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    Taylor Wily, ‘Hawaii Five-0’ and ‘Forgetting Sarah Marshall’ Actor, Dies at 56

    He spent his early career as a professional sumo wrestler.Taylor Wily, who played a shrimp truck vendor and police informant on the television reboot of “Hawaii Five-0,” and who in his earlier years was an acclaimed professional sumo wrestler, died on Thursday. He was 56.Paul Almond, a legal representative for Mr. Wily, confirmed his death. A location and cause of death were not immediately available.Mr. Wily starred as Kamekona in more than 170 episodes of “Hawaii Five-0,” a reimagining of the 1970s crime drama that followed the escapades of state police officers on the island. His character became a fan favorite, gradually morphing into the show’s resident entrepreneur, running a shaved ice business and a helicopter tour company alongside his shrimp venture.“‘Hawaii Five-0’ could become ‘Kamekona Five-0,’” Masi Oka, who played Dr. Max Bergman on the series, said in a 2012 interview with CBS.The series, which ran from 2010 to 2020, followed a fictional state police unit that seemed to routinely crave shrimp. Mr. Wily’s character was a warm and comedic presence onscreen that resonated with fans across the world as well as with residents in Hawaii.Peter Lenkov, a producer of the series, said on social media that he was drawn to Mr. Wily from his first audition, and that he was impressed enough with Mr. Wily to write in his character as a recurring role.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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    DeSantis Vetoes All Arts Grants in Florida

    Gov. Ron DeSantis gave no explanation for zeroing out the $32 million in grants that were approved by state lawmakers.For the past 10 days, Richard Russell has been rattled, poring over budgets and working the phones in an attempt to limit the consequences of Gov. Ron DeSantis’s veto pen.Mr. Russell, the general director of the Sarasota Opera on Florida’s Gulf Coast, had expected his nonprofit organization to receive a state grant of about $70,000 once Mr. DeSantis signed a budget that state lawmakers had approved in March.But in a move that stunned arts and culture organizations, Mr. DeSantis vetoed the entirety of their grant funding — about $32 million — on June 12, leaving them scrambling to figure out how to offset the shortfall.“It’s not going to close us,” Mr. Russell said. “But it is a gap that I am going to have to figure out how to make up, and if I don’t find alternate sources of funding, that could be someone’s job.”Leaders of arts organizations in Florida, many of whom have worked in the state for decades, cannot remember a governor ever eliminating all of their grant funding. Even in the lean years of the Great Recession, at least a nominal amount — say, 5 percent of the recommended total — was approved.Established arts organizations usually know better than to overly rely on nonrecurring state dollars subject to the discretion of politicians, said Michael Tomor, executive director of the Tampa Museum of Art. But to cut funding at a time when arts organizations are still struggling to recover from the coronavirus pandemic sends a concerning message “that taxpayer dollars should not be used in support of arts and culture,” he added.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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    Review: ‘Orphan Black: Echoes’ Revisits a Sci-Fi Favorite

    The new sequel to “Orphan Black” raises interesting questions about the nature of memory but misses the charm of that show’s star, Tatiana Maslany.Congratulations to the ominous vat of goo community and its ever-expanding sci-fi reign. Where else might human-seeming characters emerge if not from an ominous vat of goo? They gasp and look around frantically. Ah yes, a star covered in goo — that’s how you know the bad guys are up to something.“Orphan Black: Echoes,” premiering Sunday on AMC and BBC America, includes a few goo-births among other familiar sci-fi moments. The show is a sequel to the mesmerizing drama “Orphan Black,” in which Sarah (Tatiana Maslany) discovers she is a clone and sets out to find the other versions of herself — and to figure out her origins. “Echoes” is an apt title; the shows are similar, but this one is fainter and less original.Our anchor is Lucy (Krysten Ritter), who doesn’t know who she is, where she came from or how she got to this fake living room in a vast warehouse. She just has to get out of there. Wait — is that a vat of goo? The early action of the show follows the life Lucy cobbles together for herself, with a medic boyfriend and his deaf daughter, who, sadly, are not interesting.Lucy eventually discovers that she is a “printout,” a copy of a person — if not a clone exactly, then at least clone-adjacent. Like Sarah, she sets out to get to the bottom of … whatever is happening, and along the way she encounters mad scientists, a woman with dementia, a surly teen, a scheming billionaire.“Echoes” is set mostly in 2052, and it wears its futurism lightly. Cellphones and computers are marginally sleeker, and phone booths have made a comeback, but teens are still explaining the limits of a gender binary to their baffled parents. People still smoke cigarettes and drive regular cars; guns are still abundant, and guest rooms are still decorated with fast-furniture from Amazon.Early on, this ordinariness grates. It can feel like the whole show is in a bad mood, clomping around and resenting everything along with its characters. In “Echoes,” hostility and secrecy go hand in hand; everything seems menacing, but often it’s just obfuscated. A broad iciness makes the first few episodes dull and remote, but eventually, as the superficial mysteries are solved and the deeper mysteries emerge, the show’s more intriguing, tricky self arrives. Better late than never.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 Folger Library Wants to Reintroduce You to Shakespeare

    After an $80 million expansion, the Folger Shakespeare Library is reopening with a more welcoming approach — and all 82 of its First Folios on view.Social media is awash with pictures of jaw-dropping libraries, elaborately styled home bookshelves and all manner of drool-worthy Library Porn. But for understated dazzle, it’s hard to compete with a wall in the new basement galleries of the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C.For decades, the library’s 82 copies of Shakespeare’s First Folio — the largest collection in the world — were locked away in a vault, with access granted only to select scholars. But now, anyone can enter the public galleries and see them displayed in a special wall case, laid flat with spines out.In the dim, curatorially correct lighting, they glow like some kind of mysterious dark matter. But during a preview of the building, which reopens this weekend after a four-year, $80 million expansion, the Folger’s director, Michael Witmore, reached for a sunnier metaphor.Six of the Folger Shakespeare Library’s copies of the First Folio. The library has placed all 82 of its First Folios — the largest collection in the world — on permanent display.Justin T. Gellerson for The New York TimesThe Folio — a collection of 36 of Shakespeare’s plays, published by his friends in 1623, seven years after his death — is “the ultimate message in a bottle.”“And the miracle is that every generation opens up the bottle and it turns out the plays, the message, was addressed to them,” Witmore 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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    A Universe of Inspirations Swirls Within ‘Janet Planet’

    The playwright Annie Baker shares the artistic influences behind her feature film debut.Annie Baker has amassed multiple awards for her idiosyncratic and deeply observed plays, including the Pulitzer Prize for her 2013 drama “The Flick.” Baker has always loved the movies — “The Flick,” about three young workers sweeping up popcorn and discussing movies in a broken-down central Massachusetts theater, is something of an ode to the cinema — but has never directed a film before now.“Janet Planet” (in theaters) tells the story of the relationship between Janet (Julianne Nicholson), a single mother and acupuncturist, and Lacy (the newcomer Zoe Ziegler), her 11-year-old daughter, who is slowly coming to the realization that her mom, once the radiant center of her life, is maybe human after all. “I do think I was writing about a marriage of sorts between a mother and a daughter,” she said.In a video call from a friend’s place in Brooklyn, Baker talked about the films, artists and music that inspired her cinematic debut, from the French painter Édouard Vuillard’s portraits of his seamstress mother (“he’s my favorite painter of the color brown”) to the novels of Thomas Mann.Édouard VuillardEdouard Vuillard’s “The Artist’s Mother Playing Checkers” (1885-1895).Edouard Vuillard/2024 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; via AlamyDuring production, Baker found herself returning to Vuillard’s portraits of his mother, with whom he lived for much of his life until her death in 1928. “There’s this tender, ambivalent relationship to the woman in a lot of the paintings,” Baker said. “You see the back of her head, her face is half obscured, or her hands are oddly askew.”In the film, we see things from a similar point of view: Lacy inside a car talking to the back of Janet’s head, or staring at her mother’s profile while lying alongside her in bed. “That’s a big part of ‘Janet Planet’: looking at your mother, and observing what she looks like to you in different contexts and in different phases of life,” she 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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    Jimmy Kimmel Counts Down to the First Presidential Debate

    Kimmel doubted that Donald Trump would stick to his game plan of not interrupting President Biden, saying, “His discipline is unmatched!”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.One Week OutThe first presidential debate is one week away, and former President Donald Trump is said to have a game plan that includes not interrupting President Biden, as he has in the past.“And, as we all know, he has an uncanny ability to stick to his game plan,” Jimmy Kimmel said on Thursday. “His discipline is unmatched!”“Biden has secluded himself at Camp David, where he’s preparing for this bout like Rocky Balboa getting ready for ‘Golf Clubber’ Lang. And Trump is hard at work right now, deciding whether to go with the scented Aqua Net or unscented.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“You know, despite skipping every other debate, Trump reportedly cannot wait to attack Joe Biden. It’s the most he’s ever hated someone he wasn’t married to.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Next Thursday is the first 2024 presidential debate between President Biden and former President Trump, which means we’re just one week away from finding out who falls asleep onstage.” — SETH MEYERS“Forget the debate — I say we put them both in a hammock and the first one to stand up is our next president.” — JIMMY FALLONThe Punchiest Punchlines (Ten Commandments Edition)“Louisiana yesterday became the first state to require public schools to display the Ten Commandments in every classroom. Apparently, they’ve been having a lot of trouble with kids coveting their neighbor’s oxen.” — SETH MEYERS“Maybe they should also post the Constitution in the Louisiana governor’s office so he can give it a read every once in a while.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Oh, come on, everybody knows if you want to make something accessible to kids, you don’t put it in a big font; you put it in a Hello Kitty Trapper Keeper.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“I hate to break it to you, but Louisiana ranks 38th in reading — I don’t think the font is going to help.” — DESI LYDIC“I will say, in fairness, the point in posting the Ten Commandments in schools is to remind third-graders not to commit adultery.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Bits Worth WatchingChappell Roan performed her hit song “Good Luck, Babe!” on Thursday’s “Tonight Show.”Also, Check This OutDonald Sutherland as President Snow in “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire.” He campaigned for the role in the franchise.Murray Close/LionsgateDonald Sutherland’s consistent and reliable work transcended genres and eras in Hollywood. The veteran actor died on Thursday at 88. More

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    Review: A 10th Life for Those Jellicle ‘Cats,’ Now in Drag

    Resetting the “Memory” musical in the world of ballroom competitions makes for a joyful reincarnation.A D.J. pawing through a carton of old LPs — Natalie Cole, Angela Bofill — comes upon a curiosity: the original cast album of “Cats.” When he opens the gatefold, glittery spangles fly everywhere.That’s how “Cats: The Jellicle Ball” begins, and it’s basically what the Perelman Performing Arts Center’s drag remake of the Broadway behemoth does to the drab original. It sets the joy free.Whether upper- or lowercase, cats never previously offered me much pleasure. The underlying T.S. Eliot poems, ad libbed for his godchildren, are agreeable piffle, hardly up there with “Prufrock” as fodder for the ages. The musical, instead of honoring the material’s delicacy, stomped all over it, leaving heavy mud prints. Andrew Lloyd Webber’s score, and especially the rigged-up story and original staging by Trevor Nunn, tried so hard to make big statements from little ditties and kitties that it wound up a perfect example of camp.Camp, cleverly, is the new version’s base line, neutralizing that criticism. It turns out that the show once advertised vaguely (and threateningly) as “now and forever” — it ran on Broadway from 1982 to 2000 — works far better in a specific past.That past is the world of drag balls, which at the time of the original “Cats” was beginning to achieve mainstream awareness. Madonna’s appropriation of the participants’ style and dance moves in her videos and concerts, as well as Jennie Livingston’s celebration of them in her documentary “Paris Is Burning,” helped pave the way for the supremacy of RuPaul and dragmania today. But beneath that triumph lay a darker truth: that the thrill of ball culture depended on its drawing extravagance from destitution, meeting prejudice with bravery, and staring down death with style.The key insight of this “Jellicle Ball,” which opened on Thursday at the new downtown arts cube, is that at least some of those themes could resonate with Eliot’s subtext and Lloyd Webber’s score. The directors Zhailon Levingston and Bill Rauch have thus transported Grizabella, Skimbleshanks, Rum Tum Tugger and the rest from a metaphysical junkyard to a hotel ballroom for a vogueing competition, accompanied by new versions of the songs that go heavier on the synthesizers, turn some lyrics into raps and add a distinctive house beat.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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    ‘Smiling Friends’ Is a Deranged Blast

    This warped Adult Swim animated series, streaming on Max, is so fast and feral it feels like its own highlight reel.Charlie, Pip and Allan try to make people smile at Smiling Friends Inc.Adult SwimThe setup for the Adult Swim series “Smiling Friends,” available on Max, sounds like the premise of a cheery, do-unto-others children’s show: Charlie and Pim (voiced by Zach Hadel and Michael Cusack, the show’s creators) and their kooky pals work at Smiling Friends Inc., where their job is to make clients smile.But there is nary a shred of cutesy wholesomeness here — instead, there is cursing, bloodshed, absurdity, silliness. The show is so fast and feral it feels like its own highlight reel.Each 12-minute installment takes us on another deranged misadventure, to odd enclaves and foreign planets, to find lost loves, influence political elections, revamp video-game franchises. “Smiling Friends” has an omnivorous sensibility, and its punchlines can be surreal and warped or grounded and tenderly specific, all part of its grand ethnography of weird little freaks. It also varies its animation style, with Charlie and Pim looking mostly unchanged but guest characters depicted in a range of formats: live action, grotesque illustration, rotoscoped realism.If some of this character design conjures fond associations with “Tom Goes to the Mayor” or “Beavis and Butt-Head,” well, that’s how you know you are in the right place. “Smiling” is more acrid than “Aqua Teen Hunger Force” and plays by different rules than “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” but it has a similar naughtiness.The show first aired as a backdoor pilot in 2020, was ordered to series in 2021, debuted in 2022 and is about to finish its second season on Sunday at midnight on Adult Swim. (It was recently renewed for a third season.) Part of the appeal here is the show’s wide curiosity and unpredictable rhythm; its grab-bagginess recreates the lure of a blind-box toy. There’s also a snacky quality to “Smiling,” thanks to the peppy vulgarity that is basically Adult Swim’s Doritos powder.Its episodic nature and short running times help, too — though as with any modern show that wants to be loved, Easter eggs and deep-cut callbacks abound. More