Culture
Good Grief: TV Is Getting Better at Mourning
The medium’s episodic structure makes it an apt medium to explore that most long-running and unpredictable of emotions.
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Netflix Black Mirror’s ‘Playtest’ Brings Fear to Life
The second episode of the new season is a twisty, tense horror story about an immersive video game that can detect your darkest fears.
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Netflix Black Mirror’s ‘Nosedive’ Skewers Social Media
Starring Bryce Dallas Howard, the episode is set in a world where everyone is ranked out of five.
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Track of the Day: 'City of New Orleans' by Willie Nelson
The song isn’t about the city itself, but rather a train called City of New Orleans, which travels overnight between…
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Francois Nel / Getty 'Nasty': A Feminist History
On Wednesday, Trump employed the adjective to insult his opponent. What he didn’t realize was that the word has long been a rallying cry.
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Paramount Jack Reacher: Never Go Back Isn't Weird Enough
The sequel to one of Hollywood’s most underrated action entries of the decade wastes a solid performance from Tom Cruise.
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PBS / Courtesy of NYSE Hamilton's America Has Its Eyes on History
The PBS documentary is less a behind-the-scenes glimpse than a social primer on why Broadway’s biggest smash matters.
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Fox Searchlight The Historical Fiction of The Birth of a Nation
Nate Parker's film uses cinematic tropes that may obscure the true complexity of Nat Turner’s legend.
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Track of the Day: 'Lincoln Park Pirates' by Steve Goodman
A regular Notes contributor, Diane, adds to the most popular city in our series thus far: …
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Sony Music The Deadly Certainty of Leonard Cohen
You Want It Darker gravely and beautifully accepts God and mortality.
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Do Strangers Ever Tell Men to Smile?
Jacqueline, a reader in Michigan, brings up “one thing missing from your discussion”: All my life I…
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Studio Ghibli Hayao Miyazaki and the Art of Being a Woman
The famed Japanese animator and director created heroines who defied feminine stereotypes and showed me how to be at home in my own skin.
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Track of the Day: 'Take Me Home, Country Roads' by John Denver
Dylan is the latest reader to add to our placed-based series: My closely guarded secret…
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CBS Why Stephen Colbert Isn't Connecting
An interview with Bill O’Reilly Monday night distilled many of the struggles the Late Show host has had in his first year on the job.
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Mark Peterson / Corbis Tupac, Pearl Jam, Depeche Mode Among the Rock Hall of Fame Nominees
Guitar rock, rap, and electronic music will compete for induction again.
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Doug McLean When Novels Frustrate, and Enthrall
Franz Kafka’s work taught the writer Jonathan Lethem about how to incorporate chaos into narratives.
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Track of the Day: 'Lake Shore Drive' by Aliotta Haynes Jeremiah
All you Chicagoans out there can probably relate to reader Max: So, I’m a transplant…
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NBC Sympathy for the Melania
SNL and pop culture pay loving disrespect to Donald Trump’s wife.
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Come Watch Wag the Dog With Us
Mid-way through October—and aaaaalmost approaching the finish line of this long-running election season—it seems appropriate to consider, for the next…
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Epix The Easy Political Escapism of Graves
The new Epix comedy imagines a former Republican president deciding to atone for his sins in office.
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Dennis Van Tine / STAR MAX / AP Amy Schumer: The Comical Is Political
Some 200 people walked out of the comedian’s Tampa arena show after she made jokes about Donald Trump. It’s unclear why, exactly, they were surprised by her partisanship.
