Eliana Willis

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    ¡Vámonos! Dora Is Back for a New Round of Exploring

    Boots, Map, Swiper and Backpack all return too, in a new “Dora” that includes a lot more Latin music and Spanish language.Barbie isn’t the only childhood heroine experiencing a renaissance. Yet unlike the doll of last year’s blockbuster movie, the next pop-culture star who’s about to re-emerge isn’t a statuesque blonde in stiletto heels. She’s a pint-size Latina with sturdy sneakers and a trusty backpack.Welcome back, Dora.Nickelodeon, the network that in 2000 introduced “Dora the Explorer,” the groundbreaking bilingual animated show about the adventures of a 7-year-old Hispanic girl, is now rebooting that hit series, which over eight seasons aired in more than 150 countries, winning multiple awards and inspiring two TV spinoffs and a feature-length film.The new show’s catalyst “wasn’t necessarily that the first series was over,” Valerie Walsh Valdes, a creator and executive producer of “Dora,” said in a video interview. (“Dora the Explorer” continues to stream on various outlets, including YouTube.) “It was, ‘OK, how are we extending it, how are we going to grow her? And what’s the next iteration?’”On Friday, Paramount+ will release a full season of 26 streaming episodes of the new show, which is titled simply “Dora” and which will also air internationally on the Nick Jr. channel. (Select episodes will be on YouTube as well.) An accompanying podcast, “Dora’s Recipe for Adventure,” will expand the little girl’s exploits into the culinary sphere.The 2024 “Dora” combines old and new. The series retains all the core characters — Dora; her sidekick, the monkey Boots; her talking tools, Backpack and Map; and her antagonist, the thieving fox Swiper — while featuring them for the first time in computer-generated animation. The show still focuses on expeditions that teach problem-solving strategies and social skills, but Map now has some high-tech capabilities. Dora and Boots continue to embark on missions to find lost objects or aid friends in a magical rainforest, but the quests are faster-paced: Each “Dora” episode is now an 11-minute story. And, significantly, the series will incorporate a greater breadth of Latin music and more Spanish language for Dora.Ten-year-old Diana Zermeño voices Dora in the new show, while Kathleen Herles, who played her in the original “Dora the Explorer” series, has returned to voice Dora’s mother.Paramount+We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Huey Lewis Lost His Hearing. That Didn’t Stop Him From Making a Musical.

    “The Heart of Rock and Roll,” a Broadway show built around the songs of Huey Lewis and the News, has given the singer a reason to “get out of bed.”After Huey Lewis learned that a syndrome of the inner ear called Ménière’s disease had caused him significant hearing loss and left him unable to play or hear music, he faced the difficult task of having to tell his friends and peers.Lewis, whose wry lyrics and rumbling vocals powered Reagan-era pop hits like “I Want a New Drug” and “If This Is It,” turned to people like Tico Torres, the longtime Bon Jovi drummer, whom he’d gotten to know on golfing trips. But their conversation proved to be an unexpected source of the pragmatic philosophy that Lewis built his career on.Over a breakfast interview last month, Lewis delivered a lively, solo re-enactment of that fateful talk with Torres.“He goes, ‘Hey, Huey, how ya doing?’” Lewis recalled. “I say, ‘Tico, it’s not good.’ And I begin to explain. I said, ‘I’ve lost my hearing and I can’t hear pitch. I can’t sing.’”“I’m telling him the whole story and he’s going like this” — here, Lewis lowered his head, furrowed his bushy brows over his eyeglasses and shook his head in dismay. Slipping into an imitation of Torres’s New Jersey accent, Lewis said, “When I finish, he goes, ‘Whaddaya gonna do?’”Lewis, center, flanked by the show’s director, Gordon Greenberg, and its choreographer, Lorin Latarro, at a special presentation before the musical began performances at the James Earl Jones Theater.Peter Fisher for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Stephen Colbert Mocks Trump’s Failed Bid to Delay Hush-Money Trial

    Colbert said Donald Trump’s lawyers wanted “an impartial jury who knew nothing about the events in America over the last nine years.”Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.‘His Crimes Are the News!’An appeals court judge on Monday denied Donald Trump’s request to postpone his criminal trial in Manhattan stemming from a hush-money deal with a porn star. His lawyers unsuccessfully argued that the former president couldn’t get a fair trial in New York because potential jurors were exposed to news reporting on his other recent legal issues.“So are you saying members of the jury can’t have seen any news about Donald Trump’s crimes?” Stephen Colbert said. “His crimes are the news!”“[Imitating Trump’s attorney] Your honor, it is only fair that our client be judged by an impartial jury who knew nothing about the events in America over the last nine years. Might I recommend 12 confused men who were dropped off in a forest as infants and then raised by wolves, or, if they’re not available, could we acquire some clone babies that have been rapidly aged in some sort of machine and then released into the jury box. Oh, they think he’s guilty, too? OK.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“You were president — the whole country has a bias. The only way you’re getting a juror who doesn’t know you is if it’s randomly Tiffany.” — SETH MEYERSThe judge released a questionnaire on Monday for potential jurors, with questions like “whether they believe in QAnon, use Truth Social, or attend Trump rallies,” Jimmy Fallon said on Tuesday. “In other words, he wants to know, ‘Are you Marjorie Taylor Greene?’”“‘Has former [President] Trump ever buried you or anyone you love on one of his golf courses?’” — JIMMY KIMMEL“I wish I could get in on questioning these potential jurors. I feel like I’d be so good at it. ‘And one final question, sir: Does your truck have nuts?’” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Punchiest Punchlines (Forgiveness Edition)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Trevor Griffiths, Marxist Writer for Stage and Screen, Dies at 88

    For him, “art played a particular role in social change,” the director Mehmet Ergen said. “Everything was political.”Trevor Griffiths, a prolific and avowedly Marxist writer for stage and screen most widely known for his play “Comedians,” which was staged in London and on Broadway, died on March 29 at his home in Yorkshire, England. He was 88.His agent, Nicki Stoddart, said the cause was heart failure.An important figure on the English left, Mr. Griffiths conjoined the political with the personal and expressed that affinity across a wide range of topics, whether connected to British party politics or comparable upheavals abroad.He was at his most visible during the decade or so from 1975 onward. That period encompassed the premiere of “Comedians” in Nottingham, England, in 1975, as well as its New York premiere in 1976 — it was his only Broadway play — and his lone foray into Hollywood, as a collaborator with Warren Beatty on his screenplay for the much-admired movie “Reds” (1981).Laurence Olivier, right, with Gawn Grainger in a scene from Mr. Griffith’s play “The Party” (1973) at the Old Vic Theater in London. It was Olivier’s last stage role.via Everett CollectionHis plays granted Laurence Olivier his last stage role, in the National Theater premiere of “The Party” (1973) — an anatomy of the British left set against the backdrop of the 1968 political tumult in Paris — and offered early opportunities for budding talents like Jonathan Pryce, who won a Tony for “Comedians,” and Kevin Spacey and Gary Oldman, who starred in the American and British premieres of the play “Real Dreams” in the 1980s.“Comedians,” set in Manchester among the hopefuls in a night comedy class, has had various notable revivals over the years — among them a 2003 Off Broadway production, with Raúl Esparza inheriting Mr. Pryce’s career-defining role, and one at London’s Lyric Hammersmith in 2009, David Dawson playing the same role.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Nonprofit Theaters Are in Trouble. Lawmakers Are Proposing Help.

    Proposed legislation would allocate $1 billion annually for an industry coping with rising expenses and smaller audiences.The financial crisis facing nonprofit theaters in America has captured the attention of Congress, where a group of Democratic lawmakers is introducing legislation that would direct $1 billion annually to the struggling industry for five years.That money could be used for payroll and workforce development, as well as other expenses like rent, set-building and marketing. But the legislation, which lawmakers introduced on Tuesday, faces long odds at a time when a divided Congress — where Republicans control the House and Democrats lead the Senate — has had trouble agreeing on anything.Nonprofit theaters around the country have reduced their programming and laid off workers to cope with rising expenses and smaller audiences since the coronavirus pandemic began. There are exceptions — some nonprofit theaters say they are thriving — but several companies, including New Repertory Theater in suburban Boston, Southern Rep Theater in New Orleans, and Book-It Repertory Theater in Seattle, have ceased or suspended operations in response to the crisis.“It hasn’t been a recovery for the nonprofits — they’re really lagging compared to many other sectors in the economy, and it’s for a lot of reasons,” Senator Peter Welch of Vermont, one of the legislation’s sponsors, said in an interview. “So they do need help.”Mr. Welch argued that the organizations merit government assistance because they strengthen communities and benefit local economies.The legislation, which is called the Supporting Theater and the Arts to Galvanize the Economy (STAGE) Act of 2024, is also being sponsored by Senators John Fetterman of Pennsylvania and Jack Reed of Rhode Island. Representative Suzanne Bonamici of Oregon is sponsoring it in the House.Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, who is the majority leader and who led the fight to win government aid for performing arts organizations during the pandemic, is supportive of the proposed legislation and is also open to other ways to assist nonprofit theaters, according to a spokesman.The pandemic aid package that Mr. Schumer championed serves as a precedent: In 2020, Congress passed the Save Our Stages Act, which led to a $16 billion Shuttered Venue Operators Grant program that made money available to a wide array of commercial and nonprofit performing arts organizations.Mr. Welch said the earlier aid program succeeded despite initial skepticism.“With everything else that was going on, the expectation was this would die on the vine, but it didn’t — as this started getting momentum, there was excitement about being about to do something concrete,” he said.The new legislation is narrower, benefiting only professional nonprofit theaters, and only those that have either seen a decline in revenues or that primarily serve historically underserved communities.“This is a beginning,” Mr. Welch said. “There are obstacles, but let the effort begin.” More

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    A New Film on William F. Buckley Examines the Godfather of Modern Conservatism

    The PBS documentary “The Incomparable Mr. Buckley” implicitly and explicitly asks: What would William F. Buckley think of today’s Republican Party?William F. Buckley Jr., widely considered the godfather of modern conservatism, defended Joseph McCarthy and his communist witch hunts. He praised the “restraint” of Alabama law enforcement officers who brutally assaulted civil rights marchers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965. He was also a silver-tongued intellectual who abhorred boorish thinking and behavior and savored debates with the sharpest minds of his era.Such a track record invites the question asked, implicitly and explicitly, in a new “American Masters” documentary: What would Buckley think of the current Republican kingpin, Donald Trump, and his followers? Would Buckley, who died in 2008, denounce the direction of the movement he helped start and disown a former (and perhaps future) American president who has expressed his admiration for a strongman Russian president? Or would he find a way to fold Trump and his supporters into his dreams of a conservative empire?In “The Incomparable Mr. Buckley,” which premiered last week on PBS and is streaming on PBS.org, Buckley’s son, the novelist and former George H.W. Bush speechwriter Christopher Buckley, gives a cryptic assessment of what the senior Buckley would think of Trump: “He might just have said, ‘Demand a recount,’” a riff on William F. Buckley’s oft-repeated joke about what he would do if he won his 1965 New York mayoral bid. In a recent video interview, however, Christopher Buckley was more direct.“I don’t equate Trumpism with conservatism,” he said. “I’m very glad my father and Ronald Reagan are not alive to see what’s happened to the G.O.P. and to the national discourse.”Others, including some who appear in the film directed by Barak Goodman, say it’s not that straightforward.“My own view is that Buckley would probably think about Trump more or less what he thought about McCarthy,” Beverly Gage, a history professor at Yale University and author of the 2022 Pulitzer Prize-winning J. Edgar Hoover biography “G-Man,” said in a video interview. “He would see Trump as tremendously useful as a concentration of many of the themes and constituencies that Buckley stood for.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    ‘Fallout’ Finds the Fun in an Apocalyptic Hellscape

    TV’s latest big-ticket video game adaptation, from the creators of “Westworld,” takes a satirical, self-aware approach to the End Times.The scream was just right — bloodcurdling, if also very funny — and the practical effects crew had finally found the proper volume and trajectory of the water cannon. The idea was to film what might happen if you ripped a man from the throat of a mutant salamander, exploding its guts like a giant water balloon.All that remained was to decide what color of bile to slather on the actor (Johnny Pemberton) and on the salamander’s many teeth, which nuclear radiation had transformed into rows of humanlike fingers.Based on observations made during a visit to the Brooklyn set of “Fallout” in early 2023, Amazon had spared no expense to make the show, the latest genre-bending series from Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, the creators of “Westworld.” So it was no surprise when Nolan, on set to direct that chilly afternoon, was presented with not one but some half-dozen buckets of bile to choose from, in a variety of revolting hues. He settled on a pukey pinkish yellow.“This is the closest thing to comedy that I’ve worked on,” he said later by phone. With writing credits on films like “Memento,” “The Dark Knight” and “The Prestige,” Nolan has tended to skew dark. Comically exploding monster guts — this was new territory.“It’s a lot of fun,” he said.A fun apocalypse? Amid all the doom and gloom of most sci-fi spectacles and social media feeds? Yes, please.“Fallout” premieres Wednesday on Prime Video, and at first it may sound familiar to viewers of a certain postapocalyptic HBO hit from last year, “The Last of Us.” Imagine: a sprawling, expensive adaptation of a beloved videogame franchise that features an unlikely duo — a nihilistic old gunslinger with a tortured past and a tough young woman whose mission overlaps with his. Together, they travel a lawless America plagued by criminals, fanatics, killer mutants and trigger-happy survivors.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    ‘Shogun’ Episode 8 Recap: Borrowed Time

    As Toranaga trudges toward surrender, his closest allies wonder if the old samurai has really given up the fight.Season 1, Episode 8: ‘The Abyss of Life’Lord Toranaga is a sick man. Sick in his heart, grieving the loss of his son Nagakado, who died in a vain fight on his father’s behalf. Sick in his body, having contracted an illness on the long road back to Edo for Nagakado’s burial. The central scene of this week’s “Shogun” — perhaps the scene from the series so far — confronts vassal and viewer alike with an even more troubling question, one that it draws out for minute after excruciating minute: Is Lord Toranaga sick in his mind as well?Toranaga gathers his vassals in Edo to certify his big decision. He will not authorize Crimson Sky, the plan to attack Osaka and overthrow Lord Ishido and the Council of Regents. Once the customary mourning period is over, he will dutifully march off to his execution, and many of them must join him in marching to theirs. He wants their signatures to this effect.The vassals are aghast. Lord Yabushige and his nephew Omi are the only ones who sign before protest breaks out. The vassals have a duty to give honest advice, and their advice is that this course of action is madness. To go down without a fight over a charge — that Toranaga is conspiring to kill the Heir — with no basis in reality whatsoever? Surely it’s better to stay in Edo and defend their home turf, where they have the advantage over Ishido’s forces.No, Toranaga says. That would destroy the city, just as surely as marching on Osaka would destroy the realm. The survival of their clan is secondary to the survival of Japan, he argues.The vassals’ argument coheres in an impassioned challenge from Hiromatsu, Toranaga’s oldest and closest friend, who begs him to stop “throwing away all we’ve fought for.” Hiromatsu threatens to commit seppuku on the spot if Toranaga persists in his plan to surrender. Minute after tense minute, the two go back and forth, barely stifling their tears in a grim game of chicken — but Toranaga won’t relent.“So you do believe in pointless death,” Hiromatsu says, seemingly stunned. “Your vassal dies in vain.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More