Eliana Willis

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    ‘Kite Man’ Is a Fun, Irreverent ‘Harley Quinn’ Spinoff

    Like “Harley,” the series is set among Gotham’s villains and goons, with a similarly lewd and rowdy vibe.“Harley Quinn” is one of the best comedies going these days, quick and filthy and ambitious. (It’s all on Max.) Perhaps predictably, it has earned itself a spinoff; perhaps unpredictably, that spinoff is pegged to one of its lesser characters. “Kite Man: Hell Yeah!,” premiering Thursday on Max, keeps the nervy lewdness and contemporary pop-psychology of “Harley” but redirects its energy to Kite Man (voiced by Matt Oberg).“Kite Man” operates as an ensemble show and might be more accurately titled “Kite Man and Golden Glider,” since Kite Man’s girlfriend has just as big a slice of the narrative pie. On “Harley,” the will-they-won’t-they of Harley and Poison Ivy drives a lot of the first few seasons. Here, Kite Man and Golden Glider (Stephanie Hsu) are together and thriving, in their warped and sometimes dopey ways, from the get go, and their conflicts stem largely from their decision to buy a decrepit bar. Well, that and the super villainy: The setting here, as with “Harley,” is among Gotham’s villains, goons, thugs and scoundrels and their various appetites for destruction.The show gets off to a bumpy start because Kite Man is mostly just an airhead with daddy issues, which the show says overtly and often. The real momentum of the season follows Golden Glider and her mommy issues — hers is the richer story because she is more biting and self aware. I do wish the show dropped all its episodes at once because it makes for such a zesty binge and because I wasn’t quite sold right out of the gate.Even bad guys have their bad guys, and on “Kite Man,” our pals are up against the ever-expanding Villigans corporation. “Villigans isn’t a chain restaurant/global e-commerce/privatized prison system; we’re really a data business,” boasts its leader (Judith Light) as she rattles off personal details and manipulates the gang.If the plot of “Kite Man” doesn’t always quite soar, the dialogue is a ton of fun. “I guess one slippery slope couldn’t hurt,” says a teetotaler looking at a cocktail menu. A new character, Dubelz (Michael Imperioli), a mobster with two heads (sort of …), advises Kite Man that Golden Glider is out of his league. “You’re dating a meatball bigger than your mouth,” he huffs. And all the silliness and non sequiturs mean dramatic lines land even harder. “My parents were doing their favorite thing in their favorite place: fighting in a bar,” Golden Glider laments.The best part of the show — and the best part of “Harley Quinn” — is Bane (James Adomian), and he gets more screen time as the season goes on. His shimmering insecurity and fealty to social rules make him a consistent fish out of water, too rigid for both the evildoers and the regular joes of the world. He gets roped into balloon-animal duty at a child’s birthday party and hands them a mangled snarl. “It is despair!” he announces, proudly.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 ‘Beverly Hills, 90210,’ Shannen Doherty Redefined Teen TV Drama

    As Brenda Walsh, Doherty was the engine of the series that set the template for what a modern teen drama would look like on television.If you liked watching TV on Thursday nights in 1990, you could have spent your spring with Audrey Horne and Donna Hayward, in “Twin Peaks,” and your fall with Brenda Walsh in “Beverly Hills, 90210.” And Brenda, as played memorably by Shannen Doherty, who died on Saturday, knew who her peers were. When she dons a (hideous) hat in Season 1, she is met with derision. “Hippie witch is out,” sneers Kelly (Jennie Garth).“It’s not hippie witch; it’s ‘Twin Peaks,’ and it’s very in,” Brenda snaps back. Ah, back then we were so rich in pouty, put-upon brunettes with brooding motorcycle boyfriends, fraught taste in companions and a desire to listen to the same song over and over.No, Brenda’s outfit is not “Twin Peaks” in any way, but her affection and affectation create a fun hall of mirrors. Brenda herself was a character whose style many sought to emulate, though sadly, God blesses so few of us with such magnificent bangs. Still, it was far easier to incorporate a Walshian choker or silver belt buckle than to pull off an arch “Twin Peaks” saddle shoe.Teens were all over prime-time in 1990. “Parker Lewis Can’t Lose” and “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” also debuted that season, and shows like “Growing Pains,” “Who’s the Boss,” “A Different World” and “Doogie Howser, M.D.” were already airing.But it was “Beverly Hills, 90210” that established the blueprint for what a modern teen drama would be: glossy, aspirational, tackling the topics of the day but bending inexorably — if they lasted — toward soapiness. It was a template followed by series like “Dawson’s Creek,” “One Tree Hill,” “Gossip Girl” and “The O.C.,” among many others.And of all the young beautiful people who populated West Beverly Hills High, it was Brenda who made the show go. As she went from naïf to vixen, from humble Minnesotan to globe-trotting romantic, her transformations transformed the show itself. Grander tragedies befell other characters, but no one suffered heartbreak or betrayal with more intensity than Brenda, the show’s most authentically teenage character. In Doherty’s hands, Brenda was both vulnerable and vituperative, delivering the sharpest insults but in the most pain.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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    Test Your Knowledge of Shakespeare Film Adaptations

    The works of William Shakespeare have inspired countless performances and interpretations over the centuries, but some films show their Shakepearean roots more clearly than others. The challenge here is to identify a handful of those movies in this week’s edition of Great Adaptations, the Book Review’s regular multiple-choice quiz about books and stories that have gone on to find new life in the form of films, television shows, theatrical productions and other formats.Just tap or click your answers to the five questions below. And scroll down after you finish the last question for links to the plays and their screen adaptations.3 of 5“The Taming of the Shrew,” Shakespeare’s controversial comedy about gender roles, has been adapted multiple times for the stage and screen, with the 1999 teen rom-com “10 Things I Hate About You,” the 1948 Broadway musical “Kiss Me, Kate” and the 1986 “Atomic Shakespeare” episode of the television series “Moonlighting” all tapping into the storyline of a volatile couple and their relationship. Which of these films is also based on the play? More

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    Anthony Hopkins on Playing a Roman Emperor in ‘Those About to Die’

    In an interview, the actor discusses his new series, humble origins and the freedom age brings. “That gives me a tremendous amount of energy to move forward,” he said.Anthony Hopkins has advice for any aspiring actor: Speak clearly.“If you whisper, you sound sexy,” he said during a recent video call. “But I can’t hear you. What’s the story? Tell the story. Stop mumbling.”Though Hopkins, 86, has won two Oscars (“The Silence of the Lambs,” “The Father”), a pair of Emmys and a Laurence Olivier award, he still insists that acting is mostly just enunciating. “It’s just showing up,” he said. This summer, he can be heard, clearly, in “Those About to Die,” a 10-episode series set amid the blood and sand of a Roman amphitheater. It premieres on Peacock on July 18. Hopkins plays Vespasian, a general-turned-emperor who ordered the construction of what would become the Roman Colosseum.“Those About to Die” allowed Hopkins to return to Cinecittà, the famed Italian studio where he filmed “The Two Popes.” And it continues his interest, demonstrated in projects such as “Freud’s Last Session,” “The Father,” “Westworld” and even as far back as “Nixon” and “The Remains of the Day,” in playing men in the waning of their power.Though Hopkins appears in few scenes of “Those About to Die” (anyone familiar with the ancient Roman timeline can guess why), he is fully in command of his own capacities. His Vespasian is infirm of body, not purpose. Facing down his legacy, Vespasian scolds his sons (played by Jojo Macari and Tom Hughes), dismissing their advice and praise.“I had to be tough on them and no nonsense,” Hopkins said.Roland Emmerich, the show’s director, wanted Hopkins for that sternness. “He plays a little bit like a gruff guy,” Emmerich said in a recent interview. He also suspected that Hopkins could play Vespasian’s canniness as he contends with both the aristocracy and the people. And that he could make that realpolitik pleasurable.“He has this likability,” Emmerich said. “He played Hannibal Lecter and was still lovable.”During the video call, Hopkins was only occasionally gruff and, yes, often lovable. (A man who has a way with a twinkle, he has amassed millions of followers on TikTok.) These days, he views his career, he said, “with a sense, not of self-congratulation, but a sense of fun.”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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    Richard Simmons, the Original Queer Eye

    In an era of high machismo and casual homophobia, he was a cheerleader for self-acceptance.Richard Simmons, the ebullient paterfamilias of aerobics instruction who died on Saturday at 76, never publicly addressed his sexuality. But during his long run as a leading figure in American cultural life, the way he defined himself for others was perhaps less important than how he presented himself.More than 20 years before the fashion stylist Carson Kressley dispensed tips to finance bros on “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” and Tim Gunn rescued aspiring designers from nervous breakdowns on “Project Runway” with the instruction to “make it work,” Mr. Simmons guided the average and the out-of-shape toward a loving embrace of the bodies they already had.In the process, he navigated the end of disco culture and the advent of the AIDS epidemic by making himself as nonthreatening as possible.“Confidence is contagious,” Mr. Kressley said in an interview on Sunday. “That was his brand.”Mr. Simmons became nationally famous with “The Richard Simmons Show,” a syndicated daytime program that combined sketch comedy with celebrity interviews, cooking segments and fitness routines.At a time when Clint Eastwood and Sylvester Stallone were top male stars, Mr. Simmons baked cakes with Betty White and did kooky exercise segments in which shopping carts doubled as fitness equipment. Although he wasn’t open about his sexuality, he managed nevertheless to “really be himself on camera, and people could take it for what it was,” Mr. Kressley said.Mr. Simmons had grown up in New Orleans, La., where he said he had been a “fat kid” who avoided sports and kept mostly to himself. In the mid-1970s, he opened an exercise studio in Beverly Hills, Calif. The idea, as Mr. Simmons wrote in his 1993 book, “Never Give Up,” one of his many best sellers, was that weight loss should be fun.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 ‘Life and Trust,’ the Details Are in the Devil

    What’s the going rate for a soul these days? A little more than $200 on weekends, less on weekdays, handling fees included.That’s the ticket price for “Life and Trust,” the new show from Emursive, the producers of “Sleep No More,” and arguably an even more ambitious undertaking. A version of the Faust legend (well, several braided versions of the Faust legend), “Life and Trust,” which opens Aug. 1, occupies 100,000 square feet over six floors of a financial district skyscraper in New York that was once the home of the City Bank-Farmers Trust Company.In a brief introduction, which is set on the eve of the 1929 stock market crash, a financier makes a deal with the devil: damnation in exchange for the chance to relive his youth. The show then ushers audiences back to 1894, plunging them into a Gilded Age delirium.“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get a canvas of this size,” said Teddy Bergman, the director of “Life and Trust.” “It just keeps going.”Making this deal with the devil took space. And time. And quite a lot of money. How much money? The producers wouldn’t say, though Jonathan Hochwald, a producer at Emursive, said the final amount was comfortably in the millions.A company of performers, including Marla Phelan, above left, and Mia DiLena, plays 30 characters in 250 overlapping scenes, which loop twice each evening.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’s on TV This Week: Olympic Specials and ‘Big Brother’

    ABC and CNN gear up for the Games. CBS airs the season premiere of the reality competition show.For those who still enjoy a cable subscription, here is a selection of cable and network TV shows, movies and specials that broadcast this week, July 15-21. Details and times are subject to change.MondayTHE REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION starting at 8 p.m. on various channels. Republican delegates will be gathering in Milwaukee through Thursday to nominate the party’s candidate for president. Former President Donald Trump is the only candidate since Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy dropped out of the race. The Democratic National Convention will be held in mid-August.TuesdayCATFISH 8 p.m. on MTV. Nev Schulman and Kamie Crawford have another successful season in the books after doing what they do best — catching people who are lying about who they are online. And it truly never gets old — anyone who watches the show can immediately tell you their favorite episode (mine is a tie between the infamous Kelly Price one or the one with the slow-clapper on crutches).WednesdayBIG BROTHER 9 p.m. on CBS. As “Love Island USA” is wrapping up its run this year, this prototypical reality show is coming back for its 26th season. In a somewhat haunting, “Black Mirror” type twist, the theme will be artificial intelligence, or what the producers are referring to as “B.B.A.I.” In the newly redone house, each room is designed based on a prompt like “sci-fi rocky planet setting” or “futuristic bedroom for the year 2500.” I’m a little creeped out, but at least it’s inventive.A scene from “Wild Wild Space.”Courtesy of HBOWILD WILD SPACE 9 p.m. on HBO. With the rom-com “Fly Me to the Moon” newly released and the 55th anniversary of the lunar landing looming, the moon is on our minds. But, as this documentary points out, the new and more valuable frontier is low Earth orbit. This area, at an altitude of 1,200 miles or less, could serve as the future of communication, transportation and observation. This documentary follows Chris Kemp and Peter Beck and their rocket companies, which are competing to be the overlord of L.E.O.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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    ‘House of the Dragon’ Season 2, Episode 5 Recap: The Eye Has It

    Prince Aemond makes a move — another move, that is, after the one where he blasted his own brother with dragonfire.In his series of epic fantasy novels A Song of Ice and Fire, the author George R.R. Martin has based a trio of men-at-arms on Curly, Moe and Larry, the Three Stooges. He has used the superheroes Blue Beetle and Green Arrow as the basis for noble houses’ emblematic sigils. During the events depicted in “House of the Dragon,” the important House Tully is variously ruled over by Lords Grover, Elmo, and Kermit, with a Ser Oscar thrown in for good measure, as if “Sesame Street” had come to the Seven Kingdoms.So do I think it’s possible that in his book “Fire and Blood,” the basis of “House of the Dragon,” Martin put Prince Aemond Targaryen in control of Westeros just as a cheeky way to illustrate the maxim “In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king”? I wouldn’t put it past him.Compared to the all-out dragon warfare of last week’s outing, this week’s episode was a low-key affair, though not an inconsequential one. Aemond One-Eye’s ascension to the regency as his comatose brother, Aegon, clings to life in a burned and battered body is an alarming development in several respects. Already in possession of the Targaryen civil war’s deadliest weapon, the ancient dragon Vhagar, Aemond now has the political power to match his firepower. That sort of consolidation of control can’t bode well for any of the other prominent voices on the small council, particularly that of Aemond and Aegon’s increasingly marginalized mother, the dowager Queen Alicent.Even his nominal supporters visibly chafe at their choice of regent, though they feel that choice is limited at best. Ser Criston Cole saw firsthand how Aemond tried to kill his brother, first with Vhagar and then up close and personal, but he tells none of this to Alicent. He goes along with Aemond’s rise not despite the horror he witnessed but because of it. This is now a war of dragons, he tells Alicent, and as such they must be led by a dragon rider.The logic of Ser Larys Strong is more political than martial. How would it look, he asks, if they rejected the claim of Rhaenyra on the grounds of her sex, only to raise up another woman, Alicent, as Queen Regent? The legal and sociopolitical waters would be muddied considerably, and support put at risk. With the exception of Grandmaester Orwyle (Kurt Egyiawan), a habitual voice of reason, the men of the council all back the male candidate over the female.The episode’s director, Clare Kilner, lets the camera linger on the face of the actor who plays Alicent, Olivia Cooke, at this point. As the music of the composer Ramin Djawadi strikes an ominously modern tone, the camera draws ever closer, as Queen Alicent struggles to contain her … anger? Embarrassment? Fear? Pain, especially over her abandonment by both her lover and her son? All of the above are visible in Cooke’s extraordinarily communicative eyes.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