Kendrick’s latest single utilises advanced deepfake tech
Kendrick Lamar’s music video for his new album teaser incorporates deepfake tech to portray the perspectives of various cultural icons. It’s an example of how realistic and advanced deepfake technology has gotten. If you’re a music fan, you’ll no doubt have seen and heard about Kendrick Lamar’s imminent album...
Current in Media
Is being partially deluded the key to maintaining happiness?
The world is burning, our phones are making us depressed, and the cost of living is rising exponentially. Could adopting a slight sense of delusion be the only way to make it through? If someone was to call you delusional, it’d be perfectly normal to be offended. At the very least,...
Opinion – Britney’s pregnancy marks happy end to tragic story
Spears’ pregnancy announcement was welcome news. It also marked the end of her 13-year-long conservatorship, which forbid her from having more children. Sadly, Britney’s story of fertility control is not uncommon. When the ‘Free Britney’ movement emerged with a vengeance in 2019, many were quick to slander members as conspiracy...
Netflix’s editorial division hit with layoffs
Four months ago, the streaming service ‘aggressively’ recruited a small army of journalists – primarily women and people of colour – to run its new fan site, Tudum. This week, it abruptly axed a significant portion of those hires. After posting disastrous results for its March quarter – the loss...
Opinion – why Julia Fox is the perfect celebrity throwback
From being relatively unknown to becoming a household name in just a few weeks, let’s explore why Julia Fox is the celebrity Hollywood has been missing. As we jump from one global crisis and (unwillingly) right into the next, it can feel like the only collective source of mindless escapism...
Opinion – Why assuming celebrities are pregnant is damaging
Though watching our favourite celebrities venture into motherhood is both exciting and weirdly humanising, can sensationalising their pregnancies be damaging? Society has had a fascination with Hollywood couples for as long as celebrities have existed, but where our adoration really takes hold is when they’re expecting a child together. In recent...
Milked is a tea-spitting look at dairy’s dark reality
Now available to watch for free on environmentally-focused streaming service Waterbear, Milked offers a magnified look at New Zealand’s dairy industry and the damage it's inflicting on the country and world as a whole. Why are we still drinking cow’s milk? This is the question that Milked, a new documentary available on Waterbear, wants you to ask. Fair warning, be prepared for every conceivable pro-dairy argument to be debunked during the...
Is ‘main character energy’ pushing us further into self-absorption?
It might be easy to feel like we are the brightest glowing star in this experience called life, but taking main character syndrome to the extreme can be detrimental. It seems like everywhere you look these days somebody is telling you to be a little more selfish. Instagram is filled with quotes like ‘put yourself first’ and ‘be your own best friend’, despite science reiterating time and time again...
Jack White calls for labels to launch vinyl record plants
In a statement and video, Jack White urges record labels to get serious about vinyl production. He says that supply chain issues and manufacturing bottlenecks need to be addressed. Jack White has asked major record labels to begin building their own vinyl pressing plants, citing industry wide shortages and manufacturing problems as indication of consistent demand. White has released three successful solo albums but is perhaps best known for his...
You Decide – is horror’s portrayal of ageing women problematic?
In the modern age of horror, elderly women playing the roles of ghoulish antagonists is fast becoming an obsessive genre trope. Many such films hold up in a commercial and critical sense, but is this perhaps indicative of harmful gender values still present within Hollywood? The Shining is one of my all-time favourite movies. Personal bias aside, though, one could argue that its most harrowing scene unintentionally sums up Hollywood’s...
