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    Michael Kosta Thinks He’s Found Elon Musk’s Next Failed Purchase

    The “Daily Show” host said Musk “bought Twitter just to drive it into the ground” and is now considering doing the same for America.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.How Low Can You Go?Elon Musk, who’s so excited to support Donald Trump that he jumped up and down to show it, said on Saturday that he’d give $1 million per day to a randomly chosen registered Pennsylvania voter who signs an online petition.On Tuesday’s “Daily Show,” Michael Kosta called Musk “a man of gravitas, a man of dignity, a man with roughly a four-inch vertical leap” and wondered, “How exactly does this bribe — sorry, gift — work?”“Wow, Elon’s giving a million dollars to his fans. Now they can afford the best anime girlfriend pillow money can buy.” — MICHAEL KOSTA“He’s so rich, he bought Twitter just to drive it into the ground for his own personal pleasure, and now he’s thinking, ‘Well, what if I did the same with America?’” — MICHAEL KOSTA“I know what you’re thinking right now: How could Republicans sink so low? And also, can I sink low enough to register for this?’” — MICHAEL KOSTA“During his first solo campaign event in support of former President Trump last week, Elon Musk urged the crowd to ‘pester’ their friends and family who are not yet registered to vote, adding, ‘I would if I had either of those.’” — SETH MEYERSA Tale of Two Town HallsOn his Fox News show on Tuesday, Greg Gutfeld had harsh words for Kamala Harris, saying her Monday night town hall in Michigan “had all the spontaneity of synchronized swimming.”“So right off the bat, we got the lay of the land — another manicured platform for Kamala to blurt out her now legendary word salads. I mean, this broad ought to come to every event with a side of ranch and a bag of croutons.” — GREG GUTFELDOn “The Tonight Show,” Jimmy Fallon noted that Trump had canceled a Tuesday event that would have been titled “Make America Healthy Again.”“Tough to make America healthy again when you were just making them French fries a day ago,” Fallon joked, referring to the ex-president’s campaign appearance behind a McDonald’s counter.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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    This N.Y.C. Theater Was a Haven for Adventurous Art. Then the Archdiocese Intervened.

    The Connelly Theater has suspended operations after its church landlord began more carefully scrutinizing show scripts and its general manager resigned.The Connelly Theater in New York’s East Village has for years been a shabby but warm haven for adventurous performing arts: the play “Job,” which is now wrapping up a Broadway run; Kate Berlant’s “Kate,” a one-woman show that went on to London and California after selling out downtown; and the satire “Circle Jerk,” a Pulitzer finalist in 2021.But over the past few weeks, the building’s landlord — the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York — began more intensely scrutinizing the content of shows whose producers were seeking to rent the space. At least three planned productions had to relocate.Josh Luxenberg, who has been the theater’s general manager for the past decade, submitted his resignation late Friday. And early Tuesday, the Catholic school that is the intermediary between the theater and the archdiocese said it was “suspending all operations of its theater.”Producers who have rented from the Connelly say they were aware that it was owned by the archdiocese, and that there was always a clause in their contract allowing the Roman Catholic Church to bar anything it deemed obscene, pornographic or detrimental to the church’s reputation. But only recently, they said, did the archdiocese seek to rigorously scrutinize scripts before approving rentals.New York Theater Workshop said it was told by a bishop this month that it could not stage “Becoming Eve,” which is adapted from a memoir about a rabbi who comes out as a transgender woman, at the Connelly early next year. It is now looking for another venue.“We had seen a range of really provocative, amazing, inspiriting, artistically rigorous shows there, so I was surprised this would be rejected,” said Patricia McGregor, the artistic director of New York Theater Workshop. “And if in the East Village of New York City we are meeting this kind of resistance, where else might this be happening?”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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    A Reluctant Satirist Takes On the Bomb

    About two years ago, when Armando Iannucci began adapting “Dr. Strangelove” for the West End, he didn’t think the 1964 movie had many direct parallels to today.The full title of Stanley Kubrick’s film is “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb,” and it tells the story of a U.S. Air Force general who goes rogue and orders a nuclear strike on the Soviet Union. In the Pentagon’s war room, an ineffectual president (Peter Sellers) dithers, blusters and flails, as he tries to avert World War III.In the 1960s, the movie became a much-debated hit — a “nightmare comedy,” as Kubrick called it — at a moment when nuclear annihilation was a common fear. Yet for Iannucci, who created the TV series “Veep,” the movie’s contemporary relevance was, at first, more metaphorical: The failure to stop atomic catastrophe was akin to society’s handling of climate change.Then, the news took over.Steve Coogan, left, plays four roles in “Dr. Strangelove,” including the president of the United States in this scene.Manuel HarlanAs Iannucci and the director Sean Foley worked on the adaptation, which opens at London’s Noël Coward Theater on Oct. 29 and runs through Jan. 25, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia floated the idea of nuclear conflict with the West over its support of Ukraine. China has boosted its nuclear arsenal. And violence in the Middle East has renewed fears around both Iran accelerating its nuclear program and Israel pre-emptively striking Iran’s nuclear facilities.Suddenly, Iannucci recalled in a recent interview in a grand back room of the Noël Coward Theater, his “Dr. Strangelove” felt like “a kind of literal reminder of a real doomsday.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Late Night Mocks Trump for His McDonald’s Photo Op

    The ex-president’s stint at the drive-through window was “blue-collar drag,” said Stephen Colbert. “But with more makeup.”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.‘Blue-Collar Drag’Former President Donald Trump appeared behind a McDonald’s counter on Sunday, trolling Vice President Kamala Harris (he claims, with no evidence, that she’s lying about having worked at one in the ’80s). “No surprise, the man who’s never had an actual job in his life did not actually work at McDonald’s,” Stephen Colbert said on Monday. Citing news reports, he said the Trump appearance “was a half-hour photo op at a closed McDonald’s, and the people he served were preselected supporters.”“He’s not the common man. This is all just blue-collar drag. But with more makeup.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Well, McDonald’s screwed up my order again!” — SETH MEYERS“That’s his whole campaign right now: ‘Ave Maria’ dance party, ‘I’m going to deport everybody,’ football tailgate, blame the Jews if I lose, McDonald’s drive-through.” — JON STEWART“Yeah, he had a great time at McDonald’s, ’cause for 20 minutes, Trump actually ran a successful business.” — JIMMY FALLON“Trump told reporters, ‘I love McDonald’s. I love jobs. I like to see good jobs.’ Wow, I just realized, if you replace ‘I’ with ‘me,’ he has the same vocabulary as Cookie Monster: ‘Me love McDonald’s. Me love jobs.’” — SETH MEYERS“I love when he said ‘I’ve always wanted to work at McDonald’s’ with a straight face and expects us to believe it. Oh, do you? Well, no one’s stopping you, bro. I noticed you didn’t pick up an application on your way out. Maybe you can get a job jumping out of the ball pit and scaring away kids who have been there for too long.” — SETH MEYERS“Give him the job. I implore you. I don’t care if his references don’t shake out. Save democracy, give him the job.” — JON STEWARTThe Punchiest Punchlines (Eggplant Emoji Edition)“While speaking over the weekend at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania, former President Trump discussed golf legend Arnold Palmer and said he was ‘all man.’ Well, technically, he was half man, half iced tea.” — SETH MEYERS“But for Trump, this was actually one of his milder genital rants. This was kind of his Kidz Bop genitals rant: classy, body-positive, he was complimenting somebody else. I don’t know why we have to parse everything that this guy says so sternly.” — JON STEWART“I think one of his staffers must have said, ‘We need to focus on the polls,’ and Trump was, like, ‘Oh, I’ll focus on the pole.’” — JIMMY FALLONWe 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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    Jeff Bezos and Jessica Chastain Toast a Daring ‘Sunset Boulevard’ on Broadway

    Outside the St. James Theater on Sunday night, curious onlookers joined a throng of photographers as, amid a sea of flash bulbs, stars descended on a black carpet for the opening night of a buzzy new revival of the classic musical “Sunset Boulevard.”“I’m thrilled to see this,” said Betty Buckley, 77, who played the role of the faded silent-film star Norma Desmond in the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical in London and on Broadway in the 1990s.The show, which tells the story of Ms. Desmond’s descent into madness as she is forced to come to grips with an industry that discards its female stars at an ever-earlier age, stars the 46-year-old Nicole Scherzinger, a former Pussycat Doll, in the role.The new production, helmed by the minimalist director Jamie Lloyd, who also directed a London run last year, is in many ways a daring update of the original musical, which opened in the West End in 1993.The show’s director, Jamie Lloyd, with its choreographer, Fabian Aloise, at the after-party.Tom Francis, who plays the young screenwriter Joe Gillis, received a standing ovation for a sequence in which he sings the show’s title number as he is followed onto the street by a live feed.Rebecca Smeyne for The New York TimesJessica Chastain was nominated for a Tony Award last year for starring in Mr. Lloyd’s previous Broadway production, a revival of “A Doll’s House.”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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    Dylan Bachelet Brings Pirate Style to ‘Great British Baking Show’

    A breakout contestant on “The Great British Baking Show” is drawing style comparisons to characters from “Pirates of the Caribbean,” “The Princess Bride” and more.Long hair, strong eyebrows, silver hoop earrings, a goatee and the occasional bandanna makes Dylan Bachelet’s style feel both unique and uncannily familiar.Though Mr. Bachelet, a talented 20-year-old contestant on the current season of “The Great British Baking Show,” did not initially get much screen time in the series known for its convivial contestants and some cringe-inducing baking challenges, it did not take long for fans to notice him. Online forums and comment sections lit up, comparing Mr. Bachelet to all sorts of roguish characters: Captain Jack Sparrow, Khal Drogo (a “Game of Thrones” chieftain played by Jason Momoa), Disney princes and romance novel cover models, to name a few.“He’s so striking. He’s got eyes that speak to your soul and a distinctive look,” said Karmen Ledgister, a personal trainer from London, who was among the people trying to find the perfect comparison. “He reminds me of Goku from ‘Dragon Ball Z’ with his style and his stance. Of course, there’s that dark hair!”Adding to the mythology, Mr. Bachelet joked with Noel Fielding, one of the show’s hosts, about what it means that both of them are left-handed. “You know the word sinister means left-handed?” he said to Mr. Fielding. “They used to kill us.”While the show — known as “The Great British Bake Off” outside of the United States — is not the type of reality TV program to play on looks, even Mr. Fielding appears to be smitten, calling Mr. Bachelet “too handsome to be a chef” in Episode 3.

    View this post on Instagram A post shared by Dylan Bachelet (@dylanbachelet_)
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    Mark Proksch, of ‘What We Do in the Shadows,’ Gets Into the Swing of It

    As an “energy vampire,” the comic actor has been the most relatable menace in the FX comedy, which begins its final season.On a recent evening, the actor Mark Proksch watched as a pirate ghost cavorted on a video monitor. “I love their idea of what counts as haunted,” he said.Proksch, 46, a star of the FX supernatural comedy “What We Do in the Shadows,” knows a thing or two about haunting. He plays Colin Robinson, a vampire who shares a crumbling Staten Island mansion with three undead roommates and one human minion. Unlike his friends, Colin is a day walker, an energy vampire who feeds off others, mostly by droning on about zoning ordinances or car insurance. (Proksch, who has a gift for tedium, mostly improvises these speeches.) Onscreen, he plays blandness with such intensity that he makes apparent normalcy seem very, very weird.Proksch, who lives in Los Angeles with his wife, the TV writer Amelie Gillette, was in town to promote the comedy’s sixth and final season at New York’s Comic Con. (The first three episodes premiere Monday on FX and Tuesday on Hulu.)On a free night, he had come to the home of the pirate ghost, Shipwrecked, an ostensibly eerie mini-golf course in the Red Hook neighborhood of Brooklyn. At the first hole, he hefted his club and swung at his bright green ball. A hole in one.“Well, that was thrilling,” he said dryly.Raised in a small city in Wisconsin, Proksch never planned on a career in performance. (As a child, he appeared in a community theater production of “The Music Man”; he had no lines.) Pale and unassuming, he has a way of blending into the background of any given room. “It’s that Midwestern charisma,” he joked.On the fourth hole, his ball veered around a tropical plant then was caught by a sand trap. “There’s a reason I haven’t done this in 20 years,” he said.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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    The Menendez Brothers’ Case Under Review: What to Know.

    Prosecutors are revisiting the brothers’ convictions in the killings of their parents. It could lead to their release from prison.Over 35 years ago, Lyle and Erik Menendez — then 21 and 18 years old — walked into the den of their Beverly Hills mansion and fired more than a dozen shotgun rounds at their parents.Now, after serving decades behind bars as part of a life sentence without the possibility of parole, the Menendez brothers may be getting a chance at freedom.In early October, the Los Angeles County district attorney, George Gascón, announced that his office was reviewing the case after lawyers representing the Menendez brothers asked prosecutors to recommend a resentencing, a move that could lead to their release.The reconsideration of their life sentences comes at a time when the Menendez brothers have been thrust back into the media spotlight thanks to the revelation of new evidence, an army of social media defenders and a recent television series and documentary examining their crime and trials.Here’s what to know about the Menendez brothers’ case:What were they convicted of?In 1996, the Menendez brothers were found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without parole for killing their parents, Jose, a music executive, and Mary Louise, a former beauty queen who went by the name Kitty.It was their second trial. Two years prior, a mistrial was declared after two separate juries (one for each brother) deadlocked over a verdict.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