The filmThe Tragedy of Macbeth (2021) is an adaptation of the famous play by William Shakespeare. Set in medieval Scotland, the story follows Macbeth, who encounters three witches who predict his upsurge to power. His thirst for power consumed Macbeth as he committed merciless and immoral acts following every prophecy made by the witches.
Directed by Joel Coen, the film offers a fresh perspective on one of Shakespeare’s most notable tragedies while exploring themes of ambition, power, and the consequences of unchecked desires. Also, its visually striking black-and-white cinematography and stylized approach to the source material made everything more authentic, together with the performance of the stars Denzel Washington as Macbeth and Frances McDormand as Lady Macbeth. Here are some of the most memorable quotes from The Tragedy of Macbeth.
Macbeth: Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, creeps in this petty pace from day to day to the last syllable of recorded time. And all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle. Life is but a walking shadow… a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot… full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Macbeth: Hear it not, Duncan, for it is a knell that summons thee to Heaven or to Hell.
Macbeth: O, full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife. Thou knowest that Banquo, and his Fleance, lives. And in his royalty of nature reigns that which would be feared. ‘Tis much he dares. And, to that dauntless temper of his mind, he hath the wisdom to guide his valor to act in safety. There’s none but he whose being I do fear.
Macbeth: Out, out, brief candle. Life is but a walking shadow… a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
The Witches: Fair Is Foul, And Foul Is Fair.
Macbeth: Come What May. Time And The Hour Runs Through The Roughest Day.
Banquo: Or Have We Eaten The Insane Root That Takes The Reason Prisoner?
Macbeth: False Face Must Hide What The False Heart Doth Know.
Belfast (2021) is a movie based on Kenneth Branagh’s own experience. The whole film revolves around the point of view of a nine-year-old boy, Buddy, and his working-class Belfast family, who were attacked by a group of Protestant loyalists at their homes as well as the businesses of Catholics on Buddy’s street. At a very young age, Buddy experienced and saw the reality of sectarian conflict, and his family was caught in the middle.
The film won the People’s Choice Award at the 2021 Toronto International Film Festival. Kenneth Branagh considers this his “most personal film.” This movie received positive reviews from critics because of the excellent direction, cinematography, screenplay, and, of course, the cast’s performances. Here are some of our favourite quotes from Belfast.
Auntie Violet: The Irish were born for leavin’, otherwise the rest of the world’d have no pubs.
Granny: Go. Go now. Don’t look back. I love you, son.
Pop: You’re Buddy from Belfast 15, where everybody knows you and your pop looks out for you and your mummy looks out for you, your daddy looks out for you, your granny looks out for you, your brother looks out for you, and the whole family looks out for you. And wherever you go and whatever you become, that’ll always be the truth. And that thought will keep you safe. It’ll keep you happy… Will you remember that for me?”
Pa: Be good
Ma: Your granny says you can never have too much God, you might need him before too long.
Minister: So do not say in grief that you are sorry he is gone, but rather, say in thankfulness you are grateful he was here.
Pop: If They Can’t Understand You, They’re Not Listening.
Billy Clanton: The problem with people like you is that you think you’re better than everyone.
Pa: The problem with people like you is that you know you’re not.
Pa: It’s a mad world.
Frankie West: Well get used to it, we all live there now.
The biographical drama film Being the Ricardo’s (2021) focuses on Lucille Ball’s relationship with Desi Arnaz as they face personal and professional struggles that threaten their careers, their relationship, and their groundbreaking television show, “I Love Lucy.” This movie reveals the complexities of the couple’s relationship, the pressure of maintaining their successful TV show, and the scrutiny they face due to political and personal issues.
The film Being the Ricardos (2021) was written and directed by Aaron Sorkin and stars Nicole Kidman, Javier Bardem, Jake Lacy, J.K. Simmons, Nina Arianda, Tony Hale, and Alia Shawkat. It was released in December of 2021. With its “spitfire dialogue” added to it, as well as the perfect deep character study performance, this film is fascinating and fun to watch.
Lucille Ball: You know, I did this show so Desi and I could be together. I had no idea it was going to be a hit.
William Frawley: The less you talk, the more things you hear.
Lucille Ball: Got to give me credit. When I lie, I give it up pretty quick.”
Lucille Ball [to Vivian]: Look, we’ve made 37 episodes. You do 37 of anything, one of them’s gonna be your 37th best.
Lucille Ball: I’m hazing you a little. It’s just my way of saying I have no confidence in you at all.
Lucille Ball: My entire relationship with Communism is, 20 years ago, I checked a box.
Lucille Ball: I’m not a Communist, I’ve never been a Communist, but technically, yeah, I am.
Lucille Ball: I am the biggest asset in the portfolio of the Columbia Broadcasting System. The biggest asset in the portfolio of Philip Morris Tobacco, Westinghouse. I get paid a fortune to do exactly what I love doing. I work side by side with my husband, who’s genuinely impressed by me. And all I have to do to keep it is kill every week for thirty-six weeks in a row. And then do it again the next year.
King Richard (2021) focuses on the early lives of famous tennis players Venus and Serena Williams. The story concentrates on the family of Richard Williams which consists of his wife, Oracene “Brandy” Price, and his two lovely daughters, Venus and Serene Williams, who, at a young age, have the potential and talent to become great tennis players. Throughout the film, Richard trains and motivates his daughters to excel and improve their games and skills while keeping a humble attitude. As the story goes on, Richard finds a coach, Paul Cohen, to teach and coach Venus and Serena to improve their skills, all for free.
This movie will motivate, empower, and leave you with a lot to feel and think about as this film captivates you with a true story that is different from the usual sports movie as it showcases the real-life challenges and hardships the protagonist faces, just as it does in real life. Here are some of the most memorable quotes from King Richard.
Richard Williams: The most strongest, the most powerful, the most dangerous creature on this whole earth is a woman who knows how to think. Ain’t nothing she can’t do.
Richard Williams: No matter how them peoples treated her, no matter how disrespected, she stayed calm, she kept her heart clean. She was humble.
Richard Williams: We’re more than a team; we’re a family.
Venus Williams: I think I have the game to beat anyone. I just have to play it.
Richard Williams : One day, they going to be bragging about the time they met the two of you.”
Richard Williams : But you, you gonna be the best there ever was. You gonna be the greatest of all time.
Oracene ‘Brandy’ Williams [to Richard]: Unlike you, I don’t need the world to tell me I’m great.
Will Hodges: Let us take it from here.
Paul Cohen: Every American player who’s ever done anything got good following this path.”
Rick Macci: I think you might just have the next Michael Jordan on your hands.
Brandy Price: Wouldn’t be no dream if it wasn’t for me. I carried them inside me and on my back. And I carried you, too.
Richard Williams: Now, I haven’t been no great daddy but I’ve never done nothing but try to protect you.
Pet Shop Boys have announced a new album: Nonetheless is due out April 26. The follow-up to 2020’s Hotspot – and the duo’s first album since returning to Parlophone, their label home from 1985 to 2012 – was recorded with producer James Ford. It’s led by the single ‘Loneliness’, which arrives with a video from director Alasdair McLellan. Check it out and find the LP’s details below.
“We wanted this album to be a celebration of the unique and diverse emotions that make us human,” Pet Shop Boys’ Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe said in a statement. “From the more dance-orientated tracks to the raw poignancy of the introspective ballads, with their beautiful string arrangements, each track tells a story and contributes to the overall narrative of the album.”
“It was great to work with James Ford, who we think has brought new elements to our music,” they added. “James has dared to make us a bit more minimal at times and the final result is a record we’re very proud of.”
Nonetheless Cover Artwork:
Nonetheless Tracklist:
1. Loneliness
2. Feel
3. Why Am I Dancing?
4. New London Boy
5. Dancing Star
6. A New Bohemia
7. The Schlager Hit Parade
8. The Secret of Happiness
9. Bullet for Narcissus
10. Love Is the Law
Florence + the Machine has shared a cover of ‘White Cliffs Of Dover’, the first preview of the Jack Antonoff-produced soundtrack to the new Apple TV+ series The New Look. Walter Kent and Nat Burton wrote the song, which was popularized by the British singer Vera Lynn in 1942. Listen to Florence Welch’s rendition below.
In addition to Welch, The New Look soundtrack features Lana Del Rey, the 1975, beabadoobee, Nick Cave, Perfume Genius, and more offering their take on popular early to mid-twentieth-century songs. Created by Todd A. Kessler, the upcoming historical drama, which stars Ben Mendelsohn as Christian Dior and Juliette Binoche as Coco Chanel, arrives on Apple TV+ on February 14.
Chicago outfit Dehd have announced their fifth LP, Poetry. The follow-up to 2022’s Blue Skies comes out May 10 via Fat Possum. Lead single ‘Mood Ring’ arrives today along with an accompanying video, which you can check out below.
Dehd enlisted Ziyad Asrar of Whitney to co-produce the album alongside the band’s own Jason Balla at Palisade Studio, marking the first time the group has worked with anyone outside of the band during the recording process. According to a press release, a moment of inspiration came from Charles Bukowski’s poem ‘The Laughing Heart’, which “gave birth to Dehd’s fifth album and a new direction—to live life like Poetry.”
Poetry Cover Artwork:
Poetry Tracklist:
1. Dog Days
2. Hard To Love
3. Mood Ring
4. Necklace
5. Alien
6. Light On
7. Pure Gold
8. Dist B
9. So Good
10. Don’t Look Down
11. Knife
12. Shake
13. Magician
14. Forget
Dana Gavanski has unveiled ‘Let Them Row’, a new single from her upcoming album Late Slap. The track refers to “the fluctuations of being romantic and creative, constantly seesawing between cynicism and euphoria in a terribly expensive and competitive city,” the artist explained. Take a listen below.
Pond have returned with a new single, ‘Neon River’, their first new music in two years. It follows the deluxe edition of their sixth LP, 9. Check it out below.
“This is a full on Pond Gemini song,” the band explained in a statement. “Kinda tumbles through bucolic Gum (Jay Watson) larping, into Nick (Allbrook) in maximum Aerosmith spandex mode, with a brief detour into some kind of shoegaze instrumental section. The chorus is about the hollow half dead riverside shuffle of so many pre dawns of years gone by.”
Mall Girl is a Norwegian trio composed of vocalist Bethany Forseth-Reichberg, guitarist Iver Armand Tandsether, and drummer Veslemøy Narvesen, who bring together elements of indie pop, jazz, Midwest emo, and math rock. Their debut album, 2022’s wildly eclectic Superstar, juxtaposed its frenetic energy with moments of gentle vulnerability, which is the mode they mostly operate in on its follow-up, Pure Love. Yet the new record still feels like a tight balancing act: though the range of influences is apparent – there’s a song called ‘Emo Shred’ – Mall Girl’s commitment to tweaking and combining disparate ideas keeps the sound refreshing, all while staying true to the emotional core of the music. Pure Love is intimate, pensive, and endearing, its softness is never undermined by the at times angular, off-kilter instrumentation. It’s an approach that matches Forseth-Reichberg’s lyrics, presenting their subject matter as a jumble of experiences where past and present become blurred; a journey that’s all the more relatable for how unpredictable it is.
We caught up with Mall Girl’s Bethany Forseth-Reichberg and Veslemøy Narvesenl for the latest edition of our Artist Spotlight series to talk about their journey as a band, their collaborative process, Pure Love, and more.
How did you start playing together, and what has your journey as a band been like?
Veslemøy Narvesen: Wet met in Oslo in 2017 when we were studying music at the Norwegian Academy of Music. We were students there, me and Bethany and the former bass player, Eskild [Myrvoll]. Iver was a friend of Esklid’s from high school, and we put together a jam session, me, Eskild, and Iver. We started making instrumental, indie rock-inspired music, really guitar-based. Eskild is really good at making things happen, so he was having an idea of maybe putting another element into the band – we were thinking about either saxophone or vocals. We had a rehearsal with Bethany, and she started making lyrics to the tunes right away. It feels super nostalgic to think back – I haven’t thought about it in a long time. But it just felt like a really good fit. We immediately got a really good connection with each other, and the music we made was also very interesting for all of us, I think.
It was pretty clear we wanted to make pop music with a twist, in a way that could have influences from other genres. We were doing a jazz program, so obviously we were into those kinds of aesthetics, and more experimental pop music of the Norwegian scene. Eskild has a pretty deep background in rock music, and he has a really special way of playing guitar, influenced a lot from classical music. All of those elements put together into wanting to make pop music, and Bethany’s angelic voice on the top, made the foundation of the band. The first songs we made were pretty cute, I think, and it evolved into more and more rock-based. I think it was primarily Eskild who was pushing it in that direction, and then Eskild quit the band about a year ago. Bethany and Iver had started making the second album, the lyrics and everything, while I was living here in Solheim, and I think we naturally gravitated back to a more soft expression.
Bethany, do you feel a similar sense of nostalgia for those early days?
Bethany Forseth-Reichberg: Yeah, I’m a very nostalgic person. I love looking through albums and listening to old demos, so I can be nostalgic looking back at it. It’s fun to see how the band evolves through six years – in 2017, I was 21 years old, so you change a lot as a person also. It’s fun to link certain life events to certain songs, and I feel like I’ve learned a lot about being in a band – this is the band I’ve had for the longest and learned the most from. It’s fun how your bandmates can become some of your best friends, and still you’re able to work with the same people. This band encompasses more than just music, we can share big life events together.
As your sound and interests as a band changed over time, did you feel your dynamic and the way you worked together shifted, too?
BF-R: When we were younger and studying, we had so much time to just jam all the time. We would play every week, but now we live in cities and don’t have the same time, so things change. You just have to think of new ways to make things happen.
VN: When COVID hit, I was living in Solheim, so we weren’t able to meet, and we made a lot of songs over the internet together, sending each other demos and then adding stuff. A lot of the songs from Superstar were made like that. I also thought a lot about the fact that we have played in a band for so many years, we have obviously gone through a lot of changes together, which is a really beautiful thing because we know each other so well now and we’ve seen each other at our best and at our worst. It sort of becomes like family, playing in a band, and even though we don’t meet every week anymore, the connection is really strong.
BF: It’s like no other work environment, which is funny. The lines are blurred.
Going from the first record to the second record, did you have more conversations as a group about how you wanted to move forward?
BF-R: The process of making this album was very different from the first one. With the first album, it resulted in a more eclectic, almost collage-like collection of many ideas. But this time, I think we were more on the same page on what sound we wanted earlier and the theme was kind of in our minds before we started making it.
VN: It used to be four people having a lot of opinions about everything, but you and Iver sort of took care of the music. And of course, I was involved, but I let go a little bit of being deeply into the process because I was here and doing a lot of other things. I knew that if we were going to make another album, they would have to be in charge of it in a way, and I would come and do my part as a drummer.
BF-R: We needed that. It would have been me and Iver’s album, we didn’t want that.
VN: It was actually a really nice way to do it, because I don’t think we would have come through with it if I was very included in the making of the songs. Iver made a lot of drum tracks, and then I listened to them and did my own thing around them, but it’s really their work. It’s just cool to have different processes.
BF-R: This is something we talked about: We’re gonna make an album now, and this is gonna be one version of Mall Girl. And then the next time we can make another album, that’s another version. But just to keep the wheel going and not stop the process. That was kind of freeing, and being in a band sometimes means letting people explore their flow or their current obsession in terms of sound.
Bethany, did you find that that freedom affected your writing process with Iver as well?
BF-R: Iver and I make music together in other projects also, so we’re used to just being very effective together. We always had this mindset that it’s a one-take project: If it’s an idea that works, let’s go. We met up and we made three demos in a day. He would start normally from sending – I think he made a list of 15 guitar riffs and he would send it to me, because he listened to a lot of YouTube videos of people shredding on guitar at that time, being extremely intricate and playing fast. So he had that reference, and I’d been really into Big Thief – their last album has been a really important album for me. I feel like that combination was what sparked the sound. A lot of my ideas, lyrically, are based on where I was in life when we wrote the music, being heartbroken and just confused.
Was it challenging to find ways to inject the kind of intricate, frenetic energy of your debut into the softer, more intimate songs on Pure Love, especially the run from ‘Energy Lights’ to ‘Glu Myself to You’?
BF-R: Veslemøy, I feel like you helped us to push some of the things you felt when we were sometimes a little bit too easy, or the easy way out of certain songs. You’d be like, “We need some spice on this.” I feel like it was good to have your outside perspective on things, and that actually made us be more true to our original sound.
VN: Some of the songs you mentioned, and also ‘Emo Shred’, we had had this demo version that we put out that’s guitar-driven and sort of cute, and when we were making the album versions, we needed to bring some Mall Girl into it – the contrast between the soft parts and the energetic crazy parts. I think the drums play a huge part in that. Also, when we were doing the production with Marcus [Elfstedt], we had that in mind, that we needed to make these songs suitable for Mall Girl.
BF-R: And he produced the old album in the same studio, so there are many similar constants in the process.
Of all the songs on the record, the opener, ‘Inzane’, is the most ambitious in how it combines different styles. How do you go about taking an idea that may seem awkward or strange in theory and making it work in practice? Do you have a philosophy as a band about which risks are worth taking?
BF-R: When we practice, if someone has an idea, you’re not allowed to say no. If someone says something, it’s like, “OK, we’ll try. I don’t necessarily agree in my head right now, but it’s worth trying it.” I feel like that’s a general thing we already have in our heads, and sometimes it’s just fun making songs that are eclectic and all over the place. For me, it’s almost like a rock musical.
When it came to exploring feelings of heartbreak and love, do you feel like making the album shed light on the journey you went through?
BF-R: That’s one of the things I love about albums, the connection with one’s own life. For me, it was part of a journey of figuring out who I was, at least lyric-wise. The year we recorded the album, I ended up dating someone – I feel like I found pure love – so for me, it’s like this journey of bridging the old and the new. That in-between stage, when you’re alone and single and you have to deal with maybe a breakup, is a really weird stage of grieving something, but you know you have to move on. It’s this weird limbo, and I found that really intriguing to write about. It’s not heartbreak, but it’s not like “I’m in love” all the time.
Do you mind sharing something that inspires you about each other, and about Iver, personally or musically?
BF-R: I love how Veslemøy puts her everything into music. Music is her life, and I find that so inspiring. You come into a project, whatever it is, you bring your all. Some people might just brush it off and be like, “Oh, whatever,” but you take it seriously. And you’re a good friend – you’re good at lighting up a party when we hang out.
VN: Bethany has seen me through thick and thin. She’s a really good friend, and she’s always someone I can count on no matter what. I can always talk to her, and I usually talk to her about everything. She’s very open and very supportive and a really good person to talk to. Also, she’s really good at what she does. She has the business mind and the entrepreneur mind, which is lucky for us as a band because I don’t know where in the world we would be without her. We recently stopped working with our booking management and she’s been doing all of the work for this release tour, which is incredible. She’s one of the best people I know.
BF-R: Likewise. We should say something about Iver – Iver has so much passion, and he gives his all also. He’s an extremely good listener and friend.
VN: He’s super smart and talented.
BF-R: He is really smart, and he’s like a rock. I never get bored of him.
VN: He’s very funny.
BF-R: He’s one of the people I can be on tour with forever and not be bored.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.
