Song of the day:
TV Tuesday
As I mentioned yesterday, I watched two of three movies I’d planned over the weekend: Turning Red (Disney+) and The Adam Project (Netflix). Both of these are most definitely worth your time. Here are a few other highlights from the weekend:
Embrace the Panda: Making Turning Red (Disney+) - After watching the movie (the first time) I immediately jumped into this “making of” documentary. It was cool to hear how they created some of the characters and see how they brought the movie to life. This movie was created almost exclusively by women, which is highly unusual in the world of Pixar, and it was fun to learn their stories. It was also impressive to see how they brought it all together during a global pandemic.
Closed for Storm (Prime Video) - I stumbled upon this documentary after binge-watching another show on Prime (more on that below), and it was fascinating. This is the story of Six Flags New Orleans, previously Jazzland, and how it closed for Hurricane Katrina and never reopened. This ghost town of an amusement park still sits there with its marquee claiming “Closed for Storm” (with one of the letters missing) all these years later. Learning the history of the park was cool, but watching it fall by the wayside was very sad. Like much of New Orleans, it never recovered and continues to fade away on the side of the highway. There have been calls for proposals about what to do with the land, how to rebuild or reopen, but to date, nothing has come to fruition. This documentary was made in 2020, but I found an article from October 2021 that says a developer has been chosen (ironically, Six Flags) and something is supposed to happen within a year. I will be curious to see if it does. Regardless, I encourage you to check out this doc.
Upload (Prime Video) - Upload is a quirky and dark comedy set in a future where you can “upload” to a virtual world after you die. If you’re wealthy you can enjoy all kinds of things in this new world but if you’re not well, I’m sure you can guess how that goes. Basically you live in black and white most of the time and can barely afford to eat. There’s some drama mixed in as well as an unsolved murder and a whole bunch of other shady stuff. I binged the second season over the weekend and it was just as fun as the first one. It’s definitely dark and it might not be for everyone but hey, if you’ve got Prime, check it out.
We Need to Talk About Cosby (Showtime) - I realized late in the weekend that I had free Showtime through Sunday night so I decided to check out this 4-part documentary from W. Kamau Bell, and y’all…I knew the whole Cosby situation was bad - like seriously bad - but I hadn’t read details and didn’t know much about the particulars of what he’d done. Well now I know and WOW. It’s so much worse than I thought. This man was a predator from day one and got away with so many horrible things. He made us believe he was wholesome and honest, doing a lot of things that helped the Black community, educating the country with Picture Pages and Fat Albert, and positioning himself to be America’s Dad on The Cosby Show, but it was all a horrible, manipulative act. And he got away with it. He got away with all of it. Kamau talked to a number of the survivors, and their stories were heartbreaking. He also talked to a handful of Black comedians who had looked up to him, and it was interesting to hear their perspective. It was hard to watch at times, and clips from his comedy shows and albums, as well as The Cosby Show, were cringe-worthy, but it was incredibly well done.
Video of the day:
Okay, first of all…these people made a huge ball pit in their house! And second, this dog really wants no part of it…would you do this in your house? Would your dog want to play?