What to play, listen to, and watch this weekend
The video game to play
Shadow Of The Colossus
“It’s still a game of gobsmacking, devastating beauty, with moments and images that haunt you long afterward. All of its pieces hold up—even now, when its influence is most often touted to describe any old game with ‘big boss fights,’ and Nintendo, of all companies, has realized its unlikely successor in The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild. Bluepoint set out to make the definitive version of the game—a bold, almost heretical ambition for one of the most richly imagined and executed works in the medium—and it has succeeded.”
Read the rest of our review here.
The podcast to listen to
Unladylike, “How To Pay For An Abortion”
“The reunion of former Stuff Mom Never Told You co-hosts Cristen Conger and Caroline Ervin is enough to make Unladylike’s debut a notable one, but ‘How To Pay For An Abortion’ doesn’t coast on that well-earned rapport… [T]he Unladylike format gives them a chance to do something about which they’re clearly passionate, as they interview other women about their experiences and put those experiences front and center, backed up by facts and figures. For this episode, they speak with three women who each not only had different reasons for having an abortion, but also had wildly varied experiences paying for them, and Conger and Ervin explore the many complicated financial realities of what should be a simple procedure with their usual steadiness. It’s a tough listen at times, but surprisingly entertaining at others.”
Read about the rest of the week’s best podcasts here.
The show to watch
Altered Carbon
“Altered Carbon is often ridiculous, but damned if it isn’t the best-looking series Netflix has yet produced. The world of the show is a fully realized technological marvel, a society hundreds of years in the future that also looks like it. CGI spectacle suffuses nearly every frame of the series, making it compelling eye candy even—or especially—when the dialogue sinks like an overwrought lead balloon. As the cameras swoop and survey the landscape (thanks to the florid visual style instigated by the pilot’s director, Miguel Sapochnik), even tossed-off background sets suggest a lived-in world of stories to tell. It looks expensive as hell, and it probably is; cyberpunk futures—at least ones this gorgeous—don’t come cheap.”
Read the rest of our review here.
The album to listen to
Son Lux, Brighter Wounds
“Although Los Angeles composer Ryan Lott formed Son Lux as a solo project, in recent years he’s added a pair of core collaborators, guitarist Rafiq Bhatia and drummer Ian Chang. This expanded lineup suits the ambitious scope of Brighter Wounds, a kaleidoscopic record ruminating on loss, memory, time, and rebirth, with nods to spiraling chamber pop (‘All Directions’), skittering electro (‘Surrounded’), fractured R&B (‘Slowly’), and theatrical synth-rock (‘Forty Screams’). Lott isn’t afraid to combine disparate styles on the same song, which often leads to transcendence.”
Read the rest of our review here.