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    The Supreme Court Ballot Case Made for Must-Hear TV

    The live arguments gave audiences a rare chance to experience a Trump court case as it happened.If you were to list the ingredients of riveting live television, you would probably not include still photos, empty TV studios and parsing the nuances between the nouns “office” and “officer.”Thursday’s Supreme Court arguments over Colorado’s attempt to remove former President Donald J. Trump from the ballot on the grounds of insurrection had all of those. But the proceedings, carried via live audio on cable news, also had two essentials of must-watch (or -hear) TV: High stakes and novelty.The stakes were clear, whether or not you could follow the dissection of the insurrection clause of the 14th Amendment. There are few things as important in a democracy as the decision of who gets to run in the next presidential election, not to mention the responsibility, and the consequences, for attempting to overturn the previous one.The broadcast was novel in more than one way. The Supreme Court only began livestreaming oral arguments in 2020, during the pandemic. Having such consequential arguments take over cable news for a full morning is a rarity.What’s more, much of the coming election will turn on court cases involving Mr. Trump, and American TV audiences are likely to be kept outside the door. Cameras were mostly barred from his civil trials in defamation and fraud cases; current federal rules prohibit them in his coming Georgia election-interference case. (The Georgia case is supposed to be livestreamed, but it may not take place before November, and Mr. Trump’s lawyers have argued that he should not be tried at all if he wins the election.)Thursday, in other words, was a rare chance for voters to experience a part of the Trump Legal Cinematic Universe for themselves, not through the analysis of pundits or the fulminations of the defendant. That alone made it a TV event.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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    What to Watch This Weekend: A Tricky Cop Show

    Our TV critic recommends a sleek British thriller that puts new spins on familiar crime show setups.Peter Capaldi and Cush Jumbo star in “Criminal Record.”Apple TV+There is a sleek chicness to “Criminal Record,” an engrossing British cop thriller on Apple TV+. It pulls from lots of well-worn formats but reconstitutes everything into its own chilly terrazzo, sometimes to exciting effect.Oh, sure, it’s hard to make room in one’s heart or viewing schedule for yet another dirty cop who does things his way — but he get results, damn it! Would you believe he has a troubled daughter whose antics further tie him to the seedy side of things, that he is both a dangerous guy and a loving but suffering father? How about a righteous female cop who takes her cases a little too personally, going so far as to endanger herself as a sublimation of the dissatisfaction in her domestic life? Ever heard of layers? Hmm?But luckily “Criminal Record” is a little trickier than that, fleshing out familiar setups with tense vitality. Peter Capaldi fills Daniel Hegarty, a detective chief inspector, not with the leather-jacket intensity of most police dramas but with a patient, scary wisdom. Cush Jumbo taps into Detective Sergeant June Lenker’s panic more than her professionalism. Aggression, enmity and maybe even predation are often the dominant themes in a cop show, but here it is wariness. Watching the show feels like watching a snake, its gliding undulations mostly moving side to side but actually propelling the story forward.The action begins when Lenker gets a tip in an emergency domestic violence call. A woman says that her boyfriend is going to kill her, and that he’s killed before and gotten away with it; another man is in prison for the crime. Lenker figures out that it is one of Hegarty’s cases, and despite repeated admonishments to let it go, she can’t stop herself from digging into everything — the identity of the woman on the call, the conviction at issue, Hegarty’s slipperiness. Hegerty and Lenker are suspicious of one another’s motivations, and both are aware of the genuine politics and the less-genuine political optics of their conflict: An old white guy with a network of cronies up against a younger biracial woman who wants to expose his misdeeds. “Are you familiar with the term ‘unconscious bias’?” Hegarty asks Lenker at one point, reveling in his little moment of irony.The push-pull of multiple investigations is more interesting than the at-home plotlines for either detective, though there are a few rich moments and shining fights. When Lenker’s husband complains that everything he says is under a microscope, she’s incensed. “Then say better stuff!” she shouts back.There are eight episodes of “Criminal Record,” and six are available now, with new episodes arriving Wednesdays. More

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    Sutton Stracke Travels to Spain With Merce Cunningham’s Ashes

    The current season of “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” meets Merce Cunningham in an incongruous mash-up of reality TV and modern dance.“Can you get my drink, and I’ll get Merce?“In certain circles — OK, mine — that name can belong to only one person: Merce Cunningham, the 20th-century choreographer who reshaped modern dance. Over the past few weeks, his name has come up in the strangest of places: “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.”On recent episodes, Sutton Stracke traveled to Spain with her fellow Housewives. Along with racks of designer clothes, she brought Cunningham’s ashes packed in a Ziploc bag. Cunningham, it turns out, was one of the most important men in her pre-“Housewives” life, and she wanted to release the ashes “in a significant place and make this a really meaningful trip.”Dismay ensued. “Put me in a Birkin, fine,” Kyle Richards, another Housewife, said. “But a Ziploc? No.”And out of Erika Girardi’s tipsy mouth poured this gem at dinner: “Merce is in the purse.”Worlds are truly colliding. Cunningham, who died in 2009 at 90, is an indelible part of dance history but less familiar to the general public. As Stracke told her castmates, “He’s a real big deal.” How big? Stracke explained that he was a founder of modern dance.Girardi asked, “With Martha Graham and all them?”“Yes,” Stracke said.“Twyla?” Girardi said, referring to Twyla Tharp. Girardi, who performs pop music as Erika Jayne, has long worked with the choreographer Mikey Minden, and knows a thing or two.“Twyla studied under him,” Stracke said.“OK,” Girardi said with detectable pride, “There you go.”Erika Girardi revealed the location of Cunningham’s ashes (a purse) over a tipsy dinner.Bravo/NBCUniversalWe 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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    Tina Fey and Amy Poehler Try Stand-Up for the First Time

    Delivering a deluge of hard jokes, this double act aims directly for the nostalgic pleasure centers of their fans.To hear them tell it, the origin story of Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, one of our greatest comedy duos, hinges on a moment in 1994 on tour with Second City in Waco, Texas, when they met an Australian woman wearing a sling who spoke “lovingly” about the return of the dead cult leader David Koresh.The comedians turned to each other and mouthed in unison: “Let’s get out of here,” in coarser language.“I knew I had a partner for life,” Poehler said with feeling on their new Restless Leg Tour, which has set up shop at the Beacon Theater in New York through Feb 18. “And I knew,” Fey added in a drier, deeper register, “that we would be very evenly matched work friends.”The comedy double act has been making a comeback. Chris Rock and Kevin Hart just released a documentary about touring together, which ends with them onstage riffing off each other. Jim Gaffigan and Jerry Seinfeld have joined forces. But it was Steve Martin and Martin Short who kicked off this trend, with a long-running live show in which their love for each other comes through in bruising insult comedy.Poehler and Fey mount a similarly punchy, warmly hilarious variety act that aims directly for the nostalgic pleasure centers of their fans. When Fey asks if there are dads in the crowd who had either of the comics as hall passes two decades ago, many hands shoot up. If the phrase “mom jeans” makes you instantly crack up, you will love this show. Whereas Short and Martin built a roasting antagonistic relationship, this is a more affectionate and fleshed-out portrait of friendship, a study in contrasts (the musical “Wicked” is referenced more than once). Fey is all sharp edges and slashing wit, her deadpan unshakable, keeping the audience and her partner at a distance. Poehler is more vulnerable, even a bit fragile, discussing kids, trauma or aging. “My memory is like a cat: It will not come when called.”The show itself is a throw-everything-at-the-wall mess, a visually indifferent collection of parts, some that probably would have been cut or honed by a ruthless director. The stars begin in gowns and end in pajamas; they perform sharp, award show-style monologues, a freewheeling question-and-answer session and some disappointing improv, which is swallowed up in the vast theater.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 New Look,’ It’s Chanel Versus Dior in War-Torn Paris

    Juliette Binoche and Ben Mendelsohn play the two fashion icons during the Nazi occupation of France in a new series from Apple TV+.In “The New Look,” an Apple TV+ show premiering Feb. 14, wine glasses are never empty, cigarettes are always half-smoked and everyone is thin. The series follows two titans of French fashion, Christian Dior and Coco Chanel, after all, toward the end of World War II.But this glamorous portrayal of Paris’s creative milieu is also interested in how the French elite collaborated with their Nazi occupiers during this contested period. It offers a startling throwback to a time when swastika-stamped flags hung over the streets of Paris. From 1940 to 1944, the French Vichy regime collaborated with the Nazis and deported over 70,000 Jews to death camps, sent French workers to Germany and tried to crush the French resistance.The show’s main action starts in 1943. Chanel (played by Juliette Binoche), a star of French fashion, is living at the Ritz Hotel, which was then a Nazi headquarter, where she hosts her boyfriend, the German spy Hans Günther von Dincklage (Claes Bang).“Chanel was an excellent survivor,” said Binoche, sitting on a couch in the wood-paneled bar at the Hotel Regina Louvre, which stood in for the Ritz on the show. Binoche — wearing a white shirt layered with a black bustier, tie and pants — said she read several biographies of the designer to prepare for the role, and was impressed by how Chanel’s creativity and business savvy took her from childhood poverty to the top of the European elite.Binoche and Ben Mendelsohn, who plays Christian Dior, at the Hotel Regina Louvre in Paris, where several scenes from were shot.Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York TimesPlaying the character in this period of her life was challenging, the actress added, because “there’s so many layers of gray going on.” On the show, we see Chanel invoking Vichy’s Aryan laws in a failed bid to eject her Jewish business partners from the company. She travels to Madrid at the request of an S.S. general in a bizarre attempt to broker peace between Germany and Britain (Winston Churchill, whom she knew personally, declines 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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    Late Night Mocks Nikki Haley’s Big Loss in Nevada

    “Nikki Haley’s campaign message is ‘Nobody’s better than me,’ and Nevada agreed,” Stephen Colbert said after Tuesday’s presidential primary.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.‘Second to None’The Nevada presidential primaries took place on Tuesday, with Nikki Haley as the only candidate listed on the Republican ballot.Stephen Colbert called the primary “a big chance for her to spark some Nikk-mania,” but Haley came through with only 30 percent of the vote, losing to the option “None of these candidates.”“Nikki Haley’s campaign message is ‘Nobody’s better than me,’ and Nevada agreed.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“She also lost to Nevada candidates ‘Not feelin’ it today’ and ‘Gonna be a no from me, dawg.’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“You know how they say, ‘You’re second to none?’ She finished second to none.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“I like the idea that people took time to wait in line to vote for ‘None of these candidates.’ That’s like going to the Wendy’s drive-through and yelling, ‘Nothing for me, thanks!’” — JIMMY KIMMEL“I don’t know what the opposite of momentum is, but I know Haley’s got it.” — SETH MEYERS“Even worse, she actually came in third behind ‘None of these candidates’ and ‘No, seriously, not you, Nikki.’” — SETH MEYERSThe Punchiest Punchlines (Tucker Takes Russia Edition)“Tucker Carlson still doesn’t have a job. He’s in Moscow — house hunting, I hope.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson announced yesterday that he will interview Russian President Vladimir Putin. And while they may not speak the same language, they also kind of do.” — SETH MEYERS“As for why he chose Putin, it’s pretty simple — Hitler’s dead.” — SETH MEYERS“Today, the Kremlin confirmed that Tucker Carlson has interviewed Vladimir Putin. You can tell the interview went over well, ’cause Tucker is still alive.” — JIMMY FALLON“Yep, Tucker Carlson interviewing Vladimir Putin may not be, uh, mean much to you, but for Trump, this is like watching OnlyFans.” — JIMMY FALLON“Vladimir Putin — he’s a murderer, he’s a war criminal, he hates America, he hates everything America stands for, he’s a liar and a propagandist, but Tuck thinks we just need to hear him out.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Bits Worth WatchingOn Wednesday’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” the creator and star of “Abbott Elementary,” Quinta Brunson, responded to Daniel Radcliffe’s saying they could be a good “height match” for a romantic comedy film.What We’re Excited About on Thursday NightMariska Hargitay will celebrate 25 years of “Law & Order: SVU” on Thursday’s “Tonight Show.”Also, Check This OutA well-dressed visitor to “Giants” takes a photo of Jamel Shabazz’s “Fly Girl, Brownsville, Brooklyn, NYC,” 1980; and “Rude Boy, Brooklyn, NYC,” 1981, at the opening night party.Rebecca Smeyne for The New York TimesA new show at the Brooklyn Museum exhibits art from the collection of musical power couple Alicia Keys and Swizz Beats. More

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    ‘Bark of Millions’ Review: Taylor Mac’s Rock Opera at BAM

    If Taylor Mac and Matt Ray’s four-hour rock opera were aiming to succeed on aural gorgeousness and visual spectacle alone, there would be no cause to quibble.Somewhere close to the four-hour mark in “Bark of Millions,” the polychromatic cavalcade of splendor that is Taylor Mac and Matt Ray’s new rock opera, I finally realized why the woman in front of me had been reading on her phone throughout the performance. And why she had looked at me like I was way out of line when I couldn’t bear the glowing screen any longer, leaned forward and implored her to stop.The words on her phone were excerpts from the show’s lyrics, a free digital version of the printed fan deck on sale at concessions. More than 50 songs in, she was grasping at that text in an attempt to follow along. Because the great frustration of “Bark of Millions,” which continues through Saturday at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Harvey Theater, is that there are far too many songs in which the music drowns out the lyrics, making the meaning a bafflement. (Sound design is by Brendan Aanes.) In those moments, time decelerates.If “Bark of Millions” were aiming to succeed on aural gorgeousness and visual spectacle alone, there would be no cause to quibble. Those are plentiful in Ray’s genre-hopping music, richly interpreted by the band he directs, and in Machine Dazzle’s ingeniously odd costumes, such as the sparkly pastel number in which Mac begins the evening, looking like Weird Barbie as an acid-tinged sprite, dressed for Versailles by way of ’60s Vegas.But Mac’s vivid, often poetic lyrics are not incidental. In the creation of the score, they were the starting point, each of the 55 songs inspired by a figure in queer history. It is a mosaic of a show, inherently political in its affirmation of queer heritage and community, though as Mac tells the audience, it is not a history lesson: “We beg you not to Google in your seats.”From left, Jack Fuller, Mama Alto and Thornetta Davis.Julieta Cervantes for The New York TimesStill, there are degrees of mystery, and I do not believe that “Bark of Millions” — which Mac, its principal director, describes aptly in a program note as “an opera-concert-song-cycle-musical-performance-art-piece-play” — means to leave us so much in the dark.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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    Mary Todd Lincoln, Thwarted Cabaret Star? That’s Cole Escola’s Take.

    “Oh, Mary!,” which follows a boozing, romance-starved first lady, is the latest entertainment about the Lincolns, illustrating their staying power as irreverent genre figures.It’s hard to pin down the moment in “Oh, Mary!,” a comedy about Mary Todd Lincoln, that will send Lincoln scholars and purists into apoplexy. It could be when the first lady disastrously auditions for a role in “Our American Cousin,” the play at which John Wilkes Booth would later shoot her husband on April 14, 1865. Or when the deeply closeted Lincoln is orally pleasured at his desk. Maybe the puke-drinking scene?There have been walkouts.“I’ve seen people at the box office who seem to think this is really a play about Abraham Lincoln, and I feel a little bad, but it’s also funny,” Cole Escola, the show’s writer and star, said in a recent phone interview.“Oh, Mary!”: It sounds like a catty dramedy set at a pre-Stonewall gay bar, or maybe an alt-cabaret tribute to Jackée Harry and her chirpy signature greeting on the 1980s sitcom “227.”“Oh, Mary!,” of course, is not about gay bars or Jackée Harry, but it is just as camp: The former first lady is presented as a bubbleheaded alcoholic, and she is the latest put-upon woman to enchant Escola. (The show opens on Thursday and continues through March 24 at Off Broadway’s Lucille Lortel Theater.)Far from being a student of the Lincolns, Escola, who is nonbinary, said they only started reading “a few cursory” things about Mary Todd Lincoln about three weeks ago.“I wish I had done any research,” they said. “But I wanted to write the show for an audience who had the same third-grade understanding that I do.” (“I just wanted to wear the costume,” Escola deadpan confesses in an Instagram video.)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