New year, new decade, new snacks – same old questionable visual representations of cats.
The first of the year brings more than just a headache and a craving for brunch: it’s also Public Domain Day! This year’s biggest release that you can now enjoy copyright FREE is Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” (but we’re also pretty stoked on Buster Keaton’s Sherlock, Jr.
2019 brought us a bounty of crone representation, and we’re hoping for even more in 2020! We’re off to a good start in January’s solicits from BOOM!, which puts a crone on the cover of Kieron Gillen and Dan Mora’s ONCE AND FUTURE #7.
In crone-adjacent and special crone interest news, someone on Twitter gave us the blessing of… medieval hellish toots. They’re oddly soothing!
Apparently, the makers of the Dora the Explorer movie are putting a lot of work into South American representation, including such things as lines spoken in Quechua, an indigenous language spoken mostly in Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia, and even the United States. Sign us up!!
While on her adventure, Dora and her friends interact with actual Andean technologies. In one scene, Dora interprets a set of Inca constellations, which Incas actually used to tell time for agricultural purposes. In an action sequence, the writers incorporated information about ancient underground aqueducts.
…For [Américo Mendoza-Mori, a professor and consultant on the film], shining a light on Andean culture was a chance to explore Latin identities, especially in the United States, where media representations can lack complexity. “Suddenly we’re going to have a character that is willing to celebrate indigenous Latinx culture.”
Some holiday break time gave us the chance to watch some of the best movies of 2019, including Scorsese’s The Irishman. This essay by Priscilla Page examines the relationship between the cars in The Irishman, and the relationship to power that they represent.
Farewell, 2019!!!!