| Everything we can't stop loving, hating, and thinking about this week in pop culture.
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Everything we can't stop loving, hating, and thinking about this week in pop culture.
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Live, Laugh, Love Book Club |
There are only five people in this world with whom I'd be willing to relive the hell of Zoom-reliant pandemic isolation: Jane Fonda, Diane Keaton, Candice Bergen, Mary Steenburgen, and my therapist. After witnessing the soul-healing powers that emanate from Book Club: The Next Chapter and taking in its valuable lessons about connection, love, and living life to its fullest, I don't think I even need that therapist anymore. Paying the price of a movie ticket to spend time with my Book Club girlies is far more economical, anyway. |
Book Club: The Next Chapter begins with a webcam-led walk down memory lane (or, let's be real, nightmare alley) of those pandemic-era online meet-ups. When a movie launches in the Year of Our Beyoncé 2023 with a bit about an older person not understanding how her Zoom camera or mute button works, it feels more like it's settling us in for a horror movie than a charming romp about four good friends going on a girls' trip. But that's a naive, if understandable, instinctual reaction. (I involuntarily moaned, "No…" in a hushed, haunted tone, once I figured out what this framing device was as the movie started.) We—or, at least, I—forgot the enchanting superpowers for the Book Club franchise; yes, this is now a franchise, and may it never end. It freaking stars Jane Fonda, Diane Keaton, Candice Bergen, and Mary Steenburgen. Even the worst content is made watchable—sometimes even phenomenal!—by the individual talents of these women and the collective brawn of their easy, impressive screen chemistry. Yet I was one more Zoom-malfunction joke away from putting every laptop owned by my friends, family, and coworkers into my skirt pockets and recreating Nicole Kidman's walk into the river from The Hours. But, silly me: This is Diane Keaton doing a Zoom-malfunction joke. Resistance isn't just futile; it's impossible. By the time she finally figures out how to turn her camera on, except only now it's got a cat filter, the other women in the split-screen view are taking turns roasting her and groaning with exasperation. You can't help but giggle through your sighs too. Moreover, this opening sequence is deceptively moving. It skips through time and charts a complicated, very real emotional journey: the skittish, unsettled discomfort, when the pandemic shutdown started; the wine-fueled resignation; the monumental, often devastating life changes that happened; and the way relationships changed, in ways good and bad. This joke is not a huge chunk of the film, but it's a poignant, amusing beginning. There's a palpable rumination on mortality: the preciousness of a life worth seizing the day for, and the preciousness of the people in it who make that seizing so damn fun. It is the C-movie, super-corny version of the opening to Up—an assessment that I feel only about 80-percent as embarrassed for making as I should. And that actually might summarize the whole appeal of this movie. I expect that, when one buys a ticket to see Book Club: The Next Chapter, they are aware of the type of the film they are seeing. Not a great one! No, siree. But it's one that delivers something comforting through its cheesiness, and, thanks to that cast, it's elevated cheesiness. It's that good cheese you buy at one of those smelly Brooklyn shops that comes wrapped in paper, and everyone oohs and aahs over at the dinner party. It's Oscar- and Emmy-winning cheese. It's a cheesy movie for pretentious people, but it's only enjoyable if you truly let yourself indulge.
The first Book Club starred that award-dripping quartet as lifelong friends, who read Fifty Shades of Grey for their book-of-the-month club. It opens them up in ways they never imagined, as the discussions that stem from their reading blossom into pivotal conversations about their respective lives and what they want, or need, from them. Choosing the infamous "mommy porn" to read was a cheeky lark, but it's one that realigned their souls and spirits—and cemented their friendship—in ways they could never have expected. Much like my own experience watching the movie. (I kid. Sort of.)
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This chapter takes the girls to Italy. Their experience taught them that, now more than ever, it's necessary to throw caution to the wind and find bliss while you still can. You don't need to know much more about the plot, because you probably could have written it yourself. Not one thing happens that you don't expect. Yet, thanks to these actresses, it's often chuckle-worthy and, at times, surprisingly emotional anyway. They arrive in Italy, go to a sculpture garden, and take turns delivering hammy jokes about the marble genitalia. A series of lost-in-translation whoopsies lead to travel nightmares that they must bond together to get themselves out of. There's a montage where they try on clothes. There's one where they dance to live music while drinking wine. At one point, they dangle out of a helicopter. (OK, that one I wasn't expecting.) Each actress is given her own kooky set piece to show off her physical comedy chops, and each gets a huge, "this is the meaning of life" monologue that is delivered with such bombastic earnestness, you'd be forgiven for reflexively standing and applauding. The Big Jigsaw Puzzle of Feelings is carefully pieced together so that, at the big climax, you may even cry. (Let's be honest: The puzzle, in this case, is not that complicated.)
The movie mainly functions as a showcase for these veteran actors, turning Italy into their performance playground. Some may find it gratifying to see these women in a movie like this, having a blast. Some may think the material is beneath them. Both viewpoints are correct. But the fact is that Book Club: The Next Chapter is the vehicle that these women are in, so why not have fun with them as they speed away with it?
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Bridget Everett Is Giving a Performance |
Has a person ever won an Emmy Award for…breathing? In the most recent episode of HBO's Somebody Somewhere, Bridget Everett performs a scene where she is doing a deep breathing exercise at a voice lesson, and there is something so intimate and soulful about it that I didn't even realize how my eyes had welled up with tears, until they were trailing down my face. Something similar happens to Everett's character, Sam, too. Her teacher has one hand on her heart and another on her diaphragm and, after one breath, says something to Sam that cracks her open. Emotion launches out of her, like a Pandora's box of feeling that she didn't mean to open and has no idea what to do now that it's all escaped. It's the quietest scene I've ever watched and thought, immediately, "This deserves an award." Then again, while writing this, I realize that maybe it's also the loudest scene, too. |
Somebody Somewhere isn't just about these kinds of moments—though they are plentiful. It's about living through middle age and trying to understand your place in life, or if you'll ever even have one. It's often uproariously funny and crude; the previous episode ends with Sam and her best friend, Jeff Hiller's Joel, on the phone comforting each other, while they each sit on the toilet, battling explosive diarrhea. My first encounter with Everett was at one of her bawdy New York cabaret shows, where she, and this is not euphemism, buried my head in her cleavage and had me motorboat her while she sang a song called "Titties," afterwards winking at me and calling me "Blue-Eyed Titties." There was a lot of talk when Somebody Somewhere first premiered about how it was a revelation of Everett's range, given her raunchier reputation. I think it shows how limited we think people's talent can be.
Everett's cabaret was such a sensation because of the well of feelings it unleashed, much in the same way as that breathing exercise. Sure, in the cabaret case, it's feelings of inhibition and guilt, allowing the audience to be free. But it makes sense that a person capable of that at her downtown shows is also capable of stirring up such intense and powerful emotion on Somebody Somewhere as well. As Sam's voice teacher tells her in the episode, when she doubts if her particular skills are enough for the world: "Sam, you have a rich, full instrument. Not a heavy voice."
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Beyoncé Is Not of This World |
The myriad photos and video clips that have been posted from Beyoncé's first concerts of her Renaissance tour in Sweden are both saving and killing me. They are so good. She looks better than she's ever looked before. The sets are outrageous; the costumes are spectacular; the choreography has me wondering how a human body is even capable of moving like that for an entire concert. (Is "Alien Superstar" a coded autobiographical song?) More, she pulls off the impossible task of celebrating and embodying the queer culture that inspired her album, without it ever feeling like appropriation. |
I know all of this, because I have basically seen the entire concert, despite the fact that I have not been to Sweden since 2008. It shouldn't come as a surprise that, in an age where we record and post every single thing we do, so much footage from the shows would end up online. I even heard that you could access livestreams of the show, filmed by people in the audience. Yet, ever the fool, I was surprised! I don't think I've ever unwillingly encountered this much content from a tour I am attending at a later date. It's not that I ran away from the posts; in fact, I watched and delighted in each and every one. But I do wonder what impact they will have on my (very expensive) future experience! In any case, if one thing is clear from seeing all those clips, it's that my creaky self needs to start stretching, if I am going to survive all the dancing I'm about to do at this concert without pulling something. |
Janet Jackson Still Is the G.O.A.T. |
Speaking of creaky dancing at concerts, I was in rare form doing my little step-shuffle, hip-wiggle, shoulder-shimmy grooving at the Janet Jackson concert in New York this week.
It's not particularly novel to fawn over how good Janet Jackson is in concert; her last tour was fairly similar to this one, and she was as good then as she was this week. But it does blow your mind, when considering how dynamic her career has been, that she can still channel so much of that power into her performance—at age 56!—and that everything about her music, message, and celebrity still feels so fresh.
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She worked her high pony that trailed down to her calves like a rodeo cowboy with a lasso. At one point, she gave her shirtless backup dancers lap dances. There were several times that she smiled, and it was so electric, I wondered if Madison Square Garden was going to short-circuit. Moreover, the ticket said the show started at 7:45, and I'll be damned if her opening act, Ludacris, wasn't on that stage by 7:49. That's called respect. |
My Big Fat Greek Emotional Breakdown |
I don't know what it is about me and these cheesy-ass movies, but I got teary-eyed at the trailer for My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3. (Watch it here.) |
More From The Daily Beast's Obsessed |
Those memes from The Good Doctor that went viral this week were so funny! And so problematic! Read more. In the midst of all the drama and toxicity surrounding his cheating scandal, Vanderpump Rules' Tom Sandoval performed a concert in New York and got booed, and we were there! Read more. It's Always Sunny star Charlie Day spent 10 years making his feature directorial debut, and we found out why he has Guillermo del Toro and Mountain Dew to thank for helping it finally come out. Read more. |
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