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      What to Expect From Wednesday’s Emmy Nominations

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      The top nominees are announced at 11:30 a.m. ET. “Shogun” and “The Bear” are poised to have a big day.Just six months after a strike-delayed ceremony, the Emmys are back.Nominations for television’s most prestigious award show will be unveiled on Wednesday morning. “Shogun,” the lush period drama, and “The Bear,” the anxiety-inducing comedy, are poised to have a big day. Netflix’s “Baby Reindeer” is expected to stand out among limited series.There is a considerable cloud hanging over Emmy nomination day this year. Last year’s double strikes, along with several years of cost cutting, have put the industry in the throes of a contraction. The Peak TV era is now firmly in the rearview mirror. To wit, the number of shows submitted for Emmy consideration this year plummeted.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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      Judy Belushi Pisano, Who Defended Her Husband’s Legacy, Dies at 73

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      She was married to John Belushi until his fatal drug overdose in 1982. She went on to celebrate his comic talent in books and a documentary.Judy Belushi Pisano, who after the death of her husband, the actor and comedian John Belushi, from a drug overdose in 1982 became a fierce defender of his legacy, died on July 5 at her home on the island of Martha’s Vineyard, in Massachusetts. She was 73.Her son, Luke Pisano, said the cause was endometrial cancer.Mr. Belushi, a member of the original cast of “Saturday Night Live” and a star of hit films like “National Lampoon’s Animal House” and “The Blues Brothers,” was among the best-known comic actors in the world when he was found dead in a Hollywood hotel.Though it took weeks to determine the cause — from a mix of heroin and cocaine — the public immediately seized on Mr. Belushi’s death as a cautionary tale of excess in an era defined by it.His reputation as a hard-partying drug addict was further underlined by Bob Woodward of The Washington Post in his book “Wired: The Short Life and Fast Times of John Belushi” (1984), which Ms. Pisano had initially authorized but later came to regret.“The book is both unfair and inaccurate,” she told The Philadelphia Daily News in 1984. “To me the biggest lie is that it claims to be a portrait of John but it’s not. It’s only about drugs.”Ms. Pisano at the 2004 ceremony posthumously honoring John Belushi with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Vince Bucci/Getty ImagesWe 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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      ‘Sorry/Not Sorry’ Review: Does Louis C.K. Get the Last Laugh?

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      Cara Mones and Caroline Suh’s earnest and frustrating documentary, produced by The New York Times, has a bitter punchline.In the fall of 2017, The New York Times published sexual misconduct allegations against Harvey Weinstein and Louis C.K., one month apart. Both men were powerhouse producers whose misdeeds were an open secret within the entertainment world, and both articles have been given their own film: Maria Schrader’s “She Said,” a chronicle of shoe-leather journalism, and now Cara Mones and Caroline Suh’s “Sorry/Not Sorry” (produced by The New York Times), an earnest and frustrating documentary whose murky irreconcilabilities are tethered to the fact that Louis C.K. was convicted only in the court of public opinion.While the interview subjects agree on Louis C.K.’s guilt (he released a statement in 2017 admitting to sexual misconduct), the dramatic conflict arises in his penalty. After his status as a revered truth teller was revoked and his show “Louie” was pulled from streaming, Louis C.K has since rebranded as a renegade (and won a Grammy). Depending on the talking head, his moderate marginalization is either excessive punishment or an unearned pardon.The film pokes at this ethical morass from a few angles, most confidently when speaking with the comedians who risked their own careers breaking the industry’s silence (or obliviousness, as some performers here claim).These talented women — Jen Kirkman, Abby Schachner and Megan Koester — tell their stories with charm and humor over a mischievous, overkill score that would be better suited to an outright comedy about a dowager poisoning her rival’s plum tart. The three are far more insightful, hilarious and honest about sexual politics than the Louis C.K. of today, who continues to dole out defensive shtick to his die-hards. But the film’s bitter punchline is that he’s the one still selling out Madison Square Garden.Sorry/Not SorryNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. In theaters. More

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      3 Sharp Stand-Up Specials to Entertain You This Holiday Weekend

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      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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      The Man Behind the Minions

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      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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      Enough With Prestige TV. Give Me the Bloopers!

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      In a world of bad vibes, I just want to see an actor break.In the summer of 2023, while a confused nation binged old episodes of the gourmet cheeseball legal drama “Suits,” I chose instead to fixate on a “Suits” blooper reel. It’s on YouTube. It’s 16 minutes long and consists primarily of the star of the series, Gabriel Macht — he plays Harvey, a cocky lawyer who works at the same firm as the woman played by the future Duchess of Sussex — flubbing lines, wiggling his eyebrows, moonwalking, mispronouncing “behalves,” playfully pretending to punch his co-stars in the face and dissolving into giggles when one of those co-stars calls him “Chucklebutt.”I have never watched a full episode of “Suits,” neither when it originally ran on the USA Network throughout the 2010s nor when Netflix shrewdly revived it. Still, I returned to these “Suits” bloopers multiple times a day, every day, for months. They delighted and comforted me, as legal dramas never do.I dig blooper reels, man. I dig the slapstick, the loopiness, the unexpected poignancy, the genial chaos. I first encountered this universe as a child via the crucial (and poignant!) 1989 direct-to-VHS classic “Dazzling Dunks and Basketball Bloopers,” in which the N.B.A. gods of my youth proved themselves to be mortal by occasionally whining to the refs. And now, as a weary adult with too much to worry about and too much stuff to watch, I find blooper reels to be richer texts than the shows and movies from which they derive. Macht from “Suits” saying, “Donna, Judge Atkins is ready to hear my motion for summary judgment”: boring. Inert. I don’t care about any of these people. Macht from “Suits” repeatedly stumbling over the words, “Donna, Judge Atkins is ready to hear my motion for summary judgment” until he growls, “Oh, my God, this line”: hilarious. Winsome. Engrossing. A celebration of man’s imperfection. I think that’s beautiful.Sometimes I love bloopers for their wanton silliness. Jason Schwartzman splitting his pants during a “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World” sword fight. Will Ferrell waxing rhapsodic about the nice bluish hue of his plums on “Eastbound & Down.” Jenna Ortega accidentally clonking a young lady in the face with a flashlight while filming “Wednesday.” Jerry Stiller incapacitating Julia Louis-Dreyfus with his impassioned delivery of “What the hell does that mean?” on “Seinfeld”; Chris Pratt incapacitating the entire set of “Parks and Recreation” by suggesting that Kim Kardashian has a great comeback story. The bloopers during the end credits of Jackie Chan movies, in which Jackie Chan gets injured doing various Jackie Chan-type stunts. Ryan Gosling as a competent dramatic actor: Lovely. Good job. Ryan Gosling tittering ineptly through nearly every “Saturday Night Live” sketch in which he has ever appeared: awesome. Bizarrely compelling. A legacy to be proud of.Sometimes I watch this stuff while I’m writing. For each paragraph (or sentence) I grind out, I reward myself by returning (briefly!) to the split pants, the juicy plums, the copious giggling. This is not an especially noble impulse: Bloopers distract me, revert me to the childlike state that is my preferred adult mode.But often my love for such tomfoolery is more complicated, more emotionally fraught, more, dare I say, sophisticated. Because it turns out that sometimes grimly prestigious TV shows have blooper reels too, and I find these bloopers to be both delightful and bizarrely soothing. Look: I hate conflict, stylized cruelty, cross-examination, grittiness, bleakness, middle- to highbrow tragedy. Regrettably, the best (or at least biggest) shows on TV are often full of all that. I watched every episode of “Breaking Bad” and “Game of Thrones” and “The Americans” but didn’t really enjoy myself at all; I enjoy all those shows’ respective blooper reels very much, though. I hate watching people being mean to one another, and I love it when one of those people biffs a line and ruins the take and everyone dissolves into giggles. See? They’re actually friends! Everyone’s having a good time! The world is a fundamentally friendly and goofy and joyful place! Bleakness and cruelty are entirely fictional constructs!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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      Martin Mull, Comic Actor Who Starred in ‘Mary Hartman,’ Dies at 80

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      Mr. Mull was also known for his roles in “Clue,” “Roseanne” and “Veep.”Martin Mull, the comedic actor, musician and artist who gained widespread attention in the 1970s in shows such as “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman” and “Fernwood 2-Night,” and remained active in television and film over the next half-century, died on Thursday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 80.His wife, Wendy Mull, confirmed his death. He died after a long illness, his family said. No cause was given.In “Mary Hartman,” Mr. Mull played Garth Gimble, a domestic abuser who met his demise by being impaled on the star atop an aluminum Christmas tree.He starred in the show’s subsequent spinoff, “Fernwood 2-Night,” a parody of talk shows that aired in 1977. He played the talk-show host Barth Gimble, the twin brother of Garth Gimble.The actors Fred Willard, Martin Mull and Frank De Vol on “Fernwood 2-Night” in 1977.Everett Collection“With an undistinguished blond mustache, which may or may not be intended as a joke, Barth copes manic‐depressively with a shaky job situation and some hazy allegations about charges pending against him in Florida,” John J. O’Connor of The New York Times wrote in a review in 1977 of the show’s opening week. “Barth will say only that his lawyer thinks he has ‘a pretty darn good case for entrapment.’”He was also known for his roles in “Clue” (1985) and the television shows “Roseanne” and “Arrested Development.” He also played the character Bob Bradley, an aide to the main character in the political sitcom “Veep.”More recently, Mr. Mull appeared in the Fox television series “The Cool Kids,” about a group of rule-breaking friends living in a retirement community.Martin E. Mull was born on Aug. 18, 1943, in Chicago to Harold and Betty Mull. He earned degrees from the Rhode Island School of Design. His work appeared in gallery shows and in the Whitney and Metropolitan museums.In addition to his wife, he is survived by a daughter, Maggie Mull.In a 2018 interview with The Times, he described his approach to his art as “going back and finding old Life and Look magazines, people’s family photos and things like that, and then I collage from those, make my own images and then paint them.”A full obituary will follow.Alain Delaquérière More

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      ‘The Interview’: Eddie Murphy Is Ready to Look Back

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      Eddie Murphy has been so famous for so long, occupying such a lofty place in the cultural landscape, that it can be easy to overlook just how game-changing a figure he actually is.Let’s start, as Murphy’s career did, with standup. There had been star comics before — Steve Martin, Richard Pryor — but none exploded with anything like Murphy’s speed or intensity. Swaggering, magnetic and able to bounce between sweet personal storytelling and controversial, defiantly un-P.C. material, he was, and forgive me for mixing disciplines, a rock star. “Eddie Murphy: Raw,” released in 1987 when he was only 26, is the highest-grossing standup-comedy film ever — still. The scale of his success, and the fact he achieved it without dulling his edge, redefined what a comedian could do, paving the way for the likes of Kevin Hart and Chris Rock.Listen to the Conversation With Eddie MurphyDavid Marchese talks to the comedy legend about navigating the minefield of fame, “Family Feud” and changing Hollywood forever.Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Amazon Music | NYT Audio AppHe also, of course, cast his spell on TV. When Murphy arrived at “Saturday Night Live” in 1980, the show was thought to be on the verge of cancellation. Through sheer force of charisma as well as instantly iconic, hilariously unpredictable recurring characters like his crotchety Gumby and the Mr. Rogers parody Mr. Robinson, Murphy brought the show back to life. A highly plausible argument can be made that without him, television’s most reliable comedy-star-making machine might not have made it to a 10th anniversary, let alone be nearing its 50th.But Murphy made his greatest mark in movies, where he reached new heights, for comedians and Black performers, of popularity and bankability. He helped pioneer the action-comedy genre with his quippy, improvisational-feeling performances in movies like “Beverly Hills Cop” and “48 Hrs.” And then in the mid-1990s, after a bit of a career dip, he transitioned to family-friendly films like “Shrek” and “The Nutty Professor” (one of multiple comedies in which Murphy virtuosically played wildly different characters), and continued to score giant hits.All of which is to say that American pop culture looked different after Eddie Murphy came along. Now he’s returning to the character that sent his career into the stratosphere with “Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F,” which comes to Netflix on July 3. It arrives 40 years after the first film in the series, in which Murphy stars as the wisecracking detective Axel Foley. He is clearly comfortable with the role — and with himself. In recent years, Murphy has been a somewhat enigmatic offscreen presence, but as I found out over the course of our two long conversations in the spring, he can be open and relaxed. He was eager to reflect on what he has achieved, share some Hollywood stories, explain why doing standup doesn’t appeal to him anymore and reveal the dream project he has never gotten off the ground. More