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    Dick Wolf, ‘Law & Order’ Creator, Gives 200 Artworks to the Met Museum

    Wolf has promised works by Botticelli, the Gentileschis and van Gogh to the museum, which is also naming two galleries for him thanks to a large financial donation.Dick Wolf, the “Law & Order” creator, has made a promised gift of more than 200 works — paintings, sculptures and drawings among them — for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s collections of Renaissance and Baroque art. He is also donating a substantial sum of money, the Met announced on Wednesday, adding that it would endow two galleries with his name.Wolf has been a discreet collector in the art world, focusing his attention on older works at a time when the most well-known collectors invest in modern and contemporary art. Some of his promised gifts to the museum were also recent purchases, including a 15th-century Botticelli painting that sold for $4.6 million in 2012 and a 16th-century Orazio Gentileschi painting that sold for $4.4 million in 2022. The Gentileschi is already on view in the newly reopened European paintings galleries; Wolf is also donating a piece by the artist’s daughter, Artemisia, which sold for $2.1 million that same year.Dick Wolf said he used to visit the Met as a child on his way home from school. Chris Haston/NBC, via Getty ImagesMax Hollein, the Met’s director and chief executive, said that he and the museum’s curators cultivated a relationship with the television producer over the last three years; however, he stayed away from giving advice on the market.“I never wanted to be too presumptuous,” Hollein said in an interview. “But I think he was already thinking about the Met.”The collection also includes a $2.8 million painting by van Gogh sold in 2022, “Beach at Scheveningen in Calm Weather,” one of his earliest oil landscapes. The painting was made in 1882, at the beach outside of the fishing village of Scheveningen, but the artist later abandoned the picture inside of a crate of some 40 works. His family stored the crate with a carpenter, who later sold the contents for the equivalent of 50 cents to a junk dealer named Johannes Couvreur.Orazio Gentileschi, “Madonna and Child,” circa 1620.via The Metropolitan Museum of ArtA museum spokeswoman declined to provide a specific number for the endowment, which will ensure Wolf’s name is on two galleries in the department of European sculpture and decorative arts, but said it was in the tens of millions of dollars.Wolf declined an interview but said in a statement that his appreciation for art started when he was a child visiting the Met on his way home from school. “It was a simpler time, there was no admission, you could walk in off the street,” he said. “I’m sure most collectors would agree that seeing your art displayed in the world’s greatest museum is an honor.”Hollein characterized Wolf’s donation as one of the most meaningful gifts to the museum in recent memory.“The collection reflects Dick Wolf’s excellent connoisseurship and enduring dedication to the diverse artistic media of the periods,” he said. “Furthermore, the substantial financial contribution will provide critical support for the Met’s collection displays and scholarly pursuits.” More

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    Matt Bomer Takes the Lead

    Once told he would never be a leading man if he came out, Bomer defied such predictions and, in projects like “Fellow Travelers” and “Maestro,” is getting some of the richest roles of his career.In 2001, the actor Matt Bomer took a role in “Guiding Light.” He had resisted it at first. A graduate of Carnegie Mellon University’s vaunted musical theater program, he felt that a soap opera was beneath him. But a few theater jobs hadn’t gone anywhere, and he had recently lost a bellman gig at a midtown hotel, so when the chance came up to play Ben Reade, a trust fund baby turned sex worker, he signed on.Bomer had been afraid of being on camera. “I was terrified of anybody seeing that close to my soul,” he said. On the soap, he learned to say his lines, hit his marks, make a choice and stick to it. The camera left his soul alone.In 2002, he asked the producers to write him off. He had been told that he was the director’s choice for a major new superhero movie. Then, he believes, the movie’s producers discovered that he was gay. That movie was never made.Bomer has never been sure if that’s why the project fell apart. Like marriages and dishwashers, movies in preproduction have many ways to fail. Still, he took from the experience a painful lesson. He couldn’t be himself and have the career he wanted. Around the same time, a producer (Bomer didn’t name him) told him that if he came out publicly, he would never play leads.In the Showtime series “Fellow Travelers,” Bomer, left, and Jonathan Bailey play lovers during the Lavender Scare of the 1950s.ShowtimeIt took 20 years, but Bomer, 46, has proved that producer wrong. He can currently be seen in two major projects: the Netflix film “Maestro,” which came to Netflix on Wednesday, and the Showtime romantic drama “Fellow Travelers,” set during and after the Lavender Scare of the 1950s, in which gay men and women were denied and purged from government jobs.In the series, which concluded last week, Bomer plays Hawkins Fuller, a state department operative with a promising career, a loving wife and a passionate entanglement with a man, played by Jonathan Bailey (“Bridgerton”). Driven, magnetic, emotionally opaque, Fuller — Hawk to his intimates — has all the signifiers of a prestige drama antihero. His is a leading role. Bomer, playing him, is a leading man.“Before this I was like, why can’t we have our Don Draper? Why can’t we have our Walter White?” Bomer said. “I don’t think I could have done it if I hadn’t worked on all the projects leading up to it.”Bomer grew up in Spring, Tex., a suburb of Houston. His family went to church several times a week, and that church considered homosexuality an abomination, so Bomer spent much of his childhood and adolescence running from himself. In high school, he participated in forensics, football, student council, Latin Club. “Anything that kept me busy,” he said. He also acted, landing his first professional job at 18. In theater, inside the skin of a character, he felt free.He began to date men in college, during a year abroad in Ireland. A decade into his career, once he had recurred on several series, co-starred in a Jodie Foster movie (“Flightplan”) and was firmly ensconced as the breezy lead of the USA cop-and-con-man procedural “White Collar,” he came out while receiving a humanitarian award, in 2012. He was already married then, to the publicist Simon Halls, and the father of three young boys.Bomer came out while he was still playing the breezy (and straight) lead of the USA cop-and-con-man procedural “White Collar.”David Giesbrecht/USA NetworkBomer isn’t sure that it was an ideal time to come out. “White Collar” was still airing, and the first “Magic Mike” film, in which he plays one of the exotic dancers, would soon premiere. But he was tired of running. And he was happy.“I just thought, I don’t want to hide this,” he recalled on a recent morning. “Love is more important to me than anything that being my true self cost me.”We had met an hour earlier in the middle of a West Village street. The plan had been to walk around the neighborhood, Bomer’s favorite in the city. (Although he is based in Los Angeles, he and Halls have an apartment nearby.) But it was near freezing, so after a few moments we ducked into the glassed-in back room of a pastry shop on Bleecker Street.I can confirm that if you are a person who enjoys the company of handsome men, it is very nice to sip herbal tea across the table from Bomer. He has dark hair, light eyes, a jaw so square it could be used for geometry tutorials. Wrap that up in an off-white turtleneck sweater, and it’s heartthrob city. I had mentioned to a few friends that I would be meeting him, and they all wanted me to ask the same question: How does it feel to be that handsome?Bomer doesn’t discount his looks, but he has the decency to be mildly embarrassed by them. “We were raised in my home to always be very humble and to not be worldly in that regard,” he said. “Having said that, I make sure to moisturize.” He favors writers and directors who see him as more than a pretty face and sculpted abs. And there is more: impishness, candor, a sense of wounds long healed.“There’s a real sort of confident vulnerability about Matt,” said Bailey, his “Fellow Travelers” co-star.Coming out altered Bomer’s professional trajectory, though it didn’t necessarily diminish it. “I mean, there are certain rooms that I haven’t been in since,” he said. “But I think my career became so much richer.”As “White Collar” wound down, he took on several gay roles. He appeared in Dustin Lance Black’s “8,” a play about the overturning of the amendment banning same-sex marriage in California. He followed that with turns in Ryan Murphy’s film adaptations of “The Normal Heart” and “The Boys in the Band,” both seminal works of gay theater.“I feel like I’ve been watching straight people express their sexuality in front of me my entire life,” Bomer said. “Now you can watch some of our experience onscreen.”Sabrina Santiago for The New York TimesIn casting Bomer in “The Normal Heart,” Murphy recalled thinking: “Maybe this is the role that can show the world what Matt can do. I remember saying to him, ‘I can tell you can do this because you have a lot to prove.’” He also perceived that Bomer, an actor who had always relied on technique and charm, who had seen performance as one more way to hide, had a deep emotional well to draw from.“He knows what it’s like to struggle, and he knows what it’s like to be afraid, and he knows what it’s like to have people not believe in you,” Murphy said.Even as he played these gay roles, he continued on with straight ones, building a résumé that would not have been available to an out actor even a decade before. Murphy cast him opposite Lady Gaga in a season of “American Horror Story,” and he appeared as a Hollywood producer in a miniseries version of “The Last Tycoon.” He also filmed a second “Magic Mike” movie.Three and a half years ago, he read “Fellow Travelers,” the Thomas Mallon novel on which the series is based, with an eye toward starring in the adaptation. He was interested, but he didn’t really expect it to go forward. “There was a central part of me that has been in the business since I was 18, thinking, ‘Are the gatekeepers really going to give this the budget that it needs?’” he recalled.But the gatekeepers did. Ron Nyswaner, the showrunner of the series, wanted Bomer for the lead, intuiting that he could play both what Hawk shows to the world (charisma, ambition) and what he conceals (heart, desire, anguish).“Matt, for all his physical attractiveness and charm, he understands emotional pain,” Nyswaner said.When I asked Bomer what of himself he had given to Hawk, in terms of both effort and personal experience, his answer was simple: “Everything.” Finally, he is letting the camera see into his soul. In most scenes, Bomer plays two or three emotions simultaneously, some across the surface of his face and others roiling underneath. The show includes several unusually intimate sex scenes, and Bomer gave himself to these, too. With the consent of his co-star and an intimacy coordinator, he even improvised a few unscripted moments, as when Hawk licks a lover’s armpit.“I feel like I’ve been watching straight people express their sexuality in front of me my entire life,” Bomer said. “Now you can watch some of our experience onscreen.”In “Maestro,” Bomer plays a colleague and lover of Leonard Bernstein’s. (With Bradley Cooper.)NetflixIf Bomer has his way, there will be more to watch. He appears in Bradley Cooper’s “Maestro,” as the clarinetist and producer David Oppenheim, a colleague and lover of Leonard Bernstein’s. And there are plans for other series: a queer espionage drama, an adaptation of another novel. (His dream project is a “Murder She Wrote” reboot.) Then of course there are his other roles: husband, father, son, brother, advocate and activist for human rights.Bailey, who is a decade younger, described him as “a blinding light — a good blinding light! — of energy and commitment.” Bomer was someone he had looked to as he navigated his own career, a man who had nudged open a door and kept it open for others who came after. “He’s a beacon,” Bailey said.Predictably, Bomer takes a humbler approach. His concern is for what he has received, not what he might provide. His life has taken him, he said, from an industry suspicious of queer storytelling to one more receptive. From running from himself to settling down with a family and faith rooted in love and acceptance. Another man might discount the earlier years — the division, the prejudice, the pain — but Bomer doesn’t. It has made him who he is: a leading man and a man now able to take the lead in his own life.“I’m grateful, ultimately, that I got to see both sides,” he said. More

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    How Richard Nelson’s ‘Our Life in Art’ Was Translated, Twice

    Richard Nelson seemed to have found the perfect home for his play “Our Life in Art.”He had written a show about the Moscow Art Theater’s 1923 tour of the United States with its director, Konstantin Stanislavski, and was planning to have a Russian translation presented by the company’s modern leader at a performance space that Stanislavski had built on the grounds of his family’s factory.What’s more, the Brooklyn Academy of Music was interested in bringing the production to New York, where Nelson is best known as the author of the “Rhinebeck Panorama,” a collection of a dozen intimate plays that document and dissect slices of American life and history through nothing more than dinner conversation.A major step toward the play’s premiere in Moscow came on Feb. 23, 2022, when the director, Sergei Zhenovach, read through it with his company. Everyone seemed enthusiastic about the project, but Nelson awoke the next day to a message that read, “Something awful has happened.”Russia had invaded Ukraine.“That was it,” Nelson recalled during a recent video interview. “The war cut all ties to Russian theater, so it was over.”“Our Life in Art,” Nelson’s play about a close-knit theater troupe of the past, is being performed by a close-knit French theater troupe of the present.Elliott Verdier for The New York TimesThe war, and a fresh crackdown on dissent in Russia, made “Our Life in Art” all the more necessary. Its plot, which unfurls between Moscow Art Theater performances in Chicago, examines and questions how art is navigated within world events and politics. “The play has evolved into being about itself,” Nelson said. “What’s happened while trying to get the play on has now affected how it is seen. So many people I know in Russian theater and art — it’s just a very difficult time, and all of these issues are in the air.”In the air, and finally onstage. In the end, Nelson’s play about a close-knit troupe of the past was taken up by a close-knit troupe of the present: “Our Life in Art” found a new home at the Théâtre du Soleil in Paris, where it is running through March 2, translated into French by that company’s director, Ariane Mnouchkine.The production has put Nelson on the other end of work he has previously done translating Russian theater classics into English with Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, the power couple behind many Russian literature translations in print today. So, Nelson knows that the process is more than mapping one language onto another; as with the plays by his hero and aesthetic ancestor, Anton Chekhov, it also requires the preservation of a specific, crucial sensibility.In the works of both Chekhov and Nelson, the extraordinary emerges only from the ordinary. Revelations come not in speeches, but in passing comments. And, above all, in the spirit of verisimilitude, people have true conversations. Nelson’s characters speak to one another, not to the audience. He likes to tell actors that the performance “is the relationship you have with everyone else.”That’s a level of lived-in mastery rarely seen even in naturalistic theater. Not for nothing does Nelson tend to work with the same actors as a de facto company; Jay O. Sanders and Maryann Plunkett appeared in all the Rhinebeck plays, but as members of three different families. And Sanders starred in Nelson, Pevear and Volokhonsky’s translation of Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya.”The translators got to know Nelson when he had mailed them a letter introducing himself and expressing interest in a collaboration. They later met in New York, during the release of their version of “War and Peace” about 15 years ago, and the three of them decided to embark on translating Russian theater, starting with Turgenev’s “A Month in the Country.”“He’s a man of very great integrity,” Volokhonsky said of Nelson, “and he has a gift for friendship.”The three quickly grew close, and built up their working relationship to translating all the major plays of Chekhov. “We would submit the text to him,” Pevear said, “and he would go through it and say, ‘My actors wouldn’t say that, what if we did it this way?’ That’s why we only wanted to do this work with a playwright. It’s not just about narrative.”So, when Nelson wrote “Our Life in Art” — a nod to Stanislavski’s book “My Life in Art” — in fall 2020, he recruited Volokhonsky to translate it. Originally, it had been planned for Lev Dodin, the artistic director of the Maly Drama Theater in St. Petersburg, but he and Nelson had different visions for the play, about whether it should be understated or eruptive, and their collaboration ended on friendly terms. Next, the show was taken up by Sergei Zhenovach before he left the Moscow Art Theater, and by that point, Volokhonsky said, her work on the show was done; anything further would be refined in rehearsals. But those never came.“To have this luxury and this luck, where every day, for months and months, I am just able to focus on making theater without any other pressures or anything else going on, is a piece of profound fortune,” Nelson said of working with the Théâtre du Soleil in Paris.Elliott Verdier for The New York TimesAs the play lay dormant, Mnouchkine, who had seen Nelson’s work in New York, approached him about creating something for Théâtre du Soleil. He told her that he happened to have a show about an acting company, and sent it to her. She read “Our Life in Art” overnight and decided to mount it, with him directing, as he often does with productions of his plays in the United States.Mnouchkine translated the text quickly, she said, “while he was already rehearsing” with her actors, over a luxuriously long 10 weeks last spring. “I had to go quite fast, but I needed to have this very high-standard, delicate easiness, which seems easy to say but is not easy. And I wanted to have the same rhythm as Richard.”The translation was not without its complications. Nelson doesn’t speak French, and not everyone in the Théâtre du Soleil company speaks English. A translator was an essential intermediary. He would tell the actors what was happening in a scene, and if they responded, “That’s not quite what’s here in the text,” they would together work toward a more accurate turn of phrase. They talked through complicated idioms, untranslated figures of speech and, most difficult, the difference between pronouns, a nonissue in English: When should characters who are close but still colleagues address each another as the informal “tu” or the formal “vous”?It helps that, after more rehearsals this fall, Nelson had 14 weeks with the actors, and spent that time living in the company’s home, La Cartoucherie, in the bucolic Bois de Vincennes on the outskirts of Paris, seeing them behave as a true company. “There are no stage managers, there are no real designers,” he said. “The actors do everything: They clean toilets, they move furniture around. This is their home, and they own this.”The result may not have been an unequivocal success — in The New York Times, the critic Laura Cappelle found the play’s realistic conversations casual to the point of rendering historical context inaccessible — but Mnouchkine said she and her actors were “very pleased” to work with Nelson. For his part, he felt as if the most difficult translation, of his nothing-forced aesthetic, was achieved.“I’m really happy with where the play has landed,” Nelson said. “At a time when the American theater is in crisis, to have this luxury and this luck, where every day, for months and months, I am just able to focus on making theater without any other pressures or anything else going on, is a piece of profound fortune.” More

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    Stephen Colbert Is OK With Kicking Rudy Giuliani While He’s Down

    Colbert chided Giuliani after two former Georgia election workers won a $148 million judgment against him, then sued him again a few days later.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.Kick Him While He’s DownTwo former Georgia election workers who were awarded $148 million after being defamed by Rudolph W. Giuliani sued him again on Monday after he continued to attack them.“Now, normally, I’d say don’t kick a man while he’s down, but in Rudy’s case, go for it,” Stephen Colbert said. “It’s much easier when he’s down there — he’s closer to your feet.”“After this enormous punishment for the damage he caused by lying continually about these two innocent women, I’m sure he’s learned his lesson — and he continues to repeat his false allegations the poll watchers interfered in the 2020 election. He’s done it outside the courthouse, on Newsmax, and on Steve Bannon’s podcast. He says it everywhere he goes. He even said it to his current roommates, two sea gulls on South Street Seaport.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“The two Georgia election workers who won a $148 million verdict on Friday against Rudy Giuliani filed another lawsuit yesterday after Giuliani continued making false statements about them. Only Rudy could lose a $148 million lawsuit and say, ‘OK, double or nothing!’” — SETH MEYERS“Obviously, he needs money fast. I recommend he drill for oil in his skull.” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Punchiest Punchlines (You Make Me Feel So Young Edition)“According to a new report, President Biden frequently tells aides and friends in private conversations that he feels ‘so much younger’ than his age. And I’m sure he does, but it doesn’t inspire a ton of confidence when you walk around going ‘Man, I feel 73!’” — SETH MEYERS“Yes, his campaign staff is worried when he overextends himself by working long hours or riding a bike or nodding too hard, excessive blinking.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Well, good for you, sir! You don’t look one day over — let’s change the subject. What were we talking about? I don’t remember.’” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Bits Worth WatchingBradley Cooper could barely get through a story about his 30th high school reunion while laughing with Jimmy Fallon on Tuesday’s “Tonight Show.”What We’re Excited About on Wednesday NightNicki Minaj will promote her new album, “Pink Friday 2,” on Wednesday’s “Late Show.”Also, Check This OutA reading party in Brooklyn. Lila Barth for The New York TimesReading Rhythms isn’t a book club — it’s a reading party held regularly in parks, bars, and on rooftops. More

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    ‘Fargo’ Season 5, Episode 6 Recap: Deadbeats and Broken Dreams

    This episode reflects that this season is about women carving out a place for themselves in a world where the best men are dim and the worst are abusive.Season 5, Episode 6: ‘The Tender Trap’To the many reversals of Coen character types in this season of “Fargo” — Dot as a lethally capable Jean Lundegaard from the movie, Roy as a malevolent Ed Tom Bell from “No Country for Old Men” — let’s add one more: Lars Olmstead, the layabout husband of Indira Olmstead, this season’s indebted, nonpregnant spin on Frances McDormand’s Marge Gunderson. Marge’s husband, Norm, has a dream, too. He paints a mallard for a competition to get on the 20-cent stamp. He loses to his friend, but gets on the three-cent stamp, which Marge celebrates in the film’s touching denouement.But unlike with Lars, Norm’s ambitions are a not a drag on his wife. On the contrary, he makes her eggs and gives the prowler a jump. They enjoy a lunchtime fricassee together. In the end, snuggled under a blanket against the howling cold of the rural Midwest, they look forward to their first child. If anything, it is Marge who experiences a bit of wanderlust when she leaves for the Twin Cities to investigate the case and puts on makeup to meet with an old classmate for drinks. Ol’ reliable Norm will always be there to support her, but perhaps Brainerd, Minn., and its brown-gray buffet casseroles aren’t enough for a sheriff of her impeccable instincts.Indira is too good for Lars; that much is clear. When he comes stumbling inside from another night sleeping in his garage of broken dreams, he rages at Indira for not supporting him like a proper wife. The scene isn’t remotely persuasive, because there has never been any suggestion of why these two were ever wedded in the first place. He is trying to bring about a traditional marriage where, based on all available evidence, one has never existed. He runs up debt as a jobless nincompoop who imagined himself first as a rock drummer and then as a PGA Tour pro, and she takes double-shifts at the police station to work down their debt and to supply her man-child with Frosted Flakes. His gall in this moment is unmitigated, and it is also unbelievable.Yet the crude engineering of this scene does feed into a larger theme of the episode and the series itself, which has become about united women carving out a place for themselves in a world where the best men are dim and the worst are thoughtless and abusive. Indira’s fight with her husband, who somehow expects her to exchange recipes like the other wives at the country club, serves as a catalyst for her to reconsider her position on Dot. Given what Indira has been able to piece together, Dot is no longer the cop-tasing miscreant in the back of her cruiser but an abuse victim who is scraping and clawing to maintain the happiness she went through hell to achieve. That’s a woman worth fighting for.Lorraine doesn’t come around to Indira’s line of thinking naturally, which is what makes her the most intriguing character on the show. Her instinct is to support guys like Roy Tillman, because she considers herself tough and unapologetic and tends to think of society in terms of winners and losers, many of whom owe her company money. When Indira slides a thick file detailing Dot/Nadine’s documented abuse by Roy, Lorraine pushes it away. “People who claim to be victims are the downfall of this country,” she says. In her mind, Dot is still the impostor who has married her only son.Yet Roy, for all his swaggering power plays, has made it easier for Lorraine to change her mind. He only knows one way to deal with women and that’s to assert his power over them, by his authority or by the back of his hand. There might have been an angle he could have taken to get Lorraine to help him get his ex-wife back and solve her own daughter-in-law problems in the process. But her distaste for Roy and her meeting with Indira have started to alter her thinking about Dot, who isn’t the type of “victim” she lives to harass with onerous consolidation deals or threats of litigation.In the framing scenes at the Tender Trap, the strip club that gives this episode its title, one small detail stands out. When Roy confronts Vivian Duggar, the mustachioed banker “with a girl’s name” who’s selling his business to Lorraine, he brings up the fact that he’s violating a dancer’s restraining order against him. The irony is pretty rich, given what we know about Roy’s treatment of women, but it brings these men into dramatic alignment. When Lorraine uses her power in the end to ruin Vivian’s life, it serves as a coming attraction for things to come. She’s still coming around to the idea of “victims” being legitimate, but she lives to flex.Jon Hamm, left, and Sam Spruell in “Fargo.”Michelle Faye/FX3-Cent StampsWith Scotty left alone with Lars all day, the only thing she has to eat are crackers at lunch. In Lars’s defense, it appears that adding milk to sugar cereal is the limit of his domestic skills.This season of “Fargo” has been violent like the others, but even a bullet to the wrong captive’s head has nothing on the shock of Roy slapping his current wife for nipping his ear during a haircut. Her terrified acceptance of his abuse is just as startling and makes you think about how Dot/Nadine’s life with him must have been.Roy’s decision to “pay the boogeyman” — Munch — doesn’t seem like it will solve much of anything. Gator seems to know that, but taunting an unkillable hit man isn’t such a great idea, either.“When he was a boy, my son wanted to be a ballerina. I told him the male of the species is called a ballerino, but he couldn’t be swayed.” Wayne’s father never goes anywhere without his vodka gimlets, it would appear.That’s a lovely piece of acting by Richa Moorjani as Indira when Wayne asks her, “Have you seen my wife? She was supposed to visit me today.” Dot and Wayne’s marriage may be a legal fraud that’s falling apart, but her eyes pool with envy over their partnership.“When a man digs a grave, he has to fill it. Otherwise, it’s just a hole.” It sounds a little like Noah Hawley wants to tackle a serialized version of “A Fistful of Dollars” next.Does Indira agree to work for Lorraine? She seems disinclined by nature to trade the sturdiness of applying the law to doing security detail for a rich woman she can’t trust, but $192,000 is a lot of debt. More

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    Amazon to Bring Warhammer 40,000 to the Screen, With Henry Cavill

    Games Workshop announced this week that the popular tabletop game will come to television and film in a deal with Amazon Studios.There’s big news this week for tiny warriors.Games Workshop, the company behind Warhammer 40,000, the wildly popular tabletop game with miniature figurines, announced on Monday that it had reached a deal with Amazon Studios to bring the game to life on television and film screens.The actor Henry Cavill, known for his roles in the “Superman” franchise and as the title character on Netflix’s fantasy series “The Witcher,” is set to appear on the show and be its executive producer.The two companies had signed an agreement last year to create television programs and movies based on the Warhammer franchise, and will now move forward bringing the game’s universe to life.“All we can tell you right now is that an elite band of screenwriters, each with their own particular passion for Warhammer, is being assembled,” Games Workshop said in a statement on their website.Warhammer 40,000 was released in 1987, and in the decades since has enchanted players as they take command of small but mighty warriors for “supremacy in the grim darkness of the far future,” according to the game’s core rule book.Two or more players place their hand-painted plastic models onto terrain set in the 41st millennium — the rule book recommends a dining table or a floor — and send them into battle among aliens and supernatural creatures.Henry Cavill, who plays Geralt of Rivia in the Netflix series “The Witcher,” will be executive producer of the new Amazon Studios project.Katalin Vermes/NetflixThe game has developed a significant fan base and detailed lore throughout the years, becoming Games Workshop’s most popular product. Hundreds of novels have expanded on the Warhammer universe and mythology. It also has video game spinoffs.Much of the passion for the game, though, comes before the battle begins. Games Workshop doesn’t sell ready-to-play models for Warhammer 40,000. Instead, players purchase parts to construct, and paint in details themselves for a personal touch.Cavill is himself a fan of the game.In 2021, the actor, who has been known to construct his own personal computers, discussed his Warhammer hobby on “The Graham Norton Show.”“You have to paint them,” Cavill said. “There’s the painting-modeling side of the hobby, and then there’s the gaming side of the hobby.”The game found a new legion of fans during the pandemic, including other actors and musicians ready to battle Cavill in the fictional dystopia.Studios have been taking notice of the trend, and capitalizing on growing interest with shows like the HBO Max series “The Last of Us,” which raked in bigger audiences than some of the network’s flagship shows.Amazon Studios has bet on fantasy franchises already, with “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power,” a prequel to the J.R.R. Tolkien novels. In 2021, the studio released “The Wheel of Time,” based on the book series by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson.No details were given about anticipated release dates or the types of projects planned for the Warhammer franchise. Games Workshop said that it could be some time before the tiny warriors stand tall on a movie screen.“TV and Film production is a mammoth undertaking,” the company said. “It’s not unusual for projects to take two to three years from this point before something arrives onscreen. Still, things are now properly rolling.” More

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    Ralph Fiennes and David Tennant: Two Very Different ‘Macbeths’

    Ralph Fiennes and David Tennant take Shakespeare’s psychodrama along divergent paths in two simultaneously running shows.There is more than one way to tell a story. In England, two equally impressive new productions of “Macbeth” prove this, both featuring major stars in the title role and adopting strikingly different approaches to Shakespeare’s classic tale of hubris and betrayal.The first, starring Ralph Fiennes (“The Menu,” “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar”), runs at the Depot, a cavernous converted warehouse on an industrial estate in Liverpool. Despite its grittily authentic set design and costumes, it is for the most part a conventional, realist treatment. The second, at the Donmar Warehouse, in London, and starring David Tennant (“Doctor Who,” “Des”), is a rather more high-concept affair, heavy on ambience and atmospherics.The leading men are, likewise, a study in contrasts: Fiennes’s Macbeth is a hulking, lugubrious presence, whereas Tennant’s is a gaunt, energetic bundle of angst.The Fiennes “Macbeth,” directed by Simon Godwin, runs through Dec. 20 at the Depot in Liverpool, before moving on to Edinburgh, London and Washington, D.C., in 2024. The makeshift playhouse features an immersive set: To get to their seats, theatergoers must file past a bleak, dusty landscape of rubble and burned-out cars, suggestive of a war zone. The stage set is an elegant geometric structure in forbidding gray, comprising a number of doors, balconies and stairways, representing the various Scottish castles in which much of the action unfolds. Thin, vertical streaks of blood gradually materialize on its walls as the story progresses.The plot will be familiar to many. Three clairvoyant witches tell Macbeth he will become King of Scotland. With further encouragement from Lady Macbeth (Indira Varma), he proceeds to murder the reigning monarch, Duncan (Keith Fleming), forcing his heirs into exile and taking the crown for himself. He has to carry out several more murders in order to cover his trail, and the guilt starts to consume him; Lady Macbeth urges him to man up, but her own conscience catches up with her in the form of somnambulistic terrors and, eventually, suicide.To get to their seats in Liverpool, theatergoers must file past a bleak, dusty landscape suggestive of war’s aftermath.Matt HumphreyIn this production, Macbeth and his male co-protagonists appear in 21st-century military fatigues; when we see them, intermittently, in civilian attire, it’s understatedly stylish contemporary get-up. (The costumes are by Frankie Bradshaw.) That stark juxtaposition drives home the brutal reality of strongman politics: The ruling class and the military elite are one. There are some deft visual effects — the disappearance of the three witches in puffs of smoke is particularly pleasing — and the acting is consistently strong. Ben Turner is a powerful Macduff, and Varma brings a subtle, darkly comic energy to Lady Macbeth during the famous scene in which Macbeth, confronted with the reproachful ghost of the murdered Banquo, has a meltdown in the middle of a dinner party.A markedly different aesthetic was on offer in the compact, intimate environs of the Donmar, where theatergoers were required to put on headphones upon entry. In this “Macbeth” — directed by Max Webster, featuring Cush Jumbo as Lady Macbeth and running through Feb. 10, 2024 — the actors wear discreet headsets and their speech is transmitted to the audience digitally.Another “Macbeth,” at the Donmar Warehouse, in London, through Feb. 10, 2024, features David Tennant in the title role, with set and costume design by Rosanna Vize.Marc BrennerI was predisposed to dismiss this as a gimmick, but was pleasantly surprised. The transmitted audio imbues the words with an added richness and immediacy — the deep aural texture of a radio play. The conceit comes into its own in the scenes featuring supernatural elements (the witches, Banquo’s ghost) and during Lady Macbeth’s descent into madness, when eerie vocal echoes are overlaid on the dialogue. At times, the sound alternates abruptly between the left and right earphones.The set and costume design, by Rosanna Vize, are strikingly abstract. With the exception of Lady Macbeth, who wears a white formfitting dress, the cast are clad in an austere uniform of gray or black tops — turtlenecks, vests or collarless jackets — with dark kilts and black Chelsea boots. The stage is a simple white rectangle, at the rear of which, in a boxed-off section behind a transparent screen, a small troupe of musicians provide the play’s soundtrack: a gorgeous blend of Gaelic song and religious chant, composed by Alasdair Macrae and featuring beautifully haunting vocals by the Scottish singer Kathleen MacInnes.Fiennes and Tennant are both outstanding talents, but very different in corporeal stature and bearing. Just a few months ago, Fiennes’s brother, Joseph, delivered a compelling turn as an England soccer coach in “Dear England,” at the National Theater, in London, and there were echoes of that performance here: a certain tentative, beard-stroking pensiveness and lumbering indecision. Ralph’s frame as Macbeth is bearlike, and his turmoil is a slow burn. (I was also reminded of the Russian mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin, whose ill-fated uprising against President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, and subsequent demise, had shades of Shakespearean tragedy.)Tennant, left, and Cush Jumbo, who plays Lady Macbeth.Marc BrennerIn contrast, Tennant, with his slim-line physique and withdrawn, vaguely haunted-looking face, has a more expressive emotional energy that lends itself to treacherous intrigue and anguished remorse alike. He is frantic, almost from the get-go. An unlikelier warrior, perhaps, but a more convincing worrier.The truth, of course, is that “Macbeth” doesn’t really require too much jazzing up, because its themes resonate easily enough without embellishment. One is always struck, in particular, by the prescience of the play’s pointed depiction of machismo, long before “toxic masculinity” became a buzz-phrase. Almost every misdeed is incited with an appeal to virility, whether it’s Lady Macbeth goading her husband into going through with their murderous plan (“You will be so much more the man!”), or Macbeth using similar rhetoric to persuade his hit men to kill Banquo.A light touch is key. What these two productions get right is that they conjure just enough novelty, in their visual and aural landscapes, to freshen things up, while still ensuring that the text remains center stage — in all its timeless glory. More

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    Seth Meyers: Rudy Giuliani Has Really, Really Messed Up This Time

    The “Late Night” host ribbed Giuliani for being so far in debt that he’ll go bankrupt paying the $148 million he now owes two Georgia election workers.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.Morally BankruptLast Friday, a jury ordered Rudy Giuliani to pay $148 million to two former Georgia election workers he was found guilty of defaming after the 2020 election.“Well, after marrying his cousin, giving a press conference at a landscaping company and almost masturbating in the Borat movie, Rudy Giuliani has finally slipped up,” Seth Meyers joked on Monday.“Instead of $48 million, they ordered him to pay $148 million. They basically took the maximum and put a one in front of it, which, if you ask me, is the funniest possible choice. They took one look at Rudy and said, ‘There’s no way he can afford to pay $48 million. So [expletive] it, let’s add another hundo.’” — SETH MEYERS“That’s right, a jury in Washington, D.C., last week ordered Rudy Giuliani to pay nearly $150 million in the defamation case brought against him by two Georgia election workers. OK, but he for sure doesn’t have that much money. You might as well order a dog to drive you to the airport. A lot of stress for the dog, but you’re not getting to the airport.” — SETH MEYERS“No one’s sure how much of this judgment Rudy will actually be able to pay because his net worth is unknown, although a financial statement acquired during discovery listed his personal assets as two empty Franzia boxes and a paper bag labeled ‘Backup teeth?’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“He defaulted on a phone bill. He bounced a check for his neck removal surgery. He owes $1 million in unpaid parking tickets for parking his car inside the living room of his apartment. He missed a credit card payment for a locksmith he hired to get into his house, which he had locked himself out of, and then a second locksmith he hired to get him out of his house he had locked himself into. He also owes Blockbuster multiple copies of the film ‘Rudy’ after returning the ones he rented with himself edited into the footage.” — SETH MEYERSThe Punchiest Punchlines (Playing the Hits Edition)“It is Dec. 18, and it’s beginning to look a lot like fascism, thanks to Donald Trump.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“This weekend in New Hampshire, former president Trump delivered an hour-and-a-half-long speech where he bashed immigrants, defended Jan. 6 rioters, and called Kim Jong Un ‘very nice.’ So he’s just playing the hits, you know what I’m saying? That’s how you do it. [imitating Trump] I’m not going to waste any of your time with the new stuff — here’s some classics. The surprise song tonight is ‘Wall.’” — JIMMY FALLON“Trump does the same material so much, people start yelling requests. They’re, like, ‘Do Inject Bleach!’”— JIMMY FALLON“Trump even points the mic to the crowd during some of the singalong parts. He’s like, ‘When I say witch hunt, you say rigged!’” — JIMMY FALLONThe Bits Worth WatchingJimmy Fallon challenged two musicians from the audience to write original songs based on the made-up song titles “Texting With My Mittens On” and “North Pole Dancing.”What We’re Excited About on Tuesday NightRufus and Martha Wainwright will perform a holiday-themed song by the singer-songwriter Sufjan Stevens on Tuesday’s “Tonight Show.”Also, Check This Out“I love that feeling of taking over a space,” said Carrie Coon, who plays an ambitious new-money matriarch in “The Gilded Age.” “It’s a really satisfying and rare feeling as a woman to have that.”Amy Harrity for The New York Times“The Gilded Age” star Carrie Coon has become a fan favorite as the ambitious wife of a railway tycoon on HBO’s historical drama. More