Latest news with #Gleeks
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
What to Watch This Weekend (June 7-8): 10 Best New Movies and Shows to Stream Now (Including a Show That'll Have You Locked in For Weeks!)
You really have to buckle in this time because this is a busy week in the world of streaming and movies! This weekend, June 7-8, we have the usual summer blockbuster action movies and returns of beloved shows, but also something new: two exciting Broadway-related events for those who are theatrically inclined (I'm looking at you, any secret Gleeks!). More par for the course, Netflix also has a juicy, highly anticipated drama, and Peacock is giving the people what they want: a show that will give you an excuse to not leave your couch for approximately six weeks (like, actually). And there's more! Here's a list of the 10 best new movies and shows to watch this weekend and where to stream them. Move aside Black Widow, we have a new trained woman assassin in the mix — and she's no superhero. Ana de Armas stars as ballerina-assassin Eve Macarro, who is hellbent on getting revenge on her father's killers in Ballerina. A spinoff of the John Wick action series, Ballerina takes place between the events of the third and fourth movie, the latter of which came out in 2023. Ballerina releases in theaters on June 6. Just as the title suggests, this movie is about the life of a man named Chuck, played by a cheery Tom Hiddleston, and takes place over three eras in his life, from childhood to adulthood. In addition to a starry cast, the film features a 7-minute dance number by Hiddleston, who told PEOPLE he found filming the scene "spontaneous and joyful." The Life of Chuck releases in theaters on June 6. If you thought this show couldn't get any crazier ... you couldn't be more wrong. Georgia is awaiting her murder trial, Ginny faces teen pregnancy and their relationship is going through its usual ups and downs. The specific details are even crazier, but we don't want to spoil! Rest assured, if you're looking for a rollercoaster ride (but not the Six Flags kind), this is the right binge for you. Watch season 3 of Ginny & Georgia on Netflix. We at PEOPLE are SAT for this show, and we highly recommend that you be too. If you're ready to commit to over a month of new episodes six days a week, then buckle in because Love Island USA is back! After a steamy sixth season, the beloved show is back for season 7 — and the drama is already piping hot. This time around, viewers will be transported to the tropical coasts of Fiji to watch hot bombshells play with each other's love lives. Watch new episodes of season 7 of Love Island USA on Peacock. Taraji P. Henson is a single mother on her last straw in Tyler Perry's Straw. The poor woman's day gets crazier and crazier as she goes from being evicted to being blamed for a bank robbery — and all she wants is to cash a check for her daughter. Now, her survival depends on trusting a sympathetic police officer (Teyana Taylor) and a soothing friend (Sherri Shepherd). Watch Straw on Netflix. If you're a longtime Housewives fan then you'll be just as nostalgic as we are that the kids of our favorite ladies are all grown up — and ready to follow in their parents' footsteps. Bringing together Housewife favorite celebrity kids like Gia Giudice and Brooks Marks, Next Gen NYC follows a group of reality TV nepo babies and their friends as they live out their 20s in New York (and yes, maybe we're secretly clamoring for an invite ... ). Watch new episodes of Next Gen NYC on Tuesdays on Bravo and next day on Peacock. People are clearly super into predators as the ninth installment in the Predators franchise was released on Hulu on June 6 — and this one is taking fans way back. Like to the Vikings and feudal Japan back, because every era in history has predators right? How fun! In all seriousness, this animated anthology jumps across three time zones, ending in World War II, and sets up how predators have been coming to Earth for centuries to prove their competency through battle. Watch Predator: Killer of Killers on Hulu. AppleTV+ loves an underdog sports story, and Stick is no different, starring Owen Wilson as Pryce 'Stick' Cahill. Stick is a former professional golfer whose career ended after he had a very public mental breakdown on the course. When he comes across an amateur teen who he's convinced has what it takes to make it, Stick is reinvigorated and ready to coach him to a championship — but it's, naturally, not as easy as it seems. Watch Stick on AppleTV+. We're ending this week's list with two exciting live events in the Broadway world! First up, the 78th Annual Tony Awards are taking place this Sunday, celebrating the best in theater. This year marks many of the nominees' Broadway debuts, including George Clooney and Nicole Scherzinger, who are up for two of the most prestigious awards of the night. Other nominees include Mia Farrow, Sadie Sink, Sarah Snook, and Jonathan Groff, while Broadway veteran Cynthia Erivo is set to host the special night. Watch the Tony Awards live at 8 p.m. ET on CBS and Paramount+. For the first time in Broadway history, a play will be aired live on broadcast as Clooney takes his penultimate bow in Good Night, and Good Luck. The 5-time Tony-nominated show, which is based off the 2005 movie of the same name, will end its run on Sunday, June 7 — and give fans who didn't get a chance to nab their ticket one last chance to watch it live before final curtain. Watch Good Night, and Good Luck live on CNN and and streaming live on Max. Read the original article on People
The Guardian
03-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘How did this ever get made?' Gen Z is falling in love (and hate) with Glee
The year is 2009, and Glee has hit like a cultural earthquake. Every week, millions of people around the world tune in to watch a group of American high school misfits belt out musical theatre and pop hits, turning show choir into mainstream entertainment. The cast's cover of Journey's Don't Stop Believin' becomes an anthem, spending 37 weeks in the UK charts, catapulting its young stars to overnight fame. Glee clubs start in schools across the US and beyond, and Ryan Murphy's show develops a devoted fanbase – myself included – who proudly call ourselves Gleeks. Online, we dissect every episode on Tumblr, trade theories and wear our fandom, plus the merch we bought to prove it, as a badge of honour. But by the time Glee came to a close in 2015, all its magic had faded. The Guardian reported that 'few will mourn its passing' as the show's last season premiered. A string of increasingly absurd storylines and poor song choices left a dwindling viewership and even the most diehard fans drifting away. Or so we thought – because 10 years after its finale, the show is back with a vengeance. Glee is going viral, mainly because of gen Z – who watch the show on Disney+ and Hulu, or buy it on Amazon. On TikTok, clips of the show's most outrageous moments repeatedly resurface in an endless stream of nostalgia, while new Reddit threads constantly pop up. Last year, the show's version of Rose's Turn from the Broadway musical Gypsy debuted at No 3 in the US Top 50 chart, while more recently, the 'Glee dance' to Say a Little Prayer has seen thousands of people learn the choreography and upload videos of them performing it. And that's not all. On YouTube, Mike's Mic Glee recap videos have been watched by millions. Even some of the original stars have begun to capitalise on Glee's renewed popularity. The 2022 podcast And That's What You REALLY Missed, hosted by actors Jenna Ushkowitz and Kevin McHale (who played Tina Cohen-Chang and Artie Abrams), recapped every episode from the show's six seasons. But why, in 2025, are we still so hungry for Glee? Much of the conversation about Glee today pivots around one question: 'How did this ever get made?' Parts of it have not aged well. How could we forget the musical episode inspired by the mass school shooting at Sandy Hook elementary school in Connecticut in 2012? Or when Kurt dismissed Blaine's bisexuality by telling him 'it didn't exist'? And that's before we've even got to Mr Schue – a teacher whose inappropriate behaviour included blackmailing Finn into joining the glee club by planting marijuana on him, teaching his students to twerk and suspending Marley for not wanting to wear a revealing costume. Unsurprisingly, the response to TikTok recaps of Mr Schue's worst bits often have several comments like 'I just couldn't watch it' underneath. But Glee's cringeworthy nature is also precisely why many new and old fans find the series so enticing. Not only does an episode have all the nostalgia of the 2010s – an era gen Z are romanticising – but it also provides endless 'WTF' moments that keep us talking. The modern-day consensus is that Glee is actually so bad, it's good, with many hate-watching the series. But, it is easy to forget that when it first hit our screens in 2009, it was groundbreaking. Murphy and his co-writers took us inside a normal school: William McKinley high school in Ohio, which was ruled by jocks and cheerleaders. However, the themes, people and stories the show covered were anything but bog-standard. Christopher Baffa, the director of photography on the first three seasons, recalls feeling as if they were making something 'boundary-pushing'. At a time when 58% of Americans did not support gay marriage, Glee put queer stories front and centre. As its final series aired, one review said it 'did more to normalise homosexuality than any other show in TV history, perhaps more than any other mainstream work of art'. Baffa certainly feels that it had a positive impact: 'I've had a lot of people tell me both now and then that watching Glee was helpful for whatever they were going through in their own lives.' Ali Adler, a writer on Glee, remembers that every episode, whatever the subject matter, had comedy at its core: 'We knew the topics we were dealing with were serious, but we were always approaching them in a way that was funny.' The characters, she explains, each 'had their own point of view' about whatever the episode's theme was – whether that be homophobia, religion or mental health – 'and their opinions were so specific' to give the show a range of different, real-life perspectives. Adler describes the whole experience of working on Glee as like getting 'a golden ticket'. And for viewers, too, the show was revolutionary. Elis Shotten, 29, who ran a Glee fan account on Twitter dedicated to Darren Criss, the actor who played Blaine, remembers the series as his 'big sexual awakening'. 'It quickly became a whole world in which I was able to exist away from the real world – where I didn't feel like I was able to express my queer identity openly,' he says of Glee fandom. 'The character of Kurt was a revelation, and it can't be understated how much good he did for so many people like me.' Dominic McGovern, a comedian who uses Glee as the basis for many of his sets, even calls the show 'an education'. 'We talk about Glee being funny and silly and campy, but it was also rooted in an appreciation for popular culture,' he says. Shotten adds: 'It will always find a way to resonate with people who are high school-aged. Even if its politics have become incredibly dated, the struggles of adolescence will always be the same.' But the thing about Glee is that it wasn't another American high-school drama; the music was essential. Unlike recent screen musicals such as Wicked or Wonka, which removed all songs from their trailers, Glee always revelled in its camp and flamboyant numbers. Still, Baffa is certain that its focus was always on its stories: 'The songs were intrinsically linked to the emotional levels of one, if not all of the characters … they were just another device we used to tell stories,' he says. Musical TV shows that came after, such as Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, never quite reached Glee's levels of outlandish comedy or over-the-top performance. Of course, the tragedy that surrounds Glee is now inextricable from its legacy, specifically the deaths of three prominent cast members; Cory Monteith and Mark Salling, who both died by suicide, and Naya Rivera, who drowned in 2020, as well as several crew who died during production, including assistant director Jim Fuller, who had a heart attack. 'Statistically, to have three cast members and crew members have the deaths that we've experienced is odd,' says Baffa. On TikTok, they're often remembered in compilation videos, while And That's What You REALLY Missed dedicated a special episode to memorialising Monteith. A series of accusations from cast members that Lea Michele's behaviour made working on the show a 'living hell' now haunt Glee too – with videos resurfacing month after month aiming to both prove and disprove the claims and stars still being asked about what really happened on set, 10 years after the show ended. But, although the drama of Glee continues to fuel headlines, Baffa likes to believe 'it isn't the focus of the new fanbase I don't want the legacy of Glee to be that – I hope that people can see the positive side.' Adler is confident that nothing like the programme has been made since. 'Glee was the ultimate in terms of representation – I think kids are still drawn to that.' Does she think they'd do things differently if Glee was being made today? 'Maybe different choices would have been made,' she says. 'But I don't think you can ever apologise for history because history is what creates the future.' And by the looks of things, the future for Glee is still bright – because now, fans just won't stop believin'.
