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      ‘S.N.L.’ Turns Back to Its Favorite Topic, Trump

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      Alaska Airlines also came in for mockery, with a parody ad that imagines finding the public relations upside in a flight where a door plug blew out at about 16,000 feet.With 2024 underway and the presidential race in full swing, it was time for “Saturday Night Live” to get back to doing what it loves best: lampooning former President Donald J. Trump.In its first new broadcast of the year, hosted by Jacob Elordi and featuring the musical guest Reneé Rapp, “S.N.L.” kicked off with a sketch featuring its resident Trump impressionist, James Austin Johnson. It parodied Trump’s impromptu remarks outside a courtroom in Lower Manhattan where he is again on trial facing accusations that he defamed the writer E. Jean Carroll, after an earlier jury verdict in May that Trump defamed and sexually abused her.After a brief introduction by Chloe Fineman, who played Alina Habba, Trump’s lawyer, (“I am new at this, and I am learning,” she said), Johnson entered as Trump and quickly dressed down his own legal representation.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?  More

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      Leave the Poor Princess Alone

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      There she is in her pink suit, pearl earrings and feathered shag.There she is with her upcast eyes, unknowable sorrow and perfect sympathy.There she is, that candle in the wind someone keeps relighting.Though killed in a car crash in 1997, Diana, Princess of Wales, turns up everywhere today, in plays, on television, in movies and even musicals. She’s entertainment gold: the perfect combo of stardom, tragedy and unanswerability.Which makes her, like a Dickens novel, public domain.In the last two years alone, I’ve spent more time with her than I did in the 36 she was alive. I saw her in a play called “Casey and Diana,” produced by the Stratford Festival in Ontario and now available to stream on Stratfest@Home. She was a spectral presence Off Broadway in “Dodi & Diana,” a marital drama that hijacked her story to lend oomph to its own.The 2021 film “Spencer,” which I rewatched on Hulu over New Year’s, did much the same thing, trying to wring some ichor of glamour out of her corpse. On television, “The Crown” hung the breathless first half of its final season on the buildup to the crash, blithely making stuff up where the record is thin. (Netflix justified it as “fictional dramatization.”) And what can one say about “Diana, the Musical,” which had a brief run on Broadway in 2021 (but an ongoing one on Netflix), except that it, too, died in a disaster?Reader, I cried at them all. (The musical because it was so bad.) I am thus part of the problem of her exploitation, seeking out more Diana content when there’s little left to say. Doing so establishes a kind of contract with the culture: In return for feeding my “feelings” about a celebrity, the culture has my proxy to do so however it pleases.But what right do I or any of us have to feelings about Diana in the first place? Quite profoundly we did not know her, any more than most of us knew pop-biography grab bags like Elvis Presley, Judy Garland, J. Robert Oppenheimer and Leonard Bernstein, all of them falsified, fudged or “interpreted” in recent movies. History is not the point in such efforts, it is the impediment.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?  More

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      ‘Heartstopper’ Star Joe Locke Has a Soft Spot for ‘The Goonies’

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      “It’s the peak coming-of-age adventure film,” said the actor, who is set to make his Broadway debut in “Sweeney Todd.”Joe Locke was so moved when he saw “Next to Normal” at the Donmar Warehouse in London last fall that he called his agent with a request.“I was like, ‘I want to do a musical so bad,’” said Locke, 20, who for two seasons has played the sensitive teenager Charlie Spring in Netflix’s L.G.B.T.Q. coming-of-age drama “Heartstopper.”Soon after, his agent said he’d gotten an email from the casting team of Broadway’s “Sweeney Todd,” and the show was looking for a new Tobias Ragg, an urchin taken in by the scheming pie-maker, Mrs. Lovett.“The easiest way to play him is that he’s a bit simple — he’s not a full egg, as the Irish would say,” Locke said in a phone conversation in early January from his Manhattan apartment, before one of his first rehearsals. “But I think he’s a very street-smart character who’s survived in a world where people like him shouldn’t survive.”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?  More

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      ‘The Woman in the Wall’ Review: Searching for a Daughter Taken by Nuns

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      Ruth Wilson plays an Irish woman with a case against the Catholic church in an ecclesiastical thriller that’s also a murder mystery.On a road in the beautifully desolate Irish countryside, a passing steer stops to nose at the object in its path. It’s a sleeping woman whose white nightshirt is stained with blood. Jarred awake by the animal, she leaps to her feet in alarm and strides barefoot toward her village. A title tells us that it is 2015.Lorna Brady, the heroine of the six-episode BBC miniseries “The Woman in the Wall” (which premiered Friday on Paramount+ and will air Sunday on Showtime), is seen by much of the village of Kilkinure as crazy. She’s foul-mouthed and angry, scornful and paranoid, and when she sleepwalks she can get violent — she once took an ax to the Virgin Mary. She’s not one to seek professional help, but we quickly see where some or all of her anger is coming from: her infant daughter was taken away from her 30 years before in a Catholic “mother and baby home,” and she hasn’t seen her since.Lorna has developed her own variety of obsessive compulsion — she cares about little but her daughter, and her thoughts endlessly revisit what the nuns did to them. As played by the wickedly intelligent actress Ruth Wilson, though, Lorna is anything but one-note. Wilson, of “Luther” and “The Affair,” has a natural intensity that fits the character like a glove. But she also makes it clear that an unburdened Lorna would be practical and acerbically funny (if still a pain). It’s there in the way Lorna windmills her arms to get her blood moving before walking back to town, and in the comic charge she radiates when she gets in the face of every disdainful villager she passes.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?  More

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      How a Culture Editor Covers the Kids’ Entertainment Beat

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      Laurel Graeber, who has covered kids’ entertainment at The Times for nearly three decades, shared her favorite stories and interviews from the beat.Times Insider explains who we are and what we do and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.Laurel Graeber grew up loving the theater and museums. But she never thought she would write about them for The New York Times — or that she would do so for nearly three decades.“I was an editor, but I always wanted to write,” said Ms. Graeber, who helped lead the Culture desk’s copy department for more than 10 years before she retired from full-time work in 2017. “And when the freelance assignment of writing our weekend kids’ entertainment column became open, I said yes.”She has written regularly about culture for young people for nearly three decades, spotlighting the best activities that parents or caregivers can do with children each weekend in New York City. She also writes features on new television shows, movies, museum exhibitions and podcasts for kids.“What I find most enjoyable is stuff for adults that’s also good for kids, but not necessarily geared toward them,” Ms. Graeber said in a recent interview.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?  More

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      Japanese Talk Show Host Blazed Trails for Her Gender, and Now, for Her Longevity

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      Tetsuko Kuroyanagi has been one of Japan’s best-known entertainers for seven decades. At 90, she’s still going strong.Pushing a walker through a television studio in central Tokyo earlier this week, Tetsuko Kuroyanagi slowly climbed three steps onto a sound stage with the help of an assistant who settled her into a creamy beige Empire armchair.A stylist removed the custom-made sturdy boots on her feet and slipped on a pair of high-heeled mules. A makeup artist brushed her cheeks and touched up her blazing red lipstick. A hairdresser tamed a few stray wisps from her trademark onion-shaped hairstyle as another assistant ran a lint roller over her embroidered black jacket. With that, Ms. Kuroyanagi, 90, was ready to record the 12,193rd episode of her show.As one of Japan’s best-known entertainers for seven decades, Ms. Kuroyanagi has interviewed guests on her talk show, “Tetsuko’s Room,” since 1976, earning a Guinness World Record last fall for most episodes hosted by the same presenter. Generations of Japanese celebrities across film, television, music, theater and sports have visited Ms. Kuroyanagi’s couch, along with American stars like Meryl Streep and Lady Gaga; Prince Philip of England; and Mikhail Gorbachev, the former leader of the Soviet Union. Ms. Kuroyanagi said Gorbachev remains one of her all-time favorite guests.Ms. Kuroyanagi, who jokes that she wants to keep going until she turns 100, is known for her rapid-fire chatter and knack for drawing out guests on topics like dating, divorce and, now, increasingly, death. Even as she works to woo a younger generation — the Korean-Canadian actor and singer Ahn Hyo-seop, 28, appeared on the show this month — many of her guests these days speak about the ailments of aging and the demise of their industry peers.Ms. Kuroyanagi with a guest, Kankuro Nakamura VI, a sixth-generation Kabuki actor, as seen on a screen.Noriko Hayashi for The New York TimesHaving survived World War II, she broke out as an early actor on Japanese television and then carved out a niche as a feel-good interviewer with a distinctive style that is still instantly recognized almost everywhere in Japan. By fashioning herself into a character, rather than simply being the person who interviewed the characters, she helped establish a genre of Japanese performers known as “tarento” — a Japanized version of the English word “talent” — who are ubiquitous on television today.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?  More

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      Late Night Chides Donald Trump for a Lack of Self-Control

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      “He can’t even control an umbrella,” Seth Meyers said of the former president on Thursday.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.Get Ahold of YourselfA judge threatened to remove Donald Trump from court on Wednesday after he could be heard muttering disparaging comments during E. Jean Carroll’s second defamation suit against the former president.“A judge actually had to tell a former president of the United States, ‘You can’t control yourself,’” Seth Meyers said on Thursday. “He can’t even control an umbrella.”“Things are so crazy right now. In a year, Trump is either going to be president again, or we’re going to see him in Times Square offering to take pictures with tourists next to Elmo and Spider-Man.” — SETH MEYERS“Now, you’re probably saying, didn’t that trial already happen? Yeah, it did. We also already did Trump versus Biden. Get used to everything happening twice. Get used to everything happening twice.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Now, Trump doesn’t believe he should be held accountable for anything. At 2 a.m., he scream-posted ‘A president of the United States must have full immunity, without which it would be impossible for him/her to properly function.’ No, Trump doesn’t believe in any accountability. He believes the presidency should be like the movie ‘The Purge,’ which is why he’s always wearing that weird leather pig mask.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“It is nice to hear him being inclusive. [imitating Trump] ‘I believe the president, whether it be him or her, Hispanic or Her-spanic, should have a private kill squad to take out those who dare speak against him.’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“This is not a man who has any moral limitations, so I can’t imagine what he means by saying he should be allowed to cross the line. What’s he going to do, imprison his political opponents? Chop off California and sell it to Russia? Outlaw umbrellas?” — SETH MEYERS“This is the kind of thing that should end with Trump in prison or, best case, living alone in a motel by the racetrack. But every time he gets worse, his poll numbers get better, which explains his new 2024 slogan: ‘Welcome to Hell.’” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Punchiest Punchlines (Kissing Cousins Edition)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?  More

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      What to Watch This Weekend: ‘Boy Swallows Universe’

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      Our TV critic recommends a dreamy, violent Netflix drama from Australia, based on a book by Trent Dalton.From left, Lee Tiger Halley, Bryan Brown and Felix Cameron in “Boy Swallows Universe.”Netflix“Boy Swallows Universe,” a seven-part drama based on the book by Trent Dalton, puts a youthful spin on the accidental-criminal subgenre, blending dreaminess and brutality to terrific if incomplete effect. The whole show is available now, on Netflix.Our hero is Eli (Felix Cameron), who is both a very savvy and a very young 13 when the show begins. It’s the 1980s in Brisbane, Australia, and Eli lives with his older brother, Gus (Lee Tiger Halley, fantastic), who is selectively mute and can maybe predict the future; his mom, Frankie (Phoebe Tonkin), a recovering drug addict with good intentions but terrible taste in men; and his stepfather, Lyle (Travis Kimmel), a loving but scuzzy heroin dealer. Eli’s most important father figure and mentor is Slim (Bryan Brown), a career criminal famous for escaping from prison.“Boy” is much more a story of violence and acceptance than a sweetheart coming-of-age show. Its most intriguing trick is that it does not so much evoke being 13 as it evokes remembering being 13, the mythologizing of one’s young life. Was there really so much free-floating wisdom available, or does it only seem that way now that you know what stuck?After one catastrophic night lands Frankie in prison, Slim tries to comfort Eli. She’ll be home in four Christmases, he says. “I’ll be 17,” Eli chokes out, barely able to imagine being so grown up. When the show leaps forward those four years, we get a crushing sense of what’s been lost, for everyone.Beachy vibes overlay a real depravity here, and Eli’s and Gus’s escapes into reverie and magical realism are coping mechanisms for lives filled with people who care about them but no one to care for them. Neglect — both the benign and the pernicious strains — and squalor shape a huge part of their lives, though as one classmate points out, they are loved, just imperfectly by imperfect people.So much of this series is beautiful and surprising, blurring poppy capers with jarring blood baths, often in the same episode. Unfortunately, the finale is a bizarre letdown, leaving all the nuance and ache behind in favor of a denouement out of a Batman cartoon. But if you can tolerate a crash landing, and you like a fun soundtrack, a seedy underbelly and a poetic approach, watch this. More