Awards Picks, Assassins, Vikings, Cheerleaders and More …
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“Newsletters are all alike, except for the Wag, which is spectacularly brilliant in its own way.”—Leo Tolstoy
Dear Wags,
Do you remember where you were in 1989? Perhaps you weren’t even born, or learning to toddle on chubby legs, or sulking in your bunk bed, listening to Poison’s Every Rose Has Its Thorn. The Wag-in-Chief was a kid in Britain when the Berlin Wall tumbled down. It would have been easy to hop on a plane during the school break and witness history. But it was also terribly cold, so that softie went to Minorca instead. Meanwhile, a KGB officer named Vladimir Putin was in a Dresden courtyard, burning documents as an empire fell. Most people who recall those heady days were giddy about the future. That fellow was not.
This neatly illustrates the difference between the pampered West and the troubled corner of the world making headlines today. We are terrible at comprehending life outside of our gauzy distractions, but ugly history, with its simmering grudges and bloody vendettas, has a way of crashing in. Before we get to the business of delighting you, a gentle reminder to pay attention. Wag serves up culture: high, medium, and deliciously low, not so you become a trivial person, but to insure you stay an interesting and informed one. Hence, the list of books about Ukraine to read (or listen to) we sent out earlier this week. You can have fun, and think serious thoughts, too. No matter what your device tells you, it’s better to engage with the reality than run away from it.
Yours ever,
Do not, whatever you do, call the Screen Actor’s Guild Awards “the Sags,” or “the Saggies.” It drives them crazy. This year’s ceremony will be the first opportunity to see most award nominees in the same room together! Did you just burst into flames? We didn’t think so. Wag supports SAG-AFTRA because actors need a good union (also, they need to stop checking themselves out in every reflective surface they pass, but that’s another story). Anyhoo, here’s what we think will go down. —Marcello Rubini
Motion Picture Cast: The category feels wonky without The Power of the Dog. Given that, we think Don’t Look Up will prevail.
Male Actor: Hail Will Smith (King Richard). Feels inevitable.
Female Actor: Crazy tight, but Luuucy! Nicole Kidman (Being the Ricardos) has loads of good will. Never count out Olivia Colman (The Lost Daughter).
Supporting Male Actor: The safe bet is Kodi Smit-McPhee (The Power of the Dog). Rookie of the Year!
Supporting Female Actor: The unstoppable Ariana DuBose (West Side Story). But we still see a tiny window for Kirsten Dunst, (Power of the Dog).
Ensemble, Drama Series: It’s Succession vs. Squid Game, and we’re going with the real game players.
Male Actor, Drama Series: Did you say Actor? Jeremy Strong (Succession). Take that, New Yorker!
Female Actor Drama Series: Ginger snap Sarah Snook (Succession). Shiv needs this boost!
Ensemble, Comedy Series: The inevitable Ted Lasso (underdog: Only Murders in the Building, because it was adorable).
Male Actor, Comedy Series: The equally inevitable Jason Sudeikis (Ted Lasso). Backlash is boring.
Female Actor, Comedy Series: Sizzling Jean Smart (Hacks). She was even darker than a real standup comedian (yikes).
Male Actor, TV Movie/Limited Series: Gruff, grand Michael Keaton, (Dopesick). He carried a sad story on broad shoulders.
Female Actor, TV Movie/Limited Series: Awards magnet Kate Winslet (Mare of Easttown). A great actress can make you love her even when she’s wearing a flannel shirt purchased at WaWa.
Stunt Ensemble, Movie: We are not in a position to evaluate stunts, but Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings sounds like a picture where they were wicked hard.
Stunt Ensemble, TV: Those poor slobs in gym suits deserve something, so we say Squid Game!
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Series
Killing Eve (BBC America). You have strayed from Killing Eve, busy as you are with a million new things being streamed. What a knife in the heart (or stiletto in the eyeball) to this black comedy about assassins! It’s the final, stylish season, and Sandra Oh, Jodie Comer, and Fiona Shaw are back and murderous as ever. People who make quips after an arsenic poisoning are delightful.
Doc Series
Race: Bubba Wallace (Netflix). Bubba Wallace has been called Nascar’s Charley Pride, which is to say that he’s one of the few Black people in a good ol’ boy sport. When he began speaking out against racial injustice in 2020, he became a national figure. Now he’s on the cusp of superstardom — not an easy place to be.
Proper Piss-Up
Vikings: Valhalla (Netflix). Oh, the Vikings, with their longships, pillaging and man buns! They were bloodthirsty, yet hot, in a dirty indie band sort of way. This spinoff is set 100 years after the original gory/sexy series, which, lucky for you, means we’re still in an era of frontal nudity and disemboweling. Leif Erickson is in it, and that’s like, Viking A-list.
Reinvention
Joe vs. Carole (Peacock). What was the worst part of the pandemic? Social isolation, scary variants, the escalation of a mindless culture war? Clearly, the popularity of Tiger King, which introduced the world to Joe Exotic and Carole Baskin, two icky bizarros in a blood feud. But John Cameron Mitchell and Kate McKinnon as the yin and yang of roadside zoos? Now that’s entertainment. —George Wombwell
Nonfiction
What does American business not understand about China? Well, everything. Most especially, that naïveté and greed are ruthlessly outclassed by those who see entertainment as a weapon in a bigger game. In Red Carpet: Hollywood China, and the Global Battle for Cultural Supremacy, the Wall Street Journal’s Erich Schwartzel charts Hollywood’s missteps and compromises in China, which is positioning itself as an alternate dream factory for the audiences of the world.
Fiction
Alice toggles between realms — one of living, thinking people and a descending oblivion of dementia. But there is a third place where she thrives, and that’s a lap lane in her public pool. When a crack appears at the bottom of that refuge, she’s forced to confront a painful past, and lean on an estranged daughter. Julie Otsuka’s The Swimmers is an elegant and deeply moving story of loss. — Alice Howland
The Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders are a 50-year Texas institution, a funhouse mirror reflection of American womanhood, and a global symbol of cheesecake. They’ve shipped off on the Love Boat, appeared in Playboy, and starred in their own reality series. In America’s Girls, Whip-smart Sarah Hepola tells the story of the legendary squad, who shimmied into the national consciousness alongside second wave feminism and sexual liberation. But for all the posters they sold, they never got much respect. This will make you cheer for them. — Laura Cole
Shovels and Rope (South Carolina Americana duo Michael Trent and Cary Ann Hearst) bring an earthy quality to everything they do. But Happy Birthday Who, a ballad about homelessness, takes grit to a new level. I wasn’t born to be anything/When People pass me they look at the ground/This is just temporary/Since the hospital closed down. Spare and painful, it already sounds like a great old folk song.
Do you own a caftan and a pair of Foster Grants? Are you sitting poolside in Antibes, sipping something cool? If not, Dry by New York retro soul queen Kendra Morris will jet you to that place. Anywhere but here is fine/To look for love, gotta taste the wine, she sings. We’ll have what she’s having. —Fayette Pinkney
Black History Movie Month concludes with a Melvin Van Peebles’ Watermelon Man (1970), a simple comedy and radical critique of race relations. Peebles was a playwright and filmmaker in France but unknown in his home country when he was tapped to develop Herman Raucher’s screenplay. Loosely based on Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis, the plot follows Jeff Gerber (Godfrey Cambridge) a racist insurance salesman who wakes up one day to discover he has turned Black. The experience exposes him not just to overt racism, but the hypocrisy of liberal whites, including his own wife (Estelle Parsons). Columbia Pictures gave Peebles just 22 days to shoot the movie; he finished the project a day early. The picture was a critical and box office hit, but the filmmaker, who pushed to bring a political edge to the plot, turned down a three-picture deal to make the independent movie Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song. Peebles never worked inside the Hollywood system again. Instead, he blazed his own trail, influencing a new generation of directors. His most mainstream effort remains a strikingly original. — Don Masters
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CultureWag celebrates culture—high, medium, and deliciously low. It’s an essential guide to the mediaverse, cutting through a cluttered landscape and serving up smart, funny recommendations to the most hooked-in audience in the galaxy. If somebody forwarded you this issue, consider it a coveted invitation and RSVP “subscribe.” You’ll be part of the smartest set in Hollywood, Gstaad, Biarritz and Booger Hole, West Virginia.
“I’m sometimes bored by people, but never by the Wag.” — Nancy Mitford
September 1, 2024
