The Weekend Snack 3.10.24

We're all just Ken.

Welcome to the Weekend Snack - a quick roundup of my favorite bites from the past weekend.

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Happy Sunday, Snackers! Just finished watching the Oscars. Unsurprisingly, my main takeaway is that Ryan Gosling stole the show, and “I’m Just Ken” was everything I wanted and more. Greta and Margot being supportive stage moms? The aerial shot with Barbie cut-outs? The Slash appearance? Just everything! For a film that only won one award, they sure loved talking about it. Other quick reactions:

• I’m thrilled Zone of Interest won Best Sound. I’d prepared myself for an inevitable Oppenheimer win, but I was pleasantly surprised because it genuinely made poignant use of sound and deserved to be recognized. Excitingly, the Academy continues to become increasingly international—as evidenced by the Zone of Interest, The Boy and the Heron, and Godzilla Minus One wins.

• I’m disappointed that Killers of the Flower Moon walked away empty-handed. It was an absolute masterpiece and should have been much more in contention than it was this awards season. I loved Emma Stone’s performance in Poor Things, but I thought Lily Gladstone was something to behold as Mollie Burkhart. A special shout out to Rodrigo Prieto, the cinematographer for Killers of the Flower Moon and Barbie. What a year that guy had (even if he wasn’t officially recognized). 

• John Cena's “streaking,” John Mulaney describing Field of Dreams, and Kate McKinnon’s tasteful Jeff Goldblum nudes were my favorite bits.

• Al Pacino announcing a very unsurprising Oppenheimer Best Picture win in the most anti-climatic way felt right. Though, I felt bad that all the nominees weren’t recognized properly.

What did you think of the show?

And some other quick bites from the weekend:

• 🗞️ The “Disney Adult” Industrial Complex. I was at Disneyland this past week for the first time in ten years for a work gathering. I had a ton of fun reliving the magic of my childhood with some great colleagues! Things were a lot bigger than I remembered, and I’m a lot more motion-sick than I used to be, but the awe on the faces of the children at the park was still ever present. One fascinating phenomenon was the number of adults I saw in the park without children. The so-called “Disney Adult.” There was a group of forty-something-year-old men in matching t-shirts proudly announcing they were on their yearly “Disney Brocation.” Lately, I’ve heard more and more about Disney Adults, and I was curious to learn more about how this came to be. Spoiler: Disney marketing knows what they’re doing. Excerpt below:

  Those who mock Disney adults suffer from the same misconception as Disney adults themselves: they believe the Disney adult phenomenon arose by accident, and therefore gleefully judge and mock those who they believe to have inferior tastes. As Giroux wrote: ‘We are losing the ability to recognise, let alone resist, the corporate control of time, space, bodies, and minds.’ Disney is a company that has created research facilities to track how people respond to ads. It has hired psychologists and anthropologists to monitor boys aged six to 14 to draw them into the Disney orbit. It is currently planning its own cloistered communities where Disney adults can extricate themselves from the harsh realities of society and mix only with the middle classes. In these neighbourhoods, Disney promises to put ‘you at the centre of everything.

• 🎧🎬 “we can’t be friends (wait for your love)” Music Video. Ariana Grande released her seventh album, Eternal Sunshine, this past Friday. I can never really decide how I feel about Ariana - but ultimately, I don’t think that’s the point because she keeps putting out bangers, and I keep listening. I was late to the party, but I first noticed this during her “Be Alright” performance on SNL seven years ago (that choreography! That deep house sound!). And here I find myself, once again, bumping her latest album. I loved this music video, which is an homage primarily to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (also referenced in the album title), but there’s also a Sixteen Candles moment. You can find me listening to this song on repeat for the foreseeable.

And I’ll leave you with this Tweet referencing the release of the trailer for Anne Hathaway’s new movie (AKA the Olivia Wilde/Harry Styles relationship biopic).

What did you think of the Oscars? Let me know in the comments.

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