01/07/22
This week: Mourning (and celebrating) Sidney Poitier, bingeing SEARCH PARTY, and watching that Hugh Jackman TikTok over and over again.
TRENDS THIS WEEK
☞Youtube Film Theory: Spiderman Saved NO ONE
☞Letterboxd DON’T LOOK UP
☞TikTok #animallover
☞Spotify abcdefu - GAYLE
☞Netflix COBRA KAI
☞Twitter Hamilton
Life & Culture
Volkswagen’s iconic “Microbus” is getting an eco-friendly update, starting March 9. The new electric van looks like the classic versions from the ‘50s-’80s, and was originally announced back in 2017. It’ll potentially hit the road in 2023.
Good news for Spanish pets! A new law in Spain treats pets like family members in divorce negotiations. It “obliges judges to consider pets as sentient beings rather than objects owned by one or the other partner.” This follows recent cases in the country, like a Madrid judge giving joint custody of a dog to a separated couple. And further proves that Paulette in LEGALLY BLONDE was way ahead of her time.
Billboard reported Wednesday that Kanye West will headline Sunday night at Coachella with a version of his Sunday Service gospel show. Billie Eilish is rumored to also headline, with the two of them replacing Travis Scott and Rage Against The Machine—who were previously slated to headline 2020—and Frank Ocean, who’s now set to headline in 2023.
My favorite videos I’ve seen this week are this one, where Hugh Jackman takes the time to explain to an audience just how hard fellow Broadway performer Kathy Voytko worked, and this one which proves there are truly only two types of people in the world.
—Darlene Kenney, Digital Strategist
Film
I’ll be spending the weekend rewatching the greatest hits of Sidney Poitier’s incredible career, mourning his passing. If you’re planning to do the same, start with 1967, a pretty incredible year for the actor, who starred in TO SIR, WITH LOVE; GUESS WHO’S COMING TO DINNER; and Best Picture-winner IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT (trailer here). Released near the end of the summer of 1967, which was marked by racial violence in many major American cities, IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT features Poitier as Virgil Tibbs, an accomplished homicide detective from Philadelphia passing through Sparta, Mississippi. When a wealthy industrialist building a factory in Sparta is murdered, Tibbs begrudgingly agrees to work with racist police chief Bill Gillespie to solve the case. In addition to Poitier, the film’s credits are littered with greats—directed by Norman Jewison (!), edited by Hal Ashby (!!), scored by Quincy Jones (!!!)—and all that talent shows up in a simmering murder mystery that sweats with the Southern heat and the danger of Tibbs’ position as a Black man among racist hostility. Thematically the film is more conservative than you might expect from that summer, with its suggestion that racism can be extirpated at a personal level, that a police chief overcoming his prejudices by working with a Black man is a story of progress. Even so, the movie works, especially as a showcase for Poitier’s performance as a reserved detective, frustrated by the people around him yet determined in his work.
—Nolan Russell, Executive Assistant
I finally watched Wes Anderson’s latest film, THE FRENCH DISPATCH (trailer here), when it showed up on PVOD services last month, and can report that both Anderson connoisseurs and newbies will be beyond amused with this masterpiece. The film showcases Anderson’s renowned idiosyncratic aesthetic and directorial approach: meticulous compositions, an exquisite color palette, satisfying symmetry, and explosive dialogue with dark humor.
Structured as a series of anthologies, the film follows journalists from an American magazine who write about historical events in a fictitious French city. I’ll stop there. Because I could write a 20-page essay about how magnificent this movie is, but I will leave it for you to discover. Grab your snacks and thank me later!
—Eri Taira, Associate Graphic Designer
TV
The brilliant, genre-defying SEARCH PARTY (trailer here) is back for its fifth and final season and it truly feels like the bittersweet end of an era. The series—created by Sarah-Violet Bliss, Charles Rogers (writer-directors of our incredible comedy-thriller project, MONSTER!) and Michael Showalter—began as a Nancy-Drew-esque mystery in its first season, as Dory (Alia Shawkat) and her wayward group of friends (John Paul Reynolds, Meredith Hagner, and my idol John Early) searched for a girl they went to college with had gone missing. The series continually shapeshifted into a psychological thriller, a courtroom drama, and most recently, a captive drama à la MISERY, in its fourth season when Dory was kidnapped by The Twink (the phenomenal Cole Escola) and his mother (Susan Sarandon). But no matter how many times it's boldly reinvented itself, SEARCH PARTY has remained an outrageous, unruly comedy that explores abuses of power, narcissism, and the struggle to feel validated in ways that few shows on television have ever dared to. This certainly applies in season five, which picks up right where we left off, with Dory left for dead in The Twink’s burning basement and suddenly waking up in the back of an ambulance—alive! In the season five premiere, we learn that Dory did, in fact, die for 37 seconds...but she’s woken up with a newfound purpose—a life-affirming sense of enlightenment that she simply must share with the world. The season five premiere sets the stage for what might be SEARCH PARTY’s wildest season yet, rounded out with guest appearances from Jeff Goldblum, Kathy Griffin and John Waters. If you need me this weekend...you know where to find me. And if you haven’t started SEARCH PARTY yet for some reason, all five highly bingeable seasons are on HBOMax now. GO!!!
—Neal Mulani, Development Assistant
Book
Over the holiday break I finally had a chance to read SECOND PLACE by Rachel Cusk, which was published back in May 2021. I love Cusk’s OUTLINE trilogy, as do many people, apparently, because it took months for me to get a copy of SECOND PLACE from the library. Cusk’s new novel is hazy and digressive, and restrained in showing a clear path forward, much like the story’s swampy setting. The narrator, a middle-aged woman known only to the reader as “M,” lives with her husband on a remote marsh, where they routinely host artists in a guest cabin, the titular “second place.” M invites L, an aging but successful painter, to visit the marsh, which sets the stage for the bulk of the novel. During his volatile stay, M struggles with her relationship to him and his work, a turmoil that boils over, disrupting both her marriage and her self-image.
—Nolan Russell, Executive Assistant
Short Film
I recently watched TERRA CENE, a short experimental film directed by Rodrigo Inada and NONO (Nono Ayuso). It’s a fascinating dive into the Golden Record, a time-capsule that was sent into space in 1977, carrying images and archives of planet Earth for alien life to potentially encounter. Of course, it also carries evidence of a healthier planet, now just a memory floating further away from us. Unlike some recent climate change satire that feels the need to beat you over the head with on-the-nose caricature, this short is meditative and powerful enough to make us realize the urgency of our immediate actions to stop our planet from dying—without feeling heavy handed.
—Eri Taira, Associate Graphic Designer
