Best Weekend
Best Weekend: ‘Veep’ Is Back! Plus ‘Clouds of Sils Maria,’ Cassandra Wilson
What we'll be listening to, watching, and reading to sate our pop culture needs.
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We’ve saved Sunday night for Selina Meyer (and the Game of Thrones clans), but Juliette Binoche’s poignant new role, Mariel Hemingway’s memoir, and Cassandra Wilson’s Billie Holiday tribute will fill out the rest of our weekend nicely.
‘Veep’ Season 4 Premiere
Veep is a show that just gets better with each new season, and now that Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s Selina Meyer holds the most powerful political position in the world, the cringe factor is even higher. Oh how we’ve missed the hapless Pres and her woefully, delightfully incompetent staff! And with Patton Oswalt joining the cast as the new VP’s chief of staff, we’re looking forward to the fresh bumbling blood.
‘Clouds of Sils Maria’ starring Juliette Binoche/Kristen Stewart
The newest film from writer-director Olivier Assayas, follows the story of Juliette Binoche’s actress Maria Enders, as she faces her vanishing youth and the two young women, her assistant (Kristen Stewart) and the up-and-coming ingénue (Chloe Grace Moretz), who represent it. Binoche gives a beautiful performance as always, and, as her follow up to playing Julianne Moore’s daughter in Still Alice, Stewart is swiftly leaving the Twilight of her acting years behind.
‘Out Came the Sun: Overcoming the Legacy of Mental Illness, Addiction, and Suicide in My Family’ by Mariel Hemingway
We got a glimpse of Mariel Hemingway’s complicated history, when her retelling of the affections she received as a then-18-year-old from Woody Allen recently made its way into the media. But now, with the release of her memoir, we are given full access to the briar patch of dysfunction and mental illness the Hemingway family (including, perhaps most famously, Ernest) has faced, and how, at least one member, made it through.
‘Coming Forth By Day’—Cassandra Wilson
On what would’ve been Billie Holiday’s 100th birthday, singer Cassandra Wilson released an album that re-envisions some of Lady Day’s most beloved songs. On Coming Forth By Day, the jazz vocalist is backed by the rhythm section of Nick Cave’s Bad Seeds, and the tracks, like “Don’t Explain” and “The Way You Look Tonight,” range from big and bold, to sultry and bluesy. A fitting birthday present for Billie indeed.
‘Game of Thrones’ Season 5 Premiere
Our favorite fantasy slaughterhouse of a show is back with its fifth season, and while the wellbeing of the Lannisters is something we’ll always be concerned with, this season our eyes are on lone wolf Arya Stark and the tenacious Daenerys Targaryen, and, of course, her dragons.
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