Eliana Willis

Janelle Monáe stars in the second season of Amazon’s “Homecoming.” And a documentary about Norma McCorvey debuts on FX. More

[embedded content]The NBC drama “Smash,” though both loved and abhorred when it premiered in 2012, has since grown into a cult favorite among theater buffs. There were flashy musical numbers! Christian Borle sitting at a piano! The high stakes of putting on a show! (Critics were less thrilled.)But the series — about two songwriters creating a Broadway-bound Marilyn Monroe bio-musical and the potential stars competing for the leading role — burned bright and short, canceled after two seasons of disastrous ratings. Now, for the “Smash” loyalists waiting for a comeback, there is a glimmer of good news: The series is being reimagined for the stage, where perhaps it belonged all along.The adaptation will be based on the soapy ups and downs of “Smash” — not its fictional show-within-a-show “Bombshell,” as originally announced under a different production team five years ago, nor its other show-within-a-show, the grittier downtown “Hit List,” that was staged as a concert at 54 Below after the demise of the series in 2013.And though the musical will include many of the same songs written for television by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, the plot will “depart liberally from the series,” the production said in a release.The stage musical has not announced any timeline, but it boasts a hefty slate of producers: Steven Spielberg, who served as an executive producer on the series; Robert Greenblatt, who was chairman of NBC Entertainment when “Smash” was on the air; and Neil Meron, another “Smash” executive producer who also produced the movie musicals “Chicago” in 2002 and “Hairspray” in 2007.Bob Martin, who wrote the books for “The Prom” and “The Drowsy Chaperone,” will write the book for “Smash” with Rick Elice, who penned “Jersey Boys” and “Peter and the Starcatcher.”And Joshua Bergasse, who won an Emmy Award for his choreography in the original series, will return to the same role for the musical.The original cast of “Smash” included a slew of familiar faces from Broadway: Borle, Megan Hilty, Jeremy Jordan, Leslie Odom Jr., Brian d’Arcy James, Krysta Rodriguez and others. Some, like Debra Messing and Katharine McPhee, would go on to play leading Broadway roles after the series ended.“Smash” was also known for bringing aboard an array of powerhouse guest stars, including Bernadette Peters, Liza Minnelli and a pre-“Hamilton” Lin-Manuel Miranda. More

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. We’re all stuck at home at the moment, so here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.Mail InsecurityOn Wednesday, President Trump incorrectly asserted that Michigan and Nevada were engaging in voter fraud, accusing both states of sending mail ballots to its residents. His comments were followed by a threat to pull federal funding from these states and any others that allowed voting by mail.“I guess in Trump’s mind, voting should be like your wife smiling at you: once a year, in public, and never at home,” Trevor Noah joked on Wednesday night’s “The Daily Social Distancing Show.”[embedded content]“There are two surefire ways to piss Donald Trump off: showing him that shirtless photo of Obama, and giving people access to mail-in votes.” — TREVOR NOAH“President Trump today accused officials in Michigan of illegally sending out almost eight million absentee ballots and claimed he would withhold funding from the state if they, quote, ‘want to go down this voter fraud path.’ Yeah, you’d hate for us to get rid of our foolproof system of showing up to an abandoned library where an octogenarian looks for your name in a big binder, can’t find it, then finally says, ‘I don’t know. Just go ahead.’” — SETH MEYERS“And, by the way, Michigan isn’t sending out ballots, they’re sending out mail-in ballot applications, just like a bunch of Republican states are also doing. So clearly Trump is just looking for an excuse to avoid losing. As the election gets closer, Trump is going to get crazier. He’s going to be like one of those second-graders playing sports. [imitating Trump] ‘The results from Wisconsin don’t count. I didn’t say I was ready. Didn’t say I was ready. OK, I’m ready now — Florida, I win!’” — TREVOR NOAHThe Punchiest Punchlines (Georgia Edition)“The Georgia Department of Public Health posted a bar chart that appeared to show that new confirmed cases had dropped each day over two weeks. Good news, until it turned out that chart put the days in the wrong order. The Georgia Department of Public Health is just a little confused. It explains their sign, ‘Put a mask on your elbow and cough directly into the face.’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Now, we know Georgia did this because they left the dates on the chart. Apparently, in the Peach State, the calendar goes April 30, May 4, May 6, May 5, May 2, May 7, and then April 26. Come on, Georgia. At least try to hide the lie. When your parents come home to a house full of teenagers and alcohol, you don’t say, ‘No, I didn’t have a party while you were gone. My party is scheduled for next Friday, which, as you know, here in Georgia, was last Tuesday — and I have coronavirus.’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“But take it from me, Georgia: cheating only hurts you in the long run. Yeah. When I was in school, I forged straight A’s on my biology report card instead of studying, and to this day, I still don’t know where my labia is.” — TREVOR NOAHThe Bits Worth WatchingKaren Chee, a writer with “Late Night with Seth Meyers,” shares how she’s celebrating Asian and Pacific Islander American Heritage Month by doing things like being “grateful” to a man who tells her to “go back to Korea” — since, she notes, South Korea has controlled the coronavirus epidemic.What We’re Excited About on Thursday NightJoe Biden will chat about the latest malarkey with Stephen Colbert on Thursday’s “A Late Show.”Also, Check This OutImageThe New York Times Book Review’s Summer Reading special has its selections for the best things to read during the warm-weather months. More

Remember “Date Night,” with Steve Carell and Tina Fey? I didn’t either, until I saw “The Lovebirds” and tried to think of another movie that had similarly squandered the appeal of two popular comic performers in a rom-com caper that managed to be both frantic and lazy.There are other examples, of course, and it’s possible to prefer some of them to others. This one, starring Issa Rae and Kumail Nanjiani, starts out promisingly, and not just because it stars Issa Rae and Kumail Nanjiani. The opening sequence shows their characters, Leilani and Jibran, falling in love in the kind of montage that usually comes midway through a movie like this. Then suddenly it’s four years later, and they’re on the verge of breaking up, having worn out each other’s patience. It all unfolds quickly enough to be interesting, to make you want to get to know this pair a little better.[embedded content]That never happens. Jibran is a documentary filmmaker, while Leilani works in advertising. In writing that sentence, I have now given the matter at least as much thought as the filmmakers did. Both halves of the couple are a little bit nerdy and a little bit neurotic, in ways that might be familiar to fans of “Insecure” or “Silicon Valley.” They squabble about Instagram and “The Amazing Race,” and seem to have no opinions about much of anything.Maybe that’s unfair. They both like crudités, and they sing along with Katy Perry’s “Firework” when it comes on the radio in a ride-share car. This may be a good time — or maybe exactly the wrong time — to mention that Jibran and Leilani live in New Orleans, a city known for food and music. I’m a big fan of raw vegetables and reluctant to talk trash about a celebrity, but come on.As if to distract from the blandness of its main characters, “The Lovebirds” — directed by Michael Showalter from a script by Aaron Abrams and Brendan Gall — half-bakes a busy plot involving murder, police corruption and an elaborate blackmail scheme in which printed photographs of sex acts are mailed around in envelopes. On the run from both cops and killers, Jibran and Leilani wind up at what looks like an “Eyes Wide Shut” theme party, with masked revelers, group sex and mumbo-jumbo incantations.That sounds funnier than it is — a comic setup with everything but actual laughs. Rae and Nanjiani do their best, but neither the dialogue nor the direction serves their talents adequately. The flatness of the jokes and gags in “The Lovebirds” might suggest a made-for-streaming rush job, but this movie was originally going to be released in theaters by Paramount. Current circumstances make it easier to skip, but perhaps not as satisfying.The LovebirdsRated R. Mostly talk. Running time: 1 hour 26 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

Season 5, Episode 3: ‘Beg, Bribe, Bully’“Billions” is a show that seems to appreciate pro wrestling, as seen in the fandom of its dudebro character Mafee and the recent cameo by Becky Lynch. So I hope it’s not too indulgent to quote one of the great heel wrestlers, Ted DiBiase, better known as the Million Dollar Man, as a kind of epigraph for this episode: “Everybody’s got a price.”I know, I know: That’s kind of the point of the whole show, right? It’s a drama about the corrupting influence of money and power. But it felt more poignant in this week’s episode than it has in quite some time, perhaps because the institutions being assailed by the show’s money-talks characters — family, art, education, the environment — feel sacrosanct.Not in Bobby Axelrod’s world, though, that’s for sure. Axe spends the episode questing after three things. First, he wants to become a bank. He’s informed by the government officials Todd Krakow and Hard Bob (played by the actors Danny Strong and Chelcie Ross in deliciously sleazy cameos) that there is no way for him to get past the regulatory agencies that want to keep men with criminal histories like his away from banking; his mistake was committing his misdeeds before becoming a bank, while the megabanks that caused the 2008 crash and got away largely scot-free did it the other way around.But there’s still hope that he could secure a state charter, particularly since he knows his way around the New York power structure so well.Next up: art, specifically the abstract paintings of Nico Tanner (Frank Grillo). Axe is set on buying three canvasses when he discovers he’s been beaten to the punch by his new rival, Mike Prince. He tries to commission new pieces, but Tanner tells him he doesn’t paint for money. “‘I don’t paint for money’ means ‘nobody’s paid me enough yet,’” Axe tells his right-hand man, Wags, “so if you can’t buy the art, buy the artist.” He winds up purchasing Tanner a new studio in addition to commissioning eight paintings for an undisclosed amount of money. Hey, the Medicis paid Michelangelo to paint the Sistine Chapel, didn’t they? What’s the difference?Finally, Axe has to get his son, Gordie (Jack Gore), out of hot water at the elite prep school he attends, after the young Axelrod’s cryptocurrency-mining operation (one of those again?) causes a power outage for the entire town. Here’s where things get really nasty.After discovering that the headmaster (J.C. MacKenzie) is using Syrian-refugee scholarship students as his own personal labor pool, Axe blackmails him into allowing Gordie to stay enrolled, all right in front of his son. He then demands an opportunity to address the student body, delivering a fire-and-brimstone sermon in favor of capitalism, the system that harnesses our desire to “be greedy, be hungry, subjugate and conquer, because that’s who we are, that’s what we are” better than any other.Weirdly, Bobby’s attack-helicopter parenting inspires Mike Wagner to reconnect with his (many, many, largely estranged) children — well, weirdly for normal people anyway; this is Wags we’re talking about. This campaign meets with mixed success. Oh sure, he tracks them down, with the help of Axe Cap’s fixer-for-hire, Hall (Terry Kinney). But Wags bumbles his way through a call with one of his daughters (“You ever try talking to a 14-year-old girl on FaceTime?” he asks Axe; “I hope that was one of your kids,” replies the bossman) and inviting his eldest son, George, to the Axe Cap office, whereupon the younger Wagner attempts to tell his father the Good News about Jesus. Best of luck with that, sonny boy.Taylor Mason finds religion of a different sort in this episode. Thanks to a cutting-edge computer program that analyzes human speech for hidden meanings and messages, Mason deduces that a university president wants to divest from fossil fuels, but is digging in his heels against divestment simply because he doesn’t want to give student activists the time of day. Taylor, who can make money off divestment, nearly gets him to pull the trigger, but he is overruled by the chairman of the board of trustees, a no-nonsense Navy admiral who decries “candy-ass” college students.Fortunately, Mase Cap has a no-nonsense naval officer all its own: Sarah (Samantha Mathis), Taylor’s steeliest operative. She convinces the admiral to divest lickety-split — but she also presents Taylor with the idea of filling the fossil-fuel vacuum with the firm’s own investments. To Taylor, this defeats the entire purpose of getting the college to divest. Axe has no such qualms and cuts a deal with a pair of petrobarons right away; Sarah, disgusted by her boss’s softness, quits in protest. Greed, hunger, subjugation, conquest: They’re the capitalist way, and Taylor just let down the side.Many of these conflicts play out in miniature on the Chuck Rhoades side of the show. A bit adrift now that his divorce from Wendy is moving forward, Chuck wants to return to his alma mater, Yale Law, to teach. The only problem is that his father, a fellow Son of Eli, is years and years in arrears on his pledged donations to the institution. Rhoades père agrees to pony up, but only if Chuck arranges a formal introduction between his kids and Charles Sr.’s new wife and baby.Chuck pulls it off with help from Wendy in exchange for dropping his financial restraining order against her — but he keeps in the dark about the quid pro quo with Yale, allowing her to believe his “it’s all about family” baloney.Perhaps that’s the biggest difference between Bobby and Chuck. Rhoades does his skulduggery in secret and under cover; Bobby proudly puts his on display for Gordie and his classmates to take in as a learning experience. If he’s right about capitalism’s being a matter of subjugation and conquest at heart, these are valuable life lessons indeed. Everybody’s got a price, and some people don’t mind who sees them paying it.Loose change:This episode’s references to the “Godfather” series are many and mostly obvious, with Axe at one point alluding to the famous horse’s head scene as a picture of the headmaster’s fate. But there were stealthy “Sopranos” hat-tips as well, from Bobby’s reference to the second film in the series simply as “Two” — “Sopranos” characters did the same — to the “Good News” gag, which echoed one of the show’s funniest bits.As it’s been known to do in the past, the show matched its music cues to Bobby’s wardrobe: Axe sports a Rainbow t-shirt while the Ronnie James Dio-fronted band’s “Long Live Rock ’n’ Roll” blasts in the background.“What a show of parentage,” says Wags as he watches Bobby explain to Gordie that he’ll have to ruin the headmaster. “I have so much to learn from you both about communication between a father and a son.” I love Wags, but at the same time, it’s not hard to see why his kids want so little to do with him. More