Before you can concoct another excuse for why your Netflix subscription is wasting away or why you haven’t read a book since forever, load up your devices with these new releases for that next flight you’re catching, you busy thing.
Television & movies
Come October 26, the comicbook-to-TV Chilling Adventures of Sabrina hits Netflix, and it’s far darker than the Melissa Joan Hart sitcom you knew and loved. On a more serious side of history, there’s Operation Finale in which Ben Kingsley plays Nazi SS officer Adolf Eichmann, one of the key figures in the Holocaust, opposite the unconventionally dreamy Oscar Isaac as Mossad agent Peter Malkin. And speaking of Sir Ben, he narrates the Amazon Prime sports documentary All or Nothing: Manchester City, which goes behind the scenes of the football club’s successful 2017-18 EPL season.
Music
Gone but never forgotten – Prince’s estate has released the artist’s first posthumous album, Prince’s Piano and a Microphone 1983. It’s a collection of stripped-down covers of his own songs, which were found as a cassette tape recording in his vault. Meanwhile, another legend has also released new music: Paul McCartney’s Egypt Station is being hailed as his best work in years (start with the foot-tapper Come On To Me if you need a quick sample). As for upcoming releases, look out for Jess Glynne’s Always In Between, which contains the anthemic I’ll Be There.
Podcasts
Queer Eye’s Jonathan Van Ness has fresh episodes on his podcast, Getting Curious with Jonathan Van Ness, which asks and answers a lot of entertaining questions, both poignant and frivolous. There’s also The High Low, the highly recommended weekly current affairs and pop-culture podcast by Pandora Sykes and Dolly Alderton – the latest discusses Brett Kavanaugh and the argument around “if it isn’t rape, it doesn’t count.” And if you’re here for something a little more chill-inducing, Dr. Death will serve the kind of medical journalism that will make you question your unwavering trust in your doctors.
Books
Without a doubt, the book everyone’s talking about right now is Tom Wright and Bradley Hope’s Billion Dollar Whale, which centres on international fugitive Jho Low and the epic siphoning of 1MDB funds (Malaysians should have a whale of a time reading this). For a little feminist POV on Homer’s The Iliad, look to Pat Barker’s The Silence of the Girls (Achilles who?). And finally, Khaled Hosseini’s beautifully illustrated Sea Prayer is more than just a heartbreaking tribute to world refugee crisis – he is donating his author proceeds from the book to the UN Refugee Agency and The Khaled Hosseini Foundation.
Read also: 6 things to do in Singapore: October 2018
