Eliana Willis

More stories

  • 150 Shares119 Views

    in Television

    Late Night Recaps Harris’s Time on Fox News and Trump’s on Univision

    “Yes, both Kamala and Trump went into ‘the lion’s den’ this week — although they only got Trump there by telling him it was the name of a strip club,” Desi Lydic said on “The Daily Show.”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.Lions, Foxes and BaiersVice President Kamala Harris appeared on Fox News on Wednesday, where she was interrupted several times during an interview with Bret Baier, the network’s chief political anchor. On the same day, former President Donald Trump held a Univision town hall, where, as Desi Lydic joked on Thursday’s “Daily Show,” he “faced down his biggest fear: Hispanic people.”“Yes, both Kamala and Trump went into ‘the lion’s den’ this week — although they only got Trump there by telling him it was the name of a strip club.” — DESI LYDIC“I’d like to point out that there is no difference between his nervous swaying to Spanish and his dancing to ‘Ave Maria.’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Now Kamala’s ‘lion’s den’ was Fox News, so I guess it was a Fox den, where she sat down with Bret Baier — so maybe it was a Baier’s den.” — DESI LYDIC“I want to be clear about this: I believe that journalists should always ask the toughest questions of presidential candidates, and Bret Baier certainly plays a convincing journalist on Fox News.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Come on, Bret, you invited her on to speak with you. This is an interview with the vice president, not sex with your wife — you have to let the woman finish.” — DESI LYDICThe Punchiest Punchlines (Winning? Edition)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

  • 150 Shares119 Views

    in Theater

    Sadie Sink to Star in ‘John Proctor Is the Villain’ on Broadway

    Kimberly Belflower’s “John Proctor Is the Villain” will be directed by Danya Taymor, who won a Tony this year for “The Outsiders.”Sadie Sink, one of the breakout performers from “Stranger Things,” will star next spring in a new Broadway play about a group of high school students reading “The Crucible” while reckoning with the impact of the #MeToo movement.The comedic drama, Kimberly Belflower’s “John Proctor Is the Villain,” has taken an unusual path: It has been licensed for nearly 100 nonprofessional productions, many of them at high schools and colleges, before arriving on Broadway. (The journey generally goes in the other direction — plays that are well-received on Broadway then get staged around the country, often first at regional theaters and only then at school venues.)Set in the spring of 2018, the play takes place mostly in a classroom in rural Georgia, where the juniors in an honors English class are reading “The Crucible,” Arthur Miller’s 1953 play about the Salem witch trials. At the same time, some of the students are encountering pushback to their efforts to form a feminism club.The play has nine characters — seven students, the English teacher and a guidance counselor — and explores how the students’ ideas and ideals are challenged by unfolding events in their own lives.“As the play goes on, things get very close to home, and the characters have to grapple with what they believe, and who they believe,” said Belflower, 37, an assistant professor of dramatic writing at Emory University in Atlanta. Like the characters in her play, she grew up in a small conservative Georgia community and read “The Crucible” in a high school English class.“Right after the tidal wave of #metoo hit, Woody Allen called it a witch hunt, and my theater nerd brain was like, ‘I should reread “The Crucible”,’ and I was struck by how different it was than I remembered it,” she said. “I was talking to my dad, and I uttered the phrase ‘John Proctor is the villain.’”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

  • 88 Shares149 Views

    in Theater

    How Florence Welch Turned Rage Into Power

    O winged Lady,Like a birdYou scavenge the land.Like a charging stormYou charge,Like a roaring stormYou roar,You thunder in thunder,Snort in rampaging winds.Your feet are continually restless.Carrying your harp of sighs,You breathe out the music of mourning. — from “Hymn to Inanna” by Enheduanna,translated from the Sumerian by Jane Hirshfield PROPHETESS ONE RISKS ANGERING the gods […] More

  • 150 Shares169 Views

    in Television

    Sex, Horses and Stately Homes: Bringing a Naughty British Romance to TV

    Walking into Jilly Cooper’s house in the English countryside is like stepping inside one of her novels.The living room walls are covered in pictures or bookshelves, and the surfaces by ceramic cats, dogs and horses. Pictures of loved ones (family) and notables (royal family) are scattered throughout the room. The windows look over a landscape of rolling hills.It was from this 14th-century home, and on a manual typewriter, that Cooper, 87, wrote the “Rutshire Chronicles,” an 11-book series of romance novels featuring the handsome and troubled horse-riding hero Rupert Campbell-Black. The novels sold 12 million copies in Britain, where they shaped a generation readers’ ideas about romance, sex and the upper classes in the ’80s and ’90s.Known as “the queen of the bonkbuster” — an amalgam of “blockbuster” and “bonking,” a very English way of referring to you-know-what — Cooper’s name is synonymous in Britain with juicy romance and well-heeled naughtiness. In the United States, it has less resonance.Disney+ and Hulu are hoping to change that with the premiere, on Friday, of “Rivals,” an eight-part series based on Cooper’s 1988 novel of the same title from the “Rutshire Chronicles.”“I’m knocked out, because I love this book so much,” Cooper said in a recent interview. “I think it’s my favorite one.” Seeing it turned into a series, she said, was a “great treat,” especially at her age. “Eighty-seven is so old,” she said. “What’s 87 in dog years?”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

  • 88 Shares149 Views

    in Television

    Jimmy Kimmel Slams Trump’s Women-Centered Town Hall

    “This was the first time Groper Cleveland has been around this many women since they started padlocking the doors at Miss Teen USA,” Kimmel said on Wednesday.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.Father FigureOn Tuesday, former President Donald Trump held a town hall in front of what Jimmy Kimmel called “a handpicked audience of Trump-loving women in Georgia.”“This was the first time Groper Cleveland has been around this many women since they started padlocking the doors at Miss Teen USA.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“In the first part, the women asked questions, and in the second part, Trump went through and rated them physically from 1 to 10.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“One lucky lady was named Miss Fox News Town Hall ’24, so congratulations.” — JIMMY KIMMELAt one point during the town hall, Trump proclaimed himself “the father of I.V.F.”“Now he’s claiming to be the father of I.V.F. — which has been happening since 1978. This guy won’t even admit to being the father of Eric.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“He’s the father of I.V.F. Maybe that’s short for Ivanka, I don’t know.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Punchiest Punchlines (Y.M.C.A. Edition)“You should not vote for someone because they dance to ‘Y.M.C.A.’ But also, I’m not sure you’d call this dancing.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Those are some bad moves, baby. If this president thing doesn’t work out, he ought to think about being a contestant on ‘Swaying With the Stars’ or ‘So You Think You Can Tilt.’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“But no matter how gay his music is, young, straight white men love Donald Trump. They see him as a ‘macho, macho’ man, if you will.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“He eats red meat, he pretends to follow U.F.C., he’s into crypto and sneakers and NFTs. He’s a dude, a bro and a boss all rolled into one.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Bits Worth WatchingOn Wednesday’s “Late Show,” Stanley Tucci fessed up to fabricating his childhood confessions.What We’re Excited About on Thursday NightThe “Grotesquerie” star Niecy Nash-Betts will appear on Thursday’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live.”Also, Check This OutElizabeth Berkley in the 1995 movie “Showgirls.”Murray Close/United ArtistsA new French stage play based on “Showgirls” speaks to the 1995 film’s enduring allure. More

  • 150 Shares139 Views

    in Theater

    Adam Driver in ‘Hold On to Me Darling,’ a Satire of Sincerity

    A country music star embodies the clichés of celebrity in an Off Broadway revival of Kenneth Lonergan’s 2016 comedy.Women fall hard and fast for Strings McCrane, the “third biggest crossover star in the history of country music.” He dates supermodels “at will.” Fangirls who flirt with him at night send him sex tapes in the morning. A hotel masseuse, kneading his sculptural glutes, exclaims: “I’ve had a crush on you since I was in trade school.”Playgoer, he marries her. But not before seducing a young relative at his mother’s funeral. Coming clean to the masseuse, he later owns his indiscretion. “I went to see Essie as a cousin,” he says. “But I stayed there with her as a man.”Did the clichés of country music make Strings (Adam Driver) such a melodramatic, self-justifying, emotional boomerang? Or are his pre-existing gifts in that department what made him a country music star in the first place?These are among the questions you may find yourself asking, in want of much else to do, while watching the baggy, overlong “Hold On to Me Darling,” a comedy by Kenneth Lonergan now being revived at the Lucille Lortel Theater. Well, not so much revived as — like Strings’s mother — embalmed.Other than a few cast changes, most notably Driver in the role first played by Timothy Olyphant, the show is pretty much what it was when it debuted at the Atlantic Theater Company in 2016. The physical production looks as if it had been preserved since then in mothballs, with the same cramped, slowly revolving set by Walt Spangler. The few tweaks to the script are almost invisible. Neither Lonergan nor the director, Neil Pepe, seems to have felt the need for refinement.And why should they have? Lonergan has proved himself a terrific dramatist many times over: “This Is Our Youth,” “The Waverly Gallery,” “Lobby Hero.” This play, too, was well received by most critics, if not by me. It is certainly funny in places, and droll in others; it is occasionally even stinging in its satire of show-business sincerity. We learn that Strings’s most recent celebrity fiancée, making “a statement of solidarity and sexual enlightenment on behalf of the women of Afghanistan,” wore a see-through mesh burqa on a junket there.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

  • 150 Shares199 Views

    in Theater

    In ‘Vladimir,’ a Russian Reporter’s Fight Is an Apt Election Season Tale

    The writer Erika Sheffer takes a big swing in a Manhattan Theater Club production examining “the point at which a society finds itself on the brink.”For Raya Bobrinskaya, a hard-nosed newspaper journalist in Vladimir Putin’s Russia, being poisoned is a hazard of the job. She almost expects it to happen to her at some point.When at last it does, along with the gushing blood and wrenching pain comes instant regret — not over her reporting, but over her 20-something daughter having to witness the attempt on her life.“I’m so sorry,” Raya says. “I didn’t want you to be here for this, I really didn’t, I promise.”Until this whoosh of oxygen to the plot, Erika Sheffer’s new play, “Vladimir,” is a very slow burn. From the end of the first act on, though, the drama crackles, full of tension, intrigue and poignancy.Directed by Daniel Sullivan for Manhattan Theater Club, it is an apt play for this election season: a palimpsest meditation on hijacked democracy. In a program note, Sheffer mentions her distress at the “most recent rise of extremism and violence in American politics.” She began reading about Putin’s ascension, she adds, “and became interested in the point at which a society finds itself on the brink.”“Who chooses to fight and who stays silent?” she asks.In “Vladimir,” at New York City Center Stage I, the choice between courage and complacency tends to be an easy one for the restless, witty Raya (Francesca Faridany). Infuriated by Putin, driven by a love of her country, Raya cannot will herself to avert her gaze from abuse of power, however much safer that would be.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

  • 138 Shares129 Views

    in Television

    ‘Sweet Bobby’ on Netflix Tells the Catfishing Nightmare of Kirat Assi

    A new Netflix documentary tells a sinister tale of a decade-long online romance scam, and the devastation that followed.It started with a Facebook friend request from a man named Bobby.Kirat Assi, a 29-year-old radio host, didn’t usually allow strangers into her private Facebook life. But she’d heard of Bobby, who came from a highly regarded family in their Sikh community in West London. In fact, Ms. Assi’s cousin had dated Bobby’s younger brother, and she’d chatted with him online.So Ms. Assi accepted. It was 2010 after all, and there was still a general sense of optimism about social media. On Facebook, existing friends were coming together and new ones were readily made. It was a seemingly harmless place, full of funny wall posts, photo albums and an endless amount of pokes.For Ms. Assi, now 43, that friend request was the start of what proved to be a decade-long catfishing scheme that is the subject of “Sweet Bobby: My Catfish Nightmare,” a documentary that began streaming on Netflix on Wednesday.True crime and catfishing have been popular subjects for documentaries and podcasts in recent years, but in an interview ahead of the release of “Sweet Bobby,” Ms. Assi said that the often frivolous portrayal of catfishing can dilute the very real, long-lasting devastation these scammers inflict. She prefers to use the term “online entrapment.”“People need to know how bad it gets,” she said, noting neither the documentary nor the podcast that preceded it explained the full extent of the abuse she suffered at the hands of Bobby, as it was deemed too triggering to include.For six years, Ms. Assi and Bobby chatted online as friends. Then, Bobby got divorced and confessed his love to Ms. Assi shortly after. They dated for three years — chatting, texting, sending intimate voice mail messages and falling asleep on overnight Skype calls. Bobby said he had a stroke, and Ms. Assi cared for him from afar.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