Getting picked up by the Los Angeles Angels wasn’t exactly the plan for Andrew “Squid” Velazquez, a Bronx-native whose talent and tenacity made him a fan favorite during his months-long stint on the New York Yankees. He had just been bumped up to their 40-man roster – the list of [...]
This isn’t the first time Fede Álvarez and I have met. We crossed paths nearly one decade before, at a fan-only screening of his “Evil Dead” remake in Tempe, Arizona. At the time, he was promoting his feature-length debut, and I had decided to pursue a career in film criticism. [...]
Season two of HBO’s “Euphoria,” which aired its finale on Sunday night, has made headlines for many of the same reasons as its first: in short, anything but the show itself. Through its nine-episode sophomore season, “Euphoria” has functioned more as a collection of moments, ebbing and flowing in and [...]
The lifespan of a successful pop star bears little resemblance to that of the average individual. Pop stars are, in essence, Phoenixes: they soar, plummet, and then disintegrate, finding rebirth in their ashes, stronger and smarter than their previous incarnation. No name defines this phenomenon better than Jennifer Lopez, the [...]
Introducing a three-part series exploring the current state of South America’s “Lithium Triangle,” comprising Bolivia, Argentina, and Chile. We’ll explore the challenges each country faces in successfully mining and monetizing “The New Oil.” The area of South America known as the “Lithium Triangle” is both a catchy moniker and a [...]
Francisca Alegría, a student of the Sundance Writing Labs, premiered her short film, “And the Whole Sky Fit in the Dead Cow’s Eye,” in 2017, the same year she started writing what would eventually become her debut, 2022’s “The Cow Who Sang a Song Into the Future.” Alegría spent four [...]
Alfonso Herrera, 38, who appears as cartel scion Javi Navarro in the fourth and final season of Netflix’s dark family drama “Ozark,” takes Zoom calls lying in his beloved hammock. In mid-January, I interviewed Herrera, the acclaimed actor and musician, on the evening the new season of “Ozark” premiered on [...]
The 2022 Sundance Film Festival, which ran from January 20 to January 30, was the second in a row to adapt to COVID-19 protocols by showcasing an entirely digital lineup. Following a surge of cases caused by the omicron variant, festival-goers were disappointed to learn that Sundance would, once more, [...]
Men are monsters and monsters are men. Through the course of human history, according to Guillermo del Toro, this is the law of the land, the only principle in an unprincipled world. Since his 1993 debut, “Cronos,” a film that considered notions of eternity by turning grandpa into a bloodsucking [...]
In a sweeping rejection of Pinochetism, the people of Chile chose liberal candidate Gabriel Boric over his far-right opponent José Antonio Kast in the country’s hotly contested December 19th runoff election. Boric, who took 56% of the popular vote, rose to prominence as a representative of student activists during protests [...]