In honor of April Fool’s Day, the Playback staff have decided to take a break from our usual commentary on contemporary media to focus on…
With Jordan Peele’s sophomore feature Us opening to critical acclaim and a $70 million box office, the horror genre is once again at the forefront…
Olivia Riley created this video essay for a course on gender and media. The content of the video provides an academic primer on the fan…
Recently, there have been two significant closings of improv theaters which have put near-mythic figures in the improvisational community under scrutiny: improvOlympic (iO) West, run by Charna Halpern, and the East Village location of…
What follows, as it did last year, is our version of the Oscars, though we’ve decided to leave the near daily shake-ups and step-backs to…
There are lots of things to say about the runaway success of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. With animation so groundbreaking and eye-catching that Sony is…
The first tweet I saw in the New Year was a good one. Dr. Adrienne Keene posted, “Resolution for settlers in 2019: Listen to Indigenous…
In 1992, Spike Lee’s biopic Malcolm X hit the theaters. Arguably Spike Lee’s best work, the film largely takes its inspiration from the book The…
We’ve heard you, John Landgraf… there sure is a lot of TV these days. It sometimes feels like analysis paralysis is all but inevitable. Yet…
We’ve heard you, John Landgraf… there sure is a lot of TV these days. It sometimes feels like analysis paralysis is all but inevitable. Yet…