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We're feeling very retro this weekend, with a "Planet of the Apes" movie in theaters, "Doctor Who" on TV and The Beatles back in our ears. As a great man once said, "Groovy, baby!"
From a Fab Four movie and new "Who" coming to Disney+ to super-smart evolved apes riding horseback on the big screen once again, it's time to start making some plans. There's a lot to experience in films, TV, books and music, and that's what we specialize in: telling fans what's good and what's worth their time.
Here's what you need to put your Big Entertainment Energy toward this weekend:
Noa (played by Owen Teague) is a young chimpanzee forced on a rescue mission when his village is brutally attacked in "Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes."
The "damn dirty apes" of the '60s and '70s have become stunning computer-generated characters, like Andy Serkis' Caesar in the 2010s "Apes" trilogy. The new installment "Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes" is a sequel set hundreds of years after that story, and while it's not as good as the Serkis ones, it's a sprawling sci-fi adventure that introduces new chimpanzee hero Noa (played via performance capture by Owen Teague) into a landscape where humans are mostly feral and apes rule all.
Check out my ???-star review as well as my pal Marco della Cava's feature on the film, where Teague talked about inhabiting Noa by changing his voice and speech patterns and developing a body language that mimicked a chimp's natural posture: "You're not impersonating an ape, you're creating a character who happens to have ape-like characteristics."
In case you want to stay closer to home with your weekend movie watching, I pulled together a guide to new stuff on streaming services such as "Turtles All the Way Down" (based on the John Green book), Anne Hathaway's latest rom-com "The Idea of You" and Zac Efron's tear-jerking wrestling drama "The Iron Claw."
The 1970 Beatles movie “Let It Be” was restored by Peter Jackson and now is available to stream on Disney+.
Let me whisper some words of wisdom: Even if you're not really into The Beatles, be sure to give the 1970 documentary "Let It Be" (streaming now on Disney+) a go. It's a fascinating look at four great musicians at work, at play and at each other's throats recording the band's final album. Footage from its making went into creating Peter Jackson's exhaustive 2021 "Get Back" docuseries – which is nearly eight hours long compared to 80 minutes for the newly restored doc – but as director Michael Lindsay-Hogg tells our resident Fab Four fanatic Kim Willis, they're not the same viewing experience. “They were different animals in a way, but they really are looking at the same period of time through different lenses."
In other music news, critic Melissa Ruggeri interviewed Mary J. Blige about bringing her Strength of a Woman festival to New York ("I’ve always wanted it here") and working on a new album: "It’s going to be hip-hop soul at its finest, amazing R&B at its finest. Just great songs at their finest.” Melissa also chatted with James Taylor about a bunch of things, including the one time he met up with namesake Taylor Swift when she was a teen. "We were both just there with guitars and played a couple of songs," he says.
The Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) and his companion Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson) investigates a Baby Farm in the future that’s being run by babies in the new season of "Doctor Who."
Since 1963, the British TV show "Doctor Who" – now streaming its new season on Disney+ – has been a sci-fi staple, with several actors who've played series' time-traveling main character. "Who" fans all have the one Doctor who got them into the show in the first place – for yours truly, that's Christopher Eccleston in 2005 and for younger viewers who've never had the pleasure, now it's Ncuti Gawa as the Fifteenth Doctor. One of the best things about Netflix's excellent "Sex Education" series, the Rwandan-born Scottish actor is the first Black Doctor, and he told TV critic Kelly Lawler that he's bringing an energetic, "fashion forward" take on the cosmic character: "I would hope that my Doctor is a Doctor for all generations."
Speaking of sci-fi treats, Apple TV+ premiered the nifty new thriller series "Dark Matter" this week – with Joel Edgerton playing a man forced into a parallel-universe version of his life, while Netflix debuted the darkly twisty mystery comedy "Bodkin," with Will Forte as an American podcaster investigating an infamous series of disappearances in a small Irish town.
