The Vogue Parodies and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles That Got Us Through the Week

The best of what we've been reading, watching, and listening to for your weekend enjoyment.

By Lauren Tousignant | August 4, 2023 | 9:00pm

Entertainment Jez Recs

Well, we sure didn’t lack for news this week. From the Lizzo accusations to Trump’s (third!) indictment to the start of tomato season, the first weekend of August gave us all some post-heatwave end-of-summer whiplash. Since we can’t relax and unwind by literally removing our brains and dropping them into a pitcher of water with dozens of those fruit, mint, and flower-infused ice cubes, we’ve once again rounded up all the best movies, books, TikToks and music that have soothed our souls and entertained us.

If you’d like to recommend something for next week’s edition, drop it in a comment here, or email it to us at [email protected] with the subject line “Jez Recs.”

Watch Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem

I could not believe how much and how hard I laughed at this movie, but then again, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg (who previously teamed up for the likes of Pineapple Express and Superbad) were writers on it. The story isn’t as sophisticated as those in the Spider-Verse animated series, but the overall tone is along the same lines. The animation is singular (generally, the 3D renderings have a roughness to them like clay that hasn’t been entirely smoothed, but there are also pastel-looking accents). The music is very hip-hop forward (A Tribe Called Quest’s “Can I Kick It?” and Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s “Shimmy Shimmy Ya” are featured). The humor is self-aware (one villain says the turtles look “like little Shreks”) and at times outrageous (April, a high school student voiced by The Bear’s Ayo Edebiri, went viral during a news broadcast for her school, and we get to see the memes of her throwing up rainbows).

A climatic scene involves a bunch of mutants driving around in a car singing 4 Non Blondes’ “What’s Up” (and then when the action picks up, it even more absurdly switches to the Slackcircus “What’s Going On, Prince Adam’s Red Hot Dance Mix” version). It feels really weird stanning superhero movies, but this ruled–not quite as much as Across the Spider-Verse (my favorite movie of the year so far) but close! —Rich Juzwiack

Listen to Nora Brown’s Long Time To Be Gone

The weather has been slightly breezier in ye old New York City this week, and it’s put me in one of those insufferably glorious moods where I lounge beside my backyard garden (brag) and pretend I’m living a simple mountain life. Part of this fantasy nostalgia has been inhaling Nora Brown’s Long Time to Be Gone, her 2022 old-timey banjo folk album.

Brown herself is born and raised in Brooklyn and is only 18, but the hauntingly beautiful tunes she plucks are centuries-old Appalachian traditional music. The gentleness of her renditions of “Wild Goose Chase” and “Cumberland Gap” feel like the wind tickling your skin on an early evening walk, calming and lively at the same time. —Kady Ruth Ashcraft

If you’re a paycheck-to-paycheck princess such as myself, awareness of Poppy Anderson’s “Sick Finds Saturday” series will likely ruin your life. That said: too damn bad. I know about it, therefore you must too.

Every Saturday, this absolute sadist shares her favorite finds from the week along with who makes them—most are independent creators or small businesses owned and operated by women or queer folks. Of late, there have been funky bags with bows for straps, ultra-feminine gingham dresses, and tank tops with pictures of pasta on the nipples. I don’t know how Anderson does it, but week after week she’s coming in with a cornucopia of cute shit I can afford only if I don’t feed myself for a few days. But hey, what’s breakfast when you have a few new beaded barrettes? —Audra Henrichs

Read Mobility by Lydia Kiesling

I’m so excited to spend my weekend reading Lydia Kiesling’s second novel, Mobility. Kiesling’s first novel tackled motherhood and isolation, while this one’s a coming-of-age novel. We follow American Bunny Glenn, first as a teenage daughter of a diplomat in Azerbaijan in 1998 and later as she goes to Athens and Houston to enter the oil industry, which means some unsavory characters are going to come back into her life as she works her way up through the cursed industry.

As we suffer through the terrible effects of climate change every day (and especially this summer), I’m drawn to art that seeks to address parts of our warming planet. While I don’t expect Bunny Glenn to go blow up a pipeline, I am excited to spend time with her as she navigates big oil. Kiesling’s prose is also just fun as hell to read!!!! You’ll find me inside this weekend, turning pages. —Caitlin Cruz

Watch Silo

In the last couple of weeks, no fewer than eight people have recommended this Apple TV+ show to me. After tearing through the first eight episodes this past weekend, I am happy to join their chorus.

An unspecified apocalyptic event (that happened at least 140 years ago) has forced thousands of people into an underground, 144-story silo. The present-day residents have no idea what happened outside, why they’re here, or what happened before they got here (They don’t know what stars are! There’s an entire plot point around what a Pez dispenser might be used for! They treat “the founders” like they were a God and “The Pact” like it’s the Bible!). Despite the dystopian description, it is a working, albeit bleak, society with mechanics, schools, a police department, a mayor, and plenty of government conspiracy theories and suspicions of coverups. Things start to unravel as people (Rashida Jones! Rebecca Ferguson!) start to question whether or not the outside world really is a toxic, barren wasteland. It’s a gripping show that, even through its slower parts, keeps you fully invested because you just keep asking, “What the fuck are they actually doing down there?!”—Lauren Tousignant

Watch (or rewatch!) Tár

This, the first week of August, was a characteristically slow one for pretty much everyone—that is, except Lizzo, the artist who built not only a brand but an empire around body inclusivity and generally being a good person. After former dancers this week brought forth a lawsuit against the artist for body, race, and religious discrimination as well as sexual harassment, and a steadily growing group of people who once worked with the artist came forward with similar stories, we’re now witnessing the latest and very jarring celebrity “cancelation.”

Which brings me to my recommendation for the weekend: Rewatch Tár! The Oscar-nominated, semi-absurdist drama is, in some ways, a fictionalized version of the Lizzo debacle, following Cate Blanchett as a brilliant musician and conductor whose life falls apart when (spoiler alert!) she’s brought to task for years of perpetrating sexual abuse and exploitation. The movie’s spin on what’s become a recurring fixture in celebrity news cycles is dark but undeniably funny, and while there’s no eating of bananas out of exotic dancers’ vaginas, it has plenty of other topical twists that make for a timely weekend rewatch. —Kylie Cheung

Follow Nick Tiffany (@nick.tiff) on TikTok

When I first heard “Hi Vogue, you caught me at a great time. I’m prepping for a colonoscopy” in April, I was immediately hooked ok whoever it was making a perfect parody of Vogue’s “73 Questions” video series.

The LA-based comedian has made a bunch since that first one, in addition to also spoofing Vogue’s “Life in Looks” and Architectural Digest’s “Home Tours.” They pair annoyingly earnest answers like “Best fashion trend of all time? Kindness,” with hilariously absurd responses like, “Last thing you do before bed? Cough up blood!” All the while, they’re wearing a Hannah Montana long-sleeved with “Taylor Swift” written across it and do the weird backward walk that every celeb who’s ever done a “73 Questions” seems to get trapped in. A few other highlights include: “One thing you wanna’ do before you die? Go Missing,” “Relationship Status? Widowed by choice,” and “When do you feel most beautiful? During a hit-and-run.” I’m obsessed and I promise you will be too. —LT