Lily Cahill

New Year's Eve is Amateur Hour

2025/01/14

Every year, my husband and I watch Love, Actually at Christmastime. We talk about how weird it is that 18-year-old Kiera Knightley is being stalked by her husband's best friend, and how Martine McCutcheon is in no way fat despite the movie's insistence that she is. We encourage Laura Linney to turn off her phone and have sex with Carl already, and my husband always tries on his British accent when Colin arrives in Wisconsin to find four hot girls who just love British guys. I'm aware that Love, Actually is deeply flawed, and yet I don't care. It's great. It's well written and well edited and the performances are excellent. I had always heard that its American cousins, Valentine's Day and New Year's Eve, weren't nearly as good. But New Year's Eve is streaming on Hulu, and this newsletter is coming out on NYE, and it's directed by Gerry Marshall and stars a bunch of actors I like. How bad can it be?

Inject This Candy Straight Into My Veins

2024/12/26

Like every other pophead in America, I'm obsessed with Sabrina Carpenter. For awhile, I was squicked out by her girlish hypersexuality, but as she slowly took over my Spotify playlists I realized that she's in no way innocent. Though it may seem like she came out of nowhere, she's actually been in the entertainment business for nearly two decades and has a very canny approach to her career. She's honed her sexy image into a caricature of 1950's filmy femininity, but her naughty, self-aware lyrics make her seem like your snarky best friend. She really clicked for me when I saw a Reddit comment describing her look as drag--campy, over-torqued, and designed to both skewer and revel in the ridiculousness of performance. When I saw that she was doing a Christmas special for Netflix, I decided to save that delicious little treat for the end of my Christmas movie binge. But now I think I miscalculated. I should have watched A Nonsense Christmas earlier in December, so I could have watched it ten times already.