Television

Subterms

    More stories

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in Television

      ‘The Rings of Power’: Charlie Vickers on That Monster Revelation

      by

      The actor spoke about the big news regarding his character in Friday’s Season 1 finale. Major spoilers ahead.This interview includes spoilers for the Season 1 finale of “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power”When he auditioned for the Amazon prequel series “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power,” Charlie Vickers did not know he would be playing two roles: the conflicted human Halbrand and the ultimate deceiver, Sauron. But he began to have suspicions early on.During his audition, he was asked to read pieces from William Shakespeare’s “Richard III” and John Milton’s “Paradise Lost” — “literally auditioning as Satan,” he recalled by phone on Thursday, just hours before the Season 1 finale dropped overnight, on Friday. “That was a bit of a clue.”But it wasn’t until filming was about to resume for the third episode (after a Covid production hiatus) that the series’s showrunners, Patrick McKay and J.D. Payne, took Vickers to the set for an evil fortress, turned to him and said, “Hail, Lord Sauron.”“That was a seminal moment for me,” Vickers said.While he missed out on playing the spiky armored version of the dark lord in the show’s prologue in Episode 1 (“I wish that was me!” he said), Vickers went all-in on his Sauron studies, reading “The Silmarillion” in its entirety and combing through obscure passages in Tolkien’s Legendarium as part of his “subconscious work.”Taking a break from Season 2 production outside London, Vickers discussed the big revelation about his character and what it means for Halbrand’s relationship with Galadriel (Morfydd Clark). These are edited excerpts from the conversation.How does it feel to be the answer to the question tormenting the internet? Or if you’re Sauron, maybe you enjoy tormenting the internet.Explore the World of the ‘Lord of the Rings’The literary universe built by J.R.R. Tolkien, now adapted into a new series for Amazon Prime Video, has inspired generations of readers and viewers.Artist and Scholar: Tolkien did more than write books. He invented an alternate reality, complete with its own geography, languages and history.Being Frodo: The actor Elijah Wood explains why he’ll never be upset at being associated with the “Lord of the Rings” movie series.A Soviet Take: A 1991 production based on Tolkien’s novels, recently digitized by a Russian broadcaster, is a time capsule of a bygone era.From the Archives: Read what W.H. Auden wrote about “The Fellowship of the Ring,” the first volume of Tolkien’s trilogy, in 1954.[Laughs.] Exactly. Maybe there has been some kind of sick enjoyment that I’ve been getting. Luckily, I’ve managed to stay off the internet, but it’s been hard to avoid. I’ve had friends guessing and telling me I’m Sauron ever since the second episode, which I’ve not been able to confirm or deny. So it’s a relief.What’s been so interesting about the show is that it doesn’t shy away from the lore. For the people who know, there are little Easter eggs or hints here and there. When you look back to the second episode, you’re like, “OK, that makes sense in the grand scheme of things.” So I think it’s great that there’s been so much debate.You once mentioned that you found useful things in Tolkien’s letters, although you didn’t specify which ones. I took that as a possible reference to the period in which Sauron sought redemption. But then the showrunners talked recently about another way to read Sauron-as-Halbrand: as a power addict. What was it that you found in Tolkien that helped shape your portrayal?I think the repentant Sauron is a really interesting thing. But I like to leave it ambiguous because it was ambiguous in Tolkien’s writing, such as in Letter 131, and in “Morgoth’s Ring,” in the History of Middle-earth series. He spoke of Sauron repenting “if only out of fear.” I think his repentance is fascinating — and this is why I don’t want to say necessarily how I interpreted it as an actor — because it creates two different [possibilities] for Halbrand.If you look at him as if he’s genuinely repentant, and he wants to escape this dark path and live as someone who’s been humbled, then Galadriel inadvertently draws him back to this power. She says to him in the smithery, “There’s no peace here,” and that scene illuminates this whole idea for him of: “Well, you’re right, there is no peace for me as a regular person. My peace is in power. I need to rule. I need to lead.” And she literally gives him the keys to the kingdom and sends him back down the rabbit hole. That is, if you view him as repenting genuinely.But, if you view his repentance as an act, then it leans more into his deception, and his deception of her, in that she’s a tool for him to get back to where he wants to be. You rarely see Halbrand alone before the finale, save for this moment when he’s in the smithery, staring at his pouch, making his decision. Otherwise, you mostly see him through the eyes of other characters.And yet he’s about to cry in that moment by himself.I always like to think that in shape-shifting, the best way to deceive is to fully take on the form of what you’re trying to portray: thinking, feeling, living, breathing as a human man. Only through a wholehearted embodiment of his form could he deceive these massively influential figures. This is even when he’s by himself, because the gods are always watching. And we know that he fears the gods; we know that he’s scared. Because Tolkien says that explicitly.He can use Galadriel as a tool. She knows the right people. She gets into the right rooms. If he’s by her side, it can only lead to good things, as long as he remains undiscovered. So I made a decision as the best way for me to approach it, to make it real for me. And let people interpret it as they will.Did you decide for yourself about a lot of little details? Like, what’s in his pouch? Why was he at sea? Was his injury was self-inflicted so that Galadriel would take him to the elves?I have a belief about what’s in the pouch, but I won’t share that. Him being at sea may or may not be explored farther down the line. The injury, yes, I think he wounds himself, because he was very aware of what was coming. He thought he had stopped it, but he knows there’s only one way to get out of this mess. He risks this Halbrand form to get to the elves because he understands that the only way he can be healed is through their power and magic.So much for any fan hopes that Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) and Halbrand had a romantic future.Amazon Prime VideoDo you think he wanted Galadriel to figure it out?Yes. He’s ready for her to see him for who he is, and he thinks she’s ready to know it. He makes this pitch to her, and it’s so closely linked to the mirror of Galadriel in “The Fellowship of the Ring.” It gives it an interesting context, I think.He offers to make her his queen. Is that a marriage proposal?That’s something I thought about a lot, but I don’t think so. W.H. Auden wrote an essay on Tolkien, and he said something along the lines of, “Evil loves only itself.” [“Evil, defiantly chosen, can no longer imagine anything but itself.”] So I think in his pitch to Galadriel, it cannot mean that he loves her or that there’s any kind of romantic relationship. There should be no ambiguity around the fact that Sauron is evil — he’s terrible, and he’s using Galadriel to enhance his power.Throughout the season, she shows him a different way of ruling and maybe illuminates some things for him. So in making that pitch, I think he’s saying, “Join me and we can rule, and I can coordinate everything and rehabilitate Middle-earth.” But having said that, I also think he would have gotten there anyway without her. He would have descended back into evil. It was inevitable.Haladriel shippers will despair.[Laughs.] Shipping, by the way, is actually a word that Morfydd taught me! Hopefully people will see that any kind of romantic feeling, which couldn’t exist, vanishes into thin air.What’s the plan going forward, given that Sauron is a shape-shifter?There are a lot of twists and turns coming with the character of Sauron. We know that [his disguise as] Annatar is such a massive part of this world, and the prospect of that is really exciting to me. I can’t say much more than that.Annatar is the lord of gifts. Did you get or give any gifts on set? Maybe that wonderful hooded cloak you wear to Mordor?I love that cloak so much! I didn’t get to keep it, unfortunately. I have one gift that was given to me by one of the stunt guys, Daniel Andrews, which is a T-shirt printed with an artist’s image of Halbrand doing the sword flip on the back. That’s Danny’s trick; he’s had it in his stunt arsenal for 30 years, and he’s been trying to get it into a show for 30 years. There’s been nothing released with Halbrand, so I haven’t dared to wear it, even around the house. But that’s the coolest souvenir. More

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Television

      Two Black Comedians Sue Police Over Search at Atlanta Airport

      by

      Eric André and Clayton English said they were two of hundreds of Black travelers who have been stopped and questioned by officers just as they were about to board flights.Eric André cleared security at the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, gave the gate agent his boarding pass and was moments away from stepping onto a plane when he was stopped by officers with the Clayton County Police Department.The officers questioned Mr. André, who is Black, about whether he was selling drugs and what drugs he had in his possession, he said in an interview and a court complaint.They asked to inspect his bag. When he asked if he had to comply, the officers said no, and Mr. André was eventually cleared to board, he said.During the interaction with the police, other passengers had to squeeze past Mr. André and the officers on the jet bridge, the narrow passageway that connects the gate to the airplane during boarding. He said he was allowed onto the plane but left shaken by the interaction.“I knew it was wrong,” said Mr. André, the creator of “The Eric André Show,” a stand-up comedian, actor, producer and writer. “It was humiliating, dehumanizing, traumatizing. Passengers are gawking at me like I’m a perpetrator as they’re like squeezing past me on this claustrophobic jet bridge.”Mr. André’s encounter in April 2021 echoed another one in October 2020 by Clayton English, another Black comedian, at the same airport.Mr. André and Mr. English filed a lawsuit this month against the Police Department, saying they were unfairly targeted for drug checks, according to the complaint. Their lawyers said the department’s practice discriminated against Black travelers who had already been cleared by Transportation Security Administration agents.The Clayton County Police Department runs a jet bridge interdiction program at the airport and made stops between Aug. 30, 2020, and April 30, 2021, according to the suit.Court papers say the stops resulted in a total of three seizures: “roughly 10 grams (less than the weight of one AAA alkaline battery) of drugs from one passenger, 26 grams (the weight of about 4 grapes) of ‘suspected THC gummies’ from another, and 6 prescription pills (for which no valid prescription allegedly existed) from a third.”Two passengers — those who had the roughly 10 grams of drugs and the pills — were charged, the suit said.In that time, a total of 402 stops were made. In cases where race was recorded, more than half of the 378 passengers who were stopped were Black.The Clayton County Police Department declined to comment, citing pending litigation. In April 2021, when Mr. André shared his experience on Twitter, the department denied wrongdoing.“This type of interaction occurs frequently during our officers’ course of duties, and is supported by Georgia law and the U.S. Constitution,” a 2021 department statement said. The department added, “Our preliminary findings have revealed that Mr. Andre was not racially profiled.”The Atlanta Police Department — not the Clayton County Police Department — is the primary law enforcement agency at the airport, the airport said in a statement. “APD has a robust drug interdiction program but, unless otherwise required, does not engage in jet-bridge stops of passengers,” the statement said.From September 2020 to April 2021, the police seized about $1 million from passengers, according to the lawsuit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia.Richard Deane, a lawyer involved in the suit, said the purpose of the stops appeared to be to seize money and that the stops were made largely, if not solely, based on race.The suit maintains the police violated the constitutional protection against unreasonable searches and seizures and the equal protection clause, which guarantees racial equality and prohibits racial discrimination, said Barry Friedman, founding director of New York University’s Policing Project, and another lawyer on the case.“We have a great concern about police acting when there’s no policy in place, particularly democratically accountable policy that guides the discretion of police officers,” he said at a news conference this month. “When there’s undue discretion, we get what you have here, which is severe racial discrimination.”Drug interdiction programs at airports started in 1975 with a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration operation in Detroit and expanded to other airports, said Beth A. Colgan, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.“I think it’s a strong suit,” she said. “In terms of the Fourth Amendment claims, it seems clear that they were seized and that searches did occur and it would be difficult to describe these as consent searches.”Civil asset forfeiture allows law enforcement to seize cash, property or vehicles based on probable cause that those involved are associated with criminal activity, Professor Colgan said. This is a low standard, she said, and people often do not challenge forfeitures because the process to get the money back is costly and time-consuming.Courts have favored law enforcement in cases of consent versus coercion, said Gloria J. Browne-Marshall, a fellow and visiting professor at Harvard Kennedy School.“People may feel the need to say yes, and it’s a coerced sense of giving consent as opposed to a freedom of saying no and then feeling like everyone is going to suspect they had drugs on them,” she said.Mr. English, who lives in Atlanta, was the winner of NBC’s “Last Comic Standing” competition in 2015 and has headlined in clubs, colleges and festivals.He said he spent his three-and-a-half-hour flight in 2020 wondering what he had done wrong and whether he would be arrested upon landing. When the police took his boarding pass and identification and searched his bag, he felt he had no choice but to comply.“I felt completely powerless,” he said at the news conference. “I felt violated. I felt cornered. I felt like I couldn’t, you know, continue to get on the plane. I felt like I had to comply if I wanted everything to go smoothly.”Mr. André lives in Los Angeles but travels through the Atlanta airport often for work and has recently taken to hiring a service that brings passengers directly to the plane after they’ve cleared security because he’s afraid of repeating his experience from last year.“It’s not just about me or what I went through,” he said. “It’s about the community I identify with. It’s about Black and brown people being discriminated against and being treated like second-class citizens, being treated as if they’re already suspicious and they don’t belong in this country by their own government and the trauma that comes with that.” More

    • 113 Shares109 Views

      in Television

      ‘Saturday Night Live’ Takes On the Jan. 6 Committee

      by

      Megan Thee Stallion was the host and musical guest of an “S.N.L.” episode that satirized what may have been the committee’s final public meeting.Although its first two episodes avoided opening sketches that recreated news events, “Saturday Night Live” eventually found reality too irresistible: This weekend’s broadcast led with a parody of what was potentially the final meeting of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.As the hearing began, Kenan Thompson, playing the committee’s chairman, Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi, offered some momentous remarks. “Jan. 6 was one of the most dramatic and consequential moments in our nation’s history,” he said. “So to fight back, we assembled a team of monotone nerds to do a PowerPoint.”Summarizing the meeting’s agenda before holding up a tray of miniature cupcakes, he added, “We’re going to summarize our findings, hold a history-making vote, and then and only then, we all get to have a little treat.”He then turned the hearing over to Heidi Gardner, playing Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming and the committee’s vice chairwoman. Gardner explained that the committee’s evidence was aimed at all Americans: “Whether you’re a Republican who’s not watching or a Democrat who’s nodding so hard your head is falling off, one person is responsible for this insurrection: Donald Trump,” she said. “And one person will suffer the consequences: me.”For those viewers wondering where her toughness came from, Gardner suggested it was hereditary. She asked, “For your 10th birthday, did you eat pizza at Chuck E. Cheese with all your friends, or did you shoot a deer in the face with Dick Cheney?”Thompson almost acknowledged an eerily eager Michael Longfellow, playing Adam Schiff, Democrat of California, but reconsidered. (“Too spooky,” he said.) The committee also showed a video of Chloe Fineman (as Speaker Nancy Pelosi) and Sarah Sherman (as the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer) reacting in real time to the Capitol attack.While Fineman, as Pelosi, conducted a tense call with Mike Pence, Sherman, as Schumer, was also on the phone — to DoorDash, seeking a missing lunch order. (She said it contained “12 dill pickles, still floating in the juice, and a hot pastrami sandwich with very light mustard.”)Another video featured James Austin Johnson as former President Donald J. Trump, making remarks said to have taken place the day before the attack. Speaking on a phone, Johnson said: “The votes don’t matter at all. Because what even is a vote? It’s just a piece of paper, you fold up and put it in a hat, a guy shakes it around.” After some rambling remarks about Apollo Creed, Ivan Drago and Obamacare, Johnson wrapped up the call by casually asking, “Is Mike Pence dead yet?”Thompson concluded the meeting itself: “We tried,” he said. “It was a fun country while it lasted.”Giiiiiiiiirrrrrl of the weekIs it possible for a single joke — a single graphic — to make an entire sketch worthwhile? If so then “Girl Talk” might just have been that sketch. It started off innocuously enough, with an introduction from its host, Mo’nique Money Mo’nique Problems (Ego Nwodim), who described the program as “the talk show where ladies tell me their problems and I keep my advice real simple.”She and her guests (Megan Thee Stallion and Punkie Johnson) went on to discuss their problems and solutions in conversations consisting of different intonations of the word “Girl.” And just to be helpful to “any white people or men tuning in,” Nwodim provided subtitles for a discussion of the war in Ukraine, during which a two-syllable utterance of “girl” by Megan Thee Stallion produced an entire screen’s worth of densely packed (but educational!) text on the history of the conflict.Music video of the weekThis filmed segment for an original song called “We Got Brought” spun laughs (and a genuinely catchy tune) from a recognizably stressful premise: Nwodim, Megan Thee Stallion and Bowen Yang played the tag-along guests of three longtime friends who have met up at a club and ditched their plus-ones to hang out among themselves.Now the three guests, who are strangers to one another, are stuck at a table and unable to find anything to talk about. As one verse goes: “You’re all out of topics and the conversation’s lazy / So you just keep on saying, ‘That’s crazy, that’s crazy.’” The anxiety of Yang’s character — who tries to make small talk by remarking that only 25 people have died at Disneyland since 1955 — is so palpable it pops off the screen.Weekend Update jokes of the weekOver at the Weekend Update desk, the anchors Michael Che and Colin Jost continued to riff on the Jan. 6 committee and the outcomes from its latest meeting.Jost began:After the Jan. 6 committee subpoenaed Donald Trump, Trump responded the next day with a 14-page letter. Fourteen pages. OK, Unabomber. I don’t know if this is a coincidence, but Trump wrote the letter on the same day the F.D.A. confirmed the nation is experiencing a shortage of Adderall. I just know from experience in college, any time I wrote a 14-page paper in one night, I’d also taken a disturbing amount of Adderall.He went on:My favorite part of Trump’s letter is the beginning because it’s on really nice letterhead. It starts, “Dear Chairman Thompson.” And then the first line is just screaming. It’s like reading a Victorian love letter that says, “My beloved Winifred, WHO THE HELL ARE YOU HAVING SEX WITH?”Che picked up the thread:The committee showed a never-before-seen video from Jan. 6 of a desperate Nancy Pelosi speaking on the phone with Mike Pence. Which to Pence counts as adultery. In the video, Pelosi said that she wanted to punch out Donald Trump and knew that if she did, she’d go to jail and be happy. I assume because she owns stock in private prisons.Heartfelt musical performance of the weekIt was a moment that passed by almost as quickly as one of Megan Thee Stallion’s verses, but in the midst of a hectic night of comedy and costume changes, the rapper was genuinely moved during a portion of one her songs. In her performance of “Anxiety,” Megan Thee Stallion referenced her mother, Holly Thomas, who died of brain cancer in 2019. As those lyrics run:If I could write a letter to HeavenI would tell my mama that I shoulda been listenin’And I would tell her sorry that I really been wildin’And ask her to forgive me, ‘cause I really been tryin’And I would ask, please, show me who been realAnd get ‘em from around me if they all been fakeIt’s crazy how I say the same prayers to the LordAnd always get surprised about who he takeMegan Thee Stallion did not so much as swallow a syllable but the emotion of the lyrics were audible in her voice and visible on her face — some viewers wondered online if they even saw her shed a tear. On Friday, Megan Thee Stallion tweeted that she was contemplating a break following “S.N.L.,” and if she chooses to take it, she has surely earned it. More

    • 188 Shares199 Views

      in Television

      ‘The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power’ Season 1, Episode 8: Ramble On

      by

      The season finale included at least one shocking twist and other revelations that set up future seasons. Here are five takeaways from the episode and from the season as a whole.Season 1, Episode 8: ‘Alloyed’Like most prequels, “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” is headed toward a fixed endpoint. No matter how many new characters and locations the writers introduce, by the time the series reaches its intended end — after five seasons, if all goes according to plan — we will have witnessed the events that ended the Second Age of Middle-earth and led to Sauron’s all-controlling One Ring disappearing for thousands of years, before eventually landing in a hobbit’s pocket.Unlike most prequels, “The Rings of Power” arrived with much of its story already extensively mapped out, via the tidbits of Middle-earth history J.R.R. Tolkien dropped in both the text of “The Lord of the Rings” novels and in their extensive appendices. This is why fans watching this series have been paying close attention to the names they have never heard before, trying to figure out how they fit into the Tolkien saga. For example: Why did the author never mention Halbrand, the lost king of the Southlands, returned to his home by Galadriel and a contingent of Númenóreans in a failed effort to prevent the orcs from establishing the shadowlands of Mordor?This week’s Season 1 finale answers that question in shocking fashion. Halbrand is Sauron. There is no lost king of the Southlands. Adar, the orc-father, has established a kingdom his former master and most hated foe will someday claim.Part of what makes “Alloyed” a successful season finale is that in resolving the biggest mystery introduced this year — Where has Sauron gone? — it establishes a foundation for fresh conflicts in the next round of episodes. As this mercurial dark angel Sauron returns to the territory Adar has remade into Mordor, a fascinating power-struggle lies ahead, rooted in ancient history and Middle-earth’s longstanding racial conflicts.This episode also fulfills one of the main functions of a prequel, shading in some key details from “The Lord of the Rings” back story. It is part of Tolkien lore that Sauron helped forge the Rings of Power. How did that happen? Now we know: In the form of Halbrand, under the cover of a story of woe and redemption, he charmed his way into a fateful moment that would shape Middle-earth’s destiny for over a thousand years. The ironies are rich; and the ramifications are just beginning.Explore the World of the ‘Lord of the Rings’The literary universe built by J.R.R. Tolkien, now adapted into a new series for Amazon Prime Video, has inspired generations of readers and viewers.Artist and Scholar: Tolkien did more than write books. He invented an alternate reality, complete with its own geography, languages and history.Being Frodo: The actor Elijah Wood explains why he’ll never be upset at being associated with the “Lord of the Rings” movie series.A Soviet Take: A 1991 production based on Tolkien’s novels, recently digitized by a Russian broadcaster, is a time capsule of a bygone era.From the Archives: Read what W.H. Auden wrote about “The Fellowship of the Ring,” the first volume of Tolkien’s trilogy, in 1954.Here are five other takeaways and observations from this episode — and from the season as a whole:Stranger dangerBefore the big Halbrand-as-Sauron reveal, this episode teases the possibility that the Stranger is Sauron, as the mysterious white-clad mystics finally track him down and then surprisingly bend their knees, vowing to serve their Dark Lord. All of this happens before the opening credits, in a clever bit of narrative misdirection, intended to keep the audience from catching on too quickly that Halbrand is our Big Bad.There is, as it happens, important new information about the Stranger this week, though it is something much more expected: He is, we learn, one of the Istari, or “wise ones,” or wizards. We still don’t have a name yet for this big fella, but by the end of the episode — after a tense skirmish between the Harfoots and the mystics that sees Sadoc sacrificing his life and the Stranger gaining access to a powerful magic staff — he does finally start speaking in full sentences.The Harfoots story line ends with a promising setup for Season 2: Nori will continue to travel with the Stranger as he sets off toward the land of Rhûn to learn more about who he is. He welcomes her company, because traveling alone is just a journey, but traveling with friends is an adventure. And as Tolkien fans know, adventures are more fun.Daniel Weyman as the Stranger, who was revealed in the finale to be a wizard.Ben Rothstein/Prime Video ‘The ones who see’Earlier this season, while trying to persuade Míriel to join her cause, Galadriel expressed sympathy with the Queen-Regent and her burdensome responsibilities, saying, “I know how it feels to be the only one who sees.” Yet one of this show’s more powerful themes has been the idea that heroes can follow a path of logic and honor with absolute certainty, and still arrive at the wrong conclusion — or worse, can bring into existence the very thing they were trying to prevent.In Galadriel’s case, her need to use Halbrand as a symbol — to inspire her Númenórean army — leads to her bring her sworn enemy Sauron into Eregion, where he then coaxes Celebrimbor into amplifying Elrond’s minuscule supply of mithril by using it to create an alloy, in the form of a crown. Halbrand’s sudden eagerness to create something that will provide “power over flesh” makes Galadriel suspicious, so she has an archivist check the genealogies of the Southlands, which reveals that the region’s last king died centuries ago and left no heir. Not only has she been duped, but she has given Sauron access to a force that could tilt the balance of power in Middle-earth forever.Does the Halbrand reveal make sense, in the context of the season as a whole? I can think of some moments from earlier episodes — like Halbrand hesitating over whether to accept the mantle of king — that may not fit so neatly with what we now know to be Sauron’s grand designs. (On the other hand, Númenor is clearly hugely important to Sauron’s plans as well, so he may have just wanted to stay there rather than heading back to the mainland so soon.)Ultimately, this big twist works because it is a pivotal part of Galadriel’s character arc. In a moving sequence after the reveal, Sauron enters the elf’s mind, and corrupts her happy memories of her brother, intending to convince her that they have all had the same goal all along: a stable and peaceful Middle-earth. Back in Númenor, Halbrand tried to tutor Galadriel in the ways of persuasion by saying she should find out what people fear, and then give them the means to master it. He does that with her here by proposing they rule together — just as he “helps” her fellow elves forge a tool of control.After Galadriel rejects Sauron and flees Eregion, the elves decide to make three rings rather than one crown. But the process that will lead to the next great war has begun. And the one who saw it coming is largely responsible.Island lifeThe other major story line in the finale involves Miriel’s return to Númenor, where she learns that her father has died — though not until he has first shown Elendil’s daughter Eärien how to find his palantir, and has urged her to help lead the kingdom back to its “old ways.” Númenor has been a terrific location in this series, and before Elendil and Miriel left, we were teased with a lot of as-yet-unrevealed history and courtly intrigue that should be fruitful to explore in Season 2.Still, perhaps because of all the big revelations elsewhere in the episode, the action on the island in this finale was fairly forgettable. One of the flaws of this first “Rings of Power” season is that some key characters haven’t been developed enough to grab the audience’s attention. I would say that’s especially been an issue with Elendil and his children. I have barely mentioned Eärien in these reviews, because she has rarely been doing anything noteworthy. Isildur has been a bigger factor in the plot, but given how important he is to the “Rings” saga as a whole, he too has yet to stand out from the sprawling cast.Perhaps Season 2 will handle that better. Speaking of which …Needs improvementWhat could “The Rings of Power” improve on in the seasons to come? One of the show’s biggest weaknesses is one shared by a lot of prestige TV dramas: The episodes are too long, and too repetitive. Partly that springs from the source material. A proper Tolkien experience should be somewhat leisurely, where the conversations and the adventures on the road matter as much as the big battles at the final destinations. But also: This series is handsome-looking and features excellent actors delivering well-crafted dialogue. Sometimes it’s hard for creators with those kinds of resources at their disposal to use less of it.They should, though. Too often this season, episodes spent two or three scenes covering the same narrative and thematic ground — or had single scenes drag on until losing their oomph. (See: Nori’s goodbye to her family in this finale, which is very sweet at first and then just … keeps going.) A brisker pace could tip this show from good to great.Markella Kavenagh, left, and Megan Richards in “The Rings of Power.”Ben Rothstein/Prime VideoThe road goes ever on.All of that said, what stands out most to me from this first season is how much more impressive everything has been than I had expected. The sets, the effects, the language and even the small moments of singing and humor are all clearly crafted with a lot love — and paid for with a lot of money.“The Rings of Power” has offered spectacle and scope beyond what any current television series is attempting. Yet the creators also showed a strong command of that flash and grandeur, using it to frame a good story. This show is hardly perfect, but for the most part it is what it needs to be: the TV equivalent of a page-turner fantasy novel, for fans to get lost in. More

    • 150 Shares109 Views

      in Television

      For ‘The Great British Baking Show,’ ‘Mexican Week’ Was Not an Accident

      by

      After 12 years, the show’s long, inexorable journey from comfort to cringe is complete.Remember Custardgate? Deborah and Howard each cooked a custard and put it in the fridge to chill. But then! When Deborah was layering her trifle, she grabbed Howard’s custard by mistake. Well! This left Howard no choice but to use Deborah’s custard in his trifle. I couldn’t forget the whole frivolous affair if I wanted to — and I don’t.In its early days, the pleasure of “The Great British Baking Show” was in the reassuring fantasy it built under a high-pitched country tent — an endless source of cheeky innuendo, serious amateur baking and absolutely nothing else. The worst thing imaginable was that someone’s Battenberg cake would come out a bit asymmetrical, or that one baker might accidentally use another baker’s custard.Sue Perkins, then a host, described Custardgate as either a mistake, or “the most incredible case of baking espionage,” not because of actual drama or suspicion, but because problems on the show tended toward the truly wholesome and amusing. Taking them too seriously was a sport.From the start, “The Great British Bake Off” — as it’s known in Britain — seemed completely unlike the chef-driven, adrenaline-fueled, corporate-branded American competition shows that dominated at the time, where contestants casually announced their intention to win — not to make friends! It promised to disrupt the genre.But over its 12 years on the air, the worst thing imaginable on Bake Off has gotten worse, again and again. Last week, the hosts, Noel Fielding and Matt Lucas, strolled up a grassy slope dressed in fringed serapes and straw sombreros to introduce “Mexican Week” with tired puns, saying they shouldn’t make “Mexican jokes” but proceeding to do just that. The show had hit rock bottom, revealing what it had managed to obscure in the past with a bit of charm.To British audiences, Mr. Lucas and Mr. Fielding appearing in a casually racist bit might not have come as a surprise, but American audiences aren’t as familiar with their previous work. In part, that’s because “The Mighty Boosh” and “Little Britain,” their shows which aired in the early 2000s in Britain, were both pulled by Netflix a few years ago over their performances in blackface, brownface and yellowface.The current group of “Great British Baking Show” contestants.Love Productions/NetflixThe “Bake Off” clips were shared incredulously and angrily on Twitter, days before the episode even aired. The phrase “Mexican Week” quickly became shorthand for profound culinary blunder, presented with a sense of naïve triumph. An image of a cursed avocado, lopped away with a knife, became the episode’s unofficial mascot, as if a home cook unfamiliar with peeling an avocado should feel humiliated.To me, it felt more like the episode had betrayed its own contestants, as well as its audience, with a lack of expertise among judges, and a lack of curiosity among hosts. Paul Hollywood explaining steak tacos with pico de gallo and refried beans to Prue Leith would be howlingly funny, if he weren’t positioned as an expert.It was even worse than the clips implied — an hour of incompetent exposition, farcical bumbling and maracas-shaking. A distraction for an increasingly insular, self-referential show that’s run out of energy and expertise, and refuses to find it elsewhere.The show has slowly moved away from regional specialties and technique-centered challenges, from focusing on, say, the beauty of lamination, hot-water crusts and steamed puddings. It has grown to fit the exact, most clichéd limits of its form — countries as themes, cuisines as costumes, identities as performances.Sue Perkins and Mel Giedroyc, the show’s original hosts, excelled at double entendres, while playing up their lack of baking expertise. But they glowed with curiosity and enthusiasm for baking, and short documentary segments they hosted often featured experts, and cultural context, for many foods on the show. But in more recent seasons, several challenges have presented foods as if encountering them for the first time. A recent, and almost equally chaotic “Japanese Week” introduced a challenge of Chinese steamed buns.As the show found a wider audience in the United States, and moved from the BBC to Channel 4, it lost Ms. Perkins, Ms. Giedroyc and Mary Berry, a judge who was replaced by Ms. Leith. And while it’s tempting to say the show hasn’t been the same since, you might also say its worst tendencies have simply flourished. Viewers have been pointing them out for years. In an old episode, Mr. Hollywood repeatedly and inexplicably referred to challah, a traditional Jewish bread, as “plaited bread,” which prompted the Forward headline, “‘Great British Bake Off’ Has Zero Jewish Friends.’”And in 2019, Sana Noor Haq wrote about the tension between the show’s image as a bastion of modern, multicultural Britain and the judges’ clear sense of discomfort — or smirking amusement — when contestants like Michael Chakraverty infused the flavors of coconut and chile into his Keralan star bread.Contestants were expected to perform their biographies, neatly and concisely, for the judges. To make the flavors and designs of their foods add up to a pleasant and consumable identity. Never mind that some bakers managed to have fun with it, or be really good at it.It was always an impossible task: If they failed, they failed. If they succeeded, they were exotic. And either way, two comedians in serapes and sombreros would come ambling up the hill behind them, insisting they weren’t going to make any jokes.Follow New York Times Cooking on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok and Pinterest. Get regular updates from New York Times Cooking, with recipe suggestions, cooking tips and shopping advice. More

    • 100 Shares159 Views

      in Television

      Trevor Noah Is Inspired by Trump’s Camera Work

      by

      Noah joked on Thursday that Trump gets away with so much criminal activity, “it just shows us we could do crime, too.”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.Not So Smooth CriminalAn aide for former President Donald Trump was caught on camera moving boxes out of a storage room at Mar-a-Lago both before and after the Justice Department issued a subpoena demanding the return of all classified documents he’d removed from the White House.Trevor Noah called Trump “a legend.”“Who else gets caught committing crimes with their own security cameras?” Noah said on Thursday. “Who are you? How are you real?”“There’s something inspiring about it, too, when you think about it. It’s actually inspiring. Because Trump is so bad at crime, but he gets away with so much of it, it just shows us we could do crime, too. He’s like the drunk couple at karaoke; hearing them screech through ‘Don’t Stop Believin’ gives you the confidence to try ‘Kiss From a Rose.’” — TREVOR NOAH“Man, he’s a bad criminal. You’re supposed to get rid of the evidence. Trump is the first criminal to plant the evidence on himself.” — SETH MEYERS“I have to say, all this evidence, it’s crazy the only Trump being held in prison right now is Melania.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Remember how he was ranting and raving about the agents searching Barron’s bedroom and going through Melania’s closet? That’s because he put the documents there.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“He’s such a bad criminal. If Donald Trump wasn’t born rich, he’d be one of those bank robbers who passes the teller a note with his name signed at the bottom.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Punchiest Punchlines (Another Day, Another Subpoena Edition)“The House Jan. 6 committee voted unanimously today to subpoena former President Trump. I would say this is big news, but it’s really more like putting one more parking ticket on that van that’s been on your block for a year. That ticket ain’t gettin’ paid.” — SETH MEYERS“And to make sure the former president reads the subpoena, it’s being printed on the wrapper of a Gordita Supreme.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Watching him testify before Congress would be insane. He’d go on all sorts of insane rants and attack people. It would be like casting an actual lion in ‘The Lion King.’” — SETH MEYERS“But I feel like he will be a little conflicted. Because on the one hand, yes, he thinks this is a crooked witch hunt that is out to get him, but on the other hand, the ratings.” — TREVOR NOAHThe Bits Worth WatchingAndrew Garfield, George Clooney, Salma Hayek, Halle Berry and Larry David are just a few celebrities who participated in the latest edition of Mean Tweets on “Jimmy Kimmel Live.”Also, Check This OutTár in charge: Cate Blanchett as the conductor Lydia Tár in Todd Field’s movie.Focus FeaturesCate Blanchett stars as a powerful conductor who behaves as badly as any male maestro in the new film “Tár.” More

    • 113 Shares189 Views

      in Television

      Eugenio Derbez Believes in Job Proposals, Not Job Applications

      by

      The star of the Apple TV+ series “Acapulco” on standing up for dogs, Mexican vs. Marvel cinema and finding respect.In the Apple TV+ series “Acapulco,” the middle-aged Maximo tells his nephew the story of his rise from poverty in Mexico to riches in Malibu, thanks to the job he took in his early 20s at a prestigious resort in Acapulco. The Maximo of the 1980s is played by Enrique Arrizon, while the Maximo with the mansion and the jet is played by Eugenio Derbez, long a major screen star in Mexico.Unlike Maximo, Derbez says the pivotal moment in his career came not in his 20s, but in his 50s. He’d spent almost a decade trying to break into the U.S. film and TV market and had some success, landing roles in the Adam Sandler movie “Jack and Jill” and Rob Schneider’s short-lived CBS series “Rob.” But it didn’t create the momentum he’d hoped for, so he decided to return to Mexico to finally finish the script he’d been tinkering with: “Instructions Not Included,” about a man whose onetime lover hands him a daughter she claims is his.Derbez was the co-writer, director and star of the Spanish-language film, and when it became an enormous hit, it “changed my life in every way.” The doors to Hollywood opened, he changed his mind about having a child with his wife (he already had three grown kids) and he moved to the United States. In the years since, he has made inroads with U.S. audiences, thanks to starring roles in films like “How to Be a Latin Lover,” a supporting role in the Academy Award-winning “CODA,” as well as the Spanish/English-language comedy “Acapulco.”“I took a leap of faith, and nine years later here I am in the true prime of my career, working in another country, in another office, in another language, with a new home and a new production company,” he said in a recent video interview. “I’m happy to have taken a second chance in my life, even though I was 52.”In the second season of “Acapulco,” which premieres on Oct. 21, the elder Maximo brings his nephew to the city where his story started. Here, Derbez revisits the Acapulco of his own youth, the movie that moved him into the business and breaks down the difference between Mexican and Marvel films. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1. Acapulco, Mexico I spent my childhood summers in Acapulco and some of my best memories as a kid are from my time there. It’s where I learned to do things like the belly roll — where you move your stomach in and out in a wormlike motion. When I was 15, I had my very first trip with my girlfriend — parents included, by the way — to Acapulco. I have always had a strong connection to the beautiful, amazing city.2. 1957 Cadillac My dad was a great car lover. The very first car in the family was a red, convertible 1957 Cadillac. It’s the car my dad drove my mom in on their first date. It’s the first car I ever drove, at 8 years old — I couldn’t even reach the pedals, so I sat on my dad’s lap. I talked my dad out of selling it because I wanted to drive it when I got older. I still have the car today.3. “The Last Snows of Spring” My mom and I used to go to the movie theater every weekend. We would always watch at least two films — sometimes three or four. One day in 1973, she took me to see an Italian film called “The Last Snows of Spring.” You can’t imagine how much I cried. The emotions I felt were so intense. That day I told my mom: This is what I want to do.4. Dogs When I was 10, my sister asked me if I wanted to have a puppy, and I was like, Eh, yeah, maybe, whatever. She asked me to cry with her so that our parents would buy us a puppy. My parents got us a boxer that awoke my love for animals. By the age of 15, I was rescuing dogs from the freeway in Mexico. To this day, I’m an animal activist. I can’t stand any kind of animal cruelty.5. Job Proposals, Not Job Applications When people ask me for advice, I always tell them not to ask for a job, but bring a job proposal. For many years, I thought the right thing to do was to ask for a job. After so many rejections and my career going nowhere, one day I decided to change my approach. I met a writer who was very smart and we wrote a script for a show and we brought it to a network. For the first time, instead of asking for a job, I brought a proposal. After years of feeling ignored, they treated me differently — with respect. And that’s how I got my first opportunity to star on TV, with the show “Al Derecho y al Derbez.”6. Fatherhood, Round 2 I became a dad when I was 23, and one kid quickly turned into three. I was just a kid myself, raising three kids while struggling to make a living and have a career, so the amount of time I spent with them was very limited. In my 50s, 22 years after I had my last child, my wife and I decided to have a child. When my daughter was born, I realized it was the universe giving me another chance to make things right and fix all the mistakes I made when I was younger. I have enjoyed every diaper, every sleepless night and every vomit.7. Prince In 2006, I was in L.A. developing a project with Salma Hayek. After working all day long at her house, she said, “Prince just called and invited me to dinner — do you want to come?” I didn’t know much about Prince. During dinner at his mansion, he only said a few words, but he went through multiple outfit changes. After dinner, we went to a party. Later, back at his house, he played a private concert for the three of us. I started learning more about him after that night and became a huge fan. He was a genius.8. Fisher’s There’s an amazing restaurant in Mexico City, and a few other locations, called Fisher’s. It’s not Mexican food. It’s seafood done in a very unique way. The craziest dishes. They’re so delicious, and you wouldn’t try them anywhere else. I love that.9. Mexican Cinema The difference between cinema in the U.S. and Mexico is money. In the U.S., you can be entertained by Marvel movies, because even when the story and the plot are not strong, the special effects and everything else are amazing. In Mexico, we don’t have the budget for that. So, you have to be really creative. You have to be a really good writer and have original stories. That’s why filmmakers like Guillermo del Toro, Alejandro González Iñárritu and Alfonso Cuarón are so creative. They come from Mexico, a country where there’s no money and we have to make movies with nothing.10. Michel Franco There’s an interesting Mexican director named Michel Franco who has a very raw approach. His movies I would compare to “Parasite,” but in Spanish. Start with “Después de Lucía” (“After Lucia”), and watch it until the end. Until the very last minute. Powerful. More

    • 113 Shares149 Views

      in Television

      Stand-Up Sets Where You Can Choose Your Own Adventure

      by

      Two specials let audiences click to determine which jokes they hear. It’s both an innovative way to add meaning and a further fragmenting of the culture.In his new special, the comic Danny Jolles grouses about the magician David Blaine, famous for stunts like burying himself alive or holding his breath for 17 minutes. Jolles describes him as an insufferable psychopath: “At some point we have to take a stand. He’s not doing magic. He’s just trying to kill himself.”You only see this quip if you click the phrase “I hate David Blaine” that pops up onscreen at the start of his bit. If you choose the alternative, “I love David Blaine,” then you get Jolles praising Blaine as the greatest living human and bemoaning those who take him for granted. “Everyone’s like, What is David Blaine doing today? The impossible. And everyone just moved on.”Jolles’s “You Choose” is part of an adventurous new trend toward interactivity in specials, with the potential to be the most dystopian comedy innovation since the laugh track. Such a high-tech development is not as bizarrely futuristic as the hologram of Keenan Thompson that performed at the Laugh Factory in Chicago last weekend, but it could be more consequential.In his 2019 Netflix special “Lobby Baby,” Seth Meyers tiptoed into giving viewers control over the final edit, allowing them the option of clicking a box and skipping over political material. But two new specials — the one by Jolles, which premiered Thursday on YouTube, and Vishnu Akella’s “For You,” which became available on his site over the summer — are more comprehensive experiments.Vishnu Akella’s special “For You” digs into viewers’ pop culture knowledge and demographics for its interactive approach.Every time Jolles introduces a subject, two choices appear at the bottom of the screen. Which one you take dictates the joke in a way that enables you to avoid opinions you might disagree with. Akella uses a similar device, though it asks less about your opinions than your knowledge of references or your demographic. As a result, boomers will get different punch lines (not to mention larger fonts) than millennials will.These specials are the culmination of two worrying hallmarks of the culture today: how fragmentation incentivizes pandering to niches or fandoms, and the cheap, double-edged appeal of interactivity, a useful artistic tool that often becomes a crassly commercial one. These comics are not only aware of all this, but they also adopt the posture of a skeptic more than an evangelist. Their specials are sly enough to satirize themselves.As is so often the case, David Letterman got there first. In the early 1980s, he often simultaneously spoofed and exploited the overhyping of technological innovation, particularly in themed episodes like “the custom-made show,” written by Chris Elliott and Matt Wickline. It began with a populist introduction: Letterman said he was taking power away from network executives and giving it to the people, letting them decide everything from what he would wear to the order of guests. The studio audience’s response to multiple-choice questions, recorded by an “applause meter,” was the key metric. Of course, the crowd’s choices gave Letterman a chance to sarcastically marvel about the wonders of democracy.It’s asking too much of these young comics to display Letterman’s light touch, but also, our current internet age demands a blunter tone. This reveals itself less in the onstage jokes by Akella than in what comes in between — the questions for the viewer and the onscreen text that riffs on them. If you click on Gen Z when asked about your age, the script will ridicule you for easily giving up data to TikTok.Akella tells subtle jokes that mock the stupidity of generational stereotypes while emphasizing the illusion of choice. At one point, he gives you the option to cancel him if his joke offends you, but if you click on the box to do it, he questions the entire framework of “cancel culture.” This is smart stuff, the form perfectly integrated into the content.His fundamental theme is how social media pigeonholes us and mines our data, a condescending phenomenon that treats us less like human beings than abstractions made up of marketable information. Before the closer, a message informed me that it was removing references I wouldn’t get and adding “palatable jokes about race so you can feel like an ally.” Onstage, Akella tells us he feels sad that his generation is being treated like lab rats, and I believe him. There’s a sense of constraint and even anxiety about his stand-up persona. His voice only becomes comically vivid in the impersonal text onscreen.Phillip OrtizJolles is a more experienced performer, and his first special, also released on YouTube, displayed an endearing puppyish charm. His new, pricklier show deconstructs that persona, telling the audience right from the start how he ingratiates himself, before asking them how they want their takes delivered.In her fascinating recent New Yorker article on the choose-your-own-adventure books, Leslie Jamison made the case for a sympathetic reading of their appeal rooted in the freedom to go back and change course, or as she put it, “the revocability of it all.”Jolles taps into this by making it easy for the viewer to rewind bits to see alternative versions (much more so than Akella). But he also pointedly creates polar opposite perspectives. These contrasting views are clearly designed to make a point, but doing so shoehorns him into an argumentative posture that doesn’t always fit his comedy.In taking an extreme position, Jolles can seem like he’s doing a bad Bill Burr impression. Usually, one of his takes is funnier than the other. Is that the one he actually believes? I’m not sure, though I suspect that deep down he’s a die-hard David Blaine fan.Jolles isn’t trying to appeal to both sides, but to show how comedians manufacture opinions to fit the joke — that everything is performance. He says he supports transgender rights, then undercuts himself by saying he knows that position will get applause. He illustrates how artists manipulate audiences with camera trickery and mentions that he doesn’t like outrage over comments made many years ago. None of this is real, he says, before adding, “Why would you trust me?”He’s onto something. Comedy audiences overestimate authenticity, a trait easily faked. But there’s also a touch of the juvenile Holden Caulfield rolling his eyes about phonies here.If comedians adjust material to make a better joke, does that invalidate everything they say? If art relies on dishonesty, does that mean there’s no truth to be found in it? This is the kind of casual nihilism that crosses comedic genres, showing up in the misanthropic cynicism of Tim Dillon and the artful irony of Bo Burnham. It’s often its own kind of pandering.To answer the question posed by Jolles, people trust comedians for all kinds of reasons, but primarily because jokes, well told, are powerful. They can lighten a day or destroy your confidence. They express taboo thoughts, offer insights and reveal the world, even when built on fabrications. The comic Rich Hall struck a sensible balance when he wrote in his new memoir, “All jokes are manipulative, and audiences laugh when you reach a truthful kernel with the lie.”Even if you don’t reach it, trying matters. So does the kind of ambition behind those attempts. The sturdiest connections built with audiences don’t occur when you give them exactly what they want, but something they didn’t know they wanted. There’s no stopping technology, but for artists to use it well, they must look beyond the screen. Deep down, people like to be challenged. And in the long run, the audience trusts comics when comics trust the audience. More