litc0013-blog

[litc0013-blog]

Music – New album by The National

A few days ago, The National announced the release of their new album scheduled for May 17, and it is with great pleasure that we share this news. For those who do not know it yet, The National is an American band that was formed 20 years ago. Their debut album was released in 2001, at the birth of the 21st Century. It is a band that we do admire and that has accompanied our evenings as teenagers. Two years after the success of Sleep Well Beast which actually won a Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album at the 60th Grammy Awards, I Am Easy to Find is the eighth album of the band. The first single is out, it is called You Had Your Soul with You, and it is brilliant. You can listen to it by clicking here. ’You felt like heaven stood up in you, you said love fills you out. It moves you from the skeleton and pulls you around. I got it worse than anyone else, and I just can't find a way to forgive myself. I had only one thing left and I couldn't see it yet.’ The album will be accompanied by a short film directed by Mike Mills and starring Academy Award-winner and Swedish actress Alicia Vikander – who is the woman on the album cover. Have a look at the trailer:

Now, we bet you are as excited as we are. Alicia Vikander (The Danish Girl, Ex Machina) is one of the best actresses of her generation, and it is great to see her collaboration with The National and Mike Mills.  Who is Mike Mills? Well, he was not the director of 21st Century Women, but of 20th Century Women (We hope you understood our joke!) – which is a fantastic film, starring Annette Bening, Elle Fanning and Lady Bird’s director Greta Gerwig. We hope you are ready because this new project of The National may be one of the best of their career! By the way, they have announced five special evenings in April, including one in London at Royal Festival Hall on April 16. Grab your tickets now here! And if it is already sold out, we are so sorry!

The 21st Century Team

[litc0013-blog]

Portfolio Assignment 2: Review of a Contemporary Critical Study

‘In his brilliant new work, leading artist and writer James Bridle excavates the limits of technology and how it aids our understanding of the world. Surveying the history of art, technology, and information systems, he explores the dark clouds that gather over our dreams of the digital sublime.’

The 21st Century team is pleased to write its weekly article about James Bridle’s New Dark Age: Technology and the End of the Future. We like to explore new literary areas and aspects, so it is with pleasure and for the first time that we decided to share our feelings about a contemporary critical study. The reading of New Dark Age has been very rewarding, although complicated. Indeed, James Bridle’s writing may be quite intricate to understand since he presents concepts that some people have certainly not acquired. It is easy to get lost in the acronyms or names of politicians he mentions. However, his criticism is not to be neglected.  Before you begin reading our review, we invite you to watch this very interesting video to familiarise yourself with the world of James Bridle:

In this video, Bridle briefly explains the important points of his book. He tells us about ‘computational thinking’ which is the belief that the world can be reduced to data — completely understood. But in fact, it is more complicated than that. We tend to know a lot of things about the world, yet it seems that we are characterised by division, as he explains.

Our future is unclear and we may have toxic opinions. The world is stronger than us and he illustrates that with climate change. We have no control over it and it brings no satisfaction. Thus, what can we do and what remains for us to do? The book is divided into ten chapters — Chasm, Computation, Climate, Calculation, Complexity, Cognition, Complicity, Conspiracy, Concurrency, and Cloud. It is something quite destabilising for us, we would have preferred a continuous flow of thought. Maybe it is because we are not used to read such books. The first chapter plays the role of an introduction and gives us the main problems of the book. He actually says that ‘if we really are capable of thinking in new ways, then we are also capable of rethinking the world.’ Thus, he invites us to open our minds to understand the problems that darken our society. Even if we are in an uncertain world, he also declares that ‘we have much to learn about unknowing. Uncertainty can be productive, even sublime.’ What is very clever about James Bridle’s book is that there is no question of pessimism about a society deemed dangerous or unstable. Bridle reassures us, offers solutions and invites us to understand, before finally accepting our condition. As he says, it is ‘a book about what we know, how we know, and what we cannot know.’ At the end of the first chapter, Bridle tells us that reading this book will not necessarily be pleasant, since it is based on facts that are often difficult to accept. Indeed, ‘it requires saying things that we would rather leave unsaid, thinking things that we would rather keep unthought.’ As we said, it is sometimes complicated to understand every aspect of the book. However, Bridle illustrates his thoughts with pop culture references in order for us to have a better understanding of them. We can see him using Thor’s hammer, Google, YouTube or Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove (1964) as examples to explain a passage about ‘computer intelligence’ in his chapter Computation. At the end of his book, James Bridle concludes in a beautiful and clear-sighted way, by saying that ‘we are not powerless’. We are therefore far from the dystopias to which we are unfortunately accustomed to in literature — with Huxley or Orwell. Actually, what alarms us with New Dark Age is the fact that it is not a novel and we cannot reassure ourselves by saying that it is not true. It is, and it is our own story. Although realistic and terrifying, Bridle’s criticism aims to inform us and to raise awareness ingeniously. That is precisely why we recommend reading New Dark Age if you have the desire to understand, but also the desire to accept the dangers and the problems of our dark world. It may be our duty to do something today.

The 21st Century Team

[litc0013-blog]

Cinema – Beautiful Boy (2018) dir. Felix Van Groeningen

‘There are moments that I look at him, this kid that I raised, who I thought I knew inside and out, and I wonder who he is. He’s been doing all sorts of drugs, but he’s addicted to crystal meth, which seems, uh, to be the worst of all of them. And I guess I’m here because I just want to know all that I can about all of it. Know your enemies, right? So, my two big questions are, what is it doing to him, and what can I do to help him?’ Today, we are going to talk about Felix Van Groeningen’s Beautiful Boy. It stars Steve Carell, Timothée Chalamet, Maura Tierney and Amy Ryan. It is based on the memoirs Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction by David Sheff. When it is based on a true story, it is always delicate for the director and his actors to be legitimate. The director has the duty to convert a realistic message without distorting it, and it is the same thing for the actors. Beautiful Boy is about a complicated relationship between a father and his son who is affected by drug addiction. We want to start this review by saying that it is a film for Hollywood. Although we did enjoy the performances of Carell and Chalamet, we have the feeling that the film is idealised. ‘More than 70,200 Americans died from drug overdoses in 2017, including illicit drugs and prescription opioids.’ (Source: CDC WONDER) It is not with Beautiful Boy that you will be able to understand the everyday life of people who unfortunately suffer from a drug addiction. However, the film is powerful and successful because of the performances of the two main actors – Steve Carell and Timothée Chalamet, who tried their best to portray David & Nic Sheff. 

Carell is know for his very famous role in The Office (which is the best American television sitcom) or for films such as Crazy, Stupid, Love (2011), The Big Short (2015) or Foxcatcher (2014). He is a professional and talented actor who no longer needs to prove the extent of his talent. However, we must admit that we were afraid to see him in such a dramatic role. When we think of Steve Carell, we think of Michael Scott (His character in The Office). With Beautiful Boy, he proved to us that he was capable of everything. He is absolutely heartrending in the role of the powerless father, and his pair with Timothée Chalamet also works very well. You may have heard of Timothée Chalamet regarding the huge success of Luca Guadagnino‘s Call Me by Your Name (2017) where he was nominated for an Oscar. Chalamet is a young brilliant French-American actor who is about to become the rising star of Hollywood, if he is not already. With Beautiful Boy, he earned nominations at the Golden Globes, Screen Actor Guild, BAFTA Awards and Critics’ Choice Awards, and we understand why. Chalamet delivered the best of himself for this role, he lost several pounds before actively documenting himself on the importance of the subject he portrayed on screen thanks to the features of Nic Sheff. He has a singular sensitivity linked to an inexplicable force within him. We had the chance to discover Beautiful Boy during the premiere in October as part of the BFI London Film Festival. The majority of the 21st Century team raises the incredible performances of the actors but the lack of truth regarding the importance of the subject.

If you have not seen the film yet, we want you to do it because it remains worthy and it may be able to raise your own awareness. It is now available for free on Prime Video (Amazon).

The 21st Century Team

[litc0013-blog]

As you certainly know, the 21st Century team loves the music of Florence and the Machine, as well as literature. So, what is better than Florence Welch's book club? Well, nothing, you are right. In October, the English musician recommended us a contemporary book — Normal People by Sally Rooney. Without any hesitation, we have decided to follow her advice while diving into the adventures of Connell and Marianne. Normal People is the second book of Irish writer Sally Rooney, who is known for her debut novel called Conversations with Friends. With this new book, she tells us the singular and touching story of Marianne Sheridan and Connell Waldron. They are teenagers who live in Carricklea (which is actually the place that inspired some of W. B. Yeats’ poetry!) at the beginning of the novel. Later in the book, the action takes place at Trinity College Dublin. First, Marianne is wealthy but unpopular while Connell is poor but one of the most popular students at school.  These two opposites are yet destined to live something beautiful together and this is exactly what Rooney shares with her novel — which is a real success. If you have liked Where Rainbows End by Cecelia Ahern in 2004, you will love Sally Rooney’s new book. ‘She has never believed herself fit to be loved by any person. But now she has a new life, of which this is the first moment, and even after many years have passed she will still think: Yes, that was it, the beginning of my life.’ These are the words used by the author after Connell confesses his feelings to Marianne. For the first time in her life, the modest and detached girl feels loved and witnessing such a thing is extremely pleasant for the reader. Marianne herself was not aware of the fact that she needed to be loved for who she is. It is very easy to identify ourselves with the two protagonists of the novel. They are both intelligent students, however, they have two very different profiles and throughout the novel, they do their best to unite their differences with clumsiness but kindliness. Connell lives with her mother Lorraine who works as a cleaner in Marianne’s family. Despite this social inferiority, Connell is the popular sportsman of the school, while Marianna is described as an imperfect girl who does not really have a social life, who is even mocked by some of her classmates before being attacked by one of them during a night out. Arriving in Dublin, this tendency changes as Marianne becomes one of those girls coveted by boys and ‘she has a lot of friends’ now, while Connell confine himself to literature with novels such as Jane Austen’s Emma. It also says that ‘he feels objectively worse-looking than he used to be’. By becoming the lonely and the unpopular one, Rooney shows us how everything can be ephemeral and unstable in the lives of others. Unlike Marianne, this lack of recognition is something that affects Connell. With this superb novel, the author also offers us a relevant reflection on society. Indeed, topics such as identity, ‘male privilege’ or normality are discussed. Nevertheless, Dublin is synonymous with freedom and renewal for Connell and Marianne. From now on, they no longer seek to hide themselves as they did in Carricklea. The fear of others’ look has disappeared and we are now more focused on their own feelings. ‘And hopefully I have changed, you know, as a person. But honestly, if I have, it’s because of you.’ Connell’s words demonstrate how Normal People is also a hymn to gratitude that makes us want to fall in love. Their relationship is heartbreakingly sincere and the reader wants to protect them, while trying to connect with them in order to feel and experience this overflow of emotions. Sally Rooney’s writing is enjoyable. Indeed, she manages to use simple words while describing a complex relationship that generates feelings that are often complicated to handle for the characters — but also for the reader. The magic of Rooney is such that we are just as torn as Marianne and Connell in front this shifting love. If you have not figured it out yet, 21st Century recommends this book — which is not only the 2018 Waterstones’ Book of the Year, since it is also ours. Normal People also won ‘Best Novel’ at the 2018 Costa Book Awards. Do not hesitate any longer and go get your copy! For the next article, we are going to talk about Felix Van Groeningen’s Beautiful Boy — which is based on the memoirs of David Sheff. The film stars Timothée Chalamet & Steve Carell and it is absolutely brilliant. 

The 21st Century Team