Our weekly recap highlighting the best feature stories from around the internet.
Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Photo: Unknown
‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ Second Trailer: Chewie, We’re Home – by Mark Lisanti, Grantland
“There’s the Falcon maneuvering in a tight space, because that reminds us of the other times it maneuvered in tight spaces. There are TIE Fighters blowing shit up, and our new pals Rey and Finn meeting space-cute. And then, finally, yeah, Han and Chewie, bringing us home. We’re done. Roll over and take a deep breath. We’ve all earned it. That’s a lot of feelings to plow through in two minutes. Ready to do it 30 or 40 more times today? Han’s old, but he’s ready to go again.”
Record Store Day and the Ambivalent Branding of Independence – by Eric Harvey, Pitchfork
“For the stores and labels that won’t be participating in this year’s event, the same data proves their case too: Record Store Day has gotten way too big, and the smaller players—the people who the holiday is supposed to serve—are getting left out.”
Sigourney Weaver – by Jamie Lee Curtis, Interview
“Instead of seeming trapped in the chilly airlock of action movies, [Sigourney] Weaver delighted in changing the weather out there, cutting her heroines in independents and blockbusters alike with her personal brand of humour or allowing them to frost over completely. In Ang Lee's glassy adaptation of Rick Moody's The Ice Storm (1997), Weaver played the entitled housewife Janey Carver with exquisite cruelty, boredom, and a suffocating sadness. Rather than the other way around, she was the evil of banality incarnate—a '70s suburban Nero, all alone in her ice palace.”
Where Do Nice Guys Finish? – by Simon Wilson, Metro
“Campbell Live is in a precarious state because far too many of the people who value it in the abstract do not actually value it in their lives. They don’t watch it. Maybe it can get its audience back. But it’s a rock and a hard place when one option means becoming a bit trashier, alienating those who want quality, and the other means sticking with quality even though the people who value that don’t watch anyway.”
We need to talk about sexual harassment in nightclubs – by Chantelle Fiddy, Mixmag
“It seems that for every mind-blowing DJ set we witness, women are also often subject to the roaming hands of men who feel entitled to grope or molest us. Sunday morning war stories are so ubiquitous that it’s souring our experience of club culture and having an effect on which venues and parties many of us choose to go to. Is a night out without fear of who might be lurking next to the bass-bin really too much to ask?”
Auckland House Price Insanity – by Graham Adams, North & South / Metro
“If you want to observe for yourself the insanity of housing fever in Auckland and the dislocation between reality and housing prices, go to an auction held at a desirable property. At an onsite auction I attended in Devonport last year for a two-bedroom, concrete-block apartment, spirited bidding took the price way beyond the CV of $650,000, to a giddy $850,000. (The fact this won’t surprise Aucklanders in the slightest merely proves my point about a property market so long out of control that no one notices anymore.)”
Stand-Up Comedy Semi-Competently Performed by Celebrities: A Critical Examination – by Megan Koester, Grantland
“The Internet, in its ceaseless indignation, took to its fast-food-encrusted keyboards last week to discuss the most important issue of the day. No, not Iranian nuclear negotiations, nor the war in Yemen. Something far more important and far more terrifying — that Madonna performed stand-up comedy on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.”
Did you read something we didn't? Tell us about it in the comments section.
