Arts Calendar: Happenings for the Week of August 13

Film

• “Blue Beetle” (Aug. 18): Marvel might be queen bee when it comes to bug-based heroes (Spider-Man, Black Widow, Ant-Man and the Wasp), but DC also has its own stable of creepy-crawly characters. See Jaime Reyes (played by Xolo Maridueña ), who becomes host to the Scarab, a piece of alien biotech that turns him into the Blue Beetle. Susan Sarandon and George Lopez are the bigger names in a cast that also includes Raoul Max Trujillo, Bruna Marquezine, Damián Alcázar, Harvey Guillén and Adriana Barraza.

• “Strays” (Aug. 18): A talking-dog story that tries to teach an old setup new tricks, Josh Greenbaum’s raunchy live-action movie isn’t for young pups. The adult comedy features an abandoned terrier teaming up with a pack of strays to get revenge on his abusive former owner. Wacky premise aside, the cast is filled with Best in Show-caliber talent like Will Ferrell, Jamie Foxx, Will Forte, Randall Park, Rob Riggle, Sofía Vergara and Dennis Quaid.

• “The Moon” (Aug. 18): Kim Yong-hwa, winner of Korea’s prestigious Grand Bell Award for Directing for 2009’s “Take Off,” returns with a survival drama about a mission to rescue an astronaut stranded in space.

• “Birth/Rebirth” (Aug. 18): This indie horror film, directed by Laura Moss and starring Marin Ireland and Judy Reyes, draws heavily from “Frankenstein” with its tale of a pathologist’s attempts to resurrect the young daughter of a nurse after the girl suddenly dies. 

• “Simone: Woman of the Century” (Aug. 18): Olivier Dahan wrote and directed this French biopic about Simone Veil, the Holocaust survivor, women’s rights champion and president of the European Parliament. Elsa Zylberstein stars.

• “Boogie Nights” (Film at Lincoln Center, New York, Aug. 18-24): Paul Thomas Anderson’s late-’70s period drama, released a quarter-century ago and starring Burt Reynolds, Mark Wahlberg, Julianne Moore and Philip Seymour Hoffman, looked at the simultaneously humorous and dark sides of California’s adult-film world. Now enlarged to 70mm from the film’s original negatives, it returns to New York screens for a limited run.

TV

• “Billions,” season 7 (Showtime, Aug. 13): The last season of the hit hedge-fund drama sees Damian Lewis return in the role of cutthroat moneyman Bobby Axelrod along with most of the core cast. Things look bullish for those who can’t bear the series ending: There are four “Billions” spinoffs in the works.  

• “Telemarketers” (HBO, Aug. 13): A three-part HBO docuseries follows the years-long whistleblowing journey of two scrappy employees at Civic Development Group, which misrepresented charities and was fined $18.8 million in 2010 after a federal investigation. Our TV critic called the program “a scroungy, antic masterpiece.”

• “Reinventing Elvis: The ’68 Comeback” (Paramount+, Aug. 15): This feature-length doc looks at Elvis’s powerhouse television concert that returned him to live performance after a long period during which he focused on film. Steve Binder —who directed the special, which was watched by nearly half of all TV viewers when it first aired—is the star interview subject in director John Scheinfeld’s

• “Battle of the Decades” (Food Network, Aug. 16): If people have childhood memories of a certain food, there’s a good chance you can figure out when they grew up. From the ’50s and gelatin “salads” to the ’90s and Fruit Roll Ups to the present day and viral TikTok meals, some foods are inseparable from specific times. This cooking competition challenges chefs to use nostalgic noshes as well as retro equipment to create a variety of dishes. 

• “Depp v. Heard” (Netflix, Aug. 16): In legal terms, the case has little impact, but in cultural terms perhaps no defamation trial has ever made such a splash. Emma Cooper’s three-part docuseries revisits the courtroom, takes a new look at testimonies from both sides and explores what led to the online mania surrounding the proceedings. 

• “Harlan Coben’s Shelter” (Prime Video, Aug. 17): The young-adult crime thriller by the titular author gets an eight-part adaptation with Jaden Michael starring as a new student at a New Jersey school who gets tangled up in the disappearance of his classmate while dealing with troubles at home exacerbated by his mom, played by Constance Zimmer.

• “The Monkey King” (Netflix, Aug. 18): A girl teams up with a mystical monkey to vanquish monsters and ego while on a quest for immortality in Anthony Stacchi’s animated film with Jimmy O. Yang, Bowen Yang, BD Wong and Stephanie Hsu among the voice cast.  

Music

• Rhiannon Giddens, “You’re the One” (Aug. 18): This year’s director of the Ojai Music Festival releases her third album—the first solo record in six years and her first of all original songs. The Pulitzer-winner draws from folk favorites as well as pop sounds across the 12 tracks on the Jack Splash-produced LP.

• Cautious Clay, “KARPEH” (Aug. 18): The R&B and indie artist (born Joshua Karpeh ) explores the jazz underpinnings of his music on a deeply personal record, his Blue Note debut. Divided into three parts, the album looks at his life growing up in Ohio, his push to break away from his family and the highs and lows along the way, and the rewards and difficulties of learning to be at peace with himself.

• DeYarmond Edison, “Epoch” (Aug. 18): Most will have heard of Bon Iver, Justin Vernon’s highly regarded indie project. Fewer will have heard of DeYarmond Edison, the precursor to Bon Iver that comprised Mr. Vernon, Joe Westerlund, Phil Cook and Brad Cook (the last three of the psych rock band Megafaun). A new boxed set offers an expansive view of the group and includes 83 recordings, several of which have never been released before.  

• Hozier, “Unreal Unearth” (Aug. 18): Hozier’s self-titled 2014 debut was a runaway hit—thanks in part to the single “Take Me to Church”—that made the Irish singer-songwriter seem like he’d be a constant presence for years to come. But his 2019 sophomore effort lacked its predecessor’s popularity and it almost seemed as if he’d disappeared from the scene entirely. He now returns with a 16-track LP, written during the Covid-19 pandemic, that is framed around Dante’s “Inferno” and its nine circles of hell. 

• Jon Batiste, “World Music Radio” (Aug. 18): The jazz and R&B musician—and longtime “Late Show” bandleader—had an impressive year at the Grammys, taking home five awards, including Album of the Year for “We Are.” He follows up that powerhouse showing with a 21-track, guest-filled record that includes appearances by NewJeans,

Opera

• “Così fan tutte” (Kelowna Community Theatre, British Columbia, Aug. 18-19): Mozart’s classic opera buffa gets a staging that updates its setting from 18th-century Naples to a 1930s resort in the Canadian Rockies.

Art

• “A Magical Day at Ditch!” (Tripoli Gallery, Wainscott, N.Y., Aug. 18-Sept. 18): As the end of summer appears just over the horizon, this presentation is a celebration of the season. Drawing its name from a surfers’ beach in Montauk, the sun-soaked show features work from Katherine Bernhardt (who curated the exhibition), Katherine Bradford, Yung Jake, Vaughn Davis Jr. , Dan McCarthy and others. 

• “Ideas on Landscape” (Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Chicago, Aug. 19-Sept. 30): Taking a classic theme—the landscape—and approaching it from the broadest possible angles, the artists in this show (a collaboration between the artist-run space in Chicago and SCOTTY, another artist-run gallery in Berlin) look to reinvent the subject while embracing its traditional roots. From stereoscopes to collages to sound recordings and beyond, a variety of media are deployed to explore the many meanings behind “landscape” in the contemporary world. 

Other

• “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” (PC, Playstation 4 and 5, Xbox One and Series X/S, Aug. 18): Based on the cult horror franchise, this co-op and PvP (player versus player) game finds players searching for a character’s sister while evading killers like Leatherface (played by Kane Hodder, a staple of the genre) and The Hitchhiker ( Edwin Neal, who played the same role in the 1974 film). 

Last Call

• “The Doctor” (Park Avenue Armory, New York, closes Aug. 19): Juliet Stevenson plays a stalwart physician whose life begins to crumble in Robert Icke’s masterly and timely reimagining of a 1912 play by Arthur Schnitzler. In the words of our critic, Ms. Stevenson “gives a performance of quiet but galvanizing intensity” in a work that highlights “how atomized and tribal contemporary society has become.”

—For additional Arts Calendar listings visit wsj.com. Write to [email protected].