Is That All There Is? On Beauty and Absurdity in The Beach Bum We re here to have a good time. I just wanna have a good time until this shit s over, man.
Neon
In our monthly column
Laughed to Death, Brianna Zigler looks at the marriage between comedy and existentialism. For this installment, she unpacks the idyllic, inane approach to nihilism, mortality, and the absurdity of existence in Harmony Korine’s The Beach Bum.
“I could tell you that I’ve been trying to cover the abyss beneath my illusory connection with the world. I could tell you that it’s all written in the stars. I could tell you that I’m a reverse paranoiac; I’m quite certain that the world is conspiring to make me happy. All three of which are true, but it’s a little simpler than that. I like to have fun, man. Fun’s the fuckin’ gun, man.”
Ella Kemp
, May 14th, 2021 09:25
As the UK finally prepares to reopen its cinema doors, tQ contributors remember their most precious memories that could have only happened in front of the big screen
Over the last 14 months, we have been yearning for the big screen and looking back on the memories of brighter days spent in cinemas with a sense of bittersweet nostalgia. For me, there was also a big element of fear that these experiences would never return. But now that cinemas reopen next week, I finally feel safe enough to look ahead and also to think back to the moments that make it so important to keep going at all.
After Hours in the Afterlife: The Case for Paul Hackett s Hell
In Martin Scorsese s 1985 black comedy, a man s desperate quest to get home after a night gone wrong is actually his eternal damnation.
Warner Bros.
In our monthly column
Laughed to Death, we look at the way comedy and existentialism go hand-in-hand in seemingly unlikely ways. For this installment, Brianna Zigler makes the case for how Martin Scorsese’s 1985 black comedy After Hours discreetly portrays a dead man damned to his own endless eternity.
“What do you want from me?” Paul Hackett shrieks to the heavens, to the black, neglectful, and uncaring abyss that hovers above and taunts him with silence, “What have I done? I’m just a word processor, for Christ’s sake!”
21 Movies We Can t Wait to Watch (Virtually) at SXSW 2021
We re kicking off our coverage of SXSW 2020 s virtual film festival with a list of the movies we can t wait to watch (from the safety of our homes).
For a second consecutive year, our longtime local film festival South by Southwest (SXSW) has gone virtual due to the ongoing global pandemic. For movie, music, and technology conference enthusiasts around the world who have never been able to attend in the past, this actually works out nicely. For
SXSW Film, this means opening up one of the world’s best-curated festivals to a wider audience that can enjoy films from the comfort and safety of their homes. Hopefully next year we’ll be back to roaming the crowded streets of downtown Austin, waiting in line for hours outside the Paramount Theatre, and sneaking into parties on the various balconies of the InterContinental Hotel. But for this year, we’re delighted to be attending virtually in our ongoing quest to discover gr
Are We Human, or Are We Pop Star?
Through the mockumentary Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping and the documentary Miss Americana, the limits of humanizing the pop star persona are tested.
Universal Pictures
In our monthly column Laughed to Death, Brianna Zigler takes a look at the way comedy and existentialism go hand-in-hand in seemingly unlikely ways. For this installment, she examines the humanity lost on the pop star persona through Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping and Taylor Swift’s Miss Americana.
“I’d love to get Conner to the point where people forget that he’s a musician,” reflects Paula Klein (played by Sarah Silverman), manager to pop superstar Conner4Real (Andy Samberg), “where he’s just kind of everywhere like oxygen, or gravity, or clinical depression. He’s just