12/04/20

This week: Your year in Spotify, crowd-sourced musicals, and big news from HBO.

TRENDS THIS WEEK

☞ YouTube:  When Satan Met 2020
☞ Letterboxd: Happiest Season
☞ TikTok: #homecooked
☞ Spotify: DAKITI - Bad Bunny
☞ Netflix:  VIRGIN RIVER
☞ Twitter: HBO Max

Life & Culture 

It’s the most wonderful time of the year: Spotify Wrapped is out. Premium subscribers received personalized stories taking them through their 2020 listening data. The company also released its insights on what the world listens to.  Bad Bunny was the most listened to artist with over 8.3 billion streams, while Billie Eilish was the most popular female artist. The Joe Rogan Experience took the spot of the most popular podcast. I’ve mentioned it before, but I truly love how Spotify uses the data it mines from subscribers to give each user the best, most personalized experience. So many of us turned to music to help us get through this crazy year, and seeing the songs and artists I listened to in 2020 felt much more meaningful than it did in years past. 

Warner Brothers announced on Thursday that it is releasing its entire 2021 theatrical slate simultaneously on HBO Max. The films will be available on the platform for a month-long window at the same time that they’re released in theaters, and after that month the films will be taken off the platform for a period of time, while still running theatrically. The list of 2021 movies includes TOM & JERRY, DUNE, SPACE JAM: A NEW LEGACY, IN THE HEIGHTS, and more. The streaming service, which has a $14.99 monthly price tag, currently has 8.6 million subscribers. We’ll all be very curious to know what that number looks like at this time next year.

In more streaming news, on Wednesday, Hulu made Watch Party, its co-watching feature, available for all subscribers. The feature allows viewers to watch content with up to seven of their friends at the same time. Viewers can use the chat feature to communicate with their fellow watchers. Disney Plus is testing a similar feature in Canada, and Amazon rolled out their version for US users in June. With many people unable to spend holidays on the couch watching TV with their loved ones, I love that streaming services are giving us a digital alternative. 

My TikTok recommendation this week is a full-fledged social musical. If you’re looking to lose yourself in something beautiful, check out the crowd-sourced RATATOUILLE MUSICAL. It started back in August when user Em Jaccs made a video with an original song dedicated to Remy himself with the lyrics, “Remy, the Ratatouille, the rat of all my dreams/ I praise you, oh Ratatouille, may the world remember your name.” The rest was history, and since then, singers, dancers, designers, chefs, and even Broadway stars contributed to the musical with videos. Fair warning that you will almost certainly wind up walking around your house belting out the lyrics to one of the original songs.

—Darlene Kenney, Marketing Assistant
 

Film

What’s better than one new Steve McQueen movie? Five new Steve McQueen movies! The brilliant anthology SMALL AXE has started releasing on Amazon Prime. All five films are about the West Indian immigrant community in London during the ‘60s and ‘70s. I’ve seen the first two, MANGROVE and LOVERS ROCK, and they are two of my favorite movies of the year. McQueen creates two very distinct films, as MANGROVE is a courtroom drama about the Mangrove 9, and LOVERS ROCK takes place almost entirely at a dance party. Both are visually stunning and impossible to look away from. I can’t wait to watch the final three. 

—Bennett Levine, Executive Assistant
 

TV

It’s rare that the odd-ball assortment of celebrities on my Twitter feed coalesce around a show, so when they were ALL telling me to watch HOW TO WITH JOHN WILSON on HBO, I felt like I needed to at least check it out. The show consists of quirky documentarian John Wilson walking around NYC with his handheld camera, filming how-to videos. Each episode tackles a different topic like “How to cover your furniture” or “How to make the perfect risotto”. Although the premise is weird and John doesn’t actually tell you how to do any of these things, beneath the weirdness are some really meaningful meditations on life and the simple relationships and encounters that make it up. The story builds to a final episode that I wasn’t expecting. I may have cried.

—Bennett Levine, Executive Assistant

Theater 

I promise this ~might~ be one of the last times I mention the National Theatre (JK probably not). But, they’re launching a streaming service where you can watch their old productions! Truly the best news I’ve gotten all week. Their available plays range from old classics (think OTHELLO and MEDEA) to contemporary works, and star everyone from Helen Mirren and Olivia Colman to Michaela Coel and Tom Hiddleston. Viewers can either pay a monthly subscription fee or rent plays one at a time—more info here! 

—Julia Hammer, Creative Exec
 

Comic Book

KNOCK EM DEAD, Eliot Rahal, Mattia Monaco, & Andy Clarke’s supernatural series about a stand-up comedian feels like I’M DYING UP HERE meets DEAD LIKE ME. The real allure of the story is the fight to perfect a craft, and the humor is great as well. It’s early on in the series, but the story already feels like it could be a perfect blend of comedy and horror. 

—Royce Reeves-Darby, Director of Production

Book

One of my absolute favorite books of this year is a relatively new release: THE ORCHARD by David Hopen. It’s effectively THE SECRET HISTORY by way of Orthodox Judaism, following a young man named Ari Eden as he moves from his ultra-Orthodox community in Brooklyn to the Miami suburbs for his senior year of high school. At his new modern-Orthodox high school, Ari falls in with a group of popular guys who introduce him to a world of teen partying, sex, drugs…basically everything he never would have considered trying in his former life. Grieving his late mother and determined to prove that he is one of God’s “chosen” people, Evan heads down a path of self-destruction that threatens the lives of his friends as well. It’s equal parts cerebral and thrilling, and I could not put it down. 

—Julia Hammer, Creative Exec
 

Podcast 

THE OYSTER is a new sci-fi podcast from the Paragon Collective, with an ensemble cast featuring Logan Browning (DEAR WHITE PEOPLE), Mamoudou Athie (JURASSIC WORLD), Giancarlo Esposito (BREAKING BAD), Carla Gugino (HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE), Constance Zimmer (HOUSE OF CARDS), and Andrew Santino (DAVE). The series takes place 30 years in the future, after global warming has rendered the earth nearly uninhabitable. The government creates a numeric rating system to determine an individual’s usefulness to society. People with ratings above 50 are deemed useful enough to be “saved” and enter a civilization below ground with limited resources. But once underground, in order to increase life satisfaction, the government begins testing The Oyster—a software program that mimics DMT and creates a sort of Nirvana for participants. At its center, this series explores what happens when people no longer want to live in reality. 

While the expansive cast of characters makes the podcast a bit hard to follow, the comprehensive world-building and high concept make this series notable. 

—Lucy Putnam, Development Assistant
 

Short Film 

I’m always looking for ways to find comfort in quarantine, and Siqi Song’s new short THE COIN offered exactly that. It’s a tale of tradition and finding home when you’re far from it, as many of us have to be, this holiday season. Bolstered by some seriously innovative and *woolly* animation, Siqi follows up her 2020 Oscar-nominated SISTER with an equally beautiful short. 

—Bennett Levine, Executive Assistant