The Kobe line is the most popular sneaker in the league, so many players were worried about having to find a new shoe to wear once their stash ran out, but those players and fans of the line in general received some good news on Thursday. Vanessa Bryant announced on Instagram that nearly a year after declining to renew the contract with Nike, she had reached an agreement with the sneaker giant to bring the Kobe line back as well as Gigi merchandise, with Nike donating all net proceeds from the Gigi line to the Mamba & Mambacita Sports Foundation and working with Bryant on building a new youth basketball center in Southern California.
We’re excited to announce our partnership with Nike is going to continue! I am so proud that my husband’s shoes are still the most worn by players on NBA courts and that the demand for his shoes remain so desired by his fans around the world. With this new partnership, fans will soon be able to have access to Kobe and Gigi Nike product for years to come and with Nike donating 100% of the net proceeds yearly for Gianna’s shoes to our Mamba and Mambacita Sports Foundation (M&MSF). I am also grateful that Nike and I will work together to establish a youth basketball center in Southern California that will share the Mamba Mentality with youth athletes for generations to come. I know this is an inspiring moment for my husband and daughter’s global fans, and I am very appreciative of each and every one of you!
With Gratitude for every fan around the world supporting Kobe and Gigis Legacy,
Vanessa Bryant
It’s great to see Nike finding away to reconcile with Vanessa and get this deal done to allow fans to continue getting the ever-popular line of sneakers, while also supporting a good cause as well with Gigi merchandise. There’s no word on exactly when the Kobe line will return to retailers and Nike’s online store, but given they were in production on a few retros last year when the contract got pulled, one would think they have some product to put out fairly soon.
(Spoilers for Bridgerton, including Season 2, will be found below.)
It’s almost go-time for the second Bridgerton season, and there will be Lady Whistledown’s gossip aplenty along with a new principal romance, and over all, this batch of episodes will please fans, even without Regé-Jean Page’s Duke in sight. There’s a huge Season 1 easter egg that must be discussed, though, and it gives clues for Season 2, so if you want to (totally) avoid what’s coming next, please click away.
Yup, click away if you want no clues from Julia Quinn’s books.
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Alright, let’s talk about the bees of Bridgerton.
Netflix
These little buzzing critters are seen on occasion (like, for example, on a door knocker) in the first season, as above, during the final moments when the camera panned to this ^^^^ windowsill after Daphne and Duke Simon welcomed their first child into the world. This has to do with Lord Anthony Bridgerton (Jonathan Bailey), who’s the male lead of Season 2. Before this scene, we saw Anthony telling Daphne and Simon how he didn’t really see himself marrying for love but, instead, for duty.
This gives us a heads-up that Anthony is one stressed out dude. He’s essentially the Bridgerton patriarch before his time, and this is the case because of a damned bee. What gives?
According to Julia Quinn’s books, Anthony is deathly afraid of bees and is actually traumatized by them. That’s because his father died from a bee sting, and that had everything to do with shaping the person that he is today. Season 2 goes into the before-and-after of the bees’ insertion into Anthony’s life. His fears affect his search for love and how he prioritizes within life, and they cause him to make assumptions about how life should be lived. All of that gets knocked out of the water when Kate and Edwina Sharma surface for courting season.
In short, Anthony’s life will never be the same, and nope, the bees are not gone forever. Soon, you can see it all unfold on your streaming device.
South Korean indie band Say Sue Me delightfully emerged on a 2017 self-titled debut that culled from classic 90s indie, shoegaze, and surf rock vibes. Led by singer-guitarist Sumi Choi, the quartet were SXSW darlings and it was nothing short of joyful to see a South Korean band who was not only inspired by classic indie but were so damn good at making it themselves.
Today, Say Sue Me have announced the new album, The Last Thing Left, due out on May 13th. As the follow-up to 2018’s Where We Were Together, the new album seeks to pick up the pieces of the grief that set in four years ago when drummer Semin Kang was dealing with a terminal illness. Kang passed away in 2019 and The Last Thing Left tackles love and hope amid the loss of a dear friend that the Busan-based band experienced. “This album has the theme of some realization, eventually the realization of love,” Choi says. “Love in relationships, love for oneself, and the ultimate love gained after realizing those two things.”
Lead single “Around You” has a riff that’s as cute as Choi’s lyrics. “I’ll be better when I’m around you,” she sings, in the upbeat tune. The band wrote this song at the beginning of the pandemic when they self-produced the album in their Busan studio. Choi says it was written “in a world where it became difficult to go outside and meet people freely. I felt like time is totally mine, but I still don’t know how to control it. My thoughts linger and dwell within me and my youth is slipping away. Perhaps when I go outside something is waiting for me that makes me think better than this!”
“Around You” is sure to boost your spirits and you can watch the video for it above.
The Last Thing Left is due out on 05/13 via Damnably. Pre-order it here.
Anyone raising small kids — or who has been in their immediate vicinity in the last five years — knows (and is likely sick to death) of South Korean entertainment company Pinkfong’s near-ubiquitous and insanely popular version of the song “Baby Shark.” Originally a campfire song inspired by Jaws (the ’80s were a weird time, man), the Pinkfong version has become one of the most-played videos on YouTube (10 billion views and counting, as of this January) and was spun off into a Nick Jr. animated series, Baby Shark’s Big Show!
As a mom herself, Cardi B has likely contributed .01 percent of those view totals herself (that’s a million, folks) but being Cardi B, she’s found a way to turn what may have been a frustrating parental imperative into a potentially lucrative opportunity: Billboard reports the “Up” rapper will guest star on Baby Shark’s Big Show! alongside her husband Offset and three-year-old Kulture. Cardi will portray an animated version of herself called Sharki B, while Offset will be Offshark, and she’ll perform a new song called “The Seaweed Sway.”
Cardi is actually a big fan of “Baby Shark,” as you can see from the video she posted back in 2019, while she also tweeted that Kulture is a big fan of the “whole Baby Shark mixtape.” While this is almost certainly a dream come true for Kulture, Cardi’s beef with Peppa Pig remains unresolved. Maybe she can turn that into a guest-starring role too.
SONGS KULTURE LIKES ,TAKI TAKI,I LIKE IT,RIC FLAIR DRIP ,MI GENTE by J Balvin and the whole baby shark mixtape.
In January, it was announced that Keanu Reeves had joined the lineup for this year’s Tibet House U.S. Benefit Concert, alongside Phish’s Trey Anastasio, Cyndi Lauper, and Patti Smith, among others. This led to Chinese nationalists threatening to boycott The Matrix Resurrections — even though it had already been released in the country (it opened to a lackluster $7.5 million). The pro-Tibet benefit show, where Reeves read a poem, was held on March 3 and “came and went with no apparent consequences for Reeves,” according to the Los Angeles Times. “But the axe has now fallen.”
Last Monday, China’s major streamers removed the vast majority of Reeves’ filmography from their sites and wiped search results related to his name in Chinese — the cumbersome transliteration “Jinu Liweisi.”
“Sorry, no results related to ‘Keanu Reeves’ were found,” the platform iQiyi now states, adding: “Due to relevant laws, regulations and policies, some results are not shown.”
Most of Reeves’ best-known movies have been removed, including the John Wick and The Matrix franchises and Speed (Speed 2: Cruise Control might be available), with one exception. Toy Story 4, featuring the voice of Reeves as motorcycle daredevil Duke Caboom, still appears on Chinese streaming services, but “its credits are unusual: They unfurl in English except for the voice cast, which alone switches over to Chinese and lists only the local dubbing cast, avoiding any mention of Reeves’ name.”
If Keanu ever makes a movie with a Phish song on the soundtrack, it will be China’s most banned film ever.
Glimmering is the opposite of a trigger. A word we’ve all become very familiar with.
Where triggers tighten our stomachs, make it hard to breath and generally signal danger (even when no danger is present), a glimmer gives us a sigh of relief, helping us to feel safe and secure. And though both terms were identified by psychologist Deb Dana in her book “The Polyvagal Theory in Therapy,” most of us have only been taught to find what triggers us in life. Because, well, we have to survive before we can thrive.
But thanks to TikTok savvy therapists such as Dr. Justine, glimmers have taken on new life and people are excited to learn about the concept. You could say that finding new ways to reclaim hope is indeed going viral.
In a video that has now been viewed over 78,000 times, Dr. Justine breaks down the glimmer basics.
“Glimmers are anything that sparks a sense of joy, awe, or belongingness. It can be noticing the warmth of the sun, something beautiful around you, or seeing a kind face,” her caption reads.
If this sounds enticing to you, you’re not alone. One person—clearly eager to find their own sparks of joy—wrote, “ugh yes love glimmer hunting.”
Which begs the question: How can we form a glimmer hunting group?
“Purposely noticing glimmers allows you to tap into micro moments on Ventral Vagal energy (a state of groundedness and connectedness),” Dr. Justine continues.
The vagus nerve carries messages from our brain to other parts of our body. It’s what sends you into flight-or-fight mode when there’s a perceived threat. Mine happens to go on the fritz anytime I’m riding in the passenger seat. And I mean every time. My shoulders go up to my ears, everything appears to move chaotically and I can’t resist the urge to hold onto the grab handle for dear life. It doesn’t matter who’s driving. It always feels like I’m careening down the fast lane toward my doom. That’s the vagus nerve, doing vagus nervy things.
However, that same nerve can stimulate a completely different sensation: calm. Yes, our bodies are quite literally a walking bundle of contradictions. But we can use that to our advantage by finding the glimmers.
The glimmers we find can be simple. A walk in nature, pet cuddles, our favorite song. Even the smallest, most fleeting moments can help activate our vagus nerve to send a signal to our body that says, “Hey, we can relax, everything is perfectly OK right now.”
And the best part is: By holding onto these feelings for at least 30 seconds, we can teach our brains to consistently retain positive thoughts. Or, as Dr. Justine puts it, “turn that glimmer into a glow.”
“This is my first time hearing this word and ima hold on tight to it,” one person commented, ready for their glow up.
Dr. Justine adds “doing this purposefully is important because humans have a negativity bias towards scanning for threats/danger (especially after trauma).”
We are already hardwired to scan for the negative. Again, survival trumps all. But after a traumatic event, our drive to protect ourselves is even more hypervigilant. And yet, safety cues are just as important as danger cues. Regulation is just as vital to our health and stimulation. Balance is often the foundation to our well-being.
“This is fascinating, scientifically supporting the old saying about stopping to smell the roses,” one person noticed.
After watching Dr. Justine’s video, people started sharing their own glimmers. Three rainbows. The smell of lavender. The cracking of creme brulee. A hit of fresh air. Small things that still managed to light folks up in a big way. This is what glimmering is all about. It was a very happy comment section.
If geeking out on science is a form of glimmering for you, you could always read Deb Dana’s book. Or you could check out Dr. Justine’s TikTok for more bite-sized information. Or hey, just go back to basics and smell the roses. There doesn’t seem to be a wrong way to glimmer. What matters is knowing it can dramatically change your mental health.
That iconic jingle for McDonald’s came out nearly 20 years ago. And to this day, it’s one of the most recognizable jingles of all time. In the commercial world, that should equate to striking microtune gold.
But for rapper Pusha T–who has long been outspoken about writing those lyrics for a small one-time fee–it was anything but.
In an interview with Rolling Stone, the rap kingpin shared that in his early years, he and his brother Malice wrote the song for close to a million dollars—with zero royalties. Which, as Pusha puts it, is “pennies” considering the ad’s shelf life.
Meanwhile, Justin Timberlake, who first recorded the jingle, received $6 million. Was it because Timberlake was a bigger name? Or was a white pop singer better able to sell hamburgers to America than a Black rapper in the eyes of the advertisers? That is a question up for debate, but the payment discrepancy is not.
Either way, Pusha T regretted the decision. He told Rolling Stone, “I did it at a very young age, at a very young time in my career where I wasn’t asking for as much money and ownership. It’s something that’s always dug at me later in life like, ‘Dammit, I was a part of this and I should have more stake.’ I had to get that energy off me.”
This is where “Diss the Fish” comes in. And boy … it’s spicier than a Diablo Dare.
Pusha T teamed up with Arby’s to create a part advertisement, part insult missile aimed directly at the Golden Arches. And it’s not only a hilarious roast, it’s also further proof that Pusha is beyond talented as a wordsmith. Especially when it comes to clever comebacks. Let us not forget his famous quarrel with Drake, who also found himself on the receiving end of some savage lyrical blows.
Pusha starts off with a bold proclamation and sly nod (“I’m the reason that the whole world love it”) before calling out the famous Filet-O-Fish sandwich for its, let’s be honest, odd shape. “How dare you sell a square fish, asking us to trust it.” He threw in the words “basic,” “tasteless” and “drown in tartar sauce” to really paint the picture.
And what’s a rap song without making a dig about how little money the other guy has? The video also shows a generic clown running with money bags following the words, “a half slice of cheese. Mickey D’s on a budget?”
Arby’s fish sandwich, on the other hand, “is simply it. With lines around the corner, we might need a guest list.”
Will this be the beginning of a fast food fish feud? Time will tell. But for Pusha, it marks closure.
“I had to get that energy off me, and this [ad] was the perfect way.”
Ba da ba ba ba … he’s over it.
You can watch the full video below. And remember, never buy “a little cube of fish from a clown.”
Glitter is a word that can strike instant panic into even the most crafty parent. It’s something that a lot of parents (and many schools) won’t allow across the threshold because it’s known to stick around for months, sometimes years. It gets stuck to everything, even your child’s hair. No one is immune from its sticky little wrath of sparkle. But what if you succumb to its allure? Or your job requires you to work with those little shiny flakes? How do you keep tiny hands out of the pot when you’re not around?
For one mom, keeping it hidden away in her craft room was the solution and it worked out well. That was, until her toddler found her way into the space unsupervised and decided to turn a perfectly tidy room into a snow globe of glitter. Hayley Colton, who makes custom tumblers and shares her work on TikTok, recently discovered that her toddler set off a glitter bomb in her workspace. But instead of getting angry and yelling, Colton realized her daughter was emulating what she saw her mom do on a near-daily basis.
Colton posted a video to TikTok to explain: “So my daughter got into my glitter and made her own little glitter mixture, and rather than flipping out like I probably do too often, I sat back and thought about it and realized she watches me every day make stuff and play in this glitter. I can’t blame her for wanting to play in it too.”
Please excuse my voice I know I hate it too 😩 #toddlerlife #toddlermom #stayingcalm #parenting #glitter
After the incident, Colton collected as much of the glitter as she could pick up and put it in a small box so she could turn her daughter’s mixture into something she could use every day. She grabbed a small metal tumbler and got to work coating it with epoxy and sprinkling the glitter onto the tumbler, adding some lettering. The adorable little tumbler reads, “If I’m a mess, that means I have been learning #toddlerlife.” Colton admitted she loved the glitter mixture her daughter made and thinks the tumbler turned out pretty cute.
Commenters on the video loved how Colton handled the situation and praised her for being calm, when it would’ve been easy to be upset. One commenter said “We love non toxic parenting,” with a smiling emoji with floating hearts. Another wrote, “Question: Did you have any kind of calm discussion about like asking first or boundaries after this happened?” To which Colton replied, “Yes, of course we had a talk about only mixing glitter with mommy and not by herself.”
Parenting can be hard sometimes, and it’s helpful to see how other parents handle stressful situations, and maybe pick up some tips. Colton handled this situation like a champ and by sharing about it publicly, she’s showing other parents how to turn mess into art. Looks she’s got a future business partner on her hands.
Jimmy Kimmel made headlines earlier this year for saying that Spider-Man: No Way Home should’ve been nominated for best picture at the Academy Awards — whose awards telecast (finally) take place this Sunday. Forget the matter of whether or not Kimmel was being sarcastic at the time (at least partly, in my opinion), it was the perfect clickbait story because it gave people on the internet the opportunity to do what we do best: argue with each other. And on shaky pretexts.
Does saying Spider-man deserved to be nominated for Best Picture mean it’s in your top 10 for the year? Or does it just mean that it’s better than at least one of the 10 films nominated for Best Picture? For me, the answer to the first question is absolutely not, and the answer to the second question is… maybe? For his part, Kimmel singled out Don’t Look Up as an undeserving Best Picture nominee that Spider-man could’ve potentially replaced, and… sure, why not. I suppose it all comes down to how you rank a flawed, sporadically entertaining attempt at something against an incredibly slick achievement in giving the piggies three different kinds of slop. I’d probably agree with Kimmel and go with the latter; Spider-man was pretty good slop.
This is all a long way of saying that it’s easy to argue that a particular movie should or shouldn’t have been nominated for an Oscar (where is the love for Green Knight and Red Rocket, you ignorant apes!), but for better or worse, our choices have been set. Now is the time to argue about which is the best.
To that end, I’m offering you my own rankings as tribute. The following is how I would rank the best 2021 movies nominated for Best Picture at the 2022 Oscars. This is obviously a work of subjective opinion, so if you find yourself disagreeing with anything here, just take a deep breath, find a bathroom, and say “it’s okay to be wrong” three times into the mirror. At which point I will materialize by your side and pull down my pants.
10. West Side Story
20th Century Studios
I didn’t even review this, my sense at the time being that a two-hour and 36-minute musical version of Romeo & Juliet, remade from a 1950s musical, wasn’t going to be my cup of tea. I caught this on HBO Max the other night and… now I can confirm. It is not.
A lot of people blamed West Side Story‘s relatively poor word of mouth and subpar box office gross on people not liking musicals, but I’m not so sure that was the issue. At least, not exactly. People might say they don’t like West Side Story because they don’t like musicals, but that’s probably because West Side Story isn’t offering much beyond the general idea of being musical. There’s no particular point of view or compelling take on an old story or undeniably catchy music that would make it either an entertaining romp or a compelling story. As an artistic gesture, it’s more like “Hey, you guys like musicals, right? Well here’s a musical for ya!”
When that’s the pitch, of course the person who turns it down is going to blame musicals. I think we can all agree that Steven Spielberg shoots a gorgeous scene, and West Side Story is certainly nice to look at, but I have more or less the same questions about West Side Story as I did about Cyrano: What are we doing here?
This was definitely a gorgeous, lovingly-crafted version of a thing, but I don’t quite understand what made the filmmakers want to make that thing. West Side Story is a musical created in the 1950s, retelling Romeo & Juliet with rival Puerto Rican and Irish gangs as the Montagues and Capulets. Romeo & Juliet was already an old story in the 16th century, sort of the definitive version of “crazy love.” West Side Story was certainly a dutiful retelling of that, with a new setting and songs, but not much in the way of a hook. Even Steven Sondheim admitted at the time, “I’ve never met a Puerto Rican.”
Which is to say: there’s a big hole where an actual perspective should be. Spielberg’s version “fixes” the most basic of issues with the original — like not having white actors in brownface play the Puerto Ricans, and not using subtitles for the Spanish dialogue (uh… sure?) — but it fails to find what it needed most: any take on the material that might’ve made it interesting to someone in 2021.
So what is it, then? A museum piece for people who want to see a “truer” version of a corny fifties musical? It has a story that’s fine, with some songs that are fine (the “Cool” number was easily the high-water mark) and combining the two doesn’t make the whole any better than fine. It just makes it long.
For my money, nothing in West Side Story was as good as Channing Tatum’s “No Dames” number in Hail Caesar.
This was a brilliant parody of the format, a cool production in its own right, and hilarious to boot. Now that I would’ve watched two more hours of.
9. King Richard
Warner Bros
I admit it, after Rocketman, Bohemian Rhapsody, Straight Outta Compton… part of me hoped that we as a culture would be done with the vanity biopic. Then came the story of Richard Williams, father of tennis greats Venus and Serena Williams, as told in a movie produced by the Williams family. Would you believe that Richard Williams was an unorthodox genius, according to this film? Who protected his daughters from a ravenous media and defied the conventional wisdom while raising a pair of champions? Who never misbehaved, even as teenagers? Gosh, what a story!
Watching fictional Ice Cube, played by Ice Cube’s son, pen the first lines of the screenplay for Friday in Straight Outta Compton was sort of funny, even if I’m fairly certain it didn’t happen quite that way in real life. In King Richard, there’s a scene where a neighbor calls CPS on Richard Williams for being so hard on his kids. In the movie, she’s clearly just a jealous hater, but it’s impossible to watch without wondering what that scene actually looked like from an outsider’s perspective. Taking King Richard at anything resembling face value would require a level of credulousness and subtext-blindness I just can’t muster.
Even if you could, what would you really get out of it? The knowledge that Richard Williams was right all along? The joy of watching Will Smith overact? Please just give him an Oscar already, he’s trying so hard.
8. Don’t Look Up
netflix
This was the movie Jimmy Kimmel chose to single out, and for good reason: it became the basis for the biggest movie fight we had all year (“we” defined here as those of us who compulsively overshare our movie opinions online). If you didn’t like it, it was because you didn’t understand the climate change metaphor or care about climate change as a phenomenon. If you did like it, you were a smug prick in love with your own voice and with heavy-handed metaphors. I saw one of those “brutally honest Oscar ballot” posts recently where the anonymous Academy voter called it “a one-joke movie.”
Which is bizarre, because say what you will about Don’t Look Up, it did have a lot of jokes. Anyway, I tend to fall somewhere in the middle. A lot of people are rightly sick of Adam McKay’s whole deal, but there were a lot of great things in Don’t Look Up — Cate Blanchett’s news anchor, the grace scene, Jonah Hill playing what I assume was more or less Jonah Hill, the end gag with the alien thingy — even if it was too long and didn’t really hang together as a complete movie. It wasn’t great but it was fine.
7. The Power Of The Dog
netflix
I’ve essentially become a conscientious objector when it comes to Jane Campion movies. I accept that many people love them and that they never do much for me. She’s great with actors, with textures, and with setting compelling scenes, to the point that I’ve never considered not finishing one of her films. They’re always compelling, in that sense. Yet when I get to the end of her movies, I always find myself thinking “that’s it?”
That was basically the deal with The Power Of The Dog. It was interesting enough, and I appreciated the Bronco Henry storyline for basically being the arthouse Bill Brassky, but that Big Surprise Ending felt more like a late-second-act complication than something that tied the whole movie together. Mostly I appreciate Kodi Smit-McPhee for being an excellent human sight gag.
6. Nightmare Alley
Searchlight Pictures
Guillermo del Toro doing a movie about 30s carnies felt like a match made in heaven for the first two-thirds or so of Nightmare Alley. Then Bradley Cooper’s character left the carnival and fell in with Cate Blanchett’s character (who was too subdued and not really one of her best roles) and the whole thing got a lot less interesting. It did look great though.
5. CODA
apple tv+
CODA tells the kinda schmaltzy, kinda corny story of a Child Of Deaf Parents trying to make her way as a teenager in Massachusetts. On paper, CODA is pretty lame, a girl who just wants to sing, whose parents just don’t understand, because they’re DEAF! They can’t even hear the music! (Did we not already cover this in Mr. Holland’s Opus?)
But CODA ended up being a record sale out of Sundance, I suspect partly because festival movies are often so dreary, meandering, flawed, challenging, dull… that when a slickly conventional feel-good picture comes along, it ends up feeling like a revelation by comparison.
CODA feels like an afternoon special, and as someone who grew up around a lot of deaf people (my father taught sign language) it seemed like they vastly overstated how hard it is for deaf people to communicate with the hearing. I don’t remember it being that hard, but maybe that’s just me only remembering being on the hearing side of things. Anyway, CODA is kind of a cheesy afternoon special, but it was mostly a pretty good afternoon special. If anything made it more than average, it was Emilia Jones’ voice. The girl sings her ass off. CODA used music to turn otherwise middling schmaltz into something more in exactly the way West Side Story mostly did not.
4. Belfast
Focus Features
Belfast is even closer to a great movie, a 60-year-old Belfast-bred actor’s answer to Ladybird or Brooklyn. Kenneth Branagh should do personal more often. And Jaime Dornan and Catríona Balfe both looked insanely good in wool, in a way that made it impossible not to swoon a little. There were a handful of cinematic memoirs that came out around the same time, and all things considered, Belfast was much better made and focused than The Tender Bar.
Even so, Kenneth Branagh is still kind of a cornball at heart. Even in his most personal film he still makes some obnoxiously conventional choices. Did we really need war depicted through the faux-innocent perspective of a child? Jude Hill was great for a 10-year-old, but he’s still a 10-year-old, and there are certain things you shouldn’t ask of child actors — like being the emotional anchor for scenes in your cinematic memoir with their faces framed in close-up, say. Child actors shouldn’t be a thing! It’s a harsh truth we all must accept! Just PEN15 everyone, you’ll hardly even notice!
Sorry, I always digress when I get to complaining about child actors. Anyway, Belfast‘s opening shots of the Belfast skyline were so beautiful that they made me wish the whole film had been in color. Instead, Branagh made the dubious decision to fade to black and white for the flashback scenes (which is to say, the entire movie). Wait, it’s in black and white because it’s the PAST? Oy. Isn’t anyone else sick of “it’s in black and white because art” yet?
And yet, here we are, talking about Belfast as a Best Picture nominee. I hate “black and white because art” as a concept, but I can’t deny it as a successful strategy. “Ooh, black and white, it must be art.”
(Do not take this opportunity to talk shit on The Artist, The Artist was great).
3. Drive My Car
JANUS
Drive My Car is probably the movie I struggle with the most in this ranking. Maybe because it almost feels like two movies. There’s the one that’s almost painfully arthouse conventional — the protagonist mourning a dead child (and more!) who bonds with someone else who has also lost when she becomes his driver. The ol’ trauma plot! All suitably understated and full of people doing theater because ART. It’s Driving Miss Manchester By The Sea, as written by Noah Baumbach! Why must arthouse filmmakers persist in their delusion that grief is the most interesting emotion?
But then Drive My Car is also this other movie, one that I wholeheartedly love, a really weird story about a guy whose wife becomes possessed by a story demon after they have sex. He can only finish her script by collaborating with the man who has cuckolded him. That movie ruled.
Anyway, I can’t wholeheartedly recommend three-hour movies about grief, but ultimately I am glad that I saw this one. It helps that the whole thing looked gorgeous and had countless loving shots of a 1990s Saab. If you’re going to make a car into movie character, a 90s Saab is a great choice. Saabs look like they were designed by someone who had heard about cars second-hand but had never seen one. They’re like the Kodi Smit-McPhees of cars.
2. Dune
HBO Max
The first two movies on this list are my top two by a mile, but harder to rank against one another. I was a total Dune virgin when I saw this one and I loved Denis Villeneuve’s take on it, virtually without reservation. Dune made me feel the way I assume people who are really into Star Wars feel about Star Wars. Star Wars by comparison feels like trying to have the icing without the cake. In Dune, suddenly all the fighting and space colonialism and, yes, magic, has a logic to it, and one that doesn’t rest on “oh, well these people who are good represent ‘the light’ and these ones who are bad represent ‘the dark.’”
Dune gives all the players real motivations and something to fight over, without losing any of the goofiness and zany creativity. Do the sand dance or else the giant worms will eat you! Genius. Villeneuve’s natural seriousness (which has occasionally grated on me in certain movies) and flair for spectacle pairs perfectly with subject matter as naturally wacky as Dune, which seems to waffle between brutally cutting satire and deliciously eccentric flights of fancy.
Dune also felt like further confirmation that even if Hollywood hasn’t turned Jason Momoa into a brilliant actor, they have gotten great at figuring out which movies and scenes could do with more Jason Momoa. I don’t need Jason Momoa to be Daniel Day-Lewis, most times I just need him to be Jason Momoa. “Okay, now for this scene, I want you to really get in there and be Jason Momoa. Action!”
In Dune he got to be Extremely Jason and Incredibly Momoa and it was perfect.
1. Licorice Pizza
MGM
Licorice Pizza is a bit of a shaggy dog story, but then all of Paul Thomas Anderson’s movies are kind of like that, aren’t they? Yes it “meandered.” No, it wasn’t “tight.” But when your scenes are this beautiful and your episodes this memorable a sort of episodic structure works just fine. His movies have quiet parts and loud parts, like a Pixies song. When was the last time a filmmaker made Sean Penn this likable?
Who else would even be brave enough to set a film in Southern California starring a bunch of legacy celebrities and have it be about an inappropriate love affair between an adult and a teen? It’s like Anderson spent this entire film whacking Q-Anon’s cage with a stick and tossing in chunks of raw meat.
For me Licorice Pizza was more than just the tale of two fucked up people seeing in each other only the stuff that they wanted to, it was like a rosetta stone for Paul Thomas Anderson’s brain. It contained all his standard characters and pet themes, from lovable hucksters to pseudo-celebrities to overgrown children running around (literally running, in many cases) with no adult supervision — set in his favorite decade, the 1970s, the decade of no adult supervision. Only this time the story was so clearly personal that it offered not just his pet themes but an exploration of how they came to be his pet themes.
When you watch almost every shitty movie that comes out as a job, you occasionally get to wondering how you ever did this for fun. Then a movie like Licorice Pizza comes out and reminds you how good movies can be.
The Academy Awards take place Sunday March 27 at 5 pm ET. Vince Mancini is on Twitter. You can check out his film review archive here.
While meeting with NATO allies in Brussels, President Joe Biden was essentially asked by an ABC reporter if he was perhaps too quick to rule out starting “World War III” as a means of deterring Vladimir Putin‘s invasion of Ukraine. It was an odd moment to say the least, and while Biden fielded the question well, you can tell by the puzzled look on his face that he can’t believe what he was just asked.
Here’s Cecelia Vega’s full question, and while you can kinda see where she’s coming from, it’s hard not to interpret her line of thought as endorsing engaging Russia militarily, which would end badly for everyone. There’s a reason why the Cold War was cold, people.
“Sir, you’ve made it very clear in this conflict that you did not want to see World War III. But is it possible that, in expressing that so early, that you were too quick to rule out direct military intervention in this war. Could Putin have been emboldened, knowing that you were not going to get involved directly in this conflict?”
Biden’s response: “No and no.” You can see the exchange below, and Biden’s facial expression really ties the whole thing together:
Meanwhile, on social media, people can’t believe that a journalist for ABC News is literally out here asking if maybe Joe Biden made a mistake by not immediately sparking a global conflict that could end in nuclear war. Folks had a lot of thoughts about the current state of the media, but there was also a considerable amount of praise for Biden shutting the whole thing down like day-old malarkey.
It’s very important that #journalists give equal time to both sides of the question of whether all of humanity should be eradicated in a global nuclear holocaust. https://t.co/m5UZV9e40o
As a rule of thumb, I try to avoid questions 1) to which I already know the answer, and 2) give the person asked the opportunity to threaten nuclear war.
There are…so many other things to ask about, that have not already been answered, to try instead. https://t.co/RmwzdteqN3
REPORTER: Sir I want to ADDRESS this issue. [PRESIDENT nods] You KNOW I think World War 3 is bad PRESIDENT: Absolutely REPORTER: BUT! https://t.co/Ajwu5J9BV3
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