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    Reggie Wells, Makeup Artist for Oprah Winfrey and Other Black Stars, Dies at 76

    At a time when cosmetic brands did not cater to Black women, Mr. Wells found a niche working with Black stars and models who had struggled to find makeup options for their skin tones.Reggie Wells, who parlayed a background in fine art into a trailblazing career as a makeup artist for Oprah Winfrey, Whitney Houston, Beyoncé, Michelle Obama and other Black celebrities, died on Monday in Baltimore. He was 76.His death was confirmed by his niece Kristina Conner, who did not specify a cause or say where he died.For Mr. Wells, every face was a canvas to explore. One of his most famous clients was Ms. Winfrey, for whom he worked as a personal makeup artist for more than 20 years at the height of her television career.“Reggie Wells was an artist who used his palette of talent to create beauty no matter the canvas,” Ms. Winfrey said in a statement. “He always made me feel beautiful. Ooo my, how we’d laugh and laugh during the process. He was an astute observer of human behavior and could see humor in the most unlikely experiences.”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?  More

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    Three Festival Shows Explore Toxic Society

    “Queens of Sheba” and “Volcano” at Under the Radar, and “Bacon,” at International Fringe Encore Series, expound on identity, captivity and violence.‘Queens of Sheba’Through Saturday as part of Under the Radar; utrfest.org. Running time: 1 hour.Theater makes much of the element of catharsis, but rarely is a show purgative all the way through, as the choreopoem “Queens of Sheba” is. A celebration of Black women, and a ticked-off commiseration for all the nonsense thrown their way, it names a host of psychic poisons and puts them on display.At Lincoln Center, this British piece pays homage to Ntozake Shange’s classic choreopoem “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf.” Written by Jessica L. Hagan and Ryan Calais Cameron (“For Black Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When the Hue Gets Too Heavy”), it is a series of loosely linked stories in verse.A cast of four (Paisley Billings, Déja J Bowens, Jadesola Odunjo and the standout, Muki Zubis) tells of microaggressions from colleagues, exoticization by white dates and, true to Shange, derogation by Black men, which carries a particular pain.There is also an othering question that the women get repeatedly: “Where are you from?” Their reply is a refrain in the show: “I say I am a mix. Of both racism and sexism — they lay equally on my skin.”Directed by Jessica Kaliisa, “Queens of Sheba” was only briefly at last year’s Under the Radar, its run truncated by visa delays. So the festival brought it back, to the Clark Studio Theater.It feels less crisply focused now, but its intent is clear. Aretha Franklin’s “Respect” is its anthem, and what she sings about — what they sing about, too — is exactly what these women want. LAURA COLLINS-HUGHESWe 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?  More

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    ‘True Detective: Night Country’ Review: Iced In

    HBO’s eerie crime drama returns after a five-year break and trades in Southern gothic for Arctic horror.“True Detective” was never a series that went in for tender moments, but “True Detective: Night Country” — the show’s fourth season, after a five-year hiatus — takes a particularly unforgiving approach to the human condition. There is a moment late in the six-episide season, however, when the dour pop soundtrack turns sentimental and it’s clear that we are supposed to be tenderly moved by what is happening. What is happening is that someone is disposing of the dismembered body of the close family member they have just killed.Created for HBO back in 2014 by the writer and English professor Nic Pizzolatto, the original iteration of “True Detective” was a gothic crime drama, in anthology form, marked by Pizzolatto’s penchant for ostensibly profound, quasi-poetic dialogue — Raymond Chandler by way of Rod McKuen.The new season, directed and largely written by the Mexican filmmaker Issa López (it premieres on Sunday), dispenses with the poetry — it is by and large a plain-spoken affair. But where Pizzolatto’s “True Detective” stories were essentially traditional noirs with a gloss of pop psychology and horror-movie sensationalism, López commits fully to the outré and the supernatural. Parricide? That’s just coming up for air.López is coy about whether the cops, scientists, mine workers and Indigenous Alaskans who populate her story are actually dealing with malevolent spirits, but she is profligate in her use of horror effects to jolt the audience and goose the plot. Unseen voices abound, and dead people are frequently seen. Polar bears loom in the darkness. Oranges mysteriously, repeatedly appear out of nowhere and roll under characters’ feet. A group of men freeze together in a big jumble, naked and mid-scream, and have to be cut out of the ice and slowly thawed under bright lights. (Somewhere, “The Thing” is wondering why it didn’t think of that.)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?  More

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    Review: In ‘Cosmos,’ Female Astronauts Dance Toward the Stars

    A new show in Paris by Maëlle Poésy tells the story of the Mercury 13 space program, with choreographed movement and acrobatic sequences.Early on in “Cosmos,” a new production by the French theater director Maëlle Poésy, three performers walk slowly onstage, their bodies hidden in full spacesuits. There are plenty of clues in the playbill. After all, “Cosmos” was inspired by the Mercury 13, a group of American women who took part in a ’60s program that proved their fitness for space travel, but who never blasted off.Yet when they took their helmets off to reveal three women, I caught myself feeling surprised. Subconsciously, I realized, I still expected astronauts to be men.“Cosmos,” presented at the Théâtre Gérard Philipe, in Saint-Denis, a Paris suburb, brightly deconstructs this stereotype. The production belongs to an increasingly prominent theater genre: plays that center women’s stories as a form of historical or artistic redress, with the explicit aim of challenging conventional narratives.It’s a tricky exercise for writers and directors, as overly didactic productions quickly feel heavy-handed. Not here. Poésy and her co-writer, Kevin Keiss, delve into the space dream that fueled three of the Mercury 13 — Jerrie Cobb, Jane Briggs Hart and Wally Funk — in imaginative ways. There is upbeat dialogue and a few verbatim recreations of their public speeches, but “Cosmos” also makes use of movement to show the women striving toward the freedoms of space. The cast of five break open the large white wall that frames the action, and use dance and acrobatic sequences to express the intensity of Mercury 13’s training program and frustration at gender inequality.This allows Poésy to explore their trajectories without getting bogged down in the (eye-popping) details. As we learn, Cobb was just 18 when she got her commercial pilot’s license; later, she inaugurated new air routes across some of the most dangerous South American landscapes and flew humanitarian supplies on the continen for decades. Briggs Hart was a World War II veteran, the wife of Senator Philip A. Hart, a long-serving Michigan Democrat, and a mother of eight when she successfully passed the Mercury 13 tests.The play is based on stories from the Mercury 13, a group of American women who took part in a 1960s program designed to test their fitness to go into space.Jean-Louis Fernandez“Cosmos” isn’t the first attempt to reclaim the women’s place in the history of space travel. In 2018, Netflix released a documentary about this pioneering group and the sexist attitudes that ultimately shut down the test program, “Mercury 13”; the Apple TV show “For All Mankind” also imagined what might have happened if women had been selected for a moon landing. Books, articles and an American play, Laurel Ollstein’s “They Promised Her the Moon,” have been written about Cobb and her peers. Yet few will have heard of them in Europe.The Mercury 13’s program, privately funded and hidden from public view, was an initiative of William Randolph Lovelace II, a NASA physician. Lovelace had heard whispers that the Soviet Union was considering sending a woman into space (in 1963, it did: Valentina Tereshkova). But Lovelace doesn’t appear in “Cosmos,” which focuses on Cobb, Briggs Hart and Funk as they learn that they have been selected for the project.As they detail the medical and physical tests that followed — think frozen water injected into ears, extreme sports and isolation tanks — the cast of five women begins to perform staccato movements choreographed by Leïla Ka, a rising French dance-maker. They kneel, crouch, lie down, get up again.Later, when they learn via telegram that the program has been canceled, despite the fact that they outperformed men on a number of metrics, they return to dance — this time frantically. In ’60s-style dresses, they pretend to apply lipstick, and touch their faces and torsos, as if trapped by expectations of femininity. Caroline Arrouas is especially striking as Briggs Hart, at one point taking off her high heels and banging them against a portion of the wall until it collapses.Arrouas, right, as Jane Briggs Hart, the wife of Senator Philip Hart and one of the Mercury 13.Jean-Louis FernandezThe women’s disappointment, and subsequent attempts to get Congress and Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson to allow women into NASA’s space program, are interspersed with stories of women born after them. Dominique Joannon, playing an astrophysicist from Chile, talks movingly about a childhood fascination with the stars; and Elphège Kongombé Yamale, as an astrobiologist, explores what the 1969 moon landing meant to women in the Central African Republic.Space and flight are metaphors throughout. Two performers — Liza Lapert, who plays Funk, and Joannon — are experienced acrobats, and at one point they climb the wall, opening little traps to let warm orange light through. Joannon delivers a galactic monologue while hanging from a bar high above the stage.In the final scene, Lapert climbs a rope center stage. As she hovers above the cast, she talks about Cobb’s and Briggs Hart’s deaths, then explains that Funk’s dream finally came true in 2021, when she became the oldest person to go into space, at 82, on a Blue Origin flight.“When the rocket left the ground, I took you with me,” she tells the others below, before resuming her climb, all the way to the lights hanging above the stage. The symbolism was obvious, yet neat: Finally, one of the Mercury 13 had completed their mission.CosmosThrough Jan. 21 at the Théâtre Gérard Philipe, in Saint-Denis, France; theatregerardphilipe.com. More

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    ‘The Curse’ Season 1 Finale Recap: Things Are Looking Up

    A jump ahead in time finds the Siegels almost seeming happy, or at least faking it well enough. Then something absolutely bonkers happens.Season 1, Episode 10: ‘Green Queen’Certain kinds of surprises are de rigueur in television. The shock of when a character unexpectedly dies, for instance. It’s jolting, sure, but it’s nothing too out of the ordinary. Television writers do it all the time.And then there is whatever just happened in the final episode of “The Curse.” Since watching this hour-plus of television, my mind has been reeling as I try to figure out what to say about it. Should I attempt to determine what actually occurred, even though I don’t think there’s an explanation? Should I just marvel at its weirdness? Should I try to unpack symbolically the intentions of Nathan Fielder and Benny Safdie? Sure, I guess, to all of it. But I also think the pure bizarreness is sort of the point.All I know is that the final episode of this first season (but perhaps not the only season) of “The Curse” is one of the most bonkers, baffling, creative and I think brilliant episodes of television I’ve watched in a long time, the kind of thing that challenges what TV can do.Because here’s what happens at the end of the episode: Asher is sucked into space. Not metaphorically. Literally. The last image of Asher we see is him frozen, floating above the Earth into the stars.Before that, “Green Queen” begins like a normal episode (if “normal” is a word we can even use with this series). We’ve jumped ahead in time about eight or so months. Whitney is visibly pregnant while she and Asher go on “The Rachael Ray Show” to promote their series, smiling awkwardly on a video stream as Ray seems far more interested in the man making meatballs in her kitchen, Vincent Pastore (who played Big Pussy in “The Sopranos”) than in the couple onscreen.Things seem to be going relatively well for the Siegels. Sure, maybe it’s hard to find “Green Queen” streaming on HGTV GO, but the network has ordered a second season, which will include their baby, an addition they think will draw attention. Asher and Whitney are doing a solid job at playacting as the happy couple over a Shabbat dinner when Asher tells her he has a “push present” for her, using the (gross, in my opinion) term for a mother-to-be gift.He wants to give Abshir and his family the Questa Lane property for good. Their joy in the Siegels’ generosity will be a memory Whitney can cherish forever, Asher believes.But when they arrive, Nala and Hani are not present, but some stranger is, and Abshir is terse. He isn’t groveling with gratitude. He just wants to know if they will pay the property taxes for the rest of the year. This is his chance to have the Siegels out of his life, and he takes it. You can see the disappointment on Asher’s and Whitney’s faces when they get back into the car. All they want is for their altruism to be rewarded by the acknowledgment that they are good people. Abshir refuses to give them that, and it’s crushing.We get no tender full circle moment between Asher and Nala. Just a closed door. Does that unresolved tension explain what happens next? I truly don’t know.Because one morning, Whitney turns off the alarm on her phone, and the camera pans upward to show Asher, not in bed next to her, but on the ceiling, his body facing her from above. It’s one of the most disorienting images I’ve recently encountered. But it’s not a dream sequence. Asher’s body has somehow become untethered by gravity.The explanation he comes to is that the house has turned on him. They have installed a climate controlled room for the baby — because they fear their passive house could kill their newborn — which has perhaps unbalanced the pressure inside the structure, sending Asher skyward. But opening doors and windows doesn’t work, and even if Whitney tries to pull him down he keeps being pulled in the opposite direction by some unknown force.What follows is several incredible, disturbing sequences of physical comedy from both Fielder and Stone as they try to solve this mysterious problem. Fielder moves his body like an alien, his limbs heavy as he tries to maneuver around the skylight and tasteful wood beams. He pants and struggles and stretches. Stone is reduced to crawling on the floor for fear she will get sucked up too.In their most bravura moment, she hands him a vacuum that he then uses to try to retrieve her phone, which she left behind in the bedroom. As he struggles upside down, she starts going into contractions.There’s something almost sweet about the way we see them truly working together. Whitney and Asher have been so deeply in conflict throughout the series that we haven’t seen much of this until now. As he tries to secure the phone with the vacuum, he starts counting to determine the length of her contractions. They really are a family now, bound together by these ridiculous circumstances.But then that connection between them is shattered because Asher truly cannot come down. The doula (Elliot Berlin), who has arrived to help Whitney get to the hospital, tries to pull Asher off the underside of the portico. He is successful, but instead of returning to Earth, he winds up stuck in a nearby tree, clinging for dear life to a branch, where he stays until Dougie arrives to help. Whitney is whisked away for a C-section.Having not seen his initial flight, neither Dougie nor the firefighters believe his concerns as he grows more and more frantic. Dougie thinks Asher is panicking about the baby, and he sees this as great material for the show. But when the firefighter saws off the tree branch, Asher is sucked into the sky, high above Española. As he floats up, Whitney’s baby is extracted from her abdomen, one Siegel replaced by a newer model.Dougie is distraught, crying on the ground, realizing that his carelessness has lost him another person. Whitney, having given birth, smiles tenderly at her baby, seemingly unconcerned about Asher’s whereabouts. And Asher, well, Asher is gone past the clouds, his body frozen in space.And what are we supposed to make of all of this? Are we supposed to take it literally? I think, on some level, yes: This is what happens in the context of this world we’ve been watching and its many ambiguities. It is also unmistakably surreal, and arguably mystical. Alice Coltrane’s “Jai Ramachandra,” which we also heard at the end of Episode 3, plays over the final minutes, the sound of her Sanskrit prayer accompanying these sad people.“The Curse” has always played with the idea that maybe some level of magic is real, and there’s an argument to be made that Asher’s ultimate journey is the result of the hex Nala placed on him, his punishment for the indiscretion of snatching that $100 bill from her hand. But I think there’s something too pat about that explanation. I think we’re left instead with a question about the nature of both television and reality, themes that have been persistent preoccupations of Safdie’s and Fielder’s.The final words of the episode are delivered not by our protagonists but by some of the onlookers. A man remarks: “What movie they filming? How did they do that?” A fellow lookie-loo explains, “That’s the guy from HGTV.”Their exchange goes as follows:“Huh, so it’s for TV?”“I think so.”“Huh.”“Huh” is right. The questioner clearly believes — or at least finds it easier to believe — that Asher’s disappearance is just a bit of Hollywood magic. And in some ways it is. But if you look at this conversation in the context of what came before, it takes on a sadder bent.Asher, Whitney and Dougie consistently tried to fudge the truth of their lives for the cameras in the name of good TV. Now their truth is stranger than anything they could manipulate, and just as easy to disregard.Notes From EspañolaGiven that it’s the 25th anniversary of “The Sopranos,” I’ve been thinking about that show a lot, so I was tickled to see Pastore turn up.Cara quit art and was profiled in The New York Times. I’d like to see that write-up.Whitney casually remarking, “I’d have to say it was a statement about the Holocaust or something” sent shivers down my spine.So did “There’s a little me inside you” from Asher.Safdie has said a second season is “not off the table,” but I can’t really imagine what a follow-up would look like.I can’t wait to read a million post-mortems about how they accomplished the upside-down sequences. Did they build an upside-down version of the house?Thank you for reading. It’s been a ride. More

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    ‘The Curse’ Ending: What Just Happened?

    The season finale of Nathan Fielder and Benny Safdie’s horror-comedy arrived on Friday. Three New York Times critics discuss the show’s curses, blessings and confounding conclusion.On Friday, the first season of “The Curse,” Nathan Fielder and Benny Safdie’s cringe horror-comedy on Showtime and Paramount+, came to an audaciously unpredictable end. Three New York Times critics — James Poniewozik, chief TV critic; Alissa Wilkinson, movie critic; and Jason Zinoman, critic at large — discussed the confounding conclusion, the show’s religious themes and the sublime inscrutability of Emma Stone’s performance.JAMES PONIEWOZIK Greetings, “Curse”-heads! We have seen the finale, and I can now confidently say: lol wut?Ten uncomfortable, ingenious episodes ended with one of the biggest literal and figurative upendings in TV history (spoilers ahead). Asher Siegel (Nathan Fielder) has his personal field of gravity reversed like a horror-comedy Fred Astaire, hurtling off the Earth to an apparent frozen death in orbit, while his wife, Whitney (Emma Stone), goes into labor and gives birth to their child. All this, and Vincent Pastore cooks meatballs!I haven’t seen an episode of TV this audacious, confounding and transfixing since “Twin Peaks: The Return.” I haven’t seen a series so thoroughly and unexpectedly shift direction in its finale since … ever?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?  More

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    Late Night Finds Trump Incapable of Dealing With Facts

    A judge initially denied Trump the chance to speak at his criminal fraud trial, “but, as 27 women can tell you, Trump doesn’t take no for an answer,” Stephen Colbert said on Thursday.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.Stick to the FactsFormer President Donald Trump’s civil fraud trial wrapped up on Thursday. The judge initially denied Trump’s request to speak during closing arguments.“But, as 27 women can tell you, Trump doesn’t take no for an answer,” Stephen Colbert said on Thursday.So when Trump’s lawyers tried one final time, the judge allowed Trump five minutes, so long as he stuck to the facts.“Yep, the judge let Trump speak on the condition that he stick to the law and facts, two things people on trial for fraud are famously great at.” — JIMMY FALLON“Before he allowed former President Trump to address the court today, Judge Arthur Engoron asked, ‘Do you promise to just comment on the facts and the law?’ Good luck. That’s like asking Jake, ‘Do you promise you won’t talk about State Farm?’” — SETH MEYERS“You’re not going to believe this: Trump said he did nothing wrong, and you know what? He’s never lied to us before, so.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“The judge overseeing his civil fraud trial today allowed former President Trump to speak for five minutes after his legal team finished their closing arguments, and now he’s facing 11 more counts of fraud.” — SETH MEYERSThe Punchiest Punchlines (Bye-Bye, Belichick Edition)“After 24 seasons as head coach, Bill Belichick is leaving the New England Patriots. Yep, even though Belichick is in his 70s, the job offers are already rolling in. Today, ABC asked him to be the next ‘Grizzled Bachelor.’” — JIMMY FALLON“I don’t know about you, but I’ll miss the way Bill Belichick’s smile lit up a room.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“My staff over here tells me that upon hearing the news, Patriots fans everywhere were absolutely deflated.” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Bits Worth WatchingOn Thursday’s “Late Show,” Colman Domingo spoke with Stephen Colbert about forging relationships with friends of Bayard Rustin to better portray the civil rights leader in the Netflix biopic, “Rustin.”Also, Check This OutWhen the producers of the new late-night show “After Midnight” asked Taylor Tomlinson why she wanted the hosting job, she said she told them, “I’m kind of lonely.”Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesLike another famous Taylor, the stand-up comedian and host of the soon-to-debut “After Midnight” Taylor Tomlinson is finding life can be lonely at the top. More