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    Late Night Is Unimpressed by Titanic-Fleeing Republicans

    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyBest of Late NightLate Night Is Unimpressed by Titanic-Fleeing Republicans “Resigning with two weeks left feels less like some moral stand and more like leaving early to beat traffic,” Jimmy Fallon said of the departing officials.Jan. 8, 2021, 2:05 a.m. ETWelcome 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. We’re all stuck at home at the moment, so here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.Sinking ShipThe late-night hosts were still reeling along with the rest of the country on Thursday, the day after a Trump-incited mob stormed the Capitol.“Well, guys, it’s been a pretty epic 24 hours,” Jimmy Fallon said at the top of “The Tonight Show.” “Joe Biden was certified as our next president, several staffers have resigned from the White House, Trump’s social media accounts were banned, and yet, compared to yesterday, it’s a slow news day.”“Since yesterday’s riot, resignations have poured in at the White House, and sources expect they’ll keep coming. Although resigning with two weeks left feels less like some moral stand and more like leaving early to beat traffic.” — JIMMY FALLON“My question is, how do you put in your two weeks’ notice when your job ends in less than two weeks?” — JIMMY FALLON“I’ve been watching the news, and these ‘experts’ keep saying ‘history will not look back kindly’ on the politicians who continue with this charade. As if those people care about history. Those people don’t even care about climate change. At this rate, we’ll be lucky if we even have a history for them to be ashamed of.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Last night marked the end of the longtime romance between Donald Trump and his golden Graham, Lindsey, who used his time before the Senate last night to issue a very public breakup.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Lindsey Graham said he and Trump ‘had a hell of a journey,’ but ‘enough is enough.’ And he decided not to give him the final rose.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“That was something to watch. I’d like to commend Senator Graham for this courageous act, two weeks after he called to try to get the Georgia secretary of state to change the election results. Now he’s appalled. But heroes come in many forms, folks.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“And after that ugly day yesterday, President Trump’s mental state has now come into question, with one senior adviser saying Trump has, quote, ‘lost it.’ I’ve got to say, it’s very brave of Republicans to start speaking out against Trump only 99.9 percent of the way through his term in office. You know, not to quibble about this, but for someone to ‘lose it,’ first they must ‘possess it,’ mustn’t they?’ — JAMES CORDEN“People were comparing this big wave of resignations to rats fleeing the Titanic, but I really don’t think that’s fair. At one point, the Titanic actually had some direction. It was going somewhere.” — JAMES CORDEN“It makes sense, though. You want to get out into the job market before the Trump administration gets blocked on LinkedIn as well.” — JAMES CORDENThe Punchiest Punchlines (Blocked and Banned Edition)“Trump was suspended by Twitter. He’s blocked by Facebook and Instagram, too. Still on Match.com.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Well, yesterday we learned that if you incite a coup against the U.S. government, you will face up to 12 hours without a Twitter account.” — SETH MEYERS“Aside from his fear of removal or prosecution, maybe baby just wants his toy back, because Twitter locked the president’s account after his riot on Capitol Hill. Good to know Twitter is finally treating a violence-inciting fascist as harshly as a teenager who used seven seconds of an Imagine Dragons song.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“He also got blocked from posting to Facebook and Instagram indefinitely. YouTube pulled his video address to the rioters, citing election misinformation, and Amazon banned him from ordering Pixy Stix because they get him too wound up before bedtime.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“In other news, guess who doesn’t want to ban TikTok anymore.” — JIMMY FALLONThe Bits Worth WatchingJulien Baker performed her timely new song “Faith Healer” on Thursday’s “Late Show.”Also, Check This OutMartin Scorsese and Fran Lebowitz, as seen in the new Netflix documentary series “Pretend It’s a City,” are longtime friends. “It’s about being around Fran,” said Scorsese, who directed the series.Credit…NetflixFran Lebowitz and Martin Scorsese reminisce about old New York in their new Netflix documentary series, “Pretend It’s a City.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    On Alex Trebek's Last ‘Jeopardy!,’ Johnny Gilbert Gives a Final Introduction

    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyOn Alex Trebek’s Final ‘Jeopardy!,’ a Last Introduction From a FriendJohnny Gilbert, 92, started on the game show with Trebek in 1984. Now, he must imagine a ‘Jeopardy!’ without his longtime colleague.“I have never thought of anyone as host of the show except Alex,” said Johnny Gilbert, who had been with the show for as long as Alex Trebek. He’ll have to adjust to introducing new hosts.Credit…Jeopardy! ProductionsJan. 7, 2021Updated 11:45 a.m. ETFor more than 36 years, Johnny Gilbert has said the same 10 words, with the same mixture of razzle-dazzle and lofty cadence of a practiced showman: “And now, here is the host of ‘Jeopardy!’… Alex Trebek!” Trebek would appear with a wave and a smile, and the game would begin.He has delivered some version of that familiar warm-up more than 8,000 times, ever since Trebek’s first episode, which aired on Sept. 10, 1984, when the newly minted host strode onto the stage sporting a dark, bushy mustache and a pale pink pocket square. But on Friday, television audiences will see Gilbert’s final introduction of a longtime colleague who had become a pal, as the last episode that was filmed before Trebek’s death in November is broadcast.Johnny Gilbert introducing Alex Trebek on TV for the first time.“As much pain that he was in, I just never thought he was actually dying,” Gilbert said. “The day I heard that, part of me left this world.”Next week “Jeopardy!” will return with Gilbert introducing a new name: Ken Jennings, a record-breaking former contestant, who will be the first in a series of new, interim hosts.“It was a very bizarre feeling,” Gilbert, 92, said in an interview on Wednesday. “I have never thought of anyone as host of the show except Alex.”After Trebek’s death, Gilbert, who has had a roughly 70-year career in entertainment, said that he wondered whether it was the right time to leave. At that point, because of the pandemic, he had not been working at the studio, in Culver City, Calif., but had been recording his announcements from a bedroom in his Venice Beach home.“I thought, ‘Gee, can I go on doing this? Can I still do what the show needs?’” he said. “And I decided, yes, I would go on. I would go on because Alex wanted the show to go on.”When Trebek died at age 80 in November after battling Stage 4 pancreatic cancer, the show’s producers made clear that there would be no rush to fill the role of a man who had been the face and voice of “Jeopardy!” for so long. Only 10 days before his death, Trebek had been in the studio filming, and the show had enough episodes to finish the year. Instead of finishing in the last week of 2020, a chaotic week for television and for viewers, the show decided to push Trebek’s final five episodes to this week.The show also recognized that Gilbert was among many who felt unsettled by a new host delivering “Jeopardy!” clues. Instead of choosing a permanent successor right away, they opted for a series of interim hosts. Jennings, the only guest host who has been officially announced, has already taped 30 episodes, a spokeswoman for the show said. (In recent days, Jennings has received some flak on social media for posting insensitive tweets in the past, for which he apologized, raising questions about whether he would be in the role permanently.) The Los Angeles Times reported this week that Katie Couric had been signed as another guest host, but the show would not confirm that.Gilbert, the announcer on “Jeopardy!,” started with the show’s first episode in 1984.Credit…Michael Loccisano/FilmMagic, via Getty ImagesGilbert and Trebek, who both worked in television in the early 1980s, met at a party in Hollywood a couple of years before Merv Griffin decided to mount a new production of “Jeopardy!” Gilbert was already a known entity in daytime TV, having worked as a golden-voiced announcer for “The Price Is Right” and Dinah Shore’s daily talk show.In his memoir, published last summer, Trebek wrote that he had recommended Gilbert to Griffin: “How could you forget a voice like that?” (Gilbert’s voice wasn’t just used for announcing; he was a singer early in his career and recorded two albums in the 1960s.)What resulted, Gilbert said, was a friendship that involved a lot of chatting in dressing rooms, good-natured teasing in front of studio audiences and a deep mutual respect. On the set of “Jeopardy!,” Trebek would often poke fun at Gilbert’s age, joking that he had been the announcer for Abraham Lincoln.“We’ve been together longer than either one of our marriages, and we’ve never had a cross word,” Trebek wrote of Gilbert in his memoir.Wearing one of his many “Jeopardy!” branded varsity-style jackets, Gilbert would warm up the audience before the tapings, urging them to talk to Trebek during commercial breaks and ask him any questions that they might have. When the time came, Trebek would talk with audience members endlessly, Gilbert recalled, adding that more than once Trebek’s involved chats with members of the studio audience would outlast commercial breaks.Gilbert recalled how Trebek continued to work through his illness. When Trebek was receiving chemotherapy treatments, Gilbert said, there were times when he was clearly in great pain. Sometimes he was too unwell for the usual banter between episodes with the production staff.Trebek wrote in his memoir that there were days during his illness where he could barely walk to production meetings. But after Gilbert delivered his trademark introduction — “And now, here is the host of ‘Jeopardy!’… Alex Trebek!” — Trebek wrote that he would feel like himself again, and be able to walk out onto the stage.That transformation was apparent to Gilbert, too.“Regardless of how he felt when he walked out onstage,” Gilbert said, “when I introduced him, there was Alex Trebek.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    Stephen Colbert Goes ‘Unexpectedly Live’

    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyBest of Late NightStephen Colbert Goes ‘Unexpectedly Live’“It’s a horrifying day that will go down in U.S. history, however much longer that is,” Colbert said after President Trump incited a mob of his supporters to storm the Capitol.“Who could have seen this coming? Everyone? Even dummies like me,” Stephen Colbert remarked of Wednesday’s angry pro-Trump mob.Credit…CBSJan. 7, 2021, 3:23 a.m. ETWelcome 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. We’re all stuck at home at the moment, so here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.No Laughing MatterLate-night hosts got serious Wednesday after an angry, violent mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol, where lawmakers had convened for what is normally the routine certification of the presidential election results. Stephen Colbert went “unexpectedly live,” addressing the Republican leaders he deems responsible for supporting President Trump’s desperate attempts to overturn Joe Biden’s victory as well as his inflammatory rhetoric.[embedded content]“Hey, Republicans who supported this president — especially the ones in the joint session of Congress today — have you had enough? After five years of coddling this president’s fascist rhetoric, guess whose followers want to burn down the Reichstag?” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Who could have seen this coming? Everyone? Even dummies like me. This is the most shocking, most tragic, least surprising thing I’ve ever seen.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“For years now, people have been telling you cowards that if you let the president lie about our democracy over and over and then join him in that lie and say he’s right when you know for a fact that he is not, there will be a terrible price to pay. But you just never thought you’d have to pay it, too.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“I really do hope you’re enjoying those tax cuts — and those judges, because those judges are really going to be working hard. They’re going to be busy throwing these idiots in jail — and by ‘idiots’ I include the Republicans who let this happen. Like you, Senator Josh Hawley, raising your stupid fist to the mob outside the Capitol. Look at that — it’s like ‘Black Power’ but the opposite. There really should be a name for that. And, obviously, he has to keep his fist closed, because if he opened it, you’d see all the blood on his hands.” — STEPHEN COLBERTJimmy Fallon dispensed with jokes altogether, saying he wanted to help.“Being here tonight and talking to you at home and reassuring you that we’re going to be OK and that this is not what our country is about is how I can help,” he said.Fallon spent the top of the show speaking with Dan Rather, the former CBS News anchor, about the day’s events.James Corden said there was still reason for hope during what he called “the last dance at the worst party any of us have ever been to.”“The America that so many aspire to will be back,” he said. “It’s just been hijacked by a lunatic.”The Punchiest Punchlines (Treason Finale Edition)“Remember this morning the news was all saying Democrats now control the Senate? I’m going to say that report was a little premature. ‘The Late Show’ is ready to project Senate control has passed to Majority Leader Shirtless Freak in a Viking Hat.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Thank you for joining us for the treason finale of the Donald Trump era.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“It’s a horrifying day that will go down in U.S. history, however much longer that is.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“The Capitol was besieged by MAGA-hatters in all manner of crazy costumes. It was like a psychotic ‘Price Is Right’ audience forcibly taking control of the ‘Plinko’ wheel.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“That’s a very upsetting Paul Revere remix: ‘The red hats are coming! The red hats are coming!’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“And the wildest part is these MAGA marchers think Donald Trump cares about them. He doesn’t care about you. He doesn’t care about your wife or your job or your health care or the air you breathe, the water you drink. He cares about himself. And only about himself. Unless you were pushing a lawn mower, he wouldn’t let you into his golf club. He’d roll his limo right over you to get a Chick-fil-A sandwich.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“He does not give a damn about you. He went home to watch it on TV. You’re just entertainment for him — and, of course, a steady stream of merchandise sales.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Anyway, this isn’t how any of this works. We don’t decide elections on who’s most upset; we decide them by who gets the most votes, portioned by state through a weird Electoral College that was instituted to maintain the political power of slave states. It’s a long story.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Come on, Republicans. Don’t go up to Capitol Hill for a government handout. Pull yourselves up by your own bootstraps and just work a little harder.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Remind me: Are we great again yet?” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Bits Worth WatchingDon Cheadle managed to talk a little bit about the return of his Showtime series “Black Monday” on Wednesday’s “Tonight Show.”What We’re Excited About on Thursday NightThe author Fran Lebowitz will tell Seth Meyers about her new Netflix series with Martin Scorsese on Thursday’s “Late Night.”Also, Check This OutTed Danson, left, and Bobby Moynihan in “Mr. Mayor,” a new NBC sitcom created by Robert Carlock and Tina Fey.Credit…Mitchell Haddad/NBCTed Danson plays the titular role in “Mr. Mayor,” NBC’s new political satire from Tina Fey and Robert Carlock.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    The Best Movies and TV Shows New to Netflix, Amazon and Stan in Australia in January

    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThe Best Movies and TV Shows New to Netflix, Amazon and Stan in Australia in JanuaryOur streaming picks for January, including ‘Cobra Kai,’ ‘Bump’ and ‘One Night in Miami …’‘Cobra Kai’ Season 3Credit…NetflixJan. 6, 2021Every month, streaming services in Australia add a new batch of movies and TV shows to its library. Here are our picks for January.New to NetflixJANUARY 1‘Cobra Kai’ Season 3The second season of this fast-paced, nostalgia-spiked martial arts melodrama ended in a big brawl, leaving some of the show’s feuding characters nursing their wounds while others were left to deal with the consequences from the authorities. Season three picks up in the immediate aftermath of the melee, and continues to focus primarily on how all this trouble affects the lives of the series’ two main adults: Daniel (Ralph Macchio) and Johnny (William Zabka), from the 1984 movie “The Karate Kid.” As always, “Cobra Kai” balances action and angst with just a touch of tongue-in-cheek self-awareness.JANUARY 5‘History of Swear Words’Nicolas Cage brings his weirdo charisma to this fun docu-series, which delivers exactly what it promises: compact lessons in the history and etymology of our most popular profanities. Cage’s host segments and narration fill the gaps between the whimsical animated interludes and the interviews, which feature both insights from knowledgeable scholars and comments by foul-mouthed comedians. While the tone of “History of Swear Words” is goofy, the content is genuinely informative.JANUARY 7‘Pieces of a Woman’Reminiscent of other gripping “everything falls apart” dramas like “Uncut Gems” and “Marriage Story,” the at-times unbearably intense “Pieces of a Woman” stars Vanessa Kirby as an expectant mother who endures a nightmarish labor, followed by a long legal battle that tests her values and exposes the fragility of her personal relationships. An outstanding cast — which includes Molly Parker and Ellen Burstyn — brings some spark to a story that has very few moments of brightness or hope. The writer-director team of Kornél Mundruczó and Kata Wéber want audiences to live through something terrible, and to learn something from their characters’ worst experiences.‘Pretend It’s a City’Credit…NetflixJANUARY 8‘Pretend It’s a City’The director Martin Scorsese and his crew turn their cameras on the outspoken New York humorist Fran Lebowitz, and then just let her riff at length about the past, present and future of human existence. Scorsese and Lebowitz collaborated previously on the feature-length documentary “Public Speaking,” about her life and career as a writer and raconteur. But the docu-series “Pretend It’s a City” is much less formal. It’s more of an extended hangout session, edited together from different interviews and public appearances, shot all around the city — New York — that these two love the most.JANUARY 11‘Crack: Cocaine, Corruption & Conspiracy’In the 1980s, some enterprising drug traffickers figured out how to convert the high-end luxury narcotic cocaine into a form that was cheaper, more potent, and easier to mass produce. Almost overnight, crack began devastating Black communities across America, raising alarm in the media and giving a few Reagan-era politicians new ways to terrify their constituents. In Stanley Nelson’s fascinating documentary “Crack: Cocaine, Corruption & Conspiracy,” the filmmaker reflects on the origins of the epidemic, considering the many ways powerful people used it to exploit the vulnerable.JANUARY 13‘Night Stalker: The Hunt for a Serial Killer’During a booming economic era for Los Angeles in the mid 1980s, the city was terrorized by a serial rapist and murderer dubbed “the Night Stalker.” In the chilling four-part docu-series “Night Stalker: The Hunt for a Serial Killer,” some of the people involved in hunting down this criminal — eventually identified as Richard Ramirez — talk about the stress of the pursuit, and how difficult it was to catch a man whose pattern of behavior defied logic. What emerges from this story is a study of someone who seemed drawn to evil for its own sake, as the ultimate way of disturbing the peace.JANUARY 15‘Disenchantment’ Part 3The two-part, 20-episode first season of the animated fantasy spoof “Disenchantment” introduced the story of an unconventional princess nicknamed “Bean” (voiced by Abbi Jacobson), who’d rather have rowdy drunken adventures than marry some drippy prince. As the second two-part season begins, Bean’s wild wanderings around the kingdom have caused major problems for her family, provoking a crisis. The show’s creative team (led by “The Simpsons” and “Futurama” creator Matt Groening) clearly have fun riffing on the trappings of sword-and-sorcery sagas; but all the while they’ve been making a pretty good one of their own, with a story that gets more involving with each new batch of episodes.Also arriving: “Headspace Guide to Meditation” (January 1), “The Minimalists: Less Is Now” (January 1), “Nailed It! Mexico” Season 3 (January 5), “Surviving Death” (January 6), “Tony Parker: The Final Shot” (January 6), “Charming” (January 8), “The Idhun Chronicles” Part 2 (January 8), “Lupin” (January 8), “Stuck Apart” (January 8), “Bling Empire” (January 15), “Double Dad” (January 15), “Outside the Wire” (January 15), “Daughter from Another Mother” (January 20), “Spycraft” (January 20), “Call My Agent!” Season 4 (January 21), “Blown Away” Season 2 (January 22), “Busted!” Season 3 (January 22), “Fate: The Winx Saga” (January 22), “The White Tiger” (January 22), “The Dig” (January 29), “Finding ‘Ohana” (January 29), “We Are: The Brooklyn Saints” (January 29).New to Stan‘Bump’Credit…StanJANUARY 1‘Bump’In the high school dramedy “Bump,” Nathalie Morris plays Oly, a gifted Sydney teenager whose plans for her future are upended when one day she goes into labor and has a baby before any of her family members or classmates even realized she was pregnant. This situation is ripe for farce or for social satire, but here it’s played more for poignancy, as the grown-ups in Oly’s life realize they don’t know much about her — or her fellow teens, for that matter.‘Gossip Girl’ Seasons 1-6When “Gossip Girl” debuted in 2007, its twisty story of romance and betrayal among wealthy young New Yorkers became a sensation. When the co-creators Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage wrapped the show after six seasons, it had become hugely influential on the tone and style of high school melodramas that followed. These 121 episodes are filled with enough intrigue and emotion to overshadow a dozen imitators.‘The Watch’ Season 1Based on the beloved Terry Pratchett fantasy fiction series “Discworld,” this off-kilter police procedural is set in a futuristic city on another planet, where — in Pratchett’s books at least — multiple varieties of genre fiction and classical literature converge. The TV version strips away some of the elements of parody and homage, aiming for something more like a familiar serialized cop show, liberally spiked with anarchic zaniness. Pratchett fans may be disappointed that “The Watch” isn’t a more straightforward adaptation of the books, but newcomers might appreciate the show on its own kooky terms.‘Search Party’ Season 4Credit…StanJANUARY 14‘Search Party’ Season 4It’s hard to believe that this increasingly unclassifiable series started out as a darkly comic mystery, about a group of self-absorbed young New York pals who make a succession of terrible choices while acting as amateur detectives, investigating an acquaintance’s disappearance. As “Search Party” begins its fourth season, it’s become much deeper and heavier than it once was, with story lines that involve murder, kidnapping and courtroom drama. The one constant throughout has been the remarkable lead performance of Alia Shawkat, playing a woman whose simple boredom and disaffection have led her to serious trouble.JANUARY 15‘Survivor’s Remorse’ Seasons 1-4One of the best sitcoms of the 2010s — although it failed to draw much support from viewers or critics during its four years on the air — “Survivor’s Remorse” is about the pressures facing a young basketball star after signing his first big professional contract. The show’s creator Mike O’Malley finds plenty of humor in the culture clash that ensues when a family that used to eke out a living suddenly has millions of dollars to throw around. But this series is also impressively cleareyed about how hard it is for a promising Black athlete to find his voice when his fans would rather he shut up and play ball.JANUARY 23‘Britannia’ Season 1A sense of ancient history as an inherently alien landscape charges up “Britannia,” an action-packed drama set in the first century A.D., during the time when the Romans tried to extend their empire to the British Isles. The show contains all the sex and violence common to similar adventure series, combined with some historical inquiry into the moment when two very old civilizations pitted their strengths — and their belief systems — against one another.Also arriving: “Arrival” (January 1), “Gossip Girl” Seasons 1-6 (January 1), “8 Mile” (January 2), “Babe” (January 3), “Babe: Pig in the City” (January 3), “The Hateful Eight” (January 6), “Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist” Season 2 (January 6), “Inglourious Basterds” (January 9).New to Amazon‘One Night in Miami…’Credit…Amazon StudiosJANUARY 15‘One Night in Miami …’The premise of Kemp Powers’ play “One Night in Miami …” goes like this: In 1964, not long after the boxer Muhammad Ali beat Sonny Liston to become the heavyweight champion, he met with his spiritual adviser Malcolm X and two of their equally famous friends — the singer Sam Cooke and the NFL star Jim Brown — in a motel room, where they talked about what they’d already accomplished and what they could do going forward to inspire Black Americans. Or at least that’s which extrapolates from these four men’s real history and friendship to imagine what their conversations must’ve been like. The director Regina King’s film version of the play is as fascinating as the idea behind it, and is brought to life by a stellar cast: Leslie Odom Jr. (Cooke), Aldis Hodge (Brown), Kingsley Ben-Adir (Malcolm) and Eli Goree (Ali).Also arriving: “Tandav” (January 15), “Jessy and Nessy” (January 22).AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    The Royal Academy of Dance: From Music Hall to Ballet Royalty

    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyFrom the Music Hall to Ballet Royalty: A British TaleThe history of the Royal Academy of Dance, outlined at an exhibition in London, is synonymous with the history of ballet in Britain.The Danish-born ballerina Adeline Genée, who was a founder of the Royal Academy of Dance, in “A Dream of Butterflies and Roses.”Credit…Hugh CecilJan. 6, 2021Updated 2:07 p.m. ET“It is absolute nonsense to say that the English temperament is not suited for dancing,” Edouard Espinosa, a London dance teacher, said in 1916. It was only a lack of skilled teaching, he added, that prevented the emergence of “perfect dancers.” Espinosa was speaking to a reporter from Lady’s Pictorial about a furor that he had caused in the dance world with this idea: Dance instructors, he insisted, should adhere to standards and be examined on their work.Four years later, in 1920, a teaching organization that would become the Royal Academy of Dance (R.A.D.) was founded by Espinosa and several others, including the Danish-born Adeline Genée and the Russian ballerina Tamara Karsavina. Today, the academy is one of the major ballet training programs in the world, with students in 92 countries following syllabuses and taking its exams governed by the organization. And as the exhibition “On Point: Royal Academy of Dance at 100,” at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, shows, its history is synonymous with the history of ballet in Britain.“A lot of British dance’s legacy started with the R.A.D.,” said Darcey Bussell, a former Royal Ballet ballerina who has been the president of the academy since 2012. “It’s important that dance training and teaching are kept entwined with the professional world, and the R.A.D. has done that from the start.”There wasn’t yet a national ballet company in Britain when the Royal Academy was formed. But there was plenty of ballet, said Jane Pritchard, the curator of dance, theater and performance at the Victoria and Albert museum. She curated the exhibition with Eleanor Fitzgerald, the archives and records manager at the Royal Academy of Dance. “The Ballets Russes were there, Pavlova was performing in London, and there were excellent émigré teachers arriving,” Ms. Pritchard said. “So the R.A.D. came into existence at just the right moment, taking the best of the Italian, French and Russian schools and bringing it together to create a British style, which it then sent out into the world again.”The exhibition, which runs through September 2021, had its scheduled May opening delayed by Covid-19 restrictions. It opened on Dec. 2, but was shut down again when Britain reimposed restrictions in mid-December. While we wait for the museum to reopen, here is a tour of some of the exhibition’s photographs, designs and objects, which touch on some of the most important figures in 20th-century ballet history.‘The World’s Greatest Dancer’ (or so said Ziegfeld)Adeline Genée (1878-1970), who spent much of her career in England, reigned for a decade as the prima ballerina at the Empire Theater, where she appeared in variety programs. She was both revered as a classical dancer and hugely popular with the public; Florenz Ziegfeld billed her as “The World’s Greatest Dancer” when she performed in the United States in 1907. Genée became the first president of the Royal Academy of Dance, and her connections to royalty and her popularity with the public made her an excellent figurehead.The 1915 photograph shows Genée in her own short ballet, “A Dream of Butterflies and Roses,” in a costume by Wilhelm, the resident designer at the Empire Theater and an important figure on the theatrical scene. “It’s a really good example of the kind of costume and the kind of ballets that were being shown at the time,” Ms. Fitzpatrick said. “Ballet was still part of music-hall entertainment.”A popular entertainmentAt the Coliseum in July 1922.Credit…via Victoria and Albert Museum, LondonThis 1922 poster of weekly variety-show offerings at the London Coliseum suggests how ballet was seen around the time that the Royal Academy of Dance was founded. “It was part of a bigger general picture, and this shows it visually,” Ms. Pritchard said. “Sybil Thorndike was a great British actress and would have given a short performance of a play or monologue; Grock was a very famous clown. Most of the Coliseum bills had some sort of dance element, but it wasn’t always ballet.”Karsavina: An independent artistClaud Lovat Fraser’s drawing of Jumping Joan’s costume for Tamara Karsavina in “Nursery Rhymes” at the Coliseum 1921.Credit…Rachel Cameron Collection/Victoria and Albert Museum, LondonJumping Joan was one of three characters danced by Tamara Karsavina in “Nursery Rhymes,” which she choreographed, to music by Schubert, for an evening at the Coliseum Theater in London in 1921. Unusually for ballet at the time in London, it was a stand-alone show rather than part of a variety program. Karsavina and her company performed it twice a day for two weeks.“People associate Karsavina with the Ballets Russes, but she also had her own group of dancers, which performed regularly at the Coliseum,” Ms. Pritchard said. “She was really an independent artist in a way we think is very modern, working with a major company but also having an independent existence.”She also tried to promote British artists; the costume design was by Claud Lovat Fraser, a brilliant theater designer who died in his early 30s. “I think Lovat Fraser is the British equivalent of Bakst,” Ms. Pritchard said. “His drawings are so animated and precise, and he uses color wonderfully to create a sense of character.”Good for athletes, tooBallet exercises for athletes.Credit…Ali Wright, Dance GazetteIn 1954, the Whip and Carrot Club, an association of high jumpers, approached the Royal Academy of Dance with an unusual request. Its members had read that in both Russia and America, athletes had benefited from taking ballet classes, and they asked the Academy to formulate lessons that would improve their elevation.The outcome was a course that ran for several years, with classes for high jumpers and hurdlers and, later, “steeplechasers, discus and javelin-throwers,” according to a Pathé film clip, on show in the exhibition. In 1955, a booklet was produced, showing 13 exercises designed to help jumping, drawn by the cartoonist Cyril Kenneth Bird, known professionally as Fougasse and famous for government propaganda posters (“Careless talk costs lives”) produced during World War II.“I love the photograph of Margot Fonteyn looking on in her fur coat!” Ms. Pritchard said.From generation to generationTamara Karsavina, left, coaching Margot Fonteyn in “The Firebird,” in 1954.Credit…Douglas ElstonKarsavina, vice president of the Royal Academy of Dance until 1955, developed a teachers’ training course syllabus as well as other sections of the advanced exams. As a dancer, she created the title role in Mikhail Fokine’s “The Firebird,” with music by Stravinsky, when the Ballets Russes first performed the ballet at the Paris Opera in 1910. Here she is shown coaching Margot Fonteyn, when the Royal Ballet first staged the ballet, in 1954, the year that Fonteyn took over from Genée as president of the Royal Academy of Dance.“Karsavina had firsthand knowledge of what the choreographer and composer wanted, and is passing it on,” Ms. Fitzpatrick said. (“I never was one to count,” Karsavina says in a film clip about learning “The Firebird”; “Stravinsky was very kind.”) “There is a wonderful sense of handing things from one generation to the next.”Fonteyn and NureyevFonteyn with Rudolf Nureyev at rehearsals for the Royal Academy of Dance Gala in 1963.Credit…Royal Academy of Dance/ArenaPAL, via GBL WilsonThis relaxed moment from a 1963 rehearsal shows the ease and rapport between Fonteyn and the youthful Rudolf Nureyev, who had defected from Russia two years earlier. They were rehearsing for the annual Royal Academy of Dance gala, which Fonteyn established to raise funds for the organization. Her fame enabled her to bring together international guests, British dancers and even contemporary dance choreographers like Paul Taylor.“The gala was also an opportunity for Fonteyn and Nureyev to try things that they perhaps wouldn’t have danced with the Royal Ballet,” Ms. Pritchard said. “Here, they were in rehearsal for ‘La Sylphide,’ because Nureyev was passionate about the Bournonville choreography. They really look like two dancers who are happy with one another.”‘Diminutive, dapper and precise’Stanislas Idzikowski teaching in 1952.Credit…Central Office of InformationStanislas Idzikowski, known as Idzi to his students, was a Polish dancer who had moved to London in his teens and danced with Anna Pavlova’s company before joining the Ballets Russes, where he inherited many of Vaslav Nijinsky’s roles. A close friend of Karsavina, he later became a much-loved teacher and worked closely with the Royal Academy of Dance. Always formally clad in a three-piece suit with a stiff collared shirt and elegant shoes, he was, Fonteyn wrote in her autobiography, “diminutive, dapper and precise.”In this 1952 photograph, he is teaching fifth-year girls who were probably hoping to go on to professional careers. Idzikowski was also involved with the Royal Academy of Dance’s Production Club, started in 1932 to allow students over 14 to work with choreographers; Frederick Ashton and Robert Helpmann were among the early volunteers, and later a young John Cranko created his first work there.Party polkaStudents demonstrate a dance for Margot Fonteyn and others in 1972.Credit…Felix FonteynThis 1972 photograph of young girls about to begin a sequence called the “party polka” was taken by Fonteyn’s brother, Felix, who also filmed the demonstration being given by a group of primary school students for Fonteyn and other teachers. The footage, which had been stored in the Royal Academy of Dance’s archives in canisters marked “Children’s Syllabus,” was only recently discovered by Ms. Fitzgerald.The film offers a rare glimpse of Fonteyn in her offstage role at the Royal Academy of Dance, Ms. Fitzgerald said, and it reflects an important change that the ballerina made during her presidency. “People really think about Fonteyn as a dancer, but she was very involved with teaching and syllabus development,” Ms. Fitzgerald said. Earlier syllabuses, she explained, had included mime, drama and history, but when a panel, including Fonteyn, revised the program in 1968, they did away with much of this.“They wanted to streamline everything and make it more enjoyable for the children, and just focus on the movement,” Ms. Fitzgerald said. “The party polka is a good example of that, with a great sense for the children of whirling around the room, and really dancing.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    ‘Mr. Mayor’ Review: A Political Comedy From Sitcom Royalty

    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story‘Mr. Mayor’ Review: A Political Comedy From Sitcom RoyaltyRobert Carlock, Tina Fey and Ted Danson join forces for a show about a businessman who finds himself running a city.Ted Danson, left, and Bobby Moynihan in “Mr. Mayor,” a new NBC sitcom created by Robert Carlock and Tina Fey.Credit…Mitchell Haddad/NBCJan. 6, 2021“Mr. Mayor” has good sitcom DNA: Robert Carlock and Tina Fey of “30 Rock” and “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt” on the writing and producing side; Ted Danson, most recently of “The Good Place” and “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” onscreen. What could go wrong?Yet something did, at least on the basis of the new NBC comedy’s first two episodes, which premiere on Thursday. That’s a very small sample, but it’s what we have, and it’s a jarringly flat 42 minutes of television.No blame goes to Danson, who strides through the role of Neil Bremer, the newly elected and largely unqualified mayor of Los Angeles, with his typical aplomb. Bremer has the charismatic lunkheadedness and chummy-needy temperament Danson has brought to characters from Michael, the afterlife architect of “The Good Place,” all the way back to Sam Malone in “Cheers.”There are moments when Danson reacts to a laugh line from one of Bremer’s aides — a pair of slick, young, neurotically woke apparatchiks (Vella Lovell and Mike Cabellon) and a rumpled white guy (Bobby Moynihan of “Saturday Night Live”) who is given to outsmarting them — with a blank stare. It’s because Bremer, played by the 73-year-old Danson, doesn’t get it. But in your head you may hear Danson, along with the rest of us, asking: “Seriously? That’s the best you could come up with?”So far, the show is full of lines that are meant to be funny, in a joke-adjacent kind of way, but don’t quite hit — they have the shape of humor but not the force. Most of these are predicated on a continual but uneasy satire of the current climate of political correctness; “Mr. Mayor” takes on cancel culture as one of its main subjects, and perhaps it does it as directly as you can on prime-time network TV, but the overall effect is of writers boldly tiptoeing.It starts to feel like a receiving line: We meet the pronoun joke (“The look in his eyes — their eyes — a lot of different eyes”); the me-too joke (“If you believe in something, don’t give up, don’t take no for answer, except for with sex, that’s different”); the cleverly inverted race joke (“You need to learn how to listen, whitey.” “Whitey?” “Your hair”).Bremer himself has some Trumpian characteristics. He’s a businessman — a billboard tycoon — with a Brobdingnagian mansion and a golf habit. His chief of staff, horrified at her role in actually getting him elected, moans, “I got him that toy phone and told him he was tweeting on it.” (There’s also a dig at a blue-city politician, when Bremer commits the gaffe of rolling up his pizza slice, inviting de Blasio-style ridicule.)But Bremer isn’t soulless or venal or particularly Machiavellian, in the mode of Alec Baldwin’s TV executive on “30 Rock.” He’s more of an earnest blunderer who ran for mayor to make his daughter (Kyla Kenedy) think he was cool.And that’s not the only note of sentimentality in “Mr. Mayor” — there’s an “aww” vibe to the father-daughter relationship and to Bremer’s jousting with a political rival, a progressive hardcase played by Holly Hunter. Beneath the carapace of political humor there appears to be a pretty ordinary family-and-workplace sitcom developing here. No one in “Mr. Mayor” is as eccentric or as outsize as characters like Liz and Jack in “30 Rock” or Kimmy Schmidt, and the result — perhaps unexpectedly, perhaps not — is that no one is as sympathetic or as moving, either.Maybe it had something to do with the New York settings, or the obvious enjoyment they took in savaging the TV business in “30 Rock.” But Carlock and Fey’s earlier shows had an energy, and a storybook quality, that isn’t there yet in “Mr. Mayor.” You feel it every time a music cue doesn’t make you smile the way they did in “30 Rock.”There’s some of the old offhand joy in scenes involving Bremer’s daughter, who’s running for office at her high school. Her argument that legalizing marijuana is anti-progressive because it hurts marginalized drug-peddling communities like “the poor, surfers and DJ’s with crushing DJ-school debt” is one of the better lines, and when her proud mic drop at the end of a campaign speech results in incapacitating feedback, it’s a minor but genuinely funny touch.They’re just grace notes, but they remind us that until now, Carlock and Fey’s genius has been for making stories entirely out of grace notes.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    Lee Breuer, Adventurous Theater Director, Dies at 83

    AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyLee Breuer, Adventurous Theater Director, Dies at 83One of the founders of Mabou Mines, he reveled in being an outsider even when his celebrated “The Gospel at Colonus” reached Broadway.Lee Breuer, the director of “Peter and Wendy,” in 1997 with two of the puppets featured in that production.Credit…Suzanne DeChillo/The New York TimesPublished More

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    Theater to Stream: Festivals, Festivals, Festivals

    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyTheater to Stream: Festivals, Festivals, FestivalsThe Under the Radar, Prototype and Exponential festivals are ready to open our minds with experimental work, even if their doors are shut.Alexi Murdoch in “Wide Slumber for Lepidopterists,” part of the Prototype Festival.Credit…Pierre-Alain GiraudJan. 6, 2021Updated 12:41 p.m. ETSet dates for previews, openings and closings. Fall and spring seasons. Heck: turning up somewhere on time!Until the pandemic occurred in 2020, many of us perhaps did not realize how much theater relies on appointments. Now that most of them have vanished, with theater — and time itself — becoming somewhat amorphous, it’s comforting to see that the January festivals are still happening.Once cursed as the sluggish period of the year that follows the holiday rush, January has slowly turned into a hyperactive showcase for experimental work. And so it remains this year. While the doors remain physically shut, our minds can still open up.Whitney White and Peter Mark Kendall, the creators of “Capsule,” part of the Public Theater’s Under the Radar Festival. Credit…Melissa Bunni ElianUnder the RadarIn a way, going online was a natural step for Under the Radar (through Jan. 17). Hosted by the Public Theater, the 17-year-old event has always questioned the very nature of the art form: “What makes something theater?” the festival director Mark Russell pondered in a recent video chat. “Can an exhibit be a theater piece? Does a story have to be a part of it? This is a lot of hubris, but I felt like the whole world turned into UTR,” he added, laughing.One thing that has not changed is Under the Radar’s international bent — this year with a mix of on-demand and appointment shows, all of them free. Among the on-demand offerings are works in which two wildly creative women take on roles different from the ones they’re known for: “Capsule,” in which the rising director Whitney White (“What to Send Up When It Goes Down”) steps on the virtual stage; and “Espíritu,” which was written and directed by the prominent Chilean actress Trinidad González (“A Fantastic Woman”).As for the livestreams, mark your calendar for Piehole’s “Disclaimer”; “Borders & Crossings,” by the Nigerian-British playwright and performer Inua Ellams (“Barber Shop Chronicles”); and “A Thousand Ways (Part One): A Phone Call,” by 600 Highwaymen.Shara Nova, left, and Helga Davis in “Ocean Body,” which is part of the Prototype Festival.Credit…Mark DeChiazzaPrototypeThe experimental operas and musical-theater pieces that the Prototype festival presents can take three to five years to gestate. So when the artistic directors Beth Morrison and Jecca Barry (from Beth Morrison Projects) and Kristin Marting (from HERE Arts Center) decided in June to jettison the entire slate they had planned for the 2021 edition, which runs from Jan. 8-16, they knew they would have to change tack, and fast. Especially since they did not want to simply adapt pre-existing projects for the digital world.“A bunch of people came in with stuff that was like retooling things that they already had,” Marting said. As curators, they felt that this “wasn’t the way that we can serve our audience right now,” she continued.The new 2021 festival centerpiece, “Modulation” — a commission made up of brief vocal works by the likes of Sahba Aminikia, Juhi Bansal, Yvette Janine Jackson, Angélica Negrón and Daniel Bernard Roumain — emerged as a pure product of the new moment.“We saw the opportunity to ask a lot of composers to respond to 2020, but in short bursts,” Barry said. “The three of us developed different themes for what we were interested in having them respond to, and we landed on fear, isolation and identity. Then we thought of a fourth theme to connect all of those things, and that was breath.”Except for “Ocean Body,” a ticketed video installation at HERE that features the performers Helga Davis and Shara Nova, all of Prototype 2021’s offerings are on-demand. This includes Geoff Sobelle and Pamela Z’s “Times³ (Times x Times x Times),” which can be streamed anywhere but was conceived to be heard while walking through Times Square. For Marting, the experience is typical of Prototype’s ever-questioning approach. “We’re trying to craft the conversation,” she said, “because one of the things the festival is really interested in is interrogating this line between opera and music theater, and why people think they like one and not the other.”Nathan Repasz is taking part in “The Unquestioned Interiority of Humankind,” as part of the Exponential Festival.Credit…via Exponential FestivalExponential Festival“We didn’t want to do a single Zoom reading because they’re the bane of my existence,” said Theresa Buchheister, the founding artistic director of the Exponential Festival.This is pretty much the only guarantee we can get about the 2021 edition of a fest that reliably supplies the nuttiest, most unpredictable programming of any in January.In normal years, the festival takes place at such funky Brooklyn venues as the Brick Theater, Vital Joint and Chez Bushwick. But from Jan. 7-31, each of the 31 shows on the 2021 slate will debut in one place — YouTube — and will remain available for the foreseeable future. While this is convenient for viewers, it is giving Buchheister an extra headache. “We’re dealing with nudity on YouTube, which is hard,” she said. “Performance artists are always naked, they just are. So it’s one of the many difficulties this year.”Indeed, challenges abounded. Another, for example, was figuring out how to present Panoply Performance Laboratory’s “Heidegger’s Indiana,” which Esther Neff originally envisioned as a choose-your-own-adventure show made up of distinct vignettes.“What we ended up doing is that Esther will create a work where she’s put the pieces in the order that she wants,” Buchheister said. “And I was like, ‘You can draw tarot cards, you can throw axes into a tree — I don’t care how you choose what order they go into.’ But then we’ll also create a playlist on YouTube of all of the different segments.”One of Exponential’s singularities is its emphasis on curated bills, often pairing a better-known — at least in avant-garde circles — with an up-and-comer. Buchheister was excited to link the writer-performer Jess Barbagallo and the musician Nathan Repasz. “Nathan did one of my favorite performances of 2020,” she said, “a percussion piece to Mitt Romney saying that hot dog is his favorite meat.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More