Spring 2021: What We’re Watching, Reading, Loving
A spring rebirth (of the content sort)
The struggle is oh-so real: We’re starting to hit the wall on the content we’ve had to be content with while we wait out pandemic-related production delays. The timing for new seasons of TV favorites remains in jeopardy, with movies in wait-and-see mode for quite some time as studios wrestle with whether theaters will reopen. But with every new calendar season comes a promise of shiny new content to keep us entertained—even if release dates are a moving target. We’ve put together a Verse-approved list of options that have us anxiously tapping our fingers (fine, we’ll wait…).
Audrey: More Than an Icon (3/14)
This long-awaited documentary on Audrey Hepburn is coming to Netflix in one short week, and we can’t wait to learn more about one of our all-time favorite movie stars. With participation from her son and granddaughter as well as close friends, the film promises to paint a fuller picture of Audrey the woman.
Gifts from our hunker-down hero
We’re here with the rest of Instagram stanning over Leslie Jordan (who we were lucky enough to interview last year). It’s safe to say that Leslie is reminding us all what winning in the second half can look like and this spring, he’s really spoiling us. First, his album called Company’s Comin (4/2) will serve up classic hymns with so. many. special guests. You can hear the first single with Brandi Carlile here. And because he’s a little extra himself, Jordan also has a book coming on 4/27: How Y’All Doing?: Misadventures and Mischief from a Life Well-Lived.
Cook This Book (4/13)
We love ourselves a good Molly Baz cooking video, and her recipes actually turn out as promised (How many other things can claim such certainty?). We imagine that this is going to be one of those great foundational cookbooks that we will return to again and again. Oh, and we will 100% be donning one of her famous pinafores while we do so.
The French Dispatch (May-ish)
While travel remains on hold, nothing sounds more delightful than escaping into the carefully curated world of Wes Anderson (though we’ve been scratching our itch by following Accidentally Wes Anderson on the ‘gram). His latest relies on many of his usual players, with welcome new additions like Benicio del Toro and Timothee Chalamet.
Underground Railroad (May 14)
We can’t imagine anyone more capable of bringing Colson Whitehead’s historical novel to the small screen (via Amazon Prime) with some justice than Moonlight director Barry Jenkins. We are also pleased that the suits at Amazon saw fit to give it series treatment and let the stunning story play out over the ten episodes it deserves.
Read it for the articles (Spring-ish)
...Or so went the common refrain when readers were caught with a Playboy magazine. To be fair, they would have been right to focus on what were some groundbreaking interviews with people like Malcom X, Frank Sinatra and Ayn Rand. The Playboy Interview Podcast will turn these amazing profiles into teleplays, copying the Frost/Nixon format. While we wait for an official release date, we are listening to The Frost Tapes podcast, where his son has made interviews from his late father’s archives available.
