By Bobbie Kirkhart

News­pa­pers always make good movies: the dare-dev­il reporter, the over­achiev­ing assis­tant, and the crusty edi­tor up against the pow­er of a dis­hon­est gov­ern­ment. There is won­der­ful sym­bol­ism in the heavy lead type spelling out a scan­dal and the broad sheets of newsprint rolling off the press­es to cov­er the nation. The audi­ence is assured that the truth will come out.

The pub­li­ca­tion of the Pen­ta­gon Papers is a per­fect cru­sad­ing news­pa­per sto­ry. It starts with the intel­lec­tu­al, once hawk­ish, Marine vet­er­an steal­ing and pho­to­copy­ing secret papers and giv­ing them to The New York Times for pub­li­ca­tion, reveal­ing 30 years of the gov­ern­ment mis­lead­ing the pop­u­lace about the Viet­nam War. The Post, direct­ed by Steven Spiel­berg, begins in Chap­ter 2, with edi­tor Ben Bradlee (Tom Han­ks) frus­trat­ed and embar­rassed by hav­ing been scooped, once again, by The Times. When the gov­ern­ment gets an injunc­tion, bar­ring The Times from fur­ther pub­li­ca­tion, The Post, in the words of Bradlee, is “in the game.”

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By Pia Buchty

“Give them plea­sure. The same plea­sure they

have when they wake up from a nightmare.”

Alfred Hitch­cock

A beau­ti­ful blonde woman takes a relax­ing show­er, some­body enters the room, posi­tions him­self behind the show­er cur­tain, then there’s a knife and shriek­ing vio­lins. Does that ring a bell?

To this day, Alfred Hitch­cock is con­sid­ered one of Hollywood’s great­est film­mak­ers, and his mas­ter­piece, Psy­cho (1960), has become part of our col­lec­tive mem­o­ry. Espe­cial­ly the show­er scene is often described as the most pow­er­ful and haunt­ing scene in film his­to­ry. Since the release of Psy­cho, not a sin­gle year has gone by in which the movie – and espe­cial­ly its one-of-a-kind three-minute show­er sequence – has not been ref­er­enced, imi­tat­ed, or par­o­died in pop­u­lar cul­ture. What is it about that scene that caus­es peo­ple to look three ways before tak­ing a show­er? Well, for one the bath­room – nor­mal­ly asso­ci­at­ed with pri­va­cy and safe­ty – turns into an anx­i­ety-induc­ing place where dan­ger lurks behind the show­er cur­tain. Any­thing could hap­pen here – and appar­ent­ly some­times does.

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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 »