It was the true platform phenomenon of the summer. Netflix acquired Suits, the lawyer series that stopped airing in 2019, and had a success that exceeded everything expected. The fiction spent 13 weeks topping the Nielsen ratings, being the most watched on the platform in dozens of countries and accumulating billions of minutes of viewing – the fact that the series has 134 one-hour episodes helps a lot. It is likely that many of those who participated in that fever initially entered out of curiosity to see Meghan Markle before entering (and leaving) the British royal family, but later became hooked by the expensive soap opera plots. Now, as expected, its creators are going to film a sequel that will be part of the same universe, but that will have to wait for the unblocking of the Hollywood interpreters' strike to start filming. Maybe with Markle's detour?
THE GREAT-granddaughters of the BARCELONA CHAIR
At 94 years old, Mies van der Rohe's Barcelona chair is very fresh. This same week, two great-granddaughters that have come out of him have been presented in the Mies pavilion, the Barceloneta chair and the Barcelonino footrest, two stackable plastic pieces designed for outdoors that the designer Raffaella Mangiarotti has created for the Serralunga brand. The original Barcelona had nothing casual about it. Lilly Reich and Mies van der Rohe knew that the Kings of Spain were going to visit the German pavilion at the 1929 International Exhibition and they wanted to provide them with seats that were aligned with the pure lines of the ephemeral construction but at the same time concentrated all the majesty of a throne For that, they were inspired by the curule chairs of Ancient Rome in which only dictators, consuls, councilors and other gyrfalcons could put their asses, and which already had those X-shaped legs so characteristic of Barcelona. Originally upholstered in pigskin quilting, it was so complicated to make that only a few units were made until Knoll began mass producing it in 1940 and it has not stopped selling.
'NORMAL PEOPLE' DON'T GET THAT ANGRY
Tickets flew in minutes to see Guillem Gisbert chatting with Jarvis Cocker at one of the central events of Kosmopolis next Saturday the 28th, at the CCCB. The choice seemed obvious: two tall frontmen with a vocation as soloists with literary forays into their lyrics. By now, Cocker, who publishes Good Pop, Bad Pop on Blackie Books, must already know that his partner on the stage had one of his first hits with his band with a version of his Common People. In 2008, the then first-timers Manel recorded a nostrada version of the less orthodox Britpop hit (in that immortal song there was none of the euphoric, slightly macho hooliganism that ended up characterizing the movement), with a video clip in the old Mercat de Sant Antoni, before the reform. Intentionally or not, the Barcelona band took the lyrics to a less angry and also more middle class place, deactivating some of the working class rage of the original. The “vulgar people” became “normal people”, instead of ordering hoarseness the narrator orders expensive wine, the posh girl in the song is suggested to go to the movies instead of billiards, there is no mention of cockroaches that she would see on her wall if she took her act of being poor to its final consequences, and it is also not said that, if she got tired, she could always call her dad.
INCORRECTLY TRIAL
The Spanish judicial system has a problem (well, a few): it does not perform well on screen, its practices and customs are not cinematic enough, especially for viewers raised on American trial films. After the premiere of The Body on Fire, the Netflix series about the crime of the Urban Police, the lawyer José María de Pablo made a thread in room before testifying, to the place where the prosecutor sits and even the design of the lawyers' robes, which never wear heck (only the dean of the college wears them). A scriptwriter, Marçal Cebrian, responded to that, pointing out that sometimes there is no choice but to spectacularize the matter a little. He did it in the script for A Thief's Daughter, a film with a realistic intention but in which it was decided to reverse the order of the statements (first the plaintiff's lawyer and then the defendant) to give it more narrative tension.
MARGARET ATWOOD RESEÑA A FAKE MARGARET ATWOOD
The Canadian literary magazine The Walrus proposed the following experiment to Margaret Atwood: asking ChatGPT to write “a horror story in the Margaret Atwood way.” Obediently, the AI engine did so and returned a very short story titled The Weeping Willows of Winnipeg. A place where people “carry an invisible burden,” their faces “sketched with deep lines, their eyes with echoes of stories they are afraid to tell.” The author of The Handmaid's Tale thought that was rubbish, that she would never say that a place is frozen and then that the sun was no longer shining and that she would never use an alliterative title (The Weeping Willows of Winnipeg, in English ) in a story for adults. “Sleep well, dear authors, your vocation is safe. At least for now,” concludes Atwood, who donated the fee she received for reviewing a fake story written in her name to a bird protection association.
