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What's Making Us Happy: A guide to your weekend viewing and reading
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This week we lost Bob Newhart, Bernice Johnson Reagon, Richard Simmons and Dr. Ruth. Plus, the Emmy nominations came out.
Here's what NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour crew was paying attention to — and what you should check out this weekend.
Celebrities throwing first pitches
On Friday I’ll be going to see a Washington Nationals game that will culminate in a concert by Carly Rae Jepsen. I've been pre-gaming for this experience by going on YouTube and watching footage of Carly Rae Jepsen throwing one of the worst ceremonial first pitches that has ever been thrown in the history of baseball. This sent me down a wonderful rabbit hole of various celebrities attempting to throw first pitches and biffing it horribly. It's the kind of mishap that would 100% befall me if I were asked to throw out a ceremonial first pitch. And it is the perfect way for a celebrity to eat it on national television because it doesn't actually hurt anybody — it doesn’t hurt their reputations or careers. It's just a funny thing that happened. This is the kind of medicine that I needed. — Stephen Thompson
The God of the Woods by Liz Moore
The novel The God of the Woods by Liz Moore is an exciting, tense, beautifully written book. Set in 1975, a 13 year old attending sleepover camp goes missing. She is the daughter of a very wealthy family that has kind of a compound that's attached to the camp. And it turns out that her older brother also went missing and was never found.
I have read some thrillers recently that have really mucked up their endings. And the tricky thing about mysteries and thrillers is a bad ending can wreck the whole book. 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. — Linda Holmes
Watching the WNBA
I am loving the fact that the WNBA is finally getting her honor. I've been an NBA fan for a while, but it wasn't until last season’s NCAA fever that I started following the WNBA. So I had to do the most Native thing ever: I picked the Connecticut Sun — they are owned by the Mohegan, making them the first professional sports team to ever be owned by a tribe. It's also not a bad team to choose — they have one of the best records in the league. I'm such a big fan of DiJonai Carrington.
While the news tries to pit certain players against each other, I don't think that's really happening in the league. I got to go a Liberty game recently and when Angel Reese of the Chicago Sky left the game, even though the Liberty won, the whole arena just started cheering for her. And that's the thing that’s so different about women's sports. I'm loving the WNBA and if you're not watching, you're missing out on some of the best athletes. — Shea Vassar
The Criterion Collection sale at Barnes & Noble
The Criterion Collection half-off sale at Barnes & Noble is an annual cinephile holiday. Criterion Collection is an American home video company that distributes classic and contemporary films. In a time when streamers can just erase movies or shows from their streaming services, physical media is so important. Directors like Barry Jenkins have likened the Criterion Collection to the Library of Congress — if your movie gets in there, it's like it’s been consecrated as this important work of art. One of the great things about the Criterion Collection is that it has classics, but it also has lesser-known movies – it can give a second life to a film that didn't get a lot of attention when it originally came out. So, this month my bank account has been crying, but my heart is full. — Marc Rivers
More recommendations from the Pop Culture Happy Hour newsletter
by Linda Holmes
I was impressed with the documentary Sorry/Not Sorry, which is about allegations of sexual misconduct by Louis C.K. that were reported on by the New York Times. (C.K. ultimately acknowledged the stories women told about his behavior were true.) Eric Deggans reviewed the film last week and wrote about it very well, and I second everything he said — from how moving it is to how ... not heartening it is.
NPR has a new feature on the best games of 2024 so far — check it out and get your thumbs and fingers ready.
I had some mixed feelings about Lady in the Lake, Apple TV's adaptation of the Laura Lippman novel about a white housewife in 1960s Baltimore who wants to become a journalist and inserts herself into the stories of two disappearances: a young white girl and a Black woman. Starring Natalie Portman and Moses Ingram, the series sags a bit in the middle, but that's true of so many streaming series that I'm beginning to think it's just a function of the format. Ingram in particular is very good, including in the voiceover in which she speaks directly to Portman's character about her appropriation of other people's stories to serve her own career.
Speaking of Apple TV, it is now time to circle back to the complicated discussion we had about the adaptation of Presumed Innocent starring Jake Gyllenhaal. I think it would have been better as a thing released all at once rather than week to week, but what do I know — I truly didn't think anyone would care about a fresh take on a crime novel from the '80s, but I was wrong. It's done well enough that Apple has now renewed it for another season (apparently focused on a different case). This Wednesday, July 24, they will drop the first-season finale (which I have not seen). So if you heard about it and thought, "I am not patient enough to wait for eight weekly episodes in order to find out the answer to a mystery," this is where you jump back in.
Beth Novey adapted the Pop Culture Happy Hour segment "What's Making Us Happy" for the Web. If you like these suggestions, consider signing up for our newsletter to get recommendations every week. And listen to Pop Culture Happy Hour on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
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