The Review

Shirley Li, Spencer Kornhaber, and Lenika Cruz discuss the Pixar coming-of-age film Turning Red, why they found it utterly charming, and why this post-villain era of animation is a welcome one.

Further reading:

• What the Controversy Over Turning Red Misses
• Pixar's Turning Red Has the Cleverest Take on Puberty

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Spencer Kornhaber, Shirley Li, and Hannah Giorgis assess the state of pop music following the Grammys. While the much-derided awards have improved at celebrating the diversity of modern music, they still tend to reward safer throwback sounds. And modern music as a whole seems to be going through a nostalgic phase—just look at Silk Sonic’s retro soul, or Lady Gaga’s big-band ballads, or even Olivia Rodrigo’s pop-punk influences.

The trio reviews the Grammys, debates pop music’s retro obsession, and explains why we’re in a moment with more sound-recycling than usual. With streaming tracking all our listens, is old music killing new music? Or is the industry finally seeing (and monetizing) a type of listening we’ve always done? And with a backward-looking mainstream intersecting with a Tik-Tok-ification of pop stardom, where do we expect music to go next?

Further reading:

• How Jon Batiste's Album of the Year Win Broke Grammys Expectations
• Is Old Music Killing New Music?
• An Artist Who Makes Me Excited About the Future of Music

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Adam McKay’s disaster satire is many things at once: a parable of our distracted society, a primal scream of a warning, and a broad comedy from the writer/director of Anchorman. Such a delicate balance has made the star-studded Netflix film a polarizing movie.

Critics, audiences, and activists have both savaged and praised the movie, with cycles of backlash highlighting the difficulty of sending a funny yet urgent message. But of course, isn’t that what political satires have done for decades? Or has reality become so absurd that it’s now beyond parody?

As McKay told David Sims, he wrote the story about a planet-killing comet (and our society’s inability to act collectively to stop it) as a climate change metaphor. But after the script was done, production shut down for the pandemic and he watched the follies of a real disaster surpass his fictional one. Sophie Gilbert, Spencer Kornhaber, and David Sims unpack Don’t Look Up and whether modern satire can make a difference.

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When the first season of Netflix’s Emily in Paris debuted in October 2020, it was met with both delight and ridicule: Delight at its escapism into sunny France from the election and pandemic. But also ridicule at Lilly Collins’ bubbly American abroad blithely Instagramming her croissants by the Seine. (“The whole city looks like Ratatouille!”)

Ridicule and delight are not mutually exclusive though, as Emily in Paris’ many hate-watchers can attest. So with the arrival of a second season, three writers with three very different opinions of the series sit down to laugh both at and with the show. They also attempt to process its exact appeal: Guilty pleasure? Hate-watch? Self-aware commentary on luxury?

Voices:

• Sophie Gilbert
• Spencer Kornhaber
• Megan Garber

Further reading:

• Netflix's Emily in Paris Is the Last Guilty Pleasure (The Atlantic)
• The New Comedy of American Decline (The Atlantic)
• Emily in Paris Is an Irresistible Fantasy (The Atlantic)
• And Just Like That Is a Far Cry From 'Sex and the City' (The Atlantic)

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West Side Story is a work with some huge names behind it: Leonard Bernstein wrote the musical, Stephen Sondheim the lyrics, and Shakespeare the source material Romeo and Juliet. And sixty years after the classic 1961 film dominated the Oscars, another name was added to that list: Steven Spielberg.

The big names behind West Side Story don’t just have status in common though; they’re also all white men telling a story of Puerto Rican migrants in New York City. That lack of diversity among the creative team is evident watching the original film sixty years later. The Puerto Rican characters are portrayed by white actors, often in broad stereotype and brownface. Even Rita Moreno, who portrayed Anita and was born in Puerto Rico, was forced to wear dark makeup.

The 2021 update escapes many of the dated and problematic aspects of the 1961 version by grounding the story in real history. Spielberg and screenwriter Tony Kushner used the period setting of slum-clearance era New York to give the rival gang members more real-world motivation and less stereotyping. In doing so though, the remake may lose some of the kaleidoscopic dreaminess that made the old Hollywood original the classic that it is.

David Sims, Sophie Gilbert, and Spencer Kornhaber compare the two versions ahead of an Oscars weekend in which West Side Story is up for seven awards.

Further reading:

• Spielberg's West Side Story Is an Undeniable Triumph
• How Stephen Sondheim Changed Musical Theater
• When a Hit Musical Becomes a Bad Movie
• Why West Side Story Abandoned Its Queer Narrative
• What Stephen Sondheim Knew About Endings

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