Mailing List


Rebecca Liu
Rebecca Liu is a commissioning editor at Guardian Saturday and a staff writer at Another Gaze.

Articles Available Online


There are only girls on the internet

Book Review

August 2022

Rebecca Liu

Book Review

August 2022

I remember the first time I saw it, like a freshly alert hare alarmed by movement in the distant grasslands. It was 2013. Model...

Book Review

September 2020

Pankaj Mishra’s ‘Bland Fanatics’

Rebecca Liu

Book Review

September 2020

The Anglo-American commentariat is full of lofty egos. Pankaj Mishra has developed a reputation as their great deflater. ‘Watch...

The six chapters that comprise the Fast & Furious franchise thus far (a seventh is due for release in April 2015) are not complicated films Their forcefulness is brutish, masculine, needlessly violent, and frequently uproarious They are at times wildly sexist They are targeted directly at – and appeal to – a generation of culturally confused middle-class, middle-America, middle-of-the-road young men They are the sort of movies you expect them to be, and despite the fact that you probably haven’t seen them, you are right to suppose the majority of what you do You might have written them off as crass, rococo Hollywood offerings undeserving of the attention of discerning adults You would be largely correct in assuming that the films contain outrageous stunts and implausible plotlines; dialogue and acting as flat and as unpalatable as the Dead Sea Despite all this, they are the most profitable franchise in the history of Universal Studios; the most recent film, FF6[1], took $789m at the box office last year, and Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson became 2013’s highest grossing Hollywood actor While it was at first unclear whether the films were planned as a franchise – although it must have been devoutly wished – it is now unclear if or when they will ever stop Despite the sad – and darkly ironic – demise of one of the movies’ main stars, Paul Walker (he died after he and a friend crashed a Porsche Carrera GT at high speed in a 45mph zone), Universal have signaled that they intend to continue filming with FF7, and have since brought in Walker’s brother to continue in his stead   Working on the assumption that the majority of The White Review readers are not up to speed on the series’ elaborate plotline, I’m going to offer a brief rundown FF1, which was released in 2001, saw Walker’s acting breakthrough as LAPD cop Brian O’Conner Working undercover attempting to infiltrate an illegal street-racing scene in LA, he begins to frequent a diner that he knows to be a hub of just this sort of activity While there,

Contributor

August 2019

Rebecca Liu

Contributor

August 2019

Rebecca Liu is a commissioning editor at Guardian Saturday and a staff writer at Another Gaze.

Jia Tolentino’s ‘Trick Mirror’

Book Review

August 2019

Rebecca Liu

Book Review

August 2019

Talk about the fates of young professional women today and you will often alight on two themes: the anxieties that come with living in...

READ NEXT

Interview

Issue No. 1

Interview with Mai-Thu Perret

Timothée Chaillou

Interview

Issue No. 1

Swiss artist Mai-Thu Perret’s ongoing, fourteen year-old project The Crystal Frontier is a multi-disciplinary fiction chronicling the lives of...

Art

February 2013

Haitian Art and National Tragedy

Rob Sharp

Art

February 2013

Thousands of Haiti’s poorest call it home: Grand Rue, a district of Port-au-Prince once run by merchants and bankers,...

poetry

May 2012

Monopoly (after Ashbery)

Sarah Howe

poetry

May 2012

I keep everything until the moment it’s needed. I am the glint in your bank manager’s eye. I never...

 

Get our newsletter

 

* indicates required