In this week’s Staff Picks, News Editor Drew Gillis heads down the movie history rabbit hole and Features Editor Jen Lennon praises a game-changing game show.
It’s easy to dismiss Hollywood award shows as frivolous and vacant, but if you look at who wins, when, and why, you just might learn something. This is the primary (or at least original) mission of Be Kind Rewind, a YouTuber regularly producing some of the most thoughtful, thorough videos about film history anywhere.
When the account launched almost eight years ago, its primary focus was on Best Actress Oscar wins and the narratives and campaigns that led to a trophy. As someone who’s really only watched the Academy Awards in the new millennium, I find the politicking, especially when the old studio system was still relevant, fascinating. But the videos from BKR (real name Isabel Custodio) are not just focused on old Hollywood, even if the creator isn’t shy about her love for Bette Davis. An hour-long video published two years ago tracks Michelle Yeoh’s entire career trajectory, from her beginnings in Hong Kong action cinema to James Bond to her Oscar for Everything Everywhere All At Once. Of these videos, a personal favorite is the one analyzing the Oscar race between Julie Andrews and Julie Christie in the mid-1960s, a race that seemed to distill the transition from Old to New Hollywood.
But as the channel has grown, so has the scope of BKR’s subjects. A recent and very fun video unpacked Lindsay Lohan’s infamous Elizabeth Taylor Lifetime biopic. BKR is generous when possible; as she points out, there is a way this unconventional casting could have been interesting. Taylor and Lohan were both child stars who grew into possibly the biggest tabloid fascination of their respective days. But the video goes on to correctly categorize the casting as a gimmick, and the movie as a mess. The analysis is tactful; BKR’s research recognizes that just because critics and everyone else were gleefully cruel about Lohan’s performance does not mean that it was secretly good. The situation is nuanced, a lot more than the Lifetime movie receiving this analysis. Like an award show, it is a silly thing that is fun—and dare I say important—to take seriously.
To me, Be Kind Rewind is an all-purpose comfort watch. I like to listen to it while cooking dinner and watch it while eating; I’ll throw an episode on the TV while I’m visiting my parents. (“Miss Piggy, Camp, And The Death Of The Movie Star” was a great watch with my mom.) Because as intelligent as the videos are—I always leave with a deeper understanding of a moment in history and several fun facts—they are also digestible and accessible, even to people who have interests outside of pop culture. Whether for fun or for information, Be Kind Rewind is worth watching.
The concept of Game Changer is deceptively simple: For each episode, three contestants participate in a game show. The catch is that they don’t know what the game is and it changes every week. They’re at the gleefully mad mercy of host Sam Reich, whom the contestants quickly learn not to trust because, 10 times out of 10, Reich is absolutely, 100% fucking with them. Reich is also the owner of Dropout, the streaming service formerly known as CollegeHumor on which Game Changer airs, which has recently received a wealth of befuddled positive press coverage from legacy mediaoutlets perennially dumbstruck by the fact that running a company focused on creative quality, rather than maximizing profits, results in massive consumer goodwill that, in turn, results in a pretty healthy revenue stream.
Even the seemingly straightforward games often have a twist. A game of Simon Says (rebranded, obviously, as Sam Says) ends with a fun reward for the players: A trip on a fully stocked party bus with some friends. But, as they discover when they hobble back into the studio afterward, the cameras were still rolling and the rules still applied while they were on the bus. In other episodes, there is apparently no end to the ways in which Reich can torture Dimension 20 host Brennan Lee Mulligan, from asking him to correctly identify a roseate spoonbill to designing a game in which the contestants get points for coming in second place at a series of random tasks, effectively asking Mulligan not to do his best, which, to hear him tell it, is an ethical and moral outrage.
The season-ending reality show spoofs are consistent highlights, with Game Changer presenting warped versions of shows like Survivor, The Bachelor, and The Circle. But one of my favorite moments came from the season-seven episode “Earnest-est,” in which contestants Ally Beardsley, Zac Oyama, and Lisa Gilroy were asked to simply be vulnerable when responding to different prompts. In true Game Changer fashion, it ended with the three of them in full Joker costumes, complete with face paint, performing a choreographed dance to Seal’s “Kiss From A Rose.” I can’t remember the last time I laughed so hard and felt so moved at the same time.
