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EUROVISION SONG CONTEST: THE STORY OF FIRE SAGA If you haven’t yet watched this sweet Will Ferrell parody of the international song competition, you have yet to get “Volcano Man” stuck in your head. Your loss. Netflix.
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker
THIS
WEEK
ou (Netflix/C
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MUSIC FILM
DISCLOSURE
PHOEBE BRIDGERS’ PUNISHER
Actress Laverne Cox (Orange Is the New Black), writer and director Lilly Wachowski (The Matrix), actress Mj Rodriguez (Pose) and actor Chaz Bono (American Horror Story) share their experiences as trans artists in this original documentary and official Sundance 2020 selection. With an official mission of “provoking a startling revolution in how we see and understand trans people,” Disclosure highlights the increasing visibility of trans people in Hollywood while discussing the very real violence and injustice leveraged against those within the community. Netflix. –Leslie Ventura
Phoebe Bridgers is such a prolific collaborator—The 1975, Bon Iver, Conor Oberst, Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker are just some of the artists with whom she has worked—that it’s nice to see her expand her solo work. Her sophomore album, Punisher, comes three years after debut Stranger in the Alps, and it feels like the perfect soundtrack for a summer that finds most of us hunkering down. It’s rife with loss and heartbreak, and catharsis, too: Play “I Know the End” several times in a row and see if you don’t feel like you’ve gotten something off your chest. –Genevie Durano
TV
THE VENTURE BROS. When Jackson Publick and Doc Hammer created their animated sci-fi comedy The Venture Bros. for Adult Swim in 2004, their goals were modest: to goof on Hanna-Barbera’s Jonny Quest and to contemplate failure—generational failure, institutional failure and (mostly) male failure. Seven seasons in, it has gone from parodying sci-fi action to becoming one of the best examples of it, with Marvelquality world-building and cutthroat family drama to rival Game of Thrones. Name another show on which a shape-shifting David Bowie (impersonated) runs the criminal underworld. And—very important—it’s hilarious. Hulu. –Geoff Carter
