What we'll be listening to, watching, and reading to sate our pop culture needs.
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The indie movie we’ve been waiting for, a new Lianne La Havas record, a can’t-put-it-down mystery, and ample time with two sets of our favorite pop culture besties. This weekend RULES.
A movie that realistically treats a teen girl’s sexuality? We’re there. Based on Phoebe Gloeckner’s graphic novel of the same name, Diary of a Teenage Girl, marking the directorial debut of Marielle Heller, follows 15-year-old Minnie Goetz (Bel Powley) in late-’70s San Francisco through all the angst, creative discovery, and sexual tension of those formative years. Kristen Wiig plays Minnie’s mom and Alexander Skarsgård plays her mom’s boyfriend and Minnie’s furtive lover making this a damn near perfect film.
Our favorite real-life best friends, Julie Klausner and Billy Eichner—two hilarious people in their own rights—have compounded their genius to bring us this comedy (which premiered on Tuesday; watch the pilot here) about Julie and Billy who are, well, difficult people. In a show that takes more than a little inspiration from real life, the two play struggling comedians trying to make it in NYC, talking shit to and about nearly every person they meet on the way. In other words, we love it.
We’ve got your end of summer beach read right here. Like a Christopher Pike novel all grown up (and a bajillion times more well written) this page-turning whodunit by Ruth Ware follows crime writer protagonist Leonora Shaw as she attends an old friend’s bachelorette party, then wakes up in the hospital knowing someone’s died. But who? And how? We’re getting chills just thinking about it.
There’s a reason both Prince and Stevie Wonder are fans of U.K. musician Lianne La Havas—the 25-year-old guitarist and singer-songwriter has the voice of an old soul and on her newest album she unleashes its full power on our earholes. With elements of jazz and neo-soul, Blood takes the insightful, pared down songwriting of La Havas’s first album and turns it up to 11.
Our other favorite real-life best friends—UCB alums Lennon Parham and Jessica St. Clair—are back this week playing our favorite fictional best friends, Maggie Caruso and Emma Crawford in season 2 of this criminally underrated show. Like an absurdist Stars Hollow, the small Connecticut town that Emma has returned to in order to help Maggie raise her new baby, is full of hilarious and well-meaning characters for a series that gives you the feel-goods of Gilmore Girls with the guffaws of a top-notch improv night.