Weekend Reads: Star Trek, Akira, Critical Role, Toilet Paper, Tarkovsky
Recommended weekend reading material for March 21, 2020.
Every week, I compile a list of interesting, thought-provoking, and enjoyable articles, blog posts, and reviews. I hope you’ll find they make for good weekend reading material.
An oral history of “Yesterday’s Enterprise,” one of the best episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
While “Yesterday’s Enterprise” often ranks as an all-timer for both the franchise and science fiction in general, its development process was so convoluted and stressful that one of its co-writers, Ira Steven Behr (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, The 4400), still can’t believe to this day how well-regarded the hour is. Or that they managed to pull it off.
Via Syfy.
Let’s take a moment to celebrate the sideways motorcycle skid in Akira, arguably one of the most iconic scenes in anime history.
The skid in the original manga isn’t the iconic showpiece that it is in the anime, but the anime’s scene has been copied and references by numerous anime, cartoons and live-action shows.
Dungeons & Dragons has become increasingly popular in recent years, due in part to the dice-rolling shenanigans of Critical Role.
When they first started rolling dice on camera, Critical Role’s cast didn’t set out to start a media company. But that’s what happened. Along the way, their popularity has turned their brand into a linchpin in the Dungeons & Dragons community and even brought thousands of new members into the fold.
During this coronavirus-addled Lent season, perhaps it makes sense to fast… from toilet paper.
Guys, we need to talk about the Great Toilet Paper Panic of 2020 (as they will no doubt call it), not least of all because the whole thing seems uncannily, unsettlingly tailor-made for this exact column. You all heard there was a viral pandemic, and for some reason your response was “Man, I cannot wait for some marathon pooping sessions!”
The Criterion Collection asked several artists and filmmakers to discuss their favorite scenes from the films of Andrei Tarkovsky.
In conjunction with a career-spanning retrospective now playing on the Criterion Channel, we asked filmmakers Michael Almereyda and Peter Strickland, artist Shirin Neshat, and writers Geoff Dyer and Colm Tóibín to dive into individual moments from Tarkovsky’s films that have moved them and continue to haunt them. Ranging from close readings to personal reflections, their responses celebrate a body of work that rewards a lifetime of contemplation.
Not only is Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation a “half-forgotten masterpiece,” it’s also a surprisingly timely one.
Even more than surveillance, even more than technology, “The Conversation” is about psychology: it is a profound investigation into how cognitive bias affects perception and trust. In a political climate often described as “post-truth”, this is a timely subject.
Via Prufrock.
Scientists at the North Pole conduct their studies in a world where time has no meaning.
At the North Pole, 24 time zones collide at a single point, rendering them meaningless. It’s simultaneously all of Earth’s time zones and none of them. There are no boundaries of any kind in this abyss, in part because there is no land and no people. The sun rises and sets just once per year, so “time of day” is irrelevant as well.
Via The Loop.
On International Woman’s Day, women were in charge of every single one of the United States’ nuclear missile silos.
Though the military as a whole still has its challenges in terms of diversity beyond male and female gender roles, it's clear times are changing. And women are seizing the opportunity to lead the way. “We’re finally getting more women who are staying, and those women are using their platform to make it better for all of us,” says Captain Sheila Koebel, an executive officer at Malstrom AFB and single mom to two young boys.
Also via The Loop.
Pitchfork interviewed the Chinese band STOLEN about being quarantined because of the coronavirus.
We were all isolated at home, so we went online and had band meetings. Given that we had nothing to do, we decided to all write songs and think about the next album. We couldn’t play our stage instruments, but we could play some simple stuff on the guitar and computer.
I’m currently rewatching The Expanse, arguably the best sci-fi show on TV right now, and I constantly struck by the beauty of its opening title sequence.
The Expanse’s title sequence ends with the striking shot of a lone figure floating in space, suggesting that for all of humanity’s progress and development — as seen earlier in the opening titles — we’re still dwarfed by the cosmos. There’s still so much more out there that's beyond our comprehension.
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