The It List: Zac Efron explores sustainability in new travel show, Amy Schumer's challenging pregnancy featured in HBO Max doc, Charlize Theron leads band of immortal mercenaries in 'The Old Guard' and the best in pop culture the week of July 6, 2020
The It List is Yahoo’s weekly look at the best in pop culture, including movies, music, TV, streaming, games, books, podcasts and more. During the coronavirus pandemic, when most of us are staying at home, we’re going to spotlight things you can enjoy from your couch, whether solo or in small groups, and leave out the rest. With that in mind, here are our picks for July 6-12, including the best deals we could find for each. (Yahoo Entertainment may receive a share from purchases made via links on this page.)
STREAM IT: Zac Efron drops a new travel show on Netflix
After playing Ted Bundy in Netflix's Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, Efron can probably relate to his new role with the streaming giant a bit more. The High School Musical star is simply himself as he and wellness expert Darin Olien travel the world in the new docuseries Down to Earth. Efron wants to find “new perspectives on some very old problems” as he and Olien explore healthy and sustainable ways to live. They visit France, Puerto Rico, London, Iceland, Costa Rica, Peru and Sardinia to learn more. “Food, water and energy are all the main staples for modern life,” Efron says in a trailer for the show. “We’re going to meet some top eco-innovators to see how change is an inside job.” — Taryn Ryder
Down to Earth With Zac Efron premieres Friday, July 10 on Netflix.
STREAM IT: See Amy Schumer like you’ve never seen her before in Expecting Amy
Amy Schumer is usually standing behind a microphone or even acting in romantic comedies such as Trainwreck, but a new three-part documentary will let the audience in on what it was like for her planning a comedy special while pregnant with son Gene, who was born in May 2019. Schumer has explained that she suffered from the rare condition of hyperemesis gravidarum, which causes dehydration, weight loss and, perhaps most uncomfortably, nausea and vomiting. But Expecting Amy doesn’t focus solely on the terrible parts! We also see the sarcastic comic cry happy tears at the idea of being a mom, plus scenes from her hilarious performances. — Raechal Shewfelt
Expecting Amy premieres Thursday, July 9 on HBO Max.
STREAM IT: Charlize Theron is the world’s oldest superhero in Netflix’s new action epic, The Old Guard
Back in 2008, Charlize Theron and Will Smith played immortal superheroes in Peter Berg’s action-comedy, Hancock. Now, the Atomic Blonde star is once again kicking ass and taking names across the ages in The Old Guard, Netflix’s adaptation of Greg Rucka’s graphic novel directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood. Theron plays Andy — short for Andromache of Scythia — a 6,000 year old warrior who operates in secrecy alongside a small band of fellow age-defying soldiers, including Kiki Layne and Matthias Schoenaerts. They haven’t been secret enough, though. A pharmaceutical group has discovered that immortals walk amongst us and hope to profit off the proverbial fountain of youth that runs through their veins. Prince-Bythewood — whose comic book credits include Freeform’s Cloak & Dagger — places the story against a global canvas, hopscotching from Afghanistan to London, and throws Theron into action in set-piece after set-piece. But the Oscar-winner also gets some meaty dramatic material to play as Andy wrestles with the feelings of grief and loss that accompany being Earth’s oldest superhero. — Ethan Alter
The Old Guard premieres Friday, July 10 on Netflix.
READ IT: Jim Carrey relives his life story — kind of — in Memoirs and Misinformation
Actor-turned-artist-turned-author Jim Carrey makes his life an open book for Memoirs and Misinformation. But the ensuing tome definitely shouldn’t be classified under “Non-Fiction.” Working with co-author, Dana Vachon, Carrey spins a wild yarn that freely mixes reality and fantasy — not unlike his inspiration, Andy Kaufman, who he portrayed in the 1999 cult favorite, Man in the Moon. The book follows Carrey as he embarks on a bold new film project written by Being John Malkovich and Adaptation mastermind, Charlie Kaufman. (In another hall of mirrors moment, Adaptation star, Nicolas Cage, appears in Memoirs as the actor’s best friend.) The misinformation piles up from there — as do the laughs. — E.A.
Memoirs and Misinformation is available Tuesday, July 7 at Amazon.
STREAM IT: Hilarious Palm Springs is Groundhog Day for a new generation
It’s impossible to watch Palm Springs without thinking of the 1994 Bill Murray classic Groundhog Day, and the early comparisons have been inevitably and unsurprisingly rampant. But that is definitely not a bad thing, and it’s certainly no rip-off. This hilarious, sublime comedy starring Andy Samberg and Cristin Milioti as two hapless wedding guests stuck in a time warp, forced to relive the same drab ceremony over and over and over for who knows how long, brings more than enough freshness to the sweetheart table to stake its own claim in greatness. And that it does — Palm Springs is one of the best movies released so far this year, one of the best comedies released in years, a feast of unadulterated feel-good deliciousness for new movie-starved quarantiners. It’s a movie we didn’t want to end — and most fittingly, it’s a movie we wanted to watch over again immediately after finishing it. — Kevin Polowy
Palm Springs premieres Friday, July 10 on Hulu.
WATCH IT: Kevin Hart hosts new special Celebrity Game Face
The comedian is hustling, even in quarantine. Hart and his wife, Eniko, will host a special that’s shot from home where celebrities battle it out in random challenges for charity. Terry and Rebecca Crews, Sarah Hyland and Wells Adams, and Joel and Sarah McHale are the three teams that will compete in various activities that viewers can play along with at home. — T.R.
Celebrity Game Face premieres Monday, July 6 at 10 p.m. on E!.
STREAM IT: Get an inside look at the life of Walter Mercado, the man behind the many capes
The memory of late Puerto Rican astrologer Walter Mercado lives on in the Netflix documentary, Mucho Mucho Amor: The Legend of Walter Mercado. The film is a love letter to Mercado, who passed away last November. Mercado appeared in TV and radio for more than three decades defying traditional gender roles, delivering readings with dramatic flair and signing off with his signature mucho, mucho amor message. He had the power to bring generations of Latinx family members together to hear their horoscopes. Lin-Manuel Miranda says in the doc, “I can’t think of an English-launguage astrologer that would command the attention of millions of households.” — Gisselle Bances
Mucho Mucho Amor premieres Wednesday, July 8 on Netflix.
WATCH IT: The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills is finally back
After going on hiatus for several weeks (thanks a lot, coronavirus), the ladies of Beverly Hills return with a bang — and the back half of Season 10 looks juicy. As viewers have seen in the supertease, Denise Richards and Brandi Glanville’s drama will finally play out on camera after a she-said, she-said battle in the media. Glanville claims to have hooked up with Richards while the Wild Things actress has denied any affair. — T.R.
RHOBH returns Wednesday, July 8 at 9 p.m. on Bravo.
READ IT: An emergency room physician tells all in The Beauty in Breaking: A Memoir
PRH Audio · The Beauty in Breaking by Michele Harper, read by Nicole Lewis
In her first book, Michele Harper shares her own timely and touching story about what happened when her marriage crumbled and she moved, on her own, to a new city to start over as a single Black woman working in a profession where most people don’t look like her. She saw firsthand, while helping her patients heal, that all people are broken, but they all also have the potential to come back even stronger. Publisher Riverhead Books has pitched the read as “hopeful, moving and beautiful” — all things we could use more of in 2020. — R.S.
The Beauty in Breaking: A Memoir is available Tuesday, July 7 at Amazon.
HEAR IT: Rufus Wainwright rules, period
A bona fide member of Canadian rock royalty (he’s the son of renowned folk singers Kate McGarrigle and Loudon Wainwright III, and the grandfather of his daughter is the late Leonard Cohen), the younger Wainwright returns to claim his throne with his first proper studio album since 2012, Unfollow the Rules. Produced by the legendary Mitchell Froom, much of the LP was recorded live, sometimes in one take, marking a return to the sound of the critically adored songwriter’s early work. — Lyndsey Parker
Download/stream Unfollow the Rules on Apple Music.
WATCH IT: Jay Pharoah gets Unfiltered with Nickelodeon
The Saturday Night Live star hosts a new show on Nickelodeon where panelists Darci Lynne, Lex Lumpkin and Gabrielle Nevaeh Green must guess the identities of virtually disguised celebrity guests. “As a person who likes to transform and play multiple characters, I always love a good disguise and I can’t wait to see which panelist will be able to figure out our guests’ identities,” Pharoah said. “Nickelodeon’s Unfiltered is going to be an outrageously good time, and we have some big names and surprises that you really won’t want to miss!” — T.R.
Nickelodeon’s Unfiltered premieres Saturday, July 11 at 8:30 p.m. on Nickelodeon.
STREAM IT: Inherit the Wind predicted the future 60 years ago
On July 10, 1925, the Scopes Monkey Trial pitted religion against science in a Tennessee courtroom, with William Jennings Bryan representing the former and Clarence Darrow arguing for the latter. That clash of legal titans was immortalized in the 1955 play, Inherit the Wind, which was adapted to the screen five years later with Fredric March and Spencer Tracy playing lightly fictionalized versions of Bryan and Darrow, respectively. Released on July 21, 1960 — 35 years after the jury ruled in Bryan’s favor — the film couldn’t be more timely as the coronavirus pandemic is once again stirring debate about personal beliefs versus a belief in science. Directed by socially-conscious filmmaker, Stanley Kramer, Inherit the Wind received four Oscar nominations, including Tracy’s seventh Best Actor nod. (The actor received nine nominations and two statues across his legendary career.) And the movie’s legacy lives on in the climactic sequence where Tracy interrogates March on the witness stand — a thrilling sequence that’s clearly influenced every courtroom drama that came afterwards from A Few Good Men to The Good Fight. — E.A.
Inherit the Wind is currently streaming on Amazon.
HEAR IT: Margo Price starts the conversation
The 2019 Best New Artist Grammy nominee and Jack White collaborator returns with her third album, That’s How Rumors Get Started, produced by fellow Americana iconoclast Sturgill Simpson. In a statement, the new mother says of the record, which was delayed for coronavirus-related reasons: “This album is a postcard of a landscape of a moment in time. It’s not political, but maybe it will provide an escape or relief to someone who needs it.” — L.P.
Download/stream That’s How Rumors Get Started on Apple Music.
HEAR IT: Mike Skinner takes it to The Streets again
In the early 2000s, Mike Skinner, aka Mercury Music Prize nominee The Streets, was a leading light in the U.K. alternative hip-hop/grime scene, with his dry-witted observations of working-class British youth putting his albums in the same echelon as Pulp’s Different Class or Blur’s Parklife. After a nine-year album hiatus, the now-40-year-old Birmingham bard returns, focusing his acerbic commentary on the Brexit era in the boldly titled None of Us Are Getting Out of This Life Alive. — L.P.
Download/stream None of Us Are Getting Out of This Life Alive on Apple Music.
— Video produced by Gisselle Bances
