Culture

Since Netflix’s Sex Education began in 2019, it has won plaudits for being one of the most reliably entertaining shows on the platform, combining refreshing frankness about sex in all its forms with a finely judged balance between gross-out humor and genuine wit, while also being unafraid to delve into deeper emotional territory. Showrunner and creator Laurie Nunn — daughter of British theatrical royalty Sir Trevor — has proved a remarkable talent, not least for assembling a truly excellent cast of lesser-known actors who have all transformed into stars over the past four years. There is, inevitably, a problem with popular shows continuing beyond their natural ending, and that is a feeling of staleness.

In 2001, at the age of fourteen, Sam Lipman-Stern dropped out of high school in New Jersey and started working at the now defunct Civic Development Group (CDG) as a telemarketer. He stayed for seven years, calling up citizens to ask for money on behalf of police charities. It turned out to be a massive scam.  More than two decades later, Lipman-Stern, now thirty-six and a seasoned filmmaker, has exposed not only CDG — which underhandedly kept 90 percent of the proceeds it raised — but the entire industry in his frenetic, rip-roaring investigative HBO documentary Telemarketers.  Co-directed by Adam Bhala Lough and produced by the Safdie brothers, the three-part docuseries is a wild ride, largely due to Lipman-Stern’s archival footage.

The Thing is not a monster movie. Sure, John Carpenter was remaking the 1951 The Thing from Another World, itself an adaptation of the 1938 pulp-sci-fi novella Who Goes There? — but it’s not a shlocky B-movie horror. It’s too vicious, cynical and psychological for that. Rather, it’s the ultimate paranoia thriller. For the unfamiliar, the 1982 flick is about a group of researchers, stuck in an Antarctic base, who discover a strange shape-shifting alien, which consumes its victims and then mirrors their look, smell, speech and manner. They’re all marooned together, being hunted down by an unearthly terror, and any of them — friend, stranger, dog — could be it, waiting to strike.

If you had to pick the two Hollywood directors who have been the most over-exposed in recent years, many people would opt for two idiosyncratic and hitherto likeable figures: Wes Anderson and Taika Waititi. The reason opinion has cooled on both filmmakers, however, in the past couple of years is that their work — which has often been excellent in the past — has become so stylized, and so constant, as to be exhausting. Anderson’s most recent movie, Asteroid City, was greeted with sighs and weariness, despite being a smash at the box office, and Waititi’s much-delayed picture about soccer, Next Goal Wins, has premiered at the Toronto Film Festival to general yawns of “predictable” and “seen it all before.

The late-night talk show has been a staple of American television for three quarters of century. It is a tried and tested formula that works beautifully... until it doesn’t — as Jimmy Fallon learned this week when Rolling Stone published the feature “Chaos, Comedy, and ‘Crying Rooms’: Inside Jimmy Fallon’s ‘Tonight Show’.” There are millions of people who would sell their souls to make it Hollywood — and the competitiveness and desperation has been exploited time and time again by those at the top. But unlike many of the abusive tales that have been told over the past decade, the accusations against Fallon are watery at best.  In fact, the piece has bears all the hallmarks of a classic hit job.

Nestled in the New York Botanical Gardens in the Bronx are a series of vultures, who lurk, grotesque and yet strangely beautiful, among the greenery.  The birds number in their hundreds, are larger than life and glint with glitter in the sun. They aren’t real, of course, but part of Jamaican artist Ebony G. Patterson’s expansive show, ...things come to thrive... in the shedding... in the molting... Works in the exhibition range from cast-glass leaves and body parts — including severed feet — peeking out from the plants to the imposing sculpture “… fester …”, a ten-foot wall covered with more than 1,500 red gloves on one side and tassels, beads and tapestry on the other.

When the history of comedy’s resurgence in the early twenty-first century is written — when masses of people, silenced by the speech codes of the day, found solace and contrarian hope in the words of unsilenced comics — Shane Gillis will be a major turning point in that story.  It’s not just that he’s arguably the best stand-up under forty working today; it’s that his work won out over all the obstacles the world threw at him. He is now the comedy world’s embodiment of the Streisand Effect, where his attempted cancellation functioned instead as a rocket ship for his career based not on victimhood but on the stubborn nature of his skill. Gillis’s first special, Live in Austin, was a YouTube joint that has racked up 14 million views.

It seems DC’s thirst for restrictions did not end last April when the city dropped its mask mandate. Washingtonians still feel an incessant need to be regulated and the National Symphony Orchestra has just found the most recent method — nut bans.   In an email passed to Cockburn by a tipster about a concert starting this week at the NSO, orchestra management has established a “nut-free zone” in the building. Per their order, all performances September 5-8 will be strictly nut-free — and that’s not all. Trace amounts of nut oil will also be prohibited.  “No foods with peanuts or hazelnuts or foods cooked in nut oil can be brought onstage or backstage,” the email reads.

In the summer of 1997, one song was ubiquitous all over the world, namely the Swedish band Aqua’s novelty pop single “Barbie Girl.” A lightly ironic account of the exploits of the titular creation — “I’m a Barbie girl, in a Barbie world/ Life in plastic, it’s fantastic” — it might have irritated Barbie’s manufacturer’s Mattel, who unsuccessfully took Aqua’s record label MCA to court, citing copyright violation, but for everyone else, it was a half-amusing, half-persistent earworm that seemed as disposable and popular as the doll herself.

In the Nineties, David Fincher established himself as the cult director for a certain type of cineaste. After the misstep of Alien 3 (underrated, still not great), he came back triumphantly with the still-astonishing serial killer thriller Se7en, and then established his credentials with the millennial satire Fight Club. It was a box-office flop but attracted an immediate, fervent following who latched onto its director as a near-prophetic figure, capable of combining visual pizzazz acquired from his days as a music video director with a mordant, dark wit. He became one of those filmmakers who could simply be referred to by the initiated by his surname, like Scorsese or Spielberg.

The news that Denis Villeneuve’s keenly anticipated Dune sequel is to be delayed from its previously announced November release date until next March is both unwelcome and far from unexpected. It also brings back memories of the pandemic, when films were routinely postponed for months, even years; it is not hard to remember how the Bond film No Time To Die ended up having its original release date of April 2020 put back until October 2021, by which time Billie Eilish’s theme song had acquired all the familiarity of a much-loved old standard, and the film’s trailers had long since melted into ubiquity. And countless equally delayed pictures simply flopped at the box office, as audiences stayed away, bored by seeing the same marketing materials forever.

If you’ve ever wondered what a screenplay written by the Democratic National Committee for the Hallmark Channel might be like, I’m afraid I have your answer. Red, White & Royal Blue, a gay — excuse me, queer — romcom streaming on Amazon Prime is one of those rare films that leaves you feeling infringed. Some part of it may live in my brain forever — and that seems unjust. Don’t get me wrong — I’m a big fan of gay movies, even the corny ones. This, however, is post-gay queer chick-lit and not even in the same universe as movies written by, and for, gay men. Hell, I even thought Love, Simon was a cute movie. Red, White & Royal Blue makes sense when you look at the teen romance novel of the same name on which the film was derived.

The third series of the hit comedy-mystery series Only Murders in the Building has arrived on Hulu, to the same critical acclaim as the previous two installments, and the adventures of Steve Martin, Martin Short and Selena Gomez show few signs of coming to an end. This time the trio are joined by none other than acting royalty Meryl Streep, playing Loretta, a plucky but frustrated actress who has never advanced to the big time, and Paul Rudd, the supposedly nicest man in Hollywood, deliberately cast against type as the obnoxious and entitled star of the show that Short is directing on Broadway, which he is hoping will restore his fortunes: a desire cruelly frustrated by Rudd’s character dropping dead on opening night.

On September 9, 2014, Apple users found an unrequested gift in their iTunes: a new U2 album. Songs of Innocence was supposed to jump-start a new wave of engagement with Apple’s music products, introducing their enormous user network to it for free. And it worked: Apple announced that it was “the largest album release ever.” But just because something’s free doesn’t mean people will use it. The following Monday, Apple released instructions for how to remove the album. Bono has subsequently, and repeatedly, apologized. Five years later, in March 2019, Apple announced its entrance to the streaming game: Apple TV+.

How should we assess the reputation of a late-career movie director? In the case of Roman Polanski, who turns ninety on August 18, we can clearly tick the box denoting a solid body of work. He’s responsible for half a dozen enduring films, and one — 2002’s The Pianist — that rightly won him an Academy Award. Readers may have their own candidate, but for me Polanski’s first full-length feature, 1962’s Knife in the Water, remains at the top of the list. It’s a beautifully crafted, if at times noticeably low-budget, thriller that offers the classic Polanskian brew of claustrophobia, latent menace, voyeurism, class antagonisms and sexual tension, in this case set aboard a small yacht.

I must confess, I often forget Rolling Stone magazine still exists. Once the zeitgeist-surfing Holy Writ of American counter-culture, it hosted the pioneering writers of the boomer generation: Tom Wolfe, Lester Bangs, P.J. O’Rourke, Hunter S. Thompson. Even as recently as 2020 the magazine boasted accomplished journalists such as Matt Taibbi. But over five decades, the magazine withdrew into the Establishment, just as their boomer readers did. And every now and then the Rolling Stone’s pale cadaver makes a misjudged groaning gasp for life, if only to remind us it’s not quite dead. The rag mustered one such gasp this weekend.

Ask your average man on the street — or at least your average clued-up man with a decent knowledge of modern Hollywood — about the films of William Friedkin, who has died aged eighty-seven, and he will confidently sing the praises of Friedkin’s legendary pictures, The French Connection and The Exorcist. Then if he is pressed on the other eighteen films Friedkin directed, ranging from the excellent and underrated to the dismal, and a look of panic is likely to come over his face before he excuses himself and rushes into a nearby subway (or, if he is in New York, flees to an overground railway in homage to the legendary car chase scene in The French Connection). It is your choice whether you do a Popeye Doyle and head off in frantic pursuit, or leave him be.

When TV is in trouble, it runs to one group. They usually have big hair and even bigger silicon boobs. They also possess filthy mouths, drink rosé like water and have rich husbands. They are the Housewives — and in dry spells, on Sunday afternoons, or in the middle of a writers’ and actors’ strike, you will see their ilk plastered on your screen more than the news. There are plenty to choose from: there are eleven Real Housewives franchises in the US, twenty international versions and twenty-seven spin offs.  But will the Housewives continue to be the entertainment executive's solution to a strike-induced content drought? Or are they set to join the picket lines? The simultaneous Hollywood writer and actor strikes which started in May are gaining traction and glamor.

The death of actor Paul Reubens of cancer at the age of seventy was an oddly low-key departure for a man who created one of the twentieth century’s iconic comic characters, and also found himself mired in scandal that threatened to destroy his career, and to a large extent took him away from the A-list fame that he would have expected to attain. Yet throughout his more than four-decade career, Reubens was nothing if not a survivor, even a fighter. The fact that incidents that would have ruined most other men were treated by him as obstacles to be overcome indicated both his resilience and — to some — a refusal to kowtow to the expected demands of the industry that both made and ruined him.

2023 has the summer of unruly concertgoers. So far, bras, phones and a woman’s ashes have been thrown, pelted, and flung at the likes of Bebe Rexha, Drake, Kelsea Ballerini, Kid Cudi, Pink and Harry Styles. Now that Cardi B has become the latest victim, the celebrities are finally fighting back.   On Saturday, Cardi B was performing her 2018 hit “Bodak Yellow” at Drai’s Beach Club in Las Vegas when a concertgoer threw her drink at the rapper. Cardi B immediately hurled her microphone into the audience before unleashing a string of expletives. Cockburn commends Cardi for her excellent aim — she hit the culprit squarely in the chest.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlYU3Lpx9b0&ab_channel=CNN Cardi had warmed up her throwing arm the night before.