So you wanna watch something

Everything Everywhere All at Once: A hardworking Chinese American woman, Evelyn (Michelle Yeoh), her hapless husband Waymond (Ke Huay Quan) and adolescent daughter (Stephanie Hsu) run a laundromat. And they are chugging along until they get audited by an irate tax officer (Jamie Lee Curtis). Sounds straightforward except the film splinters into multiple universes—where every choice that Evelyn makes spawns a new reality. The rest is wacky, weird genre-bending drama.

The New York Times calls it “messy and glorious”: “The movie is a metaphysical multiverse galaxy-brain head trip, but deep down—and also right on the surface—it’s a bittersweet domestic drama, a marital comedy, a story of immigrant striving and a hurt-filled ballad of mother-daughter love.” The Guardian is unimpressed, claiming the film would be better titled “nothing, nowhere, over a long period of time.” The film releases in Indian theatres today.

Jogi: Set in the midst of the 1984 anti-Sikh violence in Delhi, Punjabi musician and actor Diljit Dosanjh (famous for Twitter feuding with Kangana Ranaut) stars as the titular Jogi. Desperate to help fellow Sikhs, he and his two friends set out to evacuate as many families as they can to safety, to Punjab. There are no reviews as yet, but it is never a bad idea to revisit our own gruesome history so we never forget. Drops on Netflix  today.

So you wanna listen to something…

Empire, episode 6: Titled ‘Queen Elizabeth II and Empire’, hosts historian William Dalrymple and Anita Anand are joined in this episode by British Nigerian historian David Olusoga. They tackle the subject that is on top of everyone’s mind right now: the British monarchy—and the many divisive and often bitter feelings it inspires. They speak candidly, and lucidly about all the grey areas surrounding the Firm—as well as colonial rule, the Commonwealth and the various reactions that the Queen’s death has evoked. It could have been dull, but instead it’s erudite and enjoyable. Hear it on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. 

A list of good reads

• This lovely New Yorker essay is about Meryl Streep's life in her 20's and the author Michael Schulman’s own twenty-something memories—and maybe even your own.
• TikTok beauty trends never fail to bring the weird. Shape looks at the latest fad of using menstrual blood as face masks, and why no dermatologist recommends it.
• Rest of World has the fascinating cryptocurrency story of how mining boomed, then went bust on the cold steppes of Kazakhstan—all in the space of six months.
• The Atlantic revisits the original, dark and sometimes disturbing story of Pinocchio—in light of a slew of new film adaptations. 
• Shape magazine has an interesting piece on human metabolism—and the surprising facts that the latest research is now revealing. 
• Ten stories—by writers, dating coaches, even professors—capture what Tinder has wrought in our collective dating lives, in Commonsense news
• Finshots has a very useful explainer on the government’s plans to replace Fastags at toll plazas with GPS tracking—and why it’s a creepy, even unsustainable idea. 
• We rarely recommend older reads, but this first-person piece in BBC News by Justin Rowlatt—the great grandson of Sidney Rowlatt—on his visit to India is definitely worth it. Reminder: the infamous Rowlatt Act was used to massacre protesters at Jallianwala Bagh.
• BBC News also explores the pressing question on the creative community’s mind: has AI killed art? 
• The Smithsonian on the history of the famed Koh-i-Noor diamond; an epic tale full of drama, gore and romance, and of course the shadow of the Empire.
• Bloomberg News tells us what we likely already know: single, child-free working women are making more money than men.