We are in the dog days of winter, and sometimes it can be hard to feel inspired. But this week, we had a lot of help to kick our creativity into gear - new shows, IG discoveries, music videos, and even athletes making bold plays. Volume 57 has something for everyone, whatever your spark might be!
The Afterparty
The new TV hot streak continues this week with the Apple TV+ premiere of The Afterparty. We’ve been anticipating this release since the trailers dropped, as the cast is absolutely loaded, featuring Tiffany Haddish, Ben Schwartz, and Dave Franco. The show takes a fun poke at the prestige detective drama that is all the rage, as the driving plot line is a murder at a high school reunion. Phil Lord and Chris Miller are involved creatively, which is always a good sign, and only makes us even more excited for the show. All of the behind-the-scenes footage has been very fun, so we are hoping that Apple has its next big comedy hit.
Bonobo feat. Jordan Rakei - “Shadows”
We’ve got a familiar face back for our music selection this week. Jordan Rakei returns to the Friday Five, although this time it’s in a featured role on the Bonobo track “Shadows.” The song is really interesting and has a great vibe, making it something good to keep on in the background of the workday, or maybe even a party (depending on the kind of party.) While the song is cool, the music video is really what put it over the edge this week. As the title would suggest, the video relies heavily on different uses of shadows, and it’s visually stunning. It’s super captivating, and hard to look away from, even though sometimes it gets a little strobe heavy for us. The video does a great job of drawing you in and elevating the song, without being too over-the-top. You might as well just put the video on loop, too, while you’ve got the song in the background anyways.
William Landgren
Speaking of building a vibe, we stumbled on William Landgren’s “Moody Racetrack” IG tutorial, and had to include it. Landgren is a 15-year old “blender artist” according to his IG bio, and he has been doing all sorts of interesting motion work. This particular video is a great behind-the-scenes segment on how to build a cool 3D environment, and as we’ve noted, we love seeing this type of stuff on Instagram. It can inspire other work, and push people to be more creative and try new things. Especially seeing this from a creator so young is really cool, even if it makes us feel a little bad about ourselves. As they say, the kids are alright.
The Grand Tour Presents: Carnage A Trois
Sometimes, indecisive scrolling pays off. This week, we stumbled on a brand new season of one of our favorite shows: The Grand Tour. The hosts from the original Top Gear created a new show that covers most of our interests - cars, stunts, and comedy. This season, they took the show to France for “Carnage A Trois” and opened a whole new lane of entertainment. The trailer alone has a lot of laughs, as well as an incredible song in the background. If you haven’t watched any of the show yet, we highly recommend going back to check out the first three seasons. The Grand Tour has been a show that we’ve looked to for inspiration in tone, style, and well-produced segments and packages, and we couldn’t be more excited to have new episodes to watch.
Chiefs vs. Bills Divisional Round Showdown
If you’re any sort of football fan, last weekend’s Chiefs vs. Bills matchup was an absolute dream. it was a total shootout, with two gunslingers at the peak of their powers. Josh Allen and Patrick Mahomes put on a show, with multiple lead changes in the final two minutes and an overtime finish. It took an extremely gutsy play from Mahomes and Chiefs tight end Travis Kielce just to get to OT, which turned out to be even more incredible once you heard postgame interviews. Kielce totally improvised a route to get open, and Mahomes trusted him to do it, then hit him with a perfect pass. It showed the creative side of sports, as well as an admirable leap of faith on behalf of the teammates. Chiefs vs. Bills was a game for the ages, and we can only hope Joe Burrow and the Bengals can put up some fireworks this weekend, too.