04/15/22
This week: Toddlers running errands, an absurdly deep dive into GLEE, and the astounding staying power of BEND IT LIKE BECKHAM.
TRENDS THIS WEEK:
Youtube STRANGER THINGS 4
Letterboxd EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE
TikTok #ecofriendly
Spotify As It Was - Harry Styles
Netflix OUR GREAT NATIONAL PARKS
Twitter Coachella
Shopify It’s been a week
Life & Culture
Yesterday morning, Elon Musk proposed a hostile takeover of Twitter for $43 billion ($6 billion more than its current market value). This comes after the billionaire bought 9.2 percent of the company earlier this month, becoming Twitter’s largest stakeholder. Musk spoke at the TED 2022 conference, explaining his interest in acquiring the platform: “This is not a way to sort of make money. My strong intuitive sense is that having a public platform that is maximally trusted and broadly inclusive is extremely important.” A noble idea, but whether a public platform like the one he’s describing should be owned by a single group of wealthy individuals is of course up for discussion. As of today, Twitter’s board of directors is adopting a “poison pill” defense in order to block Musk’s offer, which gives other shareholders the ability to purchase more shares of the stock, thus diluting Musk’s shares—and their own, hence the poison pill analogy.
Filmmaker Spike Lee is getting into the NFT game. The director is releasing a collection of 3,945 NFTs centered around his first feature film, SHE’S GOTTA HAVE IT. The crypto art will feature original frames from the movie, along with additional art as well. This comes out of an ongoing partnership with The Visible Project, a content incubator where Lee is set to be chairman.
Also on the digital front, I’ve been thoroughly impressed by TikTok duo @bigweirdworld for a while now. The page, made up of 8illy and 8nderson, dives into very specific (and lesser known) moments in history, and breaks them down in just a few minutes. The two hosts are excellent storytellers, and that, paired with dynamic editing, makes the fact-filled videos super fun to watch. They cover everything from an unsinkable WW2 cat, to the new world record on driving from NYC to LA, to German inflation in the 1920s. I highly recommend checking them out this weekend if you’re looking for a fun history binge.
I also loved this romantic cartoon, this very cinematic snail that I will never stop sharing with you, and this extremely American fishing encounter. With that, I bid you a good weekend.
—Darlene Kenney, Digital Strategist
Film
This past week marked the 20th anniversary of the oh-so-iconic film BEND IT LIKE BECKHAM (trailer here) by Gurinder Chaddha. This story about Jesminder Bhamra (Parminder Nagra), a young British-Indian Sikh girl aspiring to be a soccer player, turned out to be a surprise hit and a much needed reference for young South Asian women everywhere, sparking one-liners that are still zinged about to aunties and uncles everywhere today. The film explores the nuances of what it means to be British, hold a hybrid identity, and what it’s like to have a strong passion for a sport, or art, that isn’t quite understood or recognized in one’s community. And the film’s various messages hold as true today as they did 20 years ago, as the film was very much ahead of its time. It also features a young Keira Knightley in one of her first feature films.
—Nimarta Narang, Digital Fellow
No matter how many dialogue-heavy movies of a certain genre are released, I maintain that none will ever compare to the mastery of BURIED (2010) (trailer here). The entire film is 90 minutes of Ryan Reynolds being buried alive and struggling to get out, so if you are easily claustrophobic, be sure to watch through your fingers. What’s great about this movie is that despite its small and focused scope and setting, it still manages to feel as though it’s broken up into several acts through its use of lighting and orientation, making the whole movie deeply memorable as a developing story. At no point does it drag or feel as though the various scenes are bleeding together. The absence of additional settings and characters literally detracts nothing from the experience of watching this film, and even knowing the ending does nothing to diminish my anxiety every rewatch. I recommend seeing for yourself—available to watch on HBO Max!
—Victoria Moniz, Development Intern
TV
This week I had multiple friends recommend OLD ENOUGH!, a long-running Japanese show recently added to Netflix. They told me that it’s a show in which toddlers run errands. I thought there had to be more to it, but after watching a few of the ~10 minute episodes, I can confirm that it is in fact toddlers running errands. Sometimes they complete their errands, other times they forget what they’re supposed to be doing. It’s adorable! The program has been running since 1991 in Japan, so there are even children on the show now whose parents were on the show in the past. Generations of cuteness for you to watch this weekend.
—Nolan Russell, Executive Assistant
YouTube
There are few things I enjoy more than watching Michael Messineo, a.k.a. Mike’s Mic on YouTube, slowly lose it. Mike is essentially a walking pop culture encyclopedia whose film and TV commentary never fails to make me snort with delight, but his more recent reviews have reached unparalleled, near-transcendent levels of unhingedness—the crown jewel being a 3-part, 6-hour long series unpacking the entirety of PRETTY LITTLE LIARS. This week, however, Mike began a new endeavor: a recap of all 6 tumultuous seasons of GLEE. His methods involve a whiteboard on which he maps out characters and plot beats like a detective tracking a serial killer, a point system for rewarding or penalizing characters based on behavior, and a 5 hour and 53 minute-long Spotify playlist entitled “The Mike’s Mic Glee Experience.” Not to mention, a deep, burning hatred toward the “menace” that is William Schuester. Go. Watch. Now.
—Alicia Devereaux, Development Assistant