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    Late Night Recaps Trump’s Double-Trouble Trial Day

    “The only way to follow all of the action was to have multiple TVs,” Stephen Colbert said. “That’s why I watched all the proceedings today at a Buffalo Wild Wings.”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.‘An Insane Day for America’Former President Donald Trump had two simultaneous criminal trials on Thursday: one in New York regarding falsified business records and another in Georgia pertaining to election interference.Stephen Colbert called it “an insane day for America, because it’s a regular day for Donald Trump.” He reminded viewers that in addition to those two cases and a civil fraud trial, the former president was “also facing the Jan. 6 trial in Washington D.C., the classified documents case in Florida, Colorado trying to throw him off the ballot for insurrection, and his appeal of the verdict of the E. Jean Carroll defamation case, in which a jury has already found that Trump committed sexual assault.”He concluded, “And yet, despite all this, people want to hire this maniac to be president.”“I know how numb we’ve become, but it’s not normal. No other candidate for the presidency has ever had to pause his campaign to defend himself in multiple courts. And I’d like to point out that in all seven of his cases, no one — no one — doubts that he did these things. We’re just sitting around patiently waiting to find out if the wheels of justice will grind fast enough for there to be any consequences.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“And the media is covering it like it’s any other political story, like it’s all horse race. But in this horse race, one of the horses is old, while one of the horses is old, has hoof-in-mouth disease, and keeps quoting horse Hitler.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“This morning, Don Trump was back in the warm embrace of the American judicial system, the only place that truly loves and appreciates him.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“This is his version of uniting the country: criminal trials in the North and the South.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Trump unsuccessfully tried to get his trial in New York dismissed today, while he is also trying to get the prosecutor in Georgia dismissed. It’s a regular Dismiss America pageant that he’s running.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“It’s never good when you’re summoned to court and you’re, like, ‘I can’t, I have court.’” — JIMMY FALLON“Trump didn’t attend the Georgia hearing, and I get it — it’s so annoying getting invited to a destination trial.” — JIMMY FALLON“The only way to follow all of the action was to have multiple TVs. That’s why I watched all the proceedings today at a Buffalo Wild Wings.” — STEPHEN COLBERTWe 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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    What to Watch This Weekend: An Icy Adventure

    The star of “Free Solo” explores Greenland’s imperiled glaciers in the docuseries “Arctic Ascent With Alex Honnold,” now on Hulu.A scene from “Arctic Ascent With Alex Honnold.”National Geographic/Matt PycroftThoughtful personal growth, informed ideas about pending global disaster and moments of staggering athletic achievement are sprinkled throughout the mini-series “Arctic Ascent With Alex Honnold,” but they all take a back seat to the show’s sense of natural wonder. The cinematography in “Ascent” is staggeringly beautiful, and a ton of it is mesmerizing drone footage. (There’s so much drone footage that it includes drone shots of other drones.)The three-part story, which aired on National Geographic and is available now on Hulu, follows an expedition through Greenland’s imperiled glaciers. Honnold, the gutsy and gifted rock climber from “Free Solo,” anchors a group that includes two other elite rock climbers, a glaciologist who brightly describes her lifelong love of ice, a charismatic adventurer and a local expert.Honnold’s independence and single-mindedness were central to “Free Solo,” but here he has broadened his horizons a little, and the show leverages its excitement factor with its sense of ecological urgency. He and his climbing companions want to be the first people to climb Ingmikortilaq, a soaring, rocky cliff in a fjord in Greenland, and as part of the journey, they also help the glaciologist collect data and explain why the glaciers melting would be so disastrous for the planet.More people knowing and caring about a remote part of Greenland probably benefits humanity at large, but TV-wise, things are more exciting when people are getting beaned in the face by falling rocks. “Arctic” has a restrained respectability about it, but part of me yearned for the conventions of less-classy fare. In the third episode, Honnold and Mikey Schaefer, one of the other climbers, disagree about safety. Honnold argues that they’ve come all this way and might as well see the plan through, while Schaefer says that’s a terrible way to assess risk. Entire seasons of “Real Housewives” franchises have been built around less, but this just breezes by. When the expedition members lament that lousy weather has prevented the support team from bringing all the necessary gear, the YouTube monster in me wanted an entire play-by-play of every item they’d packed.But while I could do with a little more intrigue, there are worse ways to be wooed than with splendor. More

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    ‘The Dynasty’ Got the Secretive New England Patriots to Speak

    For an Apple TV+ docuseries, the tight-lipped sports franchise provided insight into six Super Bowl victories as well as darker moments.The New England Patriots, a modern N.F.L. juggernaut with six Super Bowl wins and two cheating scandals, are the perfect subject for a docuseries. They are also one of the most secretive franchises in professional sports.But the filmmakers behind “The Dynasty: New England Patriots,” an Apple TV+ docuseries premiering on Friday, convinced more than 25 players, coaches and executives to open up on camera. Among those interviewed are Robert Kraft, the team’s longtime owner; Bill Belichick, who has the most playoff wins of any N.F.L. coach; and Tom Brady, a three-time league M.V.P. who is widely considered the greatest quarterback ever.In an opening montage for the behind-the-scenes look into the rise and fall of the Patriots, Brady’s voice cracks and he appears to hold back tears while reminiscing on his New England career, which had a tense ending.“The Dynasty” largely focuses on the Patriots’ inner power dynamics and the team’s football mystique — Brady unleashes a comical, profanity-laced defense of a favorable but controversial play in 2002 — but the series devotes three of its 10 episodes to darker moments. Those include the murder conviction of Aaron Hernandez and league punishments for spying on an opponent and playing with deflated footballs. (Hernandez killed himself in prison in 2017.)“I can’t overstate how impressed I was with the honesty that people demonstrated with really difficult content,” said Jeff Benedict, who wrote a book about the Patriots before pitching the docuseries. “Some of the things that we were asking people to talk about were not pleasant.”The Patriots were one of the league’s most tight-lipped teams under Belichick, who left the organization last month after a 4-13 season. His weekly news conferences often consisted of short, unrevealing answers; the team’s “Do Your Job” mantra referred to both on-field assignments and limiting distractions.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: ‘I Love You So Much I Could Die,’ an Experiment in Distance

    Mona Pirnot’s crisis-centered play uses all its resources to keep the audience at a physical and emotional remove from her sorrow.Whether it’s thought through or instinctual, turning your back to the audience certainly makes a statement. The person onstage might need to hide from an intrusive gaze, or might be deliberately trying to recalibrate the nature of spectacle and the expectations we place on it. Or maybe it’s all part of a grand conceptual design involving the subconscious connections we make when absorbing art.It’s tempting to reach for that last explanation when considering Mona Pirnot’s “I Love You So Much I Could Die,” partly because this New York Theater Workshop production is directed by Lucas Hnath (her husband), who explored the link between storytelling and sound in his plays “Dana H.” and “A Simulacrum.” But this show is too slight, too wan, to bear the weight of analytical dissection.Pirnot, who wrote and stars in “I Love You,” spends the entire 65-minute running time sitting at a table, facing away from the audience. When she picks up a guitar and sings the songs that dot the narrative, we cannot see her expression.We can’t see it during the spoken sections, either, because her words, generated by a speech-to-text application, are piped out of a laptop in a male-sounding voice. A cursor is visible moving across the screen, highlighting the text as the gnomic A.I. interpreter works its way through; at times it feels as if we are sitting in on a willfully dull karaoke session.Interweaving songs and stories, Pirnot pieces together a traumatic event from her life, in a manner that feels solipsistically granular. “I’m the kind of person who will think and think and think, and then think about what I’m thinking, and then think about what I think about what I’m thinking,” she says. “My mom calls it having a pity party.”If that’s her own mother’s take — especially in light of the show’s subject, which gradually comes into relief — imagine the challenge it is to elicit interest, not to mention compassion, from a theater full of people not related to Pirnot. It is a challenge “I Love You” struggles to meet.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: ‘The Vince Staples Show’ Is a Hip-Hop Head Trip

    Netflix adds to the rap-comedy canon with five episodes that showcase the star’s absurdist, deadpan sensibility.There have been enough offbeat comedies about rappers and hip-hop lately to make up their own genre — the shape-shifting surreality of “Atlanta,” the scatological farce of “Dave,” the social-media savvy of “Rap Sh!t” — not to mention a list of dramas and docu-series from “Empire” to “Wu-Tang: An American Saga.”On Thursday, Netflix adds “The Vince Staples Show,” an impressionistic alt-comedy built around the deadpan sensibility of its star. It is mordantly funny and visually arresting, although at five brief episodes, it’s more of an EP than a magnum opus.Staples, once affiliated with the alternative hip-hop collective Odd Future, is known not just for his music but for a self-aware sense of humor that’s made him a sharp presence on social media. In the series, whose executive producers include Staples and Kenya Barris (“black-ish”), he plays a version of himself, flexing his sardonic voice while playing with the sense of danger that informs many of his lyrics.In the first episode, Vince is pulled over after making a U-turn in his home town of Long Beach, Calif. The experience is part nightmare (he’s locked up with a white man with Nazi tattoos and a behemoth with a reputation for knifework); part satire (when he picks up the communal phone, a voice says, “Hello, and welcome to jail!” followed by the sound of children cheering); part hallucination (for his meal, he’s handed a sandwich topped with a Draw Two Uno card).Outside jail, Vince’s world is just as much of a comic dystopia. A bank visit turns into a combination heist flick and Jordan Peele horror story. On a trip to a water park, the loudspeaker announcements are cryptically menacing (“All children must be accompanied by adults of the same ethnic background”), and the cartoony park mascot glares at Vince with ill intent.Unlike other recent hip-hop comedies, the rap-business part of “Vince Staples” stays largely offscreen. We don’t see Vince recording or performing, though he does run into the megastar Rick Ross. Instead, his fame is the backdrop and premise. It gets him recognized in lockup (an admiring guard quotes his song “Norf Norf” at him); it gets him an invitation to speak at his old school that goes bizarrely south; it gets him targeted by relatives looking for loans.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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    Jimmy Kimmel: Tom Suozzi Has ‘Very Big Clown Shoes to Fill’

    Kimmel joked that New York’s special House election results had to be verified “to make sure the winner wasn’t George Santos in disguise.”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.Anybody But SantosTom Suozzi, a Democrat, won a special election on Tuesday to fill the congressional seat previously occupied by George Santos. The victory shrank the Republicans’ thin majority in the House. Jimmy Kimmel congratulated Suozzi on his win on Wednesday, saying, “You have some very big clown shoes to fill.”“You guys remember George Santos? Congressman, alleged felon, Sephora platinum member, Nobel laureate, Olympic gold medalist, Clark Kent having allergic reaction and Super Bowl M.V.P.?” — SETH MEYERS“They actually had to wait to verify the election to make sure the winner wasn’t George Santos in disguise.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“It’s weird when you know nothing about someone but still know they’re an improvement.” — JIMMY FALLON“That’s right, Tom Suozzi is replacing George Santos, and just from looking at their resumes, the two of them are pretty different. For instance, under education, Suozzi put, ‘B.A. from Boston College.’ Santos put, ‘Ph.D. from Hogwarts.’” — JIMMY FALLONThe Punchiest Punchlines (Valentine’s Day Edition)“Today was Valentine’s Day, so I know what I’m getting tonight — eight hours of sleep.” — SETH MEYERS“As I’m sure you’re aware, it is Valentine’s Day. If you weren’t aware, probably why your wife’s been mad all day, not saying anything.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“I want to extend a special welcome to those of you who are making love right now with the TV on. We see you.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“That’s right, today is Valentine’s Day, and if you forgot, don’t worry, there’s a good chance President Biden did, too.” — JIMMY FALLON“Even Donald Trump posted a romantic message today. He wrote, ‘Biden is not too old, he’s too incompetent.’ As close as he gets to telling somebody he loves them.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Donald Trump celebrated the day by writing a valentine to his wife Melania, and then having his campaign send a mass email blast with the subject line ‘I love you, Melania!’ [imitating Melania] ‘Unsubscribe.’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Even just graphically, it looks like a ransom letter, which I guess is fitting, given Melania’s current situation.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“And then there’s a little box where you can leave a message for Melania that says, ‘We want 100,000 responses now!’ And of course, a button to make a donation to St. Valen-crime’s legal defense fund. What a lovely and a romantic gesture.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Bits Worth WatchingOn Wednesday, Stephen Colbert was joined by his wife, Evie McGee Colbert, to present their new family cookbook, “Does This Taste Funny?”What We’re Excited About on Thursday NightThe campy pop singer-songwriter Chappell Roan will perform on Thursday’s “Late Show.”Also, Check This OutBeyoncé released two new songs from her upcoming country-rock album after the Super Bowl, diving deeper into a genre that has Black musicians at its roots. Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for The Recording AcademyBeyoncé’s new musical turn highlights the exclusion of Black artists in country music. More

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    ‘Between Two Knees’ Review: A Virtuosic Romp Through a Century of Terrors

    Two deadly standoffs at Wounded Knee are the bookends for a show that manages to narrate a violent history with moments of light and humor.Rapid-fire punchlines and crafty sight gags may not seem the most obvious means to convey a brutal history of displacement and extermination. But “Between Two Knees,” which opened at the Perelman Performing Arts Center in Manhattan on Tuesday, uses both in an audaciously sidesplitting comedy that’s an indictment of Native American persecution.The show’s antic account of Indigenous struggle was written by the 1491s, an intertribal sketch comedy troupe that includes Sterlin Harjo, a creator of “Reservation Dogs.” The action is bookended by two deadly standoffs: the 1890 massacre at Wounded Knee, where U.S. soldiers killed as many as 300 members of the Lakota Sioux tribe, and the occupation of that site in 1973 by the American Indian Movement and its supporters, who were protesting government injustice.A narrator named Larry (Justin Gauthier) welcomes the audience with the casual air of a stand-up breaking in the crowd, saying that Indians have experienced some “pretty dark” stuff. White audience members are warned that guilt pangs lie ahead — and encouraged to assuage them by depositing donations into a basket being passed around. “Don’t be cheap now,” Larry prods. “I promise, when you leave, you will still own everything.”Playful daggers like these are cloaked throughout the production, directed with ingenuity and finesse by Eric Ting, with a vaudeville-style emphasis on amusement and artifice.When we meet Ina (a wryly deadpan Sheila Tousey) clutching her baby during the Wounded Knee massacre, for example, an ensemble member demonstrates the severity of Ina’s wounds by detaching her false arm and absconding offstage with it. (Victims of the siege, many of them women and children, were unarmed.) A red streamer unfurls from Ina’s shoulder like a clown’s handkerchief, the show’s recurring signifier of bloodshed.Ina’s murder starts a multigenerational story that follows her descendants’ turmoil through the 20th century: Ina’s orphaned son Isaiah (Derek Garza) and his love interest, Irma (Shyla Lefner), defeat the wicked nuns at their Native American boarding school (a video-game-style showdown with witty projections by Shawn Duan) to become vigilantes. Their son William, a.k.a. Wolf (Shaun Taylor-Corbett), departs to fight in World War II. A cascade of soapy twists, including a baby left on a doorstep, eventually leads the family back to Wounded Knee.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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    Dating Woes? Nina Conti Has the Answer, or at Least Some Jokes

    In “The Dating Show,” the British comedian and ventriloquist initiates close encounters of the potentially romantic kind. Laughs will definitely ensue.Meaningful, long-lasting connections can take a while to form, but when Nina Conti met her future partner-in-crime, she knew they were simpatico right away.“It was one of those moments where I felt very grounded as soon as I saw his face,” Conti, a British performer and writer, said in a video conversation. “It was the chemistry between my personality and something so cozy about him. You can put him in a handbag, no problem.”It might be worth mentioning that the face in question belongs to Monkey, the puppet that has been Conti’s main scene partner for most of her nearly 25 years as a ventriloquist.“You can actually project anything onto that face,” she said. “Wisdom is what I choose to project onto it. When I look at him, I expect him to say something wise that might get me out of a tight pinch. But it’s weird because onstage it’s kind of the opposite: He’s throwing me in the [expletive] all the time, and I’m clambering to apologize and keep up.”Creating and sustaining personal relationships seems to matter to Conti, who inherited the dummy collection of her lover and mentor, the theater maker Ken Campbell, after he died in 2008. (She explored that grief-stricken time in the 2012 documentary “Her Master’s Voice,” which also follows her to a ventriloquist convention in Kentucky.) Now, close encounters of the potentially romantic kind are at the center of “The Dating Show,” which Conti is performing at SoHo Playhouse through March 2.Monkey, however, is not her main collaborator in that piece — the audience is.“I expect him to say something wise that might get me out of a tight pinch,” Conti said of Monkey. “Onstage, it’s kind of the opposite: He’s throwing me in the [expletive] all the time, and I’m clambering to apologize and keep up.”Charlotte Hadden for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More