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      What’s on TV This Week: ‘Simple as Water’ and the American Music Awards

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      HBO airs a documentary about families affected by the civil war in Syria. And Cardi B hosts the 2021 American Music Awards on ABC.Between network, cable and streaming, the modern television landscape is a vast one. Here are some of the shows, specials and movies coming to TV this week, Nov. 15-21. Details and times are subject to change.MondayHOLIDAY BAKING CHAMPIONSHIP: GINGERBREAD SHOWDOWN 9 p.m. on Food Network. There may be few culinary situations more intense than baking for blood relatives. Food Network nods at that fact with this holiday baking competition show, which kicks off Monday night by challenging its contestants to make snow globe scenes out of coconut shavings and gingerbread.TuesdaySIMPLE AS WATER (2021) 9 p.m. on HBO. The Oscar-winning documentarian Megan Mylan gives an intricate, intimate look at the effect that the civil war in Syria has had on families in this ambitious documentary. Mylan follows an array of Syrian families whose lives have been changed by the war. They include a woman and four children living in a refugee camp in Greece; a man working as a delivery driver in Pennsylvania while applying for asylum for himself and his younger brother; and a husband and wife in Masyaf, in northwest Syria.“These stories avoid triteness by lingering on the daily, unassuming routines of their characters,” Claire Shaffer wrote in her review for The New York Times. The result, Shaffer said, is a film that’s “anything but simple when it comes to its technical achievements, weaving together familiar immigrant narratives in ways that still manage to surprise and stun.”Daniel Radcliffe in “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.”Warner Bros.HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERER’S STONE (2001) 6:30 p.m. on Syfy. This first movie in the “Harry Potter” franchise hit theaters 20 years ago this month. The movie made celebrities out of its three young stars, Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson, and defined the look of the so-called wizarding world in which the stories are set, which until that point had existed only in readers’ imaginations.In a recent interview with The Times, Radcliffe reminisced about shooting the film. He looked back on some elements, like the use of practical special effects, fondly (“one of the great things about the films early on,” he said). Memories of, say, broom riding, came with more of a wince. “It was a broomstick with a thin seat in the middle, and you didn’t have stirrups — or, if you did, they were very, very high up,” Radcliffe explained, “so you were basically leaning all your weight onto your junk when you leaned forward.”WednesdayBOOGIE NIGHTS (1997) 11 p.m. on Showtime. The filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson is set to roll out his latest movie, the 1970s coming-of-age story “Licorice Pizza,” next week. That new movie shares its setting with Anderson’s 1997 period drama, “Boogie Nights” — both are set in the San Fernando Valley in Southern California.The story in “Boogie Nights” follows a young man, Eddie (Mark Wahlberg), who gets discovered in the late ’70s by a successful pornographer (Burt Reynolds) and becomes a star. The film, Anderson’s second feature, was how many viewers first discovered Anderson. In her review for The Times, Janet Maslin wrote that Anderson’s “display of talent is as big and exuberant as skywriting.” Everything about “Boogie Nights,” she wrote, “is interestingly unexpected.”ThursdayHIGH ANXIETY (1977) 10 p.m. on TCM. Mel Brooks spoofs Hitchcock as both the director and star of this satirical mystery movie. Brooks plays an anxious psychiatrist who gets accused of murder. The doctor’s quest to clear his name lets Brooks riff on scenes from “Vertico,” “Psycho,” “Spellbound” and “The Birds,” using the same brand of disgruntled humor he employed to great effect in YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN (1974), which TCM is airing at 8 p.m.Five Movies to Watch This WinterCard 1 of 51. “The Power of the Dog”: More

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      ‘Insecure’ Recap, Season 3 Episode 4: The Earth Moves

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      This season, Issa has undergone plenty of personal evolution, but some people still bring out her old self-doubt.Season 3 Episode 4: ‘Faulty, Okay?!’Nathan, Nathan, Nathan. There’s a lot we still don’t know about Nathan but we know that Issa likes him, or at least likes to keep him around. This week, the former and possibly future couple move past their emotional mix-up in the bedroom, from this season’s second episode, and head into new territory in more ways than one.The episode starts at the beach, where Nathan is celebrating his barbershop with his friends. When Issa shows up, with Molly and Kelli, she’s desperate to see if Nathan will be as warm with her as he was before she “cried in his mouth,” as she put it. It’s been a week and even though they have texted, the matter was not discussed.As usual, Issa gets awkward when she is insecure. Watching her talk to Nathan is like hearing nails scratch a chalkboard — it’s beyond cringey. She asks about the weather and talks out of turn. Everything comes out of her mouth except how she feels about the other night. Nathan doesn’t reciprocate her attention and seems cold, which makes Issa think he doesn’t like her anymore.We also don’t know why Issa is nervous here — as far as we knew, she was happy being single. She’s at the beach with Nathan because she wants to be, but why exactly does she want to be there? It’s as if she hasn’t thought it all through herself. Nathan also doesn’t know what she wants, and it seems the failed cuddle muddled what he thought she wanted. He says as much to his friends as they drive to the bar Sharky’s, after an earthquake and the threat of a possible tsunami broke up the beach party.Whether at the beach or the bar or at a random Jason Derulo event later, Molly and Kelli play perfect sidekicks. Kelli is hilarious and experiences a series of emotional breakthroughs — she’s stopped drinking until she becomes “enlightened,” she says. That could be a cue for Issa and Molly to do the same, but no: Molly is being hounded by two of Nathan’s friends and she likes it, and Issa is still sorting through her feelings.These include something like jealousy when, while the others are playing spades, Issa is watching what she interprets as romantic flirtation between Nathan and his friend Resha, a short, voluptuous and bombastic woman. Issa surmises that Resha and Nathan have been intimate, and that pressure forces her to be up front with him.“I just wanted to check in, are we cool?” she asks.“Nothing’s changed for me,” Nathan responds, stoically.“So, we’re still friends?” she says humorously, fishing for warmth.“Yep,” Nathan replies before pulling away.In the last couple of episodes, we have seen how Issa has grown in the year since she broke up with Lawrence. She started her own company and mended her relationship with Molly. She’s confident at work — even though her client has been taking shots at her on social media — and has been taking time for herself. Her awkwardness and insecurity around Nathan illustrates the ways in which, for all of her personal progress and evolution, she’s still the same Issa we’ve known for years.She does not know enough about Nathan to be grounded in how she feels about him. He is a butterfly she is trying to capture in a jar, and he is constantly fluttering out of her reach.All we know about him is that on occasion, he disappears in order to deal with his mental health struggles. That is the reason he ghosted Issa last time, in Season 4. In this episode, we learn more about Nathan through his cousin, Thomas. For instance, when Nathan lived with him, he would leave without warning and come back days later, in the middle of the night. Such unpredictable behavior is why Thomas ultimately wanted Nathan to stop staying with him — this revelation shocks Nathan, who had always blamed his cousin’s wife for kicking him out. (At Sharky’s, the wife suggests that Nathan likes to abandon things.) The conversation reveals that in the time before he met Issa, Nathan was frequently “manic,” as he explains later.While her friends are at a Jason Derulo party, Issa finds Nathan trying to process what he’s learned from Thomas. After a day of multiple misfires, they are finally honest with one another and the ground shakes.“I don’t want to just be friends with you,” Issa says.“I don’t want to be friends with you either,” Nathan responds.Nathan and Issa embrace and as they kiss, there is an aftershock.Issa and Nathan might be getting back together now but it feels like there is much that is not being said, by both of them. I also can’t help but worry about Issa reuniting with an ex, who became an ex for a reason.Is Issa being honest with herself? Can she hold Nathan or will he flit away like he has so many times in the past? More

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      ‘Succession’ Season 3, Episode 5: Imaginary Dead Cat Bounce

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      The problem with staking everything on one imposing figurehead is that eventually they get old and senile.Season 3, Episode 5: ‘Retired Janitors of Idaho’There was a moment in last week’s episode of “Succession” when Kendall was standing on Josh Aaronson’s patio, reminding Josh of their longtime friendship and boasting about his upcoming birthday party — acting like a big shot, in other words. Kendall had come to the meeting to show he could be the commanding, charismatic figure to lead Waystar into the future. And for a few seconds at least, he had his host’s undivided attention.Then Logan walked through the door, and Josh literally pushed Kendall aside to greet the old man. Point made: Logan is still Waystar’s star.This week’s episode is titled “Retired Janitors of Idaho.” It refers to the faction Roman fears will determine the fate of the Roy family if the Waystar shareholders get the chance to vote on the company’s leadership. Nearly all the action takes place in a luxury hotel and conference center, where the powerful people are sequestered in stew-rooms, scarfing down snacks and strategizing. The general feeling among the Roy loyalists is that Logan needs to address the assembly, calming their nerves with his star power.“Just get the body up there,” Karl says.But just as Logan broke down physically in front of Josh last week, this week his body failed him again. He has a urinary track infection; and when his assistant isn’t around to remind him to take his pills, Logan becomes disoriented. He calls Shiv “Marcia.” He asks to go the bathroom seemingly every few minutes. He does not appear to know where he is or why he is there. And he is convinced there is a dead cat under his chair.So no, there will be no Logan Roy wow factor at this shareholders’ meeting. But the Roys have an even bigger problem. Before Logan loses his wits, he gives the order that they should reject the big peacemaking deal their opponents have offered them. But did he really know what he was saying at the time, or was he already slipping? (Roman: “Can we just give him some cranberry juice and then ask him about the deal again?”)This of course is the problem with staking everything on one imposing figurehead. Leaders can flag. They age, they weaken. While the Roys are making multibillion-dollar decisions based on their patriarch’s mumbling about imaginary cats, Sandi Furness (Hope Davis) is in a suite nearby, consulting with her own father, Sandy (Larry Pine). He has chronic medical problems, too, leaving him mostly immobile and inaudible. When Sandi meets with Shiv to try to find what Gerri likes to call “a deal-space,” each of these two highly intelligent, highly capable women claim, “I just do what my dad tells me.”Instead of bringing their own fresh ideas to the family business, Sandi and Shiv are left defending the decisions their clearly diminished dads are making, even when those choices seem driven more by spite and paranoia than by sound business sense. Sandy, for one, seems motivated primarily by a desire to make a deal that robs the Roys of any of the trappings of power. First, he asks to be granted the right to veto any decision to make a Roy family member a future chief executive. Then, when he gets a begrudging “yes” to that, he comes back with a demand that the Roys give up their private jets. (Roman: “First they came for the P.J.s, and I said nothing. …”)As for Logan, even though he is under criminal investigation and in danger of losing control of everything he has built, he still refuses to believe that he is not holding all the trump cards. Any time the Sandy and Stewy side offers a concession — just to avoid the uncertainty of a vote — Logan sees it as a sign they are scared. Before he lapses into incoherence, he suggests either calling their bluff or leaking to the press that they’re wavering, to show the shareholders who is really the boss.One of those shareholders is Logan’s own brother Ewan: another old man stifling a youngster. In Ewan’s case, he is making life difficult for Greg, who has disappointed his grandfather by signing onto the Waystar joint defense agreement, throwing his lot in with the people Ewan calls, “My brother and his gang of crapulous shills.” He informs Greg that he has changed his will, giving all of his money to Greenpeace. (“Even my part?” Greg asks. “That was the first part,” Ewan replies.) Trying to shake his grandson up, he says, earnestly, “Your life is not a bagatelle,” adding: “You need to take yourself seriously, kid.” Greg nods, then later asks someone else, “Do you think it’s possible to sue a person … a grandparent, for example … in a way which is, like … in an affectionate way?”The last old man playing a major role in this story is the president of the United States — “the Raisin” — who has been feeling real pressure ever since ATN pivoted from backing him unconditionally to questioning his mental fitness. The Raisin calls the Roys, asking to speak directly to Logan, who is still indisposed. So they pass him off to Roman, who is the closest thing to “bootleg Logan.” After Roman bumbles through the small talk and is sworn at by the commander in chief, he gets the news that the president is withdrawing his re-election bid.This is not really how the Roys wanted their whole “Is the President secretly senile?” maneuver to work out. Their access to the Oval Office gives them crucial leverage in their business deals — and, they had hoped, in the Justice Department’s Brightstar investigation. They have outsmarted themselves and are losing a major asset. (Roman, with maximum irony, looks on the bright side: “It’s kind of nice to know we can puppet-master the whole American republic project.”)The outcome isn’t much better with the agreement Sandi and Shiv hurriedly hammer out: The Roys will eat the P.J.s, the Sandy and Stewy side will get four seats on the board (including one for Sandi), and Waystar will grab another seat as well (possibly for Shiv). When Logan regains his faculties, he is peeved, certain that any agreement that satisfies Sandy must be a dud. He can’t say what he would have done differently. He just knows it would have been better.But the real loser from all the frantic deal making is — as it so often seems to be — Kendall, who never gets to be in any room where a final decision is made. Early on, he boasts to Stewy that his suite is “the real annual meeting,” insisting he has back channels to everyone who matters. But Shiv ignores him when calls to offer insights and gossip, Roman screams at him when he pops by the main Roy room, and even Stewy busts his chops a little, saying, “Shouldn’t you be standing on a rainbow soapbox somewhere screaming, ‘Time’s up!’?” In danger of being left out of the day’s narrative altogether, Kendall makes a sad, desperate final showboating move, storming the stage in front of the shareholders to speak up for the Brightstar victims.In one last twist of the knife, Logan asks for a quick end-of-the-day meeting with Kendall but then ghosts him, leaving his son sitting completely alone in a tiny room. Kendall tries to call his dad, but Logan blocks his number — permanently.So just as Logan has no access to the Raisin, Kendall now has no access to Logan. And both men are about to find out whether their power has more to do with who they are or who they know.Due DiligenceKendall must still have the Beatles on the brain because when he gets a phone call from one of his kids, he answers with, “What’s goin’ on, wild honey pie?” (That call has to do with whether or not his daughter’s pet rabbit should be allowed to eat a bagel. Kendall says it is probably OK. He is wrong.)Kendall insists to Greg that he’s not mad about his cousin’s signing the joint defense agreement. But “as a pal,” he says, he feels obliged to warn Greg that “I may have to burn you.” Greg briefly wonders, “How bad will the burning be?” but then immediately says, “Even as I ask that, I can tell.”Speaking of old men outstaying their welcome, while all the back room negotiations are raging — and while Logan remains incapable of making a public appearance — Frank is left to vamp onstage for the shareholders, spouting banalities for what must’ve felt like an eternity.I confess to having a moderate obsession with what people eat (or are served and then don’t eat) in movies and TV shows. For me the most poignant moment in this episode came toward the end, as the cater-waiters disposed of all the uneaten nibbles on the various buffets. So many squandered pastries. More

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      'S.N.L.': Taylor Swift Performs and Jonathan Majors Hosts

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      The sketch show, hosted this weekend by Jonathan Majors, also featured a 10-minute performance from the musical guest Taylor Swift.Back in 2012, when the then-Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney professed his affection for Big Bird but nonetheless vowed to cut funding for PBS, “Saturday Night Live” brought in Big Bird himself to explain that he wasn’t a political creature and didn’t “want to ruffle any feathers.”Almost a decade later, after the fictional, good-natured Big Bird said in a tweet that he had received a Covid vaccine, he has drawn the ire of Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who complained that the tweet was “government propaganda for your 5-year-old.”This time around, “S.N.L.” didn’t get the support of any actual Muppets, so the show created its own alternate version of “Sesame Street,” which it called “Cruz Street.”Aidy Bryant, who played Senator Cruz in the opening sketch, stood in front of what looked like a familiar brownstone and explained, “For 50 years I stood by as ‘Sesame Street’ taught our children dangerous ideas, like numbers and kindness.”She continued: “But when Big Bird told children to get vaccinated against a deadly disease, I said enough. And I created my own ‘Sesame Street,’ called ‘Cruz Street.’ It’s a gated community, where kids are safe from the woke government.”Following the show’s theme song, Bryant was joined by Cecily Strong as Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, toting what she said was an AR-15.Strong said she was “just taking a break from releasing the phone numbers of Republicans who voted for the infrastructure bill so they and their families get death threats, and I thought I’d stop by.”Bryant’s Cruz was also visited by Kyle Mooney, dressed in a makeshift Big Bird costume that probably wasn’t fabricated by Sesame Workshop. He said that in the week since he had gotten the vaccine, his feathers had fallen out (among other physical side effects he claimed to be experiencing).To help out Mooney, Bryant brought out Pete Davidson, who played the comedian and podcast host Joe Rogan. He offered his own unreliable remedies, which consisted of “zinc and ayahuasca and some horse medicine.”Other cast members played alternate versions of “Sesame Street” characters, including Alex Moffat and Mikey Day as Bert and Ernie; Chris Redd as a furry green creature called Oscar the Slouch (“Papa Joe Biden gave me so many stimmies, I decided to quit working and live in this trash can”); and Aristotle Athari as the Recount Count.And hey, for good measure, the sketch brought out Chloe Fineman as Britney Spears, newly released from her yearslong conservatorship. “Oh my God, you guys, we did it,” she said.Fake ad of the weekSpare a thought for all the men who discovered during the pandemic that they didn’t know how to form adult friendships and are now bereft of peer groups.For their support — and for the benefit of their spouses and significant others — “S.N.L.” has given us the Man Park, a dog park-like place where these well-meaning recluses can come together and share useless trivia, argue about “Rick and Morty” or communicate with one another simply by saying “Marvel” over and over.We’re not saying we’re the target audience for this particular service, but when Andrew Dismukes asked “Who’s the GOAT, Michael Jordan or Tom Brady?” and Athari answered “How about Bo Burnham?” it felt so real.Musical performance of the weekTaylor Swift got only one song on the show, but boy did she make it count: She delivered a blistering, 10-minute rendition of “All Too Well” from her newly released album of re-recordings, “Red (Taylor’s Version).”Her performance — which ran even longer than Prince’s fabled eight-minute, three-song medley from an “S.N.L.” appearance in 2014 — was accompanied by a short film that Swift directed, starring herself and the actors Sadie Sink and Dylan O’Brien. The re-emergence of “All Too Well” (a shorter version of which was originally released in 2012) has also resurfaced speculation on who the song might be about — speculation that the film seems to be reinforcing? — and we recommend that you give the song a full listen if you want to at least understand the leadoff joke on Weekend Update.Weekend Update jokes of the weekOver at the Weekend Update desk, the anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che riffed on the indictment of Stephen Bannon, the Kyle Rittenhouse trial and, yes, Taylor Swift.Jost began:Well, guys, I think the lesson we all learned this week is, never break up with Taylor Swift. Or she will sing about you for 10 minutes on national television. At the very least, return the scarf.He continued:But in real news — I don’t really know what’s real anymore — ex-Trump adviser Steve Bannon, seen here moments after shooting out of a sewage pipe — sorry, I should use his full name, Stephen K. Bannon; the K stands for three Ks — was indicted this week for contempt of Congress. If convicted, Bannon would face up to two years in prison. Which from the looks of him, might be a life sentence.Che pivoted to Rittenhouse:Legal experts are saying that Kyle Rittenhouse crying on the stand as he described how he shot his victims will help him with the jury. Man, is there a White Tears Law School that I don’t know about? I notice that every time y’all get in trouble, you start crying, and everything just works out for you, whether you’re trying to beat a murder charge or trying to be a Supreme Court justice. [His screen displays a picture of Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh.] More

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      ‘I Don’t Know What a Carrie Is’: Candace Bushnell Works It Out Onstage

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      The writer maps her life in a one-woman show, “Is There Still Sex in the City?,” beginning previews this weekend at the Daryl Roth Theater.I must tell you that after a long day of rehearsal in five-inch heels and a photo shoot at which she had posed atop, bestride and semi-supine on a corner banquette, Candace Bushnell, the woman who made the cosmopolitan the most famous drink of pre-Y2K New York, slipped into a chair in the gallery of the Carlyle Hotel and ordered an unglamorous pot of Earl Grey tea. With slices of lemon to soothe her throat.Bushnell, 62, broke out in the mid ’90s as a sex and relationship columnist for The New York Observer, centering her columns on a character named Carrie Bradshaw, a chic stand-in for Bushnell herself. She collected those pieces into a spiky 1996 book, “Sex and the City,” autofiction before it was cool. HBO premiered a series adaptation two years later. It ran for six seasons. Two movies followed, as did licensed fragrances, bus tours and candy.Bushnell’s life diverged from Carrie’s. She turned her talents to fiction. Her marriage to the ballet dancer Charles Askegard, whom she nicknamed Mr. Bigger, ended in divorce. After fleeing Manhattan for the Hamptons and despairing of dating, she wrote another novel, “Is There Still Sex in the City?”I couldn’t help but wonder: Has Bushnell adapted that novel into a one-woman show? She has. In “Is There Still Sex in the City?,” which begins previews at the Daryl Roth Theater on Saturday, Bushnell makes her stage debut, tracing her life — like a fever chart plotted in tasteful pink lipstick — from her Connecticut childhood to her party girl pinnacle to marriage, divorce and beyond. Is this fiction, autofiction, memoir?Bushnell at a rehearsal for “Is There Still Sex in the City?” in Midtown Manhattan. She hired an acting coach and a voice coach, and is doing Pilates to build up her core strength for the show. Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“I’m not trying to play a character,” she told me. “But I have a feeling that maybe I am a character. Like kind of naturally.”Bushnell arrived at the Carlyle, a few blocks from her Upper East Side apartment, in a sensible gray sweater dress and a fresh pair of absolutely senseless shoes — red satin Manolo Blahniks with diamanté buckles — that she walked in with impossible ease. (A line I’d heard during the rehearsal for the show earlier that day: “Do I have a shoe obsession like Carrie Bradshaw? No. Carrie Bradshaw has a shoe obsession because of me.”) In person, she has the wide-set eyes and porcelain poise of a Meissen figurine and conversation as polished as the Carlyle’s silverware.As a child in Glastonbury, Conn., Bushnell acted sporadically, though she spent most of her free time scribbling short stories and riding her horses. When she moved to New York at 19 — “wild and full of philosophies,” she said — she flirted with acting (that’s her frisky verb), studying at HB Studio.“I didn’t think I was really very good at it, which I probably shouldn’t say,” she said.Besides, she never loved it the way that she loved writing. “I really felt like, I’ve got to be a writer, or I’m going to die,” she said. So she wrote, signing away the theatrical rights to each new book. But a few years ago, when apportioning the rights to “Is There Still Sex in the City?,” she decided to hold onto the theatrical rights for herself.She wasn’t sure what to do with them. But then she met a talent manager, Marc Johnston, at the Carlyle, which Bushnell seems to treat as a bonus living room. He had helped to create a touring show for his client, the composer and accidental reality TV star David Foster. He thought that he could do the same for her.So again she wrote, this time in monologue form, repurposing stories from her books, her life, her lecture tours. That first draft ran about 200 pages. To shape up the script, Johnston and his fellow producer, Robyn Goodman, introduced Bushnell to the director and choreographer Lorin Latarro.“I have that aspect of my personality where I’ll put in hours and hours and hours into something just to try to make it better,” she said of preparing for the role.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesIn June, the show had a tryout at Bucks County Playhouse in New Hope, Penn. Set in a near-replica of Bushnell’s apartment, which includes her actual sofa, her actual carpet and her actual poodles, it unfurls as a chatty girl’s night.And though Bushnell is a practiced hostess, those first performances were unnerving. “It was like, Oh, God, this is really acting,” Bushnell said. Gradually the script shortened and Bushnell relaxed and improved.“She’s really miraculous,” Goodman told me in a phone interview. “She was determined to understand acting and she’s done it.”Understanding meant hiring an acting coach and a voice coach, and committing to Pilates three times a week to build up her core strength for the show. Which is to say that Bushnell takes the work of rehearsal and performance seriously — hence the afternoon Earl Grey — comparing it to the dressage drills she practiced as a girl, repeating the same small moves over and over until she gets them right.“I have that aspect of my personality where I’ll put in hours and hours and hours into something just to try to make it better,” she said.I joked that this made her seem not entirely like a Carrie. “I don’t even know what a Carrie is,” she said.HBO is busy reviving Carrie with a new series, “And Just Like That…,” which follows most of the original “Sex and the City” characters into their 50s, but Bushnell is not involved. In several places, her stage show emphasizes differences between Bushnell and Carrie, but those differences pertain to matters of men and fashion, not ideology or temperament. Carrie is flighty; Bushnell has her feet, if not her heels, firmly on the ground. While Carrie’s story ultimately became a romance, Bushnell maintains extreme ambivalence about romantic relationships.Bushnell in red satin Manolo Blahniks with diamanté buckles. “Carrie Bradshaw has a shoe obsession because of me,” she quips in her one-woman show. Celeste Sloman for The New York TimesHer feminism, which lurks at the margins of her books, emerges cogently and unashamedly in conversation. She speaks persuasively about the deforming effects of patriarchal power and the need for, as she put it, an equality of “mind, body and earning potential” — a nice surprise from a woman once known for table dancing at Da Silvano.A Page Six darling, Bushnell has rarely received much credit for her politics, her obvious intelligence, her psychological acuity. (Let’s just say that when I read her most recent book I found a few pages that described my foundered marriage so entirely that I had to text them to half a dozen friends and then lie down for a while.) And this is just ever so slightly on purpose.She recalled that as a child, angry about the inequities of gender, her father sat her down and told her that while she had ideas that people would need to hear, no one would listen if she yelled them. “So I learned very early on to coat everything in a candy-colored, sugarcoated message. Because that’s how you move society,” she said.Latarro, during a pre-rehearsal chat, agreed. “She writes feminism in a way that makes it palatable for a lot of women who have internalized misogyny and a lot of men who think everybody looks great in their sexy dresses.”The stage show, rich in quip and pop song snippet, is candy-colored, too — a chocolate martini with a sugared rim. Bushnell is recognizably herself, at least in the hour of rehearsal I saw, but buffed and glossed: a person repurposed as a fun and fabulous character. I asked her why she hadn’t attempted something sharper, more bitter. Earlier drafts had darker elements, she said. But those were cut.“The message that I’m delivering is probably risky enough as it is. I sit there and say, ‘I’m not married, I don’t have kids. And I’m grateful.’”Not that she wants to bother her audience with too many messages, which is probably why the producers have created a post-show nightspot, the Candi Bar, in the basement of the Daryl Roth.“Cosmos all night!” Johnston had enthused in a phone interview.Bushnell, as she drank her tea, put it more practically. “People just want to feel good,” she said. “And I want to give them a good time.” More

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      Prison Won’t Be a Riot for the QAnon Shaman, Jimmy Kimmel Says

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      “Prosecutors are recommending 51 months behind bars, after which, he will be remanded into the custody of ‘Dancing With the Stars,’” Kimmel joked.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.Dancing With the InsurrectionistOn Thursday night, Jimmy Kimmel joked that Jacob Chansley, “the infamous insurrectionist” known as the QAnon Shaman who took part in the Capitol attack on Jan. 6, “is probably not gonna be storming anything any time soon.”This week, prosecutors suggested that Chansley be sentenced to more than four years in prison for his role in the incursion, which would be the most severe punishment yet for a participant.“Prosecutors are recommending 51 months behind bars, after which he will be remanded into the custody of ‘Dancing With the Stars.’” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Weird to think the QAnon Shaman could get four years in prison when the guy who encouraged him to do it could get four more years in the White House.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“And also, can we stop calling him a shaman now? I mean, that would make half the fans at the Buffalo Bills game shamans too.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“I support a four-year prison sentence for any adult wearing a costume.” — JAMES CORDEN“They’re asking for three years for the riot, and an extra year because he used to be in an improv group.” — JAMES CORDEN“He may be going to prison for years. Even worse, they’re also making a movie about all of this: ‘The Shaman-Shank Redemption.’” — JAMES CORDENThe Punchiest Punchlines (Thank You for Your Service Edition)“It is Veterans Day here in the United States, the day on which we honor the men and women who served and fought in wars to defend our country so the rest of us can fight on Facebook.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“The closest most of us have come to a war zone is shopping on Black Friday at T.J. Maxx.” — JIMMY FALLON“Yup, the only people who have seen more combat than you guys are flight attendants on Southwest.” — JIMMY FALLON“I remember telling my dad that I thought a life in uniform might be right for me, so he went out and got me a job application for Pizza Hut.” — JIMMY FALLONThe Bits Worth WatchingThe “Daily Show” correspondent Desi Lydic put the spotlight on female veterans throughout “hist-HER-y.”Also, Check This OutJulia Child and a fridge friend in an archival image, as seen in the documentary “Julia,” directed by Julie Cohen and Betsy West. Paul Child/Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University/Sony Pictures ClassicsA new documentary about Julia Child explores her influence on how Americans cook and eat. More

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      Christopher Walken Destroys Banksy Painting on BBC Comedy Show

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      A genuine painting by Banksy, the street artist whose work has sold for millions, was gone in seconds as the actor painted over the artwork as a gag on the show.With a few swipes of a paint roller, the actor Christopher Walken wiped away a real Banksy painting from the side of a building in England on an episode of BBC’s “The Outlaws” that aired Wednesday night.Though Banksy’s work has fetched millions of dollars at auction, Mr. Walken unceremoniously painted over the artwork on the comedy-drama series, which is set in Banksy’s hometown, Bristol.A spokesperson from Big Talk Productions, the show’s production company, confirmed that the artwork was “an original Banksy,” and that Mr. Walken painted over it during filming, “ultimately destroying it.”Mr. Walken plays Frank on the BBC comedy show “The Outlaws.” Stephane De Sakutin/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe production company offered no more details, and a representative for Banksy did not respond to a request for comment.Banksy, a street artist and one of the world’s most expensive artists, has rigidly maintained his anonymity. He has often manipulated the news media with stunts, notably in 2018 when a painting self-destructed moments after it was sold for $1.4 million at auction. That painting, retitled “Love is in the Bin,” was recently resold by Sotheby’s in London for $25.4 million, a record for the artist.Big Talk/Four EyesIn the BBC show, directed by and starring the comedian Stephen Merchant, Mr. Walken’s character, Frank, is ordered to perform community service. He and several other characters don high-visibility vests as they clean up graffiti from a wall on the side of a building in Bristol.Mr. Walken’s character, fulfilling his duties, knocks over a board leaning against the wall, revealing a painted black-and-white rat and two canisters, recognizable in Banksy’s style even if the word “BANKSY” weren’t spray-painted on the wall in orange.“Look at this rat I found,” he says to his supervisor, played by Jessica Gunning, who, thoroughly uninterested, spends her supervision reading with her back turned to the wall.Big Talk/Four EyesAfter he explains it was a graffiti rat, not a real one, she responds: “Council said paint over any graffiti, so crack on.”“It’s awfully good,” he protests.“Less debating, more painting,” she shoots back.Mr. Walken shrugs, and then the camera zooms tightly on the artwork as he covers it entirely with six strokes.The BBC did not immediately put a clip of the scene on YouTube, but it made the episode available to watch on its iPlayer service for those in Britain. More

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      Know How the Beatles Ended? Peter Jackson May Change Your Mind.

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      The director’s three-part documentary “Get Back” explores the most contested period in the band’s history and reveals there’s still plenty to debate.It is a cold January morning in 1969, and three of the four Beatles are assembled in a cavernous film studio in London, with cameras rolling and microphones everywhere. “Lennon’s late again,” Paul McCartney says matter of factly, as he plugs in his bass guitar.With Ringo Starr and George Harrison sitting groggily before him, a tray of toast and jam by their side, McCartney starts to strum and sing, searching for inspiration. Within minutes, a mid-tempo groove takes shape and a familiar vocal melody emerges. “Get back,” he sings in a faint howl. “Get back to where you once belonged.” Almost like magic, a Beatles classic begins to form out of nothing.Later that same day, after John Lennon arrives, the four rock deities gather in a circle and bicker. They have loose plans for a concert TV special featuring brand-new songs, but most of the men appear to be dreading it — and may be dreading each other, too. Lennon, who seems to space out for much of the meeting, declares vaguely that “communication” with an audience is his only aim, while an impatient McCartney challenges his bandmates to show some enthusiasm for the project or abandon it.Harrison blurts out what they may all be thinking: “Maybe we should have a divorce?”Those back-to-back scenes in Peter Jackson’s documentary series “The Beatles: Get Back,” a seven-hour-plus project that will be shown in three parts on Disney Plus from Nov. 25 to 27, encapsulate the twin sides of the most contested period in Beatles history — the glory of artistic creation by the world’s most beloved and influential rock band, and the grueling conflicts that led to its breakup, announced a year later.For Beatles fans, or any student of 20th-century pop culture, these are astonishing glimpses into the band’s working life and the tensions that surrounded them.“It’s sort of that one impossible fan dream,” Jackson said in a video interview from Wellington, New Zealand, where he has spent much of the last four years in a darkened editing suite surrounded by Beatles memorabilia. “‘I wish I could go in a time machine and sit in the corner of the stage while they were working,’” he said, describing a lifelong dream like a child praying for the ultimate Christmas present. “‘Just for one day, just watch them, and I’ll be really quiet and sit there.’”“Well, guess what?” he continued. “The time machine’s here now.”Peter Jackson pored over nearly 60 hours of footage for his documentary “Get Back.”Nicola Dove/DisneyJackson’s film is also a volley in one of the longest-running debates in Beatles scholarship. The band’s journey in January 1969 began with intense pressure to put on a high-concept live show and ended with something wonderfully low-concept: an impromptu lunchtime performance on a London rooftop that reminded the world of the band’s majesty, spontaneity and wit. “I hope we passed the audition,” Lennon quips at the show’s end.That period was already the subject of “Let It Be,” a 1970 vérité film by Michael Lindsay-Hogg; its soundtrack was the Beatles’ final studio LP. In time, that film took on a reputation as a joyless document of the band’s collapse, and later testimony from members of the Beatles seemed to buttress that view. Lennon described the sessions as “hell,” and Harrison called them the group’s “winter of discontent.”Yet that narrative has long been challenged by some Beatles aficionados. Lindsay-Hogg’s film, they argue, was selectively edited for maximum dreariness, perhaps to retroactively explain the breakup — “Abbey Road,” the Beatles’ true swan song, was made after “Let It Be” but released first — while evidence from bootlegged tapes suggests a mixture of pleasure and frustration familiar to any musician struggling through Take 24 on a deadline.The mere existence of “Get Back” is a sign that, more than half a century after the Beatles disbanded, their history is still unsettled, and remains endlessly ripe for deep-dive research and partisan counternarratives.Jackson’s film, arriving with the authority of a lightning bolt hurled from a mountaintop in Middle-earth, may become the final word in the argument over this period, though the story it tells is far from simple. Jackson, the Oscar-winning director of the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy — and an avowed Beatles nut — was given access to nearly 60 hours of previously unseen footage by Apple Corps, the Beatles’ company, with no brief, Jackson said, but to restore the film and tell the full story.From left: Ringo Starr, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, John Lennon and Yoko Ono in the studio.Apple CorpsThe Beatles, or at least their corporate surrogates, have embraced Jackson’s retelling, and a preview of the film highlighted moments of brotherly silliness, like the band dancing and clowning in the studio. At a music industry event last year, Jeff Jones, Apple Corps’ chief executive, promised that the new film would “bust the myth” that these sessions were “the final nail in the Beatles’ coffin.” Yet Jackson said the band has had no influence over his work.“Everyone sort of thinks it’s a whitewash” because the Beatles have authorized the film, Jackson said with a laugh. “But actually it’s almost the exact opposite. It shows everything that Michael Lindsay-Hogg could not show in 1970. It’s a very unflinching look at what goes on.”For fans who remember Lindsay-Hogg’s film, or have read dismal anecdotes in any of dozens of Beatles books, Jackson’s scenes of lighthearted antics and creative breakthroughs jump off the screen. We see the Beatles cracking each other up at the mic, mimicking posh accents and performing absurdist slapstick as if in a “Monty Python” skit.“You see these four great friends, great musicians, who just lock in and develop these songs, and you see it all onscreen,” Jackson said.Day after day, new material takes shape. Polishing the lyrics to the song “Get Back,” McCartney and Lennon test out names for a character who departs his Arizona home: Jojo Jackson, Jojo Carter, Jojo Daphne. Shaving off the last name gives McCartney enough syllables for some more specificity in the story: “Jojo left his home in Tucson, Arizona …”Lennon, chewing gum, glances up to ask: “Is Tucson in Arizona?”The original “Let It Be” was shot on 16 millimeter film and blown up to grainy 35 millimeter. Generations of fans, if they’ve seen it at all, have had access to the movie only in crummy bootlegs transferred from videotape. It has never been officially released on DVD or in online formats.I told Jackson that when I finally saw “Let It Be,” 20-odd years ago, my local video rental shop required a $100 cash deposit. Jackson grabbed a vintage VHS copy and said he had long regretted not buying it when visiting the United States in the early 1980s, but the format was unplayable on his machine in New Zealand. While making “Get Back,” he tracked down an original on eBay for $200.“I don’t have a VHS machine,” he said, “so I still can’t play it.”Jackson’s restored images in “Get Back” are strikingly clear, and help flesh out a story of creative anxiety and creature comforts inside Fortress Beatle. Attendants pour glasses of wine as the musicians rehearse; Yoko Ono paints Japanese calligraphy while Lennon and McCartney, a few feet away, yuk their way through “Two of Us” in goofy accents.But the misery is never far away, and as the arguments grind on, it starts to seem miraculous that the Beatles can still come together at all. At one point, Harrison briefly quits the band, apparently fed up with his second-fiddle status. In the studio cafeteria, Lennon tells McCartney that the band’s rift with their lead guitarist has been “a festering wound.”After Harrison walks out, the remaining Beatles jam loudly and angrily. Starr tears through the drums. Ono, dressed all in black, stands at a microphone and wails to a wild climax — perhaps the most violent sound the Beatles ever created.A recurring theme is the band’s discomfort over the role of Ono, who sits by Lennon’s side constantly during the sessions and will come to be vilified by fans for her supposed role in the Beatles’ breakup. A companion book to the film, with further transcripts from the tapes, quotes Lennon telling McCartney: “I would sacrifice you all for her.”Jackson’s restored images in “Get Back” help flesh out a story of creative anxiety and creature comforts inside the Beatles’ cloistered world.Apple CorpsYet it is never clear whether the Beatles’ conflicts are caused by the events of the day or by the accumulated stress of years in the spotlight. Peter Brown, who was a top executive at Apple during this time, said in an interview that the troubles began with the success of “Sgt. Pepper” in 1967.“They were doing things that they’d never done before, and they were very, very worried that it was going to take off,” Brown said. “And of course it took off like crazy. Then how do you follow that?”Some of the drama, of course, may be typical band stuff. Neil Finn, of the New Zealand group Crowded House, said that Jackson showed his band about four hours of footage earlier this year. “We all wept,” he wrote in an email.“So much of it struck a chord with me from my own rehearsals and recording experiences,” Finn added. “Paul asking John if he had any new songs, and John kind of blustering with his answer: Uh, maybe, not really. You can see the others staring in disbelief. I’ve seen that look before.”But the stakes were incredibly high for the Beatles, and the prospect of the band’s dissolution hangs like a cloud over almost the entire film. Early on, McCartney floats an idea for the still-undefined TV special. Their performance, he proposes, would be interspersed with news reports about earthquakes and other “red hot” events around the world. “And at the end,” McCartney says, “the final bulletin is: ‘The Beatles have broken up.’”To some extent, “Get Back” and the original “Let It Be” are exhibits in a study of truth. Does the footage actually show the endgame of the Beatles, or has history gotten it wrong all these years? Does the weight of the evidence point to the band being joyful and creatively fecund, or fed up with each other’s company? The answer may be: all of the above.In one of many moments of levity, Starr hoists a mug behind the drum kit.Apple CorpsIn a note included with a new reissue of the album “Let It Be,” McCartney writes that the original film “was pretty sad as it dealt with the breakup of our band, but the new film shows the camaraderie and love the four of us had between us.”Lindsay-Hogg believes that not only fans, but likely also members of the Beatles themselves, have been misreading “Let It Be” for years.“I think part of the rap that ‘Let It Be’ has had is no one has seen it for a very long time,” he said in an interview. “And it got very confused with the time it came out, which was just after they’d broken up.”Of course, the Beatles did not disband in January 1969. They went on to record “Abbey Road” later that year, with great care; most of the songs on that album, including “Octopus’s Garden,” “Mean Mr. Mustard,” “Carry That Weight” and “Something,” are heard in early stages during “Get Back.”But Jackson’s film makes clear that the end was nigh. If there is a true culprit in the breakup, it was the business conflicts that ensued during 1969, when the group tussled over its management, and Lennon and McCartney tried but failed to take control of the company that held their songwriting rights.Those problems are foreshadowed in “Get Back” with the utterance of a single name: Allen Klein, the American business manager who arrives a few days before the rooftop show to pitch his services for the band. Shortly after the events shown in “Get Back,” Lennon, Harrison and Starr all signed on with Klein; McCartney declined, and the schism was never repaired. Klein died in 2009.“Our movie doesn’t show the breaking up of the Beatles,” Jackson said, “but it shows the one singular moment in history that you could possibly say was the beginning of the end.”If Beatles’ scholarship and fandom has proved anything, it is that even a contradictory summation of the band and its influence can still hold true. The Beatles were a pop boy band that ended up pushing the creative boundaries of rock music further than anyone else; nearly every day of their existence together has been documented exhaustively, though a full accounting of their motivations is impossible.“Get Back” seems to contain all those multitudes — the delight, the tension, the fighting and the wonder of the Beatles simply playing music on the roof.“There’s no goodies in it, there’s no baddies,” Jackson said. “There’s no villains, there’s no heroes. It’s just a human story.”Jackson’s scenes of lighthearted antics and creative breakthroughs jump off the screen. Apple Corps More