分类： 赛事资讯

By Andrew Lin, age 13, Upper Canada College, Toronto

Greg Heffley, everyone’s favorite wimpy kid, has burned through years worth of diaries — sorry, journals — yet has never shown growth or change. His life, in the form of this series, is a perpetual nightmare, propelling itself forward with sequel after sequel, repeating itself over and over, but progressively getting less worth reading. When Greg complained about being “stuck in middle school,” maybe he was talking about “Diary of a Wimpy Kid.”

Since its 2007 release, the “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” series has churned out 15 books, four movies and several spinoff books, standing out for being written in the form of Greg’s journal and containing his (mostly negative) remarks on school, family, friends and everything else that Jeff Kinney, the author, throws at him. The books don’t follow clear-cut story lines — as expected from a middle schooler’s journal — but end with climactic scenes, be it confrontation with bullies or narrowly escaping an angry mob by drifting a camper an into a bridge, “Fast and Furious”-style. The latter, however, is an example of “Diary of a Wimpy Kid’s” problem.

The first few books were successes, spinning jokes, commentaries and illustrations together in a way that was relatable to their audience, leaving kids asking for more. Kinney tried to give them more, but he had lost his spark; to keep the series going, he resorted to ridiculous over-exaggerations, to absurd jokes, to repetition, repetition, repetition.

“Diary of a Wimpy Kid” relies on Greg being selfish and having a flawed view of his world; as he said in the first book, “I’ll be famous one day, but for now I’m stuck in middle school with a bunch of morons.” This started out humorous and sometimes even relatable — but, 14 sequels later, Greg is still the same cynical, socially clueless wimp. The other characters haven’t changed either — and neither have the ideas. The only difference is that the characters have now been simplified, losing their relatability, and that the jokes and stories have been inflated to ridiculous proportions. Even the youngest kids will notice this and grow tired of Greg’s suffering and complaints. Someone needs to confiscate Kinney’s air pump before another sequel arrives.

Yet “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” still sells. Every year, a new audience enters the target age group and discovers Greg’s journal for the first time, then begs their parents to buy them a copy. Unlike other series, which search for longtime fans, “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” is being kept alive by the very thing it discarded: growth.

Maybe I’m being too harsh; maybe the series just isn’t right for me. Or maybe I inevitably did what our wimpy kid doesn’t. Grow up.

By Chloe Chang, age 16, Herricks Senior High School, New Hyde Park, N.Y.

Garish, loud and radiantly bright are words one might expect to describe a photojournalistic chronicling of life in the L.G.B.T.Q. community, however, Mengwen Cao’s latest project, “Liminal Space,” eschews popular stereotypes, offering queer portraits that are unapologetically ordinary and painstakingly in-the-box — and that’s the point.

With blaring headlines and outrageous glamorized magazine covers of self-expression — the queer community has garnered increased visibility in today’s cultural scene. Unfortunately, this step forward has catalyzed a largely spectacularized and glitzy-glam view of what it really means to be queer. This media trend comes from an industry that has largely shunned diversity in gender and sexual identity in the past. The result: an apologetic and overproduced portrayal of queer identity that neglects to detail the authenticity and vulnerability of their lived humanity.

In contrast, Cao, an up-and-coming Chinese queer photographer, is exactly what the photography scene needs. Choosing to explore the communal space between race, gender and cultural identity, Cao’s newest photo series reveals the seemingly-mundane privacies of queer life and redefines the sensationalized modern media image of the L.G.B.T.Q. community. In a culture that frequently transfigures the image of queer individuals into grandiose visions of violence and glamour — to see young queer adults fixed into a casual and authentic frame is enlivening.

Vitalized by intrinsically subdued hues and dreamy textures, the photographs in this series illuminate the “liminal space” of queer life by capturing its models during the prosaic and diurnal junctures of everyday life that are often neglected by the camera. By snapping friends during intimate and fleeting instances of privacy, Cao — the artist-turned-social-activist — preserves the delicate essence of human vitality with a click of the shutter — capturing the silence that frames queer life behind the exterior noise.

Featuring photographs softened by natural golden rays, Cao captures the intricate streaks and shades that highlight the vivid landscapes of their portraits: In “Suzy & Cristine,” a sun-kissed Sapphic couple lovingly embracing atop ruffled bedsheets. In “Grace Preparing for Hot Pot,” soy sauce and fish balls scattered across a wooden table, with warm, cozy light and tantalizing smoke rising from the heated pot. Grace, clad in a casual muscle tee, focuses on the traditional Chinese dish in front of them with a candor that reveals a slice of daily life without any of the camera’s performative elements.

A stark contrast to the eye-catching ostentatious displays of queer models in modern photography, Cao designs these quotidian moments to the familiar and authentic backdrops of everyday life. Through capturing nondescript instances of queer beauty in bluntly vulnerable moments, Cao brings to life a candidly realistic image of queer individuals that broadens the span of society’s camera lens.

By Davin Faris, age 15, home-school, Frederick, Md.

The final book by the late Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Mary Oliver, “Devotions,” is nothing short of an abridged life’s work. Its contents span more than half a century, chosen by Oliver herself from 27 of her collections. Yet that scope is easy to forget; one poem follows the next with such completeness that they hardly feel separate at all, each one simply drawing focus to a different corner of the profound natural world that Oliver inhabits.

“Devotions” centers on the idea of finding answers in ordinary things, the everyday miracles that society has conditioned us to overlook. In truth, nothing Oliver writes about — from the sweetgrass to the wild geese to the dog in the snow — is insignificant. Rather, she renders it meaningful by finding such importance there. The greatest strength of Oliver’s poetry, though, is that she brings the reader into it as well. She doesn’t just recount experiences vividly; she beckons us to walk and wonder beside her. Then she asks of the reader in return, writing: “Did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything? And have you finally figured out what beauty is for? And have you changed your life?”

Oliver’s book is founded on such questions, almost accusations, that defy dismissal — after all, not answering is an answer in itself. Each pointed remark is a call for us to simply pay attention. God (or gods) may be invisible, Oliver contends, “but holiness is visible, entirely,” if only we seek it out. While the delicate imagery and starkly accurate metaphors of this collection make it a pleasure to read, it has far more substance to it. “Devotions” is a set of lessons on how to attend to the world, how to “keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable.” Its pages escort us through “the willows and the honey locust, […] the beech, the oaks and the pines,” past the thrush singing at twilight and to water that wakes our bones. It rejects all notions of separateness, superiority or rigidity. It encounters the divine in innumerable unlikely places, marked not by grandeur but by simplicity.

While her poems occasionally strain under their own whimsy and specificity, following the formula of her other works but lacking the same depth, “Devotions” remains, at its heart, a poignant meditation on experiencing “mysteries too marvelous to be understood.” By coupling the unanswerable with an astounding existential Gnosticism, Oliver reveals how the bare acts of living and noticing can embody prayers more powerfully than words. She urges us, with each verse, to mend the rift between ourselves and everything greater: “Love yourself,” she writes. “Then forget it. Then, love the world.”

By Siyang Lian, age 17, The Hotchkiss School, Lakeville, Conn.

Butter bubbles over medium-low heat, the flames gently kissing the bottom of the pan. “Add water to help with the emulsification.” Jewels of fat swirl around two Maine lobster tails. Just as they turn a delicate red, I plate them with orzo cooked with lobster sauce and a generous piece of Parmesan tuile. Bon appétit.

As someone who previously cooked only eggs and instant ramen, I never imagined that I’d be recreating Michelin-style dishes at home. But Thomas Keller’s comprehensive MasterClass course allowed me to go from kitchen Neanderthal to gourmet home chef in six weeks. His class not only taught me how to cook iconic dishes from his famed restaurant The French Laundry, but also changed the way I think about food, community and life.

The beauty of Thomas Keller’s teaching approach is that he breaks down complex recipes into manageable steps, making this a perfect course for beginners and experts alike. Beginners will appreciate his emphasis on kitchen setup, knife skills and cookware, and ingredient sourcing, while experts can skip ahead to more convoluted dishes like the Salt-Baked Branzino With Fennel and Red Pepper.

The course is broken down into three series, beginning with the fundamentals of vegetables, pasta and eggs; before moving on to meats, stocks and sauces; and ending with the more advanced seafood, sous vide and desserts. Each series builds upon skills learned in the previous one: to make the butter-poached lobster featured in series three, you need the pasta-cooking technique from series one, as well as the poaching technique and chicken stock preparation taught in series two. Keller may be a Michelin-level chef, but his meticulous and patient approach to teaching fundamentals, including both a video demonstration and written recipe, give beginners like me the confidence to try intimidating dishes.

Keller’s course goes beyond traditional cooking — it fundamentally changes how you approach food and community. As Keller explains, the things that make food taste good — freshness, sustainability, and organic and locally-grown ingredients — go hand in hand with caring for the environment. Keller teaches us that cooking isn’t just about following a recipe; it’s about paying attention to where ingredients come from and how to best combine and cook those ingredients in a way that can bring us and our loved ones joy and deliciousness.

This past year, I’ve cooked food more complex and delicious than I previously thought myself capable of. More important, though, I’ve learned to approach food — and life — in a more deliberate and conscientious way, making sure I build a solid foundation before moving on to tackle intricate, dazzling dishes. Thomas Keller’s MasterClass has something to teach each of us on how to cook, eat and live.

By Samantha Liu, age 16, Ridge High School, Basking Ridge, N.J.

It’s about that time where Disney plunders a richer past for newly mediocre content, and, as of late, “Mulan” is the unlucky victim. To market Disney+ in mainland China, director Niki Caro struggled to bring maturity to a cheeky original. Gone are shirtless Li-Shang scenes, wisecracking Mushu, infectiously upbeat songs; in their place, wuxia themes and sweeping landscapes. But underneath the diversity points for the all-Asian cast and the grandeur of a $200 million budget lies an empty story: forgettable at best, problematic at worst, satisfying nobody.

Though the remake’s omissions from the original imply somberness, its jolts of absurdity found me balking. In the climactic battle scene, Mulan flings aside her protective armor — flamboyant, maybe, but a bit too ludicrous for an adult film. The juvenility doesn’t end there: There’s a witch who transforms into a million bats (and still manages to die from an arrow); the sets resemble dollhouses under oversaturated skies; and the gaudy costuming feels plucked from a princess movie counterpart.

Caro’s slapdash historical references fare no better. As an addition to the original, a fortuneteller describes chi, the Asian medicinal force, except it’s degraded into a super juice of which Mulan drinks too much. Now, already jedi-like and chi-supercharged, she is literally incapable of doubting herself. I found myself searching for the stumbling, determined teenager of “I’ll Make a Man Out of You” and received instead a Spiderman without Peter Parker. Without the 1998 protagonist’s endearing blunders, Mulan becomes as wooden as the staffs with which she trains.

But if the film seems childish for a heavy historical drama, it still fails to spark joy as a family movie. Thanks to “authentic cultural representation,” which is to say, a Google Translate take on Chinese, all of the characters are austere and distant, poor caricatures of Oriental values. The soldiers, devoid of camaraderie, crack two jokes before being abandoned by Mulan altogether (in the original version, she taught the hypermasculine bunch to cross-dress to save the emperor), while the repeated ad nauseam slogan “loyal, brave and true” casts doubt on Disney’s mastery of the show-not-tell principle. Most of all, it was cringe-inducing to watch Mulan’s parents parrot honor over happiness, so stiffly and stereotypically Asian that they cannot embrace their own daughter. In her attempt to create traditional legitimacy, Caro succumbs to the impersonal, Western notions about Asia. The result is a movie without heart, laughter or warmth — a movie without Disney’s trademark.

In 1998, the young Hua Mulan gazed introspectively into her mirror and sang, “Who is that girl I see / Staring straight back at me?” If she were glimpsing herself 22 years into the future, doomed by future Disney’s obsession with garbled live-actions, she would be asking the same question.

By Yiyun Hu, age 16, Shanghai Qibao Dwight High School, Shanghai

Explosions in art often represent fear and destructiveness; however, in Cai Guo-Qiang’s hands, they become the embodiment of mystery and beauty. In Guo-Qiang’s latest exhibition, “Odyssey and Homecoming,” which features hundreds of works that use gunpowder to recreate old masters of Western art, he shows us the shamanic power of gunpowder as an artistic medium that bridges nature and canvas in ancient and contemporary worlds.

In Guo-Qiang’s work, the ancient weapon is artistically transformed into a modern visual language. In “Painting Rubens’s Diana and Satyrs,” for example, Guo-Qiang uses speckled traces left by the explosion to create a psychedelic smoke fog over the forest, reproducing the intense atmosphere in a different way. Compared to oil paintings with classical and elegant styles, Guo-Qiang’s “Diana and Satyrs” uses randomness brought by the explosions to create graffiti and neon effects, which is more in line with the visual aesthetics of modern urbanites. Those traces of gunpowder explosions silently record the dialogue between old masters and the contemporary artist.

Traveling through time and space, Guo-Qiang first takes Chinese audiences on a journey through the Western classical period and contemporary art. Next, it’s time to go home. His virtual reality work, “Sleepwalking in the Forbidden City,” echoes “Homecoming” in the title of the exhibition. “It’s a daydream dedicated to the grand history of the Forbidden City,” Guo-Qiang said. He takes Shanghai audiences on a visit to a legacy thousands of miles away; he invited professional craftsmen to build a miniature version of the white marble palace and used V.R. technology to record the stunning fireworks above the palace. Cue the multicolored fireworks, and the Forbidden City, which has been sleeping for 600 years, gradually becomes filled with color and glows brilliantly again. The crackling sound of fireworks awakens the ancient relics of Guo-Qiang’s motherland.

Gunpowder is an ancient weapon that had been given the meaning of destruction and killing thousands of years ago. Now, Guo-Qiang has redefined it as a medium for connecting the past and the future. Using gunpowder as his language, Guo-Qiang speaks to the souls of the past masters; color is his vocabulary, texture is his syntax and fireworks are his voice. He is not restricted by identity, race or gender, nor does he make a specific group the target of his creations. Instead, he creates for all mankind as one human being. In an era when travel bans are still in effect, Guo-Qiang’s art takes audiences on a fantastic journey across time, place and Western art history.