New this week: ‘Ice Age,’ Kevin James and ‘The Gilded Age’
MOVIES
— “The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild,” premiering Friday on Disney+, is the sixth feature film in the “Ice Age” series, which also encompasses TV specials, a load of videogames and an ice show. This installment, the first released by Disney after taking over 20th Century Fox, centers on Simon Pegg’s one-eyed weasel, Buck Wild, who was first introduced in “Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs.”
— “Home Team,” a new Adam Sandlerproduced sports comedy starring Kevin James as NFL head coach Sean Payton. “Home Team,” which debuts Friday on Netflix.
— A virtual Sundance Film Festival continues to unspools online in it second week. Despite the Park City, Utah, festival having to cancel its in-person events due to the omicron-propelled surge in COVID-19 cases, a wide range of new independent films can be streamed at home with the purchase of a ticket. Movies premiering beginning Monday include Tig Notaro and Stephanie Allynne’s friendship comedy “AM I OK?,” with Dakota Johnson and Sonoya Mizuno; “The Janes,” a documentary about the 1970s underground abortion collective; “Emily the Criminal,” with Aubrey Plaza as a debt-saddled Los Angeles woman pulled into a criminal underbelly; and “Piggy,” a Spanish horror film about a picked-on teenager.
MUSIC
— Singer-songwriter Anaïs Mitchell, who won a Tony Award for the musical “Hadestown,” returns to her own music with a new self-titled album, out Friday. Made with members of Bon Iver and The National, it’s Mitchell’s first collection of all-new material under her own name since 2012’s “Young Man in America.”
— The Temptations are always in style and haven’t stopped making music. Their new album “Temptations 60” features tracks written and produced by Narada Michael Walden, hip-hop producer K. Sparks, longtime group member Ron Tyson, founding member Otis Williams and the legendary Smokey Robinson, whose classic songs launched the group’s original hit streak.
TELEVISION
— HBO’s “The Gilded Age,” written by Julian Fellowes and Sonja Warfield, opens in 1882 amid wrenching U.S. economic change that sees the building of massive fortunes. Louisa Jacobson stars as a young woman who leaves the country for New York City and life with her old-money aunts — one of whom is warring with a new-money tycoon. Carrie Coon, Morgan Spector, Cynthia Nixon and Christine Baranski are among the stars in the nineepisode drama debuting Monday.
— “Astrid & Lilly Save the World,” a Syfy series that combines the two. Close pals Astrid and Lilly (Jana Morrison, Samantha Aucoin) are social outcasts and, to add to their woes, have accidentally opened a portal to a “terrifyingly quirky monster dimension,” as it’s explained. But the duo may be able to turn bad luck into good and realize their hero potential by taking on the creatures. The series debuts Tuesday on Syfy (with a USA simulcast for the premiere).
— A high school reunion plus murder equals “The Afterparty,” an Apple TV+ mystery-comedy series from filmmakers Chris Miller and Phil Lord. Described as “a genre-defying series” about the reunion evening that ended in death, each of the eight episodes focuses on one character’s account of events. Tiffany Haddish, Sam Richardson, Zoë Chao and Ilana Glazer are part of the ensemble cast for the series that debuts with three episodes on Friday.