Television

Subterms

    More stories

    • 125 Shares189 Views

      in Television

      Desi Lydic: Trump Just ‘Put a Cover Charge on America’

      by

      “It’s $5 million to get in, but he’ll waive it if you bring in three hot girls with you,” Lydic said of President Trump’s “gold card” visa idea on the “Daily Show.”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.Putting a Cover Charge on AmericaPresident Donald Trump announced his new “gold card” program on Tuesday, which would price American citizenship at $5 million.“Oh, green card privileges plus. See, I was still getting America with ads,” Desi Lydic said on Wednesday’s “Daily Show.”“Quick question: If I’m unhappy with America, can I cancel my subscription after seven days?” — DESI LYDIC“Did this guy just put a cover charge on America? It’s $5 million to get in, but he’ll waive it if you bring in three hot girls with you.” — DESI LYDIC“I mean, I guess it beats the old way of becoming a citizen, which was to marry Donald Trump, but still.” — DESI LYDIC“I feel like immigrant stories are going to be a lot less inspiring in the future: ‘My grandfather came to this country with nothing but $5 million and the clothes in his custom Louis Vuitton five-piece trunk set.’” — DESI LYDICThe Punchiest Punchlines (Land of $5 Million Citizenship Edition)“One group that Trump embraced in the last 24 hours is immigrants. Well, rich ones, because yesterday, Trump announced he’s going to offer gold card visas for $5 million to rich foreigners, echoing the eternal words on the Statue of Liberty: ‘Give me your tired, your poor — psych! Gimme 5 million bucks, [expletive]! We buyin’ bottles in the clurb.’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“What a good idea. I’ve always said our immigration system should run more like the customer rewards program at a casino in Atlantic City.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“This is basically what he does at Mar-a-Lago. He’s selling memberships to a country club, but this club is actually our country.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“The land of the free, and by ‘free,’ I mean, five million bucks.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Bits Worth WatchingStephen Colbert asked Wednesday night’s “Late Show” guest Guy Fieri how he thought he’d fare as a contestant on his own reality cooking competition, “Tournament of Champions.”What We’re Excited About on Thursday NightBob the Drag Queen will appear on Thursday’s “After Midnight.”Also, Check This OutBob Dylan’s earliest demo tape, a reel-to-reel recording of a performance in Greenwich Village in 1961, is up for auction.via RR AuctionA reel-to-reel recording of a 20-year-old Bob Dylan performing a six-song set at a Manhattan coffeehouse in 1961 is now up for auction. More

    • 75 Shares189 Views

      in Movies

      Who Makes the Red Carpet? Steve.

      by

      On a recent weekday morning in La Mirada, a suburb outside Los Angeles, Steve Olive, 58, walked among hundreds of carpet rolls in red, green and lavender in a white, sun-drenched, 36,000-square-foot warehouse.Laid out on the floor was a 150-foot stretch of rug, delivered by truck from Georgia a few days before, in the custom shade of Academy Red that is only available for the Oscars.Mr. Olive himself may not be famous, but celebrities have strolled the plush craftsmanship of his carpet for nearly three decades.His company, Event Carpet Pros, has supplied carpets for the Oscars, Golden Globes, Grammys and Emmys, as well as for Disney, Marvel and Warner Bros. movie premieres and the Super Bowl.And, at a moment when carpets have moved beyond the classic red and become splashier and more intricate, his handiwork has become more prominent. He has crafted custom designs like a shimmering, sunlit pool carpet for the 2023 “Barbie” world premiere and a green-and-black ectoplasm drip carpet for the “Ghostbusters” world premiere in 2016 that took a month to create.“I haven’t come across anything that we couldn’t do,” Mr. Olive, who founded the company with his brother-in-law, Walter Clyne, in 1992, said in an 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? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares169 Views

      in Television

      Michelle Trachtenberg, ‘Gossip Girl’ and ‘Buffy’ Actress, Dies at 39

      by

      Michelle Trachtenberg, who rose to fame as Buffy’s younger sister, Dawn, in the dark, comedic series “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and as a conniving socialite on the show “Gossip Girl,” has died, according to the New York Police Department. She was 39.The department said in a statement that officers, responding to a 911 call just after 8 a.m. Wednesday, found Ms. Trachtenberg unconscious and unresponsive in a Manhattan apartment. She was pronounced dead by emergency medical workers, who had also responded.The medical examiner will determine the cause of death, the department said, adding that criminality was not suspected.Michelle Trachtenberg in an undated photo. Beginning as a child, she had a long list of film and television credits that endeared her to a generation of fans.Online USA, via Getty ImagesBeginning as a child, Ms. Trachtenberg had a long list of credits in movies and television that endeared her to a generation of fans.In 1996, she portrayed Harriet Welsch, a precocious 11-year-old who meticulously records her observations of neighbors and classmates in “Harriet the Spy,” a movie based on Louise Fitzhugh’s beloved 1964 children’s book of the same title. The movie also starred Rosie O’Donnell as Harriet’s nanny, Ole Golly.Ms. Trachtenberg also portrayed Casey Carlyle, the heroine in the 2005 figure-skating movie “Ice Princess.” Other credits included the 2004 raunchy teen comedy “Eurotrip” and the 2009 comedy “17 Again,” which also starred Zac Efron and Matthew Perry.A full obituary will follow.Chelsia Rose Marcius More

    • 138 Shares179 Views

      in Television

      Jimmy Kimmel: ‘The Whole Country Is a Fyre Festival Right Now’

      by

      “I think it might be time to give the planet to the apes, because we’re finished,” Kimmel said on Tuesday.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.Fired FestFederal employees have been getting mixed messages about whether to respond to a mass email from Elon Musk, threatening to fire them if they didn’t justify their employment.On Tuesday, Jimmy Kimmel said the nation’s civil servants were “as confused as Elon’s kids were when they realized their father named them after a phone number.”“Elon and his musketeers — they sent an email to all federal employees ordering them to list five things they did at work last week. Trump loved this idea — he said it was ‘genius,’ and he said anyone who didn’t respond to the email would be ‘fired or semi-fired.” Which, what if that was his catchphrase on ‘The Apprentice’? ‘Meat Loaf, you’re fired. Or semi-fired.’” — JIMMY KIMMEL“OK, now I understand. It’s somewhat voluntary, but if you don’t respond, he guesses you get fired. Thanks for clearing that up.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“At this point, how is anybody supposed to know what to do with all this confusing information? Forget running the government; these clowns couldn’t get 10 bridesmaids to a paint-and-sip.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“This email created chaos throughout our government. Some agencies, like the F.B.I., told their employees just to ignore it; others, like the V.A., demanded that employees respond. At H.H.S., employees were told they could respond if they wanted to but should assume that what they write will be read by malign foreign actors. What? Russell Brand’s going to get these?” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Kash Patel told the F.B.I., ‘Don’t respond to that email.’ Tulsi Gabbard said, ‘Don’t respond to that email.’ Pete Hegseth responded to that email at 2 a.m., saying, ‘U up?’” — DESI LYDIC“And maybe the craziest part of all of it is Elon Musk has no official authority to fire anyone. He’s not an elected official — he wasn’t appointed, he wasn’t confirmed. Who knew you could fire people at a place you don’t even work? I might try it at Chipotle sometime just to see what happens.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“It’s confusing. When you walk in the White House and say ‘Who is in charge?’ everyone just shrugs like they’re working at Lids.” — JIMMY FALLON“I think it might be time to give the planet to the apes, because we’re finished.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“The whole country is a Fyre Festival right now, and Elon Musk is soaking the mattresses.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Punchiest Punchlines (Fyre Fest: The Sequel 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? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares119 Views

      in Television

      ‘A Thousand Blows’ Is a Knuckle Sandwich of a Series

      by

      From the creator of “Peaky Blinders” comes another brutal and dingy underworld drama, this one set among the boxers and criminals of 1880s London.“A Thousand Blows,” on Hulu, is a grimy historical drama, an evocative boxing drama and a festive crime drama. Its biggest draw, though, is that its creator is Steven Knight, who also created “Peaky Blinders,” and the shows resemble each other quite a bit in their muddy brutality. “Blows” is less brooding, though.The show, based on a true story, follows Hezekiah Moscow (Malachi Kirby) and his best friend, Alec (Francis Lovehall), who emigrate from Jamaica to London in the 1880s. Hezekiah is there to be a lion tamer at the zoo. But when faced with a slew of demeaning setbacks, he winds up in the boxing ring instead, where he becomes something of a star. He catches the eye of Mary Carr (Erin Doherty), the leader of an all-female crime ring, who sees him as “the last chess piece” in her plan.“And I am a pawn?” he asks.“More like a knight in battered armor,” she says.Not everyone likes Hezekiah’s shine, though, especially Sugar Goodson (Stephen Graham), a bare-knuckle boxer and generally volatile dude who has known Mary since she was a kid. They share a destitute, Dickensian background. Most of the characters here are fueled by a lust for vengeance against villains from their past, and they also suffer from shabby treatment in the present because of their race, class, gender or ethnicity. Sometimes they cope with this by forming exciting criminal and romantic allegiances, and sometimes they save their feelings for the boxing ring.Characters in “Blows” punch and get punched a lot, and viewers might feel that they too are on the receiving end of an absolute dagwood of a knuckle sandwich. Some of this thick bleakness is cut with fun sequences of Mary and her crew’s high-end robberies. Glamorous parties — some of which are also part of Mary’s high-end robberies — add trapeze work and candelabras to the show’s mix; one cannot live on bloodied visages and sooty urchins alone.Although much of the show feels predictable, radiant performances — especially from Kirby, Graham and Doherty — lend it a sense of freshness and verve. There’s a fieriness to everything, and at just six episodes, also a breathlessness. That sense of forward momentum carries through the finale, which ends with coming attractions for more episodes.SIDE QUESTS“Peaky Blinders” is on Netflix.If you want a different, slower British period drama starring Tom Hardy and created by Knight (alongside Hardy and Hardy’s father, Chips), “Taboo” is on Peacock.Kirby and Graham are both in the tense restaurant movie “Boiling Point,” and Graham returns for its terrific and different TV sequel, also called “Boiling Point.” (You don’t have to watch one to watch the other.) The movie is on Peacock, and the show is on Amazon Prime Video, Netflix and the Roku Channel. More

    • 88 Shares149 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Exterior Night’ Review: Life in Perilous Times

      by

      The Italian master Marco Bellocchio turns to TV, revisiting the mysteries of the Aldo Moro affair.When the great Italian filmmaker Marco Bellocchio made “Good Morning, Night” in 2003, about the 1978 kidnapping and killing of the politician Aldo Moro by the Red Brigades, he provided a fanciful, heartbreaking coda: an image of Moro walking away from captivity, looking not much worse for wear after 55 days in a small cell.Bellocchio revisits the Moro affair in his first television series, “Exterior Night,” and once again he frees Moro (Fabrizio Gifuni) for just a bit. This time the scholarly, prickly statesman gets to stare down his colleagues in Italy’s Christian Democratic Party and tell them exactly how and why they have allowed him to die.(Released in 2022, the series is now available in the United States on MHz Choice, where the third and fourth of six episodes will stream beginning Tuesday.)Moro’s abduction and death was a watershed moment in the “years of lead,” when politically motivated bombings, shootings, kidnappings and assassinations convulsed Italy and other European countries. But it is a story that can speak to anyone who has a sense of living in perilous times. As a character in “Exterior Night” says, a society can tolerate a certain amount of crazy behavior, but “when the crazy party has the majority, we’ll see what happens.”What makes Moro’s fate such prime material for dramatization, though, are its elements of mystery and imponderability and its hints of conspiracy, as murky today as they were four decades ago. Why did Moro’s own government — of which he would have become president later that year — refuse to negotiate for his release? Why did the Red Brigades finally kill him, knowing it probably would be disastrous for their cause?“Good Morning, Night,” told from the point of view of a female captor who begins to sympathize with Moro, was a splendid film, both passionate and razor sharp. Working across five and a half hours in “Exterior Night,” Bellocchio spreads out, adding historical detail and giving space to players he had little or no room for in the film.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

    • 100 Shares149 Views

      in Television

      Late Night Laughs at DOGE’s Work Force Demand

      by

      “It’s like the government is being run by BuzzFeed,” Jimmy Kimmel said on Monday about Elon Musk’s work-tracking request to federal employees.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.Return to SenderOn Saturday, Elon Musk emailed federal employees and asked them to respond with their top five accomplishments during the previous workweek or risk being fired.“It’s like the government is being run by BuzzFeed,” Jimmy Kimmel said on Monday.“It’s not just that they’re firing thousands of federal workers; it is the glee with which they’re firing. Ordinarily, you have some compassion when you lay people off — you wish them well, you thank them for their work. Not MAGA. Not the DOGE Bros.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Federal workers who got this email had no idea what to do, and their Trump administration bosses didn’t seem to know, either. New Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard told personnel at spy agencies not to respond. F.B.I. Director Kash Patel told F.B.I. staff to pause any responses, and Health and Human Services Secretary RFK Jr. sent out an email saying, ‘Free roadkill in the break room!’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Our federal work force is in the clutches of a heartless billionaire who wants to colonize Mars with vehicles shaped like his penis, by which I mean Cybertrucks. He should see a doctor.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“I mean, seriously, if that guy walked into your office and told you he was there to start making cuts, everybody would jump on him and put him in a headlock, right? You’d zip-tie him and hold him until the cops showed up.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Punchiest Punchlines (Five Things I Did Last Week Edition)“Well, guys, I’m having an odd day. This morning I got an email from NBC asking what I accomplished last week.” — JIMMY FALLON“Yep, they need to respond with five accomplishments from the last week. Federal workers wrote back: ‘I received this email, I opened this email, I read this email, I laughed at this email, and I deleted this email.’” — JIMMY FALLON“He followed up by tweeting, ‘Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.’ Now, obviously, the only proper email response to that is: ‘What did I do last week? Your mom, your mom, your mom, your mom, and your mom.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Of course, the workers were furious, mostly about getting a work email on a Saturday.” — JIMMY FALLONThe Bits Worth WatchingJon Oliver scrutinized Facebook’s new posting policies on Sunday’s episode of “Last Week Tonight.”What We’re Excited About on Tuesday NightThe “St. Denis Medical” star Wendi McLendon-Covey will sit down with Desi Lydic on Tuesday’s “The Daily Show.”Also, Check This Out“Leigh Bowery,” by Fergus Greer (1988), from the exhibition “Leigh Bowery!” at Tate Modern in London.Fergus Greer. Courtesy of The Michael Hoppen GalleryA new Leigh Bowery exhibition at Tate Modern will introduce the artist’s work to a broader audience. More

    • 75 Shares149 Views

      in Movies

      The Singular Charm of Parker Posey

      by

      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