The Weekend Snack 5.5.24
Welcome to the Weekend Snack - a quick roundup of my favorite bites from the past weekend.
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Happy Sunday, Snackers! I don’t know about you, but I was concerned about the movies this year that would follow last year’s extremely high-caliber slate. And while some of that remains to be seen, I’m excited by some new entries into my “feel good” favorites category. My thoughts are developing, and I’ll share more on Wednesday. In the meantime, let’s get into some quick weekend bites.
🎬 Challengers. If you’re a person on the internet, you’ve likely seen at least one meme about this movie. Directed by Luca Guadagnino (Call Me By Your Name, Suspiria) and written by playwright/screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes (fun fact: he’s married to Past Lives writer Celine Song - how tired do you think they are of being asked about threesomes?), Challengers tells the story of a decades-long, tangled relationship between three high-profile tennis players. Inspired initially by Kuritzkes watching the controversial 2018 US Open final between Serena Williams and Naomi Osaka and learning that sideline coaching was against the rules, Kuritzkes imagined how you would communicate only through tennis. The movie is fast-paced with a timeline that jumps all over the place to give you context for their interwoven relationships, and it's bolstered by a Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross score that you’ll no doubt be hearing at every summer party this year. It’s a sexy summer movie, and it feels like it’s been a moment since we’ve had one of this caliber.
🗞️ Reducing The Idea of You to Fan Fiction Is Another Example of Dismissing Women’s Art by Robinne Lee (author of The Idea of You novel). This weekend, I watched the Anne Hathaway-led romantic comedy The Idea of You and had a great time. The movie, based on a book by author/actor Robinne Lee, tells the story of a 40-year-old, recently divorced single mom who begins dating the twenty-something lead singer of a widely popular boy band. I’d first heard the movie described as Olivia Wilde and Harry Styles fan fiction. While there are some obvious similarities, it sounds like Lee’s intent went far beyond imagining the behind-the-scenes truth of that romance. While I don’t think every movie needs an adjacent think piece, I did enjoy this article Lee wrote about her work and the cultural tendency to dismiss female stories. And if you haven’t watched the movie, you should. The script isn’t perfect (a real low point was the “Mom - why would you break up with a talented, kind feminist” moment), but does it need to be? They knew what we wanted from the movie, and they delivered. So if next week gets you down, give this movie a go, and you’ll soon be like me, contemplating if you should get bangs like Anne Hathaway (the answer is probably no) and laughing at the idea that someone would be dying to go to Glendale.
“It’s art. And it makes people happy. And that’s a very good thing. We have this problem in our culture. We take art that appeals to women—film, books, music—and we undervalue it. We assume it can’t be high art. Especially if it’s not dark and tortured and wailing. And it follows that much of that art is created by other women, and so we undervalue them as well. We wrap it up in a pretty pink package and resist calling it art.”
And in a weekend of diss tracks, I’ll leave you with my favorite.
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