What’s Making Us Happy: A guide to your weekend viewing and listening
This week, the Screen Actors Guild Awards surprised us, further complicating an already complicated Oscar race. And we lost both a great actor and a beloved singer.
Here’s what NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour crew was paying attention to — and what you should check out this weekend.
Flow
Flow is one of the films nominated for the Best Animated Feature Oscar this year. It’s also up for Best International Feature Film, and it’s the first Latvian film to be nominated for any Academy Awards. You can watch it on Max. There are no subtitles because there is no dialogue. It’s about a cat who survives a flood that seems to cover most of the Earth who is forced to reject all their catlike intuition and actually work with others. There’s a capybara and a lemur and the dumbest, doofiest, most obnoxiously cheerful golden retriever that they have to work with.
So much work has been done to not anthropomorphize these animals. All their actions and reactions are kept as realistic as possible. Cat people are going to watch this and think, “Yes, that’s exactly what my cat would do.” And dog people like me are going to watch it and think, “Yes, that is just what my dumb jock of a dog would do.” It’s great. — Glen Weldon
‘We Shall Overcome’ by Pete Seeger
In the last few weeks, I’ve spent a lot of time listening to Pete Seeger. In the album We Shall Overcome, he performs a handful of Bob Dylan songs. It was recorded within a week or two of when The Freewheelin Bob Dylan came out. Anything you can find of Pete Seeger or the Weavers, which is the group that he sang with for a really long time, will be both happy making and really stirring. A lot of it is about difficult times and times of trial and I recommend it most highly. — Linda Holmes
Deal or No Deal Island
Deal or No Deal Island is airing on NBC, streaming on Peacock. Maybe you saw the phrase “Deal or No Deal Island” on your TV schedule and thought “the Howie Mandel thing with the suitcases on an island?” then never thought of it again. The show is basically a mash up of about six different shows, including Deal or No Deal. They still do the thing with the suitcases at the end of each episode, but the purpose is different. There are also elements of Survivor, The Challenge, Big Brother and other shows with alliances, hurt feelings and splashing in the mud. It’s held together by Joe Manganiello of Magic Mike fame who was born to do this. It’s a lot of fun to watch if you like these competition shows. It may just be the palate cleanser that you need this Oscars weekend. — Stephen Thompson
Sly Lives!
Sly Lives! (aka The Burden of Black Genius) is a documentary about the legendary Sly Stone directed by Questlove, streaming on Hulu. Now, is this Questlove’s Oscar winning debut Summer of Soul? No, that’s a tough act to follow. This is a movie that’s about Stone’s groundbreaking artistry and how that artistry has been historically undervalued.
The documentary has interviews with people like Chaka Khan, Q-Tip and D’Angelo. We get a lot of great moments and soundbites from those folks, but I think the best thing about this is when the talking heads get super, super nerdy about the music itself. There’s some great sequences where you have Nile Rodgers, Jimmy Jam, Terry Lewis breaking down the instrumentation and the vocals on songs like “Dance to the Music,” and it’s just a real delight. — Aisha Harris
More recommendations from the Pop Culture Happy Hour newsletter
by Glen Weldon
Here’s what you’re gonna do. You’re gonna stop reading this page, click on this link and watch comedian Matteo Lane walk you through an old clip of Liza Minelli on the Home Shopping Network. You will notice how thoroughly Lane has imprinted every second of this clip – every breath, every nuance, every movement, everything – onto his very soul. Then you’re gonna come back here and thank me for making your life better for 11 minutes and 25 seconds.
Now you’re gonna stop reading this page again, click on this link, and play the browser-based game Dragonsweeper, which maps fantasy-RPG elements onto Minesweeper. Then you’re gonna come back here and yell at me for devouring half your damn day.
Dhanika Pineda 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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