Weekly Culture Menu 1.30.24

This is water. This is water.

For this week’s installment of the Weekly Culture Menu, we have a sampling of content across a variety of mediums, lengths, and sensibilities so that you can dip in and out all week. Once you subscribe, you can expect a weekly menu delivered to your inbox every Tuesday. 

🍤 Amuse Bouche [ -10 mins ]

• 🗞️ “‘Hot guy books’ are the hot new accessory” by Josiah Gogarty. The journalism we’ve been waiting for! Toting a book is apparently the ultimate green flag (can’t say I disagree), with a higher dating app success rate than even puppy selfies. Here’s a “very serious ranking” of the hottest book covers to carry around. 

  

🍟 Appetizer [ -30 mins ]

• 🗞️ “This is Water” Commencement Speech by David Foster Wallace. Standing in an overly long grocery store line during the grocery buying rush had me revisiting this 2005 commencement address (read it - you’ll get it). This speech has resonated with me more as I’ve gotten older, and the dull routine of general adult life has revealed itself. A perspective-shifting manifesto that reminds us we ultimately choose how we construct meaning from our experiences. A good one to remember the next time you’re stuck in the Trader Joe’s line. 

• 📺 ”Car Pool Lane” - Curb Your Enthusiasm Season 4, Episode 6. This Sunday, my favorite misanthrope returns for the final season of Curb Your Enthusiasm. If you haven’t watched the show before, Curb follows Larry David playing a version of himself as he encounters everyday annoyances and creates self-inflicted predicaments. If you don’t know where to start, “Car Pool Lane” will give you a taste of Larry’s antics. An added bonus is this episode helped a wrongly convicted man avoid death row (the documentary Long Shot tells the story in detail). If you already love Curb and can’t wait for the return, check out the first season of the Origins podcast for the behind-the-scenes story of the show’s creation. And never forget: “A good compromise is when both parties are dissatisfied.”

🍽️ Main Course [ 1 Hour+ ]

As promised, here are a few Sundance favorites from this year’s festival. While these aren’t available to watch just yet, I’ve included a few recs to tide you over.

Does anyone know where I can buy a June Squibb hat???

• 🎬 My Old Ass. I loved this movie! Written and directed by Megan Park and produced by Margot Robbie’s Lucky Chap, My Old Ass is a genre-bending coming-of-age story about a teenage girl named Elliott (newcomer Maisy Stella) the summer before college. After taking mushrooms with her best friends, Elliott is visited by her older self (Aubrey Plaza!), who gives advice that makes her question everything. Beautifully shot, with a standout performance from Stella, this is sure to be an instant growing-up classic. I’m not afraid to admit I ugly cried all the way home after the screening as I wistfully reflected on that fleeting liminal period between youth and adulthood. While we wait for a release date, check out another coming-of-age favorite, Edge of Seventeen with Hailee Steinfeld, Woody Harrelson, and a pre-White Lotus Haley Lu Richardson. 

• 🎬 Thelma. A crowd-pleaser inspired by Director/Writer Josh Margolin’s real-life grandmother, Thelma is about a 93-year-old who gets duped by phone scammers pretending to be her grandson. She then spends the rest of the movie on a Mission Impossible-style quest to reclaim what was stolen from her. This is 95-year-old June Squibb’s first leading role after a 70+ year acting career, and she is absolutely delightful - she even did her own stunts! Both hilarious and touching, this movie is an empathetic portrayal of aging and the obstacles in life that are ageless. The film was sold to Magnolia Pictures and is slated for a wide theatrical release. In the meantime, I’d recommend a rewatch of Pixar’s Up - another unlikely journey with a senior citizen at the heart. It gets better with each watch!

• 🎬 Presence. Steven Soderbergh’s latest thriller, Presence, centers on a family that moves into a suburban house and finds they’re not alone. The kicker? The movie is shot entirely from the “presence’s” perspective. Soderbergh previously thought that a first-person point-of-view narrative couldn’t work, so as a challenge, he decided to try it. The movie was shot in one location in only three weeks, and Soderbergh wore martial arts slippers to quietly slide around the house and film as the ghost. I’m desperate for the behind-the-scenes footage! It’s a directorial feat that the camera/ghost really does feel like another character in the movie. In my opinion, reports that people walked out because the film was too scary are hyperbolic, but the twist definitely sat with me. While we wait for Neon to announce a release date, check out another of my favorite twisty Soderbergh thrillers, the Hitchock-inspired Side Effects.

• 🎬 A Real Pain. Jesse Eisenberg wrote, directed, and co-starred in this dramedy about cousins who go on a trip to Poland to learn about their ancestral homeland and honor their late grandmother, who survived internment in a concentration camp. Kieran Culkin plays Eisenberg’s charismatic and manic counterpart, and it’s nearly impossible to take your eyes off his chaotic but heartfelt performance. The film grapples with how we handle pain - day-to-day, existential, generational…  A pitch-perfect script, it’s unsurprising that it was one of the festival’s first acquisitions. To hold you over, watch Jesse Eisenberg in one of his earliest roles, Noah Baumbach’s The Squid and the Whale. 

• 🎬 Ibelin. Winner of the Audience Award for World Cinema Documentary, Ibelin tells the story of a young Norweigan gamer who died of a degenerative muscular disease at age 25. His parents mourned what they believed was a lonely existence, only to discover he was a member of a vibrant digital community. This heartfelt story had me thinking completely differently about the power of online connection, and I found the storytelling refreshingly original. Acquired by Netflix, I’m thrilled a wider audience will know Ibelin. Until then, watch last year’s Sundance Documentary Grand Jury Prize and recent Oscar nominee, The Eternal Memory - but make sure you have tissues handy… 

Honorable mentions include the highly stylized and much talked about Freaky Tales, Saoirse Ronan’s gripping performance in The Outrun, and the mindf*ck that is Little Death (not for the faint of heart, but I’m interested to see what Jack Bergert does next). 

🧁 Dessert [ -1 hour ]

• 📺 The Curse Q&A Moderated by Christopher Nolan. I promise I’ll stop talking about this show eventually, but this was too good not to share. A few weeks back, Christopher Nolan moderated a Q&A with Benny Safdie and Nathan Fielder about The Curse, and they finally shared a full recording. Sadly, it happened pre-finale, but this is an excellent discussion if you’re still processing the show. 

• 🎧 Geena Davis on How To Fail with Elizabeth Day. Every week, author and journalist Elizabeth Day interviews guests about their failures and the lessons they learned from them. Every conversation is insightful and a good reminder of a saying I live by: “Rejection is redirection.” The most recent season just kicked off, but this is one of my favorites from the archives. I particularly enjoyed the discussion about the scientific research on representation in media. Scroll through the list of her previous guests, no doubt that someone will catch your interest!

And I’ll leave you with a bit of chat and cut.

@stamford27#larrydavid #curbyourenthusiasm #chatandcut

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