Post- Feb. 25, 2016

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upfront

Editor-in-Chief Yidi Wu Managing Editor of Arts & Culture Abby Muller

contents 3 upfront minding your body Kimberly Meilun

Managing Editor of Features Monica Chin

4 features

Managing Editor of Lifestyle Cissy Yu

i am my hair Claribel Wu

Managing Editor of Online Amy Andrews Arts & Culture Editors Liz Studlick Mollie Forman Features Editors Lauren Sukin Halley McArn Lifestyle Editor Claire Sapan Corinne Sejourne Creative Director Grace Yoon Copy Chiefs Lena Bohman Alicia DeVos

4-5 lifestyle changes Section Editors paris in providence Corinne Sejourne

6-7 arts & culture best picture speculations Post- Magazine

8 lifestyle top ten overheard at brown letting the light in Liz Studlick

editor’s note Dear Readers, One of our copywriters tells me that yesterday was the last day to add a course (with a late fee), change from audit to credit, or change a grade option. The finality, she said! The burden of choice, she said! I had selected my courses on the first day of shopping period and had no idea that this deadline even approached. In any case, it’s too late to change now if this is the first that you’re hearing of it. Remember for next year!

Perhaps this particular deadline was as unremarkable for you as it was for me, but many other important opportunities for choice pass without notice in our lives. Opportunities--to change our moods, to change our habits, to change the people we are--pass by us on a daily basis. We do not act out of inertia, out of ignorance, or out of a lack of faith that change is possible. Our writers talk about such opportunities for change this week, from the pattern of the season to the balance between mind and body.

Best,

Yidi

Serif Sheriffs Logan Dreher Kate Webb Head Illustratrix Katie Cafaro Staff Writers Sara Al-Salem Tushar Bhargava Kalie Boyne Katherine Chavez Loren Dowd Rebecca Forman Joseph Frankel Devika Girish Gabrielle Hick Lucia Iglesias Anne-Marie Kommers Joshua Lu Caitlin Meuser Emma Murray Spencer Roth-Rose Jacyln Torres Ryan Walsh Claribel Wu Staff Illustrators Yoo Jin Shin Alice Cao Emily Reif Beverly Johnson Michelle Ng Peter Herrara Mary O’Connor Emma Margulies Jason Hu Jenice Kim Cover Emily Reif

From right to left: Yidi Wu ‘17, Abby Muller ‘16, Monica Chin ‘17, Cissy Yu ‘17, Amy Andrews ‘16, Liz Studlick ‘16, Mollie For- man ‘16, Lauren Sukin ‘16, Nate Shames ‘17, Corinne Sejourne ‘16, Lena Bohman ‘18, Alicia DeVos ‘18, Logan Dreher ‘19, Ellen Taylor ‘16, Kate Webb ‘19, Katie Cafaro ‘17 (Please send us a photo at post.magazine.bdh@gmail.com)

upfront

3

minding your body

smiling on the bad days

KIMBERLY MEILUN staff writer When we wake up, whether we’re tired or well-rested, we leave our dream space and prepare to enter the world of errands, academics, social circles, and other networks.

Schedules structure our days, remind us of our assignments, and keep due dates looming over our heads. We are constantly living in two time zones: our day-to-day life and our future. We have to go grocery shopping, and we also have to prepare for job interviews. That leaves us with two roles—we must shape our future lives and future selves while simultaneously presenting our fullest selves.

This duality can be overwhelming.

On paper, we control our schedules, but in many ways, our schedules control us. We can control our present circumstances, but we cannot control the hand we are dealt and to which we have to react. We may feel caught up in a draining lifestyle that mentally and physically exhausts us, then become so entrenched that it becomes the only lifestyle imaginable.

I am most overwhelmed when I feel trapped in this cycle, when I feel like I don’t have agency or control over my life, leaving me uninspired and dissatisfied. Can I change these negative feelings without changing my circumstances? Or are these feelings signals that I need to change an aspect of my lifestyle, that something isn’t quite working anymore?

Bad days, bad weeks, bad months, and bad semesters happen. When these re-

alities become constant realities, professional intervention is important. However, this article does not address mental illness, but rather, the ups and downs that we are not impermeable to.

When we feel dissatisfied, frustrated, or upset with the people in our lives, the activities we involve ourselves with, family situations, relationships, or the career path we’ve chosen, how can we feel better? Health professionals say that smiling, even when you don’t feel happy, can make you feel happy. But is that really possible? Is there a mind-body connection that can influence how we perceive and shape our lives shape our lives?

A mind-body connection exists in some aspects of my life, but not others.

In spiritual and meditative practices, I am conscious of it and can feel a noticeable difference when my mind and my body are in sync. However, in professional situations and in my daily life, my physical body is not a priority for me. I do not get enough sleep. I do not exercise regularly. I do not eat healthy meals.

In fact, my typical meal consists of fruit roll-ups and pickles. In this way, my body is just the mechanism, the vessel, that I use to engage with the world.

Treating my body this way is a perverse privilege. I am fortunate to say that I currently do not have a serious health condition that affects my daily life. For now, I do not have to watch what I eat, pay attention to my heart rate, or monitor my blood pressure. Many medical

conditions require entirely different forms of awareness. I recently heard a fellow student speak about a cardiologic and neurological condition she has; she has an overactive connection between her brain and her heart, meaning her mental state can affect her physical state and vice versa.

Her definition of health does not separate physical health from mental health in the same way that mine does. For her, physical health and mental health are not two different sides of the same coin, but rather, the same side of the same coin.

I cannot imagine what it is like to live with this woman’s condition—the attention it demands and the scariness of it both seem incredible. Yet I am intrigued by it. The condition itself demonstrates something that is true even for those without it: No matter how much we may fight it by ignoring our need to sleep or eating unhealthy meals, there is a connection between one’s mind and one’s body.

Our attitude and our stress level affect how we feel on a physiological level; when I am stressed, I am more likely to get sick, to cry, to not sleep, and to feel faint and weak. When I am happy, my body feels stronger, whether I am physically well or not.

Can we harness this mind-body awareness? Instead of the mind overruling the body or the body overruling the mind, what if we more often listened to one to inspire, to propel, and to strengthen the

other?

What if we slept when our mind says we should study? Would we learn better time management? What if we wrote creatively when we want to stress-eat? What if we called our parents to vent rather than write that last internship application?

I struggle to treat myself well, and I have many friends who also struggle to treat themselves well. These feelings often express themselves in unhealthy behaviors that we can recognize but fail to stop because they seem uncontrollable.

But we can control our minds and our bodies. We can choose how we want to feel throughout the day by encouraging, rather than discouraging, ourselves.

We need to redefine what healthy means. Healthy is a combination of physical and mental factors. To improve our health, we can eliminate people, activities, or stresses from our life that once made us happy but no longer do. We can eliminate what we do not care about and focus on what and whom we love.

We do not have to become trapped in patterns, lifestyles, attitudes, and ways of thinking.

We can change. We are not static people. We can take a different path, approach problems differently, and choose to be happy.

We have this agency.

Illustration by Yidi Wu

4

features

i am my hair

a new ‘do gives way to a new you

CLARIBEL WU staff writer Over winter break, I felt a little odd. I guess the best way to describe it is that feeling you get when you come back to your room and realize that something has changed, and it takes you a while to realize it’s because the poster you only subconsciously acknowledge fell off the wall while you were gone.

Everything had seemed right as rain: I just finished my finals, and I was on my way back to the sunny embrace of Southern California. However, the sudden departure from the routine of life I had adopted over the past few months gave me time and space to be contemplative about where I was at in life, rare luxuries not often afforded in the chaos of college. This opportunity for deliberation evidently brought on a wave of existential confusion: What I was doing in life, and why I was doing it? What did I care about, and why? Every “what” was always followed by a “why.” These questions rattled in my head as I started to question everything and everyone in my life.

There’s one scene in “500 Days of Summer” where young Summer is standing in front of the mirror. The movie’s omniscient presence narrates in a reassuring baritone, “She’d only loved two things. The first was her long dark hair. The second was how easily she could cut it off and feel nothing.”

Summer then proceeds to take a pair of scissors and cuts, say, nine inches off without flinching. This moment always astounded me, because throughout my life, I’ve always been very careful about my hair. I couldn’t imagine doing something so cataclysmic to something that had taken me months to cultivate.

I guess my astonishment mostly stemmed from her ability to let go of some-

thing to which she supposedly had an attachment. When I first saw the movie, I interpreted Summer’s action negatively; I thought it was meant to show that she was cold and distant.

Increasingly, I’m realizing that there is a profound truth behind your ability to transform something, like your hair, so suddenly and definitively. It’s a signal of free will, of subtle but powerful agency over your life and circumstances. It’s also an acknowledgment that things change, a realization that nothing is truly permanent when it comes to existence. It’s making peace with that.

I thought I’d deal with these nonmaterial thoughts with a material action, so toward the end of winter break, I tied my hair in a ponytail and cut off everything past the hairband. It was a moment of exhilaration––and a little bit of fear.

It wasn’t a drastic transformation, admittedly, but I don’t think anything has to be in order to bring empowerment and transcendency. In the midst of my inner turmoil and disconnectedness with life, this act was a reminder to myself that I could shape things into what I wanted them to be––and if things didn’t turn out right, it would still be completely okay. Hair grows back, and life goes on.

It’s easy to get consumed by things like grades, jobs, and relationships. We get hurt and disappointed when things don’t go as planned. I might even venture to say that the singular cause of unhappiness is disappointment, a failure of reality to line up with our expectations.

I think that personal image is a really powerful first step to overcoming those emotional hurdles and living life with less

inhibitions. Have you always wanted to dye your hair purple, or get a pixie cut? Go for it. Just do it. What’s holding you back, and why does it matter? Again, these questions of what and why.

Lately, several of my friends have asked me to give them eyebrow slits. Basically, it’s a trend where you shave off narrow bits of your eyebrows. With our glorification of having them “on-fleek,” it’s terrifying to conceive of shaving off even a little bit of your own eyebrow, not to mention someone else’s eyebrow.

Another friend called me up spontaneously on a weeknight and said she was dying her hair teal. I came over and helped her do part of it, using just a hair dye bought on Amazon (with great reviews, of course) and some plastic gloves that I swiped from the dining hall.

Each of these people is taking risks and wresting back control of their life. It can be difficult to look at certain parts of your life, whether it’s hair or something else, and realize the ephemerality of it all. Yes, it seems to matter so much in the present, but don’t let that weigh you down so much that it stops you from doing what you love and enjoy.

Frida Kahlo said: “Nothing is absolute. Everything changes, everything moves, everything revolves, everything flies and goes away.” If you can see your life this way, you’ll see that it won’t be the end of the world if you dye your hair, get those eyebrow slits, or chop off your locks. Stop giving yourself obstacles from the future, and allow yourself to pursue what you want in the present.

This philosophy doesn’t only apply to self-image; it’s an all-encompassing per-

spective. Don’t let that one bad quiz grade crush you, and don’t let a romantic rejection determine your happiness. Take some time, when you’re in a hurricane of stress and emotions, to find the eye of the storm and remember what life really is: an experience.

These little things shouldn’t dictate how we live and how we feel. It is within your power to transcend the suffocating grip reality often has on us and to live life as abundantly and exultingly as you can.

Illustration by Katie Cafaro

changes

if you could do one thing over at brown, what would it be?

SECTION EDITORS I would have changed my freshman advisor much sooner. I tried to stick with my advisor—I stuck with him all year—and he was horrible. He stood me up to meetings that I would plan.

I’d be like, “Can you meet me at this time, in your office, during your office hours?” and he would just not be there.

He sucked. I didn’t know how easy it was to change, I guess. I would say if you don’t like your freshman advisor, switch to someone you do like. Also, I would go off meal plan early.

- Emma Illick-Frank ‘18 I guess I regret taking that class pass/ fail last semester because I was afraid of a B. - L.B. ‘19: I would say to be careful about liv-

ing with your friends just because they’re your friends doesn’t mean you have the same living habits. And then if you get mad at them, then you’re both mad at your friends and mad at your roommates.

- Catherine Willet ‘16 I would say I would really just take classes in what I was interested in. For so long I was trying to do this concentration because I needed to get this job, and that was silly because I really wasn’t that interested in it.

- Carol Medina, ‘18 I feel like mine’s very similar to hers.

I’m just trying to think of how to phrase it. Okay, so if I could do something over, it would be not to be intimidated to take classes that I wasn’t good at at first, be-

lifestyle

cause I think that happens a lot with, like, computer science classes. So I wish I would have taken more earlier on.

- Rafael Reyes, ‘18 I would ask for help and support more often.There were many times when I badly needed advice, but I was too busy, too scared, too stubborn, or too distracted to seek it out. There were times when I didn’t even know I needed help, times when I assumed I knew best. If I could do Brown again, I would make time to check in regularly with an advisor, and despite the everyday chaos, make sure I sought support from someone who had more experience with the big picture.

- E.J. ‘16 If I could go back and redo something, I would think more long-term about my academic plan for choosing my courses, you know, like freshman year.

- Abraar Chaudry ‘19 I think if I could change one thing I would have worked harder in my classes.

The thing is, it’s when classes seem really

easy that I don’t do any work for them.

- Kari Malkki ‘16 I just would have started a language freshman year … Chinese. Starting sophomore year there’s a limit to how far you can go.

- Tyler Hakomori ‘18 Definitely get to know some of my earlier professors sooner.

- Zach Ricca ‘18 The times I regret the most are the ones I spent stressing about the future— I remember doing that a lot during my first few semesters. Brown is an incredible place and we’re only here for a short time. If I could do over one thing, I would try to be more cognizant of that early on.

- S.T. ‘16 It would probably be to just, I don’t know, sort of explore the different opportunities on campus more often and maybe get involved with more extracurriculars to form longer lasting relation-

ships. I’m in the process of doing that now, but just starting it earlier in the game, you know what I mean?

- Amanda ‘18 I would have really evaluated the extracurriculars I became involved in initially and determined whether or not they really helped me grow as a person.

And then dropped any of them that weren’t contributing to that. Which is most of them.

- Kiera Peltz ‘16 If I could have one do-over at Brown, I would spend more time getting to know my first year roommate.

- Anonymous ‘16 I’d tell my freshman self to fully engage in the social life at Brown instead of trying to go home as often as possible.

- David Armanious ‘19 I was very naive coming into Brown.

I was naive about physics, research, academia, and what to prioritize. In high school, nothing was particularly dif-

5

ficult and my schedule was defined by my school and [cross country or track] practices. I knew exactly what to do to succeed in high school. At Brown, many things were uncertain and I didn’t know how to start off succeeding in what I wanted to do, let alone figure out if there was something I wanted to do. I didn’t know how to properly study for physics, research was intimidating, I had no idea how important computer science was for the sciences, and I didn’t know what to prioritize … Back then, I wish I had reached out to more professors and to my peers to get the help I needed earlier on. However, I am now actively pursuing everything I wish I had done earlier on to set myself up for success in the future including reaching out to professors and peers and learning more about what to do to succeed and what types of research are available at Brown and beyond.

- Joseph Fichera ‘17 Illustration by Michelle Ng

paris in providence

a q&a with french director richard blakely

CORINNE SEJOURNE lifestyle section editor Corinne: For people who don’t know the French Film Festival, could you give a brief overview from your perspective?

Richard Blakely: It was started 21 years ago. This is its 21st anniversary, so it can drink now (laughs). This year I think it’s a good strong program because the films—if you noticed—all except one, are very recent, produced within the last two years, most of them in 2015. And a lot of them haven’t been shown in the States before.

C: And they’re all French films?

R: Yeah, they’re all made in France except for one, the one called “Eau Argentée” [“M’a Al-Fidda”]. It was filmed in Syria. But it was produced in France—they’re all French productions.

C: And what is your role specifically in the French Film Festival?

R: Well, I’m called the director of the festival, but I hate to use that word because so many people are involved. Basically, my job is to coordinate things in the department of French Studies. But in MCM, Susan McNeil and Liza Hebert do an awful lot of work, especially with graphics and setting up students ... Also, Richard Manning … is the film archivist at MCM. And then another person who helps an awful lot is the guy who owns Cable Car, Daniel Kamil.

So my role is really to coordinate the French department’s input and to work with these people to put this together. We all first met in October and created a huge, long list of films.

C: So the planning starts in October?

R: Yes, we pick and choose and winnow it down to what we come up with.

C: And how do you pick?

R: We choose films that are available that we know we can get. Either they will be available in the States or we can have them shipped from France. Also, I look pretty care-

fully at reviews and online, and we consider things that we have seen. For example, my wife, Annie, and I saw “La Loi du Marché” last year, which is an amazing film.

C: And was this in France that you saw it?

R: Yes, right, we were in Paris, and we came home from the Bastille and were just amazed with the acting. Then we got home and turned on the Cannes awards, and just then Vincent Lindon, who was the lead and also helped direct, was awarded best director of the year.

C: What funny timing. So, picking the films, it’s partly the collaborative effort, but it helps when you’ve seen them yourself?

R: Yeah, it helps when you’ve seen them yourself. As does word of mouth. I send around a letter to all my friends in France and they say, “You gotta have this, you gotta have that.”

C: That makes a lot of sense.

R: The other thing I really like about the Festival is the student involvement; there are a lot of volunteer students. In the last couple of years we’ve started doing introductions by students. Not for every film, but for a lot of them.

C: That sounds like a really nice thing.

How long have you been involved in the French Film Festival?

R: I came to Brown in 1973 to teach film.

I’d just come out of the University of California at Santa Barbara, and I had a degree in literature and film. In those days people didn’t study film; it was not an academic subject …

My favorite course I taught was on the films of Jean Renoir of the 1930s. In fact, I did my thesis on one of Renoir’s movies, and Renoir himself was living in Beverly Hills at the time, so I was in touch with him. He was amazed to know that I was using his movies to teach French language, and also as an art

form ...

After those 10 years, I went to URI to teach English ... But I always had my foot in film; I also taught film at URI. And then I went to France for three years and taught film and English there, American films. I came back to Brown later on and continued teaching part time here and at RISD. But anyway, because of my interest in film, the second or third year of the festival they asked me to direct it, and I did, and I’ve come back from time to time ... I’ve done it three or four times.

C: Do they try to have different directors each time?

R: I think they get whoever’s willing to do it. It’s a lot of work.

C: Do you have a favorite of the movies coming this time?

R: I really like “La loi du Marché.” But also the two films with Géraldine Pailhas: “Espion,” and also she was in “Le Dos Rouge.” She’s coming to present.

C: And are there any that you’re particularly looking forward to seeing?

R: Yeah, well I very much want to see

“Bébé Tigre,” and “Dheepan,” and of course Géraldine Pailhas’ two films … they’re really all so good.

C: I’m curious also, how did you get interested in French culture to begin with?

R: I did a junior year abroad. And I was an English major until I came back from Bordeaux. That was the first year the University of California had a program. It was a rare thing—that was in ‘63. I participated in that year abroad and came back with more French credits than English, and—you know the story, right?

So, I got my French major and more and more kind of fell in love with France. And then I fell in love with a French woman. That helped.

The French Film Festival (https://www. brown.edu/campus-life/events/french-filmfestival/) will be running at the Cable Car Cinema from February 25, 2016 - March 3, 2016.

Illustration by Mary O’Connor

6

arts & culture

best picture speculations

post- staff discusses this year’s academy award-nominated films

POST- MAGAZINE THE BIG SHORT We’ve all seen dramas about big moments in history; half of this year’s Best Picture nominees tell us some version of a true story. These films make for compelling Oscar fare. “The Big Short”, though, is unique in that it tells us not about an episode we, as an American audience, heard about in the news, but rather one we lived. The 2008 financial crisis is something we all remember and most of us—except maybe the Econ

concentrators—haven’t ever really understood.

“The Big Short” has received both criticism and praise for the way it deals with explanation and exposition: Some is delivered via narration, but also at several points in the film, big-name pop stars deliver monologues directly to the audience explaining subprime mortgages and the housing bubble and all those other things we don’t quite get. This is an instance where the influence of the director Adam McKay, who typically di-

rects more comedic fare, shows through.

In my opinion, it works. We get the background we need to move forward with the story—and it is a compellingly told story. “The Big Short” is dark, angry, and disillusioned; it stings. It calls out everyone. It’s American hubris packaged, that tragic flaw run wild with jobs and homes and lives hanging in the balance. The cast features many big names, including Christian Bale, Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling, and Brad Pitt. There is no single star; this is an ensemble film, with all playing characters who had various roles in figuring out the looming crisis before it happened. They are successful and brilliant; they are young, excited, ambitious, jaded, tired.

This is not a feel-good movie, but it is an astoundingly powerful one, and a strong contender for best picture. It tells a complicated story well and engages its audience in the process. - Abby Muller BRIDGE OF SPIES “Bridge of Spies” is a Cold War drama based on the true story of Francis Gary Powers’s U-2 plane being shot down over Soviet territory in 1960. The film boasts a lot of big names: the movie was directed by Steven Spielberg, features a script co-written by the Coen brothers and lesser-known screenwriter Mark Charman, and stars Tom Hanks. Hanks plays an insurance lawyer-turned-American hero, traveling from Brooklyn to Sovietcontrolled East Berlin to negotiate the trade of a captured American pilot for a suspected Soviet spy.

Despite the prestigious cast and crew members, I knew little to nothing about the film before I saw it, except that it came highly recommended by my parents—both of whom are lawyers, which makes them more inclined to enjoy media depicting lawyers in a positive light. Though I’m not a lawyer, I found “Bridge of Spies” gripping and intense, yet not without moments of humor. Hanks is likable as always, going above and beyond the call of duty to negotiate for the safe return of American citizens, and he has a zeal for justice that rivals Atticus Finch’s. Similarly, Mark Rylance’s portrayal of stoic, artistic spy Rudolf Abel instantly renders the viewer sympathetic to him, even if he has been passing information to the USSR at the height of the Cold War. It’s a long film, clocking in at close to 2.5 hours, but the dialogue and action are compelling enough that the film never feels as though it has overstayed its welcome. Will “Bridge of Spies” win Best Picture? Almost definitely not—it hasn’t come close to matching the buzz of “The Revenant” or some of the other strong contenders for the coveted Best Picture trophy. But it’s an engrossing look at a tense moment in American history, and whether or not it wins this Sunday, it’s well worth your time. - Amy Andrews

BROOKLYN A clever Irish girl moves to the big city. In a world of deliberately ‘50s pastel décor and even more deliberate regional accents, Eilis (Saoirse Ronan) must grapple with what it means to leave home, get lonely, eat spaghetti, and find a man.

That’s the gist of it.

There’s a scene in Brooklyn where Eilis goes to a homeless shelter to serve Christmas dinner. She watches as hundreds of polite, tired Irish laborers line up for a home-cooked meal. One of the men stands up to sing an old Gaelic song. The scene lengthens, his voice a chilling, melancholic soundtrack to the blank stares of the Irishmen, some of them already napping. In that moment, the audience feels a prickling, gut sense of longing for a home that one can’t remember, in a city that has made one much more alone.

But thoughtful scenes like this are few in “Brooklyn.” Director John Crowley, himself an Irish immigrant, chooses a cozy, optimistic take on the immigrant experience, even when his storyline would imply aims at complexity. Midway through the movie, a death happens in the family, and Eilis sails back to Ireland to comfort her mother. Upon arrival, she feels tempted to move back to her familiar, provincial hometown, even though she misses her new American husband. To illustrate this point, Crowley introduces another love interest, a courtly Irish gentleman. Eilis feels torn.

She must make a choice.

This part strays a little bit from history. In fact, most immigrants during the 1950’s were driven by financial need, and had no choice but to stay in America. The freedom, leisure, romantic interests, and job opportunities Eilis enjoys make her conflicts seem, in the end, more aesthetic than actual. After all, the struggles of an immigrant come not from the moment of choosing to go, but from the feelings of regret, estrangement, silence, and bewilderment that follow that choice, as years pass.

“Brooklyn” neglects this sadness. It tells a good story, though, with a cast of really charming, funny characters. Throw in the ‘50s pastel décor, and there’s just enough to like. Though not enough to deserve an Oscar. - Cissy Yu MAD MAX Depending on who you ask, it’s hard to tell whether “Mad Max: Fury Road” is an underdog or a shoo-in for top awards at the Oscars. It’s won a spate of major awards for best picture or film of the year, including from the AFI and the London Critics Circle, and it’s been lauded industrywide for its set design and special effects. However, with recent BAFTA (and other) wins for films like “The Revenant” and “Spotlight”—more traditional Oscar fare—the Oscar future for “Fury Road” is beginning to look more and more bleak.

But as a film about a group of downtrodden people escaping from patriar-

arts & culture

chal slavery in the wasteland of postapocalyptic Australia, “Fury Road” knows bleak—just as it knows a strain of celebratory filmmaking (and feminism) that is missing from today’s action movie culture. While other post-apocalyptic movies like “The Road” are nearly monochromatic, director George Miller blasts “Fury Road” with color, affect, and frenetic movement; while other action movies foreground the white male protagonist and relegate the stories and pain of women to the background, “Fury Road” uses Tom Hardy’s pretty face far more as a launch board for Charlize Theron’s narrative than for any type of male hegemony. “Fury Road” is a great feminist movie; few sources refute that, and many that do, do so with the expectation that feminism in mainstream media is about total revolution rather than the more quotidian notion of more films made for women and made well.

Even without its feminist cred, “Fury Road” is just a plain good movie. With naturalized world-building specific to the universe of this film that doesn’t require knowledge of the three prequels, a fast-paced narrative that weaves breathtaking action sequences with introspective scenes, and an epic brand of pathos, “Fury Road” proves that blockbusters can craft plots with depth, and characters with weight, without giving up an ounce of C-4 or scrap metal.

The fact that it does so to propel a group of sex slaves to freedom and women to the forefront of a genre that has minimized them—so much the better. Mollie Forman THE MARTIAN “The Martian” was fine. It was worth watching if you enjoy space movies and aren’t yet sick of them; it was better than “Interstellar” and worse than “Gravity.”

Fortunately, I’m a nerd when it comes to space, so, overplayed or not, the “all alone in space while dramatic music swells” thing is still enough to get me to fork over $13. While I don’t have much to say about whether the movie deserves an Oscar, I can say I wouldn’t be mad if it happened, which might be good enough, considering the slate of options. My biggest takeaway from watching “The Martian,” and my biggest excitement about the movie in general, is the possibility that because of it, people might finally care about NASA again.

NASA itself loved the film, telling Wired that the movie is “an opportunity to re-engage the public with space travel.” Since Newt Gingrich isn’t running for president this time around—which means he doesn’t have a platform to talk about building moon colonies and sending astronauts to Mars—NASA has been in desperate need of a popular advocate.

It seems like Matt Damon might do. Although the agency recently told Congress it could go to Mars on its current budget, the reality is that it will need more funds if Mars is to be in our stars anytime soon, given that the current US space exploration program is skeletal at best.

The movie’s suggestion that space travel can lead to important scientific innovations (as well as its reminder that space and astronauts are cool) are not the only factors contributing to the film’s pro-NASA message. Interestingly, the movie doesn’t ignore politics. Kristin Wiig, as the head of NASA public relations Annie Montrose, constantly

reminds viewers that politics is largely about winning hearts and minds. In fact, a central conflict of the movie is whether it would be financially and politically viable to rescue stranded astronaut Mark Watney (Matt Damon). By bringing attention to the challenges of bureaucratic politics, it’s possible that “The Martian” might just have reminded its viewers that NASA needs—and deserves—enhanced political support. - Lauren Sukin THE REVENANT “The Revenant” is not a movie that entertains. It is not laughed at or cried at, and, aside from a few relatively tame jump-scares, it is not particularly thrilling or scary. It is not narratively complex—the symbolism is practically thrown in the viewers’ faces—nor does it captivate with a spectacular story arc or character development of any sort.

Mostly, “The Revenant” is endured.

From the very beginning, the viewer is following pain. We see physical pain, as Alejandro González Iñárritu guides us through a brutal opening battle scene followed by a two and a half-hour sequence of grapples, gunshots, stabbings, maulings, drownings, plummets over waterfalls, and more. But even more devastating is the emotional journey. We see a dying Leonardo DiCaprio witness the death of his son and drag himself from a grave of pain and delirium to hunt down the killer across the American wilderness, with one working leg and countless open wounds. Throughout the movie we see others question themselves, get into fights, lose their minds, lose friends or family, succumb to the wilderness. Very few scenes in this movie are happy or uplifting in any sense, but they all reflect pure pain and desperation in a way I’ve never seen a movie do before.

“The Revenant” is nice-looking. It features wide, swooping camera shots of majestic forests, waterfalls, lakes, and the like. The cinematography, music, sets, and costumes are stunning. But within all this beauty is a story of hu-man willpower pushed to its utmost limit. There’s a primal desperation that shines through the professionalism, the ugly and terrifying extent to which humans will go to survive.

We suffer in an unsettled frontier for two and a half hours, and it is this complete, unapologetic realness, combined with DiCaprio’s spectacular performance, that makes The Revenant a true masterpiece. A Best Picture win would be both unsurprising and truly deserved.

- Monica Chin ROOM Irish director Lenny Abrahamson’s “Room” is, by all appearances, the underdog of the Best Picture race. Made with the smallest budget in the category—$6 million, a meager twenty-fifth of the budget of Mad Max: Fury Road—it possesses neither the technical and commercial grandeur of the other nominees, nor their mega-watt director/star-power.

But it would be a mistake to underestimate “Room,” which makes up for what it lacks in funds, FX, and famous names with its profound and complex humanity.

The film’s premise is the stuff of nightmarish true-crime stories: five-year-old Jack (Jacob Tremblay) and his Ma (Brie

Larson) live in a 11-by-11 foot garden shed, a.k.a. Room, where Ma has been imprisoned for the last seven years, since being abducted as a 17-year-old by a neighbourhood predator. Sounds like something you don’t have the stomach to watch for two hours? I didn’t think I did, either. But with the assistance of its supremely talented cast, Room performs a conjuring trick as impressive as the much-discussed CGI bear in “The Revenant”: Within the bleakness of the film’s setting, it conjures up beauty and enduring hope.

Narrated from the point-of-view of the blissfully ignorant Jack, the entire film is infused with an unshakeable sense of wonder—even the first half, which is set within the claustrophobic confines of Room. Jack doesn’t know that there is a world outside of “Room.” To him, the cramped little shed is an infinite playground. Nine-year-old Jacob Tremblay’s radiant performance ensures that you cannot be untouched by his innocent joy, despite being aware of the horrors of his and Ma’s circumstances. The first half culminates in what is probably the most tense, nail-biting sequences I’ve seen in recent films—and then “Room” flips the script, transforming from a quasi-thriller into a contemplative essay on life after trauma. This halfway-turn is the film’s radical little secret: It is not a story of victimization or even escape, but of (steady, slow, and complicated) survival.

Tremblay and Larson disappear deep into their characters to give us tremendously powerful and organic performances that could push “Room” into the top slot on their own strength. Going by awards season so far, though, “Room” is probably not going to win Best Picture—my money’s on the star-studded, and deserving, “Spotlight”. But despite all odds, “Room” puts up one hell of a good fight. - Devika Girish SPOTLIGHT “Spotlight” is not a movie about the pedophilia scandal in the Catholic Church. It’s a movie about the journalists that uncovered it. This may seem like an irrelevant distinction, but this is a film obsessed with the petty office politics and daily labor of a rapidly ending age of journalism: knocking on doors, cross-referencing records, haggling for documents with the court house, huddling in corner offices. Call it the reporter procedural. What’s important here are the details that make up the slow progression of the investigation. The pacing takes the routine of reporting as its cue as well. We get sudden reveals and horrifying connections, but the bulk of the movie is a calculated plod towards the inevitable front-page story.

The morality on display is curiously gray for such a seemingly clear-cut issue as pedophilia. A restrained Michael Keaton and his team are constantly confronting where their loyalties lie, what it means to be a good journalist and person, and the value of truth in a story that won’t stop expanding. Journalism often throws itself in the crosshairs. There’s a heart-pounding sequence where previously shuffly Mark Ruffalo goes on a mad dash for released records, yelling about what it would mean if their competition got there first. The romantic figure of the reporter kept up late at night by a tough story is subtly grounded in the cold and brutal economic reality of newspapers.

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What’s strange is that the story behind one of the defining news stories is so banal, and what’s stranger is that this film manages to make that mostly fascinating.

This movie is sometimes so reserved and precise that it feels dead on the screen; we do get our requisite moments of catharsis, though, and the underlying tension of the scandal suffuses even the most ordinary scenes with a cool dread. A win for this wouldn’t be a win for a flashy artistic achievement, but for a movie that proxies the steady, fact-driven process of journalism. It deserves to win, and it just might, but it would be a subdued celebration.

It’s telling that in the last shot of the movie, the day of the publication, its heroes walk into the office to ringing phones of new victims coming forward and there’s no real sigh of relief or moment of victory. They just start picking up the phones. - Liz Studlick A NOTE ON THE OSCARS The Oscars are white, and they are male. We all know this; this is the second year in a row that there have been no nonwhite nominees for acting awards, and the second that prominent films starring diverse casts and telling stories from and about people of color were snubbed for Best Picture nominations.

A study released this week evaluated the state of Hollywood, and the results are more or less what we could have guessed.

Only 33.5 percent of speaking characters in American movies are female, and only 28.3 percent are nonwhite. It’s no wonder that people are protesting.

The Oscars have problems, and they ignore deserving nominees, and their assessment of what “Best Picture” means is unlikely to be anything like balanced.

Maybe a few years from now will be better: The Academy has announced its commitment “to doubling the number of women and diverse members of the Academy by 2020.” Hopefully, we’re on the road to a more representative Academy.

Of course, the existing Best Picture nominees are still great films, and the Oscars still go on. Alongside everything they aren’t, they are still a celebration of talented actors, strong writing and directing, and impressive art and entertainment. It’s still fun to talk about the nominees and guess which ones will win, and to argue for the merits of our favorites. While we speculate, though, it’s worth keeping in mind that the system behind the Oscars is, like many things in our society, flawed. The nominees are deserving movies, but they are not the only deserving movies.

So, may the “best” picture win, and if it doesn’t—may the winner at least be a damn good movie.

Illustration by Clarisse Angkasa

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lifestyle

topten fun facts

1. Ohio is the only state that shares no letters in common with the

word mackerel 2. all top tens have 10 items in them 3. most kangaroos are left-handed 4. the letters in each word of “how i want a drink, alcoholic of course, after the heavy chapters involving quantum mechanics” correspends to the digits of pi

5. the sky is blue 6. bees grow hair on their eyes 7. if you want to play boggle, emailing alicia_devos@brown.edu is a good place to start

You say pregnancy metaphor, I say sex metaphor.

The chicken and the egg is the ultimate postmodern story, the only one truly lacking narrative.

Do you identify heavily with this cat? I ask not for apologies but for answers.

We don’t discriminate here in vegetable friend club.

At least your terminal isn’t full of penises.

hot post time machine

I was eating a strawberry popsicle by my pool when the first bunny decided to commit suicide in front of me. death in suburbia -10/09/2014

8. lbj campaigned for president by chasing down farmers from a helicopter 9. if you lay the washington monument on its side it would fit inside the national cathedral (thanks “the west wing”)

10. shoelace tips are called aglets

letting the light in feeling SAD and feeling better LIZ STUDLICK arts & culture section editor When my life began falling apart the winter of my freshman year, I knew what to blame. I was stressed out by my classes.

Finals were rapidly approaching without me having learned seemingly anything. I felt like everyone around me had made life-long friends or at least had a solid Ratty crew. I had three friends that I met at orientation whom I clung to even as they drifted to their real college lives. I wasn’t eating enough, or I was drinking too much. Whatever it was, I felt bad all the time. Motivating myself to do anything was difficult. I showered less often than I’d like to admit. I spent my free time in bed. When the feeling slowly subsided in the spring, I thought it was because all of these problems worked themselves out, as freshman year problems often do. Bad things happened and I felt bad; bad things stopped happening and I felt better.

When my life began falling apart the winter of my sophomore year, I had no idea what to blame. I had switched concentrations and didn’t hate my classes all of the time. I was in an incredibly supportive relationship and had increasingly close friends. My Ratty meals were veggie-filled, and I did mixed martial arts twice a week. By all accounts I was living a healthy, happy life. But slowly that feeling began to creep in. I couldn’t find energy for all the things I usually wanted to do. If bad things weren’t happening, why did I feel so bad?

I wish I could say that was when I sat down and figured it out, or that I went to Psych Services. Feeling bad and doing badly are not the same things, however, and being able to get out of bed, go to classes, and act like a functional, if unhappy, human being meant to me that I didn’t have depression or anything “real,” anyway. So for most of my time at Brown, I’ve had crappy winters that I write off as inevitable. I had read about seasonal affective disorder (SAD), which is basically a mild to moderate depression brought

on by winter and its lack of sunlight.

Even though I knew that winter was, for as long as I can remember, a pretty bad time for me, I didn’t do anything about it.

This year has been the first year that I’ve tried to stop obsessing over whether or not there’s something wrong with me and just started doing things about it. I am very clearly not a doctor, and if this resonates with you, I highly recommend you do your own research or hit up some medical professionals. But here are some small things I’ve done differently this year that have seemed to make my life better.

All of the Lights: Light therapy feels incredibly stupid when you start doing it.

You plug a panel of lights into the wall and sit next to it for 15 to 45 minutes, ideally in the morning. You’re not supposed to look directly at it, but it should hit you in the corner of your eyes so it reaches your retinas. It’s a bright light, and it gives me a mild headache sometimes, but I have decided that I’m doing it every day. So I keep doing it, and I have successfully not fallen apart yet. It’s possible that it’s a placebo, but a number of studies have found light therapy roughly as effective as antidepressants. There are a number of options on Amazon ranging from $60 tiny ones to $200 huge ones.

But here’s the great news: CAPS will let you rent a box for a $25 deposit.

Pills and Potions: Since I decided to go all-in on the lack-of-sunlight factor, I’ve been taking Vitamin D capsules.

Vitamin D deficiency is highly associated with seasonal depression, since that’s what your body produces from sunlight.

A winter’s worth of D3 was under $10 on Amazon, so I’ve been popping those daily. I personally haven’t taken melatonin because my sleep isn’t worse in the

winter, but a lot of people swear by it.

Melatonin plays a crucial role in regulating sleep schedules and is one of the key hormones affected by SAD; taking it as a supplement helps you take back control after your body loses the normal daynight cycle in the winter. Other ideas are fish oil supplements and multivitamins.

Actual Sunlight: Being outside is hard in the winter. It’s cold. You’re not going to sit outside for hours soaking up the sun. Here’s the secret: being close to windows at all times. Pick your favorite sunny lobby and squat there. Try to align your study schedule slightly more with sunlight. My favorite place in the winter is the greenhouse on top of BERT, which is somehow always deserted, crazy warm, and filled with plants, fountain sounds, and sunlight.

Packing a Bigger Punch: This is the obligatory plug for other campus resources that accompany any mental health article. CAPS has short term counseling that can help you figure out what’s going on and how to change it. Project LETS has fantastic peer counseling. There are weekly support groups of all kinds at Brown. If you’ve ever thought about attending one but hesitated to go, winter is a great time to let yourself start.

Picking yourself out of the dark hole of winter is difficult, but it’s worth it to not lose six months of your year. Most of all, remember to be patient with yourself.

Everyone has bad days, snow or shine, and eventually most things do get better.

In the meantime, take it easy. The sun will come back.

Illustration by Ruth Han