Weekend Reads (Jan 8): Looking Ahead to 2022, Marjorie Taylor Greene, BlackBerry (RIP), “The Matrix”
Recommended weekend reading material for January 8, 2022.
Every week, I compile a list of interesting and thought-provoking articles to offer you some enjoyable weekend reading material.
Alissa Wilkinson ran an informal survey to try and figure out what moviegoers are looking for in 2022.
While you might expect to hear about loving the huge screens and state-of-the-art sound, most people discussed their love of seeing movies with strangers as well as their gratitude for an experience that forced them to pay attention to the film at hand. As we move into a brave new era of moviegoing, theaters might also want to pay attention.
The Pitchfork staff has posted their list of 2022’s most anticipated albums, featuring the likes of Beach House, Blood Incantation, Interpol, Kendrick Lamar, and Spiritualized. Meanwhile, the Treble staff have released a list of their most anticipated albums for the winter and spring of 2022.
Related: Last month, I shared a list of the music, movies, TV shows, etc., that I’m looking forward to in 2022.
It’s easy to focus on the big name studios releasing games for PC, Xbox, Playstation, etc., but there are plenty of interesting-looking indie games coming out in 2022, too.
Games created by smaller independent studios are important for the video game industry as a whole: These are frequently the spaces where true innovation happens, where developers get to experiment and play around with story, mechanics, and gameplay. There were so many glorious indie games to play in 2021, and 2022 is no different. There are plenty more exciting indie games to look forward to — many, many more than I could fit on this list.
The good folks at ScreenAnarchy have announced their top films of 2021.
Everyone here was encouraged to send in a top five and some additional recommendations. Any new movies seen were eligible, though of course this had us clashing with release dates between countries and festivals. Streaming platforms counted too, adding to the confusion as for many titles this stopped regular distribution in several countries. Some of the films in the lists will have been seen by some in 2020, some can only be seen by most in 2022. As such, do not take the list too seriously. It's not a running contest and taste is not an absolute. Keep that in mind if your favorite is not in here, or if you think we have vastly overrated something.
I can’t really argue with their #1 pick.
Hayao Miyazaki celebrated his 81st birthday earlier this week, so to mark the occasion, Germain Lussier asked readers to share what the celebrated animator’s work means to them.
Hayao Miyazaki and his films don’t mean just one thing to me. They kind of mean everything to me in so many different ways. We’re guessing maybe you feel the same. For the legendary filmmaker’s 81st birthday, share with us below what his work means to you.
If I had to sum up Miyazaki’s works into a single word, it would be “beauty.” His films are visually magnificent, no doubt about that, but his stories, characters, and fanciful worlds fill me with a sense of beauty — and a desire and appreciation for it — more so than any other director. I still remember my first viewing of Princess Mononoke and being moved to tears in the theater at what I saw on the screen before me.
666 is arguably history’s most (in)famous number due to its title of “number of the beast” as mentioned in the Bible. But it’s popped up in all sorts of places.
For a while, Finnair had a regularly scheduled flight 666 to Helsinki, shortened to its airport code HEL. There were 21 occasions where you could board Flight 666 to HEL on Friday 13th. (Maiden, of course, dubbed their round-the-world tour aboard Ed Force One “Flight 666”). After the success of the Terry Pratchett / Neil Gaiman book Good Omens, a sequel was floated with the excellent title 668: Neighbour Of The Beast.
I’m not going to lie: As a church kid who grew up in the ‘80s on a steady diet of Rapture theology, satanic panic, and the evils of rock n’ roll, I still get the heebie-jeebies whenever I see 666. And I doubt I’m the only one.
In yet another move bound to stir up controversy over the role and influence of “Big Tech,” particularly in right-leaning circles, Twitter permanently suspended Marjorie Taylor Greene’s personal account.
In a statement to The Verge, Twitter spokesperson Katie Rosborough explains that the platform “permanently suspended” Greene’s account “for repeated violations” of the platform’s COVID-19 policies. “We’ve been clear that, per our strike system for this policy, we will permanently suspend accounts for repeated violations of the policy,” she adds.
Greene responded by calling Twitter “an enemy to America.” Her official government account still remains active.
Ben Werdmüller explains why everyone should blog.
Sharing my reflections lets me put them in order, which in itself is valuable to me, but I love reading your replies and other peoples’ reflections. This earliest form of social media is, for me, the deepest and most interesting: a decentralized sphere of diverse voices, all publishing on the same playing field. It’s what the internet is all about.
Via Manton Reece. I agree wholeheartedly with this. Blogging wasn’t just the earliest form of social media; I’d argue that it’s actually superior to what currently passes for social media when it comes to decentralization, authorial control, and freedom.
Take a moment to offer some thoughts and prayers for the BlackBerry users in your life: the company stopped supporting their classic devices earlier this week.
This means all of its older devices not running on Android software will no longer be able to use data, send text messages, access the internet or make calls, even to 911.
While most mobile users have moved on from BlackBerry — the last version of its operating system launched in 2013 — the decision to discontinue support for its phones represents the end of what was once considered bleeding-edge technology.
Via NextDraft. There was a time when BlackBerry dominated the market. That basically ended when Apple introduced the iPhone.
In a fascinating piece, Maggie Appleton discusses the various metaphors that we use to describe and make sense of the World Wide Web.
As George Lakoff and Mark Johnson made clear in their touchstone book Metaphors We Live By, metaphors are the basis of all human thought and reasoning. The metaphors we use to speak about the web are not simply linguistic trivia — they determine how we understand it on a fundamental level. It determines what we think the web is capable of, what risks, opportunities, and challenges it poses. Which means the metaphors we use to think about the web profoundly influence what we think the web is, what we think we can do with it, and how we might change or evolve it.
Via Frontend Focus. Appleton also proposes a new metaphor to make sense of the Web, one that describes it in geological concepts.
From the Blog
My wife and I rang in the New Year by watching The Matrix Resurrections, a movie that has greatly polarized critics and viewers. But we both enjoyed it, while still realizing its shortcomings.
Given the wildly divergent and divisive opinions and reviews floating around, I went into The Matrix Resurrections braced for a train wreck and hoping for something more than just a shameless retread. And while I was somewhat disappointed by what Resurrections isn’t (another groundbreaking sci-fi action film), I was pleasantly surprised by what it actually is: an earnestly emotional film that subverts usual action movie heroics in order to explore trauma and grief (albeit with some guns, explosions, and stylish sunglasses for good measure).
If you find that intriguing (or maybe even infuriating), read my full review.
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