All posts tagged: AntiCapitalist

Keke Palmer in Boots Riley’s Anti-Capitalist Comedy

Keke Palmer in Boots Riley’s Anti-Capitalist Comedy

Published by Daniella Wilson

Boots Riley, the punkish filmmaker behind Sorry to Bother You and Amazon’s I’m a Virgo, has a proven knack for creating surreal realities that feel truer, somehow, than the ones we can see outside our window. His latest feature, I Love Boosters, is set in a version of the Bay Area where the floors of an office are tilted at a 45-degree angle, where a demon sucks the souls out of people by going down on them, where a teleportation device shows great promise as a way for retailers to cut down shipping costs. But watching it feels less like being transported into a different universe than putting on X-ray goggles to look at our own — and finding, buried under all the frustration and despair, a joyful and unruly sense of hope. I Love Boosters The Bottom Line Wild, weird and delightfully unique. Venue: SXSW Film Festival (Headliner)Release date: Friday, May 22Cast: Keke Palmer, Naomi Ackie, Taylour Paige, Poppy Liu, Eiza González, LaKeith Stanfield, Will Poulter, Demi MooreDirector-screenwriter: Boots Riley Rated R, 1 hour …

Stardew Valley at 10: the anticapitalist game that cures burnout and inspires queer art | Games

Stardew Valley at 10: the anticapitalist game that cures burnout and inspires queer art | Games

Published by Sam Flores

When farming sim Stardew Valley first came out back in 2016, most of us saw it as a modest indie hit, offering charm, wit and a beautiful little world. Ten years later, this tiny indie has sold nearly 50m copies. If you haven’t played it yourself, you’ve probably seen someone playing it on the train (or, in the case of one of my musical theatre castmates, in the dressing room between scenes). As we discussed on the Tech Weekly podcast shortly after its launch, this calming game about tending crops and animals and relationships with neighbours rejuvenated the entire farming/life sim genre. To this day, I still get press releases promising that some upcoming cosy game or another is the next Stardew Valley. While developer Eric “ConcernedApe” Barone now has a small team to help with periodic updates, the original game – his first – was all his own work, from the distinctive pixel art and animations to the soundtrack that has since toured the world in concert. Unable to get a job after university, …

Indonesian Auteur Edwin Takes a Cue from Jordan Peele for Anti-Capitalist Horror-Comedy ‘Sleep No More’

Indonesian Auteur Edwin Takes a Cue from Jordan Peele for Anti-Capitalist Horror-Comedy ‘Sleep No More’

Published by Daniella Wilson

In the fluorescent glare of a rundown Indonesian wig factory, vats of human hair simmer in huge cauldrons, stirred by hunched laborers as rows of mannequin heads watch blankly from the dark.  Indonesian auteur Edwin has spent much of his career examining the quiet absurdities of modern life with a cool, deadpan detachment. But with Sleep No More, premiering in Berlin’s Special Midnight section this week, the director makes a headlong plunge into horror — infusing the genre with black comedy and a pointed critique of humanity’s slavish worship of capitalism. The film marks Edwin’s return to Berlin, where Postcards From the Zoo screened in competition in 2012 and later earned him the Edward Yang New Talent Award at the Asian Film Awards. For the new feature, he takes his cue from Jordan Peele, using the scary movie not just as spectacle but as a vehicle for uncomfortable social satire.  “I never worked with this genre before,” Edwin says. “So we thought, let’s have fun with it — but not by doing a horror based on …