Author: Buttercup Dew

1,792 words

Equilibrium is a 2002 science fiction film that was poorly received and underviewed, largely seen as an also-ran to 1999’s The Matrix, which set the tone and style of cyberpunk thrillers to follow. Equilibrium is unjustly forgotten, a sleeper non-hit that deserves revisiting; a thoughtful and condensed statement on huge volumes of preceding dystopian literature and cinema.

Equilibrium plays to the strength of film as a medium in its ability to succinctly put salient points into character narratives that otherwise require full-length novels and academic treatises. (more…)

3,199 words

Metroid Prime: Echoes is a 2004 videogame originally released on the Nintendo GameCube, a direct sequel to Metroid Prime. While it achieved only moderate commercial success, it was highly critically acclaimed. The original Prime is widely regarded as the best GameCube game ever made, but while Prime 2: Echoes is outstanding, it didn’t stray far enough from the formula or bring enough new gameplay mechanics to supersede it. (Within Retro Studios, the developer, the game was thought of as “Metroid Prime 1.5”.) (more…)

3,210 words

No Time to Die is a magnificent film. This review will contain major spoilers after the fifth paragraph, as they are necessary to meaningfully analyze the film, though only those relevant to the points made. For a spoiler-free review, listen to Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 380, where Greg Johnson bravely attempts to discuss the film without giving away plot details, and where Endeavour somewhat brazenly attempts to discuss it without having seen it at all. (more…)

1,203 words

Twitter is done. After the suspension of then-sitting President Trump and successive ban waves, it’s obvious that Right-wingers have no future on the platform. What began as Left and Right competing for audiences on Twitter has ended with Twitter itself flexing its soy-infused muscles to purge all but a small and carefully curated number of high-profile (more…)

3,706 words

Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009) is a wonderful film designed and directed by Wes Anderson. It was his first stop-motion animation, and its success led to its even wilder spiritual successor Isle of Dogs, an important landmark in Japanophile cinema. Around the time of its release, Fantastic Mr. Fox stood alongside other unusual works like Rango (2011), Chicken Run (2000), Up (2009), and Where the Wild Things Are (2009), all released in a period of scintillating creativity in the animated film industry.

This period began in 1996 with the release of Toy Story and ended in 2012 with the release of the first Avengers film, (more…)

2,727 words

Children of Earth, or more accurately “Children of Britain,” was the Doctor Who spin-off Torchwood’s third outing. Torchwood dropped the Doctor and asked what happens when he’s not around to save the day, a not-unreasonable question given the astonishing frequency the Earth is attacked by aliens. Being a BBC show, it’s always Britain that gets attacked first and hardest, and a “Time Rift” in Cardiff keeps vomiting out beasties for the Torchwood team to tackle. (more…)

2,021 words

Hokusai: Beyond the Great Wave was an exhibition of Hokusai’s works mounted by the British Museum in the summer of 2017. This ambitious event sought to contextualize Hokusai’s famous In the Hollow of The Wave, better known as “The Great Wave,” (more…)

4,208 words

Yomawari: Night Alone is a survival horror videogame from Nippon Ichi Software, released in fall 2015 in Japan before being rapidly localized into English in 2016. It has enjoyed commercial success across multiple platforms (PC, Nintendo Switch, and PS Vita) and spawned a sequel, Midnight Shadows. The player character is a little girl with a red bow drawn in simple anime style; a sort of Minnie Mouse from a more mature world. (more…)

Banana Yoshimoto and Yukio Mishima.

2,725 words

Banana Yoshimoto
Kitchen
Translated by Megan Backus
London: Faber and Faber, 1993

Yukio Mishima
Thirst for Love
Translated by Alfred H. Marks
New York: Random House, 1999 (more…)

4,306 words

Porco Rosso is one of the more famous Studio Ghibli films, released in 1992. It is the midpoint of an unofficial Miyazaki trilogy examining flight as a method of personal and national liberation, beginning with 1989’s Kiki’s Delivery Service, and concluding with 2013’s The Wind Rises. Porco Rosso is the strongest of the three, being bright, bold, and easy to follow whilst touching on more serious themes than its premise might suggest. (more…)

2,663 words

“In the Grim Darkness of the Far Future, there is only WAR . . .” tells us the strap line of the world’s most popular miniature wargame. In the 41st Millennium, mankind has collapsed after a Dark Age of Technology and an Age of Strife, and is set upon by nefarious, merciless alien races. Humanity is struggling against a primordial force of the universe — Chaos — that corrupts and deforms men into inhuman monsters.

(more…)

2,058 words

Tito Perdue
The Node
Charleston, W.V.: Nine-Banded Books, 2011

The Node is Tito Perdue’s debut in speculative science fiction. It is a tour de force of postmodern storytelling, examining the extremes of white fragility and resilience, apathy and defiance through the travels of an unnamed narrator: “Our boy.” (more…)

3,496 words

Blade Runner 2049 is a deep and interesting film fueled by visual spectacle and cleverly-handled ambiguity. The film’s dialogue is sparse and carefully weighted, and the intricate plot resolves itself fairly satisfactorily (even though the film takes its sweet time getting there). Nonetheless, it fails to live up to its predecessor. It struggles to make headway with the theological commentary of the original – lines about Replicants being “angels” are unjustified, and are thankfully marginal. (more…)