Entertainment

Diiv is a shoegaze band to believe in

Published

2 years ago

June 29, 2024

Two days before they’re due to play the first date of a headlining theater tour, the members of the rock band Diiv are sitting around a picnic table in the parking lot of a Burbank rehearsal studio, reminiscing about the arena shows they opened last fall for Depeche Mode.

They talk about the glittery jackets frontman Dave Gahan wore onstage (only to slip them off after a few minutes) and the moves he’d bust every night on a catwalk; they talk about the confidence they developed by playing in front of thousands of people who hadn’t turned up to see Diiv (but who were open to being won over by the right performance).

Also: They talk about catering. “Man, I miss that,” guitarist Andrew Bailey says as though lost in a memory of endless chafing dishes.

Diiv is going without many of the borrowed perks of A-list rock stardom on the road behind its latest album, “Frog in Boiling Water.” After launching in early June, the tour stops at the Wiltern in Los Angeles — Diiv’s hometown, more or less, since three of the four members moved here from New York a few years ago — on Saturday night.

Yet the musicians, all in their mid to late 30s, seem no less eager to be out playing their new songs; indeed, they say the music reflects the fact that “we’ve committed our lives to this band,” as bassist Colin Caulfield puts it, even minus the kind of “long-term infrastructure” that might appeal to people their age. Adds Caulfield, wryly: “No one’s matching our 401(k).”

Diiv’s determination is warranted. Easily the most impressive of the group’s four LPs, “Frog in Boiling Water” is probably also the best rock record released so far this year: a dense and luxurious set of hooky post-shoegaze guitar jams that evokes a dream-pop Nirvana. With their layers of fuzz and their trippy yet propulsive grooves, songs like “Brown Paper Bag” and “Raining on Your Pillow” fit easily into the shoegaze revival that’s taken off lately on TikTok and introduced bands from the 1980s and ’90s such as My Bloody Valentine and Slowdive — noisy but sensitive types known for staring down at their effects pedals — to a new generation of young fans. Yet Diiv pairs those immersive textures with songwriting much sturdier than what you’ll find on, say, Spotify’s popular Shoegaze Now playlist.

“When it comes to music in this genre, there’s a lot of trying to emulate what’s come before,” says Jasamine White-Gluz of the Montreal band No Joy, which has toured with Diiv. “So you’re kind of just doing a ‘Loveless’ or doing a ‘Souvlaki’ — trying to fit in the box of what shoegaze is,” she adds, referring to the seminal albums by MBV and Slowdive, respectively. “Diiv doesn’t do that — they’ve got their own sound. They’re in the box but they’re making the box bigger.”

Part of what distinguishes “Frog in Boiling Water” is the political thrust of singer Zachary Cole Smith’s lyrics, which ponder the brutality of late-stage capitalism and the deceptions of the military-industrial complex — ideas he says he was drawn to after he and his wife brought their first child into the world about a year ago. (That his words about “rotating villains profit[ing] off suffering” are intelligible at all represents something of a break from a lot of shoegaze music, in which vocals serve as just one more instrumental component.)

“I think the record has a sense of hope,” Smith says, “despite all the evidence that we’re heading toward total f—ing collapse.”

Optimistic or not, the album’s focus on the outside world represents Smith’s effort to move beyond the personal demons that long defined Diiv. In 2013, Smith was arrested in New York with his then-girlfriend, singer Sky Ferreira, for possession of heroin; he exhaustively detailed his experiences with addiction and recovery on Diiv’s 2016 “Is the Is Are” and 2019 “Deceiver.” Of the latter, Smith says his hope was that it “took the trash out a little bit, so that now we can talk about other things in our music.”

Yet a recent review of “Frog in Boiling Water” in Pitchfork made him wonder if he’s attained that leeway. In a thread on X that went indie-rock viral, Smith wrote about seeing his music “met with an unwillingness to accept me as the person I’ve worked so diligently the last eight years to become”; he also lamented that his bandmates — Diiv’s fourth member is drummer Ben Newman — are “still at the mercy of a public tendency to root discussion of our band around a past that they personally suffered from as well.” (The review, which was positive, opened with a mention of Smith’s arrest.)

“These events in my life, I don’t get to decide when people stop talking about them,” Smith acknowledges in Burbank. “But not including the rest of the story or where it led me, I think that’s a damaging mind-set for people in sobriety. It makes me sad to think about somebody who’s experiencing addiction seeing that and being like, ‘Damn, I’m just always going to be this destructive force,’” he says. “People can change — profoundly.”

One effect of Smith’s change is a democratizing of Diiv’s creative process. During the band’s early days, the music was unquestionably a product of Smith’s vision, a situation he looks back at with complicated feelings: “In my active addiction I was selfish and ego-driven in a really unsustainable way,” he admits; recovery led him to “want to retreat from a leadership role” and invite more participation from his bandmates à la Sonic Youth, to name one touchstone act with more than one person in a controlling role.

“I think that choice to open it up to being everyone’s band is what made the record great,” says Chris Coady, who produced “Frog in Boiling Water” and who’s known for his work with TV on the Radio and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. “As a producer, it was a bit of a nightmare,” he adds with a laugh, explaining that getting everyone to agree on every decision meant that the sessions at his studio in northeast L.A. weren’t brief. “But all four of them are good at all kinds of stuff, and this allowed them to come together in such a cool way.”

That shared investment in Diiv — and in the belief that together they’ve hit a new artistic peak with “Frog in Boiling Water” — has buoyed the band’s members after a long stretch of turmoil, even at a moment when making a living as a musician feels more precarious to many than it has in decades.

“All our eggs are in this basket,” Smith says as he heads back into rehearsal. “It’s scary — and thrilling.”

Movie Reviews

Movie Review: Here comes “THE BRIDE!”, audacious and wild – Rue Morgue

Published

2 hours ago

March 5, 2026

Press Room

Movie Review: Here comes “THE BRIDE!”, audacious and wild – Rue Morgue

That’s both a promise and a challenge she delivers, since what follows may rub some viewers the wrong way. Yet Gyllenhaal’s full-throttle commitment to her vision is compelling in and of itself, and she has marshalled an absolutely smashing-looking and -sounding production. The story proper begins in 1936 Chicago, which, like everything and everyplace else in the movie, has been luminously shot by cinematographer Lawrence Sher and sumptuously conjured by production designer Karen Murphy. Her involvement is appropriate given that her previous credits include Bradley Cooper’s A STAR IS BORN and Baz Luhrmann’s ELVIS, since among other things, THE BRIDE! is a nostalgic musical. Its Frankenstein (Christian Bale), who has taken the name of his maker, is obsessed with big-screen tuners, and imagines himself in elaborate song-and-dance numbers. (Considering the reception to JOKER: FOLIE À DEUX, one must applaud the daring of Warner Bros. for greenlighting another expensive film in which a tormented protagonist has that kind of fantasy life.)

THE BRIDE! may be revisionist on many levels, but its characterization of its “monster” holds true to past screen incarnations from Karloff’s to Elordi’s: His scarred appearance masks a lonely soul who desires companionship. Frankenstein has arrived in Chicago to seek out Dr. Cornelia Euphronious (Annette Bening), correctly believing she has the scientific know-how to create an appropriate mate for him. Rather than piece one together, Dr. Euphronious resurrects the corpse of Ida (Jessie Buckley), whose consorting with underworld types led to her brutal death. Previously chafing against the man’s world she inhabited in life, she becomes even more defiant and unruly as a revenant, apparently possessed by the spirit of Shelley herself, declaiming in free-associative sentences and quoting rebellious literature.

Buckley, currently an Oscar favorite for her very different literary-inspired role in HAMNET, tears into the role of the Bride (who now goes by the name Penny) with invigorating abandon that bursts off the screen. Unsure of her identity yet overflowing with self-confident bravado, she’s the opposite of the sensitive “Frank,” but they’re united by the world that stands against them. That becomes literal when a violent incident sends them on the lam, road-tripping to New York City and beyond, on a trail inspired by the films of Ronnie Reed (Jake Gyllenhaal), Frank’s favorite song-and-dance-man star.

With THE BRIDE!, Gyllenhaal has made a film that’s at once her very own and a feverish homage to all sorts of cinema past and present. It’s a horror story, a lovers-on-the-run movie, a crime thriller, a musical and more, and historical fealty be damned if it makes for a good scene (as when Penny and Frank sneak into a 3D movie over a decade before such features became popular). In-references are everywhere: It might just be a coincidence that the couple’s travels take them past Fredonia, NY (cf. “Freedonia” in the Marx Brothers’ DUCK SOUP), but it’s certainly no accident that the former Ida is targeted by a crime boss named Lupino, referencing the actress and pioneering filmmaker whose works included noirs and women’s-issues stories. Penny’s exploits lead legions of admiring women to adopt her look and anarchic attitude, echoing the first JOKER (while a headline calls them “Twisted Sisters”), and the use of one Irving Berlin song in a Frankensteinian context immediately recalls a classic comedic take on the property.

Whether the audience should be put in mind of a spoof at a key point in a film with different goals is another matter. At times like these, Gyllenhaal’s pastiche ambitions overtake emotional investment in the story. As strong as the two lead performances are (Bale is quite moving, conveying a great deal of soul from behind his extensive prosthetics), it’s easier to feel for them in individual scenes than during the entire course of the just-over-two-hour running time. The diversions can be entertaining, to be sure, but they also result in an uncertainty of tone. The dissonance continues straight through to the end, where the filmmaker’s choice of closing-credits song once again suggests we’re not supposed to take all this too seriously.

There’s nonetheless much to admire and enjoy about THE BRIDE!, and this kind of risk-taking by a major studio is always to be encouraged (especially considering that we’ll see how long that lasts at Warner Bros. once Paramount takes it over). Beyond the terrific work by the aforementioned actors, there’s fine support from Peter Sarsgaard and Penelope Cruz as detectives on Penny and Frank’s heels, with Sandy Powell’s lavish costumes and Hildur Guðnadóttir’s rich, varied score vital to fashioning this fully imagined world. Kudos also to makeup and prosthetics designer Nadia Stacey and to Chris Gallaher and Scott Stoddard, who did those honors on Frank, for their visceral, evocative work. Uneven as it may be, THE BRIDE! is also as alive! as any film you’ll likely see this year.

Entertainment

These 3 Disney movie songs, animated with sign language, are headed to Disney+

Published

4 hours ago

March 4, 2026

Press Room

These 3 Disney movie songs, animated with sign language, are headed to Disney+

New animated sequences of songs from “Encanto,” “Frozen 2” and “Moana 2” are headed to Disney+.

Disney Animation announced Wednesday that “Songs in Sign Language,” comprised of three musical numbers from recent Disney movies newly reimagined in American Sign Language, will debut April 27 in honor of National Deaf History Month.

Directed by veteran Disney animator Hyrum Osmond, “Songs in Sign Language” will feature fresh animation for “Encanto’s” chart-topper “We Don’t Talk About Bruno,” “Frozen 2’s” poignant ballad “The Next Right Thing” and “Moana 2’s” anthem “Beyond.” Produced by Heather Blodget and Christina Chen, the new versions of these songs were created in collaboration with L.A.-based theater company Deaf West Theatre.

“In the majority of cases, we created entirely new animation,” Osmond said in a press statement. “There were a lot of adjustments that we had to do within the animation to be true to the original intention.”

Deaf West Theatre artistic director DJ Kurs, sign language reference choreographer Catalene Sacchetti and a group of eight performers from Deaf West worked together to craft and choreograph the ASL version of the musical numbers for “Songs in Sign Language.” The creatives focused on being true to the concepts and emotion of the songs rather than direct translations of the lyrics.

Kurs said his team jumped at the chance to collaborate and integrate ASL into “the fabric of Disney storytelling.”

“Disney stories are the universal language of childhood,” Kurs said in a statement. “The chance to bring our language into that world was a historic opportunity to reach a global audience. Working on this project was very emotional. For so long, we have known and loved the artistic medium of Disney Animation. Here, the art form was adapting to us. I hope this unlocks possibilities in the minds and hearts of Deaf children, and that this all leads to more down the road.”

Osmond, who led a team of more than 20 animators on this project, said animation was the perfect medium to showcase sign language, which he described as “one of the most beautiful ways of communication on Earth.” The director, whose father is deaf, also saw this project as an opportunity to connect with the Deaf community.

“Growing up, I never learned sign language, and that barrier prevented me from really connecting with my dad,” Osmond said. “This reimagining of Disney Animation musical numbers helps bring down barriers and allows us to connect in a special way with our audiences in the Deaf community. I’m grateful that the Studio got behind making something so impactful.”

Movie Reviews

Maxime Giroux – ‘In Cold Light’ movie review

Published

14 hours ago

March 4, 2026

Press Room

Maxime Giroux – ‘In Cold Light’ movie review

(Credits: Far Out / Elevation Pictures)

Wed 4 March 2026 9:30, UK

Maxime Giroux – ‘In Cold Light’

The action is relentless in the complex thriller In Cold Light, a tense combination of crime and fugitive tale and family drama. It is the third feature and first English language film by Maxime Giroux, best known for a very different kind of film, the critically acclaimed 2014 drama Felix & Meira.

The tension and high energy of In Cold Light almost overwhelm the film, but are relieved, barely, by moments of character development and introspection that keep the audience pulling for the restrained and outwardly cold main character.

Speaking at the film’s Canadian premiere, director Giroux admitted he found creating an action film a challenge. Part of his approach was using very minimal dialogue, especially for the central character, letting the action speak for itself, and allowing silence to intensify suspense. Giroux has said he likes the lack of dialogue and speaks highly of the importance of silence in cinema; he prefers using “physical aspects of communication” in his films.

Young Ava Bly (Maika Monroe) is a competent and businesslike drug dealer, working in partnership with her brother Tom (Jesse Irving) and a small team. As the film begins, Ava has just been released from a brief prison sentence. She is hoping to return to her former position, but her brother’s associates consider her a risk due to her recent incarceration. While she works to re-establish herself, a shocking encounter with a corrupt police officer sends Ava’s life into chaos and forces her to go on the run.

Ava’s fugitive experience introduces a new character, to whom Ava turns for help: her father, Will Bly, played by Troy Kotsur, known for his excellent performance in CODA. Their first interaction is handled in a fascinating way, as Will is deaf and the two communicate through sign language. This, of course, provides another form of the silent interaction the director prefers; he explained that much of the father-daughter interaction was rewritten with the actor in mind. Their conflict is nicely expressed through a scene in which their initial conversation is intermittently cut off by a faulty light which goes out periodically, making communication through sign momentarily impossible, nicely expressing the rift between father and daughter.

As Ava continues to evade danger, her escape becomes complicated by new information, placing her in a painful dilemma. We gradually learn more about Ava, her background, and her character through occasional flashbacks and glimpses of her dreams. The plot becomes more complex and more poignant, and gains features of a mystery as well as an action tale, as she is pressed to choose from among equally unacceptable alternatives.

The climax of her efforts to protect both herself and those close to her comes to a head as she meets with the director of a rival drug gang. Veteran actress Helen Hunt is perfect in the minor but significant role of Claire, the rival drug lord, who plays odd mind games with Ava in an intriguing psychological fencing match. It’s an unusual scene, in which Ava’s personality is made clearer, and Claire’s understated dominance and casual speech do not quite conceal the threat she represents.

The frantic pace and emotional turmoil are enhanced by the camera work, which tends to focus tightly on Ava, and by a harsh, minimal musical score that sets the tone without distracting from the action. Giroux chose to shoot the film in Super 60; he describes digital as “too perfect” for the look he was going for, and since “Ava is rough,” the film portrays her better. The director describes the entire movie as “rough,” in fact, and deliberately chose a dark, washed-out look for much of the footage, occasionally using light and colour, in the form of fireworks, lightning, or a colourful carnival, to both relieve and emphasise the darkness.

The dynamic, intense story holds the attention in spite of the lengthy, sometimes repetitive chase scenes and subdued dialogue. Ava’s predicament, and the difficult decisions she is forced to make, are made surprisingly relatable, from the initial disaster that starts the action to the surprising flash-forward that concludes the film, on as high a note as the situation could allow. Fans of action movies will definitely enjoy this one.