Eliana Willis

More stories

  • 138 Shares99 Views

    in Television

    Jimmy Kimmel Takes on Trump’s ‘Sad’ Return to the Campaign Trail

    Kimmel called Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign “the political equivalent of when Michael Jordan went to play for the Wizards.”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.‘Diet Trump’Former President Trump is back on the stump, kicking off his 2024 presidential campaign over the weekend with events in New Hampshire and South Carolina.Jimmy Kimmel said watching Trump return to campaigning was “sad,” calling it “the political equivalent of when Michael Jordan went to play for the Wizards.”“Former President Trump kicked off his 2024 campaign on Saturday at the New Hampshire Republican Party’s annual meeting and said, ‘I’m more angry now, and I’m more committed now than I ever was’ — though it’s never a good sign when your opening pitch is, ‘I’m blind with rage.’” — SETH MEYERS“Trump also warned that if Ron DeSantis runs for president, he would consider it a great act of disloyalty. And, you know, loyalty means everything to the guy who cheated on his third wife with a porn star and thought it might be cool to hang his vice president.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Speaking of DeSantis, I saw that he’s actively preparing for a possible presidential run, and he hasn’t landed on an official slogan yet, but he’s trying a few out. First, there’s ‘DeSantis 2024: Diet Trump.’ Next, there’s ‘DeSantis 2024: DeAmerica DeTruly DeDeServes DeDeSantis.’ And finally, ‘DeSantis 2024: Make America Florida Again.’” — JIMMY FALLONThe Punchiest Punchlines (Brotherly Love Edition)“Guys, I want to say congrats to the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles on advancing to Super Bowl LVII. Yeah, to all the Chiefs fans, I want to say, ‘Congratulations.’ To all the Eagles fans, I want to say, ‘Good morning.’” — JIMMY FALLON“You can tell Philly partied hard last night because today the Rocky statue is holding up Tylenol and a Gatorade.” — JIMMY FALLON“Of course, everyone in Kansas City is just as pumped. This is the Chiefs’ third Super Bowl appearance in the last four years. Even Tom Brady is like, ‘Hey, give someone else a chance.’” — JIMMY FALLON“This is interesting, Travis Kelce is going to be playing against his brother in the Super Bowl. His older brother, Jason, plays center for the Eagles. It’s the first time two brothers have ever competed in the Super Bowl against each other, which, that has got to be tough for their parents. I mean, no matter who wins, they’ve gotta take them both to Disneyland, right?” — JIMMY KIMMEL“It’s already a history-making game because Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce and Philadelphia Eagles center Jason Kelce will become the first brothers to face off against each other in a Super Bowl. But not the first time family members have played each other. Who can forget the dramatic playoffs matchup between Joe and Hannah Montana?” — STEPHEN COLBERT“This is really high stakes because they’re playing for who gets the top bunk.” — JAMES CORDEN“Maybe this is how Prince William and Prince Harry should sort out their issues.” — JAMES CORDEN“I would tell them, I would sit them down and say, ‘Boys, whoever wins is the son we love more and that’s that.’ That’s how Trump does it.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Bits Worth WatchingThis week’s “Daily Show” guest host, D.L. Hughley, spoke with Ibram X. Kendi and Nic Stone, co-authors of “How to Be a (Young) Antiracist,” on Monday night.What We’re Excited About on Tuesday NightThe actress Jessica Chastain, who stars in Showtime’s “George and Tammy,” will chat with Stephen Colbert on Tuesday’s “Late Show.”Also, Check This OutJennifer Coolidge and her character’s rant about murderous “gays” are featured in a popular dance mash-up of the theme song from the show “The White Lotus.”Fabio Lovino/HBODanceable remixes of “The White Lotus” theme song have become a hit in music venues and dance clubs. More

  • 125 Shares199 Views

    in Television

    Cindy Williams, Star of ‘Laverne & Shirley,’ Dies at 75

    The show, in which Ms. Williams and Penny Marshall played roommates who worked in a Milwaukee brewery, was a spinoff of “Happy Days” and became a staple of 1970s television.Cindy Williams, an actress best known for her role on the 1970s slapstick sitcom “Laverne & Shirley,” died on Wednesday in Los Angeles. She was 75.Her death followed a brief illness, her assistant, Liza Cranis, said by phone on Monday, adding that she had died “peacefully.” No cause was given.With Penny Marshall, Ms. Williams starred in the sitcom, which ran from 1976 to 1983 and was a spinoff of the television show “Happy Days.” It followed two young single women working at a Milwaukee brewery in the 1950s. Ms. Williams played Shirley Feeney, an upbeat and demure complement to Ms. Marshall’s brash Laverne DeFazio.“Laverne & Shirley” ran for eight seasons and, for several years, was among the highest-rated shows in the country. Ms. Williams appeared in more than 150 episodes but left in the final season of the show, after considerable on-set tension between her and Ms. Marshall. Ms. Marshall died in 2018, also at age 75.Ms. Williams is survived by her children, Emily and Zak Hudson, who, in a statement on Monday, described their mother as “one of a kind,” noting her sense of humor and “glittering spirit.” Her marriage to the musician Bill Hudson ended in divorce.Ms. Williams signing copies of her book “Shirley, I Jest! A Storied Life” in 2015.Beck Starr/Getty ImagesBefore Ms. Williams debuted in the role that would most define her career, she was cast in the George Lucas film “American Graffiti,” released in 1973. For her portrayal of Laurie in the film, she earned a nomination for best supporting actress from the British Academy Film Awards. The next year, she was in the Francis Ford Coppola film “The Conversation.” American Graffiti” and “The Conversation” garnered best picture nominations at the Academy Awards.Ms. Williams also auditioned for the role of Princess Leia in the “Star Wars” franchise, a part that eventually went to Carrie Fisher.Later in her career, Ms. Williams was a guest star on well-known television shows such as “Law and Order: SVU” and “7th Heaven” and earned several stage credits including the Broadway production of “The Drowsy Chaperone,” in which she briefly played Mrs. Tottendale.But she was best known as Shirley.“She was sort of an optimist, kindhearted, repressed, temperamental, fun-loving person,” Ms. Williams once said of her character. “I always saw her as having this fear,” she added, noting that while Shirley’s desires were never explicitly played out onscreen, both Laverne and Shirley strove for the comforts of modern life.“That was the sadness of those characters to me,” Ms. Williams added. “What if that never happens, then where are we? And that was sort of my life, too.”Born in Van Nuys, Calif., a neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley region of Los Angeles, on Aug. 22, 1947, Cynthia Jane Williams became interested in acting during high school and attended Los Angeles City College, where she majored in theater arts, according to biographies provided by Ms. Cranis. “I’m what you might call a ‘Valley Girl,’” Ms. Williams wrote in her 2015 memoir, “Shirley, I Jest! A Storied Life.”She worked at a pancake house, as well at the Whisky a Go Go nightclub in Hollywood, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Ms. Williams went on to perform in commercials for deodorant and sunglasses, some of which never aired, she said in an interview with the Television Academy. Her early television roles included parts on “Room 222,” “Nanny and the Professor” and “Love, American Style.”“I always played the lead’s best friend, always,” she said.Then known for her seemingly guileless American sweetheart presence, Ms. Williams turned that expectation inside out with an exceptionally sly performance in “The Conversation.” In the film, the viewer pieces together her words from a surreptitiously recorded conversation, expecting her to be a helpless victim, not the calculating femme fatale that she is. More dramatic roles might have followed, but she turned to situation comedy instead.Ms. Williams and Ms. Marshall were writing partners at Zoetrope, a production company founded by Mr. Coppola, where they were working on a prospective TV spoof for the bicentennial, when Garry Marshall, Ms. Marshall’s brother, asked if the two women would guest star on his show “Happy Days” as easy dates for Fonzie (Henry Winkler) and Richie (Ron Howard). Fonzie claimed Laverne for himself, while Shirley was meant for Richie, reuniting Ms. Williams with her “American Graffiti” co-star, Mr. Howard, who had played her boyfriend in that film.The episode of “Happy Days,” which aired in 1975, was so popular that Mr. Marshall pitched Fred Silverman, a top executive at ABC, about doing a comedy starring the two, arguing that there were no other shows about blue-collar women.The opening credits of “Laverne and Shirley” featured a school rhyme and a heartwarming mission statement that summed up the duo’s playful, hopeful ethic that anyone could relate to: They might just be young working-class women in the big city, but they are going to make their dreams come true.Laverne and Shirley’s high jinks were reminiscent of those of Lucy Ricardo and Ethel Mertz on “I Love Lucy,” but, for this classic comedy duo, Shirley was (usually) the calmer and dreamier of the pair. With her breezy personality, Ms. Williams demonstrated an easy flair for portraying the awkwardness of youth in broad physical comedy.In a review of “Laverne & Shirley” in 1976, John J. O’Connor, the television critic for The New York Times, wrote: “Both title roles are played to a splendid noncondescending turn. Miss Williams and Miss Marshall touch all the best bases, a bit of Barbara Stanwyck in “Stella Dallas” here, a bit of Giùlietta Masina in “La Strada’ there, touches of Lucille Ball, Eve Arden and that crowd all over the place.”Though the actresses shared the screen, Ms. Williams sometimes felt that her co-star got preferential treatment because of her connection to Mr. Marshall. For her part, Ms. Marshall felt that Ms. Williams’s husband at the time, Mr. Hudson, who wanted to be a producer, was too demanding.At the beginning of the show’s final season, viewers watched Ms. Williams marry Walter Meeney — and become Shirley Feeney Meeney. Soon afterward, however, her long run had an ignominious end, with the plot claiming Shirley had followed her new husband overseas, leaving only a note to say goodbye. In reality, the actress had hoped to work with the show to hide and accommodate her pregnancy. She later sued for $20 million; the case was settled out of court for an undisclosed amount.“‘Laverne & Shirley’” ended abruptly for me,” Ms. Williams wrote in her memoir. “When we shot the first episode, I was four months pregnant. But when it came time to sign the contract for that season I realized that the studio had scheduled me to work on my delivery due date.”“In the wink of an eye, I found myself off the show,” she wrote. “It was so abrupt that I didn’t even have time to gather my personal things.”In 2013, Ms. Williams and Ms. Marshall reunited for an appearance on the Nickelodeon series “Sam & Cat,” a modern show that riffed on the themes of “Laverne & Shirley” and starred Jennette McCurdy and Ariana Grande.Ms. Williams published her memoir two years later, and last year she completed a national theater tour of a one-woman show, “Me, Myself and Shirley.” In the show, she chronicled her life in Hollywood as well as her relationship with Ms. Marshall.“You couldn’t slip a playing card in between us because we just were in rhythm,” she said last year in an interview with NBC. “I couldn’t have done it with anyone else.”Sheelagh McNeill More

  • 138 Shares199 Views

    in Television

    Lisa Loring, Wednesday Addams in ‘The Addams Family,’ Dies at 64

    With her dark clothes and pigtailed hair framing a pale face, Ms. Loring played Wednesday as a young girl obsessed with death on the ABC series, which ran from 1964 to 1966.Lisa Loring, whose creepy yet cherubic portrayal of Wednesday Addams in the 1960s television series “The Addams Family” originated a role that has been revived in films and, most recently, a popular Netflix series, died on Saturday in Burbank, Calif. She was 64.Her death, in a hospital, was confirmed by her daughter Vanessa Callies Dominguez, who said Ms. Loring had been removed from a ventilator after a stroke.Ms. Loring auditioned for the role of Wednesday when she was 5. Her grandmother owned a Mexican restaurant on Ventura Boulevard in the Sherman Oaks neighborhood of Los Angeles that was popular with people in the movie industry, Ms. Dominguez said. Through those connections, Ms. Loring did some child modeling work before she was offered the role on “The Addams Family” in 1964.“I got it because of my pout,” Ms. Loring said in an interview with Daytimers, a soap opera magazine, in 1980.In one episode that has become a fan favorite, she teaches the family’s butler, Lurch, how to dance.“Loosen up a little,” Wednesday says, all sliding feet and wobbly knees as she encourages her zombielike sidekick. “Let yourself go.”Ms. Loring as Wednesday Addams in 1964. She auditioned for the role when she was 5.Filmways/Album, via AlamyMs. Loring and Ted Cassidy, as Lurch, in an episode of “The Addams Family” from 1964.ABC Photo Archives/Getty ImagesLisa Ann DeCinces was born on Feb. 16, 1958, on Kwajalein, in the Marshall Islands, the only child of James P. DeCinces, who was stationed there with the U.S. Navy, and Judith Ann (Callies) DeCinces. Her parents divorced not long after the family moved to Los Angeles when she was a toddler.“The Addams Family,” which premiered on ABC in 1964, was based on spooky but harmless characters that Charles Addams created for a series of cartoons that first appeared in The New Yorker in 1938. The television series focused mostly on Wednesday’s parents, Gomez and Morticia (John Astin and Carolyn Jones), as heads of a zany household that included Uncle Fester; Grandmama; Wednesday’s brother, Pugsley; and a disembodied hand, known as Thing, that popped out of a box.Addams did not give his characters names until they were developed for television in the mid-1960s. He said he named Wednesday after a line in the nursery rhyme “Monday’s Child,” which noted that “Wednesday’s child is full of woe.”With her dark clothes and pigtailed hair framing a pale face, Ms. Loring played Wednesday as a young girl obsessed with death, who talked about chopping off her doll’s head or feeding her pet spider.The cast of “The Addams Family,” clockwise from top left: Jackie Coogan, John Astin, Blossom Rock, Ted Cassidy, Ken Weatherwax, Carolyn Jones and Ms. Loring.Hulton Archive/Getty ImagesMs. Loring returned to school after “The Addams Family” was canceled in 1966. She married for the first time when she was 15, gave birth to her first child and then divorced a year later, her daughter said.She reprised the Wednesday Addams role for a 1977 reunion special, “Halloween with the New Addams Family.” Her other television credits include “The Girl From U.N.C.L.E.,” “Fantasy Island” and “Barnaby Jones.” Her film credits include “Savage Harbor” (1987), “Way Down in Chinatown” (2014) and “Doctor Spine” (2015).In 1980, she was cast as Cricket Montgomery in the CBS soap opera “As the World Turns.”Ms. Dominguez said her mother thought of acting as a way of supporting her family as a single mother. Acting “was not her love,” Ms. Dominguez said. “It was something that happened to her in her life.”In addition to Ms. Dominguez, Ms. Loring is survived by another daughter, Marianne Stevenson Keller, and two grandchildren. Ms. Loring’s first three marriages ended in divorce. Her husband, Graham Ritch, died last year, Ms. Dominguez said.The role of Wednesday Addams has been reinvented many times for television, film and the stage. The latest incarnation is “Wednesday,” a Netflix series starring Jenna Ortega, 20, as a teenage version of the character who is sent to a boarding school for outcasts, vampires and werewolves. Ms. Ortega has cited Ms. Loring among the inspirations for her iteration of Wednesday’s dance moves, which became a sensation on TikTok and in dance clubs.In an interview at Silicon Valley Comic Con in 2018, Ms. Loring said she was so young when she auditioned to play Wednesday that she had not yet learned to read, much less dance.“Who taught me to dance like that?” she said. “I can’t dance like that!” More

  • 150 Shares99 Views

    in Theater

    ‘Asi Wind’s Inner Circle’ Review: Pick a Card, Not Just Any Card

    A master at the top of his game, the magician Asi Wind performs fluidly and with obvious pleasure.The magician Asi Wind makes no claims to supernatural ability or superhuman prowess. He is not a conceptualist, like Derek DelGaudio, or a storyteller, in the manner of Helder Guimarães, or a mentalist, like Derren Brown, or an endurance artist, in the style of his producer, David Blaine. His tasteful outfit layers black on black on black, he scorns flash and eyeliner. His sole prop, beyond a couple of paper envelopes, is a deck of cards. That deck has been created by the audience, with ushers handing ticket holders a card and a Sharpie and asking them to inscribe their names.But when Wind manipulates those cards — with the occasional ornate shuffle that speaks to thousands of hours of practice — he reveals himself as one of the finest practitioners of close-up magic, an intimate style that depends on the adroit manipulation of small objects, working today. In the past months, I’d had a couple of colleagues and a couple of rival magicians tell me that Wind was the best card magician they had ever seen. They weren’t wrong.“Are you seeing this right now?” a man in the audience said, loudly and aghast, as Wind completed the first trick of “Asi Wind’s Inner Circle.” Thanks to a purpose-built theater inside Judson Church and the judicious use of an overhead camera, yes, we were.Wind, who moved to New York from Israel 22 years ago, is bluntly handsome in a sportscaster kind of way, with a polished smile and an elegant bush of salt-and-pepper hair. A friendly host, he moves between affability and gentle needling. “I’m going to lie to you tonight, a lot,” he says, eyes agleam.Here is one truth: Most of the tricks he does, under John Lovick’s invisible direction, are familiar. Cards will appear in wallets, in envelopes, under watches. He will pick them and guess them and arrange them in precise patterns when they ought to be random. Yet it’s not what he does but how he does it, with seeming effortlessness and obvious pleasure, a master at the tippy-top of his game. His ability to force a card on a volunteer — and force it and force it and force it again — is unimprovable. Excepting a few deliberate feints (moments in which Wind will appear to have guessed wrong, though he never does), he tends toward perfection.The title “Inner Circle” is a minor play on words. The rows of seats, steeply raked, overlook a round velvet-topped table, which seats about 10 people, who assist with most of the tricks. Close-up magic is usually designed for an audience of this size, and certainly those viewers are privileged in sitting so close. (Too close? “Come a little closer,” Wind said, beckoning his table mates in. “Covid is over. I heard it on Fox News.”) But Wind has a way of bringing everyone in and making everyone feel a part of the show.The show has a thematic spine, though this spine is somewhat flimsy. Wind uses the deck of audience-signed cards as an opportunity to meditate, briefly, on the names we are given and the names that we might choose. Wind was born Asi Betesh. At 13, he changed it. This was both to spare Westerners the difficulty of pronouncing his original surname (apparently we struggle sufficiently with Asi) and to occlude his Sephardic Jewish origins, which he then found embarrassing.These ruminations are not Wind’s strongest suit. A practiced showman, he is clearly most comfortable with diamonds, hearts, clubs and spades. But whether you call Wind by his given name or his chosen one seems almost beside the point. If you spend an hour watching him manipulate the cards — fluently, fluidly — you will want to call him what he is: astonishing.Asi Wind’s Inner CircleThrough May 28 at the Gym at Judson, Manhattan; asiwind.com. Running time: 1 hour 10 minutes. More

  • 125 Shares179 Views

    in Television

    Annie Wersching, Star of ‘Star Trek: Picard,’ Dies at 45

    Ms. Wersching was best known for playing the Borg Queen on the Paramount+ “Star Trek” series. She was also on the television series “24,” “Bosch” and “Timeless.”The actress Annie Wersching, best known for her roles on the television series “Star Trek: Picard,” “24,” “Bosch” and “Timeless,” died on Sunday morning in Los Angeles. She was 45.Ms. Wersching’s death was confirmed by her publicist, Craig Schneider. The cause was cancer, Mr. Schneider said in a statement released on Sunday. He noted that Ms. Wersching was diagnosed in 2020 but had continued her acting work, playing the Borg Queen on the second season of “Picard,” a “Star Trek” spinoff on Paramount+, as well as the serial killer Rosalind Dyer on the ABC crime series “The Rookie.”Ms. Wersching was also known for playing Julia Brasher, a police officer on the Amazon series “Bosch,” and Emma Whitmore, an engineer, on the NBC series “Timeless.” On Fox’s “24,” she played the special F.B.I. agent Renee Walker.Ms. Wersching, with Kiefer Sutherland, starred in two seasons of “24” on Fox.FoxMs. Wersching also provided the voice for the character Tess in The Last of Us, a 2013 video game that has recently been adapted into a television series on HBO.“There is a cavernous hole in the soul of this family today,” Ms. Wersching’s husband, the actor Stephen Full, said in a statement. “But she left us the tools to fill it. She found wonder in the simplest moment. She didn’t require music to dance. She taught us not to wait for adventure to find you.”Mr. Full noted that whenever he and his sons left their house, Ms. Wersching would shout “Bye!” until they were out of earshot.“I can still hear it ringing,” he added. “Bye, my Buddie.”In an interview with the Paramount+ show “The Ready Room,” Ms. Wersching described playing the Borg Queen as “certainly a little intimidating.” She noted that she had familiarized herself with the role and those who had previously played it before going forward with her own interpretation and performance. “It’s such an iconic role,” she said. “I’m incredibly excited to have everyone see.”Ms. Wersching starred as the Borg Queen on “Star Trek: Picard.”Paramount+In a statement released on Sunday, Akiva Goldsman, an executive producer of “Picard,” described Ms. Wersching as a “gift” and an “utter joy” to work with. “Her entire ‘Star Trek’ family is heartbroken,” he said.Jon Cassar, director and producer of “24,” said in a statement that he mourned the loss of a colleague and a friend. “Annie came into my world with an open heart and a contagious smile,” he said. “Brandishing such talent, she took my breath away.” He added, “She’ll be truly missed.”Ms. Wersching was born and raised by her parents, Sandy and Frank Wersching, in St. Louis. She is survived by her husband and their three children, Freddie, Ozzie and Archie Full. More

  • 138 Shares139 Views

    in Television

    What’s on TV This Week: ‘Fight the Power’ and ‘The Ark’

    Chuck D hosts a documentary about hip-hop on PBS. And a new science fiction series debuts on Syfy.Between network, cable and streaming, the modern television landscape is a vast one. Here are some of the shows, specials and movies coming to TV this week, Jan. 30 to Feb. 5. Details and times are subject to change.MondayEAST OF EDEN (1955) 3:45 p.m. on TCM. In this classic adaptation, the director Elia Kazan brings to the screen John Steinbeck’s semi-autobiographical work of fiction, which incorporates the history of his family into a modern-day retelling of the Book of Genesis’s story of Cain and Abel. The film is set in California’s Salinas Valley on the eve of World War I and follows the ever-changing and evolving dynamics between the Trask family — a lettuce farmer, Adam (Raymond Massey), and his twin sons, Aron (Richard Davalos), the favorite, and Caleb (James Dean), the jealous rebel who yearns for Adam’s love. “This is not a simple tale of good and evil, of crime and punishment,” A.O. Scott, the New York Times co-chief film critic, described in a 2011 video feature on the film. And “this is not what you find in the Bible,” Scott said. “In place of a religious conception of human nature based on fixed ideas of good and bad, ‘East of Eden’ proposes a psychological dynamic of complicated human relationships.”TuesdayFIGHT THE POWER: HOW HIP HOP CHANGED THE WORLD 9 p.m. on PBS. From the Grammy-nominated rapper Chuck D and his producing partner, Lorrie Boula, comes a new series that examines the relationship between hip-hop and the political history of the United States. The series features interviews with Killer Mike, Will.i.am, Monie Love, Ice-T, Roxanne Shante, MC Lyte and others as it traces the genre from its start as an underground movement in the Bronx to its emergence as one of the most popular music categories in the country. Tuesday’s premiere begins with an exploration of the art form’s origins.WednesdayTiana Upcheva in “The Ark.”Aleksandar Letic/Ark TV Holdings, Inc./SyfyTHE ARK 10 p.m. on Syfy. This new science fiction series from Dean Devlin, a producer of the films “Stargate,” “Independence Day” and “Godzilla,” and Jonathan Glassner, a producer of the TV show “Stargate SG-1,” takes place 100 years in the future aboard a self-sustaining spaceship tasked with finding humanity a new home as Earth becomes uninhabitable. The series focuses on the human condition as a diverse cast of characters reacts to unforeseen catastrophes aboard the vessel.ThursdayJude Hill in “Belfast.”Rob Youngson/Focus FeaturesBELFAST (2021) 6:20 p.m. on FX. An Academy Award nominee and a winner of the People’s Choice Award, “Belfast” is a semi-autobiographical film from Kenneth Branagh that is based on his childhood in Northern Ireland during the conflict known as “The Troubles.” Set in 1969, the film follows 9-year-old Buddy (Jude Hill), the fictional version of Branagh, as he lives through an ethnonationalist conflict between the loyalists (mostly Protestants) and unionists (referred to as the Catholics) that he doesn’t understand. “While ‘Belfast’ is, in one sense, a deeply personal coming-of-age tale, it’s also a more universal story of displacement and detachment,” Jeannette Catsoulis wrote in her review for The Times.FridayRENT (2005) 4:05 p.m. on HBO2. Adapted from the Pulitzer- and Tony-winning Broadway musical loosely based on Giacomo Puccini’s opera “La Bohème,” “Rent” focuses on the trials and tribulations of a group of friends living in an unheated East Village apartment in New York during the H.I.V. and AIDS crisis. Beginning on Christmas Eve 1989 and ending a year later, the film follows Mark (Anthony Rapp), an aspiring filmmaker; Roger (Adam Pascal), an H.I.V.-positive recovering addict; Benny (Taye Diggs), a roommate turned landlord; and Maureen (Idina Menzel), an activist and Mark’s ex-girlfriend, on their journeys through love, addiction and disease. “The movie applied a cinematic sheen to the scenes of this seedier New York,” the Times critic Maya Phillips wrote in a 2020 essay. Still, she wrote, “the message of ‘Rent’ isn’t just a glib carpe diem but a resounding declaration of ‘stand with your community despite’ and ‘make art despite.’”SaturdayFrom left, Corin Rogers, Joseph Carter Wilson, Glynn Turman and Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs in “Cooley High.”Olive FilmsMALCOLM X (1992), COOLEY HIGH (1975) and SOUNDER (1972) at 4:30 p.m., 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. on TCM. During its Black History Month Saturdays, Turner Classic Movies is celebrating with eight works of Black cinema. Its roundup is a collection of both obscure and highly regarded films that work together to represent a range of actors, directors and stories. The three films playing on Saturday are representative of that collection, starting with a biographical drama on the life of Malcolm X (played by Denzel Washington) from Spike Lee, who used Malcolm X’s autobiography and an unfinished screenplay by Arnold Perl to inform the film. Next are two coming-of-age films, starting with “Cooley High,” which “documents perhaps that last moment in modern American history — 1964 — when it was possible for young Blacks to see their color as simply one of the components of their personalities,” Jack Slater wrote in his 1975 review of the film for The Times. The film, based on the experiences of its writer, Eric Monte, and produced by Michael Schultz, who today is credited as one of the longest-working Black directors in history, is set on Chicago’s Near North Side and follows the high jinks of a group of friends in their last year of high school. The night is rounded off with the Oscar-nominated classic “Sounder,” a Depression-era movie that centers on two Louisiana sharecroppers, Nathan (Paul Winfield) and Rebecca (Cicely Tyson), their three children and the family dog, Sounder.SundayAMERICAN PAIN 9 p.m. on CNN. This special, directed by the documentary filmmaker Darren Foster (“Science Fair”), traces the rise and fall of two of America’s most prolific opioid kingpins: the identical twins Chris and Jeff George, who trafficked more than $500 million in opioid pills. Through F.B.I. wiretap recordings, undercover videos and jailhouse interviews, the documentary explores the lives of the George twins and how they helped fuel one of the worst drug epidemics in U.S. history. More

  • 150 Shares99 Views

    in Television

    ‘The Last of Us’ Season 1, Episode 3: One More Good Day

    This week’s episode, starring Nick Offerman and Murray Bartlett, stepped away from the main action, offering a melancholy vignette about companionship.‘The Last of Us’ Season 1, Episode 3: ‘Long Long Time’In last week’s episode of “The Last of Us,” Ellie waded through a flooded hotel lobby, delighting in the decaying grandeur of a social institution she had only read about. This week, she spends a few hours in an elegant old house, filled with vintage furniture and a piano. She has no context — not even from books — for what a home like this really means.Joel, on the other hand, has dined with and traded with the house’s former residents, Bill (Nick Offerman) and Frank (Murray Bartlett), many times over the previous 15 years. Joel keeps his feelings to himself, but it is easy to imagine that for him this home was a portal to a safer, cozier past, like the one he lived back in Austin.How must Joel feel then, when he finds Bill and Frank dead?This is the first episode in this season to skip the pre-credits scene, which in the previous two weeks had been devoted to a brief flashback. Instead, most of the 70-minute running time is spent on one long journey into the past, stretching from the frantic early days of the cordyceps plague, in 2003, to one quietly bittersweet day in 2023, not long before Joel and Ellie knock on Bill and Frank’s door. Over that 20-year stretch, we see the story of a love affair — doubling as a short, sweet lesson about what survival really means.As someone whose favorite post-apocalyptic movie is George Romero’s “Dawn of the Dead” — with all of its long scenes of survivors constructing a combination fortress-oasis in a shopping mall — I could have lingered forever in this episode’s 2003 segment. After the government has evacuated his neighbors, Bill, a doomsday prepper in a quaint Massachusetts town, raids the Home Depot, the gas plant and the wine store, and he eventually builds a fence around his neighborhood and its nearby shops, fortifying it with security cameras, electric fencing and booby traps.With his gardening and hunting skills, Bill has all he needs to survive. But he lacks a larger sense of purpose. Four years later, when a stranger, Frank, falls into one of his pits, Bill softens. Frank, a refugee from Baltimore’s failed Quarantine Zone, persuades his captor to give him some food and let him take a shower. With someone — at last — to show off his skills to, Bill delivers an elegant gourmet rabbit lunch, paired with a fine Beaujolais.Inside the Dystopian World of ‘The Last of Us’The post-apocalyptic video game that inspired the TV series “The Last of Us” won over players with its photorealistic animation and a morally complex story.Game Review: “I found it hard to get past what it embraces with a depressing sameness, particularly its handling of its female characters,” our critic wrote of “The Last of Us” in 2013.‘Left Behind’: “The Last of Us: Left Behind,” a prologue designed to be played in a single sitting, was an unexpected hit in 2014.2020 Sequel: “The Last of Us Part II,” a tale of entrenched tribalism in a world undone by a pandemic, took a darker and unpredictable tone that left critics in awe.Playing the Game: Two Times reporters spent weeks playing the sequel in the run-up to its release. These were their first impressions.Later, the two men take turns playing the piano and singing the Gary White love song “Long, Long Time,” made famous by Linda Ronstadt. The lyrics prove prescient. After Frank coaxes Bill to admit that he has never acted on his attraction to men, they slip into bed together, with Frank promising, “I’m going to start with the simple things.”What follows are two more poignant vignettes, from 2010 and 2013, showing the comfortable life these two lovers settle into. Bill can’t entirely shake his fear of losing everything to the authorities or to the infected — a paranoia more intense now that he has someone to protect. But Frank nevertheless urges him to make their immediate surroundings more attractive and permanent. Then he invites over some friends he met on the radio: Joel and Tess. All this domesticity leads Bill to worry that taking pleasure in basic human interactions will be a distraction from his mission to survive, leading to near-fatal mistakes — like the night when raiders try to infiltrate the compound, and Bill gets shot.But Bill survives that attack, and instead it’s Frank who falls apart, succumbing to some unspecified illness in 2023. In their house, now filled with Frank’s paintings instead of Bill’s mother’s cross-stitch samplers, the men agree to have “one more good day” together before drinking wine laced with a lethal dose of painkillers.Some time later — perhaps weeks — Joel and Ellie find the couple’s dirty dishes, along with a note urging them not to open the bedroom door and see the corpses. (We never see them either. The episode closes with a shot drifting backward into their room’s open window; but it never shows the bed.)It’s frankly remarkable that what is ostensibly an action-horror series could make time — in its third episode, no less — for an alternately heartwarming and heartbreaking short film about companionship. It’s as though the opening montage from the movie “Up” were extended to about 45 minutes and then dropped into the middle of “World War Z.”It’s even more remarkable that the writer Craig Mazin and the director Neil Druckmann have made this little interlude not only relevant to the plot but also potentially essential to what this series is going to be about. On a surface level, what happens here is that Joel and Ellie get access to Bill and Frank’s stash, including a truck, a lot of guns and other essential supplies. But on a deeper level, this episode is about how even amid a world-ending crisis, the taste of a fresh strawberry can make a person want to stick around for another day.“Paying attention to things — it’s how we show love,” Frank says; and Mazin and Druckmann back that up with their own small details, like how when Frank first arrives, Bill’s dining room furniture is covered in dust. But by their last day, Bill is voluntarily watering the flowers. Again: It’s the simple things.The episode is also about Joel’s growing dependency on Ellie — he is starting to need her as much as she needs him. Bill’s goodbye note says to Joel that “men like you and me” are meant to take care of people, and that so long as there is “one person worth saving,” they can live a fulfilling life. In the note, Bill tells Joel to look after Tess — a line that hits our man so hard that he has to step outside for a few minutes. (Joel won’t talk about Tess with Ellie, though at one point we do see him building a tower of rocks by a creek, presumably in her honor.)So he needs to refocus; and he needs to start caring more about Ellie, the foul-mouthed chatterbox who until now he has mostly just ordered around. (Not that she ever obeys.) This kid who is fascinated by tales of video games, restaurants and airplanes may help him see the world differently. When they hop into Bill’s truck to head off to Joel’s brother’s Firefly compound in Wyoming, Ellie is excited about everything in the vehicle, which she’s seeing for the first time. (“It’s like a spaceship!”) As they pull out of the compound, she pops in a cassette tape, and Joel is moved to hear “Long, Long Time,” a song that clearly means a lot to him, too, for his own unspoken reasons.Ellie, of course, has no emotional associations with this song. (“You know I don’t know who Linda Ronstadt is.”) But right there, at that moment, they are making a new connection, together.Side QuestsOn their way to Bill and Frank’s, Ellie pesters Joel with questions about the pandemic, and he explains to her — and to us — more about what happened. Although the origins of the cordyceps mutation remain unknown, many believe the fungus contaminated some common worldwide grocery staple, like flour. Infections began taking hold on a Thursday. By the following Monday, society collapsed, as people were either herded into Quarantine Zones or slaughtered by the military. Everything happened so fast that no one had time to prepare. Rash choices made during a frenzied weekend still linger.Those radio broadcasts that let Joel know about trouble outside the Q.Z.? It turns out they originated from Bill and Frank’s place. (The decade-specific pop music code was Frank’s idea.)In a parallel to the sequence in which Bill fortifies his neighborhood, we see Joel and Ellie stock up for their road trip, grabbing clean clothes, toilet paper, deodorant and other basics. Joel won’t let Ellie take a gun; but when he isn’t looking, she finds the pistol Frank kept stashed in a writing desk, and she shoves into her backpack. This will undoubtedly appear again later.Mazin’s dialogue captures the easy affection Bill and Frank have toward each other. It’s all about their gentle pokes and running jokes — the stuff that becomes the foundation of a long relationship. It’s clear these guys are going to hit it off from the moment they meet, when Bill says he is hesitant to feed Frank because he doesn’t want other bums to come by looking for a free lunch — “This is not an Arby’s,” he grumbles. And even though Frank is facing a gun-wielding paranoiac, he can’t help but reply, “Arby’s didn’t have free lunch; it was a restaurant.” More

  • 150 Shares189 Views

    in Television

    “The Traitors” Host Alan Cumming Wore His Own Clothes on the Show

    On “The Traitors,” a reality game show framed as a whodunit, host Alan Cumming’s wardrobe has some viewers on the edge of their seats.“The Traitors,” a new reality game show, hinges on startling revelations. In episodes of the series, which is framed as a whodunit, cast members are regularly “murdered” (kicked off). Others are “banished” (also kicked off). But some of the most astonishing reveals have nothing to do with the plot — and everything to do with what outfit the show’s host, the actor Alan Cumming, will appear in next.There are pink plaid suits. Herringbone tweed capes. Sleek little kilts. “Perhaps, rather alarmingly,” Mr. Cumming said, “the vast majority of the clothes were mine.”Some fans of “The Traitors,” which premiered this month on Peacock, said Mr. Cumming’s knack for turning natty looks became a favorite part of tuning in. “I really appreciated that he was dressing in so many colors,” said Catherine Maddox, 39, a lab manager in Boston.The series, which is based on a show from the Netherlands, arrived in the United States after a British adaptation (not hosted by Mr. Cumming) became a surprise hit last year. Contestants on the American version are a mix of celebrities made famous by past reality shows — including Arie Luyendyk (“The Bachelor”), Cirie Fields (“Survivor”), and Kate Chastain (“Below Deck”) — and people who have yet to earn their 15 minutes of fame.Mr. Cumming, whose demeanor is at once macabre and flirtatious, presides over them as they compete for a cash prize on the grounds of Ardross Castle, an estate in the Scottish Highlands once owned by an heir to the Lea & Perrins Worcestershire sauce empire.Many of the clothes Mr. Cumming wears on the show came from his own closet.Photographs by Euan Cherry/PeacockSam Spector, who styled Mr. Cumming for “The Traitors,” wanted to achieve an aesthetic that he described as Sherlock Holmes, with a touch of “villain from a James Bond movie.”Euan Cherry/PeacockThe set was meant to evoke “Clue,” the murder-mystery board game turned movie, said Mathieu Weekes, the production designer of “The Traitors.” To freshen up the 19th-century castle, his team decorated it with ruby red dining room chairs, a crimson love seat, an emerald couch and other vibrant furniture. “Our first reference for color was the film ‘Knives Out,’” Mr. Weekes said. “We wanted to make it feel quite quirky.”Rarely do reality show sets “have this vintage maximalism,” said Rachel Trombetta, an architectural researcher who works in film and TV. Mr. Weekes, the production designer, said that the set of “The Traitors” was “quite different to create” than those of previous reality shows he has worked on (among them: “I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here!”) “We wanted to break from the norm and try to give it sort of its own identity,” he said.Setting the show at such a spectacular location meant its host needed a wardrobe that would “relate to the craziness of this beautiful castle,” said Sam Spector, who styled Mr. Cumming for “The Traitors.” Thankfully, Mr. Cumming, who is Scottish, had a closet full of suits, kilts and plus fours that could serve as a foundation for the aesthetic he and Mr. Spector wanted to achieve. “We talked about trying to make this sort of dandy,” Mr. Cumming said, “this eccentric Scottish laird.” Or, as Mr. Spector put it: Sherlock Holmes, with a touch of “villain from a James Bond movie.”Robin Emry, a 31-year-old researcher in London who has seen both the British and American versions of “The Traitors,” described Mr. Cumming’s wardrobe as “Vivienne Westwood meets Vincent Price.”To make Mr. Cumming’s clothes pop even more, Mr. Spector accessorized the host in fly plaids, a type of Scottish scarf worn over one shoulder, hats, capes, sashes and opulent brooches, which tied many of his outfits together (literally and figuratively). Some of his accessories, like a pair of blue opera-length gloves, were made especially for the show.“The gloves are just hilarious,” Mr. Cumming said. He wears them with what he called “a little policeman’s cape” and a porkpie hat — an eccentric get-up that even he said pushed the limits of an already theatrical wardrobe.“It’s the most mental look,” Mr. Cumming said, “but I love it.” More