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    ‘Shogun’ Review: Rediscovering Japan

    The FX remake of the classic mini-series is classed up, retuned for contemporary sensibilities and still an epic soap opera.The new FX mini-series “Shogun” is getting a lot of credit simply for not being “Shogun,” the 1980 NBC mini-series also adapted from James Clavell’s best-selling novel about the last days of feudal Japan. But the new show stands and falls on the same terms as the old show: its success as an epic costumed soap opera. You can correct for wooden acting, dated production values and Eurocentrism, but you can’t really correct for the basic nature of the material.And on those terms, this “Shogun” — which premieres Tuesday on FX and Hulu with two of its 10 episodes — is perfectly successful. It is sumptuously produced, mostly well acted and not excessively sentimental or sensational. If its story seems to stop and start a bit, there are reasons for that, which become clear in a satisfying and moving ending; if there are major characters who don’t stand up to scrutiny, there are others who come alive and hold your interest. It may not live up to its hype, and it may leave you wondering why so much time (more than a decade) and money needed to be spent reanimating Clavell’s tale. But it delivers.Created by the husband-and-wife team of Justin Marks and Rachel Kondo, the FX “Shogun” is still the story of an English navigator, John Blackthorne, who arrives in Japan at the turn of the 17th century and becomes embroiled — to a startling degree — in the political, cultural and romantic life of the country. (Blackthorne, like most of the significant characters, is loosely based on a historical figure.)Kondo and Marks have recalibrated the narrative, however, moving Blackthorne’s point of view down in the mix and elevating the roles of many of the Japanese characters, particularly Toda Mariko, the noblewoman who becomes Blackthorne’s translator and love interest, and Yoshii Toranaga, the lord who both protects and manipulates him.That’s a notable change from the original “Shogun,” but 44 years down the road, it’s not as if the show should get a ton of credit — it’s an easy win. In the current global TV environment, the show’s emphasis on Japanese characters and language is welcome but not exceptional. (Tremendous effort reportedly also went into vetting the details of period costume and behavior; few viewers, even in Japan, are likely to know the difference, but what’s onscreen certainly looks credible to the rest of us.)As the plot, busy yet not all that complicated, unwinds — Toranaga and his rival Ishido jockeying for power, with Blackthorne as a reluctant pawn; Blackthorne being alternately repulsed and seduced by his new surroundings — the real difference between the old and new shows has less to do with cultural enlightenment than with a higher level of tastefulness and technique. Though there is a multicultural dimension there, too: Marks and Kondo’s show is informed by the craftsmanship of classic Japanese samurai films, which were in turn heavily influenced by the attitudes and styles of Hollywood westerns and swashbucklers. This “Shogun” sits in a polyglot comfort zone.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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    ‘Where Is Wendy Williams?’: 5 Takeaways From the Documentary

    The Lifetime series gave an inside look at the television star’s life and struggles since she last hosted her talk show in 2021.Since 2021, daytime television viewers and pop culture fanatics alike have been wondering, where is Wendy Williams?Over the weekend, a Lifetime documentary series tried to answer that question.For a while, Williams’s struggles were seen on air on multiple occasions. On a 2017 Halloween episode of “The Wendy Williams Show,” she fainted during a live taping, which she later attributed to her diagnosis of Graves’s disease, an immune system disorder.In 2019, Williams announced on the show that she was staying in a sober living home, and then a month later, she filed for divorce from her husband. She last filmed her talk show on July 23, 2021, and the following year, when a court appointed a legal guardianship to oversee Williams’s finances, the state of her mental and physical health was unclear.It turns out that, until Williams entered a facility to treat her cognitive issues in 2023, cameras had been following her and documenting it all for a series on which Williams and her son, Kevin Hunter Jr., are listed as executive producers.Last week, as Lifetime prepared to air the resulting footage in “Where Is Wendy Williams?,” Williams’s guardian, whose identity is redacted throughout the documentary, requested a temporary restraining order to block the network from airing it — but a judge turned down the request, citing the First Amendment.At the same time, Williams’s care team revealed that the host, 59, had been diagnosed with progressive aphasia and frontotemporal dementia, which affect language, communication behavior and cognitive function.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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    In ‘The Regime,’ Kate Winslet Gets to Have a Little Fun

    In the absurdist HBO limited series, she plays a central European dictator making it up as she goes along.Chancellor Elena Vernham would like you to know she is “very much not ridiculous.” She would never serve salmon at an official event. (That would be “meek.”)The fictional character, portrayed by Kate Winslet in the darkly funny new HBO limited series “The Regime,” is a neurotic autocrat losing her grip on her country. A title card early on in the series, which premieres Sunday, announces that we are somewhere in “Central Europe,” in a country whose official vegetable is the sugar beet. As a U.S. senator played by Martha Plimpton puts it during an official visit: “A strong woman leader providing for her people, resisting China? We love all that.”Elena’s people, however, are suffering mass unemployment, and many are starving. So it’s maybe a little tone-deaf when she broadcasts a message to the country at Christmas, and it’s a video of her singing “Santa Baby,” in a fur-trimmed mini skirt and boots.“I wanted to do something that felt absurd,” Winslet said in a video interview from her home in Sussex, England. Elena is a hypochondriac and an agoraphobe, and Winslet said that, from a political standpoint, her character “absolutely has moments of just making stuff up.”She is “fearless,” Winslet said, “and yet terrified of the world.”“The Regime” was created by Will Tracy, whose previous writing credits include “Succession,” and the fine-dining satire “The Menu,” two projects that also feature delusional figures, drunk on their own power. Tracy said that he enjoys creating tyrannical characters “because they have created a situation where they cannot be argued with or reasoned with.”He had been obsessed with reading about geopolitics and authoritarian regimes since his late teens, he said. For “The Regime,” he researched leaders from Syria, Russia and Romania, and found that they shared “a shaky relationship with reality” and “a desperate need for survival.”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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    Jon Stewart Returns to ‘The Daily Shows’ and Calls Out Tucker Carlson

    The comedian has always had a sharp Borscht Belt approach, but only in his return to “The Daily Show” can we see how he wields this style so expertly.When it was announced that Jon Stewart was returning to “The Daily Show” every Monday, there was some understandable skepticism. His track record since leaving the program in 2015 has been spotty at best, including an HBO project that never aired and another on Apple TV+ that didn’t gain traction.And yet, two weeks into his stint, Stewart has already done what seemed impossible: He has made “The Daily Show” relevant again.Not only have ratings skyrocketed for Stewart, earning the biggest numbers since he left the show (including among young adult viewers, who went up 62 percent), but its rotating guest hosts have also benefited. Jordan Klepper and Desi Lydic, who each sat at the desk for three nights after Stewart, got more viewers than any guest host of the previous year. Maybe more important: Once again, people are talking — and grumbling — about “The Daily Show.” Along with plenty of critics on social media, Puck reported, many in the White House were paying close attention to Stewart’s first show.Reboots of hits are often popular. And hosting weekly has meant that Stewart’s appearances are an event. But the first two shows revealed a simpler explanation for his swift success: Jon Stewart, who returns for a third one on Monday, is really good at this peculiar job. It’s an obvious point since he all but invented funny nightly political commentary. But it’s easy to forget what exactly he did so well; he was always overshadowed by the hype about him supposedly being the Walter Cronkite for a new generation, which never did him any favors.Stewart didn’t just pioneer savvy and sometimes strident political humor on television. In a landscape dominated by tightly wound Midwestern gentiles (Jack Paar, Johnny Carson, David Letterman), he brought a ruthlessly populist Borscht Belt sensibility to late night.Witness last week’s mockery of his old foil Tucker Carlson, who conducted a deferential interview with Vladimir Putin, then visited a Moscow supermarket in an attempt to show viewers that contrary to what the news media tells you, Russia is more than just a brutal authoritarian state. It has great produce.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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    ‘Abbott Elementary’ Teaches Reading, Writing and Roll Camera

    Each season of the ABC sitcom employs about 150 children. Its core curriculum: schooling Hollywood in what a show with child actors can be.Willis Kwakye has attended the same school since 2021. He’s 13 now, an eighth grader, a veteran, someone who knows his way around the classrooms and the cafeteria. And sometimes, when he’s in his uniform with a math worksheet in front of him, “I can even think it’s real school for a little bit,” he said.His classmate Arianna White, also 13, knew just what he meant. “It feels a lot like school, except we’re just filming and there’s a lot of cuts,” she said.Kwakye and White were speaking, via video call, from a classroom on the set of “Abbott Elementary.” (They were in one of the real classrooms, where child actors complete their mandated three hours of instruction per work day.) The Emmy-winning ABC sitcom mockumentary has recently matriculated for a third season and already been renewed for a fourth. Set in a fictional K-8 school in Philadelphia — though actually filmed in Los Angeles — it requires the presence of about 150 school-age children each season.In any given episode, those kids can be seen raising their hands in class, scurrying past each other in the hallways, giggling at their teachers’ antics. But “Abbott Elementary” diverges from most scripted series involving children in two significant ways: The show uses its child actors sparingly, giving them a handful of lines per episode and only requiring their presence one or two days each week. And for the most part, it lets them be kids.“Having kids just be themselves actually looks really good in our world,” Quinta Brunson, the series creator and star, said in a recent phone interview.Willis Kwakye, center, in an episode of “Abbott Elementary.” Tyler James Williams, a star of the show, said, “Part of being a child actor comes with a certain amount of trauma,” and “Abbott” aims to avoid that.Gilles Mingasson/ABCWe 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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    Amy Schumer Says She Has Cushing’s Syndrome, a Hormonal Disorder

    The comedian’s announcement came after she was targeted on social media for a change in her physical appearance during on-camera interviews this month.The comedian Amy Schumer has announced that she has been diagnosed with a rare hormonal disorder called Cushing’s syndrome, after she was swarmed with comments on social media about a change in her physical appearance.Schumer, 42, revealed her diagnosis in an interview for the News Not Noise newsletter on Friday. People commented on her “puffier” face after she appeared this month on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.” She said that the condition did not pose any serious threats to her health.The online buzz around her appearance, a mix of concern and negativity, was how she “realized something was wrong,” Schumer told the newsletter.Cushing’s syndrome is caused by excessive levels of cortisol, known as the stress hormone, and can cause a range of symptoms including a round face, weight gain and weak muscles, according to the National Institutes of Health.“Over time, the excess cortisol causing these symptoms can lead to progressive deleterious health effects like high blood pressure, diabetes, bone loss,” said Dr. Lilah Morris-Wiseman, the chief of Johns Hopkins Medicine’s division of endocrine surgery.In the newsletter interview, Schumer said she had been undergoing medical tests while also doing a round of interviews to promote the new season of her Hulu show, “Life and Beth.”She told the newsletter that she was “in M.R.I. machines four hours at a time, having my veins shut down from the amount of blood drawn and thinking I may not be around to see my son grow up.”“So finding out I have the kind of Cushing that will just work itself out and I’m healthy was the greatest news imaginable,” she added.Cushing’s syndrome is sometimes the result of a tumor in the adrenal gland or elsewhere in the brain, requiring surgery.But in Schumer’s case, the excess cortisol that led to her diagnosis was brought on by “getting steroid injections in high doses,” according to the newsletter.The comic has been open about having endometriosis, a disease that affects the uterus and can be treated with steroids, though it was unclear if that was why Schumer was getting injections.When steroids are the cause of Cushing’s syndrome, reducing their use can help reverse the symptoms of the disorder, Dr. Morris-Wiseman said.Schumer highlighted the shaming that women face when their bodies change. Many comments on social media after her appearance on “The Tonight Show” were derisive and misogynistic.After that appearance, Schumer wrote in an Instagram post that a woman “doesn’t need any excuse for her physical appearance and owes no explanation,” but that she wanted to “take the opportunity to advocate for self love and acceptance of the skin you’re in.”She is the latest celebrity to disclose a medical diagnosis after facing public scrutiny over her health.Last week, representatives for Wendy Williams, the former talk show host, announced that she had been diagnosed with “frontotemporal dementia and aphasia.” More

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    What’s on TV This Week: ‘Shogun’ and ‘The Regime’

    FX premieres a new show set in Japan in the 1600s. A new mini-series starring Kate Winslet airs on HBO.For those like myself who still haven’t cut the cord, here is a selection of cable and network TV shows, movies and specials that broadcast this week, Feb. 26-March 3. Details and times are subject to change.MondayTHE VOICE 8 p.m. on NBC. The people involved in this singing competition are working overtime — the show is beginning its 25th season though it has only been on the air for 13 years. Niall Horan (the reigning champion and two-time winner) and Gwen Stefani are not returning as judges, but the show is debuting a coaching duo — the singers Dan + Shay. They’ll be joined by the returning judges Chance the Rapper, John Legend and Reba McEntire.TuesdayHiroyuki Sanada in “Shogun.”Katie Yu/FXSHOGUN 10 p.m. on FX. This limited series, based on a novel by James Clavell and a remake of a previous adaptation, takes place in Japan in the 1600s and centers on Lord Yoshii Toranaga as members of the Council of Regents turn against him. Attention shifts when a mysterious European ship turns up on the shore of a small fishing village.WednesdaySURVIVOR 8 p.m. on CBS. This show, 46 seasons in and still going strong, returns with the host Jeff Probst and 18 castaways who are headed to Fiji to compete and survive. Contestants noted that this season might be a departure from the calm and feel-good vibe of the past couple of years — backstabbing, arguments and breakdowns are back, baby!REAL HOUSEWIVES OF BEVERLY HILLS 8 p.m. on Bravo. Two “Housewives” reunions in a row? I am ordering a family-size bag of SkinnyPop and a five-liter box of wine. Andy Cohen, of course, will be moderating. The sneak peek of the reunion shows that the drama starts before the ladies have even sat down on set — as Cohen is seen telling Kyle Richards that Erika Jayne “wants me to eviscerate you.”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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    ‘The Hunt’ Review: The Hunter Becomes the Hunted

    This modern-day fable, directed by Rupert Goold and starring Tobias Menzies, is styled with horror.“Each town has its witch/Each parish its troll,” a character sings ominously while sharpening hedge shears. “We will with pleasure/Take the life from their veins.”Let it be known that the British import “The Hunt” — about a man ostracized, and worse, for a crime he didn’t commit — does not really err toward subtlety.The simple premise can be summed up in a sentence: Lucas (Tobias Menzies, from “The Crown” and “Outlander”), a small-town kindergarten teacher, is falsely accused of molesting several of his students, and his life falls apart. The Danish filmmaker Thomas Vinterberg told the story in an understated manner in his movie “The Hunt” (2013), which is simultaneously detached and veined with warm, if subtly expressed, empathy.Now a tragedy that feels ripped from the headlines is deployed with fable-like horror stylings in a stage adaptation by David Farr directed by Rupert Goold, which just opened at St. Ann’s Warehouse. Ritualistic dancing and chanting, sacrifices, jump scares, blinding white lights, quasi-supernatural apparitions: At times it feels as if we are watching a spinoff from the cult 1973 film “The Wicker Man,” in which an island community following pagan practices drenched in sex and violence turns against an outsider.When Vinterberg made “The Hunt” (which he wrote with Tobias Lindholm), he pulled back from the Dogme 95 precepts he followed at the beginning of his career, and which emphasize an almost Puritanical minimalism. “I wanted this film to be as naked and truthful as possible, because this was a film about truth and lies, but I had to find a new way of doing it,” he said a decade ago.From left: Jonathan Savage, Danny Kirrane, Menzies, MyAnna Buring, DeBoer and Alex Hassell in the play, in a structure that can protect secrets and reveal them, offer shelter and harbor violence.Sara Krulwich/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