a translated science fiction novel called One Hundred by the Portuguese author Priscila de Araujo Severo. It’s about a detective who has an accident that leaves him with the power to see the future, without the ability to change it.

Subtle Cinema and the Dardennes Brothers

I’ve never liked being told what to do, or how to think. Usually, my default response is to want to think or do the opposite, while quietly hating the person who ordered me around.

Midnight Subversion: A Eulogy for Late Night TV

You’ve been gone so long now that the time we spent together almost feels like a lie. Although, on certain days, I swear you’re still here, a nightlight to ease my febrile brain. And, as an echo of your memory floods my mind, once again you illuminate the darkness with a warning and a promise… “DO NOT SLEEP” But it’s just a dream.

Bump in the Night: The Cult Hit Cartoon that Made Monsters Beautiful

Drowsy and cow-licked, slovenly munching cereal in front of Saturday morning’s cartoon slate. Right before Tales from the Cryptkeeper. Right after ReBoot.

Disowned Films: Michael Mann and The Keep

To the casual observer, Michael Mann appears to make stylish but conventional genre films. A closer look reveals a filmmaker who occupies a strange position in American cinema. One who works within the Hollywood machine yet also outside of it.