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Disney’s Stranglehold on the Oscars

By Mark Laherty

Disney has an inappropriate level of control over the Academy Awards. I don’t mean that they’re winning too many. I mean that Disney owns ABC, which is the channel that broadcasts the Oscars – and they’re placing the commercial break during four awards with no Disney-produced nominations. I hope none of you dear readers have any interest in editing, cinematography, costumes/hairstyling, or short films, because why would anyone watching the Oscars care about those?

[Between time of writing and time of publication, the Academy has rolled back its decision. However, the huge influence of Disney remains an issue – and the fact that the experiment was only scrapped after huge public pushback says a lot.]

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On Dr Who and Yellowface

By Mark Laherty

[Content warning: racism, of course]

‘The Talons of Weng-Chiang’ is a 1977 Doctor Who serial spanning six episodes. It’s about the Fourth Doctor (Tom Baker with his scarf) visiting Victorian London and being unwittingly drawn into a web of mystery involving giant sewer rats and a murderous ventriloquist dummy. The plot also involved tongs, a type of organisation for Chinese immigrants. Those characters were played by white actors, who were decked out in makeup and costume to appear stereotypically Chinese.

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On Capitalism in Dystopian Fiction and Jessica the Wizard Eats a Third Horse

By Mark Laherty

Jessica the Wizard Eats a Third Horse is a fantasy novelette by Jason Steele, a writer and animator who is best known by the screen-name FilmCow and as the creator of ‘Charlie the Unicorn.’ As its title suggests, Jessica the Wizard is a self-aware and goofy story, tripping from one quirky character or situation to another. It follows the titular wizard, who has just moved to a new city to work in a bank. Due to her experience with dark wizards, she is enlisted by one of her higher-ups to investigate the theft of all the bank’s wizard gold.

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ROCK FUCK

Snap Judgement: Don’t You Know Danny?

By Barry Neenan

Here’s a sentence I have difficulty saying aloud: I am a big fan of Ninja Sex Party. It’s the one name harder to praise publicly than Kung Fu Panda.

But my history with Danny Sexbang and Ninja Brian – aka Dan Avidan and Doctor Brian Wecht, PhD, No Really He’s An Expert On String Theory – was not always rosy. With the band’s latest album, ‘Cool Patrol’, out in one week (August 17th), now is the perfect time for some reflection. Sit with me awhile and I will explain how the dick-joke ninja boys exemplify a fundamental concern of modern comedy. Or don’t. I’m not a cop.

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Three Artists People Should Be Listening To

By Dara Eaton

Let me just preface this article with an admission that I am not a well researched, well informed man. I make my observations based on what I witness myself in my day to day life, and am always happy to admit defeat when I’m revealed to be misinformed. However, even if the artists I’m about to detail turn out to be more popular than I originally expected, I guarantee that someone reading this will have not heard of them, and they should be glad that they have now.

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Kelly Marie Tran and Toxic Fandoms

by Mark Laherty

[This article quotes some extremely racist Internet abuse, so, heads up.]

I was going to write a piece about the so-called controversy surrounding the Solo box office figures because the algorithm demanded it. Then Last Jedi actor Kelly Marie Tran deleted her Instagram, apparently to evade the harassment that’s followed her for the last six months. We now have something more urgent to talk about. Why is the Star Wars fandom like this?

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Avengers Fatigue

by Mark Laherty

On April 21, director James Cameron made some controversial remarks about the Avengers franchise.

“I’m hoping we’ll start getting ‘Avenger’ fatigue here pretty soon. Not that I don’t love the movies. It’s just, come on guys, there are other stories to tell besides hyper-gonadal males without families doing death-defying things for two hours and wrecking cities in the process. It’s like, oy!”

At the time, there was a lot of backlash to this on social media. A lot of people pointed to a perceived hypocrisy; much of the fatigue around the Marvel Cinematic Universe comes down to the sense that they’re churning out sequels on a conveyor belt. Cameron can hardly take the high ground on that topic since he’s working on four (!) Avatar sequels even though much of the original response to Avatar was muted. It’s also unreasonable to say that families have nothing to do with Marvel movies like Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 or any of the Thor films.

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The John Cena Project: Judgment Day 2003

It is May 18, 2003. Sean Paul is getting busy on top of the Billboard charts with Get Busy, followed closely by 50 Cent, Busta Rhymes, Justin Timberlake and pederast R. Kelly. Lurking at the bottom of the top 10 are Three Doors Down and Evanescence just in case people thought it was going to be an exclusively club-heavy pop scene for the rest of the year. Meanwhile, in news since Brock Lesnar pummelled a loudmouth wannabe rapper from West Newberry, Massachusetts, Lithuania and Slovakia approve joining the EU by referendum, multiple terrorist bombings kill 30 people at Riyadh, Beijing closes all schools for 2 weeks in response to the SARS virus and, most infamously, George W. Bush announces “Mission Accomplished” on ‘major combat operations in Iraq’ in a ludicrously stage-managed press conference that was a perfect monument to the folly of America’s latest imperialist adventure.

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The John Cena Project: Backlash 2003

It is April 27, 2003. Charting at no. 1 on the Billboard charts is 50 Cent with In Da Club which is basically Mid-Noughties Club Music: The Song. When you think of going in clubbing in the mid-noughties, you think sub-tropical beats, mush-mouth rap and ridiculous excess. Just to hammer home the point, also charting are Sean Paul, Busta Rhymes, some guy called Fabulous and child molester R. Kelly with that club-defining hit Ignition.

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