WATCHING
Palm Springs Like groundhog day but with more Black Mirror edge. Really enjoyed this, and it’s release is pretty timely what with Covid n’ all.
The Bodyguard Oh Whitney
East is East I LOVE this film. haven’t watched for a while and it’s so heartbreaking and hilarious.
I Hate Suzie Billie Piper is so GOOD. Honey to the bee, that’s Billie and me. Yes, I loved her as a pop star, but acting is definitely her forte. Really like the structure of the series too, with each episode focusing on an emotion she feels after falling victim to hackers. I said ‘Can you imagine’ a lot in the first episode. The anxiety is palpable.
Dracula 2020 (Netflix) Mini series made good by Claes Bang (Dracula) and Dolly Wells (Van Helsing)
The Duchess As a big Katherine Ryan fan I liked this. It’s good writing and a refreshing take on motherhood. The acting is not so good.
Selfish A nicely done short animation about plastic pollution.
Des - meh. David Tenant is fantastic. But just didn’t feel… long enough. It’s a very disturbing story, but it needed more build up than the 3 part series allowed for.
Maurice Ashley, The Grandmaster – an ad/film from Hennessy & Droga5, that is SO nicely done. An homage to the first black chess grandmaster. Directed by Daniel Wolfe
I Love New York: Bella Hadid, Misty Copeland & Whoopi Goldberg Celebrate the City | Vogue. Created and Directed by Bardia Zeinali. Written by Jeremy O. Harris.
Us This annoyed me. I’m a big fan of Jordan Peele, but what was this supposed to be about? It did LOOK stunning though…
Ratchet A super stylistic origin story of Nurse Ratchet. A lot of very fucked up scenes… Maybe a bit too ‘torture porn’ than necessary. Will probably watch all of it, but won’t be recommending.
READING
Burnt Sugar Just started… So far so good. The cover made me buy it.
Who Am I Prepared To Kill by William Davies. A thoughtful essay on our (society) tendency to reduce everything to yes/no, right/wrong, when really it’s all quite a bit more complicated than that. Some favourite quotes: ‘society of perpetual referendums’ (referencing social likes/dislikes) ‘The tyranny of binary opinion isn’t just a symptom of consumerism, but also an effect of the constant flow of information generated by the internet. It is not for nothing that, in the age of the digital platform, we use liquid metaphors of ‘feeds’, ‘torrents’ and ‘streams’ to describe the way images, sounds and words surround us.’ It is all a bit overwhelming innit. From London Review of Books
I’ve signed up to ANOTHER news letter… Book read by… No idea when I’ll read this, or the books I’m reading about people reading. Over. Whelming.
And another one… Why Is This Interesting
This is funny, in a geeky literary way. Basically Authors as blurbs.
And this is another interesting read from The Fence interviewing the New York Times Correspondent for The New York Times, David Gallipoli-Jones ‘– Nothing is more important or fundamental to a rights-based democracy than accountable journalism’
Godmother of Soul, Erykah Badu’s expanding musical universe by Kelefa Sanneh for The New Yorker. There’s a lot a didn’t know about Erykah Badu.
The Correspondent I think I found this from ‘Why Is This Interesting’ lots of tabs open lately… This is ‘An antidote to the daily news grind’ offering news without the sensationalised headlines, where the readers are the clients – not the advertisers. A very smart model which I’m looking forward to reading more from. This is the Correspondent’s manifesto of sorts, and definitely worth a read.
– Delayed Gratification is doing a similar job, a quarterly publication that focuses on the impact of news events.
Girls Night In – Weekly newsletter of smart reads and recommendations, reminded me of my pals VERY GOOD little side hustle: Articles Club
Starving Artists GREAT article in The New Yorker by Hua Hsu about artists being paid (or not being paid) in the digital era.
LOOKING
Thomas Blanchard makes beautiful films and images zooming into worlds of inks, paints and soap reacting together.
Spotify made a great website in the absence of Carnival this year
Pollution popsicles 3 students from the National Taiwan University of the Arts made ice lols from polluted water around Taiwan. They are quite beautiful, and have got a lot of coverage, so hopefully Taiwan will look into the pollution of their waters further… one of them is BLACK. The samples were first frozen in moulds then preserved in polyester resin for display.
FKA Twigs Sad Day is a lovely haunting song with an elegant Twigs kind of weird music video.
Cows but make them fashion - photographs by Klaas Zwijnenburg
19 Chairs a great creative project raising money for Age UK, artists are sent a chair to ‘revamp’ anyway they want…
LISTENING
Carnival in your living room - playlists from Spotify
Carrot Cake by Pan Amsterdam x GUTS Only just discovered Pan Amsterdam (from Radio 6) and now LOVE HIM. Have been listening to his 2018 album Pocket Watch and he has a NEW album coming out Ha Chu.
But You Can't Use My Phone, Erykah Badu (I’m very late to the party…)
OTHER STUFF
ScreenplaySubs well this is a very cool Chrome extension – if you’re into films/scripts. It lets you watch films on Netflix with the script on the side.
Founded by the CD of Droga 5 (which I found from snooping at the team behind ‘The Grandmaster’ ad - above), The Great Brain Cell Sacrifice is a nice idea, that is actually also real (which always helps)… They make and sell wine. And for every bottle of wine they sell, they donate a book to the charity Books For Kids. ‘By drinking our wine, you're trading in a few of your brain cells to help build the brains of the next generation’.
Mario Cart just got sort of real! Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit – players use their Nintendo Switch to pilot a physical kart around their house and set up ‘gate markers’ to highlight areas that will become the track. Imagine this wouldn’t be all that fun in my small flat, but if you have a large space, very cool.
