| 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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Titanic is old enough to rent a car. Remembering tWitch. What is going on at HBO Max? The best award win of the year. The most sexually exciting news of the week.
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I Can't Believe Titanic Is 25 |
It's been 84 years. It's been 25 years. I'm very excited for whatever those blue people who have sex with their ponytails are doing when Avatar: Way of the Water comes out this weekend. (I'm not being sarcastic. I can't wait to spend $43 dollars to watch this at an IMAX theater in NYC.) But James Cameron will never top the masterpiece that is Titanic, which turns 25 on December 19—a fact that makes me feel as old as that couple who decided to cuddle and drown while the water rushed into the ship. Many films are great. Few films are formative. Only one is Titanic.
It's a movie that shaped me. It's a movie that traumatized me. It's a movie that made me understand what movies should be, to the point that I scream, "Now that's a movie!" any time I see that even approaches Titanic's audacity and its brilliance. (Such as Michael Bay's Ambulance.)
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There are two kinds of people. The ones who remember renting Titanic at Blockbuster and it showing up on two VHS tapes, and there are youths. Like Mariah Carey, I do not have an age. I am timeless. But I was the prime Titanic Mania age when the movie hit theaters, and remember the thrill of it. I remember what it was like to be so obsessed with Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio, a level of worship that, finally, made me understand religion. I have strong memories of overhearing the girls in my class bully each other because someone had gone to see it in theaters only seven times, not nine times like the most popular girl. The whistle introduction to "My Heart Will Go On" is as close as anything will get to being surgically implanted in my brain. It is almost a physiological reflex to scream, "I'm the king of the world!" each and every time I am on a boat, and I will fight anyone who rolls their eyes when I do it. It's a movie that is seared into milestones of my life, like a badge—or, in some cases, a scar. For example, the first time I watched it, my mother covered my eyes during the part when Rose asked Jack to sketch her "like one of his French girls." (The second time I watched it was secretly at a friend's house, eyes wide open. Two-and-a-half decades later, I wish it was her who was sketching him…) |
Then there's the less horny things. I cannot explain to you how disturbed I was, at my cherubic age, by certain sequences in the film. The elderly couple…I can't even. The scene that rivals that on the scale of devastation is when the mother tucks her children into bed, knowing they're all going to die because they're in steerage and the water level is rising. We were religious VH1 viewers in my family. The channel was on every morning as we got ready for the day. I don't like to admit this, but one hopes this is a safe space: I would have to leave the room when the "My Heart Will Go On" music video played—which it did roughly every 17 minutes—because those scenes were in a montage that played as Céline Dion sings, and it made me too sad. It would ruin my entire day if I watched it. Different movies that people grew up with matter to them for different reasons. Beauty and the Beast made me happy. The Sandlot made me understand friendship. Sister Act made me gay. But Titanic? Yes, it was an unparalleled cinematic achievement at that time. It was romantic. Mostly, though, I associate Titanic with death. Do you remember when the ship was sinking, broke in half, and the people who were at the bow started falling into the water, as if they had been pushed off a skyscraper? Remember when that one person hit the propeller on the way down and just started flipping through the air like Simone Biles? I sure do, because I'm still not over it. On the occasion of Titanic's 25th anniversary and the milestone making me feel as old as Rose at the end of the film, I may up my therapy sessions to twice a week. I need to talk through why it is that the movie was so specifically impactful for me; it was three hours and 14 minutes of James Cameron putting his hand on my shoulder and saying, "Young Kevin, people die." In fact, there was so much death that I never quite understood the film's biggest controversy: There was room on the door for both Jack and Rose. Jack's death is a beautifully scripted ending to a story so operatic. "I'll never let go, Jack" is a gorgeous encapsulation of the way a great love imprints on you, even if they leave you. Why would anyone begrudge that moment, or pettily debate the believability of the situation? I'm not even trying to characterize myself as heroic or anything like that, but if I was in Jack's situation, I probably would have just hung off the door like he did. It wasn't that big of a door. It might have wobbled or sank if they both tried to teeter on it. It was probably as cold on the door with the wind blowing on you while you're soaking wet as it was in the water. I'd have just thought, "Eh, I have a floating thing to hang onto. I'll be fine." |
But Jack's death never broke me in the way that it did for so many other people. It was the random passengers who were just dying—constantly!—that struck me. Kids who were drowning in their lower deck cabins. People falling off the boat and hitting debris. The ones who thought they might survive once they hit the water, but then froze or drowned. For a kid, it just seemed so random and unfair—the way that death is! We didn't get to hear their stories. At least Jack got to have some good sex in that car and say some beautiful things to his love before he went.
It's wild when you realize a fact like Titanic was released 25 years ago. It makes thoughts, feelings, and memories flood, like the ones I've just regurgitated here. You start thinking about strange things like why the biggest movie ever makes you feel weird about death. You get nostalgic for what it was like for literally everyone you knew to be aware of and care about and have opinions about the same thing. And, yes, you feel old, too.
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The tWitch Dance I Can't Stop Watching |
There was a time—for years, really—when So You Think You Can Dance was my favorite show on television. Its return each summer was the highlight of my year. It all worked for me: creator and judge Nigel Lythgoe's entertaining smugness; Mary Murphy's cringey catchphrases; choreographer Mia Michaels' emotional battiness; and, of course, host Cat Deeley's warm, compassionate enthusiasm. But, duh, the real draw was always the spectacular dancing. There are so many graduates of the show that I still stalk—I mean, follow. (Thank you Instagram.) Going to a Broadway musical these days doubles as a game of "Spot the So You Think You Can Dance Alum" in the chorus. But for fans of the show, no career has been more thrilling to observe than that of Stephen "tWitch" Boss. |
He was a phenom in the hip-hop style like the show had never seen. Yet tWitch also proved to be a surprise star of the show's most gripping element: challenging dancers to perform routines outside of their speciality—disco! salsa! contemporary!—and seeing who has the patience, versatility, and star power to excel. Judges and viewers were reliably stunned by the grace with which tWitch handled being outside his comfort zone, not to mention how his specific skills shined unexpectedly in other styles of dance. After the news broke that tWitch died this week in an apparent suicide, fans and colleagues of his shared their favorite videos of him dancing. Anecdotally, none have been shared as often as the hip-hop routine he performed with Alex Wong, when he returned to the show in 2010 as an "all star."
Set to "Outta Your Mind" by Lil Jon and LMFAO, it was one of the most energetic, complicated, and thrilling routines ever performed on the series. (It's also what started his decade-long friendship and work partnership with Ellen DeGeneres, who asked him to help her learn the routine to perform on her show; she eventually brought him on full-time as her DJ and a producer.)
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It is just so good. Watch it here, and do so over and over again. You won't regret it. |
The boom of streaming services and ensuing explosion of content has often been referred to in the industry as "the Wild West," which feels especially appropriate given how lawless—and ruthless—circumstances seem to be right now. This is some show business mumbo-jumbo that might make your eyes glaze over, but the short version is that Warner Bros. and Discovery merged, which means that their respective streamers, HBO Max and Discovery+, will soon combine. One mandate of the merger was cutting costs, leading to a spate of abrupt cancellations of many WB series and the removal of past seasons from HBO Max's library entirely.
Some of those choices in the past weeks have seemed especially jarring. The company canceled the HBO Max show Minx while it was nearly finished shooting Season 2; it will not see the light of the day on the streamer. (It's being shopped around elsewhere.) Westworld, which at one point was the most-watched series on HBO, is among the series that are being wiped from the Max library. (Warner Bros. also hopes to sell it to another service.) But if a show that big is gone, what chance do smaller, beloved gems have?
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Which brings me to my point. Friends, loved ones, kind strangers: We must do everything in our power to protect The Other Two, a perfect comedy series. It was renewed and has been shooting Season 3, but, as this week taught us, that means nothing! Let us join hands in spirit and faith. Let us pray: "Our Molly Shannon, who art in Heaven…" And don't forget to say the "Hail Mary (Katherine Gallagher)." These are scary times. The thought of losing The Other Two might be the scariest thing about them. |
The Collaboration of the Century |
It's the time of year when all kinds of organizations are announcing the nominees and honorees of their annual awards. Among them was the Boston Society of Film Critics, which made waves with the announcement that its selection for Best Ensemble this year was a tie. One winner is Women Talking, which is a predictable, worthy choice. The other: Jackass Forever.
This is the kind of delightful, borderline-camp, but also completely justified left-field choice that we love. (More daring would have been to select Johnny Knoxville and his band of bruised stunt idiots on their own.) Chief among those who are giddy about this decision are Women Talking writer-director Sarah Polley and, according to her, the film's cast. She encapsulated her enthusiasm in the perfect tweet:
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The revelation this week that Paul Mescal, Joe Alwyn, and Andrew Scott have a group text chat with each other that is called "The Tortured Men Club" is too intensely sexually appealing that, to protect myself, I can't allow myself to fully process it. |
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Avatar: Way of the Water: I think this is one of those "resistance is futile" situations. (Now in theaters) Emily in Paris: See above. (Wed. on Netflix) I Hate Suzie: It's one of those shows that epitomizes "underrated gem." I'm so glad it got a Season 2. (Thurs. on HBO Max)
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| Kindred: A trailblazing sci-fi masterpiece gets a terrible series adaptation. (Now on Hulu) National Treasure: Edge of Tomorrow: You expect me to care about a National Treasure sequel series that doesn't have Nicolas Cage? (Now on Disney+)
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