By Kai-Arne Zimny

The title font, rem­i­nis­cent of 1980s hor­ror-thriller nov­els, buzzes over the flat screen TV or lap­top mon­i­tor to the eeri­ly pul­sat­ing beat of elec­tron­ic music. We could pause and quick­ly answer a What­sApp mes­sage before the episode starts. After all, this is 2018, and we’re stream­ing via Net­flix. But wait, is it real­ly 2018? I’m not so sure any­more. Put your smart­phone away, it might as well be…

1983 in a nor­mal Amer­i­can small town called Hawkins. On the way home from a nice­ly nerdy night of play­ing Dun­geons and Drag­ons in a cozy base­ment with his three best friends, twelve-year-old Will Byers (Noah Schnapp) encoun­ters a strange thing and dis­ap­pears with­out a trace. Will’s wor­ried sin­gle moth­er Joyce Byers (Winona Ryder) turns to local Police Chief Jim Hop­per (David Har­bour) – a guy whose morn­ing groom­ing rit­u­al includes beer and cig­a­rettes and who at first doesn’t take the case seri­ous­ly. But Will’s friends Mike (Finn Wolfhard), Dustin (Gat­en Mataraz­zo), and Lucas (Caleb McLaugh­lin) take mat­ters like these seri­ous­ly and into their own young hands. While search­ing for their miss­ing friend, they encounter Eleven (Mil­lie Bob­by Brown), a mys­te­ri­ous girl with a shaved head and the num­ber 11 tat­tooed on her arm. The trio will soon find out that these fea­tures are not the strangest things about the girl. This Amer­i­can small town with a secre­tive research lab near­by may not be so nor­mal after all, and even a reluc­tant Chief Hop­per comes to real­izes that stranger things of a para­nor­mal nature are afoot in Hawkins. Read more »

By Kai-Arne Zimny

“Our sto­ry is about a town. A small town. And the peo­ple who live in that town” are the first words we hear on Riverdale (2017 – present). These words are spo­ken by a nar­ra­tor who turns out to be a sev­en­teen-year-old boy – with a beanie that looks sort of like a crown – sit­ting in a din­er booth, typ­ing away at his nov­el in the works.

His name is Jug­head Jones (Cole Sprouse), and the peo­ple liv­ing in the small town of Riverdale are Archie Andrews (KJ Apa), who’s torn between being a high school jock and a sen­si­tive musi­cian; the good girl Bet­ty Coop­er (Lili Rein­hart) as well as rich rebel Veron­i­ca Lodge (Cami­la Mendes). And, of course, all their friends, ene­mies, fren­e­mies, and parents.

These names may or may not ring a bell because Riverdale and its ensem­ble of char­ac­ters are based on the Archie Comics, which have been pub­lished since 1942 and have reached icon­ic fame in the USA. Since then, the char­ac­ters have appeared in sev­er­al shapes and forms, even as a vir­tu­al band called “The Archies” with their most pop­u­lar hit song “Sug­ar, Sug­ar” from 1969. Read more »

By Michaela Keck

On Fri­day, Octo­ber 16, our group of five – two mas­ter stu­dents, three bach­e­lor stu­dents, and I – set out from the Insti­tute of Eng­lish and Amer­i­can Stud­ies at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Old­en­burg for a four-day excur­sion to the eco­log­i­cal field sta­tion of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Pots­dam in Gülpe. This small vil­lage is locat­ed approx­i­mate­ly 70 kilo­me­ters north­west of Pots­dam, or cir­ca 85 kilo­me­ters north­west of Berlin, along the east­ern bor­der of the Nature Park and Dark Sky Pre­serve West­havel­land. Here, we want­ed to study, debate, and direct­ly expe­ri­ence dark­ness in an area that still afford­ed a phe­nom­e­non that is increas­ing­ly lost to our bright­ly illu­mi­nat­ed Euro­pean con­ti­nent: dark night skies. The plan for this long week­end was to have the after­noons set aside for text dis­cus­sions and to ven­ture out into the dark after the moon had set. The morn­ings were free to either recov­er from our noc­tur­nal activ­i­ties or to explore the wet­lands of our imme­di­ate surroundings.

Includ­ed in our con­sid­er­able amount of lug­gage – the eco­log­i­cal field sta­tion requires self-cater­ing – were three sem­i­nal texts for our eco­crit­i­cal stud­ies of dark­ness: Richard Louv’s Last Child in the Woods: Sav­ing Our Chil­dren from Nature Deficit Dis­or­der (2005); Paul Bogard’s The End of Night: Search­ing for Nat­ur­al Dark­ness in an Age of Arti­fi­cial Light (2013); and the chap­ter enti­tled “Ridge” from Robert Macfarlane’s The Wild Places (2007). Although the titles of the first two books express a sense of loss and there­fore sug­gest a yearn­ing for an ear­li­er, bet­ter, more “nat­ur­al” life, Louv and Bog­a­rd both inves­ti­gate the Anthro­pocene with an atti­tude that com­bines curios­i­ty, fas­ci­na­tion, and prag­ma­tism rather than regres­sion, nos­tal­gia, and mor­al­iz­ing. Read more »

By Kai-Arne Zimny

“A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…”

The bright blue let­ters appear on the big black screen. Rev­er­ent silence fills the movie the­ater. Maybe you’ll hear the sound of cheer­ing some­where in the back, but most­ly you can feel the tense thrill of antic­i­pa­tion. After two years of wait­ing, STAR WARS – THE LAST JEDI, the eighth episode of the most beloved sci-fi fairy tale of all time and the sec­ond movie of the new tril­o­gy, is only sec­onds away … Read more »

By Kai-Arne Zimny

BoJack Horse­man (voice by Will Arnett) is a long-faced, washed-up Hol­ly­wood star whose career end­ed two decades ago, along with his Nineties sit­com, Horsin’ Around. Since then he’s turned into a rad­i­cal glass-half-emp­ty kind of guy with a per­pet­u­al­ly brim­ful glass of whiskey, as self-cen­tered as he is self-loathing.

Oh, he’s also a horse.

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By Kai-Arne Zimny

“As far as I could see, peo­ple were always con­ning each oth­er to get what they want­ed. We even con our­selves. We talk our­selves into things. We sell our­selves things we maybe don’t even need or want by dress­ing them up. We leave out the risk. We leave out the ugly truth.”  — Irv­ing Rosen­feld (Chris­t­ian Bale)

New Jer­sey, late 70s – Fraud­u­lent duo Irv­ing Rosen­feld (Chris­t­ian Bale) and Syd­ney Pross­er aka “Lady Edith Greensly” (Amy Adams) get caught in the act by FBI agent Richie DiMa­so (Bradley Coop­er). Smelling an oppor­tu­ni­ty for fame and recog­ni­tion, the agent decides to offer the crooked cou­ple a dis­hon­est deal that would force them to gath­er incrim­i­nat­ing evi­dence against four oth­er peo­ple. To avoid pros­e­cu­tion, Irv­ing and Syd­ney agree, not know­ing the object of the FBI’s inves­ti­ga­tion: sev­er­al cor­rupt con­gress­men, ruth­less mafia boss Vic­tor Tel­le­gio (Robert DeNiro), and most spec­tac­u­lar­ly Camden’s pop­u­lar and big-heart­ed may­or Carmine Poli­to (Jere­my Ren­ner). Polito’s ambi­tion to cre­ate jobs by revi­tal­iz­ing Atlantic City’s casi­nos might make him sus­cep­ti­ble to bribes by a fake Sau­di sheik. A game of deceit and con­flict ensues, not mak­ing Irving’s per­son­al dilem­mas – evolv­ing around his unpre­dictable wife (Jen­nifer Lawrence) and his beloved adop­tive son – any easier …

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