10 Notable New Releases Over the Next Two Weeks – Vulture

TV and Pop Music
1. & 2. Watch and Listen to Springsteen on Broadway
For your hungry holiday heart.
If you couldn’t get tickets to see the Boss’s theatrical turn, then catch Springsteen on Broadway, his witty, occasionally heartbreaking blend of autobiographical stories and stripped-down performances of hits and deep cuts, as a Netflix special and soundtrack album, out just in time for Christmas.
Netflix, December 15, and Columbia Records, December 14.

TV
3. Watch Vanity Fair
Upwardly mobile.
William Thackeray’s novel has been famously adapted on more than one occasion. But strong British reviews of this latest limited-series version, which aired earlier this fall on iTV, suggest it’s very much worth a look.
Amazon, December 21.

TV
4. Watch The Kennedy Center Honors
Glass act.
Though it’s been shunned by the current president, The Kennedy Center Honors continues to recognize masters of both popular and fine art in the closest thing TV has to a retro-1950s variety performance. This year’s crop includes country star Reba McEntire, indestructible diva Cher, Lin-Manuel Miranda and the co-creators of Hamilton, Weather Report co-founder Wayne Shorter, and composer Philip Glass. —Matt Zoller Seitz
CBS, December 26.

Movies
5. See Vox Lux
Bitter pill.
Love or hate it, you won’t be indifferent to the talented Brady Corbet’s madly ambitious, pop-infused psychodrama starring Natalie Portman as the survivor of a brutal school shooting who becomes a star. Portman doesn’t slide easily into the role: You see the acting when she mouths off at reporters and tromps around the stage delivering anthems by Sia. But you will be agog, awed. —David Edelstein
In theaters now.

Movies
6. See Cold War
Darkness falling.
This fleet, lustrous black-and-white drama from Pawel Pawlikowski, director of the Oscar-winning Ida, opens in Poland in 1949 as the Soviets get their hooks into the culture. Tall, soulfully unkempt Tomasz Kot plays the co-leader of a folklorist troupe who falls hard for a young singer (Joanna Kulig), and Pawlikowski infuses the romance that spills into Warsaw, Berlin, Paris, and Yugoslavia with a quiet but insistent threat. —D.E.
Opens December 21.

Books
7. Read Milkman
Fabulistic and timely.
This novel’s surprising Man Booker Prize victory comes as less of a surprise when you see what Anna Burns has crafted: a narrative at once intimate and universal. The narrator identifies herself as “middle daughter” and her much older tormentor as “milkman” — which he is not. Instead, he’s a paramilitary thug in 1970s Belfast. His coercion of this bookish girl has #MeToo echoes but reflects the ways social mores can spawn abuse in any place at any time. —Boris Kachka
Graywolf.

Audiobooks
8. Listen to Lingua Franca
It’ll get you through the holidays.
Former teacher Miles Platting has a brainstorm that makes him a rich man.
Through his agency, Lingua Franca, he helps cities sell naming rights. But as he’s about to close the deal to turn Barrow-in-Furness to Birdseye-in-Furness, Miles’s wife leads a silent revolt. William Thacker’s madcap, delightfully silly tale is voiced with suitable sincerity by British voice artist Angus Freathy.
Legend Press.

TV
9. Watch Watership Down
Hare, hare!
If memories of the ’70s animated movie based on Richard Adams’s novel still creep you out, this new animated mini-series will help wipe them away. This fresh take on the classic about a group of rabbits attempting to find a new home features an exceptional voice cast, including James McAvoy, Nicholas Hoult, John Boyega, Ben Kingsley, Daniel Kaluuya, and Olivia Colman.
Netflix, December 23.

Books
10. Read All That Heaven Allows
Breaking the waves.
Like Rock Hudson’s life — marked by glory as a Hollywood star and pinup but also the lifelong shame of the closet and his AIDS-related death — his afterlife was blessed and cursed in equal measure. Mark Griffin sets the balance right in a full, empathetic biography, sparing few details about the complicated life of a man who was born (and died) too soon. —B.K.
Harper.

*A version of this article appears in the December 10, 2018, issue of New York Magazine. Subscribe Now!

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