03/12/21
This week: Bad news for free-loaders, good recs for entertainment lovers.TRENDS THIS WEEK
☞ YouTube: Doja Cat - Streets
☞ Letterboxd: MOXIE!
☞ TikTok: #90sAesthetic
☞ Spotify: What’s Next - Drake
☞ Netflix: GINNY & GEORGIA
☞ Twitter: Shawshank Redemption
Life & Culture
For anyone using their roommate’s ex’s grandma’s Netflix account, I have some bad news for you: Your heyday might be coming to an end soon. This is going to be hard to hear for the 42% of TV watchers who use someone else’s credentials, but Netflix is taking measures to crack down on password sharers across its platform. A small sampling of users are reportedly being asked “is this your account?” with a prompt to verify with an email or text code. Which pretty much means the end is near. Streaming services are apparently losing $9 billion a year to password-sharing, so truth be told, I’m surprised it’s taken them this long to start policing free-loading more aggressively.
This time last year, the most money Beeple had sold a piece of art for was $100. Yesterday, he sold an NFT for a piece of digital art for $69 million. Auction house Christie’s announced the piece back on February 16, and declared it “the first purely digital work of art ever offered by a major auction house”. For the piece, titled EVERYDAYS: THE FIRST 5000 DAYS, Beeple digitally juxtaposed 5,000 individual pieces of work that he’s created every day for the past, well, 5,000 days. The resulting art showcases Beeple’s journey as an artist, and is pretty cool to look at too, if you ask me.
Two of my favorite Toks from this week are this video in which a steadicam operator takes viewers through a scene, and this video where two friends infiltrate a group of horses in a Trojan Horse-type moment.
—Darlene Kenney, Marketing Assistant
Filmmaker
Photographer, filmmaker, and self-portrait artist Nadia Lee Cohen released the 2021 second edition of her monograph WOMEN last week, so I figured I would use the opportunity to highlight her work here. As a photographer, the British (but L.A.-based) artist’s work is easily recognizable, thanks to the saturated colors and the intentionally orchestrated images, creating a dreamlike, and maybe more accurately, nightmare-ish look that challenges the concept of perfection. As a filmmaker, she brings a signature retro-inspired surrealism to everything she does. You probably recognize her work on A$AP Rocky’s “Babushka Boi”, Kali Uchis and Tyler the Creator’s “After the Storm”, and this GCDS x Barilla Campaign (yes, as in a collab between the streetwear and pasta brands).
—Mimi Li, Development Assistant
Film
I can’t remember the last time I awaited a release as much as I have QUO VADIS, AÏDA?— not because I hadn’t seen it (one our film execs, Jessica Switch so brilliantly suggested I watch at TIFF) but because I wanted to recommend it to everyone I know without being the asshole who says “oh, it’s not out yet.”
QUO VADIS, AÏDA? tells the story of Aïda, a UN translator in Srebrenica during the Srebrenica massacre/genocide. While the film obviously (and beautifully) addresses identity, violence, and the politics attendant to access of information, it’s also a heart-wrenching story about family, morality, and truth. Although I sobbed through the vast majority of the movie, every time I think of it I’m reminded of the universality of storytelling and the power of art, and specifically of film, to convey humanity and elicit empathy.
—Lucy Putnam, Creative Exec
TV
On my watch list for this weekend is GENERATION, a half-hour dramedy following a group of high school students navigating sexuality, identity and (you guessed it!) intergenerational conflict within the trappings of their conservative-leaning California town. Created by father-daughter duo Daniel & Zelda Barnz and starring Justice Smith among an exciting cast of newcomers, the series promises an unvarnished, neon-tinged look at Gen-Z in the vein of EUPHORIA and GRAND ARMY. Zelda Barnz was 17 years old when the show was picked up, and it was born out of her desire to see her experiences as a teenager depicted truthfully rather than shown through the diluted prism of an adult’s perspective. I’m intrigued to see if GENERATION turns out to be an all-out cringefest or a worthy addition to the #unfiltered teen-centric TV canon; with executive producer Lena Dunham in the mix, it’s bound to polarize!
The first three episodes are available now on HBO Max.
—Neal Mulani, Development Assistant
Theater
I’m incredibly excited to watch Steppenwolf Theater Company’s latest online offering, DUCHESS! DUCHESS! DUCHESS!, which is about my favorite topic of the moment (and most moments), Meghan Markle and the Royal Family. The play is formatted as an interview between two Black women named the Soon-to-Be Duchess and The Duchess. What begins as a conventional “princess lessons” conversation devolves into a study in holding one’s tongue—and to think Vivian J.O. Barnes started writing this in 2018, before Megs and Harry were even married! I’m eager to see what Barnes makes of both the Soon-to-Be and Duchess characters, and will be more than happy to discuss with anyone else who watches.
—Julia Hammer, Creative Executive
Book
This week’s edition of “books that have sat on my shelf for years but I’m finally reading” features Kate Hope Day’s debut novel IF, THEN. The novel follows an ensemble cast of characters in a small Oregon town as they grapple with motherhood, grief, difficult marriages, and one professor’s research that indicates the long-dormant volcano their town is built upon may actually be active. Oh, and they’re also beginning to see flashes of their lives in alternate realities—the people they might have been if they had made different choices. In spite of this light sci-fi twist, the book reads like an intimate character drama. And Day’s writing is incredibly engrossing, so the pages fly by!
—Julia Hammer, Creative Executive
Podcast
I listened to the first two episodes of STOLEN: THE SEARCH FOR JERMIN, hosted by journalist Connie Walker, and am eagerly awaiting the release of the rest of the season. I’m recommending this podcast because it is both moving and tragic, but not because it is extraordinary. In fact, just the opposite. I’m recommending this podcast, which chronicles the search for Jermain Charlo, an indigenous woman who went missing in Montana in 2018, because what happened to her is so commonplace.
So far, this podcast has effectively situated Jermain’s disappearance and the resulting investigation against the broader context of the current epidemic of violence against Native American Women. If you don’t love podcasts, but want to know more about this subject, please find two New York Times articles here and here.
—Lucy Putnam, Creative Exec
Short Film
Are short film adaptations of late 19th/early 20th century European writers the hot new trend? Pedro Almodóvar’s adaptation of Jean Cocteau’s THE HUMAN VOICE suggests yes. That short will get plenty of attention, so I actually want to highlight Russian filmmaker Daria Geller’s HIM & HER, inspired by an Anton Chekhov short story. A journalist interviews a lively singer and her alcoholic manager—who also happens to be her husband. When asked about their relationship, both list their spouse’s faults…and the lists are not short. Their love is obviously toxic—I certainly wouldn’t want to be married to either of them—but in their private moments we see that there’s something more keeping them together. I know that sounds cliché, but the writing is funny and the performances are charming, so just trust me and check it out on Vimeo.
—Nolan Russell, Executive Assistant
