Serenity now for Mcconaughey
Actor continues to polish his performance as philosopher king, Chris Lackner writes.
MOVIES
Big releases on Jan. 25: The Kid Who Would Be King; Serenity
Big picture: Serenity is Dead Calm meets Hitchcock meets Matthew Mcconaughey clichés. Much like the latter’s True Detective character, Baker Dill is a grizzled, poor-man’s philosopher — a fishing boat captain who drives around his remote community thinking up kernels of wisdom that would impress a class of toddlers. Case in point: “Around here they like to say ‘everybody knows everything,’ but what if the truth was nobody knows anything?” When his distraught ex-wife Karen (Anne Hathaway) tracks Baker down and asks him to kill her vile new husband, not everything is as it seems. Sex, lies and murder quickly follow.
Meanwhile, The Kid Who Would Be King is about a modern British boy named Alex who finds the mythical sword Excalibur and turns his high school into a band of knights. Why? To fight alongside Merlin (Patrick Stewart) to save the United Kingdom from the evil sorceress Morgana (apparently Harry Potter was too busy placing bets at the local Quidditch track to be bothered with playing hero). As Alex puts it: “This is like in every story we ever read … Harry Potter, Luke Skywalker … something amazing happens and they find out they are descended from magical families.” (On a related noted, I keep sending back my results to Ancestry.com and telling them I won’t be satisfied with their work until they trace my lineage back to at least one mythical or magical figure. C’mon! Hercules? Achilles? Conan the Barbarian? Shera? Gimme something people.)
Forecast: In the sequel to this King Arthur reboot, Alex will face a much stiffer test than an ancient witch: trying to solve the whole Brexit debacle.
TV
Big events: Black Earth Rising (Jan. 25, Netflix); Kingdom (Jan. 25, Netflix); Rent (Jan. 27, Fox) Big picture: Black Earth Rising is a British miniseries about the troubled prosecution of an African warlord, courtesy of the International Criminal Court. Kingdom is a Korean drama about an exotic medieval kingdom beset by a deadly zombie plague. Lush, sensual and bloody, it’s like Walking Dead meets The Last Samurai meets The Last Emperor. Finally, Rent is a threehour live version of the hit musical starring Vanessa Hudgens.
Forecast: The zombie trend is impossible to kill; Kingdom won’t fall. It won’t be long before Walking Dead: The Musical comes to your small screen.
MUSIC
Big releases on Jan. 25: Backstreet Boys (DNA); Michael Franti & Spearhead (Stay Human, Vol. II) Big picture: Quit playing games with my heart. Backstreet’s back, all right? Bands from the 1990s are trending after all — like lumbering musical zombies that remind us of rosier times where boy bands ruled the airwaves, people didn’t spend most of their spare time sharing and liking irrelevancies on social media, and the biggest thing a lot of people had to worry about wasn’t looming political and environmental disaster — but if Ross and Rachel would hook up on Friends.
The Boys already have a hit single — Don’t Go Breaking My Heart — from their comeback studio album, their first since 2013. Meanwhile, the ever-optimistic, engaging and talented Michael Franti & Spearhead encourage us to Stay Human. Sure, Michael. Tell that to the zombies.
Forecast: You want it that way. You’ll pretend not to be excited about the Backstreet Boys album, but secretly download it and add it to your playlist.