Super Bowl, CODA, Con Artists, & The Trojan Horse Affair
What I'm Watching, Reading, & Listening To This Week
Happy Super Bowl Sunday! For some of us [it me], this day is about pure entertainment value: Kendrick Lamar, Mary J Blige, Joe Burrow’s game-day fashion, and the year’s best commercials.
For others it’s about gambl—I mean, football!
And if you’re in the third category of people — ie, boycotting the Super Bowl out of legitimate concerns about literally everything — I salute you!
I also highly recommend everyone read this article about Brian Flores, the man who loves football so much, he’s willing to burn it all down to make it better.
The most important thing I’d like to share this week is this amazing project for Black History Month: 28 Days of Black History.
Just drop your email at the link and for each day of February you’ll get a new story and discussion and action items you can do with friends, kids, or just yourself. I loved Friday’s reflection questions, which were so relevant to what we do here:
Why is it important to create a like-minded community around art? How is that even more important for the marginalized parts of our identities?
Who are the filmmakers that have shaped your movie-watching experience?
Why is it important to watch films made by a diverse set of filmmakers?
If you have any thoughts about those questions, I’d love to hear — especially the one about the filmmakers who shaped your movie-watching experience.
On to the week’s topics!
In the News
IS ADELE ENGAGED?!? While she is supposedly “just dating” sports agent and LeBron James BFF Rich Paul, she showed up at the BRIT Awards in a gorgeous gauzy black dress and a rock the size of the entire United Kingdom on her left ring finger!! Her response? “As if I would ever tell anyone if I was or wasn't. Lovely though, innit?” SO THAT’S A YES…INNIT????
This week I discovered a new fashion icon: Sydney Carter!! She’s a former basketball player and current player coach at Texas A&M, and she hit my algorithm last week with this incredible outfit. Which led me to find this, and this, and this, and this. I love it all!!
As of today, I learned that some people are trolling her for “not looking professional.” To which I say: Men in ill-fitting suits have been ruining my aesthetic experience for 33 years, so you can take your olden-times ideas of “professional” and go live in the woods making fire and grunting!!!
An artist spent 4,500 hours making a 24-karat golden cube to display in Central Park. Then some genius at Velveeta saw it and in less than 24 hours a giant box painted like a “liquid gold” Velveeta carton appeared in Central Park, scandalizing the Upper East Side neighbors. That’s capitalism, folks!
Movies - CODA on Apple TV
Welcome to my first installment of Oscar Nominees 2022! Until the Oscars on March 27th, each week I’ll pick a Best Picture Nominee to watch and review!
This week I picked CODA, which stands for “Child of Deaf Adults.” It’s about a hearing teenager whose parents and older brother are deaf, and how those relationships play out and are impacted by her dreams to become a singer.
I highly recommend! It’s quite beautiful — very simple and sweet, a small but lovely story that will make you feel so uplifted. It follows a pretty predictable “inspirational movie” pattern, but succeeds within that framework.
It’s also one of those movies that does what movies do at their best — which is to change the lens through which you see and feel the world just a little bit. Two other movies that have done that for me in recent years were also Best Picture nominees: Sound of Metal (also about the Deaf experience) and Moonlight (2017 Best Picture Winner about a gay Black man and the emotional nuances of masculinity). FWIW I actually think Sound of Metal is even better than CODA, though it’s definitely sadder — less of a feel-good experience but more emotionally stunning.
I asked my friend Eliza, who has spent a lot of time with the Deaf community, about CODA, and one thing she said that struck me was: “Deaf people were traditionally labeled as disabled, which a lot of them push back at. A huge slogan in the Deaf community is ‘We can do everything but hear.’”
You start to really grasp the power and truth of that as you watch the love of this family in CODA.
TV - Inventing Anna on Netflix
Y’all, apparently it is CON ARTIST SEASON. Here are just a few projects about con artists out right now or coming soon:
The Tinder Swindler, blowing up on Netflix right now, tells the true story of a guy on Tinder who romanced women with fancy dates then conned them out of thousands by saying his enemies were after him. (!?!) You’re probably seeing this photo of him memed all over the internet.
Not one but TWO versions of the Elizabeth Holmes/Theranos debacle. One is a TV show starring Amanda Seyfried, coming March 3rd. The other is an Adam McKay movie starring Jennifer Lawrence with no set release date. PS: I’ve recommended a few documentaries on this story, including The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley and Bad Blood: The Final Chapter podcast.
The Puppet Master also on Netflix about the ultimate con man who is still out there somewhere.
And, of course, the one I’m currently watching — Shonda Rhimes’ newest show Inventing Anna, about the fake socialite who scammed New York City’s biggest banks, hotels, and glitterati out of thousands-nay-millions of dollars!!
It’s pretty fun! Let me start out with what’s not great: First, like many of these shows, it glorifies the criminal at the center who ruined a lot of people’s lives. And second, it’s not prestige TV, okay? But it’s not really supposed to be.
I’ve only watched three episodes but so far it’s been QUITE entertaining! The acting is doing the absolute most, everything is showy and stylish and way way over the top — and that’s what it’s trying to be! This is Shonda Rhimes, creator of Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal, and Bridgerton! This isn’t Chloé Zhao filming hours of France McDormand doing nothing! It’s camp! Have a little fun with it.
PS: If you’d rather read about it, the fantastic article that broke the story open is here. It’s wild.
Listening - The Trojan Horse Affair podcast
I AM BINGEING THE HELL OUT OF THIS!!!!
From This American Life and the team behind Serial comes a new crazier-than-fiction tale dug up from recent history: The Trojan Horse Affair.
It’s a story from Birmingham, England, that everyone in the UK thought they knew as “That time they found out a bunch of schools were being radicalized by Islamist extremists.” But it turns out…that might not have been the case?
This story has fantastic twists and turns, and my favorite part is the dynamic between the two hosts. One is Hamza Sayed, the doctor-turned-journalist who brought the story to the seasoned team at This American Life. The other is Brian Reed, This American Life producer. Together they’re quite charming — they have a real buddy cop movie energy with the old hand and the new inexperienced hothead. [Also, for the record, Hamza’s accent is sexy. He’s got one of those British accents like Adele’s that uses words like “innit” and “mate.”]
I’m addicted.
Just Some Clips Bringing Me Joy
Because it’s February and we all need a little.
US skater Nathan Chen’s free skate that sealed his gold medal in the Men’s Figure Skating Competition. It’s absolute electricity from start to finish. [This is after his devastating fall in the last Olympics! I guess he listened to some Kelly Clarkson and said, “B*tch, I’m back!”]
This clip of Stephen Colbert and Dua Lipa having a transcendent moment discussing comedy and faith was making the rounds last week.
My brother-in-law Sergei sent me this hilarious clip from the British comedy game show Taskmaster — it features familiar faces from the Great British Bake-Off, too!
Colin Jost and Scarlett Johansson did a Super Bowl commercial with Amazon and I like to pretend this is exactly what their life is like together!
Reading
The Metamorphosis of Robert Pattinson - GQ
If you like celebrity profiles, this is a great one! Apparently RPatz is really into designing furniture? So he’ll make like a tiny chair out of clay and send it to a designer to create an actual piece of furniture. What a strange, lovely man!
13 Ways to Make Your Super Bowl More Romantic - The Turf Sports
“Because some women like sports, but not your girlfriend.” LOL — This was written by my hilarious and talented friend Angelica Richie, and is fantastic from beginning to end.
we accidentially watched the first 10-15 minutes of coda with no subtitles, and inadvertendly experienced the movie as people who don't understand sign language. it made the experience THAT much more powerful.