What you missed: Schitt's Creek, Hot Docs, Queer Eye and a whole lot of trailers

Hello! You're reading the CBC Arts newsletter, and if you like what you see, stick around! Sign up here, and every Sunday we'll send you a fresh email packed with art, culture and a metric truckload of eye candy, hand-picked by our small and mighty team. Here's what we've been talking about this week.

Hi, art lovers!

What are we watching?

Hot Docs (a.k.a. "Canada's international documentary festival") announced its lineup earlier this week, and we're still making our way through the 150+ (!!!) trailers on its YouTube page. Honestly, if we were really and truly dedicated to watching all those videos, there's no way we'd have had time to write you this email — but go ahead and flirt with missing your own deadlines. Have a peek! (For those who'll be in Toronto, the festival runs April 25 to May 5.)

What else are we watching? More trailers! We finally got our first look at Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and even if you've never cared about a Quentin Tarantino movie in your life (who are you?), a split second of Leonardo DiCaprio dad-dancing was clearly worth the wait. The Toy Story 4 trailer dropped, too, so consider it T-minus three months until you're bawling into your popcorn. Related: CBC Radio's q ran a quick hit about Keanu Reeves's "distinctly Canadian" Toy Story character, Duke Caboom. Apparently Duke's "Canada's greatest stuntman." We always thought that was Super Dave (R.I.P.), but we're willing to suspend our disbelief for one of the most beloved movie franchises of all time.

As for music, Billie Eilish got Japanese art star Takashi Murakami to do her music video for "you should see me in a crown." It's exclusively on Apple Music, which is annoying, but you can watch a snippet (and probably a few ripped versions by now) on YouTube. Because we're a sucker for a one-take music video (and Karen O and Danger Mouse and Spike Jonze and Stephen Colbert) watch "Woman." This video of a seven-year-old singing with Celine Dion turned half the office into shrieking bags of feelings. (Most of us are softies who wore out our "The Power of Love" cassingles.)

Also because we're softies: Queer Eye, Season 3. Pretty much everyone on the team binged the series this week, which is as good a segue as any to...

What are we reading?

Sure as Tan loves French tucks, 99.9 per cent of everything ever written about Queer Eye will say something about how the show's as hopeful as TV can get — and if that's not apparent from just watching every tearful transformation, Season 3 just keeps generating the good-news stories. (Two favourites: Janelle Monae endorsed a GoFundMe to send one subject back to college, and the Jones sisters, the badass pitmasters from episode 3, can't keep their hot sauce on the shelves thanks to the Netflix boost.) But Queer Eye is seeing itself through a fresh pair of Warby Parker specs now that it's three seasons in. This column picks up on how the show's evolved for the better when it comes to how it handles gender roles, and notably, more women got the Fab Five treatment this time around. But as this review points out, the show's such a phenom that any sense of culture clash or conflict has also been flat-ironed right out of the formula. That makes for even cozier TV, but it's also, per the article, "less issue-driven and more purely escapist." Whatever your take, Bobby deserves way more fan love. Also, the people who produce that show are miracle workers. Every season they've somehow discovered a cast of busted unicorns: folks who are charming, open to change — but are also somehow in desperate need of complete lifestyle overhaul. This Vanity Fair article reveals a few of their secrets.

Also on their site, a comprehensive look back at Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which just turned 15. (Look, this newsletter can't be about warm-and-fuzzy escapism all the time. Sometimes, you want to watch a movie forces you to think about every broken relationship ever.) Director Michel Gondry and Jim Carrey reflect on the making of this modern classic. Another pop- ulture long-read: Game of Thrones star Emilia Clarke revealed that she survived two brain aneurysms during the early days of the series. She opened up about the experience in The New Yorker. And like GoT, CBC's Schitt's Creek is approaching its final season. The news was announced this week. We'll miss Moira's vocabulary most of all.

And because we promised you eye candy

Don't get it twisted — those dresses are made of balloons. Emi Jingu recently showed designs like these at Vancouver Fashion Week, and the Japanese artist has been globe-trotting lately, doing photo shoots with her inflatable get-ups wherever she goes. The photos are popping, obvs. Follow her on Instagram.

Pretty or pretty unsettling? We stumbled on these recent-ish works on paper by Catherine Bolduc while we were reading up on the Papier art fair. (It runs April 25–28 in Montreal.)

So this was one of the more bonkers inventions we read about this week: an AI tool that would absolutely slay at Pictionary. The thing can turn MS Paint doodles into photo-realistic images, and while it's not yet available to the public, we can't help but wonder what would happen if you fed it "Voice of Fire."

The scariest thing inside this old knife factory isn't old knives.

You've got to see this

Art or porn? - That debate's been raging for thousands of years, long before Facebook banned anyone for gratuitous nippleage. So when is sexy art, art? Professor Lise (not really a professor) will take you through some of the most important examples in NSFW history.

Our story begins in... - A cabin in the woods, McDonald's, Columbia University, kitchens and bedrooms and even a makeshift office on the banks of the Koksilah River. Those are just a few of the places where this year's Canada Reads authors write — and for a new series of essays, they reflected on how a place can influence what you see on the page. Enjoy the musings of David Chariandy, Max Eisen, Rhonda Mullins, Lindsay Wong and Winnie Yeung before television's tweediest competition series returns to CBC this Monday.

One of the darkest chapters in Canadian history is now a comic book - In August 1933, Toronto's Christie Pits Park became ground zero for the largest race riot in Canadian history. Winnipeg's Jamie Michaels was unfamiliar with this unsettling part of our heritage, and he figures most people would say the same. That's one reason why Michaels teamed up with illustrator Doug Fedrau to create Christie Pits, a new graphic novel that launched this weekend. Read about the origins of the project, and why they think the story is still relevant almost 86 years later.

Follow this artist

Alex Gibson (@caribbean.boy) - Seems cozy, right? Like, so cozy that you probably regret waking up to check your email. Take a closer look, and you'll notice that bedroom is flooding. It's a recurring motif for artist Alex Gibson, and it's one of the ways that he tells a very personal story about queer anxiety through his art. We spoke to him last week when he was our Exhibitionist in Residence, and he unpacked that idea a bit.

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Until next week!

XOXO, CBC Arts