Our weekly recap highlighting the best feature stories from around the internet.
Sacha Baron Cohen. Photo: AFP
Is it cos I is wack? The rise and fall of Sacha Baron Cohen – by Danny Leigh, The Guardian
“Earlier this year, I saw Grimsby, the new film by Sacha Baron Cohen, at the Cineworld above my local shopping centre. It had only come out that day, so the audience was big for a weekday afternoon. Not that big, though: I counted seven of us. There were a few scattered laughs, and the comic centrepiece – a scene best described as elephant bukkake – brought yelps of hysteria. Mostly, however, there was silence. Some time before the end, a phone went off. Its owner left to answer it. I heard him at the door as the film played on. “Don’t worry – it’s shit,” he said. “See you in Foot Locker.””
How Taylor Swift, pop queen, keeps her critics in line – by Eve Barlow, The Sunday Times
“People in the business sought me out – off the record, of course – to unload their own stories of falling foul of the Swift machine. One pop star told me about losing a best friend to the #squad. One actor got so paranoid halfway through a rant that she simply stopped speaking. One high-powered manager emailed my negative review around, relieved to see an alternative opinion online among endless puff posts about Swift. Why were they all so scared of voicing any Swiftian dissent publicly? It was pathetic. It was odd.”
Beyoncé Wants to Change the Conversation – by Tammar Gottesman, Elle
“I'm not really sure people know or understand what a feminist is, but it's very simple. It's someone who believes in equal rights for men and women. I don't understand the negative connotation of the word, or why it should exclude the opposite sex. If you are a man who believes your daughter should have the same opportunities and rights as your son, then you're a feminist. We need men and women to understand the double standards that still exist in this world, and we need to have a real conversation so we can begin to make changes.”
Money for Nothing: The Lucrative World of Club Appearances – by Carrie Battan, GQ
“In a single night, Scott Disick—the runt of the Kardashian litter, the fuckup father of Kourtney's three children—makes more money doing nothing than most Americans earn in an entire year. Disick is a man routinely mocked on national television for being the one without any skills in a family of people who are famous for not really having any skills. But in 2016, he represents both the luckiest beneficiary and the most tragicomic casualty of the booming club-appearance economy. All he has to do to earn his check is walk through the door at 1OAK in Las Vegas and not leave for one hour.”
Why Anika Moa is 'the greatest unsigned television talent in NZ' – by Greg Bruce, NZ Herald
““Career suicide!” Moa says people told her at the time of her coming out. She didn't care. Except for a brief period when she was very young, she has never cared. Not caring is a big part of her life. She did care when the two long slides were closed in the kiddie part of the zoo where she likes to take her children. “We couldn't go there for three months and it sucked ballsacks,” she says.”
Strange magic: The story behind Auckland’s Temple of Higher Thought – by Greg Roughan, Metro
“It’s been five years since Harry Potter last steered his broomstick across our screens. J.K. Rowling’s wildly popular boy wizard was such a fixture of the past decade that it’s easy to forget the outcry when he first landed. Remember the warnings from the Bible Belt about a generation of children being trained in the occult? No one seems to bother these days – the protests smothered by the long years of books and movies – yet few people know New Zealand once had its very own, very real school of witches and wizards.”