A six-episode, behind-the-scenes Disney+ docuseries about Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour and Rian Johnson’s third Knives Out movie, Wake Up Dead Man, are some of the new television, films, music and games headed to a device near you.
Also among the streaming offerings worth your time this week: Chip and Joanna Gaines take on a big job revamping a small home in the mountains of Colorado, video gamers can skateboard through hell in Sam Eng’s Skate Story and Rob Reiner gets the band back together for Spinal Tap II: The End Continues.
MOVIES
Photo: AP
■ Rian Johnson’s third Knives Out movie, Wake Up Dead Man arrives on Netflix today. Religion is at the heart of this installment, which finds Daniel Craig’s dapper detective Benoit Blanc trying to solve the “locked room” murder of Josh Brolin’s Monsignor Jefferson Wicks, a charismatic and terrifying church leader with a devoted set of followers. The large ensemble cast includes Josh O’Connor, Glenn Close, Andrew Scott, Jeremy Renner and Kerry Washington. Some were less than delighted by this outing, however. In his review for The Associated Press, Mark Kennedy called it, “a gloomy and clunky outing that may test fans’ faith in the filmmaker.”
■ Brad Pitt plays a washed-up driver looking for glory on the racetrack in the Formula One movie F1, streaming on Apple TV beginning today. Filmmaker Joseph Kosinski wanted to make it feel as exciting and authentic as possible: In many scenes, it really is Pitt and Damson Idris driving those cars at 180 mph. Film Writer Jake Coyle wrote in his review that it’s, “a fine-tuned machine of a movie that, in its most riveting racing scenes, approaches a kind of high-speed splendor.”
■ Rob Reiner got the band back together for Spinal Tap II: The End Continues, which begins streaming on HBO Max today. Was it a mistake to revisit the great 1984 mockumentary, though? Mark Kennedy wrote in his review that, “Despite some great starry cameos — Paul McCartney’s is easily the best — Spinal Tap II leans into the old favorite bits too needily and is suffocated by the constantly looming presence of death, a downer. The improv-based comedy is forced and the laughs barely register. This is a movie only for die-hard Tappers.”
Photo: AP
— AP Film Writer Lindsey Bahr
MUSIC
■ It is Taylor Swift’s world and we’re just living in it. Prepare yourself for two new projects at Disney+. That’s a six-episode, behind-the-scenes docuseries about her landmark “Eras Tour” titled Taylor Swift ‘The Eras Tour’ The End of an Era — the first two episodes will premiere today. And that is not to be confused with the second, titled Taylor Swift ‘The Eras Tour’ The Final Show, a concert film now with the inclusion of The Tortured Poets Department section. The 2024 album was incorporated into her three-and-a-half-hour performance following its release. It was filmed in Vancouver. (That differs from 2023’s Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour film, which was compiled from several Swift shows at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, a suburb of Los Angeles and arrived ahead of The Tortured Poets Department.) Swifties, rise!
Photo: AP
■ It has been a big year for collaborative rap records (looking at you, Clipse) and that continues into 2025’s 11th hour with Light-Years, a new release from rapper Nas and record producer DJ Premier. They’re greats for a reason.
■ The Grammy-award winning producer, DJ and electronic musician Fred Again will release the next iteration of his USB series, the 16-track USB002, today. Expect the unexpected: The first song released from the collection is you’re a star, which features Australian punky-pop band Amyl and The Sniffers. The club sounds a little different this time around.
— AP Music Writer Maria Sherman
NEW SERIES
■ Chip and Joanna Gaines have long said they would not do any fixer uppers outside of central Texas. Until now. The couple has taken on a big job revamping a small 1960s home in the mountains of Colorado. Fixer Upper: Colorado Mountain House is on Magnolia Network and HGTV and streams on HBO Max and Discovery+.
■ Percy Jackson, the son of Poseidon, returns to with Season 2 of Percy Jackson and the Olympians. The series, starring Walker Scobell in the title role, adapts The Sea of Monsters, the second novel in a book series by Rick Riordan. A two-hour season premiere is streaming on Disney+ and Hulu.
■ He helped to launch American Idol and created America’s Got Talent and the group One Direction. Now, cameras follow Simon Cowell as he seeks to form a new boy band in Simon Cowell: The Next Act. The docuseries is about both his search and Cowell himself. He prides himself on discovering an “it” factor. “When you’re putting a band together, it’s like mining for diamonds,” he said in the trailer. “If this goes wrong, it will be ‘Simon Cowell has lost it.’”
■ Diane Kruger stars in a new drama for Paramount+ called Little Disasters as Jess, a mother who takes her son to the hospital for a head injury. The doctor, who is also a friend, becomes suspicious of Jess’ description of what happened and calls the authorities. It’s based on a novel of the same name. All six-episodes are already streaming.
— Alicia Rancilio
VIDEO GAMES
■ I’ve skateboarded all over the world in various video games, but one location remains untouched by my deck: hell. Solo designer Sam Eng aims to correct that omission with Skate Story. You are a skateboarder made of glass in an underworld filled with demons, who can only be defeated by unleashing your gnarliest tricks. The only way to escape is to swallow the moon. If you love classics like Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater but wish they were more hallucinatory, this might be the ride for you. Kick off Monday on PlayStation 5, Switch 2 or PC.
— Lou Kesten
For a time, it became popular to describe the tactics of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in encroaching on sovereignty and militarizing islands in the South China Sea as “salami slicing.” Those slices have been getting chunkier. The People’s Liberation Army has been increasing its navy and air force activities in the region. The Chinese Coast Guard has likewise been ramping up their activities, and the civilian paramilitary People’s Armed Forces Maritime Militia has been backing up the navy and coast guard with alarming swarming maneuvers. The PRC claims most of the South China Sea through its U-shaped 10-dash
The comical bit of parachute journalism by Simon Shuster in the Atlantic last week under the title “Will Taiwan Just Give Up?”, drew much attention for its numerous minor errors, largely forgivable, its total lack of understanding of Taiwan and its history and its strange, pro-China interpretations, including taking Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) seriously. The laughter and indignation that essay generated among Taiwan aficionados is an indicator of how far Western journalism on Taiwan has come. Twenty years ago, it would have been another piece for the pile. Today, it is an obvious outlier. Shuster’s piece was
For a small nation, Taiwan has an unusually long list of territorial disputes. In part or in whole, it has disputes over the Spratly Islands (Nansha Islands, 南沙群島) with Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei. It also has another territorial dispute with Vietnam over the Paracel Islands, and with Japan over the Senkaku Islands (Diaoyutai Islands, 釣魚台). Of course, the biggest territorial disputes are with the People’s Republic of China (PRC), which not only claims all of the above, but also Pratas Island (Dongsha, 東沙島), Kinmen, Penghu and all of Taiwan itself. This creates considerable headaches politically for the government, especially
Sept 14 to Sept 20 Hwang Tae-im’s in-laws were among the many Korean families that congregated in Keelung after World War II, hoping to board a ship home. Japanese colonial rule had ended in both Korea and Taiwan, and many Koreans were eager to return to their newly-liberated homeland. Around 3,000 Koreans were recorded living in Taiwan in 1943, with Keelung hosting the largest population at 612. However, only one ship arrived to repatriate civilians, leaving many, including Hwang’s in-laws, stranded in Keelung. When the Korean War broke out in 1950, they gave up going home and settled in Keelung’s
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