What links Scarlett Johansson to the football fan with the flare on his butt? | Culture

Sing again

The sequel to the 2016 animated jukebox musical Sing hits UK screens this week, with Scarlett Johansson, Matthew McConaughey and Reese Witherspoon again lending their voices to anthropomorphic animals who like to, well, sing. U2 function with your song saved my life, the kind of mid-tempo ballad for a textbook movie that marks a Oscar nomination without touching the sides.

All the people

Last year, Bono and the Edge teamed up with Dutch DJ Martin Garrix for the Euro 2020 anthem (2021). We are people, the kind of uptempo ballad for a football tournament that is played at the opening ceremony and never heard again. Somewhat confusingly, the video for the song featured former Irish international Jason McAteer reenacting a 2001 goal he scored for Ireland in a completely different football competition, but that’s a rabbit hole alone.

Trapped in a euro you can’t get out of

Few will forget the last European Championship: England reached the final, a fan stuck a flare in their butt and Italy won it all. In the quarter-finals, Roberto Mancini’s side dispatched the much-desired Belgium, Lorenzo Insigne’s impressive goal taking them over the line.

let’s go naples

Insigne is the current captain of Napoli in Serie A: an honor Diego Maradona once had. The 1984 arrival of the world’s greatest footballer in Naples provides the backdrop for Paolo Sorrentino’s recent “extravagantly personal film”, The Hand of God (Netflix).

she will follow

This Must Be the Place, Sorrentino’s 2011 regular English-language debut, featured the breakout role of Irish actress Eve Hewson, most recently seen in the Netflix series Behind Her Eyes and BBC’s The Luminaries. Hewson is Bono’s daughter who, as well as providing a song, lends her vocal talents as a lone rock star lion in …Sing 2 from English writer-director Garth Jennings.

Pairing Notes

Clock Before Jennings took Hollywood by storm, he was one half of the Hammer & Tongs team of directors and producers, creators of witty music videos, including a milk carton odyssey for Blur’s. coffee and tv.

Eat In Sorrentino’s 2013 Oscar-winning play The Great Beauty, Jep, the writer and protagonist, has a working lunch of what looks like a tomato-based risotto. Tasting it, Jep wisely intones: “Reheated rice is always tastier than freshly cooked rice. Old is better than new.”