Kayleigh Donaldson
School
University Of Edinburgh, University Of Dundee,
Expertise
Pop Culture Criticism, Celebrity Culture, Awards Season
- Kayleigh's biggest pop culture fascination is celebrity gossip. For over two years, she's written the popular newsletter, The Gossip Reading Club, which dissects vintage celebrity reporting through a contemporary gaze. Her newsletter was recommended in the New York Times as a must-read.
- A long-time Oscar obsessive, every year Kayleigh hosts a pre-Oscars party (due to the US/UK time difference) and owns a hefty shelfful of books dedicated to the machinations of Hollywood old and new.
- In 2018, Kayleigh received a Master's degree in film studies, graduating with distinction, and she puts her qualification to good use every day with her job. After graduating, she returned to her old university to talk to new students about the realities of working in the world of entertainment journalism.
Experience
Kayleigh is the features writer and editor for Pajiba.com and has been a full-time pop culture writer and critic for over six years. She has written for a variety of publications, including /Film, IGN, Uproxx, Total Film, Vulture, Little White Lies, The Daily Beast, Paste, and many more. Kayleigh has written extensively on film and pop culture, with a special interest in the ways that cinema intersects with celebrity culture, feminism, awards season, and more. She's covered a wide variety of topics, from romance novels to body horror to how to win an Oscar. She has also appeared on CBC Radio and BBC Radio 4 (Mark Kermode once said she was great).
Education
Kayleigh received her MA (hons) in Celtic studies and English literature from the University of Edinburgh in 2012, then received her MLitt in film studies from the University of Dundee six years later.
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Stories By Kayleigh Donaldson
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To celebrate the release of Crimes of the Future, let's reminisce about the many times director David Cronenberg grossed us out.
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The trailer for the Disney+ Marvel show She-Hulk: Attorney at Law reveals a Jennifer Walters much less built than her male counterpart, Bruce Banner.
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Here's how Top Gun went from cheesy American military propaganda to a queer classic.
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Sam Raimi's Evil Dead became a target of the video nasties campaign, and thus a symbol in the battle for horror freedom.
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There's a true thrill in seeing great make-up at work in a film, but something still seems to have gotten bogged down in this approach.
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Fantastic Beasts once seemed too big to fail, but it's now sliding into bleak territory. And there is really only one person to blame.
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There's something about being old or the elderly that remains eternally scary to audiences and filmmakers alike.
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The most recent iteration of the Joker in The Batman perpetuates a troubling trope with facial disfigurements on the big screen.
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Twenty years ago, the Academy created the Best Animated Feature Oscar category. But animation is still treated as a lesser medium.
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With the promotional cycle around Batman films, there is a darker streak to the narrative that rears it ugly head every single time.
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Anne Rice was a giant amongst literary icons and a queen amongst vampires.
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No movie more than Pan's Labyrinth shows Guillermo del Toro's talent for showing humanity in monsters and showing the monstrous in humanity.
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Biopics, and our rigid demands and expectations for them, have made acting a lot worse over the past few decades.
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Will Smith is one of our biggest movie stars today. So when he occasionally makes his bid as a serious actor, it's cause for celebration.
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In 1981 The Rocky Horror Picture Show got a sequel (or rather, an 'equal') called Shock Treatment. Here's why it's seriously underrated.
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The Innocents may be 60 years old, but you'd be hard-pressed to find a horror movie more capable of getting under your skin.
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35 years ago, a Rob Reiner classic hit theaters and helped build the short but vital career of actor River Phoenix. This is Stand by Me revisited.
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Aladdin and the King of Thieves is the best movie from Disney's direct-to-video era, a period that demands a closer examination.
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Yes, King Shark is hot. And yes, we have written an entire article exploring why DC Comics' shark-man is turning so many heads.
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The Devil Wears Prada and Meryl Streep represent a turning point in a remarkable career, when a great actress became an icon.
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Thanks to a certain accent choice by actor Mike Myers, Shrek and Scotland go hand-in-hand. Here's what that actually means for the Scottish people.