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    ‘The Rehearsal’ Is an Awkward, Dazzling Ride

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    For Season 2, Nathan Fielder’s focus is commercial airline safety, hardly a typical topic for comedy. But his approach is never typical.The first season of HBO’s “The Rehearsal,” which aired in 2022, was an entrancing experiment. Created by and starring the comedian Nathan Fielder, the show began with a relatively simple but absurd premise: What if you could rehearse for events in your everyday life — like, for instance, having a difficult conversation with a friend? Eventually, the experiment turned into a large-scale simulation in which Fielder “rehearsed” raising a kid, a feat that, because of child labor rules and an accelerated timeline, involved a rotating cast of child actors.The second season premieres on Sunday, anticipated by the question: How is Fielder is going to top that first brilliantly uncomfortable season? His answer is to turn his attention to the world of commercial airline safety, and what results is both sidesplitting and one of the most stressful television watching experiences in recent memory.The season revolves around Fielder’s personal research into the causes of aviation disasters — a premise he admits isn’t particularly ripe for a comedy. (“So far, I was failing,” he narrates in what is perhaps the show’s first joke. “We were over 10 minutes into this episode with zero laughs.”) He has concluded that a primary cause of crashes is a lack of communication in the cockpit, where the second-in-command feels too intimidated to press his or her concerns with the captain.Fielder’s solution? Getting the pilots to open up through his rehearsal methods involving professional actors. But in Fielder’s universe, nothing is that straightforward.Working with real pilots and building a full-size replica of a Houston airport terminal, Fielder takes bizarrely hilarious detours. One involves a singing competition called “Wings of Voice.” Another uses oversize puppets to examine the life of the “Miracle on the Hudson” pilot Chesley Sullenberger.Fielder’s life-or-death subject is distressingly topical, but “The Rehearsal” is interested in more than aviation. It is a study of human behavior and the masks people wear, investigating the psychology not only of the pilots but also of the actors Fielder employs and, ultimately, of Fielder himself.Fielder draws from his own life more than ever — including in references to his other shows “Nathan for You” and “The Curse” — all while keeping the audience guessing about how much of what he is showing us is just a character. But his typically deadpan persona takes on new weight here. “The Rehearsal” remains one of the best comedies out there, but what’s at stake is no joke. More

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      ‘Harry Potter’ HBO Series Casts Dumbledore, Hagrid and More Major Roles

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      John Lithgow will play the Hogwarts headmaster in the HBO show, with Paapa Essiedu filling the role of Severus Snape.Potterheads are one step closer to seeing a television series about the boy wizard come to life, two years after it was announced.HBO said on Monday that it had cast John Lithgow as Albus Dumbledore, Janet McTeer as Minerva McGonagall, Paapa Essiedu as Severus Snape and Nick Frost as Rubeus Hagrid.Casting for major roles like Harry Potter, Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley has not been announced, and the series — based on the best-selling books by J.K. Rowling — does not have an official title or air date.HBO also said that Luke Thallon and Paul Whitehouse were joining the cast as Quirinus Quirrell and Argus Filch.“We’re delighted to have such extraordinary talent onboard, and we can’t wait to see them bring these beloved characters to new life,” Francesca Gardiner, the showrunner of the series, and Mark Mylod, who will direct several episodes, said in a joint statement. (They are both also executive producers of the show.)Paapa Essiedu will play Severus Snape in the show.Neil Hall/EPA, via ShutterstockLithgow starred in the 1990s television series “3rd Rock From the Sun” and won Emmys for his roles in “Dexter” and “The Crown.” He has also won two Tony Awards and has an extensive movie career; he played one of the cardinals contending for the papacy in last year’s “Conclave.”He told ScreenRant in February that he had signed on to play Dumbledore, a role played in the original “Harry Potter” films by Richard Harris, who died in 2002, and Michael Gambon, who died in 2023. (Jude Law played a younger Dumbledore in “Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore,” a spinoff film.)“It was not an easy decision because it’s going to define me for the last chapter of my life, I’m afraid,” Lithgow said then. “But I’m very excited. Some wonderful people are turning their attention back to ‘Harry Potter.’ That’s why it’s been such a hard decision. I’ll be about 87 years old at the wrap party, but I’ve said yes.”The new show will air on HBO and stream on Max. HBO said in 2023 that the series would be a “faithful adaptation” of the seven books published between 1997 and 2007. Eight hit films were released between 2001 and 2011. More

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      ‘The Last of Us’ Review: On the Road Again

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      Season 2 of HBO’s zombie drama begins with Joel and Ellie safe and settled. One guess how long that lasts.HBO’s video-game-inspired, postapocalyptic hit “The Last of Us” likes to cover all its zombie bases. The first season emphasized urban hellscapes — lots of cowering and running in the ruins of Boston, Kansas City and Salt Lake City — while moving toward the open spaces of Wyoming. Season 2, premiering Sunday, goes the other direction, starting out as a grisly western — stockaded town, horse patrols, waves of attackers — but moving back to the city, this time an emptied-out Seattle.Wherever it goes, though, “The Last of Us” remains (as my colleague James Poniewozik pointed out in his Season 1 review) a zombie tale that polishes and elaborates on the conventions of the genre but does not transcend them. The course of its action and the dynamics of its relationships run in familiar grooves, lubricated by generous applications of blood and goo.Where the show has differed from the genre standard is in the dramatic weight and screen time it devotes to those relationships, or, seen another way, in its sentimentality. (I say potahto.)Other zombie shows flesh out love, friendship and loyalty just enough to provide a little extra frisson when a character becomes lunch. “The Last of Us,” which was created and is still overseen by Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin, doesn’t reverse that equation — it still spends time, and a lot of HBO’s money, on elaborate scenes of mayhem, in close quarters or on broad canvases. But it really wants you to care. If the Hallmark Channel had a zombie drama, it might look like a PG version of “The Last of Us.”At the heart of the series, making the greatest demands on our emotions, is the Mutt and Jeff pairing of Joel (Pedro Pascal) — a hard case whose daughter was killed at the beginning of the show’s zombie-spawning fungal pandemic — and Ellie (Bella Ramsey), a teenager he met two decades later. Ellie, who would try the patience of adults far saintlier than Joel, happens to be immune to the fungus, and in Season 1 Joel reluctantly agreed to take her on a cross-country journey in pursuit of a cure. They emerged from the perilous, season-long road trip as each other’s surrogate family.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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      After “The White Lotus,” Lorazepam Lives On in Memes and Merch

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      “The White Lotus” Season 3 may be ending, but the medication that has become synonymous with it has found a new life in memes and merchandise.Etsy has been flooded with hats and candles asking the question: “Has Anyone Seen My Lorazepam?” Social media is rife with videos of people enunciating “lorazepam” in a faux Southern drawl. Lorazepam even made a cameo on a recent episode of “Saturday Night Live,” when the actress Chloe Fineman raucously shouted the word during a sketch.As anyone even loosely familiar with Season 3 of “The White Lotus” may know, this sudden tsunami of references to a prescription medication used to treat anxiety is not a sign of mass desperation. Rather, it’s a manifestation of an unceasing fan obsession with Victoria Ratliff, a character on the HBO TV show, the current season of which ends on Sunday.Played by Parker Posey, Victoria is a wealthy North Carolina woman on vacation at a wellness resort in Thailand, who, despite the idyllic setting, regularly expresses a need for her lorazepam, a drug known for being tough to quit.A massage? It could make her “very stressed out” and “claustrophobic,” Victoria says. The lorazepam helps her “to really relax,” she tells a masseuse.A party on a yacht? “Certain social situations make me anxious,” Victoria drawls at her eldest son, Saxon.Her daughter Piper’s decision to make a major life change? “I don’t even have my lorazepam,” a distraught Victoria declares after her bottle goes missing. “I’m going to have to drink myself to sleep.”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 White Lotus’ Luxury: How Branded Collaborations Are Capitalizing on Privilege

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      The hit HBO series satirizes luxury vacationers’ privilege. That hasn’t slowed demand for branded collaborations that sell the show’s lavish lifestyle.Ahead of the much-anticipated Season 3 finale of “The White Lotus,” HBO’s dark comedy-drama that skewers self-absorbed luxury travelers, some fans will be able to immerse themselves in a version of the show’s opulent settings.The Four Seasons Hotel Westlake Village, in the foothills of California’s Santa Monica Mountains, is offering an “exclusive luxury wellness retreat,” set to begin hours ahead of the finale’s airing on Sunday. The experience is intended to “capture the essence” of this season’s Thailand location.“We’re inviting fans to go beyond watching ‘The White Lotus’ and truly experience it,” Pia Barlow, HBO and Max’s executive vice president of originals marketing, said in a news release about the campaign.The retreat is only one of many “White Lotus” experiences and products pegged to the current season. The premium luggage company Away sold out its “White Lotus” capsule collection, complete with lotus flower-printed interior lining. Clothing retailers including H&M, Abercrombie & Fitch, Bloomingdale’s and Banana Republic have all offered show-inspired resort apparel. (Patrick Schwarzenegger, a star of the season, modeled for Banana Republic.) There is “White Lotus” wallpaper, sunscreen and a travel skin-care set in a branded beach tote. Sunglasses, candles, chocolates and even a Thai coffee-flavored creamer can be purchased by viewers looking to live like the show’s wealthy protagonists.But truly experiencing “The White Lotus” is an inherently dicey proposition. The primary motif of the series — created, written and directed by Mike White — has always been to satirize the wealthy who, even while enveloped by the world’s most tranquil and extraordinary surroundings, can’t help but indulge their egos or keep up with their ever-growing list of grievances. They can’t relax either.“I just was like, I should just do a show about people on vacation who have money, and how money is impacting all of their relationships,” White told The New York Times in 2021, ahead of the Season 1 premiere.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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      Duke Says ‘White Lotus’ Went ‘Too Far’ With School References

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      In a show that features an array of disturbing story lines, the actions — and wardrobe — of a character have gone “too far” for the university.The third season of HBO’s “The White Lotus” has featured — spoilers ahead — adultery, a stolen firearm, an incestuous threesome, a dead body in the water, fake friendships and white-collar crime.So it might not be entirely surprising that real-life officials from Duke University are troubled that the school has played a supporting role throughout the season.One of the show’s leading characters, Timothy Ratliff, a wealthy businessman and Duke alumnus played by Jason Isaacs, is on vacation in Thailand with his family. But things go south in a hurry when he learns that he is being investigated for his part in a shady financial deal.Mr. Ratliff copes by stealing lorazepam, an anti-anxiety medication, from his wife’s cache of prescription drugs. The pills leave him in a zombielike state. Later, after filching a handgun from one of the resort’s security guards, Mr. Ratliff appears to contemplate suicide — while wearing a Duke T-shirt.But there is more: Mr. Ratliff’s eldest son, Saxon, who works for his father’s company and is played by Patrick Schwarzenegger, is a poster child for toxic masculinity — and has a disturbing sexual encounter with his younger brother and a woman they met at the resort. Saxon went to Duke, too.Frank Tramble, the vice president for communications, marketing and public affairs at Duke, said in an email that the university did not approve of the use of its “marks” in the program.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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      in Music

      Marty Callner, Director of Comedy Specials and Music Videos, Dies at 78

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      At HBO in the late 1970s, he established the template for presenting stand-up on the small screen. He then became a mainstay of MTV in its early days.Marty Callner, a pioneering director of comedy specials who set the template for the genre at HBO in the 1970s before going on to make music videos infused with humor during the early heyday of MTV, died on March 17 at his home in Malibu, Calif. He was 78.His son Jazz Callner said the cause was not yet known.Over a half-century, Mr. Callner worked with some of the biggest names in popular culture, including Jerry Seinfeld, Madonna, Robin Williams, George Carlin, the Rolling Stones and Chris Rock.Mr. Callner, who preferred to stay in the background but was far from shy, “might be the most successful director you have never heard of,” Jason Zinoman of The New York Times wrote in 2022.One day in the early 1980s, Mr. Callner had an epiphany. While watching television at his home in Beverly Hills, he found himself enraptured by a music video. It was Kim Carnes’s “Bette Davis Eyes” — and he couldn’t take his eyes off it.“I said, ‘This is unbelievable,’” he recalled on the “HawkeTalk” podcast in 2021. He called it “the most artistic and entertaining thing I’ve ever seen” and recalled thinking, “I’ve got to go do this.”Marty Callner in his home office in 2022 with a Sports Emmy Award that he won for the football reality series “Hard Knocks.”Peter Fisher for The New York TimesWe 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 9 ‘White Lotus’ Characters We Keep Seeing Every Season

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      A luxury hotel marries the exotic and the familiar: The location may be new and the fruits at the breakfast buffet varied, but the thread count of the sheets, the indulgence of the staff, the sumptuousness of the spa — these remain the same.“The White Lotus,” Mike White’s HBO show about the guests and workers of a five-star resort collection, knows this well. Maybe too well? If the surroundings for the third season of this cringingly comic, lightly murderous anthology series are different — with Koh Samui, Thailand, replacing Maui (Season 1) and Sicily (Season 2) — the characters haven’t really changed. (And is there at least one uncomfortable scene aboard a boat? You bet your yachting whites.) So garnish your poolside cocktail, tie on your sarong and see if you can spot White’s favorite types.Handsome Jerk Due for a ReckoningPatrick Schwarzenegger is this season’s obnoxious handsome man.Fabio Lovino/HBOIn Season 1 it was the privileged mama’s boy, Shane (Jake Lacy). In Season 2, it was Cameron (Theo James), a moneyman who managed to be both smarmy and oblivious.Thailand’s entitled jackass, enrobed in family money, is Saxon (Patrick Schwarzenegger), a finance bro who eschews local cuisine in favor of protein shakes and complains when his massage doesn’t include a “happy ending.” It is hard to imagine someone more in need of a comeuppance, but just deserts are rarely on White’s hotel menu.Uptight Workaholic Having a Bad TimeJason Isaacs plays a businessman stressing his way through his vacation.Fabio Lovino/HBOWe 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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      in Movies

      The Singular Charm of Parker Posey

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      One January morning, I arrived at the East Village studio of a “sound facilitator,” prepared to heal. The facilitator introduced himself as Gary. He led me past a refrigerator cloaked in an Indian tapestry and into an emptied living room, where I found Parker Posey perched cross-legged on a mat, facing a row of gongs. She appeared cozy and at ease, as if she had known the gongs for many years. Posey had invited me there to experience a sound bath, a New Age therapy that she first tried in Thailand, where she filmed the third season of the HBO anthology series “The White Lotus.” During a sound bath (according to Gary’s website), various chimes and bowls are played in an intentional therapeutic sequence; the treatment may uplift the spirit, release stuck energies and rouse engagement with the surrounding environment. Or it may not, but Gary seemed nice anyway.I joined Posey on the floor. The room filled with sounds that resembled the wait music for a planetarium. Gary then advised us that we were approaching the first full moon of the year, which he called “the wolf moon.” Posey turned to face me with spooked eyes, her mouth pulled into an arc of wry expectation. Then she stretched her legs high in the air, laid flat on the mat, and piled a sweater atop her face.Ninety minutes later, the two of us burst onto the street as if from a saloon door. When I arrived at the appointment, we were both wearing flowy black pants and black sweaters, and I was pleased I had guessed the correct attire for our encounter. But by the time we left, she had applied her Parker Posey costume over the base layer: earrings like glass shards, a pearl hair clip in the shape of a vine-picked berry, a slippery high-necked plaid overshirt, a prismatic silk scarf and a pair of round rose-tinted glasses. We walked in woozy circles around the village. Occasionally she produced her phone and waved its digital map in front of us as if it were a homing device. Whatever had happened up in Gary’s studio — brain-wave entrainment, or maybe just a permission structure for taking a film-length nap — my spirit was in fact uplifted, and Posey was engaged with her surrounding environment.To walk alongside Posey is to be reminded that a New York City sidewalk is a habitat still teeming with life. “Ha ha ha HA,” she said as we closed in on a poodle in a little sweater. “Yeah, I speak poodle!” she trilled to another. Manhattan’s pedestrians typically navigate its steroidal landscape in a dissociative state, but with Posey, every poodle is acknowledged, every commotion registered. A car drove up beside us and stopped at a light, blasting an accordion-forward Latin track. “I love this song!” she screamed to its occupants, craning her head toward the open window. Once she squatted on the sidewalk to greet a familiar dog, then crept over to retie both of my sneakers in double knots. “That was so fun, tying your shoelaces,” she said as she sprang up. “I’m a little mommy.”In the coming weeks, whenever I told anyone that I was profiling Parker Posey, they invariably had a story about her impish appearance in their own life. A journalist colleague said that as she reported to work on Sept. 12, 2001, Posey drifted past her, roller-skating through Lower Manhattan. Seemingly everyone below 14th Street has had a pleasant encounter with her at a dog run. Walton Goggins, Posey’s friend and co-star in “The White Lotus,” told me that when he first met her, at a friend’s barbecue in the Catskills, he felt instantly drawn into her world. “She has this fairylike quality about her,” he said. “She’s a person capable of doing what Emerson said so long ago — to see the miraculous in the common. And she uses phrases like, Isn’t that a gas?” Natasha Rothwell, who plays the weary spa manager, Belinda, on “The White Lotus,” said in an email that when Posey first approached her on set, Posey said she had lost her wallet and had just said a prayer to Saint Anthony, before asking Rothwell if she wanted to be her neighbor at the hotel. “She then gave me a hug and seemed to float away.”Parker Posey with Sarah Catherine Hook and Sam Nivola in the current season of the HBO series “The White Lotus.”Fabio Lovino/HBOWe 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