Music Lists

Popdust's Ultimate Autumn Playlist

We still have one week left of autumn.

Taylor Swift, "cardigan"

Believe it or not, next week marks the first day of winter.

Until then, it's still technically fall, meaning it's still time to light your candles, put on your sweaters, and set the autumn mood with some good tunes. There's no better way to mark phases in time than a themed playlist. Below, we've compiled our 10 favorite songs to welcome in the best season of the year.


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Film Lists

31 Halloween Movies to Watch This October

Juxtapose the horrors of Fox News against the more enjoyable horrors of Stephen King movies.

David Menidrey / unsplash

This autumn, our world is grappling with a bevy of horrors—an ongoing pandemic, relentless unchecked racial injustice sanctified by our legal system, the gaping void of an open supreme court seat, and an election that could potentially unravel all of American democracy.

Of course, October also brings with it a far more pleasant kind of horror: The blissfully distracting, transportive, folky wonder that is Halloween season. This October, we'll all have to intersperse pre-election phone banks and protests with some spooky autumnal entertainment in order to avoid burnout and keep our spirits alive.

The good thing is, fall offers plenty of options in the realm of transportive art and culture. Namely, these dark autumn nights are perfect for playing through your favorite horror movies. From the kitschy to the gory to the downright spine-chilling, horror movies have a way of bringing many of us an odd kind of peace. Plus, a recent study discovered that people who love horror movies might actually be faring better during the pandemic.

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This summer, my partner and I visited a record (for us) number of wineries. We bought wine from nearly every vineyard, hoping we'd amass a substantial collection for the colder seasons when we have less time for vineyard-hopping and more time to cook hearty meals.

Of course, the wine was so good that by the time Fall came, our stash was depleted.

Rather than heading back to all those wineries and trying to figure out our favorite bottles, we decided to look online to see if there was a sort of wine marketplace to find local wines.

At first, we kept finding wine clubs, but they're so obsessed with trying to help you discover your palate - my partner used to manage a restaurant, and we've been drinking wine together for decades, so we generally know what we like. Also, we're willing to pay the right price for a magnificent bottle!

When looking up some of our favorite vintages from our travels, we found one on a site called Wine Access. We were sure it was the bottle because they had in-depth tasting notes, along with a blurb about the winemaking process that included a wonderful story about their unique winemaking process - our tour guide had told us about it, but there were some new facts we hadn't known!

Impressed, we looked at their other bottles and found that their team of wine experts, including a Master Sommelier, specializes in curating a selection of local and rare wines from all over the world. We added the 2015 Halpin Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon we loved to our cart. Next, we were asked to enter an email address.

We paused. They had a wine membership, but we didn't know if we were interested in paying a yearly fee. Thankfully, the membership is completely free. Only 1 out of every 18 bottles make it onto the site, and some of the bottles are so rare and coveted; they only have a small inventory -through our membership, we would be notified by email about the new, limited stocks.

Before we purchased our Cab Sav, we found another from a Napa Valley vineyard we'd always wanted to visit. We'd heard of this bottle - only 5 barrels of it were made, and it's supposed to be excellent. Since we knew the first bottle was gold, we had faith in the second and decided to purchase them both. Everything would be shipped directly to our place in climate-controlled packaging, and they guaranteed it would arrive in perfect condition.

That weekend, we had our neighbors over and prepared beef tenderloin with a blackberry and goat cheese salad - Mmm. It was delicious, and after polishing off the first Cabernet Sauvignon, we opened the second, the 95-point 2014 from Three Twins Vineyard; the corkscrew lifted the cork out to reveal a magnificent burgundy color. I poured, and we drank it down. It was marvelous.

As Fall transitions to Winter, we plan on getting all our bottles from Wine Access. Each bottle comes with meal pairing suggestions, so we can shop by recipe. Not to mention, they have an excellent staff of writers to tell the stories of the wines. I highly suggest reading them to inform or enhance your purchases.

Wine Access is the only marketplace for wine I've ever come across that caters to a higher-end palate.

Special Offer: Wine Access is offering our readers a special discount on select wines this week. Click here to browse the selection.

CULTURE

Warner Bros. Takes Legal Action on Trump Campaign Ad Because of ‘Dark Knight’ Copyright Infringement

This isn't even the first time that Trump has run into trouble with copyright infringement

NME.com

In the latest installment of the Trump-controlled reality TV show we're all living in, our President now has beef with Warner Bros. Studios because he posted a campaign video that included a selection from The Dark Knight Rises soundtrack.

The video advertisement first appeared on Twitter on Tuesday. It featured Hans Zimmer's "Why Do We Fall," and even used a font from some of the film's advertisements.

Hans Zimmer - Why Do We Fall? (with chant)www.youtube.com

By Wednesday morning, Warner Bros. had threatened legal action. "The use of Warner Bros.' score from The Dark Knight Rises in the campaign video was unauthorized," the company said in a statement. "We are working through the appropriate legal channels to have it removed."

Within a few hours, the video—which had already amassed over 2.3 million views—was taken down. Later, a Trump aide stated that the video had actually been made by a supporter and not the administration itself.

Trump's 2020 campaign manager Brad Parscale also had plenty to say on the matter, even arguing that Warner Bros. is "positioning themselves as a weapon of the left."

This isn't even the first time that Trump has been in hot water over attempts to capitalize on popular culture. He also tried to reference Game of Thrones in his November sanctions announcement, leading HBO to threaten him with legal action.

Overall, the Trump clan does not seem to have issues with copying others—after all, it's hard to forget the time Melania Trump effectively stole a speech by Michelle Obama. On the other hand, this is one of the first times that the administration has faced fallout from their legal infringements.


Eden Arielle Gordon is a writer and musician from New York. Follow her on Twitter @edenarielmusic.


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