Twisters and what's making us happy
Update: 2024-07-193
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Twister was one of the biggest disaster movies of the '90s. Now, it's finally got a sequel — one with an all-new cast, state-of-the-art effects, and a whole lot of tornadoes. The new film stars Glen Powell and Daisy Edgar-Jones as rival storm-chasers who have a habit of running into tornadoes while everyone else is fleeing. Twisters was directed by Lee Isaac Chung, who also directed the Oscar-nominated Minari.
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00:00:00
Christian Nationalists want to turn America into a theocracy, a government under biblical rule.
00:00:07
If they gain more power, it could mean fewer rights for you.
00:00:11
I'm Heath Drosen, and on the new season of Extremely American, I'll take you inside the movement.
00:00:18
Listen to Extremely American, from Boise State Public Radio, part of the NPR Network.
00:00:25
Twister was one of the biggest disaster movies of the 90s.
00:00:32
Now it's finally got a sequel, one with an all-new cast state-of-the-art effects, and a whole lot of tornadoes.
00:00:40
The new film stars Glenn Powell and Daisy Edgar Jones as rival storm chasers who have a habit of running into tornadoes while everyone else is fleeing.
00:00:50
I'm Linda Holmes.
00:00:51
And I'm Stephen Thompson.
00:00:52
Today we are talking about Twisters on Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR.
00:00:57
Joining us today is NPR producer Mark Rivers.
00:01:00
Hey Mark.
00:01:01
Hey Stephen, good to see you guys.
00:01:02
Also with us is writer Shay Vassar.
00:01:04
Welcome back Shay.
00:01:05
Thanks for having me.
00:01:07
It is great to have you both.
00:01:08
So ordinarily, when we talk about sequels, we have to run down the plot and cast of the original.
00:01:15
But in this case, the only strong connective thread between Twister and Twisters is that both films are about people who chase tornadoes in the hope of studying them.
00:01:26
In Twisters, we meet two rival teams of storm chasers.
00:01:29
One is polished and science-driven and led in part by Havi played by Anthony Ramos.
00:01:34
Havi recruits his former colleague Kate, played by Daisy Edgar Jones to join them.
00:01:39
The two of them survived a deadly tornado together years earlier, but the incident scarred her.
00:01:45
Then there's a group of rowdy YouTubers who seek thrills in attention in equal measure.
00:01:50
They're led by Tyler, played by Glenn Powell, because the law apparently dictates that every movie released this year has to have Glenn Powell in it.
00:01:57
You didn't say which way we were going yet.
00:01:59
Now from what I gather, West, we double our chances.
00:02:02
East?
00:02:03
Well, it's high risk.
00:02:05
I reward.
00:02:06
Twisters was directed by Lee Isaac Chung, who also did the much quieter, heavily Oscar-nominated Minari a few years back.
00:02:13
The film is in theaters now Shea Vassar.
00:02:15
I'm going to start with you.
00:02:17
What did you think of Twisters?
00:02:19
I actually had a really fun time.
00:02:20
I also don't know if I went in expecting a ton just because let's be real.
00:02:25
The only summer blockbusters we really get these days are usually superhero.
00:02:29
And those aren't really my jam.
00:02:31
I think I was expecting something a little bad.
00:02:35
So maybe what I'm looking for.
00:02:38
Right.
00:02:39
I really think ended up being a really fun time.
00:02:44
I also rewatched the original about two weeks ago.
00:02:49
And then I realized I had never seen the whole thing.
00:02:51
So it's like one of those things I'd only seen on reruns, late night, flip and channels.
00:02:56
So watching that for the first time, I really think I got the attitude of the original, which is melodramatic.
00:03:04
And there's just a lot more commentary on like the romance and like the interpersonal.
00:03:09
And I thought this film did something similar with the interpersonal and trying to make something bigger of the relationships and the friendships than it probably needed to.
00:03:19
But I'm all for a little bit of melodrama.
00:03:21
I don't know.
00:03:22
I really had a good time.
00:03:23
Nice.
00:03:24
How about you, Linda?
00:03:25
So disaster movies are inherently sort of silly most of the time.
00:03:30
And this is a very silly movie in several different ways.
00:03:34
It is not realistic.
00:03:36
I think that many of these things would actually happen.
00:03:40
However, just as the original is what I would call silly fun, I thought this was also silly fun.
00:03:47
Is it like the first one in that really it's sort of a workplace piece about like people hanging out at work?
00:03:53
The first one has this extraordinary team that includes Phil Pseymour Hoffman and Joey Slotnik and all these other folks, including Todd Field who by the way is the director of tar from yes,
00:04:05
he's come a long way.
00:04:06
He's also a storm chaser in the first twister.
00:04:09
This one is similar.
00:04:10
It has a couple of different teams that are running around.
00:04:14
I found it to be really fun in that way.
00:04:16
And yeah, I mean listen, I had a really good time.
00:04:19
I was a little skeptical at the beginning.
00:04:22
But by the end, I was like, yeah, get that tornado.
00:04:25
And you know, person versus nature, it's a classic.
00:04:30
Just as Shay said, I had a great time.
00:04:32
Okay.
00:04:33
How about you Mark?
00:04:34
So I don't want to bring the mood down here guys.
00:04:36
But say you mentioned superhero movies.
00:04:38
I think the kind of era of superhero movies is kind of in decline.
00:04:41
And I think after kind of getting through that long dark cold that was a superhero era, we're kind of in need of any sort of non superhero entertainment.
00:04:50
And I think we've kind of lowered our standards here.
00:04:53
When I came out of this, I said, I suppose it was a movie, you know, what?
00:04:57
I think what the first fister did so well is that it knew that this premise was inherently absurd.
00:05:03
And I think one of the worst things that a lot of American movies or a lot of American entertainment tend to do now is they try to bring a level of seriousness into what is inherently absurd premise.
00:05:14
The main character played by Daisy Eiger Jones, you know, suffocates tragedy in the beginning.
00:05:18
And you kind of it's just another one of these trauma plots.
00:05:20
But it's very one.
00:05:21
No, it's very perfunctory.
00:05:23
And I noticed that the story was credited to Joseph Kaczynski.
00:05:26
He directed Top Gun Maverick.
00:05:28
So we know how good like entertainment could be from out of Hollywood.
00:05:33
I think we know what it looks like when actors are really engaged in the material.
00:05:37
When the action scenes actually seem thought through and marry practical and CGI in a way that actually involves you instead of kind of looking like a rehash of countless spectacles we've seen in the past.
00:05:47
And this movie to me just felt so perfunctory.
00:05:49
I think any of the cast members you think you could have taken away their dialogue and just put signs about their head just kind of saying what's function they served.
00:05:56
This is the hipster girl.
00:05:57
This is the hot shot.
00:05:58
This is the loudmouth camera guy.
00:06:00
So I just don't see how any of that is a problem.
00:06:02
Right.
00:06:03
It kind of movie works.
00:06:04
All the stuff is just movies.
00:06:06
Listen, and this is coming from somebody who deeply believes in Glenn Powell.
00:06:10
I think he is one of the few American actors we have who chooses roles that actually fit in what he can do.
00:06:15
But I was unmoved and unentertained by this one.
00:06:19
I think if you've seen the first twister, there are only so many times you can escape a twister before I guess repetitive.
00:06:24
Can I just say I am from Oklahoma?
00:06:27
Yeah, you can escape a twister quite a few times while I do believe that you have to divorce yourself from complete reality.
00:06:35
Of course.
00:06:36
Even when I called my dad afterwards, because I think this has all the elements to make a fantastic dad film.
00:06:42
So I told him that he will love this movie.
00:06:44
But with him being a chemical engineer, he was going to have to divorce himself from scientific fact.
00:06:51
Oh my gosh, especially because he knows Oklahoma.
00:06:54
Right.
00:06:54
But also there is a lot of independent storm chasers that YouTube and they build on that.
00:07:03
I mean, I've definitely heard of them.
00:07:05
I've watched some of their things.
00:07:07
And tornadoes are really scary.
00:07:09
So I will throw that in there, not saying that Mark, you're totally wrong, but like real tornadoes scary.
00:07:14
CGI tornadoes a little less scary.
00:07:16
Okay, point, point accepted.
00:07:18
Before I sort of say what I think about the movie, I have to ask Shay, you are from Oklahoma.
00:07:23
Did you find that people in Oklahoma had no idea what to do in the case of a tornado?
00:07:30
Because every time a tornado hit, it's like they never seen a tornado before.
00:07:34
Some town in Oklahoma, people will be like, what is that?
00:07:36
What do I do?
00:07:37
Should I get in my car?
00:07:39
Should I get in my car?
00:07:40
It did not seem like a good representation of Oklahoma at all.
00:07:43
Okay, so the thing about Oklahoma is that a lot of times when we get tornado watch, it's like, oh, whatever.
00:07:49
We'll just keep doing our thing.
00:07:50
Like we don't care.
00:07:51
Oh, it's human.
00:07:52
Exactly.
00:07:53
It's human.
00:07:54
It might storm whatever.
00:07:56
Tornado warning.
00:07:57
It means, oh, let's go look for it.
00:08:00
So we'll stand in our front yard and wait for it.
00:08:03
But a lot of people also have their own storm shelters.
00:08:06
So if it does get really bad, they have safety below ground.
00:08:10
I grew up with one.
00:08:11
We never had to use it.
00:08:13
But it was something that like I grew up that was normal for me.
00:08:16
Okay, so twisters not accurate.
00:08:18
We can agree on that.
00:08:19
Right.
00:08:20
Definitely.
00:08:20
I found it to be a sort of unrelenting, fun, very action-driven.
00:08:26
I might have shaved one tornado out of it.
00:08:30
It felt a little deadening after a while.
00:08:32
Too many tornadoes in the tornado movie.
00:08:35
Too many tornadoes in the tornado.
00:08:36
I mean, too many twisters and twisters.
00:08:38
I guess repetitive.
00:08:39
It does feel a little repetitive after a while.
00:08:42
But on balance, I got a big kick out of it.
00:08:44
You know, I thought having Lee Isaac Chung will get to Lee Isaac Chung in a minute.
00:08:49
But like having the director of Minari direct a disaster movie, one of the things I went into this really wondering is like, how does Lee Isaac Chung get his directorial voice into this film?
00:09:00
And I think one way that he does that is that it's beautifully shot.
00:09:05
He understands this terrain.
00:09:07
He's from this area.
00:09:08
He loves to shoot a person against a vista.
00:09:11
And I did think it was gorgeous to look at.
00:09:14
And that is part of the fun of it as well.
00:09:17
Yeah, I thought it was too.
00:09:18
And I want to go back to what Mark said about Glenn Powell because I have been kind of semi-skeptical of Glenn Powell, I think, in the sense that when you first see him in this movie,
00:09:30
I just thought like, oh man, this is a lot for me because I don't see human being.
00:09:36
I just see like teeth like just like smile face like.
00:09:40
And I get it.
00:09:41
But it's so much that I kind of feel like she's okay.
00:09:46
Linda, he's the only person doing anything in the movie.
00:09:50
Poor Daisy.
00:09:51
I don't agree with that.
00:09:52
But I I think as the film goes on, I felt, you know, there's a moment when they kind of start to when he and Daisy Edgar Jones kind of start to become friends and he comes to kind of see her in this motel room where they're staying.
00:10:06
When he was at the door and they were talking, I kind of thought like, okay, yes, this is why I like him is that when you get all of that like teeth, teeth, teeth, then it can kind of downshift a little into somebody who actually feels like a person.
00:10:20
I think the sequence where they go and they are visiting her mother who was played by the great and good moraternity.
00:10:27
I really liked that section.
00:10:29
I think more tyranny is is very funny, although it was not like I sort of needed her to do a little bit of a take toward her daughter being like, oh my goodness, who is this man?
00:10:39
A little bit more because I think many mothers would do a little bit more of, you know, heavens, you know, that kind of thing.
00:10:47
But I did ultimately really enjoy it.
00:10:50
And Twister is also a trauma plot.
00:10:52
She also has a terrible traumatizing experience with a tornado that becomes the basis of her eye-hate tornadoes.
00:11:01
She's Indiana Jones in the snake.
00:11:03
But I think there's a difference to the first one than that.
00:11:05
Even though Helen Hunt does suffer that trauma, she kind of flip it like it turns her into a wild card.
00:11:10
Like she turns her into a kind of Twister nut.
00:11:12
Well, yeah, I'm not saying it's the same exact thing, but it also makes her rather than make it's true that rather than making her sort of decide.
00:11:19
I don't want to deal with this anymore.
00:11:21
It does make her more like, you know, I'm going to go and punch tornadoes.
00:11:25
But I think both work.
00:11:28
I like David Koran sweat, poor, poor Koran sweat, you know, he's an extremely good looking dude who seems to always play either horrible people or silly people.
00:11:41
I kind of like where they go with him.
00:11:43
Yeah, I mean Linda speaking about the cast like we talked about the first Twister and how it had memorable presences.
00:11:48
And you think about what that movie was doing.
00:11:51
Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton mess each other's freak if you will.
00:11:55
This new Twister less spark intention.
00:11:57
I feel like in the cast.
00:11:58
I think Anthony Ramos plays a hobby, an old friend of Daisy's character.
00:12:03
We know what kind of spark he can bring to the screen.
00:12:05
He was he was really good in the heights.
00:12:06
And I just felt like here, he looked over and saw what Glen Powell was doing and just knew he was not the star of this movie.
00:12:12
And just his line deliveries just felt like first table read.
00:12:16
I think Glen Powell, he is really good at what he does.
00:12:20
And he knows that the camera loves him.
00:12:21
And that's one thing this movie does well, I think, is kind of just soak in the Glen paleness of this performance.
00:12:28
And to me, you know, I want to talk about other members of this cast.
00:12:31
But when I remember the movie, I'm only remembering Glen Powell.
00:12:34
I want to defend some of the other cast of this film.
00:12:36
I think there are a few like kind of bit parts that stood out to me.
00:12:39
I'm a music guy.
00:12:40
So seeing Tundey at a bimpe, weird, but fun to see.
00:12:44
He was he was in Rachel getting married and was really good in that years and years.
00:12:48
Yeah.
00:12:49
And I got to say he has real charisma and real charm.
00:12:53
And I kept finding myself kind of rooting for that character to be okay.
00:12:58
And I should point out when we're looking for connective threads to the original twister, James Paxton, the son of Bill Paxton, pops up in kind of a cameo as a disgruntled motel guest.
00:13:11
And that felt like I was looking for Easter eggs and looking for little nods.
00:13:15
Listen, is it great?
00:13:17
No, did I have a great time?
00:13:19
Yes, they did.
00:13:20
Well, and I think is it great?
00:13:22
No, I had a great time.
00:13:23
Yes.
00:13:23
Is kind of the story of Twister.
00:13:25
You know, you guys mentioned Lee Isaac Chang, who directed Meenery.
00:13:28
He's kind of part of this pipeline that we've had recently in Hollywood where you have these indie darlings that make this small, personable drama and then kind of gets sucked into the IP vortex,
00:13:39
if you will.
00:13:40
And I think say for a couple of beautiful shots that I think of one in the beginnings, kind of a vocative shot again with these younger Jones kind of framed against the evening sky.
00:13:49
I think any director from Hollywood could have directed most of that movie.
00:13:52
It just felt, it felt like a mercenary job.
00:13:55
I will say I think where I see it as someone who is also from the area, I'm more from where the Isaac Chang is from as well.
00:14:02
That border right by Arkansas and Oklahoma.
00:14:05
I will say I think the color scheme was something that I found really relatable.
00:14:11
And when reading about how he was really inspired to have a little bit more of the muted, because like the wheat and the way that that golden wheat came in and the different colors of the sky and then the way that that reflected onto the clothes that they wore,
00:14:26
I thought that's where I saw a very personal effect, which maybe because I am local, I'm able to pick up on, but I also don't know if that's like spectacularly different.
00:14:36
I don't know if I would say another director wouldn't come up with the idea to like, oh, let's put Glenn Powell in a shirt.
00:14:43
That's the same color that a scene ago we showed the red dirt.
00:14:46
I was a little nostalgic for like my childhood and like knowing that being a younger kid from that area, I would so love to see my place on screen in this way.
00:14:58
And another thing that I thought about a lot when I was watching this was kind of it has a sense of the area and the threat that it's under.
00:15:09
I think the first one was more I think about tornadoes as a fascinating thing for scientists and certainly as a destructive thing right because Helen Hunt has had that experience.
00:15:21
But I think this one more contextualizes tornadoes as something that terrorizes a population of areas that tend to be very hard hit.
00:15:30
And it was interesting to me because there was a little story that went around saying, well, you know, they don't say climate change in this movie and it's because, you know, he didn't want, you know, and then they asked the director and said,
00:15:41
oh, I didn't really want it to be a message movie and people are like, oh, you should be talking about climate change.
00:15:45
The people may not say, this is climate change, but there is repeated discussion of these are getting worse and worse.
00:15:52
There are more storms.
00:15:55
They are stronger.
00:15:57
The more a tyranny character makes that point.
00:16:00
They seem to be worse every year.
00:16:01
And to me, there's a whole sense that hangs over the movie that this research has taken on increased importance because these storms are such a threat to people.
00:16:13
There's also a kind of a side story that becomes about the way that predatory companies swoop in and kind of try to take advantage of people who are hit by disasters.
00:16:25
Those kinds of things did make it to me something that the threat of tornadoes is not just like tornadoes are exciting or tornadoes are dangerous to storm chasers.
00:16:34
But I think it has a little bit more of a global sense of the community and how the communities are affected, which I do think is maybe a little bit of a liaizak chung kind of thing that he maybe is a little more able to bring to it.
00:16:47
It gestures at a topicality in that way, but it kind of felt from me kind of torn.
00:16:51
I feel like I was being tugged different ways at certain points.
00:16:54
How much is it going to focus on Glenn Powell and his YouTube storm chasers?
00:16:58
It's complex, it's complex.
00:17:00
How much is it going to focus on Daisy as her Edgar Jones kind of finding herself again and being able to overcome this trauma?
00:17:08
And how much is it going to focus on this predatory company?
00:17:10
It sometimes felt like it didn't know which thing it wanted to focus on more.
00:17:14
And I want to defend, I want to defend this movie on one other front.
00:17:18
We've kind of spoken to this a few different ways of liaizak chung and what he's bringing to this film.
00:17:22
And one thing I think he is bringing to this film is a little more subtlety than I would have expected from a tornado based disaster movie.
00:17:31
This film really could have very easily like this particularly gruesome tornado based death is bound to befall this villain.
00:17:42
And the first one does that, the first one does that.
00:17:45
And this one I think pretty pointedly doesn't.
00:17:48
And I appreciated that.
00:17:50
I appreciated that note of subtlety.
00:17:52
One last question that I wanted to get into.
00:17:54
We've talked about this movie for a while now without mentioning the soundtrack.
00:18:00
This film as much as any movie I've seen since Barbie really incorporates a ton of original music and really like like feels like a throwback to a classic era of action movies that really like pauses to give you tons and tons and tons of music.
00:18:21
What did you think of the music in this film?
00:18:24
Very on the nose.
00:18:25
Yeah.
00:18:25
A lot of songs about wins and storms.
00:18:28
And Oklahoma?
00:18:28
Yeah.
00:18:29
This is a moment when Daisy Ager Jones characters were turning home and I swear the song was just like there's no place like Oklahoma on the soundtrack.
00:18:36
It was definitely commenting on the narrative for sure.
00:18:39
I will say too.
00:18:40
I wanted to bring up.
00:18:41
It was cool to see local musicians from Oklahoma also get a chance to be in the film and end up on the soundtracks.
00:18:50
One of them is Ken Palmeroy.
00:18:52
She's a Cherokee musician and she has like a small cameo in the film.
00:18:56
And I was like, wait, I follow her on Instagram.
00:18:58
So I thought that was cool.
00:19:00
I was like, oh, fellow Cherokee like on the screen.
00:19:03
But that was also adds to my one of my biggest compliances.
00:19:07
Well, the cast was very diverse.
00:19:09
You know, Oklahoma has one of the largest native populations, especially for the size of the state.
00:19:15
And if you know the history of Oklahoma, there's a very sad reason why that is.
00:19:19
But we'll go into that.
00:19:21
But I was kind of sad that like none of the side characters were a native actor.
00:19:25
Like and it's not because any of the side characters did bad and I would necessarily replace them.
00:19:30
But it's like, we are in this moment of like native storytelling.
00:19:33
And there's tons of actors and it's like, you couldn't find one in Oklahoma.
00:19:38
Like there's there's so many.
00:19:39
Like I could tell you 10 right now.
00:19:42
And there's a woman that you see who's cleaning up after one of the storms.
00:19:46
I saw her, but I see what you're saying about the actual like characters, you know.
00:19:51
So seeing even a little bit of background actors that were very legitimate to who you would see, especially because those who are affected by tornadoes and like maybe don't have a storm shelter or don't have the infrastructure to stay safe are usually going to be your underrepresented communities.
00:20:08
So that was very realistic.
00:20:10
So again, I think that's where some of that leizing tongue like subtlety comes in.
00:20:15
But yeah, no.
00:20:16
So I wanted to just shout out Ken and I'm excited for the soundtrack, which comes out today.
00:20:21
It is a very overstuffed soundtrack.
00:20:24
Get ready to spend hours with it.
00:20:25
It's 29 songs.
00:20:27
We need to go back to the to the time when movie soundtracks were just as popular as the movies themselves.
00:20:32
Sometimes even more popular.
00:20:33
We need to go back to that era.
00:20:34
Agreed.
00:20:35
I endorse it.
00:20:35
Yeah.
00:20:36
Me too.
00:20:36
All right.
00:20:37
We want to know what you think about Twisters.
00:20:39
Find us on Facebook at facebook.com/pch.
00:20:43
Up next, what is making us happy this week?
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00:21:06
It's a high stakes election year.
00:21:09
So it's not enough to just follow along.
00:21:11
You need to understand what's happening so you are fully informed on November.
00:21:16
Every weekday on the Empire Politics Podcast, our political reporters break down important stories and back stories from the campaign trail.
00:21:24
Do you understand why it matters to you?
00:21:27
Listen to the Empire Politics Podcast wherever you get your podcasts.
00:21:30
Now it's time for our favorite segment of this week and every week.
00:21:36
What is making us happy this week?
00:21:38
Shea Vassar.
00:21:39
What's making you happy this week?
00:21:40
So I got to say the WMBA.
00:21:43
I am loving the fact that the WMBA is finally getting her honor.
00:21:49
I've been an NBA fan for a while but it actually wasn't until last season because of the NCAA fever with the specifically on the women's side.
00:22:00
I was like, you know what?
00:22:01
I need to be more into the WMBA and so I had to do the most native thing ever and I picked the Connecticut Sun, which if you are a sports nerd like me, you know that they were the first professional sports team to ever be owned by a tribe.
00:22:16
They are owned by the Mohican.
00:22:17
It's also not a bad team to choose.
00:22:19
They have one of the best records in the league.
00:22:21
I'm such a big fan of Dishonet Carrington.
00:22:24
I love watching their stuff.
00:22:26
This has been long overdue and while the news tries to put certain players against each other, I don't think that's really happening in the league.
00:22:34
I wonder who you could possibly be talking about.
00:22:36
Oh my gosh, who knows.
00:22:38
But it's like, you know, I actually got to go to the Liberty game when the sky was in town in in Brooklyn and just seeing Angel Reese and seeing her play.
00:22:47
And when she left the game, even though the Liberty one, you know, the whole arena just started cheering for her.
00:22:54
And that's the kind of thing with women's sports.
00:22:56
I think it's so different than the masculine competitiveness is like, they're competitive.
00:23:01
They're great players.
00:23:02
They are aggressive on the court, but they are also very much just champions in this world.
00:23:10
I'm loving the WNBA.
00:23:11
And if you're not watching, you're you're missing out on some of the best athletes.
00:23:15
Yeah, co-signing what Shay said completely.
00:23:17
I made it to a mystics game for the first time this season and had an absolute blast.
00:23:21
Thank you, Shay Vassar, Mark Rivers.
00:23:23
What's making you happy this week?
00:23:25
So it's making me happy this week.
00:23:26
It's the half-off sale at Barnes and Noble's for the Criterion Collection.
00:23:30
This is kind of an annual cinephile holiday, if you will, but those who don't know, the Criterion Collection is this American home video company that focuses and distributes,
00:23:41
you know, classic and contemporary films.
00:23:43
And I think one of the great things about it is that in a time when, you know, streamers can just erase movies or shows from their streaming services, that physical media is just so important.
00:23:54
Directors like Barry Jenkins have likened the Criterion Collection to the Library of Congress.
00:23:58
You know, so if your movie gets in there, it's kind of like constant created as this important work of art.
00:24:02
And one of the great things about the Criterion Collection is that it has movies like Seven Samurai or Raging Bull of the Classics, but also lesser known movies, like Victims of Sin, this 1950s melodrama from Mexico,
00:24:13
or Marquitla Zerovo, which is this check film, and these movies feel like discovering new worlds.
00:24:18
It can also give second lives to movies or work that didn't really get a lot of attention when it came out.
00:24:22
Recently, Barry Jenkins is the Underground Railroad, which is one of the best things that has ever been put on TV, just FYI.
00:24:28
So this month, my make account has been crying, but my heart is full.
00:24:31
So that's the Criterion Collection half-off sale.
00:24:33
I've been really enjoying that.
00:24:35
Yeah, I know our co-host, Aisha Harris, has a budget line item for the sale comparable to my budget line item for my car.
00:24:43
All right, thank you, Mark Rivers.
00:24:45
Linda Holmes, what's making you happy this week, buddy?
00:24:48
What is making me happy is the novel The God of the Woods by Liz Moore, which it's set in 1975, and there is a 13-year-old who is attending sleep over camp,
00:24:59
and she goes missing.
00:25:00
And so there's this search for her.
00:25:03
And then she is the daughter of this very wealthy family that has kind of a compound that's attached to the camp, because it turns out that her brother,
00:25:15
her older brother, also went missing and was never found.
00:25:18
So now the family has been hit with these two tragedies or these two like emergencies, I guess I would say.
00:25:25
But it is just a beautifully written book that is exciting and tense, but also wonderful to read.
00:25:34
I have read some thrillers recently that have really, I think, mucked up their endings.
00:25:40
And the tricky thing about a mystery or a thriller is if the ending is really bad and you're really mad, it can wreck the whole book.
00:25:48
This is one where I think the resolutions to all the various plot threads are all really effective, and I was happy with all of them.
00:25:56
So what's making me happy this week is The God of the Woods by Liz Moore.
00:26:01
Thank you, Linda Holmes.
00:26:03
What's making me happy is also in the neighborhood of sports.
00:26:07
The day that this episode drops, I will be going to see a Washington Nationals game that will culminate in a concert by the great and good Carly Rae Jepsen.
00:26:15
That is making me happy and how I've been pre-gaming for this experience is I have gone on YouTube and watched footage of Carly Rae Jepsen throwing one of the worst ceremonial first pitches that has ever been thrown in the history of baseball.
00:26:31
This then sent me down a wonderful rabbit hole of various celebrities attempting to throw first pitches and biffing it horribly.
00:26:39
If you watch Carly Rae Jepsen, you can actually scout what she does wrong in the throw.
00:26:44
She holds on to the ball too long and it kind of rolls off her fingers and so she manages to throw it far to the left and straight down.
00:26:54
It is very, very, very funny.
00:26:57
It's the kind of mishap that would 100% befall me if I were asked to throw out a ceremonial first pitch.
00:27:04
And it is the perfect way for a celebrity to eat it on national television because it doesn't actually hurt anybody.
00:27:13
Right.
00:27:14
It didn't hurt Carly Rae Jepsen's reputation.
00:27:16
It didn't hurt Carly Rae Jepsen's career.
00:27:18
It's just a funny thing that happened.
00:27:20
You see her laughing her head off at how badly it goes.
00:27:24
This is the kind of medicine that I needed.
00:27:27
It's been very fun.
00:27:28
Cannot wait to see Carly Rae Jepsen at the national scheme.
00:27:30
I really hope they have her throw out the first pitch.
00:27:33
What a Friday night.
00:27:34
That just like is so perfect.
00:27:36
Cannot wait.
00:27:37
That is what is making me happy this week.
00:27:39
If you want links for what we recommended plus some other recommendations, sign up for our newsletter at npr.org/popculturenewsletter.
00:27:46
That brings us to the end of our show, Shay Vassar, Mark Rivers, Linda Holmes.
00:27:50
Thanks so much for being here.
00:27:52
Thank you.
00:27:52
It's been so much fun.
00:27:54
Thanks, Steven.
00:27:55
This episode was produced by Liz Metzger, Ramell Wood and Huff Safatema, and edited by Mike Katzif and Jessica Reedy.
00:28:01
Hello, Camin provides our theme music.
00:28:03
Thank you for listening to "Pop Culture Happy Hour" from NPR.
00:28:06
I'm Steven Thompson and we will see you all next week.
00:28:29