02/19/21
This week: Tearjerkers, justice for Britney, and a cure for FOMO.TRENDS THIS WEEK
☞ YouTube: CRUELLA
☞ Letterboxd: JUDAS AND THE BLACK MESSIAH
☞ TikTok: #ColdDays
☞ Spotify: drivers license - Olivia Rodrigo
☞ Netflix: Good Girls
☞ Twitter: #CountdowntoMars
Life & Culture
Tik Tok, Twitch, and Instagram creators woke up to some good news last Thursday. After three years of research and discussion, SAG-AFTRA is opening up membership to social media influencers who sell sponsorships on those platforms. The most meaningful thing about this change: access to health insurance and other union benefits. This feels like long-overdue validation for creatives who are part of a huge—and rapidly growing—industry. Don’t believe me? Check this: brands will spend up to $15 billion on influencer marketing in 2022 according to a 2019 study by Business Insider.
Speaking of influence and the people who have it, David Dobrik dropped a new image-sharing app, Dispo, this past weekend. What makes the app different from Instagram, VSCO, and Twitter? After you take a photo, it disappears for 24 hours, meant to mimic a disposable camera. And in keeping with that theme, the photos also have an OG disposable camera filter applied to them when they’re shared. The app’s invites are exclusive, with only 10,000 testers currently using it Sadly, my invite got lost in the spam filters somewhere, but by the looks of the photos Twitter users have been sharing, the treatment looks a bit like the heavily filtered Instagram photos from the early days of the app. Let’s see if near-term nostalgia sticks in a social landscape that’s clearly hungry for change.
And of course, my favorite TikToks from this week: this nostalgia-inducing take on iconic movie and TV lines, and this creator’s envisioning of how food would walk if it had legs.
—Darlene Kenney, Marketing Assistant
Filmmaker
The filmmaker I’d love to put you on this weekend is Virgil Williams. He’s currently adapting the book BLACKTOP WASTELAND for us, and we’re blown away by his ability to adapt a story into an innovative film retelling that still honors the essence of the original. While we (of course) can’t show you anything yet, we highly recommend checking out MUDBOUND, directed by the amazing Dee Rees, on Netflix, which Virgil co-wrote. He received an Academy Award nomination for his adaptation, and it was well-earned!
—Shuyu Cao, Development Assistant
Film
In a season of dark and depressing movies, finally a beacon of light! BARB AND STAR GO TO VISTA DEL MAR is a blissfully weird stoner comedy (minus the characters actually getting stoned) about two middle-aged Midwestern ladies on the vacation of a lifetime. Directed by our dear pal Josh Greenbaum, BARB AND STAR has everything you didn’t know you needed in a film: Jamie Dornan singing! Colorful culottes! And many, many jokes about the name Trish that somehow never get old?! I don’t want to give too much away, but I loved how the film would zig whenever I thought it was going to zag. It’s sure to be a cult classic for a long time, Trish.
—Julia Hammer, Creative Executive
Although it was released over three years ago at 2018’s Sundance Film Festival, Cathy Yan’s DEAD PIGS has finally found its way to streaming this week on Mubi. You may know Yan as the director of last year’s hit BIRDS OF PREY and if you liked that, I highly recommend checking out her first feature. The film is the intertwining story of a group of people from different walks of life in a rapidly developing Shanghai. It draws you in with its ambitious scope and scale and keeps you hooked with it’s biting satire. It’s also a great excuse to check out some of the other awesome films on Mubi with your free trial.
—Bennett Levine, Executive Assistant
Editor’s Note: This is Bennett’s last week as a PS Weekly contributor, because he’s following his creative dreams over to FilmNation. We’re going to miss his passion for film—and his commitment to watching a superhuman volume of short films and lesser-known projects, to bring you the very best recs here every week!
Theater
From now through March 1st, you can stream Riz Ahmed’s solo rap show THE LONG GOODBYE, which he originally live streamed/recorded on his iPhone in December. Through a combination of rap, spoken word, and storytelling, Ahmed takes the audience through his rap album of the same name and tells his life story along the way. And if you haven’t seen him rap before, you are in for a treat. He’s an electric, intoxicating presence on stage—every time I watch him perform, I’m left wondering if there’s anything he can’t do.
—Julia Hammer, Creative Executive
Book
Next up on my reading list is Chang-rae Lee’s MY YEAR ABROAD—mainly because I heard it described as an “obsessive food novel.” It’s the story of a young man named Tiller, who returns to New Jersey after a crazy and traumatic year living abroad (the reveal of what actually happened only comes at the end). He moves in with Val, a former mobster’s wife who’s now in the witness protection program, and befriends Pong Lou, a local entrepreneur trying to invent the next miracle energy drink. Again, I haven’t read the book yet, but given that all I think about these days is food and the travel I cannot yet indulge in, it seems like a perfect quarantine read.
—Julia Hammer, Creative Executive