What we'll be listening to, watching, and reading to sate our pop culture needs.
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Sunday is International Women’s Day so we’ll be celebrating the achievements of women by filling our weekend with their exceptional work. Okay, you’re right, we always do that. But this weekend we’ll be doing it with more purpose while following the hashtag #MakeItHappen (this year’s theme).
The end of 30 Rock left a Liz Lemon–shaped hole in our heart but the release of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt on Netflix today might just help fill it. The show, starring Ellie Kemper as the survivor of an underground doomsday cult who’s reacquainting herself with normal life in NYC, was created by Tina Fey and her 30 Rock cohort Robert Carlock, so it’s got a similar sense of the absurd plus Fey’s awesome undercurrent of feminism. It also casts Jane Krakowski in a role that is more outlandishly hilarious than Jenna Maroney. You want to go to there.
Since she was 11, poet Sarah Manguso was a voracious diarist, capturing every moment as a “defense against waking up at the end of my life and realizing I’d missed it.” Ongoingness, her third work of nonfiction, details the motivation behind her 800,000-word undertaking (though never actually quoting from it), and how her feelings toward it shift as her life changes. Her signature poetic prose will give you the feels.
In light of documentarian Albert Maysles’s passing on Thursday, it’s perfectly fitting that the Edies—whose story he brought to the world—are back on the big screen, right where they should be, thanks to the re-release of a fully restored Grey Gardens. We can’t wait to be spending an evening with the S-T-A-U-N-C-H, eccentric mother-daughter hoarders in the theater, wearing our best revolutionary costume for the day.
L.A.-based French singer Soko takes her love of the Smiths and the Cure and channels it into the melancholic-pop of her new album. My Dreams Dictate My Reality still exhibits Soko’s quirks (Ariel Pink joins as her partner in weirdness on two tracks), but with its ’80s synths and post-punk melodies, it’s an album as familiar as it is fresh.
Sure, the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel was a little cheesy and predictable but oh boy, was it a heart warmer. Plus any movie with great roles for women over 60 scores bonus points with us. We’re pretty sure this follow up will similarly deliver, and Maggie Smith alongside Dame Judi Dench is our idea of heaven.