Hello Genius, It's Your Weekly Recs!
Dear Wags,
We endure a global pandemic of wrongheadedness. For many people in politics and media, trolling has murdered coherence. There are meaningful differences between living in a free society and living under authoritarianism. If you can no longer tell the difference, it’s time to take a hammer to your phone.
Evan Gershkovich has been held in Russia’s Lefortovo Prison for 331 days. His crime was to be a foreign correspondent in a complicated country. Good journalism helps us understand a dangerous world. No wonder it is loathed. Reporting is under unprecedented assault, just when we need it most.
Please keep Evan and others like him in your thoughts. You can support the Committee to Protect Journalists here. And now, this week’s diversions.
Yours Ever,
CultureWag serves up the best diversions for the most sophisticated audience on Earth. If you become a Primo Subscriber, we’ll let the interns have two slices of pizza. Think of how happy that will make them!
The 30th Screen Actors Guild Awards (Netflix). Fresh off a strike, the 120,000 scrappy members of the Screen Actors Guild reward their favorite films and TV shows. The exercise may give you a sense of how performing awards at the Oscars will shake out (Academy voting started yesterday). But actors being actors, SAG can be quirky. For instance: All the Hollywood players in Barbie could be showered in air-kisses for Best Cast. Here’s what our foggy crystal ball says:
Paul Giamatti of The Holdovers could squeak past Oppenheimer’s Cillian Murphy in the Lead Actor race. “Actors worship the guy,” says A Snarky Publicist.
Lily Gladstone has to fend off Emma Stone. When it comes to Lead Actress laurels, the wind seemed to be blowing the way of The Killers of the Flower Moon star for months. “But that was before folks saw Poor Things,” says S.P. “Stone gives a bravura performance.”
Are people really that wild about Ken? Some Wags think Ryan Gosling can manage a Supporting Actor win here. But Robert Downey Jr. is in solid shape. The same can be said for Da’Vine Joy Randolph of The Holdovers.
The TV acting categories seem locked. Drama Series Cast goes to Succession. Comedy Series Cast goes to The Bear. These shows will dominate the individual actor categories, too. Congrats Sarah Snook, Kieran Culkin (or Matthew McFadyen!), Jeremy Allen White, and Ayo Edebiri '‘Anything else will be shocking,” says S.P.
Beef sweeps the Limited Series slots. Cheers, Stephen Yuen and Ali Wong.
Stop whining about Jury Duty being shut out. —Marcello Rubini
Shogun (FX/Hulu). James Clavell’s 1975 bestseller and the 1980 miniseries starring Richard Chamberlain made their mark on pop culture. Justin Marks and Rachel Kondo have reinvented the saga by showcasing three heroes — Warlord Yoshii Toranaga (Hiroyuki Sanada), translator Toda Mariko (Anna Sawai), and stranger-in-a-strange-land John Blackthorne (Cosmo Jarvis). It’s satisfyingly epic. — Meggie Cleary
All of Us Strangers (Hulu). Wag Supremo Andrew Haigh’s tender picture about a lonely man’s reconciliation with his past is a critical darling. Let’s hope Hulu introduces it to a broader audience. Andrew Scott stars as as a writer who magically reconnects with his dead parents (Clare Foy and Jamie Bell), while taking a chance on love with a new chappy (Paul Mescal). About as sweet as they come. — Clive Durham
Have you noticed the Ulysses S. Grant Renaissance? Once, America’s 18th president was written off as a bloodthirsty, blundering sot. Now historians rank him as our seventeenth best chief executive. Smarty Brad Neely serves up a wickedly cracked treatment of Grant’s life. It’s a fictionalized portrait of a sloppy dude trying to hold a fractious country together. Which is hilarious and a tad alarming, given the state of things. —Lucy Marsden
Nobody does it better, makes us feel sad for the rest. We’re speaking of Wag Indira Varma, of course! Alongside Dashing Raza Jaffrey, she hosts Wondery’s espionage pod, The Spy Who … which spills the beans about great secret agents. There’s high-rolling Dusko Popov, a suave Serbian who inspired 007, Noor Inayat Khan, a princess who aided the French Resistance, and Oleg Gordievsky, who sabotaged the KGB. We could go on, but we’d have to swallow a cyanide tablet. — Anya Amasova
So scared of/Time passing/Nothing lasting long enough to hold it down. We hear you, Gaby Moreno! In Solid Ground, Guatemala’s gift to Americana drops a rousing number about letting go. Still believe in/Good intentions/But you took this heart and turned it upside down, sings our Gaby. You’ll get him next time. — Maggie Carpenter
What a drag it is, getting …Older. Philadelphia’s Lizzy McAlpine is reflecting on growing up in an unforgiving world. Love! Loss! Regrets! It’s a sad and pretty ballad from a singer songwriter wise beyond her years. Somewhere I lost all my senses, she sings. I wish I knew what the end is. Us, too. —L.B. McPherson
A million years ago, Hollywood made warmhearted comedies for adults. Wag Emeritus Norman Jewison’s Moonstruck (1987) is such a picture. Widow Loretta (Cher) lives with her parents (Olympia Dukakis and Vincent Gardenia) in pre-gentrification Carroll Gardens. She accepts a marriage proposal from Johnny (Danny Aiello) but his eccentric brother Ronny (Nicholas Cage) shows up and she finds herself falling for the wrong man. When he declares his love for her, she gives him a slap and delivers one of the best lines in movie history: Snap out of it! That such a cozy picture could spend 20 weeks in the box office top ten and gross $100 million speaks to how much movies have changed. Nominated for six Oscars, it won three — for Cher, Dukakis, and John Patrick Shanley for the screenplay. Drop everything and watch it. (Feb. 25, TCM). —Rita Cappomaggi
CultureWag is the brainchild of JD Heyman, former top editor at People and Editor-in-Chief of Entertainment Weekly (among other things) and staffed by the Avengers of Talent. Our goal is to cover interesting topics with wit and integrity. We serve smart, funny recommendations to the most hooked-in audience in the galaxy. Questions? Drop us a line at intern@culturewag.com.
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Hey Mambow! (Photo: Mambow).
Hey Mambow! (Photo: Mambow).
“How do I wish to be remembered, if at all? I think perhaps just as a fairly desirable sort of Wag.” — James Mason
