Noelle Bowles examines Ryan Coogler’s hit film “Sinners,” speaking with Tony Kail, cultural anthropologist and scholar of Hoodoo, about how this story of vampires and the blues in the Jim Crow south faithfully incorporates Hoodoo and rootworking.
Arts & Culture
“Beneath the Trees” (2019): folk horror made with ten tropes and zero soul
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As the sage Lil Wayne once said, there are two ways to make art: be good or be good at it. A film does not have to be innovative or even have anything new to say for audiences to respond. This film is neither good nor good at it. I didn’t want to sing along, so here I am to heckle.
Arts & Culture
Review: Popo the Xolo
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Alan U. Dalul reviews a children’s book based on the Indigenous Mexican folklore around death, dying, and the underworld. “Family unity and peace are perhaps the most relevant topics besides the central themes of grief and death, maybe even more on some pages. Lopez delivers a story that celebrates life and reminds us there is always a light at the end.”
Book Reviews
Review: Michelle Tea’s “Modern Magic”
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We not only learn about Michelle’s life, but also how those experiences shaped her practice, how her practice evolved, and how she evolved as a person as well. However, there is none of that holier than thou attitude that some might expect. Quite the opposite, in fact.
Arts & Culture
Folk Magic and Hermeticism in “Nosferatu”
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With its right hand Eggers’s Nosferatu points at all the sex it can, but its left invokes the imagery and the uncanny nature of folk magic.
Arts & Culture
Abracadabra, the Lady (Gaga) in Red Said
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Let’s get something straight: Lady Gaga is our Lord and Savior, and I will not hear otherwise. She comes back, resurrected like the phoenix when we need a beacon of hope.