Arousing contention and a symphony of scoffs from among peers, “The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology” has stirred up long-kept quiet feelings about Swift. Many people, for instance, tend to dislike the album due to its somber tone and overly dramatic title. Arguably, the album is what most would call ‘sad girl:’ a dramatic, depressing album that’s sad just for the value of being sad. Lizzy McAlpine and Gracie Abrams also follow this melody with their music, crafting masterpieces that are perfect to bawl your eyes out to. Although sad girl music isn’t necessarily bad, if anything it’s ridiculously welcomed, people still ridicule the genre for its generic message and repetitive nature.

Along the line of ‘repetitive’-ness, many seasoned Swifties and new listeners alike found the lyrics of this album just that: repetitive, and to be quite honest, lacking. After her eighth and ninth studio albums which were released during Covid, the lyrical and poetic albums “Folklore” and “Evermore”, this album feels quite lacking in terms of depth. 

“I tried to keep a tally of how many songs yearningly reference wedding rings and ran out of fingers. By the end, this perspective makes the album feel a bit hermetic, lacking the depth and taut structure of her best work,” writes Lindsay Zoladz in the New York Times piece “On ‘The Tortured Poets Department,’ Taylor Swift Could Use an Editor.”

Due to these earlier albums, which were full of fictional characters, historical characters and a murder mystery song with the HAIM sisters, we were able to see the height of Swift’s true capabilities when it comes to writing. Swifties who listen to these albums on a regular basis were hoping TTPD would be like them in regards to the lyricism, and came up disappointed with the flat dullness of it. 

Others, however, find this new genre captivating, regardless of its lacking lyrics. Following her 10th studio album, the pop-synth purple and blue “Midnights,” Swift manages to seamlessly connect her previous sounds into her brand-new monochromatic album. Teaming up with Aaron Dessner, a founding member of the National, to create the same fantastical feeling that came with “Folklore,” we get songs like the folktale Boy Who Cried Wolf spin-off, “Cassandra,” and the lost, sad voice behind “Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus.” Or, we could talk about the small “Reputation”–esque cuts that “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?” leaves with its blood-boiling lyrics, “I want to snarl and show you just how disturbed this has made me / You wouldn’t last an hour in the asylum where they raised me.” Either way, Swift has combined all of her eras into an intoxicating and addictive album that has captured the ears and hearts of millions.

With “TTPD,” released around a year after her break up with her ex-boyfriend Joe Alwyn, Swift attempts to navigate the deeper, harder heartbreak, the type that feels like crossing a chasm. She wasn’t wrong to name it “Tortured Poets,” as most of her tear-stricken ballads of heartbreak tend to feel that way. From the strangled sigh at the start of “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived” that slices hearts as easily as ripping a butterfly’s wings, to the melancholy piano of “loml” and its disastrously epic lyrics (“Dancing phantoms on the terrace, are they second hand embarrassed // That I can’t get out of bed ‘cause something counterfeit’s dead”), Swift manages to explain the crack in her heart in a simple yet elegant way that catches listeners off guard.

And while there’s plenty of sadness to pass around, Swift’s mood board for this album is much more than just aesthetic pictures of brunettes crying; it’s speckled with a fresh golden that represents Swifts’ second studio album “Fearless”, providing us with songs like “But Daddy I Love Him” and “So High School”. The Romeo-Juliet theme opens yet again with Swift’s sixth track, “But Daddy I Love Him.” It’s bubbly and hilarious chorus (“I’m having his baby/ No, I’m not, but you should see your faces”) offers a glimpse into the head-over-heels young love feeling that’s reminiscent of high school, but this time with older lyrics and a wiser outlook that peeks through the main story (“Growing up precocious sometimes means not growing up at all”).

“Fortnite,” however, brings an all new sound to Swift’s discography, introducing a haunting and drawn-out sound that raptures listeners as soon as they hit play. The single features Post Malone, who adds delightful vocals and builds on Swift’s. The only other feature on the album is on “Florida,” when Florence Welch, the lead singer from Florence + The Machine, gets her own unique verse with ghostly yet stunning lyrics (“So I do my best to lay to rest / All of the bodies that have been on my body / and in my mind, they sink into the swamp / Is that a bad thing to say in a song?”).

In general, Swift’s new album has brought forward pronounced opinions and a motley of feelings. While Swift’s new songs may not be her best, they still deserve being published as an album.

The post ‘The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology’ Is A Heartbreaker appeared first on Obsidian News | Oregon Youth Voices.

In the movie, Paul is attempting to convince the Fremen that he is the Lisan al-Gaib (a messiah-like figure to their culture) in order to overthrow the Emperor in the name of revenge. Chani, who is played by Zendaya, loves Paul but is trying to convince him to make better decisions. Meanwhile, Paul’s mother becomes the Reverend Mother to the Fremen (along with her daughter, Alia, who is in the womb), and we follow two new perspectives including the princess (Florence Pugh) and the heir to the House Harkonnen, Feyd-Rautha (Austin Butler).

Ryan Tomlinson, a local nerd, is an avid sci-fi enthusiast and long-time “Dune” fan who has seen the original 1984 adaption of the book along with the most recent movies. After finishing the movie with my dad, Tomlinson cleared up all the things that had been confusing or odd for us. Since he’s read the first three books multiple times, I went to him to ask what the movies changed that were different from the original novels. 

“The major differences come from the major time skip in the movies where two years are compressed into weeks or months,” Tomlinson said. He continued to explain that due to these time leaps, multiple details were cut, such as the son that Paul and Chani were supposed to have, as well as the plotline of Alia’s childhood. Instead, Paul and Chani simply remain lovers, and Alia speaks to her mother and Paul from the womb. 

You may think this would take away from the movie, but Tomlinson seemed to support it. When he originally watched the 1984 “Dune” movie, he greatly disliked these aspects and supports the directors for cutting them in the most recent movies.

“I normally find that movies are severely altered from their counterparts, but with the “Dune” series, the only major difference occurred in the most recent movie,” Kalman DeMeester, a Summit sophomore and exceptional reader, said. “Instead of Chani remaining by Paul’s side after Paul chose the princess as his bride, she fled into the desert.” The princess who he mentions, played by Florence Pugh, is the daughter of the emperor, and has a consistent storyline in the most recent movie. This concept that DeMeester points out is just another thing the directors changed, but he agrees with Tomlinson that the altercation fits the story better anyways.

Not only was the plot changed though–in this second attempt at adapting the book, Australian cinematographer Greig Fraser was brought in to ensure it was better than its predecessor. Taking multiple new approaches to the movie, he made it come to life with new techniques and methods. 

During the scenes on Giedi Prime, the home planet to the hairless yet treacherous House Harkonnen, the atmosphere felt leached of color, yet not entirely black and white. That’s because they didn’t shoot these scenes with a black and white camera. Using the same cameras they shot the film with, they made some modifications and managed to create the uncanny scene we see in the theaters.

“All the shots were taken with an ALEXA camera set to “infrared,” which captures light beyond the spectrum that is visible to the human eye,” Matt Zoller Seitz writes in his piece What’s Real and What’s Not in “Dune”: Part Two’s Biggest Action Scenes.

The movie is spectacular, and from the interviews collected, the books are too. But who should read them, and when? The biggest obstacle when reading the books comes from the fact that Herbert’s world-building, while fantastic, is incredibly dense and can be hard to understand for readers new to epic fantasy.

“The reader may have to wrestle with using these fundamental tools at the same time they are attempting to understand the complicated storyline,” Tomlinson said. “I suspect it will be easier for future readers who have seen these movies because they will understand the broader context.”

Along the same lines, Tomlinson goes on to say he would recommend the physical books over the audiobooks due to the common struggle with speed. With an audiobook, you might have to replay audio due to hard sentences or words you didn’t understand because of the complex plot, world-building, and vocabulary; if you were to read it as a physical book, you could read as slow or fast as you like.

“The two movies are some of the best science fiction works of the last decade,” DeMeester said at the end of our interview. “The plot was exciting, the characters had depth, the world was impressive, and the soundtrack was great.”

The post Dune: Part Two appeared first on Obsidian News | Oregon Youth Voices.