Eliana Willis

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    Crew Member Working on Marvel’s ‘Wonder Man’ Dies in Fall

    The worker fell from a catwalk at Radford Studios early Tuesday, officials said.A crew member working on the set of Marvel Studios’ “Wonder Man” TV series at Radford Studios in Los Angeles died on Tuesday after falling from a catwalk, officials said.The man who died worked as a rigger, Deadline reported, and he died on set. A Marvel spokesperson confirmed those details in a statement, adding that “our thoughts and deepest condolences are with his family and friends, and our support is behind the investigation into the circumstances of this accident.”Members of the Los Angeles Police Department responded to Radford Street for a death investigation at about 6:55 a.m., said Officer Tony Im, a police spokesman.The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees said in a statement posted on social media that the organization was “shocked and deeply saddened by this tragic loss.”“We are working to support our member’s family and his fellow members and colleagues,” the union said.“Wonder Man,” a Disney+ series that is set to star Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, was not filming at the time of the incident. More

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    ‘The Connector’ Review: When Fake News Was All the Rage

    An Off Broadway musical about the sins of journalistic fabrication might benefit from more make-believe.If you’re even a little sensitive to signs of sociopathy, you’d peg Ethan Dobson right away. Someone at the start of a promising career in journalism who is so aggressively flattering and greasily evasive, with a snap-on, snakelike, aw-shucks smile, has got to have a scheme up his sleeve. Or rather, in Ethan’s case, a dangerous bunch of lies in his pocket.To ask why the editors of such an obvious fabulist don’t catch him until they’ve published at least six of his articles, each one a long, lurid and uncheckable fantasy, is to ask why the editors of The New Republic took so long to catch Stephen Glass doing much the same thing. Or why the editors of Rolling Stone took so long to catch Sabrina Erdely; USA Today, Jack Kelley; The Washington Post, Janet Cooke; and The New York Times, Jayson Blair.They didn’t want to.That’s the most intriguing idea to emerge from “The Connector,” a murky new musical about journalistic fabrication that opened on Tuesday at MCC Theater. It sees Ethan (Ben Levi Ross) as the beneficiary of a long history of male editorial vanity that sentimentalizes its past and falls for the excesses of New Journalism over old facts. That makes Conrad O’Brien (Scott Bakula) — the head of a prestigious monthly called The Connector — an easy mark; when he takes Ethan under his handsomely graying wing, he thinks he’s securing his glorious legacy when actually he’s destroying it.But that animating idea is also a problem because aside from Jason Robert Brown’s typically propulsive songs, which excite even the most absurd moments of Jonathan Marc Sherman’s book, the engine of the story, set in the 1990s, depends on uncertainty about Ethan’s veracity. That’s a nonstarter. After just one meeting at the magazine, a young copy editor and frustrated writer named Robin (Hannah Cruz) is already suspicious: “I’m watching you map the boundaries,” she sings, in a number that also serves as a vaguely romantic red herring. And the magazine’s “fact-checking legend,” Muriel, played by Jessica Molaskey, sees right through him even faster.So do we, and we quickly lose interest.That’s not the fault of the beamish, resourceful Ross, who, as a recent Evan Hansen, has experience portraying liars. Here, though, he has little to play; not pinning Ethan down is how “The Connector,” conceived and directed by Daisy Prince, keeps itself moving forward. This leaves the show devoid of psychology — the most important thing a musical might have added to the already well-covered histories of journalists who make stuff up. It helped, if you believed him, that Jayson Blair, after his deceptions were discovered, explained that he suffered from bipolar disorder.But Ethan? We have no idea. The worst impediment we learn about him, in a song called “So I Came to New York,” is that he’s from a place where “everyone’s a scumbag”: New Jersey.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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    Tyne Daly Withdraws From ‘Doubt’ on Broadway, Citing Health

    Amy Ryan will replace her in the show, which also stars Liev Schreiber and began previews on Saturday.Tyne Daly, the Tony- and Emmy-winning actress, is withdrawing from a starring role in the first Broadway revival of “Doubt: A Parable,” citing health issues.Daly was set to star in the production of John Patrick Shanley’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 2004 play about a sexual assault accusation against a Catholic priest. She will be replaced by Amy Ryan, who will begin performances Feb. 13.Roundabout Theater Company, the nonprofit producing the revival, announced the cast change on Tuesday, saying in a news release, “Ms. Daly was unexpectedly hospitalized on Friday and unfortunately needs to withdraw from the production while she receives medical care; she is thankfully expected to make a full recovery.” The organization did not provide further details.The “Doubt” revival, also starring Liev Schreiber, was to begin previews last Friday, but that first performance was canceled by Roundabout. The production then began performances on Saturday, with the understudy Isabel Keating going on in Daly’s stead; Keating has been performing the lead role since then, and will continue to do so through Sunday.Daly was to play Sister Aloysius Beauvier, a nun who serves as the principal at a Catholic school and who suspects the parish priest, Father Brendan Flynn, of misconduct. Schreiber is playing the priest. In 2008, the play was adapted into a film starring Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman; it was also adapted into an opera.Daly, 77, has worked steadily onstage and screen. She has performed in seven previous Broadway shows, winning a Tony Award in 1990 for starring in a revival of “Gypsy,” and earning two more nominations since. She has also won six Emmy Awards, for the television shows “Cagney & Lacey,” “Christy” and “Judging Amy.”Ryan, 55, has performed in five previous Broadway shows, and was nominated twice for Tony Awards in Roundabout revivals. Her last appearance on Broadway was nearly two decades ago, when she was featured in a revival of “A Streetcar Named Desire.” Since that time she has worked primarily on film and television, earning an Oscar nomination for her work in “Gone Baby Gone.”The “Doubt” revival, directed by Scott Ellis, will now open March 7, one week later than initially planned. The production, which is scheduled to run until April 14, also features Quincy Tyler Bernstine and Zoe Kazan. More

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    Movies and TV Shows Coming to Netflix in February: ‘Avatar: The Last Airbender,’ ‘The Tourist,’ More

    A live-action remake of “Avatar: The Last Airbender” and a new season of “The Tourist” highlight the new offerings this month.Every month, Netflix adds movies and TV shows to its library. Here are our picks for some of February’s most promising new titles. (Note: Streaming services occasionally change schedules without giving notice. For more recommendations on what to stream, sign up for our Watching newsletter here.)‘Orion and the Dark’Now streamingFans of the writer-director Charlie Kaufman’s playfully complex art films like “Synecdoche, New York” and “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” may be surprised to see his name in the credits of an animated kids’ movie. But while this adaptation of an Emma Yarlett picture book (directed by Sean Charmatz from a Kaufman screenplay) is very much oriented toward children, it has some of the metafictional layers for which Kaufman is known. Jacob Tremblay is the voice of a young boy, Orion, whose fear of darkness prompts a visit from the physical manifestation of Dark (Paul Walter Hauser), who tries to show him the wonders of the night. Colin Hanks is the voice of the older Orion, describing this boyhood adventure to his own nervous daughter, who keeps questioning her dad’s version of what happened. The tension between the story itself and the way it gets told adds some poignant, adult undertones to a family-friendly romp.‘One Day’Starts streaming: Feb. 8Based on a David Nicholls novel (previously adapted into a 2011 movie), this romantic dramedy miniseries covers 20 years in the lives of two University of Edinburgh classmates, who have one painfully awkward date after graduation in 1988 and then spend much of their young adulthood staying in touch but failing to become a couple. Leo Woodall and Ambika Mod play these distant friends, whom “One Day” revisits on the same day each year, to show how their careers and relationships go through dramatic changes, often pulling them further apart. Like the book, this is the story about the loves and times of two very different people, who could actually be perfect for each other if they can ever get past their hang-ups.‘Players’Starts streaming: Feb. 14In this romantic comedy, Gina Rodriguez plays a New York sportswriter named Mack, who alongside her best friend and colleague Adam (Damon Wayans Jr.) is a master at running “plays” in singles bars, telling lies to help each other coax their romantic quarries into bed. Then Mack meets Nick (Tom Ellis), a renowned war correspondent who might be worth more than a one-night stand. Directed by Trish Sie from a Whit Anderson script, “Players” combines the mechanics of a heist film with the trappings of a old-fashioned big city love story, for a portrait of middle-aged adults starting to realize it may be time to grow up and stop playing games.‘Avatar: The Last Airbender’ Season 1Starts streaming: Feb. 22Fans of the epic animated fantasy series “Avatar” have been anxious to see this live-action version, after the previous attempt to adapt the franchise into a live-action movie fell flat. This new take is overseen by the writer-producer Albert Kim — the creators of the Nickelodeon cartoon, Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko, were initially involved but withdrew in 2020, citing creative differences. Like the original, this version is set in a world where four kingdoms — each representing one of the classical elements — have been in crisis since the Fire Nation went on the attack. The first season’s eight hourlong episodes introduce the title character, Aang (Gordon Cormier), a superpowered youngster who despite his small size and occasional clumsiness may be the one to restore balance to society.‘The Tourist’ Season 2Starts streaming: Feb. 29In Season 1 of “The Tourist” (which originally aired on HBO Max now streams on Netflix), an Irishman traveling through rural Australia suffers a bout of amnesia after getting run off the road by a truck. With the help of the friendly small-town cop Helen Chambers (Danielle Macdonald), this man (Jamie Dornan) — who eventually learns his name is Elliot — tries to piece together who he used to be and why someone may be trying to kill him. In Season 2, Helen and Elliot keep following that trail to Ireland, where he learns more about his violent past and tries to reconcile it with the gentler person he has become since the accident. As with the first season, the second weaves some jarring twists and dark comedy into a story about someone who has been on the run for as long as he can remember.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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    A Super Bowl Broadcaster With Slime and Swagger

    Nate Burleson spent 11 seasons playing in the N.F.L. He now balances several TV assignments, and will announce the Super Bowl with SpongeBob SquarePants.Nate Burleson, far removed from the 11 seasons he spent toiling in the National Football League, pulled up his shirt to wipe sweat from his forehead during a well-deserved break.Burleson was in a buzzing laboratory with green slime-filled industrial containers, recording Nickelodeon’s “NFL Slimetime” days after explaining the challenge of overcoming turnovers on “The NFL Today,” the CBS football show that was in Baltimore for the A.F.C. Championship Game. Hours before the Nickelodeon taping, he had provided updates about the widening conflict in the Middle East on “CBS Mornings,” the network’s flagship morning newscast.After a productive but unglamorous football career, Burleson, 42, has found high-profile success in the television industry. Now he faces a daunting schedule this week in Las Vegas, where the Kansas City Chiefs and San Francisco 49ers will face off in the Super Bowl.Burleson is setting 1:30 a.m. alarms to anchor “CBS Mornings” from the Las Vegas Strip throughout the week. And on Sunday, he will announce Nickelodeon’s first alternate Super Bowl telecast for children, changing into a suit and racing down Allegiant Stadium’s elevator with help from security to join his “NFL Today” colleagues for halftime analysis.“I never played in a Super Bowl, so I feel like this is my Super Bowl,” Burleson said.Tony Dokoupil, left, Gayle King and Burleson on “CBS Mornings.” Burleson impressed producers with the energy he brought to segments while guest hosting.Mary Kouw/CBSNickelodeon’s alternate telecasts are an attempt to attract younger viewers by infusing N.F.L. games with augmented-reality animations on the field — yes, there will be plenty of virtual slime — and incorporating popular cartoon characters. Burleson will call the Super Bowl with the voice actors for SpongeBob SquarePants and Patrick Star. (Jim Nantz and Tony Romo are announcing the traditional broadcast on CBS.)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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    ‘Hors Pistes’ Is an Arts Festival About Sports, for People Who Don’t Like Sports

    A series of events in preparation for the Paris Olympics explores a paradox, since arts and sports rarely mix in France.When it comes to the biggest sports show on earth, many Parisians have reached the stage of begrudging acceptance. The level of disruption — and metro price hikes — to get the city ready for this summer’s Olympic Games hasn’t exactly endeared the event to locals, especially those who favor culture over sports.“The Olympics are coming — whether we like it or not,” a curator from the Pompidou Center, Linus Gratte, said as he introduced a performance there this past weekend as part of the “Hors Pistes” festival. The audience chuckled.“Hors Pistes” (meaning “Off-Piste”), a festival the Pompidou Center says is devoted to “moving images,” came with an Olympic-ready theme this year: “The Rules of Sport.” It is part of the Cultural Olympiad, the program of arts events that is now a part of the Olympic experience in every host city.For the Paris Cultural Olympiad — spearheaded by Dominique Hervieu, an experienced performing arts curator — the city has opted to go big. Any cultural institution could apply for the “Olympiad” label, leading to a sprawling lineup of sports-related exhibitions and performances, which started back in 2022. This has led to a degree of confusion over what, exactly, the Olympiad stands for: Its official website currently lists no fewer than 984 upcoming events.And quite a few of them end up exploring a paradox, because art and sports rarely mix in France. As a rule, the country’s artistic output leans toward intellectualism rather than the virtuosity embodied by high-level athletes. The Pompidou Center, a flagship venue for contemporary art, telegraphs as much in its “Hors Pistes” publicity material, which says the festival’s goal is “to question and subvert the rules of sport, and to imagine new interpretations of them.”While the Pompidou is primarily an art museum, and “Hors Pistes” comes with a small exhibition, the festival features a significant number of performances, onstage in the center’s theater, or in its galleries. Some of these struggled to find coherent common ground with sports, however, like Anna Chirescu and Grégoire Schaller’s “Dirty Dancers,” an hourlong dance performance staged in the exhibition space, with sports-style bleachers for the audience.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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    $7 Million for 30 Seconds? It’s Worth It at the Super Bowl.

    In a time of fragmentation, advertising during the game’s broadcast is still a reliable way to boost company revenue and familiarize viewers with a brand.A cat meowing for Hellmann’s mayonnaise, Peyton Manning chucking Bud Light beers to patrons in a bar and Kris Jenner stacking Oreo cookies. They all have one thing in common: Those companies paid seven figures to get their products in front of viewers during this year’s Super Bowl.For the second consecutive year, the average cost of a 30-second ad spot during the Super Bowl was $7 million. Even as many businesses are being more disciplined with the money they have for marketing, and with spending on advertising slowing in recent years, the cost of a Super Bowl ad continues to go up.The reason is simple: There is no opportunity guaranteed to reach more people than the Super Bowl, and the slice of every other pie keeps shrinking.“It’s a throwback in terms of reaching everyone all at once,” said Charles Taylor, a professor of marketing at the Villanova School of Business.In an increasingly fragmented media landscape, the number of opportunities for companies to reach a mass audience through advertising on network television has dwindled. Popular shows have increasingly moved to streaming platforms, along with audiences. More and more, networks find themselves relying on live events, like award shows and sports, to draw viewers.“Live events are still huge for advertisers, and those are the ones that draw the highest attention,” said Frank McGuire, a vice president at Sharethrough, an advertising integration platform.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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    I’ve Never Bought Anything From QVC. I Can’t Stop Watching It.

    The playful pleasures of David Venable keep pulling me back in.Last fall, I lived in a hotel in the small college town where I teach, an admittedly strange arrangement that came with a serendipitous perk: cable TV. At the end of most days, after stocking up on ice from the machine down the hall, I would get beneath the sheets and click on QVC. If I was lucky, I got to watch the incomparable David Venable, whose most distinct trait — aside from his striking height (6 feet 6 inches) and the dulcet tones of his North Carolina drawl — is his “happy dance”: a hands-over-head, 360-degree twirl that he executes when a product especially delights him. In seemingly every moment of his cooking and housewares show, “In the Kitchen With David,” he radiates joie de vivre.I don’t think I’m part of Venable’s target demographic. I can’t cook. I don’t like accumulating things. I appreciate when a living space feels homey, but I’m just as content in a spare room as I am in a curated one. Still, I’ve become one the many David Venable faithful. Regardless of what he’s selling, I’m watching. Venable avoids falling into the wolfish smarm that typifies the shopping-show genre. There’s a forthrightness of approach that tells us he’s interested in more than just selling things to us. When he’s talking up a portable power station, warning us that we won’t know we’ll need it until it’s too late, he’s not being a doomer; he’s being honest. He comes off like a mindful parent cautioning a naïve child, much like my folks, who, when I was in high school, always made sure I had an extra coat and blanket in the car during Minnesota’s brutal winters, just in case my car broke down. Like any salesperson, Venable uses scarcity as a tactic. But he doesn’t promise that any particular item will solve all your problems. Rather, he imagines a life for the viewer already brimming with warmth. Whatever he’s selling could make that full life a bit less unwieldy. You might feel compelled to buy those airtight, spillproof LocknLock storage containers, not just because they’re selling out fast, and this deal will only last tonight, but also because with Venable’s encouragement you can imagine walking to your parents’ home, holding your child’s hand, juggling a stack of gifts and laughing so hard you might drop your homemade hot-dish on your way to the front door. With LocknLock’s proprietary technology, however, you can be confident that your casserole won’t spill! For me, “In the Kitchen With David” functions as therapeutic entertainment. Venable’s screen presence never activates anything in the realm of stress or embarrassment. Just like us, we learn, he drops dishes at home, and his kitchen goes through various states of disarray. “There’s no shame in your game if you go to the store bakery and you buy something store-bought and put it in there,” Venable will say while holding a pie-carrier with handle-lid. His nonjudgmental energy transforms solo TV-watching into a communal experience, inviting us to marvel alongside him at the quotidian: a nonstick pan or a vegetable wedger or sugar-free caramels. And he is never desperate to make a sale. Look closely as a jittery brand ambassador fumbles over his or her pitch, and you’ll see Venable’s eyes soften and a smile spread across his face. He seems to enjoy it when things don’t go as planned. For him, spills and mispronunciations are not reasons to panic but opportunities for play.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