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Dolly Parton hosting a two-hour puppy-filled variety special on CBS and the seventh and final season of the hospital drama, “The Good Doctor” are some of the new television, movies, music and games headed to a device near you.
Also among the streaming offerings worth your time as selected by The Associated Press’ entertainment journalists: Andrew Lincoln and Danai Gurira return to “The Walking Dead” universe in their own spin-off, “The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live” and “Avatar: The Last Airbender” gets the live-action treatment by Netflix.
— It missed out on Oscar nominations, but Andrew Haigh's “All of Us Strangers” was one of the best films of 2023. The film, now on Hulu , stars Andrew Scott as a writer working on an autobiographical script, work that transports him back to his childhood home where he finds his long dead parents (Claire Foy, Jamie Bell) as they once were. At the same time, a romance with a neighbor (Paul Mescal) evolves. Metaphysical and melancholy, “All of Us Strangers” is a stunner that AP Film Writer Lindsey Bahr called an “a deeply felt journey of acceptance, love and forgiveness" in her review.
— Another near-miss with the Oscars, Sofia Coppola's “Priscilla," hits Max on Friday. Coppola's dreamy, textured tale of Priscilla Presley's surreal romance with Elvis produced two of last year's most memorably breakthrough performances in Cailee Spaeny and Jacob Elordi. In my review, I praised “Priscilla” as “a kind of fairy tale that turns claustrophobic and cautionary.”
— Two notable veterans of last year's Oscar race, both from A24, arrive this week on Netflix. “ Everything Everywhere All at Once, " Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert's multiverse romp arrives Friday, almost exactly a year after the anarchic sci-fi whatsit's improbable Academy Awards sweep. Also hitting Netflix, on Saturday is the 2023 best animated-nominee “Marcel the Shell With Shoes On.” Jenny Slate and Dean Fleischer Camp's whimsical stop-motion animated film about a one-inch tall seashell with a big heart and an endearing fondness for Lesley Stahl.
— AP Film Writer Jake Coyle
— MGMT is ready to midwife their 10-track “Loss of Life,” which the band says had a “relatively painless birth after a lengthy gestation period.” The psychedelic, synth-pop duo of Andrew VanWyngarden and Ben Goldwasser joke “Musically speaking, we are running at around 20% adult contemporary.” Christine and the Queens appear on the song “Dancing in Babylon” — the first-ever feature on an MGMT album. “Loss Of Life,” the follow-up to 2018’s “Little Dark Age,” has spun off the singled “Nothing To Declare,” “Bubblegum Dog” and “Mother Nature.” It lands Friday.
— Goth-pop singer Allie X is putting it all on the line with “Girl With No Face,” her first self-produced album. “There is a death in this music, as well as the beginning of a rebirth. I needed to make something that came completely from me,” she wrote. The classically trained pop artist from Toronto has released a trio of tracks from the new collection, including “Black Eye,” an off-kilter, retro electro-banger with a video she directed and the lyrics, ”The world goes round/Makes me dizzy but I hold my ground/When I get nauseous I just gag it down.” The album drops Friday.
— If you already miss the “Puppy Bowl,” Dolly Parton has you covered. The country music icon hosted the two-hour variety special “Dolly Parton’s Pet Gala” that first aired Wednesday on CBS. It featured the latest in doggy fashion and performances of Parton classics, including “9 to 5,” “I Will Always Love You,” “Puppy Love” and “Jolene,” with Parton and country hitmakers Lainey Wilson, Carly Pearce, Chris Janson and KC of KC of the Sunshine Band performing. “I know all the animal lovers out there are going to love this show,” Parton said in a statement.
— A trio of popular ABC shows returned Tuesday after eight months due to the Hollywood strikes. “Will Trent,” based on books by Karin Slaughter, stars Ramon Rodriguez as an agent with the Georgia Bureau of Investigations. Nathan Fillion leads the police procedural “The Rookie,” and Freddie Highmore returns for the seventh and final season of the hospital drama, “The Good Doctor” where he plays a surgeon with autism. Episodes also stream on Hulu.
— Fifteen years after the popular Nickelodeon animated series “Avatar: The Last Airbender” went off the air, the story has gotten the live-action treatment by Netflix. This new “Last Airbender” stars Gordon Cormier as Aang, a 12-year-old boy with the fate of the world on his shoulders. The series premiered Thursday.
— Andrew Lincoln and Danai Gurira return to “The Walking Dead” universe in their own spin-off, “The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live.” The six-episode series follows their star-crossed characters, Rick and Michonne, as they fight to find their way back to one another after years of separation. Scott Gimple, the chief content officer for “The Walking Dead” franchise created the series with Lincoln and Gurira. New characters are also played by Terry O’Quinn, Lesley-Ann Brandt and Aaron Bachelor. The show premieres Sunday on AMC and AMC+.
— From “Twin Peaks” to “Twilight,” the Pacific Northwest is the epicenter of a peculiar kind of pop culture weirdness. It’s also a cool place to go for a drive. Seattle-based indie Ironwood Studios aims to combine the two with its debut game, Pacific Drive. Your mission is to explore the “Olympic Exclusion Zone,” where experiments by some secretive organization have unleashed supernatural anomalies. Your only companion is a beaten-up old station wagon (dig the wood paneling), which you can upgrade with gadgets scavenged from the abandoned labs. You’ll need to soup it up to deal with the radiation and bizarre weather in the Zone. Hit the road on PlayStation 5 or PC.
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Catch up on AP’s entertainment coverage here: https://apnews.com/entertainment.