Everything I’m Listening to
This week keeping me company while I cook, shower and drive were Anna Faris is Unqualified, The Big Picture, and Life is Short with Justin Long.
Featuring on Unqualified and Life is Short were Kate Mara and Kat McNamara respectfully, who are actresses I have been aware of but knew little about. I was taken away by both their passion for their craft and their compassion for others. Both came across as nice, grounded and genuine women and it was nice to get a greater insight in to both of them. I’m excited to check out Mara’s new show A Teacher if it ever makes its way over to the UK, Mara has deserved a breakout role for a while. McNamara was one of the few bright spots in Arrow’s dire seventh season and whilst I’m not jumping at the bit for her potential Canaries spin-off, I am now excited to see her in upcoming limited series The Stand.
The Big Picture dropped two episodes this week, one focussing on the idea of ‘Oscar bait’ following the release of Hillbilly Elegy and another on the best films of 2014. The first episode offers some interesting historical aspect (including the original use of the film) and a deep dive in to Oscar campaigns of the past which is what Sean and Amanda are so good at. The 2014 movie draft episode was fun as always, though I am raging they allowed Paddington to go through as an animated feature – utter bullshit. Oh and Chris is wrong, The Lego Movie is amazing.
Also a shout out to Bad Romance Pod for their What A Girl Wants episode and Verbal Diorama for her Birds of Prey ep – loved both the films and the pods!
Everything I’m Watching
A took a gamble on another Ryan Murphy Netflix show this week and started to watch The Politician. I was a huge fan of Murphy’s early work, few people experienced the bizarreness of Popular that very clearly followed in to Glee and I equally loved the first seasons of Nip/Tuck and American Horror Story and short-lived sitcom The New Normal (be still my Justin Bartha loving heart). Unfortunately I’ve struggled with any of his newer shows as well as the Murphy curse that befalls any of his long running creations. It was to my great surprise that I devoured season one of The Politician in just 48 hours. It was an utter wacky delight, melding all the best parts of Popular and Glee with some of the best young actors working today. It is everything that Ryan Murphy does well, addictive fun and absurd. Which is why I am now so, so disappointed by season 2. I’m only 2 episodes in, but even the final episode of season 1 felt like a backdoor pilot for this season and lost everything that had made the first season so addictive. It feels like the New York seasons of Glee – actors who we’ve been told to believe are younger than they are suddenly being wise beyond their years in unrealistic ways. It also feels like a reunion season of a show, as if it had been off the air for a number of years and they’d rounded the gang back together in a contrived manner for one last season. Except it came exactly a year after the first and was always the plan. What a disappointment. I can’t think of any of Murphy’s shows that have kept their initial season stamina so I can’t say I didn’t see this coming, but it’s a disappointment nonetheless. Ryan? Stay in high school honey, it’s the only place your wild antics work.
What else? I’ve watched the first two episodes of Little America on AppleTV+ and really enjoyed them. I don’t feel like I’ve heard anyone talking about this show? Is it the AppleTV effect or did people just not like it? It really reminds me of last year’s Modern Love and I’m looking forward to watching the rest of the episodes.
I caught up with episode 3 of Industry which was skipped during the early LFF preview. I still don’t actually know if I like this show, but it’s nice to see young Londoners having fun when I miss both London and my twenties so much. I’ve discovered this evening that the whole season is actually available on BBC iPlayer, so I’ll be tucking in to that over the week, as I did notice I was a lot less invested watching just the one episode, as opposed to watching the 3 in a row during LFF.
90 Day Fiancé: The Other Way continues. Brittany continues. What a trash human. Storylines like her and Yazan’s have really ruined the show, so I’m pleased the season looks to be coming to a close, and I’m not even looking forward to the Tell All, it really isn’t the same without the studio element and the couples this season (aside from Kenny and Armando) have been so bleh. A new season of the parent show is on the way though, so that could be fun. Interesting to see how it plays out in a Covid landscape.
Movies-wise it’s been a little quieter than normal. I watched French film Les Miserables, you can check out my review that was published earlier in the week, as well as French film Cuties, of infamous Netflix drama, which I thought was wonderful and I’ll be writing up a review of either here, Letterboxd or maybe CineChat, who knows? I also watched Emma (2020) and Monsoon but didn’t care for either, and re-watched A Star Is Born (2018) and remembered how much I miss love. Has anyone ever looked at someone the way Bradley Cooper looks at Lady Gaga? I’ll have a review of County Lines which I watched last week coming out on Monday and I plan to watch From Dusk Till Dawn for the first time this week, so that might be fun?
Everything Else
Aside from that, I’m still trying to live the vegetarian lifestyle, you can follow those dramas on Dinner With Clare or my Instagram stories. Also still trying to read Rachel Bloom’s book, but it’s a lot of looking back on all the things that made her a weird kid, which is great and pretty funny, but it’s also making me think back on all the things that made me weird and I have permanently locked those memories away so no thank you. Definitely not a bedtime read for that reason.
And that’s everything!
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