Welcome to Culture Hound, InsideHook’s deep dive into the month’s most important pop cultural happenings.
WATCH: The Belko Experiment
You think your office is bad? Imagine 80 white collar workers getting locked in their corporate high rise and told, via a mysterious intercom, that they must kill each other to survive. It’s Battle Royale, The Raid, Saw and Office Space rolled into one, via writer James Gunn (Guardians of the Galaxy) and director Greg McLean (Wolf Creek). (March 17)
(See more film picks in our spring movie guide, coming next Wednesday.)
LAUGH AND LAUGH AND LAUGH WITH: W. Kamau Bell
You’ve already probably heard his trenchant political views on CNN or elsewhere — now join him for a night of special guests, topical comedy, and more at City Arts. If you’re not, in fact, on top of his work, see the clip, with Stephen Colbert, above. (March 27)
READ: Spaceman of Bohemia
It gets lonely in space. So much so that you may start up a philosophical argument with, say, a giant imaginary spider (“I cannot offer you the solace of Nutella, for I have consumed it”). Jaroslav Kalfar’s debut is literary Gravity, but lighter in tone. (March 7)
GET IN LINE FOR: 13 Minutes
If you like tense tales of World War II-era intrigue, you need to put this on your calendar: It’s a feature treatment of the real-life story of Georg Elser, a carpenter who built a bomb that might have killed Adolf Hitler. (From March 24)
BINGE: Amy Schumer: The Leather Special
More dirty talk from the Emmy-winning comedian, who riffs on binge drinking, her new boyfriend and “navigating the unknown of being a newly famous woman who looks like someone you grew up with.” It’s the start of a larger trend for Netflix: the streaming service recently announced exclusive standup deals with Dave Chappelle, Chris Rock, Tracy Morgan, Jerry Seinfeld and Louis C.K. (March 7)
BUY: Nintendo Switch
Nintendo’s new gaming system was designed for group play (like the old Wii) and portability: it’s a large tablet (complete with motion controllers called Joy-Cons) that can be connected to a dock for console play. (March 3)
NSFW: Le Petit Voyeur
This artsy Copenhagen photo zine, best known for some Emily Ratajkowski nudes, just launched their first limited-edition, very-clothes-optional photo book. You’re welcome. (Available for preorder)
LISTEN: Our monthly Spotify playlist
The best new music of the month, a whopping 30 songs spanning two hours. Probably the only place where Future Islands, Big Sean, Gary Clark Jr. and King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizards could work together. (Also, dig The 1975’s cover of Sade.)
BUY: The Original Cassette Tape Coffee Table
Forget the vinyl resurgence. Here, a new version of the cassette-inspired TAYBLES features a hidden shelf, dry-erase top and stainless steel cup holders. And it’s $250, or about 1/5 the price of the company’s original cassette table tops. (Funding through March 19)
ALSO: The Big Apple turns into a future Venice in the dystopian novel New York 2140 (March 14) … An Esquire writer tracks down the world’s most fashionable people and talks about their least fashionable days in I Actually Wore This (March 28) … Bros across time, aka Fox’s Making History (March 5) … Crackle’s new adaptation of Snatch hopes to be Fargo for the Guy Ritchie crowd (March 16) … Robert Redford finds the existence of an afterlife in Netflix’s The Discovery, to extremely detrimental effects (March 31) … Michelangelo Antonioni’s mod mystery classic Blow-Up makes it to Blu-ray, complete with a making-of book and new documentary (March 28) … TED Talks debuts their “Unheard Voices” newsletter every weekday in March, focusing on smart people you may not have heard of talking about worthwhile topics … Combine the best songs of early 2000s into the amazing mashup tool that is the Magic iPod … And finally, the welcome small screen return of The Americans (March 7), Love (March 10) and Idiotsitter (March 23).
Main image: Jonathan Leder
This article was featured in the InsideHook SF newsletter. Sign up now for more from the Bay Area.