amy winehouse
Best Weekend: The Amy Winehouse Doc, Amazon’s ‘Catastrophe,’ + More
What we'll be listening to, watching, and reading to sate our pop culture needs.
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It’s the start of a glorious long weekend and we’ve got just the ticket: four things to do for the 4th of July holiday, when you’re not busy BBQ-ing, fireworking, and general Amurrrica-ing.
‘Amy’ Documentary
We’ve watched the haunting trailer for Amy, Asif Kapadia’s documentary about the troubled singer who died from alcohol poisoning in 2011 at the age of 27, at least five times. So we can’t wait to see the whole heartbreaking thing when it hits theaters on Friday. Featuring live footage of the reluctant pop star’s performances and rare versions of her biggest songs, the doc also has enough home movies of a happy, healthy-looking Winehouse to make your soul ache.
Twin Danger—‘Twin Danger’
Jazz singer Vanessa Bley plus Sade’s saxophonist and songwriter Stuart Matthewman? Yes please. Twin Danger’s debut self-titled album is smooth like butter, giving just the right amount of edge to these jazz masterpieces. Simply try to stop your hips from sensually swaying to the smoky notes.
‘Catastrophe’ on Amazon
This new series, created by and starring Twitter phenom and outspoken feminist Rob Delaney and Irish actress and comedian Sharon Horgan, is the perfect show to fill the binge-watching hole OITNB left. In Catastrophe Delaney plays Rob, an American adman who has a one-week stand in London with Horvath’s schoolteacher. She gets pregnant and they decide to keep it, Knocked Up–style, but with way less bro humor and way more realistic heart.
‘The Star Side of Bird Hill’ by Naomi Jackson
In Naomi Jackson’s debut novel, The Star Side of Bird Hill, we meet three incredible characters: 10-year-old Phaedra, 16-year-old Dionne, and, when the girls are uprooted from their Brooklyn home and life with their single mom to live with family in their native Barbados, Hyacinth, their grandmother. It’s a coming-of-age story that gives its young protagonists as much depth and complexity as the older one, and Jackson’s lyrical descriptions bring Barbados to life.
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