Unbeastly Boys & Perfect Bears
Hello, Dear Dames Nation! We hope you enjoyed last week’s Super Special Issue about CRYING— we certainly enjoyed your many kind responses. But this week, it’s back to business-as-more-usual. Which means we begin with a joint recommendation: the recent, live-action Paddington Bear movies.
God, what a world we would have if this were true.
If you keep up with Film Twitter, we can’t imagine you need much further convincing. The reviews for the first film were warm, the reviews for the second: rapturous. But if all you know of them is their regrettably sloppy first trailer, permit us, Oh Subscribers, to sing of a bear, his marmalades, adventures, and true-blue friendships.
Due to Hugh Grant’s assertion in this exceptionally charming profile that Paddington 2 “may be the best film [he’s] ever been in,” we’ve been thinking again about just how perfect Paddingtons 1 and 2 are. Dame Margaret was prompted to watch both for a Pop Culture Happy Hour episode and rarely has a freelance assignment introduced her to anything more immediately and completely lovable than these movies. For gentle family films, they have a shockingly nuanced perspective on the impact of Britain’s imperial past, and if you can watch the post-credits musical number that ends the second film without immediately wishing to view everything that preceded it, well, you’re a stronger person than either of us:
In addition, these films are visually enchanting; from the costumes to the art direction to the cinematography, every frame is a painting. If you are a childless adult who loves Wes Anderson or Amélie, please know: these movies are very likely for you, even if all they had to offer were their aesthetics. They also manage something very special and, we feel, necessary at this time: they are intensely comforting without being saccharine.
We need more family movies like these perfect treasures, which are so captivating and genuinely fun for all ages. And while we’re issuing eminently reasonable demands, we’d also like to insist upon more calypso in movie soundtracks. We appreciate music supervisors’ timely & swift attention to this matter!
Dame Sophie’s Amuse-Bouches
Love & respect to the end
My husband & I watched Beastie Boys Story this week and as predicted, it was a delight and a sob-fest. I realized afterwards that we did so on May 4, which was the 8th anniversary of Adam Yauch’s death. Time has softened some of the jagged edges of my grief but it still hurts to have lost such a significant influence & role model so young. Every year on the anniversary of MCA’s death I share this letter to the editor of the NYT, written in the voice of his alter ego, innovative (and mildly unhinged) Swiss music video director Nathanial Hörnblowér, because it makes me laugh so hard through my veil of tears. It also reminds me that a good thing to aspire to be in this life is a hilarious goofball who also works to make the world a better place. His growth as an artist and as a person meant so much to me, and that still influences how I approach the world and my small place in it.
The actual BEST moment of the movie wasn’t even in the movie, but when Ad-Rock and Mike D were talking about Girls & how ashamed of the lyrics they are.Our 14 year-old was on the couch with us at that point and performed the most lavish eyeroll.
My husband hit pause and asked: do you know who Horovitz is married to?
Nell: no?
M: Kathleen Hanna, from Bikini Kill
N: BAHAHAHAHAHHAHAAAAAAA
Sophie: people can change, Bun!
If you have a few minutes and are inclined to help some researchers out while taking a sonic trip down memory lane, a fun thing to do is participate in Flowing Data’s exploration of generation gaps in awareness of hit singles across the decades. You’ll be asked your birth year and initially will be assigned a decade to identify songs from, in batches of 10. You can revisit as many decades as you want, as many times as you want. You’ll get different songs each time, and will contribute useful data points to the 1.33 million they’ve got already. I have no comment on how many of them were contributed by me in the last week, kindly MYOB!!!
When I learned that Reply-All co-host PJ Vogt is, like me, a total horror movie-avoiding scaredy-cat, I felt a combination of relief and giddiness. Same, same, saaaaaaaame! Now he and his perennial collaborator Alex have launched a podcast designed to entertain listeners while helping PJ understand and overcome his terror. Episode one’s guest is Jason Mantzoukas and they discuss The Exorcist (which is one I’ve actually seen, courtesy of a 9th grade slumber party, and therefore never need revisit). They’ll be posting new episodes biweekly.
Finally, if you love an epistolary romance as I do— the slowest & hottest of all slow-burns!— the tale of Elizabeth Barrett & Robert Browning’s courtship is one for the ages, retold here with élan and charm by the wise & clever Jenny Hamilton.
Music is Mostly All Dame Margaret Can Engage with Right Now
40% of it is just listening to this song over and over
Anxiety— and hard work at my job, frankly!— have fractured my attention span into a million tiny pieces. I desperately want to watch Mindy Kaling’s very well-received new sitcom… but I can’t bring myself to start it. I have so many books calling to me, but their spines remain uncracked. The Criterion Channel is crafting the most alluring double-feature selections, but— by and large— they remain unstreamed. The only artform I have continued consuming voraciously is music. I think it’s because it provides the perfect balance of mental engagement and mental rest— if I want to listen closely, take in lyrics, marvel at choices, I can. If I want to just let it wash over me, I can. It’s meant to work both ways. Within that sphere, here’s what I would like to shout to you about:
I have continued on with my Instagram prompt playlists and, although assembling them is not an insubstantial task, both the music and the discussions that result from the music have brought me so much joy. So far we have found the songs people wish they could have inspired, the songs that feel to them like a really good session of therapy, the first songs they found for themselves and really loved, and songs they feel were used perfectly in either a movie or a TV show. There will be another prompt this Sunday, and more to follow that, as long as my enthusiasm and my participants’ remains steady, so! If thinking about such questions seems fun to you, and seeing other peoples’ answers: follow me on Instagram and tune in on Sunday afternoons.
That said, for all that I love my crowd-sourced playlists, the one that’s been giving me the most joy this week is by my friend Gabe entitled “resilient,” which is where I found the song that opened this section of the email, “I Think You’re Great.” The chorus, honestly, sounds like it was written in response to last week’s email: “But you don't always have to smile / You don't only have to cry at night / When tears stain your face / You're not feeling brave / I'll be there again and again / 'Cause I think you're great.” The whole playlist is just as good. It’s the closest thing to being hugged by a friend that this god awful pandemic will permit.
On My Last Night Out (which I did not, by any means, realize was that), I celebrated a the birthday of a very dear friend (whom I will be lucky to see again by September) at arguably the best establishment in my neighborhood: Tres Gatos, a tapas restaurant/wine bar/book store/record shop that somehow manages to be sincerely excellent at all four things at once. While I was there, I picked up a secondhand copy of Donna Summer’s Greatest Hits and, truly, it’s probably the most important quarantine stockpiling I did, and it wasn’t even on purpose. The whole album is mixed so that— even in streaming form— the tracks flow seamlessly into one another, like a DJ set at a disco. And the transition between “Hot Stuff” and “Bad Girls”— honestly, when I listen to it, it’s like someone is in the joy-producing portion of my brain straight-up smashing the keyboard out of manic enthusiasm. If you don’t need something that makes you feel that way right now, well, frankly Jeb, I don’t even want to know you.
Final note: Bandcamp, the independent music listening/selling platform that’s designed to be as good to artists as it possibly can be, has decided to be even better to them than usual: on the first Friday of the next two months (i.e. June 5th and July 3rd), it’s waiving the 10-15% commission it takes on sales and sending 100% of its proceeds to artists. So I would recommend that you familiarize yourself with the platform, find out which artists you love sell music or merch there, and start making your wish list for June. If my email on Monday piqued your interest about Sylvan Esso, all three of their albums are available there, and there isn’t a dud choice among them.
Two Bossy Dames is brought to you by:
The Macarena Zone
The stunning accuracy of this roast of corporate flim-flammery
Brad Leone, latest winner of the CK Dexter Haven Award for Unsuspected Depth!
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