Eliana Willis

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    in Television

    ‘True Detective’ Season 4, Episode 6 Recap: Stories Are Stories

    The season ended with a finale that provided plenty of answers while clinging to a bit of mystery.Season 4, Episode 6: Part 6One of the tricky parts of a ghost story like “True Detective: Night Country” is the banal, inevitable business of having to explain events that were once teasingly inexplicable. It is more haunting, for example, to imagine a supernatural force turning terrified scientists into an Arctic “corpsicle” than to learn that they were commandeered by a vigilante band of Indigenous women taking justice into their own hands.This is the risk the creator Issa López has courted all season, as the show’s procedural elements have been intermingled with obscure symbols, hidden traumas and outright ghostly hallucinations. In order to solve the practical mysteries facing Danvers and Navarro, it would have to come crashing back to earth.Yet the achievement of this flawed but compelling finale is that López succeeds in having her cake and eating it, too. The important whodunit questions about the deaths of Annie K. and the scientists have concrete answers, but she’s unwilling to sell out the spiritual and psychological unrest that’s unique to this locale.From the beginning, the strongest element of “Night Country” has been its evocation of Ennis, Alaska, as this northernmost outpost of humanity, a border town to oblivion. There have been several moments, including a few in the finale, where a character is one step away from disappearing into nothingness, like Werner Herzog’s deranged penguin in “Encounters at the End of the World.”The big revelations start hitting before the opening credits here, as Danvers and Navarro bust into the ice cave system in the middle of a storm that looks formidable even by Ennis standards. Yet López is still unwilling to part with the uncanniness that’s been such an important piece of the intrigue: As they make their way through the caves, Navarro peels off through a narrow crevasse, certain that she “hears” Annie leading her to where they need to go. That’s more than a detective’s instincts at work; that’s a sixth sense. And López validates the moment when the two discover the secret lab where Annie was murdered.The connection between Annie’s case and the dead scientists had been something Danvers and Navarro had worked hard to connect, from the romantic relationship between Annie and Raymond Clark to the shady financial arrangement between the mine and the lab, which needed help in finessing its pollution numbers. When they find the underground facility and capture Raymond, their suspicions are confirmed, though the details are a little surprising.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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    For Donald Trump, the Recriminations Will Be Televised

    The former president’s trials aren’t being aired. That isn’t stopping him from turning them into a political reality show.The civil-fraud case against Donald J. Trump’s businesses in New York, in which he was ordered to pay a penalty of $355 million, was not televised. Neither was his civil trial for the defamation of E. Jean Carroll. Nor — barring an unlikely change in federal court policy — will be his looming federal election-interference trial.But outside the courtroom, the show goes on.In each case, Mr. Trump has sought out the cameras, or brought in his own, to offer a stream-of-consciousness heave of legal complaints and re-election arguments. In the process, the former reality-TV host and current presidential candidate has turned his many legal cases into one-sided TV productions and campaign ads.To TV producers, because Mr. Trump is a former president, a candidate and high-profile defendant, his on-camera tirades are news. But there is also a kind of transaction at work. TV news craves conflict and active visuals. There are only so many times you can show a motorcade, or reporters cooling their heels in the street. Mr. Trump’s appearances give them sound, fury and B-roll.At the same time, Mr. Trump gets the kind of unfiltered access to the airwaves that networks were, once upon a brief time, wary of giving a candidate notorious for fabrications and conspiracy theories.On the day a judge set a trial date for his Manhattan criminal case stemming from a hush-money payment to a porn star, cable news networks took him live as he called the case a Biden-campaign plot to steal the election: “This is their way of cheating this time. Last time, they had a different way.”On Friday evening, after the civil-fraud ruling, he spoke to the cameras at his home and private club Mar-a-Lago, claiming that the case (brought by the New York attorney general) “all comes out of Biden,” accusing the judge of corruption, citing his election poll numbers and lamenting that “the migrants come in and they take over New York.”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 Theater

    ‘Shawshank’ in China, as You’ve Never Seen It Before

    A stage adaptation of the film featured an all-Western cast, was performed in Chinese and raised questions about translation, both linguistic and cultural.When a stage production of “The Shawshank Redemption” opened recently in China, it was cast entirely with Western actors speaking fluent Mandarin Chinese. But that may have been the least surprising part of the show.That the show — an adaptation of the Stephen King novella that became one of the most beloved movies of all time — was staged at all seemingly flew in the face of several trends in China’s cultural sphere.Chinese audiences’ interest in Hollywood films is fading, with moviegoers turning to homegrown productions. China’s authoritarian government has stoked nationalism and cast Western influence as a political pollutant. Censorship of the arts has tightened.Yet the production reflects how some artists are trying to navigate the changing landscape of both what is permissible and what is marketable in China. And its success shows the appetite that many Chinese still have for cultural exchange.A scene from the play.Gilles Sabrié for The New York Times“The Shawshank Redemption” — the story of a man wrongfully convicted of murder who defies prison officials’ tyranny and eventually pulls off a daring escape — has been a target for Chinese censors before. Mentions of it were briefly censored online in 2012, after a prominent Chinese dissident escaped house arrest and fled to the American Embassy. In general, the Chinese authorities have shown little tolerance for calls, artistic or otherwise, for freedom and resistance to injustice.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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    Review: Sarah Snook Is a Darkly Funny Dorian Gray

    In a stage adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” Snook plays all the characters — with the help of screens.A large, rectangular screen hangs from the top of the stage at the Theater Royal Haymarket in London. It is, rather appropriately, in portrait mode.Beneath it, the Australian actress Sarah Snook (“Succession,” “Run Rabbit Run”), sporting a Johnny Bravo-style blonde quiff, is circulated by a small team of black-clad camera operators who broadcast her every move onto the screen in real time as she simultaneously narrates and performs the title role of Oscar Wilde’s “The Picture of Dorian Gray.”Later, several more screens descend, playing prerecorded footage of Snook in no fewer than twenty-five other roles. Over the course of the next two hours, the onstage Snook interacts seamlessly with these digitalized selves. There are no other actors involved.Wilde’s 1890 novel, in which a handsome rake makes a Faustian bargain with the cosmos by trading his soul for eternal youth (and comes to regret it), lends itself to stage adaptation: It is dialogue-heavy, punctuated by witty, morally intelligent exposition; its allegory of human hubris is timeless.This adaptation, by the Sydney Theater Company, directed by Kip Williams and running through May 11, is a formally ambitious but playful multimedia production. The single-actor format and clever use of camerawork give visual expression to the novel’s themes of overweening egotism and existential dread.The play’s aesthetic palate is a blend of period and contemporary. There’s something tongue-in-cheek about much of the dated garb.Marc BrennerWe 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 Theater

    Tobias Menzies on ‘The Crown’ and His Role in ‘The Hunt’

    The British actor excels at playing reserve, and what roils beneath, on “The Crown.” And now he brings that stoicism to “The Hunt,” onstage in Brooklyn.On a morning in early February, the actor Tobias Menzies walked the Brooklyn Heights Promenade in the relative anonymity he prefers. Menzies wasn’t hiding. He wore no sunglasses, no cap, just Blundstones, jeans, a shearling coat. He didn’t duck when people came his way. But the past few years, including multi-season stints on “The Crown” and “Outlander,” have brought him a new visibility, which still makes him uneasy.“I’m not that confident about my life or what it is to be able to put it out in the public,” he said, shoulders hunched against the breeze. “I’m just bumbling along as best I can.”Menzies, 49, had come to Brooklyn, to rehearse “The Hunt,” a theatrical adaptation of the Thomas Vinterberg movie that begin performances at St. Ann’s Warehouse on Friday. Back in 2019, Menzies had originated the stage role of Lucas, a preschool teacher falsely accused of exposing himself to a child, in a London production. A member of a local hunting club, Lucas now finds himself targeted by the community that once embraced him.In the years since “The Hunt” premiered, Menzies has won an Emmy, for playing Prince Philip on the Netflix hit “The Crown,” and a fan base for his dual roles of Frank Randall and his sadistic ancestor Black Jack Randall on the Starz series “Outlander.” He also played somewhat against type as an anxious therapist in Nicole Holofcener’s acerbic comedy “You Hurt My Feelings.”Menzies has won an Emmy, for playing Prince Philip on the Netflix hit “The Crown,” opposite Olivia Colman.Sophie Mutevelian/NetflixFive years ago, the role made perfect sense for Menzies, who specializes in wounded masculinity. The play, adapted by David Farr, is caustic and cerebral, and it reunited him with a frequent collaborator, the director Rupert Goold. And Lucas is a type that Menzies has often gravitated toward, a man unable, whether by upbringing, temperament or circumstance, to show his feelings. Lucas benefits from both Menzies’ natural reserve and his ability to show what roils beneath that stoicism, a game of emotive hide-and-seek.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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    ‘Genius: MLK/X’ Offers Portraits of the Icons as Vital Young Men

    “We wanted to take them off the T-shirts and make them real,” said Gina Prince-Bythewood, who created the series with her husband Reggie Rock Bythewood.The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X are among American history’s most thoroughly chronicled figures, their voices and mannerisms captured forever on recording after recording, their lives picked over in book after book.By himself, Malcolm X has been the subject of two Pulitzer-winning biographies in the past 13 years and just last year Jonathan Eig’s “King: A Life” landed a spot on Barack Obama’s yearly best-books list. Both men adorn countless T-shirts, posters and memes. They aren’t just people; they’re also symbols — of civil rights, of social progress, of a decade that saw many of its heroes murdered.But symbols don’t make for particularly compelling drama. So when Kelvin Harrison Jr. and Aaron Pierre signed on to play King and Malcolm X, respectively, in the new National Geographic series “Genius: MLK/X,” which premiered earlier this month, they knew their imperative was to make their iconic characters as human as possible and leave more famous portrayals in the past.“The first thing I had to do, and the first thing I needed everyone around me to do, was to stop speaking about them as icons,” Harrison said in a video interview last month alongside Pierre. “I had to live in the moment that they existed. They did not know who they were or where they were going.”Gina Prince-Bythewood, who, with her husband, Reggie Rock Bythewood, are among the executive producers of the series, put it this way: “We wanted to take them off the T-shirts and make them real and tangible for an audience. And to do that, you need to show their humanity.”Jayme Lawson, as Betty Shabazz, and Pierre in “Genius.” The series emphasizes the strength and support of the men’s wives.Richard DuCree/National GeographicWe 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 Walking Dead’: Andrew Lincoln and Danai Gurira Are Back. Will Audiences Follow?

    When Rick Grimes, the rugged, righteous former sheriff played by Andrew Lincoln in AMC’s zombie horror series “The Walking Dead,” was written out of the series at Lincoln’s request in its ninth season, the show seemed to lose its hero, its heart and its hopeful moral center. A well-weathered and much brutalized leader, Rick was part of an ever-expanding ensemble but always felt like the main character.Rick’s departure created a vacuum that the show — which concluded in November 2022 after more than 150 episodes and 11 seasons — could never quite fill, even as a six-year time jump moved the story ahead into the future. Audiences seemed to lose interest, too: Ratings plummeted toward the end of the show’s run to a fraction of what they were during its mid-2010s peak popularity.Rick was never actually killed off: He left “The Walking Dead” under mysterious (and somewhat contentious) circumstances, whisked away by an unexplained helicopter with the promise of one day returning in a planned series of movies. Those movies instead morphed into a new six-part mini-series that reveals what happened to Rick after his sudden departure. “The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live,” premiering Feb. 25 on AMC and AMC+, finds Lincoln reprising his signature role in a new setting: a dystopian metropolis called the Civic Republic ruled by a military police force called the Civic Republic Military, or C.R.M.“The Ones Who Live” reunites Rick with his wife, Michonne, the katana-wielding firebrand played by Danai Gurira, who left “The Walking Dead” early in the show’s 10th season. Gurira and Lincoln have stepped up to serve as executive producers on “The Ones Who Live,” with Gurira also credited as a creator alongside Scott M. Gimple, the former “Walking Dead” showrunner and current chief content officer for the “Walking Dead” universe.Lincoln and Gurira starred together for many years in “The Walking Dead” until Lincoln left in Season 9, and Gurira in Season 10.Jackson Lee Davis/AMCIn a video interview from Los Angeles just before the premiere screening of “The Ones Who Live,” Lincoln and Gurira were chatty and playful, with the air of old friends who are totally at ease together. Lincoln, blithe and funny, kept insisting that Gurira answer questions first, while Gurira, trying to hastily scarf down a salad, mimicked him back: “You go ahead.” “No, you go ahead!” “No, YOU go ahead!” They eventually managed to discuss why they left “The Walking Dead,” why they came back and how “The Ones Who Live” differs from the original. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.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