04/09/21
This week: A meditation on Yahoo Answers and a heavy dose of nostalgic viewing/listening.
TRENDS THIS WEEK
☞ Youtube World’s Largest Explosion!
☞ Letterboxd GODZILLA VS KONG
☞ TikTok #springvibes
☞ Spotify Lil Nas X - MONTERO (Call Me By Your Name)
☞ Netflix WHAT LIES BELOW
☞ Twitter #DescribeYourDayWithABookTitle
Life & Culture
The iconic website Yahoo! Answers is taking its curtain call after 16 years of informing, inspiring, entertaining, and sometimes confusing us. It was the platform that dared to ask the question: What if we let strangers on the internet answer other strangers’ darkest, most personal questions? The resulting site gave us deeply relatable reading. Kind souls like Brandon. Questions that people came across a decade ago and still remember. And of course, some profoundly philosophical responses. Have I used the site in the past decade? No. But, am I still mourning this loss? Yes. Yes, I am. And to make matters worse, the site is completely shutting down next month. People are comparing this to the burning of the Great Library of Alexandria. Wayback Machine, you’re our only hope, now. If you want to take a look back at some of the best Yahoo! Answers has to offer, The Verge compiled a great selection.
Following in the footsteps of TikTok and Snapchat, Pinterest just launched a Creator Fund. The image sharing platform set aside $500,000 to pay influencers who create content, starting with just eight users who come from underrepresented backgrounds. It also revealed plans to expand the program to include 10 more creators in the coming months. Smart move. And it makes more and more sense, when I read news like this, that nearly 30 percent of kids today want to be a YouTube creator above all else. In more social media news, TikTok is testing a ‘Playlists’ feature, which will allow users to group videos into collections based on themes. And finally, Bloomberg revealed that Twitter was recently in discussions to buy buzzy audio app Clubhouse for around $4 billion. That, by the way, is 133x what the company reportedly paid for Vine, nine years ago.
And of course, I couldn’t leave you without my two favorite TikToks of the week. Thisskit about getting vaccinatedgenuinely made my week better, and this video of a dadaccompanying his daughter on a datealmost puts the movie theater date scene in Cheaper By The Dozen 2 to shame (I hope you know which scene I’m talking about here…).—Darlene Kenney, Marketing Assistant
Film
I don’t know about y’all, but I feel like we’re really starting to feel the COVID lag in TV programming. That’s why I recently decided to treat myself to the thousandth viewing of HEARTBREAKERS, an iconic film for the gays which somehow never achieved the mainstream success it undisputedly deserves. Sigourney Weaver, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Ray Liotta, and Gene Hackman all flex strong comedic muscles with pitch-perfect chutzpah in a 2001 gem that feels surprisingly timely with its “scam the rich” narrative. And, with a bittersweet cherry on top, the David Mirkin-directed film is also Anne Bancroft’s final live-action feature credit. I couldn’t decide on a favorite quote to share with you here, so instead, why don’t you just watch it and tell me yours!
—Kauveh Khozein Carrera, Creative Executive
Theater
The Williamstown Theater Festival is (kinda) up and running this summer! It will be presenting three shows entirely outdoors, starting with “Outside on Main: Solo Plays by Black Playwrights,” a series curated by SLAVE PLAY director Robert O’Hara. The season also features the world premiere of ROW, a musical about a woman who attempted to row solo across the Atlantic Ocean; and an immersive walking-or-driving production called ALIEN/NATION. If you find yourself in Massachusetts this July or August, check it out!
—Julia Hammer, Creative Executive
Book
I’m incredibly excited to dig into Rachel Kushner’s new book of essays, THE HARD CROWD. While Kushner is best known for her fiction (THE FLAMETHROWERS and THE MARS ROOM), she is equally prolific as a prose writer. Her essays in this book discuss everything from her love of motorcycles and antique muscle cars to prison reform and Palestinian refugees, often coming back to Kushner’s childhood in 1970s and ’80s San Francisco. Her writing is poetic but not self-indulgent, and her observations are incisive without passing too much judgement.
—Julia Hammer, Creative Executive
Short Film
RELIC, a suite of four short films by British artist Larry Achiampong, is now streaming on the Criterion Channel. The shorts contemplate colonialism and the African diaspora with a slight sci-fi bent. The series, which follows a “traveller”—a young Black boy outfitted in a spacesuit—as he traverses empty landscapes, is fairly light on plot but big on cinematics. The young protagonist’s exploration is backed by a lyrical letter read by an anonymous narrator and a mesmerizing, pulsating electronic score. These elements coalesce to create a moving piece of visual poetry. And, if you don’t have Criterion, I still recommend browsing Achiampong’s works on his website.
—Nolan Russell, Executive Assistant
Music
Swifties, rejoice. The first of Taylor Swift’s six re-recorded albums, FEARLESS (TAYLOR’S VERSION), is finally out. After Taylor's former record label Big Machine Records sold the master recordings of her first six albums to Scooter Braun in June 2019, Taylor vowed to re-record them as soon as she was contractually eligible in November 2020. And that she did! This move not only allows Taylor to retain complete ownership of her diaristic life’s work, but to exercise full control of licensing her iconic hits in commercials, movies, TV shows, etc (she’s already brilliantly flexed this point in the rollout of her re-recordings, with the use of LOVE STORY (TAYLOR’S VERSION) in this Ryan-Reynolds-directed Match.com commercial, and most recently with a snippet of WILDEST DREAMS (TAYLOR’S VERSION) in the trailer for Dreamworks’s SPIRIT UNTAMED).
This reissue of Taylor’s first GRAMMY-winning record includes new renditions of beloved country pop hits like YOU BELONG WITH ME and LOVE STORY, as well as six brand new songs “from the vault” — songs she recorded but ultimately scrapped when first putting FEARLESS out in 2008. The vault tracks include collaborations with Maren Morris and Keith Urban that have been produced by Taylor’s most recent collaborators on FOLKLORE and EVERMORE, Aaron Dessner and Jack Antonoff. It’s a thrilling, creative approach to reinterpreting the past, so check it out this weekend if you’re feeling particularly nostalgic for angsty teen love songs. Personally speaking, I am equal parts terrified and stoked to see what songs Taylor has lying around in the vault for RED…Jake Gyllenhaal, you’ve been warned.
—Neal Mulani, Development Assistant
