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‘Freaks and Geeks,’ Reconsidered by a Fan Who’s a Dad Now
A longtime “Freaks and Geeks” fan reconsiders what it means to be one of the cool kids. More
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Jane Lynch Loves Being the ‘Weakest Link’ Host and Not a Contestant
The former “Glee” star turned a childhood fascination with game shows into a TV gig. “I could do it forever,” she says.Growing up, Jane Lynch used to pretend to be sick so she could stay home from school and watch game shows like “Tattletales,” “Password” and her favorite, “Match Game.”As an adult, she had the good luck of her guilty pleasure became something of a vocation. For seven years, she was the host of NBC’s “Hollywood Game Night.” And since 2020, she has hosted “Weakest Link,” a remake of the British series overseen, terrifyingly, by Anne Robinson. Season 3 is now streaming on Peacock.“I love the game, I love trivia, I love that I’m not playing it,” said Lynch, who instilled her own brand of fear as the cheerleading coach Sue Sylvester in “Glee.”“I could do it forever,” she added in a video interview from Manhattan, where she was filming Hulu’s “Only Murders in the Building,” before talking about the neighborhood rambles, cultural outings and do-it-yourself projects by which she and her spouse, Jennifer Cheyne, try to live magnificently in Montecito, Calif.These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1Long Walks Close to HomeOne of the things that Jennifer and I said when we moved here is we want to be close to Coast Village Road, which is the main drag. It has all the restaurants and cute little shops. I walk up and down the neighborhood streets, and then I stop for a cup of coffee, and then I continue walking and I’m at the ocean, and then I just walk back.2About That CoffeeThe Montesano Market & Deli has really good, strong Italian coffee. I know all the regulars that come there. It’s a wonderful thing to go where everyone knows your name and you know theirs.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
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‘Prosper’ Is a Juicy Megachurch Drama
This Australian series has enough tawdry scandals to qualify as a soap and enough Shakespearean power lust to qualify as a fancy drama.Richard Roxburgh stars as a megachurch leader in “Prosper.”StanThe Australian drama “Prosper,” on the Roku channel, follows the Quinn family and their megachurch franchise. Dad Cal (Richard Roxburgh) is the slick, energetic leader, the kind of pastor who does not turn the other cheek but instead punches the guy right back, harder. Mom Abi (Rebecca Gibney) is the tough power player, willing though not always happy to cover up her family’s transgressions — a task that takes up nearly all of her time.The eldest son, Dion (Ewen Leslie), might be too milquetoast to take over. “If you want to inherit the earth, Dion, you’re going to have to be a little less meek,” says one attaché. Dion’s wife, Taz (Ming-Zhu Hii), is more than happy to push him, though. God helps those who help their spouses, right? Issy (Hayley McCarthy) is the pop singer with a showbiz-Jesus husband (Jordi Webber) who would love his own chance to preach, while Jed (Jacob Collins-Levy) is the prodigal son who ditched the megachurch in favor of a soup kitchen but now finds himself sucked back into the fold. And the baby of the family, the adopted, teenage Moses (Alexander D’Souza), is trying to contact his birth parents amid a self-destructive spiral.“Nobody does church like us,” Cal brags. One hopes! His plan to plant a church in Los Angeles sends his children scrambling for top position, trying to prove both their spiritual and commercial mettle. They compete to baptize a famous young D.J. the way the “Succession” kids tried to close deals. Jesus is lord, but cash is king, and those sprawling buildings, rock-concert stages, private helicopters and image consultants don’t pay for themselves.“Prosper” has enough tawdry scandals to qualify as a soap and enough Shakespearean power lust to qualify as a fancy drama. Unlike some of its more prestige-chasing brethren, “Prosper” moves; it almost feels distilled. Episodes zip along, and characters tend to announce their schemes and allegiances, and what the show lacks in nuance it makes up for in momentum. Many of its juiciest arcs are ripped from tabloid headlines, but the series avoids tinny caricature and instead finds the real light and longing in its characters, the sincerity of the search within the hypocrisy of the outcomes. More
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3 Sharp Stand-Up Specials to Entertain You This Holiday Weekend
Hannah Einbinder, Raanan Hershberg and Mo Welch all take tricky approaches in their quests for laughs.Hannah Einbinder, ‘Everything Must Go’(Stream it on Max)Bathed in moody lighting beneath three grand chandeliers, the comic Hannah Einbinder performs her jokes the way models strike poses: with dramatic pauses and flirtatious flourishes, always alert to the camera. Whereas the fictional comedy writer she plays in “Hacks” feels palpably real, her stand-up persona sparkles with artifice.Einbinder tells us a lot about herself in “Everything Must Go,” her debut special (she’s bisexual, has ADHD, is an ex-cheerleader), but her larky comedy doesn’t feel confessional. It’s not primarily about setups and punchlines either. Her oddball show comes off as a spoof of Hollywood glamour and over-the-top confidence. Directed by Sandy Honig with a visual vocabulary that evokes David Lynch as much as any special, the hour moves between tight close-ups and a long shot that makes the comic look like the inhabitant of a dollhouse. You hear the audience, but don’t see it as anything other than an undifferentiated mass. Continually breaking the fourth wall, Einbinder at one point looks away from the crowd, toward the camera, and makes a face as if to say directly to us: “Can you believe what’s going on?” Her idea of a transition from one joke to another is asking: “Would you believe that reminded me of something totally unrelated?”There’s a self-indulgence in this knowing style that will alienate those looking for quick and familiar laughs. And her dramatic pauses can adopt the rigid pacing of a movie trailer. But there’s something exciting about a young performer operating at her own comic frequency. While some bits need her charisma to put them over, she has a couple of standout jokes, including one that presents humanity as a toxic husband and climate change as planet Earth “recognizing her worth and filing for a divorce.”Einbinder has a shape-shifter’s gift for voices and illustrates the climate change metaphor through the movie “My Cousin Vinny”; her impression of Marisa Tomei shows off her actorly range. Like the whole special, the humor comes from how unexpected it is. There’s nothing dark about her presentation until the end, when the curtains close and Einbinder, standing alone backstage, collapses in a heap as the credits roll.Raanan Hershberg, ‘Brave’(Stream it on YouTube)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
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Saudi Arabia Sentences Producer to 13 Years in Prison Over Netflix Show
In a video plea for help, Abdulaziz Almuzaini — a dual Saudi-American citizen — described how the authorities had accused him of promoting extremism through a cartoon franchise.From the outside, the past few years looked like the peak of Abdulaziz Almuzaini’s career.As the head of an animation studio in Saudi Arabia, he signed a five-year deal with Netflix in 2020. A sardonic cartoon franchise that he helped create, “Masameer,” likened to a Saudi version of “South Park,” was soon streaming to audiences around the world. And as the conservative Islamic kingdom loosened up, Mr. Almuzaini was being publicly celebrated — as recently as a few months ago — as one of the homegrown talents shaping its nascent entertainment industry.Behind the scenes, though, he was on trial in an opaque national security court, as Saudi prosecutors — who accused him of promoting extremism through the cartoon series and social media posts — sought to ensure that he would spend the rest of his life in prison or under a travel ban.Mr. Almuzaini, a dual U.S.-Saudi citizen and father of three, recently described his plight in a video pleading for the Saudi leadership to intervene, saying that he was awaiting a final ruling from the kingdom’s Supreme Court.“I might bear the consequences of what happens after this, and I’m ready,” he said in the 18-minute video, which he said he was filming at his home in the Saudi capital.The video was published on his social media accounts late last month and deleted the same day. In it, Mr. Almuzaini, sporting a black beard graying around the edges, spoke in front of a wall covered with colorful sticky notes.A screen shot from a video posted on Mr. Almuzaini’s social media accounts late last month that was later deleted.via XWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
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Did You Find These Easter Eggs in ‘The Bear’ Season 3?
Subtle, and not so subtle, culinary references are sprinkled throughout the show’s third season.In its third season, “The Bear,” a television show known for its dedicated hyperrealism, did not disappoint fans looking for real-world culinary references. As Carmy (Jeremy Allen White), Sydney (Ayo Edebiri) and their team of former sandwich professionals hustled for a Michelin star or two at their newly opened fine-dining spot, Easter eggs dotted the show. We’ve compiled a short list, with help from restaurant industry professionals, of the most true-to-life nods and hidden surprises:In certain corners of Reddit, it is rumored that the entire show is loosely based on the life of the chef Curtis Duffy, an owner of Ever restaurant in Chicago. But, while the creators have dined at his restaurant, “If they were studying me, I didn’t know it,” he said.The photos of the restaurant critics posted in the Bear office are of actual people, including the New Yorker writer Naomi Fry, the “How Long Gone” podcaster Chris Black and Sue Chan, who runs the culinary events and marketing agency Care by Chan. On the show, Marcus, the pastry chef played by Lionel Boyce, makes a “caviar sundae.” A similar dish was served at the renowned, now-closed restaurant 108 in Copenhagen, a culinary hotbed to which “The Bear” has referred numerous times.In flashbacks to Carmy’s time at the French Laundry, Thomas Keller’s restaurant in the Napa Valley, a sign beneath the clock reads, “Sense of Urgency.” “That sign sits under every clock in every restaurant Thomas Keller has,” said Nick Fitch, a co-owner of Alston Hospitality Group who spent 12 years working the dining room at the French Laundry and Per Se.The Pilot G2 Gel Roller Pen, with a .07-millimeter tip that Carmy uses to furiously scribble throughout the season (and to write his list of “non-negotiables”) caught the eye of Greg Ryan, a co-owner of Bell’s in Los Alamos, Calif. who worked in the dining rooms at Per Se and the French Laundry for more than five years. “When I was an expediter, those were just the pens you had,” he said. “They work well on receipt paper, don’t smudge, have a fine tip and write super-smoothly.”Much has been made of Mr. Keller’s chicken-trussing demonstration — “If you ask him his favorite dish, he’ll say roast chicken,” said Mr. Fitch — but a photo of his handprint cast in concrete also makes an appearance in the season’s first episode. According to Mr. Fitch, the handprint was initially in the kitchen at the French Laundry but was extracted during an extensive renovation and moved outside, along with handprints from Corey Lee, a former French Laundry chef de cuisine, and Claire Clark, a former pastry chef at the restaurant.Joel McHale, who plays Chef David, said on “Late Night With Seth Meyers” that he was “portraying” Mr. Keller. “I don’t think he’s as awful as I was, but he does whisper at his employees,” Mr. McHale said. Others have speculated that the character is based on Daniel Humm, the chef at Eleven Madison Park. Will Guidara, a producer on “The Bear,” was a business partner of Mr. Humm’s until the two had a tense public split. Mr. McHale said in a GQ interview this week that “David is apparently based on Thomas Keller and Daniel Humm,” and added, “There wasn’t any material. I’ve never met them.”In Episode 2, Carmy calls a dish of sea bass topped with potato chips a “Boulud nod,” as in Daniel Boulud, the renowned chef who created crisp paupiettes of sea bass in Barolo sauce. That dish uses thinly sliced potatoes as a crust for a skinless fillet, and Mr. Boulud has in turn credited a mullet dish made by Paul Bocuse as his inspiration.The tip-versus-service-charge conversation among the Bear’s staff touches on a hot-button issue that’s playing out all over the country. Many restaurateurs, most famously Danny Meyer, have tried to create a better system, with mixed results. In California, a recently passed law seemed to make restaurant service charges illegal (as part of a bid to reduce hidden fees), but then a second bill was passed, allowing restaurants to keep those fees if they are presented clearly.In Episode 7, Chef Marcus asks Carmy about a photo of Mr. Keller with Mr. Boulud and the chef Nobu Matsuhisa as much younger men. All three went on to become world-renowned chefs. Mr. Matsuhisa has opened restaurants on five continents, and popularized the now-famous dish of miso black cod at Nobu, his restaurant in TriBeCa.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
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The Man Behind the Minions
Pierre Coffin helped invent the yellow animated creatures and has supplied their voices for nearly 15 years. He’s as puckish and subversive as his mischievous creations.When the French animation studio Illumination was developing “Despicable Me,” an ingratiating family comedy about a second rate supervillain and his adopted children, the team decided that the movie needed some lighthearted relief to help make the movie’s antihero, Gru (Steve Carell), more sympathetic.So the directors Pierre Coffin and Chris Renaud, alongside the character designer Eric Guillon and the producer Chris Meledandri, came up with the Minions, a flock of mischievous yellow creatures that would scurry about in the background and cheer on their nefarious leader.Coffin, a French Indonesian animator, offered to improvise some high-pitched gibberish dialogue for the characters, which he’d occasionally done working previously in commercials, until a celebrity voice actor could be added at a later date.But as it turned out, Coffin’s voice stuck: Test audiences loved his distinctive staccato giggle and melodic nonsense speak. And so, since 2010, Coffin has been the unlikely star of one of the largest pop cultural phenomena of the century, reprising the role for the sixth time on the big screen in the new sequel “Despicable Me 4,” which comes to theaters Wednesday.“After the last movie, I told Chris Meledandri, ‘I have to stop doing anything Minion-related, I’ve got to do something else,’” Coffin said in a recent video interview from an animation festival he was attending in southeastern France. “But there’s something very appealing that I really like about those characters. So even when I say that I want to get out of it, then I think, ‘Oh, I should do that, it’s fun!’”Born in France in 1967 to the novelist Nh. Dini and the diplomat Yves Coffin, Pierre’s childhood was spent partly in the United States, which made an outsized impression on his young mind. “I was overwhelmed, like ‘This is the greatest country ever: They have all these movies!’” he said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
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The Best Movies and TV Shows Coming to Netflix in July
This month brings the arrival of “Lost” and the return of Eddie Murphy as Axel Foley.Every month, Netflix adds movies and TV shows to its library. Here are our picks for some of July’s most promising new titles. (Note: Streaming services occasionally change schedules without giving notice. For more recommendations on what to stream, sign up for our Watching newsletter here.)‘Lost’ Seasons 1-6Starts streaming: July 1This enormously entertaining and frequently surprising science-fiction epic comes back to Netflix, just in time for the 20th anniversary of its debut episode. What begins as a story about a seemingly random group of airline passengers crash-landing on an uncharted island grows over the course of six seasons into a centuries-spanning saga, as the castaways stumble across the mysteries and history of their strange and dangerous new home. An innovative flashback structure balances on-island adventure with smaller stories about these people’s lives before they crashed. “Lost” works as both a rich character-driven drama and an addicting puzzle, littered with clues and curiosities. It will be interesting to see if a new generation of fans becomes as obsessed as TV watchers were in the early 2000s — and if they argue just as much about the way the show ends.‘Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F’Starts streaming: July 3Arriving 30 years after “Beverly Hills Cop III,” this long-gestating sequel sees Eddie Murphy return to one of his most memorable roles: Axel Foley, the savvy and wisecracking Detroit policeman who somehow keeps finding himself back in Los Angeles, solving crimes. In “Axel F,” the old-school action hero shows up to help out his estranged daughter, Jane (Taylour Paige), a defense attorney whose life may be in danger. While working alongside Jane’s ex-boyfriend, Detective Bobby Abbott (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), Foley runs into a lot of old friends, including Billy Rosewood (Judge Reinhold), John Taggart (John Ashton), Jeffrey Friedman (Paul Reiser) and Serge (Bronson Pinchot). The movie is being pitched as a full-scale 1980s throwback, with big stunts and R-rated jokes.‘Cobra Kai’ Season 6, Part 1Starts streaming: July 18The sequel series to “The Karate Kid” movie franchise is coming to an end, with a season divided into three parts, starting with five episodes in July. “Cobra Kai” started as a simple twist on the original 1984 film, turning its jerky villain Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka) into more of an underdog and its hero, Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio), into someone out of touch with his humble roots. As the series has gone on, these characters — and their children, who also compete in martial arts tournaments — have evolved in ways that make their motivations and relationships more complex. The story has expanded to encompass more parts of the “Karate Kid” mythology, but it has remained a surprisingly sensitive look at how people overcome the family histories and socioeconomic circumstances that initially shape them.‘Skywalkers: A Love Story’Starts streaming: July 19Acrophobes should probably clear of this dizzying documentary, about a pair of famous Russian “roof-toppers” who climb as high as they can onto towering buildings then take pictures to preserve the achievement. Angela Nikolau and Ivan Beerkus fell in love while pursuing this passion for extreme climbing. When their relationship started to falter, they tried rekindling the romance by making plans to break into the upper floors of the world’s second-tallest skyscraper, in Kuala Lumpur. Because Nikolau and Beerkus have documented and shared so many of their adventures on social media, the “Skywalkers” director, Jeff Zimbalist, and his co-director, Maria Bukhonina, have ample footage to work with. They tell a story that is partly about a risky act of criminal trespass and partly about a couple who have to learn to trust each other in order to survive their big stunt.‘The Decameron’ Season 1Starts streaming: July 25Based loosely on Giovanni Boccaccio’s influential 14th-century story collection, “The Decameron” is set in Florence during the time of the Black Plague and follows an eclectic group of aristocrats and their servants as they shelter from the pestilence at a rural villa. Created by Kathleen Jordan (best known for the wry satire “Teenage Bounty Hunters”), the mini-series features a cast of distinctive comic actors, including Zosia Mamet (“Girls”), Tanya Reynolds (“Sex Education”), Saoirse-Monica Jackson (“Derry Girls”) and Tony Hale (“Arrested Development”). Rather than the wide-ranging anthology format of the book, this version covers the misadventures of the houseguests, as days of isolation and anxiety lead to a breakdown in social and sexual inhibitions.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
