A chip off the ol’ Rocky block, stars sing Broadway’s praises & Natalie Portman has a (soccer) ball
Meet the fam of ‘Rocky’ star Sylvester Stallone in a new docuseries.
FRIDAY, May 12 City on Fire Eight-episode original drama revolves the shooting of a NYU student in Central Park, creating an ever-deepening mystery about a series of citywide fires, the downtown music scene and a wealthy family imploding under the stress of a lifetime of dark secrets (Apple TV+).
Great Performances at 50 The iconic Public Television documentary-film series celebrates a birthday milestone with a revue of milestone Broadway shows and songs, hosted by Sutton Foster and featuring Jane Krakowski, Betty Buckley, Vanessa Williams and many more. It’s like going to the theater…without going to the theater! (9 p.m., PBS).
SATURDAY, May 13 Banded Talented singing, songwriting and instrument-playing musicians compete in this new “build a band” competition hosted by Brandon Jenner and mentored by Grammy-winning artists and producers (9 p.m., AXS TV).
SUNDAY, May 14 Fear the Walking Dead They’re still dead, they’re still walking, and they’re heading tonight into the eighth and final season of this installment of the hit post-apocalypse franchise. So, there’s still plenty to fear! With Lennie James, Kim Dickens, Karen David and Ruben Blades (9 p.m., AMC and AMC+).
The Cube Three-time NBA champion Dwayne Wade hosts the new season of this high-octane competition series in which contestants confront physical and mental challenges while confined inside a moving glass box (9 p.m., TBS).
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Cosplay, you may be aware, is when people dress up for conventions and other events in the “costumes” to “play” their favorite characters from comics and movies. Thurstan Redding’s explosively illustrates this pop-culture phenomenon in Kids of Cosplay (Thames and Hudson), with more than 70 surreal portraits of young people getting their cosplay on.
The Neighborhood Dave (Max Greenfield) finally learns the truth about the long-ago disappearance of his father (guest star Kevin Pollack) (8 p.m., CBS).
MONDAY, May 15 Street Outlaws: Locals Only It’s fast and it’s furious as cameras follow local race drivers across America in a bracket-style elimination to determine, well, who’s the fastest and the furious-est (8 p.m., Discovery).
TUESDAY, May 16 Anna Nicole Smith: You Don’t Know Me Documentary (below) delves into the life, death and secrets of Vickie Lynn Hogan, who became international famous as model turned actress Anna Nicole Smith (Netflix).
The Tower 2: Death Message Season two of the streaming crime-drama series begins as London dig for clues into grisly murders, organized crime and other dark turns of events. Starring Gemma Whelan and Jimmy Akingbola (Britbox).
Angel City Actor Natalie Portman founded the Angel City Football Club, an all-female soccer team in 2020, and now she’s one of the producers of this docuseries (above) about the players worked to build the franchise (9 p.m., HBO).
WEDNESDAY, May 17 Conor McGregor New documentary series goes inside the world of mixed martial arts champ Conor McGregor as he prepares for a return to the UFC octagon (Netflix).
The Family Stallone It’s Rocky, with all the chips off the ol’ block-y! This new docuseries takes you inside the life of actor Sylvester Stallone and his family, including wife Jennifer Flavin and their three daughters (Paramount+).
THURSDAY, May 18 I Survived Bear Grylls The TV survivalist joins with comedian Jordan Conley to host this new competition series featuring simulations of some of Gryllis’ most grueling and hair-raising endurance situations (9 p.m., TBS).
The Geography of Bliss Rainn Wilson (from TV’s The Office) goes on a global trek in this new docuseries (above) to find the happiest places on the planet (Peacock).
Steve Harvey goes to court, Muppets Mayhem & a first for Garth Brooks
Padma Lakshmi gets her yum on.
FRIDAY, May 5 Taste the Nation with Padma Lakshmi The renowned foodie returns for a new season of this series exploring America’s rich, electric regional cuisines (Hulu & Disney).
Silo Gripping dystopian drama series unfolds the saga of the last people on earth, who live underground to protect themselves from the toxic and deadly world above. Rebecca Ferguson, Tim Robbins and rapper-actor Common star (Apple TV+).
SUNDAY, May 7 Vice Season four begins of the award-winning documentary series (above), which heads tonight into the aftermath of a devastating earthquake in Syria, and also explores new groundbreaking developments in artificial intelligence (8 p.m., Showtime).
MTV Movie & TV Awards Find out what’s popular with the “kids” these days on this show honoring the top things on screens of all sizes, with a special “Comedic Genius” trophy going to actress/comedienne Jennifer Coolidge. Previously announced host Drew Barrymore won’t be there, however, in a show of support for Hollywood’s writers’ strike. (8 p.m., MTV).
The 2010s Docuseries examines culture, politics, personalities, music and lifestyle that defined the not-so-long-ago decade (9 p.m., CNN).
MONDAY, May 8 Horrible Bosses It’s ribald and raunchy, yes, but wildly funny, and if you haven’t seen it—well, tune in to this 2011 comedy caper to see how the misguided plans of three guys (Jason Bateman, Charlie Day and Jason Sudeikis) to get rid with their awful bosses take a turn toward the hilarious. With Kevin Spacey, Jennifer Aniston and future Royal Meghan Markle! (10 p.m., TruTV).
Jeopardy Masters Ken Jennings host this prime-time special-event edition of the iconic game show, featuring top-ranked returning contestants (8 p.m., ABC).
TUESDAY, May 9 Judge Steve Harvey Court is once again in session as the host of TV’s Family Feud picks up the gavel and puts on the cloak in this unscripted comedy series, usong his life experiences and common sense to “rule” on a variety of small claims, friendship-taxing disagreements and neighborhood disputes (Hulu).
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Look, up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No, it’s the Superman 1978-1987 5-Film Collection (Warner Bros. Home Entertainment), a superb collection of Man of Steel movies—Superman: The Movie, Superman II, Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut, Superman III and Superman IV. Not the most inventively titled flicks, they nonetheless re-established the Man of Steel for a whole new generation. Includes commentary, vintage featurettes and cartoons from the groundbreaking Fleischer Studios, dozens of deleted scenes, and more.
WEDNESDAY, May 10 Class of ’09 Brian Tyree and Kate Mara star in this new thriller series about a class of FBI agents grappling with immense changes as the criminal justice system is altered by artificial intelligence (Hulu).
The Muppets Mayhem New streaming movie (above) follows the Muppet “act” the Electric Mayhem Band—with Dr. Teeth, Animal, Floyd, Zoot and Janice—on a mishap-py mission to record their first album. Voices by Llly Singh, Tahj Mowry and others (Disney+).
The Game Show Show If you love game shows (and who doesn’t?!), you’ll love this new series, which takes a long, insightful look at the history and impact of game shows across eight decades of American culture (10 p.m., ABC).
THURSDAY, May 11 The Academy of Country Music Awards I know, it’s a bit confusing. There’s the CMA Awards and the CMT Awards, and tonight it’s the ACM Awards, hosted this year by superstars Dolly Parton and Garth Brooks—marking his first time as an awards show host—and streaming live from Frisco, Texas (Prime Video).
Marvel’s cosmic misfits return for an overstuffed blowout farewell party
Zoe Saldana as Gamora in ‘Marvel Studios’ ‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3’
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 Starring Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Baustista, Karen Gillan & Will Poulter Directed by James Gunn PG-13
In theaters Friday, May 5, 2023
The gang’s all here as Marvel’s motley crew of cosmic outlaws closes out their movie trilogy with a bang in a daring dash to save one of their own. This big, bold rousing finish (supposedly) is the overcrowded end of the franchise, which began nearly a decade ago and now hinges on the backstory of Rocket, the genetically modified wisecracking racoon (voiced again by BradleyCooper).
The Guardians quip, banter and rip across the universe, encountering an array of bizarro cyborg critters and a crazed despot (Shakespearean actor Chuckwudi Iwuji, deliciously, devilishly nasty) intent on creating a new, perfected world—and discarding all his “mistakes” along the way.
Vol. 3 throws a lot at the screen—a barrage of digital effects, a who’s who of characters and a dense stream of details. If you haven’t been along for the ride from the beginning, paying attention through the other Guardians flicks, the events of The Avengers and the interwoven connectedness of the broader Marvel Cinematic Universe, well, good luck. You might not understand how the green-skinned Gamora (Zoe Saldana), who died in a previous movie, can show up again, and have no memory that she and Guardians leader Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) were once lovey-dovey.
As diehard Marvel fans know, there’s always the chance of new beginnings and redo’s, thanks to time warps, Infinity Stones and other comic-book shenanigans.
Just about everyone is aboard for this way-out wrap party. There’s Drax the Destroyer (former wrestler Dave Bautista); Gamora’s sister Nebula (Karen Gillan); Mantis (Pom Klementieff), whose enhanced ability for empathy comes in handy. Groot, the size-shifting, virtually indestructible humanoid tree, is voiced again by Vin Diesel, even though he grunts only one thing (“I am Groot”) over and over.
Look: There’s Sylvester Stallone, back again! And Elizabeth Debicki! Will Poulter makes the movie debut of a golden-hued, artificially fashioned space super-dude, Adam Warlock, whose comic-book roots go back to the 1960s. And Cosmo the telepathic dog has a new voice—it’s Bulgarian actress Maria Bakalova, who got an Oscar nomination for playing Borat’s daughter in Borat Subsequent Moviefilm. Returning director James Gunn’s brother, Sean, also returns as a humanoid alien with a mohawk fin on his head and a whistle-controlled arrow in his quiver.
There more than a few space-age shootouts with all kinds of zappers and blasters, and even a high-tech version of an old standby, the hand grenade. But nothing blows up like the heated moment when one of characters drops the F-bomb, marking an onscreen first for a Marvel movie.
At one point, the Guardians plop down in a comically mutated surburbia that looks like Ozzie and Harriett spliced with The Twilight Zone. Is that Howard the Duck, the waterfowl star of Marvel’s first feature-length theatrical movie (1986), playing a card game? Be quick or you’ll miss a visual shoutout to Alf, the sitcom space alien. To top it all off, there’s a climactic rescue of a bunch of cute kids, who look like ragged theater waifs abandoned after being worked to the bone in back-to-back productions of Cats and Les Miserable.
Baby Rocket (voiced by Bradley Cooper)
It’s a mega-movie loaded with wildly colorful characters, oddball creatures, monsters and cuddly pets, loads of whimsy and jokes, bursts of dramatic intensity, lushly detailed world-building and ka-boomy blasts of explosive, expensive-looking, sometimes chaotic action. But there’s also a surprising amount of emotional heft and heart, particularly in the sentimental swell of Rocket’s early days when he was experimentally bioengineered alongside other “altered” caged animals. If those TV PSAs for animal-cruelty prevention really get to you, you’ll be wrecked by watching what went down with Rocket and his penned-in pals. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
And you’ll certainly tap your toes to the soundtrack, a highly curated playlist loaded once again with scene-appropriate tunes by the Flaming Lips, Heart, Faith No More, Alice Cooper, the Beastie Boys, Florence and the Machine, Bruce Springsteen and X. The movie opens, fittingly, with Radiohead’s “Creep”—and Rocket muttering along to the lyrics, about being a self-loathing “freak” and “weirdo”—and closes with a bouncy, upbeat Poco tune that will be familiar to fans of the first movie, back in 2014.
Pom Klementieff as Mantis, Groot (voiced by Vin Diesel), Chris Pratt as Peter Quill/Star-Lord, Dave Bautista as Drax, and Karen Gillan as Nebula
If this is, indeed, the final Guardians mission, they go down swinging (and swearing!). But rest assured, you’ll be seeing these characters—or some of them, anyway—in other Marvel projects, in some form or another. This may be a goodbye, but these Marvel space seeds were also engineered to grow, made to be movie perennials, sewn to sprout—to regenerate like the roots and branches of Groot—over and over, returning again and again.
A new ‘Afterparty’ whodunnit, Star Wars shorts & a fem-centric spin on ‘Fatal Attraction’
FRIDAY, April 28 The Afterparty Season two of the feisty murder-mystery whodunnit comedy series begins with returning cast members Tiffany Haddish (above), Sam Richardson and Zoe Chao, and new players including Elizabeth Perkins, Paul Walker Hauser, Ken Jeong, Jack Whitehall and others (Apple TV+).
Peter Pan and Wendy Just because you can doesn’t mean you should—I really don’t see a reason for this remake of the classic childhood tale from Scotland’s J.M. Barre, but Peter Pan has become one of Disney’s most enduring characters. He’s even the host of his own attraction, Peter Pan’s Flight, in most Disney parks. And hey, it’s a kick to see Jude Law as Capt. Hook (Disney+).
SATURDAY, April 29 Moonage Daydream Acclaimed 2022 doc about the music and life of glitter rocker David Bowie comes to TV (8 p.m., HBO).
SUNDAY, April 30 Tom Jones on Masterpiece Four-part new adaptation (above) of one of the great novels in the English language, with a new twist to its tale of a young man’s love for a wealthy heiress (9 p.m., PBS).
Fatal Attraction This new series spin on the 1980s psychosexual classic (stewed rabbit, anyone?) stars Joshua Jackson, Lizzy Caplan, Amanda Peet and Toby Huss in a torrid tale of forbidden love and infidelity through a contemporary prism of strong women, personality disorders and dangerously tangled webs (Paramount+).
MONDAY, May 1 A Small Light Bel Powley, Joe Cole and Live Schreiber star in this new limited series based on the inspiring true story of the women who played a critical role in hiding Anne Frank and her family during the Nazi occupation of Amsterdam (9 p.m., National Geographic).
Undercover Underage Reality series focuses on a nonprofit working with decoys to entrap would-be predators (9 p.m., ID).
TUESDAY, May 2 Thalia’s Mixtape Docuseries about the young Latin global superstar and her musical influences (Paramount+).
King Charles: The Boy Who Walked Alone Royals alert: Longtime friends, school chums and Buckingham Palace staffers offer up recollections of Britain’s new monarch ahead of his coronation in this new 90-minute documentary (above) sure to delight fans of all things Brit-ty (Paramount+).
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Woody Harrelson stars in Champions (Universal Home Entertainment) as a former basketball coach who finds new purpose in his life when he’s court-ordered to take on a team with intellectual disabilities. With Cheech Marin, Ernie Hudson and Kaitlin Olson.
WEDNESDAY, May 3 Ed Sheeran: The Sum of It All How did a young stuttering British child grow up to become a global superstar? Find out in this new musical documentary that examines the life and career of the London-born singer-songwriter (Disney+).
Pete Davidson stars in ‘Bupkis,’ based on his own life.
THURSDAY, May 4 Bupkis Pete Davidson stars in this new half-hour live action comedy with a fictionalized spin on his life (Peacock).
Star Wars: Visions Second installment of the popular streaming series, pushing the Star Wars mythos into new realms of storytelling with animated shorts from studios around the world (Disney+).
Jennifer Garner hunts for her husband, Betty Gilpin plays a streetwise nun & Kerri Russell stars as ‘The Diplomat’
Jennifer Garner searches for her missing husband in ‘The Last Thing He Told Me.’
FRIDAY, April 14 The Last Thing He Told Me Jennifer Garner stars in this gripping new drama series based on the New York Times No. 1 bestselling novel, about a woman who must form an alliance with her teenage stepdaughter (Angourie Rice) in order to solve the mystery of her husband’s disappearance (Apple TV+).
Jane New kids-focused series, inspired by the life of pioneering zoologist Jane Goodall, stars Ava Louise Murchison as young environmentalist (also named Jane) on a quest to save endangered animals (Apple TV+).
SUNDAY, April 16 The Phantom of the Opera It’s leaving Broadway after a run of more than 25 years. But now you can watch from your home with this performance of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical stage production filmed live at the Royal Albert Hall (BroadwayHD).
Ciao House Chow down on some fine Italian cuisine in this new cooking competition in Tuscany, the epicenter of Italian life, hosted by Alex Guarnaschelli and Gabriele Bertaccini (9 p.m., Food Network and Discovery+).
MONDAY, April 17 The Weakest Link Jane Lynch hosts the season three return of the quick-witted game show in which contestants must work together to bank prize money—and eliminate the “weakest” among them (8 p.m., NBC)
Live with Kelly and Mark Actor Mark Consuelos comes aboard officially to join his wife, Kelly Ripa, after the departure of long-time co-host Ryan Seacrest from daytime’s longest-running talk show (7 a.m., ABC).
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Channing Tatum returns to the role he created over a decade ago in Magic Mike’s Last Dance (Warner Bros. Home Entertainment). He’s Mike Lane, a former male stripper now returning to the stage for a last hurrah with a new group of male exotic dancers. Directed by Steven Soderbergh, who also directed the original MM, and Salma Hayek hops aboard as a wealthy patron who can afford a $60,000 lap dance. Right!
If a bear toots cocaine in the forest, and there’s no one around to see it… This isn’t a riddle, it’s Cocaine Bear (Universal Home Entertainment), a rip-roaring comedy—yes, a comedy—based on a true story. With Keri Russell and Margo Martindale, and marking one of the final film appearances of Ray Liotta. If you’re up for some offbeat, snarling fun, it’s grrrrrrrr-eat!
Author Raymond Chandler’s iconic noir detective gets an update in Marlowe (Universal Pictures Home Entertainment), as the classic gumshoe gets a new star, Liam Neeson, and a new mission. With femme fatale support from Jessica Lange and Diane Kruger.
TUESDAY, April 18 Longest Third Date Romantic sparks fly when a couple, Matt and Kahani, meet online. But when they fly on a wild whim to Costa Rica for date number three, they get stuck there as the world shuts down for the onset of COVID-19 in March 2020 (Netflix).
Deadliest Catch Let’s go crabbin’! Tonight’s two-hour premiere kicks off a new season of this reality series about competing groups of net-casters hoping to cash in on Alaskan Crab (8 p.m., Discovery).
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Which President played so most golf, he had a putting green installed at the White House? Which one ran a horseshoe league from the Oval Office? What really went down when Barack O’Bama played a pickup game of hoops with the North Carolina Tarheels…and later won the state by .3 percent of the vote? Find out in Power Players (Twelve) by former CNN reporter Chris Zilla, which offers an enlightening looks at U.S. presidents and their sports passions, from the spectator sidelines to the playing field.
Most fans know the Three Stooges mostly by their “shorts,” the 190 short films they made for Columbia Pictures in the 1930s thru the ‘50s. Now A Tour de Farce: The Complete History of the Three Stooges on the Road, by Gary Lassin, is the first-ever compendium of the iconic trio’s five decades of taking their show on the road, with appearances in theaters and auditoriums, on military bases, at circuses and for hospital patients. With hundreds of never-before-published photos, tour documents and local reviews, it’s a delightfully detailed flashback to a “lost” chapter in the career of one of pop culture’s most enduring comedy teams.
WEDNESDAY, April 19 Niagara Falls Learn all about the world’s fastest-moving waterfall (and its second largest) and the wide variety of wildlife that call this geological wonder home. P.S., bring your own barrel! (8 p.m., PBS).
Let’s Make a Deal Grammy nominee Jordan Sparks helps celebrate the U.S. military in tonight’s first in a run of prime-time special editions of the popular daytime game show hosted by Wayne Brady (9 p.m., CBS).
Pretty Stoned New comedy series about, yes, attractive stoners who run afoul of a female drug lord (above). It’s got a mostly female cast, including Pretty Vee, Paris Berelc and Kandi Burruss-Tucker (8 p.m., MTV).
Betty Gilpin is a nun who fights ‘Mrs. Davis.’
THURSDAY, April 20 Mrs. Davis Betty Gilpin (of GLOW) stars in new drama series as a streetwise nun who goes to battle with an all-powerful artificial intelligence known as “Mrs. Davis,” forcing the sister (and us) to re-examine the systems and institutions in which we put our faith (Peacock).
Keri Russell stars as a harried ambassador in ‘The Diplomat.’
The Diplomat If you liked The West Wing and Homeland, you’ll love this new series (from the same creative team) starring Keri Russell as a U.S. foreign ambassador trying to hold her marriage together as her political world is threatening to fall apart (Netflix).
Matt Damon and Ben Affleck score big in their modern Cinderella story about one of the greatest underdog victories in sports marketing history
Matt Damon stars as a Nike marketing exec in ‘Air.’
Air Starring Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Viola Davis & Jason Bateman Directed by Ben Affleck Rated PG-13
In theaters Wednesday, March 5
Move over, Cinderella, and make way for another shoe story. And this one’s no far-off fairy fable.
Director Ben Affleck’s earnestly crowd-pleasing Air tells the true tale of how a third-rate sneaker company signed a teenage college basketball phenom, Michael Jordan, and revolutionized everything that followed. One of the most groundbreaking deals in the annals of sports marketing, Nike’s affiliation with Jordan sparked quantum changes in pro sports as well as the realms of fashion, celebrity endorsements and lifestyle.
It catapulted Nike to the top of the sports-shoe pyramid and eventually made Jordan—today widely recognized as pro basketball’s GOAT, its greatest player of all time—an ever-growing multi-million mountain of moola, dwarfing what he ever earned in his entire NBA career as a superstar for the Chicago Bulls and the Washington Wizards.
Air is a rah-rah, rousing feel-good story about taking risks, following gut instincts, sweating bullets and scoring big. It’s like sports in that regard, but it’s not really a “sports drama.” It spends very little time courtside. Most of the plays we see are as business execs watch grainy scouting tapes. The central figure of the story, Jordan, appears only briefly, a silent sentinental seen almost always from behind. We never get a good look at his face, and we hear him speak only one word, “Hello,” over a telephone.
He’s a looming presence without really being present. It’s a bold, completely effective choice from director Affleck, who knows that dwelling too much on Jordan as a character would take us away from the “sole” of the story and the people who made it happen.
So Jordan, and the game of basketball itself, are sidelined as movie focuses, instead, on the human drama—fathers, sons, workaholic businessmen and one super-savvy mom who connected all the dots, against all the odds. It’s like Moneyball crossed with Jerry Maguire and a dash of David and Goliath.
Ben Affleck is Nike’s philosophical founder, Phil Knight.
It opens in the heart of the go-go, greed-is-good 1980s as we learn how Nike is on the financial ropes, floundering far behind its competitors, Adidas and Converse. The board of directors is pressuring CEO and founder Phil Knight (Ben Affleck) to cut corners and slash budgets. Advertising honcho Rob Strasser (Jason Bateman) bemoans that “George Orwell was right: 1984 is a terrible year—sales are down, growth is down.”
And Nike is down. But Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Damon), in the company’s basketball scouting division, has a bold brainstorm to turn things around…maybe. He wants to use the company’s entire marketing budget to lure Michael Jordan, then only 18, into an endorsement deal, custom designing a shoe that “fits” him in more ways than one, footwear that will become his emblem, his lifestyle, his legacy.
Sonny knows that if his gamble doesn’t roll out a winner, he’ll be out of a job. But he’s all-in. “We build a shoe line just around him. He doesn’t wear the shoe, he is the shoe,” he says. “I’m willing to bet my career on one guy.”
The shoe, of course, would be the Air Jordan, so named for Jordan’s jaw-dropping leaping abilities as a prolific scorer.
Viola Davis plays the mother of teenage basketball phenom Michael Jordan.
Viola Davis plays Jordan’s mother, a shrewd negotiator who innately understands the longterm value her supremely gifted son brings to the table. Marlon Wayans is George Raveling, a superstar basketball coach who only appears briefly but offers some enduring words of inspiration from his past. Comedian Chris Tucker steals his scenes as a Nike marketer with some valuable insights for Vaccaro, especially in dealing with Black athletes. “Always go the mamas,” he tells him. “The mamas run stuff.”
Chris Messina has some spicy comedic bite as a Jordan’s hard-driving agent, David Falk. Matthew Maher is the shoe designer who comes up with the iconic, inspired design for a product that would ultimately travel far, far above and beyond the basketball court.
It’s a juicy, Oscar-bait ensemble, but Damon’s Vaccaro is the heart and soul of the story, the bedraggled underdog who rallies his Nike cohorts—his teammates—behind his big, high-stakes push to land a legend…and help create another one in the process.
Air is Affleck’s fifth project as a director, and it brims with the confidence and slam-dunk sure-footedness he’s developed in The Town, the Oscar-nominated Argo, Gone Baby Gone and Live by Night. The film is rich with ‘80s period-piece touches (handheld video games, Trivial Pursuit, VCRs, running suits) and a soundtrack of expertly curated MTV-era hits (“Blister in the Sun,” “Money for Nothing,” “Born in the USA,” “Time After Time”). It marks the first project of the production company, Artists Infinity, Affleck formed with Damon, his childhood bestie from the ‘hood in Massachusetts.
This is the ninth film in which Damon and Affleck have appeared together, beginning with uncredited appearances as Fenway Park extras in another sports-related human drama, Field of Dreams. They have a natural, unforced ease onscreen together, a natural stride that feels like, well, two old friends who’ve marched along the same path together for years, often as collaborators, doing what they always dreamed of doing, now getting to do it in Hollywood’s big leagues.
And in Air, they’ve found a shoe—and a shoe story—that feels like it fits them perfectly, a cinematic Cinderella’s slipper accented with the Nike swoosh.
Sandler’s new ‘Murder Mystery,’ a return to ‘Schimagdoon!’ & Jim Belushi goes to pot
Jennifer Aniston and Adam Sandler reunite for another ‘Murder Mystery.’
FRIDAY, March 31 Murder Mystery 2 Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston return for more adventures as a clue-sniffing couple hoping trying start their own private-eye agency—and finding themselves in the middle of an international abduction when one of their friends goes missing (Netflix).
The Power Toni Collette, John Leguizamo, Eddie Marsan and Auli’i Cravalho star in this new series a sci-fi thriller about what happens when teenage girls suddenly develop a superpower—to electrocute people at will. Yikes! (Prime Video)
Rye Lane In this streaming movie, two 20-somethings (Vivian Oparah and David Jonsson) both reeling from bad break-ups connect on one eventual day in South London, where they help each other in dealing with their nightmare exes (Hulu).
SATURDAY, April 1 The Ten Commandments It must be Easter! This 1956 classic, starring Charlton Heston (above) as Moses and Yul Brynner as Pharoah, gets trotted out this time every year. Spoiler alert: The Red Sea parts (7 p.m., ABC).
Very Scary People Donnie Walhberg hosts the new season of this investigative true-crime series, which dives into diabolical acts and the twisted individuals who commit them (9 p.m., Investigation Discovery).
SUNDAY, April 2 Beat Bobby Flay Natalie Morales, co-host of TV’s The Talk, heads to kitchen with Eddie Jackson, sending a pair of chefs on a mission to beat Bobby Flay in a whipped-up battle of Scotch eggs (9 p.m., Food Network).
CMT Music Awards Live from Austin, Texas: Hitmakers Kane Brown and Kelsi Ballerini (left) host this annual event honoring country music videos and performers, including Laney Wilson, who leads with four nominations (8 p.m., CMT).
MONDAY, April 3 Race to Survive Alaska Think you’ve got what it takes to endure the harsh extremes of our northernmost state? Well, you might think again when you watch this cherry-picked group of adventure racers and survival experts trying to endure more 100 miles of inhospitable terrain—equipped with only what they can carry—in this high-stakes competition for half a million dollars (11 p.m., USA Network).
TUESDAY, April 4 FBI TV worlds from FBI, FBI: International and FBI: Most Wanted collide—and collaborate—in this crossover event, which features Dylan McDermott, Missy Peregrym and Luke Kleintank (8 p.m., CBS and Paramount+).
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Sports fans will flip for Got Your Number (Hyperion Avenue), by ESPN’s Mike Greenburg and Paul Hembekides, a stats-saturated dive into 100 sports legends, creatively woven into a “countdown” of the numbers they became famous for wearing. So put on your favorite jersey and let the games begin!
WEDNESDAY, April 5 Schmigadoon! The acclaimed, Emmy-winning musical comedy series starring Keegan-Michael Key and Cecily Strong returns for a much-anticipated second season, with all-new songs, hilarious supporting roles by Martin Short, Kristin Chenoweth, Ariana Debose, Alan Cumming and more, and a bright new parade of special guests (Apple TV+).
Growing Belushi New season continues the adventures of actor Jim Belushi (yes, the brother of the late John Belushi) as he works toward expanding his cannabis brand in Oregon (9 p.m., Discovery Channel).
Dave New sitcom starring comedian and rapper Dave Burd, who stars as a comedian who discovers much about America on a country-crisscrossing tour—and also a bit about the pressures that fame can put on love and friendship (10 p.m., FX).
Tricia Fukuhara, Marisa Davila, Cheyenne Wells and Ari Notartomaso star in a new ‘Grease’ spinoff.
THURSDAY, April 6 Grease: The Rise of the Pink Ladies New streaming series (above) takes place in the mid-1950s, before the events of the movie Grease, and follows four female outcasts determined to have big fun on their own terms (Paramount+)
Slasher: Ripper Will & Grace’s Eric McCormack stars in this fifth-season edition of the horror anthology series as a ruthless tycoon in the late 19 century while a bloodthirsty killer stalks the streets, looking to mete out justice to the rich and powerful (AMC+).
Looking for the next big country star, investigating space aliens & celebrating a ‘Young & Restless’ milestone
Reese Witherspoon & Kacey Musgraves are looking for new country stars in “My Kind of Country.”
FRIDAY, March 24 Up Here Romcom musical series (from Steven Levenson, who wrote Dear Evan Hansen and tick, tick…BOOM!) stars Mae (Good Girls) Whitman and Carlos (Gaslit) Valdes as young couple reevaluating their relationship, along with their hopes, dreams, fears and fantasies (Hulu).
My Kind of Country Talent-scout country artists Mickey Guyton, Jimmie Allen and Orville Peck hunt for the next big country star in this new unscripted competition series from executive-producer big shots Reese Witherspoon (a Nashville native!) and Grammy-winning country singer-songwriter Kacey Musgraves (Apple TV+).
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Can you believe it’s been half a century since Pink Floyd’s iconic album first hit the charts? Now a lavish coffee-table book, Pink Floyd: The Dark Side of the Moon (Thames & Hudson) celebrates the musical milestone with rare and previously unseen photos of the British band on tour, documentation of tour dates, and a visual chronicle of the enigmatic artwork that would become the emblem for one of the most celebrated rock albums of all time.
SATURDAY, March 25 Unexplained: Caught on Camera Experts attempt to explain unexplainable events, including twin brothers who swear they were abducted by visitors from another world, and an hunter who gets more than any eyeful when he sets up a camera in the Montana wilderness (9 a.m., Travel Channel).
SUNDAY, March 26 Great Expectations My sixth-grade reading assignment lives on! This new adaptation stars Olivia Colman as Miss Havisham, plus a wide cast of others playing characters first presented on the page in Charles Dickens’ coming-of-age classic, which first appeared in 1860 as a serialized magazine story (Hulu).
Rabbit Hole Nothing is what it seems to be in this new thriller streaming series, in which a master of corporate espionage (24‘s Kiefer Sutherland) is framed for murder by powerful forces with the ability to influence entire populations (Paramount+).
Searching for Mexico And gee, I thought I already knew where it was… In this six-episode series, actress/producer/director Eva Longoria (right) retraces her cultural and culinary roots south of the border. Produced by Stanley Tucci (10 p.m., CNN).
Succession The Emmy-winning drama-dark comedy series returns tonight to begin its fourth season, further exploring the power struggle between media magnate Logan Roy (Brian Cox) and his four grown children. Alexander Skarsgård returns as a tech visionary (9 p.m., HBO).
Yellowjackets The hit drama—about a young soccer team that splinters into brutal clans of survivalists after an airplane crash—kicks off season two tonight. Hang on: It’s gonna be another wild ride! (9 p.m., Showtime).
MONDAY, March 27 Like a Girl New six-part streaming series profiles championship women in sports—females who turn the derogatory phrase “Like a girl” inside out, including swimmers, volleyball players, soccer stars and basketballers (Fuse).
The Young and the Restless 50th Anniversary Celebration Has it really been half a century since this iconic daytime soap started stirring up the suds? Yep, and this primetime special commemorates the TV milestone with cast interviews, highlights and a deep dive into the show’s storylines of romance, feuds, rivalries, weddings and wardrobe (8 p.m., CBS).
TUESDAY, March 28 The Movement and The Madman Find out about this little-remembered chapter of the 1960s, when President Richard Nixon and the antiwar movement came to a tense showdown (9 p.m., PBS).
FBI True There are certainly a lot of “true crime” shows on TV. But this one is different, taking a gritty look at the real-life pressures faced by agents, in their own words, after events like the Waco standoff and a Manhattan bombing (Paramount+).
BRING IT HOME
A stylish remake of one of the classic anti-war films of all time from 1930, the Oscar-winning All Quiet on theWestern Frontdepicts the horrors of World War I from the perspective of young German soldiers who endure the hellishness of battle (Capelight/Netflix).
WEDNESDAY, March 29 The Big Door Prize Chris O’Dowd stars in this new comedy series about a small town forever changed with the arrival of a mysterious machine that appears to reveal everyone’s true potential, causing people to re-evaluate their life choices (Apple TV+).
THURSDAY, March 30 Rapcaviar Presents It’s kind of a weird name, but this new documentary series looks at some of today’s most provocative issues through hip-hop artists and newcomers exploring current events and other topics with their music (Hulu).
Unstable Rob Lowe stars in this new eight-episode series comedy as a biotech entrepreneur working to make the world a better place while trying to reconcile with his estranged son (Netflix).
Almost everything superstar Willie Nelson has recorded over the past decade has been in collaboration with producer Buddy Cannon
Willie Nelson has a Buddy.
Not a buddy, but The Buddy. He’s the Nashville uber-producer who’s been producing Nelson since 2003. Most recently, they collaborated on I Don’t Know a Thing About Love, Willie’s latest album, a new collection of songs written by the late, great Nashville tunesmith Harlan Howard.
The album contains Willie’s all-new cover versions of Howard’s “I’ve Got a Tiger by the Tail” (a hit for Buck Owens), “Busted” (recorded by Johnny Cash, Ray Charles and a later it for John Conlee), “She Called Me Baby” (Carl Smith, Charlie Louvin, Charlie Rich), “Streets of Baltimore” (Gram Parsons, Bobby Bare), “Too Many Rivers” (Brenda Lee, Johnny Rodriguez, Ray Price, Eddie Arnold, Ernest Tubb), “Excuse Me, I Think I’ve Got a Heartache” (Buck Owens, The Mavericks, Dwight Yoakam), and the Ricky Van Shelton hit “Life Turned Her That Way.”
“I sent Willie a list of about 30 Harlan songs,” recalls Cannon of the project’s genesis. “I said, ‘Why don’t we choose from this?’ And Willie said, ‘Hell, let’s just cut the first ten!’ I don’t think we ended up doing exactly that but, I mean, what a goldmine of songs.”
Willie chose to name the project—the title of another Harlan Howard classic—when all the tracks had been finished.
“I think he just really liked that song,” says Cannon of “I Don’t Know a Thing About Love,” which was a No. 1 chart-topper for Conway Twitty in 1984.
Cannon’s musical path first intersected with Willie back in the 1980s, when Cannon was producing another act, Mel Tillis.
“The first time I met him, I was working with Mel [for a 1984 album] on a track called ‘Texas on a Saturday Night’,” says Cannon. “Mel thought it would be good to have Willie sing on it, and Willie said he would. So, he came into town one night and we went over to the old Music Mill on 18th [Avenue] and spent about two hours working on that song.”
Cannon and Nelson eventually became buddies and true working collaborators years later, when Cannon was producing a new album for superstar Kenny Chesney, and the “No Hat, No Shoes, No Problem” singer also invited Willie to join him on a cut of the old pop standard “That Lucky Old Son.” Nelson liked Cannon’s production on the track so much, he asked Cannon on the spot to work with him on a record.
“He said, ‘Let’s go find some songs and make an album’,” says Cannon. “That’s how it kinda started.”
To date, Cannon has produced just shy of 20 albums for Nelson, and they’ve cowritten dozens of songs. The new I Don’t Know a Thing About Love is Willie’s salute to a songwriter regarded as one of the top tunesmiths of all time, the one who described a great country song as “three chords and the truth.”
Earlier this month, Nelson’s 2022 album A Beautiful Time received the Grammy for Best Country Album, and he won the Grammy for Best Country Solo Performance for “Live Forever,” a track from his tribute last year to singer-songwriter Billy Joe Shaver. Yeah, Cannon produced both of those, too.
Nelson, a musical icon by any measure, began his career in his native Texas in the mid 1950s. He later relocated to Nashville in 1960s, where he struggled to crack into the musical community, eventually establishing himself as a fledgling songwriter. In the 1970s, he became a torch bearer for country’s “outlaw movement,” a musical ethos of iconoclastic artists who insisted on creative freedoms beyond the strictures of Nashville’s Music Row. Today, he’s a bona fide superstar, with 25 No. 1 hits, more than 200 albums and enough awards—including 12 Grammys—to fill a Texas dance hall.
And on the cusp of turning 90 in April, he’s still going strong. Cannon recalls a recent trip to visit Willie at his getaway home in Maui, where he watched him work out with a boxing speedbag. Only Willie wasn’t punching, he was kickboxing.
“It was higher than my head, and he was kicking that thing,” Cannon recalls. “He’s very agile.”
Killen says the vibe at the sessions for the new album were relaxed and in synch with Willie’s musically laid-back personality—and suffused with a portent of his almost-shamanistic creativity, just like always. “There’s an aura around him,” Killen says. “Every time I’m around him in the studio, I get excited because, you know, something magical is about to happen.”
Nelson’s iconic, idiosyncratic singing style and jazz-influenced phrasing have become musical trademarks, and his guitar playing is a thing completely his own. “You never know what it’s going to sound like, his singing or his playing,” says Cannon. “Even he doesn’t know what it’s going to come out like.” And forget about asking him to do another take of a guitar part, or a vocal phrase, the way he did it previously. “He sees absolutely no point in playing or singing the same thing twice. It’s different every time.”
He adds that Nelson has never been one to over-prepare, over-sweeten or overcook when it comes to making music. Nelson and Cannon’s collaborations show how “you can under-produce instead of over-produce, and it will be just as effective,” says Cannon. “A lot of Willie’s recordings have no background harmonies on them, and you don’t even notice it.”
One of Nelson’s albums long before he started working with Cannon was Willie Nelson & Family, the 1971 LP that established his eclectic, ever-widening circle of musicians, associates, friends and blood kin as a unique, like-minded clan…a family.
And for the past ten years or so, producer Buddy Cannon has felt like he’s part of that family, too.
“I get the Willie Nelson and family thing now,” Killen says. “People mean something to him. I think I’ve somewhat become a part of that.”
What’s next for Cannon, and for Willie? The producer says their next studio collaboration will tap into Nelson’s wide-ranging tastes in all kinds of music. And they’ve already started working on it.
“We’re cutting a bunch of Willie’s old stuff with bluegrass musicians,” says Cannon, who’s mum on other details about the project.
But he notes that the bluegrass project is in keeping with Willie’s unpretentious, musically ecumenical embrace of all kinds of styles and formats, from country to pop standards, jazz and blues.
“He doesn’t think about genres,” says Cannon. “As far as he’s concerned, it’s just songs, and he’s just a singer.”
Jack White’s indie boutique label continues to push the envelope for the “experience” of music
The former White Stripes front man opened up Nashville’s Third Man in March 2009.
Ben Swank might not be singing “Happy Birthday” this week, but he’ll be thinking it as Third Man Records marks its 14th year in Nashville.
“It feels like, wow, that went by so fast,” says Swank, who was instrumental in opening the Nashville branch of Third Man in 2009—and he’s been a Nashvillian ever since.
Some nine years earlier, Grammy-winning Detroit rocker Jack White had co-founded the independent, vinyl-centric record label with Swank and Ben Blackwell, his Michigan business partners. “It happens fast when you head down the middle of it.”
From its eclectic headquarters on 7th Ave. South, Third Man has grounded itself in the local music community, pushing the boundaries of what a record company can do and be. It releases records, sure, but it’s much more—a retail store, live-music venue, photo studio, distribution center, publishing company and arthouse cinema. Where else in Nashville can you see a collection of vintage music-machine curiosities, then catch a set by a visiting Scottish indie sensation? It’s the only record company in Nashville where an act can perform, record live and then have vinyl records made—on the spot—in just a matter of hours.
Fans can not only see and hear music, purchase it and be entertained by it, but can experience it in one of Nashville’s coolest, most unique settings, where music isn’t so much a commodity as an organic, ongoing creative process.
“Jack’s philosophy on a lot of things is to find new ways for fans to engage,” says Swank, whose describes his role and responsibilities as Third Man’s consiglieri.
Since its opening, hundreds of artists have plugged in to Third Man in Nashville. There’ve been singer-songwriters, garage bands and punk rockers, but also superstars. U2, Pearl Jam, Conan O’Brien and comedians Chris Rock and Aziz Ansari have performed and recorded there. So has White’s former White Stripes duo partner and ex-wife, Meg. Country’s Margo Price was a Third Man breakout with her critically acclaimed 2016 debut album Midwest Farmer’s Daughter.
When I connected with him a couple of weeks ago, the consiglieri talked about becoming a Nashvillian, how he hooked up with White, and the big opening night, 14 years ago, that kicked everything off and set the tone for everything that would follow.
How did you meet Jack White?
We met when we were in our early 20s in Toldeo, where I’m from. One of his bands was playing on a bill with some friends of mine. My band played in Detroit [White’s hometown] a lot. We started swapping shows; he produced my band’s first big record. We just kind of became, the way music can bring people together. But more than that, I always thought Jack was an intelligent, natural-born almost bohemian type person, and I’ve always found myself more interested in people like that. I just think we identified with each other a little more than some others in the world. But certainly, music was the first thing that kind of made us friends.
White had already moved to Nashville, in 2005, after producing Loretta Lynn on Van Lear Rose, her much-hailed comeback album, on which the former White Stripes front man also sang and played guitar. Impressed by the Music City vibe, he decided to open a Nashville branch of Third Man, expanding beyond the company’s original footprint in Detroit and its later setup in London. Swank, working in the London location at the time, and Blackwell, White’s nephew, were tapped to relocate and set up the new operation.
What were your first impressions of Nashville?
I didn’t know anything about Nashville, and then, here I was. My very first night they took me down to Broadway, and I thought, ‘Oh, boy, well, this isn’t me.’ But I put in some time, and almost immediately I started seeing that this is the perfect place for us. I wanted to be in a smaller town, and I was kind of tired of living in a sort of hectic-ness [in London]. Nashville had everything we needed for Third Man; URP, United Pressing Service, who started working with us [making acetates and records] almost immediately, was right down the road from us; [and] there’s so much printing [done] here. It felt very close to what we were trying to do, at start of the onset of the trend of small businesses and farm-to-table restaurants. We wanted to say, “Come in, you can record, take your photos, do all of it in-house, and your records will be made here in Nashville,” A one-stop shop.”
Third Man launched in Nashville on March 11, 2009, with a top-secret grand opening known only to the 100 guests who’d been invited. White debuted his new band, The Dead Weather, which played their very first show in Third Man’s new venue space, the Blue Room.
What do you remember about opening night?
Lots of industry people came to see the debut of Dead Weather. We had already pressed Dead Weather’s first seven-inch [vinyl 45], which was available at the show. All the sleeves were hand-signed by the band. Everyone got an individual piece of photo strip of the band, and each one had a different picture in every frame. I think it immediately set the pace for what we were trying to do. We took everyone’s phones away; they had to immerse themselves in this party, this experience. It was amazing to see people’s minds blown by this new thing that was happening.
Third Man continued to add to the experience of music. In 2013, it introduced the Third Man Record Booth, where fans—or anyone else—could step inside a small space and make an “instant record.” Soon, artists also flocked to the booth; Neil Young recorded a whole album in it; Weezer, Weird Al and Richard Thompson also plugged in to its unique aural ambience.
What other new things did you bring to Third Man after the opening?
We’ve expanded our retail store four times. We bought the building next door to us and combined both into one larger structure. So, we now have distribution in-house now, as well as what we call “soft” merchandising manufacturing—T-shirts, etc. And we added the photo studio, where we hand-develop film and make prints in-house. Our Blue Room is now open for shows five nights a week. We’re a bar that’s open on a near-daily basis. We have 800 releases under our belt at this point, I have a family now and I’m almost 50. It’s fun to look back. We started out as a very small team, and we’ve built a very specific kind of world and culture here.
Especially at first, locals expressed some skepticism about the location chosen for Third Man in Nashville—just across the street from the city’s homeless shelter, a couple of blocks from the Greyhound station, in an industrial zone where businesses mostly buttoned up and shut down after dark.
There were comments about Third Man setting up shop in a spot that some people considered dicey, or even a little dangerous.
It doesn’t bother us. We still hear about that; apparently, it’s a concern for some folks. I think it says a lot more about [them] than us, to be honest. Just because we’re next door to the mission, I don’t think it means anything necessarily bad about the neighborhood. It’s always felt like home to us, and that’s what Jack [wanted]. Since we come from a more sort of industrialized city, it never seemed out of place to us.
What have been some of the highlights and things you’re proudest of?
We have a world record—the fastest record ever made, which we did in front of a live audience; recorded it, pressed it, did the artwork. That was a big thing.
[In 2004, White recorded a pair of new songs in front of a live audience, then took the direct-to-acetate disc to United Record Processing, printed vinyl singles and brought them back to Third Man, immediately, to sell to fans. Elapsed time: just under four hours.]
We put a record in space, Carl Sagan. [Third Man’s 2016 vinyl release of the Cosmos host talking was set to music by composer John Boswell; a gold-plated vinyl copy spun on a turntable, specially designed to function in the deep freeze of high altitudes, attached to a high-altitude balloon that ascended to 94,000 feet]. It sold a lot of copies for us.
We brought countless bands through our doors that hadn’t played in Nashville before or wouldn’t have played here otherwise. We have the only venue in the world where you can play a live show in front of an audience and record direct to acetate, live to a master in real time. The audience can watch that process as it happens, and then buy those albums. That’s something that only exists in Nashville, because of us.
We screen films; we have 16mm projectors and we try to show films that are out of distribution. We do massive poetry events and art shows. We really try to just be part of the culture overall. [Third Man’s publishing imprint has released an array of diverse titles of poetry, fiction and children’s books, including White’s own “We’re Going to Be Friends.”]
There’s been so much over the years. But I think the thing I’m most proud of is really being a part of this community, less about being the “first ones” about anything. More about being a part of what’s special about Nashville, and bringing our own stamp to that, in a very specific Third Man way.
The Media Tourist 