The Stream
What's new this week in television, films and music
Ben Affleck, left, and Matt Damon in "The Rip"
Bond film "No
"Pole to Pole With Will Smith"
Idris Elba in "Hijack"
"Agatha Christie's Seven Dials"
ENTERTAINMENT
MOVIES
James Sweeney's "Twinless," an award-winning standout at last year's Sundance Film Festival, arrives Jan. 16 on Hulu. In it, Sweeney stars alongside Dylan O'Brien as two young men who become friends after meeting at a twin bereavement support group.
Matt Damon and Ben Affleck are together again, this time in Miami. In "The Rip" (Jan. 16 on Netflix), the Boston-bred stars are directed by Joe Carnahan in an action thriller about a group of Miami police off cers whose bonds begin to fray after they discover millions in cash in a derelict stash house. The supporting cast including Steven Yeun, Teyana Taylor and Kyle Chandler.
While development and nonstop casting rumors surround the next James Bond film, all 26 of the 007 movies are coming to Netflix beginning Jan. 15. Though Bond is now owned and controlled by Amazon MGM, the studio is licensing the Bond library to Netflix to whet appetites while director Denis Villeneuve preps the first post-Daniel Craig entry in the long-running spy series.
— Jake Coyle
MUSIC
It has been nearly a decade — eight years — since A$AP Rocky released a full-length project, his third studio album titled "Testing" back in 2018. The wait is finally over Jan. 16 when he drops "Don't Be Dumb." The first off cial taste of the release comes courtesy "Punk Rocky," a restrained alt-rock song built atop a dream-pop riff and Rocky alternating between a reverbed chorus and melodic flows.
The pop-R&B vocalist Madison Beer returns with her third LP, "Locket," also on Jan. 16. It may prove to be her strongest output to date: "Bittersweet" plays to her
For the eclecticists reading along: Avant-garde experimentalists Julianna Barwick and Mary Lattimore have teamed up for the collaborative album "Tragic Magic," out Jan. 16. It's ambient, well, magic — the two composers improvising and weaving into one another; Lattimore with her harps and Barwick with her synthesizers. Together, they form a kind of poetry.
— Maria Sherman
SERIES
Will Smith takes viewers on a trip to all seven continents in his new National Geographic docuseries "Pole to Pole With Will Smith." This is not your average travel show. It's taken five years to complete and Smith visits the jungles of the Amazon, skis in the South Pool and climbs the Himalayas. The seven-episode series debuts Jan. 13 and streams next day on Disney+ and Hulu.
A funny meme circulated last summer about Prime Video's "The Summer I Turned Pretty" that essentially said, if you think the Jeremiah character is a bad boyfriend you haven't seen the character Stephen DeMarco of Hulu's "Tell Me Lies." See for yourself just how toxic he is in the show's third season, debuting Jan. 13. It follows a group of (sort of) friends during two time-lines, at college and then six years later as twentysomethings. Grace Van Patten and Jackson White star.
Idris Elba saved the day during a hijacking on a plane in season one of "Hijack" for Apple TV. In Season 2, out Jan. 14, his character is scarred from the events of season one, but he finds himself in another hostage situation on a train.
An adaptation of "The Seven Dials Mystery," a 1929 Agatha Christie novel, lands on Netflix on Jan. 15. It's about a young wealthy woman investigating a murder at a party in the English countryside. "Agatha Christie's Seven Dials" is a three-part series and stars Helena Bonham Carter, Martin Freeman and Mia McKenna-Bruce.
Emilia Clarke and Haley Lu Richardson co-star in a new thriller called "Ponies" for Peacock. Out Jan. 15, the pair play two women living a mundane life in the Soviet Union in the 1970s as their husbands are CIA operatives. When they both find themselves widowed, they get thrust into the action. — Alicia Rancilio
