Television

Subterms

    More stories

    • 75 Shares179 Views

      in Television

      Jimmy Kimmel Debunks the Government-Hurricane-Control Theory

      by

      “The only person who can control the weather is Beyoncé,” Kimmel said 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.The Eye of the StormMeteorologists in Florida and North Carolina have been facing death threats and angry messages from viewers who think they are complicit in a Democratic-led plot to direct hurricanes toward Republican voting districts.Jimmy Kimmel was flabbergasted on Thursday by this “bonkers idea.” He said, “Donald Trump has pushed us to the point where we can’t even agree on the weather. What a stupid time to be alive.”“And of course, before the storm even hit, the Trumpers were blaming the White House for all this, which is interesting because two weeks ago, 11 House Republicans from Florida voted against keeping the government and FEMA fully funded. Then, when Hurricane Helene came to visit, they all signed a letter asking President Biden for federal funding. This is how it goes now.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Has anyone thought about unplugging America and plugging it back in again? ’Cause it could use a reboot.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Donald Trump should be forced to live on an island with all these people. Listen, dummies, the government can’t control the weather. The only person who can control the weather is Beyoncé.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Punchiest Punchlines (25 Days Until the Election Edition)“You guys, Election Day is only 25 days away. Just think, in 25 days, Trump will either be saying he won or saying he didn’t lose.” — JIMMY FALLON“Yeah, 25 days. Trump just got an election Advent calendar that gives him a new conspiracy theory every day: [imitating Trump] ‘Ooh, immigrants are stealing our Hulu passwords. They’re watching “Murders in the Building” for free.’” — JIMMY FALLON“The polls say it is a tossup. It might ultimately come down to which candidate can deliver a new R.V. to Clarence Thomas first.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Bits Worth WatchingEric Idle of Monty Python discussed his new book, “The Spamalot Diaries,” with Jordan Klepper on Thursday’s “Daily Show.”Also, Check This OutLaura Dern and Liam Hemsworth in “Lonely Planet.”Anne Marie Fox/NetflixLaura Dern and Liam Hemsworth have a May/December romance in “Lonely Planet,” from the writer-director Susannah Grant. More

    • 138 Shares129 Views

      in Television

      ‘The Confidante’ Is a Layered French Drama About a Heartbreaking Scam

      by

      Streaming on Max, the series tells the story of woman who lies to a grief support group about her connection to the Paris terrorist attacks of 2015.Laure Calamy stars in “The Confidante.”MaxThe four-part French mini-series “The Confidante,” beginning Friday, on Max (in French, with subtitles), is based loosely on a true story and follows a woman named Chris (Laure Calamy), who claims falsely that her best friend was a victim of the 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris. Chris ingratiates herself into a survivors’ support network, providing real time and energy but also catfishing other members and committing fraud. She posts constantly on Facebook, offering herself as a shoulder to cry on, fielding texts, chats and calls from bereaved, traumatized — legitimate — victims.“Confidante” keeps its focus tight, with only slivers of Chris’s previous grifts creeping into the narrative — just enough to feel like half remembered rumors. We see Chris’s pain and vulnerability, the shabby ways some people treat her. And we also see her shamelessly scam cabdrivers and bartenders.In one of the show’s knottiest, most striking scenes, members of the support group join Chris at the hospital to visit “Vincent,” her comatose friend. They promise an unconscious Vincent that they care about him, they’re waiting for him. We, and Chris, know the man in the bed is not Vincent but rather a random victim whose room she weaseled into weeks earlier. What does one make of a misdirected vigil?Chris often blasts music on her headphones, which we hear in tinny second hand. A man sighs that everyone in Paris is connected to a victim somehow, given the scale of the attack. Another man, whose wife survived the attack, describes the second-degree trauma he and his son experience from watching her suffer. “Confidante” layers these moments carefully to build Chris’s psyche: Just because you’re not wearing the headphones doesn’t mean you can’t hear the music, right? Just because it didn’t happen to Chris the way she said doesn’t mean it didn’t happen in the broader sense, right? … Right?Well, no, of course not. “Confidante” subtly, effectively depicts how a fraud turns everything inside out. What seemed like generosity was selfishness. What seemed like support was damage.“The Confidante” kicks off a little social fraud boomlet in the coming days: “Anatomy of Lies,” “Sweet Bobby: My Catfish Nightmare” and “Scamanda” all premiere next week, and all follow outrageous, compounding scams. Those are all documentaries, and what a fictionalized drama can offer that ripped-from-the-podcast docs can’t is a real evocation of the present tense, the part before ruefulness, the part where it all feels true. More

    • 138 Shares149 Views

      in Television

      Review: Trust ‘Disclaimer’ When It Tells You Not to Trust It

      by

      The seven-part series from Alfonso Cuarón, about a familiar theme of the treachery of narratives, is easier to admire than to enjoy.“Beware of narrative and form. Their power can bring us closer to the truth, but they can also be a weapon with a great power to manipulate.”The warning comes early in the Apple TV+ thriller “Disclaimer,” as spoken by the journalist Christiane Amanpour. She appears in the series to present an award to a documentarian named Catherine Ravenscroft (Cate Blanchett), who is herself about to become the target of a malicious narrative intended to ruin her.Plant your feet too firmly in your assumptions, Amanpour’s speech tells us, and you may take a tumble. Consider this the disclaimer of “Disclaimer.”Audiences have already learned this lesson countless times — from “Gone Girl,” from “Rashomon,” from “The Affair,” from any number of stories-about-stories and tales of unreliable or competing narratives. But the warnings, overt and oblique, come repeatedly in “Disclaimer,” a seven-part adaptation by Alfonso Cuarón (“Roma,” “Children of Men”) of a 2015 thriller novel by Renée Knight.This is the series’s selling point and its problem. It spends so much time and care building a trap with its meta-story that its actual story suffers in the process.The aforementioned meta-story arrives at Catherine’s home in an envelope with no return address, in the form of “The Perfect Stranger,” a pseudonymously published novel that, she realizes with horror and nausea, details a terrible secret from her past. She is the book’s villain and its target. “Any resemblance to persons living or dead,” the front matter reads, “is not a coincidence.”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 Shares109 Views

      in Television

      Seth Meyers Is Starting to Wonder About Trump and Putin

      by

      A book says Donald Trump sent Covid testing equipment to the Russian leader. Meyers suspects he threw in “some snacks, a bath bomb and a CD.”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.Testing, TestingFormer President Donald Trump has denied a report in a new book that he sent Covid testing machines to Vladimir Putin for his personal use during the pandemic, but Seth Meyers wasn’t buying it on Wednesday’s “Late Night.”“How did Trump send them? Was it part of a care package with some snacks, a bath bomb and a CD that said ‘Mixtape for Vlad from Don: My heart is loyal only to you’?”— SETH MEYERS“People were quarantining, contact tracing, seeking medical care. I know you weren’t doing that since you were basically a Typhoid Gary who would hold superspreader events at the White House, and then when you yourself got Covid, took a joyride in an S.U.V. like you were an off-brand pope.” — SETH MEYERS, addressing Trump“Trump was telling Americans that Covid testing was overrated on the exact same day he was telling Vladimir Putin he was sending him his best Covid tests — his [expletive] Glengarry Covid tests.” — SETH MEYERS“To be fair, lots of people in Putin’s circle were suddenly dying: [imitating Putin] ‘Falling from balcony is very common Covid symptom.’” — SETH MEYERSThe Punchiest Punchlines (Kamala’s Media Blitz Edition)“So with less than a month to go, both campaigns are going all out — starting with Democratic nominee Kamala Harris, who has been everywhere recently: news shows, daytime talk shows, satellite radio, podcasts, your kid’s piano recital — she applauded, but seriously, ‘Chopsticks’? I mean, you can do better, Arlo.” — JORDAN KLEPPER“Meanwhile, today, Trump complained that CBS edited Kamala Harris’s interview on ‘60 Minutes’ to make her look better. Trump said, ‘It was clearly edited. She didn’t say one thing about people eating pets in Ohio. Not one. Didn’t even mention it.’” — JIMMY FALLON“In a new interview with radio host Howard Stern, Vice President Kamala Harris said that she doesn’t really take naps, setting up a clear contrast with President Biden, who took one mid-debate.” — SETH MEYERS“During the same interview with Howard Stern, Vice President Kamala Harris said that she usually eats a bowl of Raisin Bran or Special K for breakfast, whereas her opponent, as we all know, is cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.” — SETH MEYERSThe Bits Worth WatchingQuinta Brunson, the “Abbott Elementary” creator and star, dished on her series’ crossover episode with “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” on Wednesday’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live.”What We’re Excited About on Thursday NightJordan Peele will promote his revival of the horror-themed hidden-camera reality series “Scare Tactics” on Thursday’s “Tonight Show.”Also, Check This Out“Unknown American” is a portrait from the 1940s to 1950s.The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Twentieth-Century Photography FundThe Met Gala’s 2025 theme, “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style,” is the museum’s first fashion exhibition to focus solely on the work of designers of color. More

    • 100 Shares149 Views

      in Television

      ‘The Bachelor’ Is Shattering Its Own Fairy Tale

      by

      Recent revelations about contestants’ troubling backgrounds have punctured the franchise’s fantasy — that reality TV is a secure place to look for love.Just three years ago, the “Bachelor” franchise was in serious need of a revival. The longtime host, Chris Harrison, had left the show and ratings sagged. Instead of 10 million viewers, premieres now brought in closer to 2 or 3 million.In 2023, ABC pumped new life into the franchise with “The Golden Bachelor,” a version of the dating contest that followed Gerry Turner, a 72-year-old widower who proudly wore a hearing aid and spoke of finding love after the death of his wife. The premiere brought in over 4 million live viewers (and totaled over 7 million including streaming), making it the franchise’s most-watched debut since 2020.But the show’s honeymoon has not lasted. “The Bachelor” and its various iterations have long promised viewers some semblance of a fairy-tale romance, providing charmed but closed environments where the leads can suss out the suitors’ intentions through extravagant dates, like hot air balloon rides and castle visits. Recent revelations about the show have punctured this fantasy.Just before Turner handed out his final rose, The Hollywood Reporter published details about his past (a spotty work résumé, a trail of scorned lovers) that challenged his image as a sympathetic figure, as put forth on the show. (Turner declined to comment for the article.) His subsequent marriage to Theresa Nist, the season’s “winner,” ended after three months.The most recent season of “The Bachelorette,” which debuted in summer 2024, cast Jenn Tran as the series’s first Asian American lead, a role she hoped would bring positive visibility. “Anytime Asians were in the media, it was to fill a supporting character role, to fulfill some sort of stereotype,” Tran said in an interview with The New York Times before the show’s premiere. “I always felt boxed in by that, because I was like, I don’t see myself onscreen. I don’t see myself as a main character.”But her quest for love ended in public humiliation. On the live special “After the Final Rose,” she revealed through tears that Devin Strader — the contestant she proposed to in the series finale — had broken off their engagement over the phone. Seeing him for the first time since the breakup, Tran sobbed uncontrollably on the show as producers made her watch the proposal in front of a national audience.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

    • 88 Shares99 Views

      in Television

      No Lie: George Washington Is Funny Now

      by

      The first president is usually at the margins of popular culture. As a recurring character on “Saturday Night Live” and a trend on TikTok, is he finally having a moment?Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr and Thomas Jefferson were immortalized in “Hamilton.” John Adams had his own HBO mini-series, and Samuel Adams is a beer. Ben Franklin often appears experimenting with his kite when characters travel back in time to Colonial America.And then there’s George Washington.He might be the first president, but the stoic general who led the Americans to an unlikely Revolutionary War victory doesn’t exactly lend himself to memes and caricatures in popular culture. Other founders immersed in drama and scandal (Hamilton, Jefferson) or at least more quotable (Franklin, Adams) have gotten more attention.But Washington — “a marble man of impossible virtue and perfection,” as the New York Times book critic Michiko Kakutani once called him — might finally be having his moment.Over the weekend, “Saturday Night Live” brought back “Washington’s Dream,” one of its biggest hits last season. The comedian Nate Bargatze, known for his deadpan delivery, plays a subdued, earnest Washington who is trying to inspire his soldiers with his peculiar vision of a free America. In the original version, at camp, he dwells on a new, confusing system of weights and measurements (while consigning the metric system to “only certain unpopular sports, like track and swimming”).In the latest, Washington leads his soldiers across the Delaware River as he yearns to Americanize the English language, proclaiming: “I dream that one day our great nation will have a word for the number 12. We shall call it a ‘dozen.’”A soldier asks what other numbers would have their own words: “None,” Bargatze replied. “Only 12 shall have its own word, because we are free men.”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 Shares99 Views

      in Television

      How ‘Nobody Wants This’ Became Netflix’s Latest Hit

      by

      The Netflix rom-com checks every genre box, but it became a megahit by offering versions of everything you already like on TV.Two leads with nostalgia power. A meet cute. A series of fish-out-of-water mishaps, some of which rely on an almost alarming level of ignorance or ineptitude. A party that goes awry — probably from too much stress. (Probably a wealthy, maybe even icy woman has caused this stress.) Her: Frazzled, into her phone. Him: Safe, sensitive, sage.Make it about Christmas, and you have a Hallmark Channel original. Make it about interfaith romance, and it’s Netflix’s latest hit “Nobody Wants This.”A romantic comedy that checks every genre box, “Nobody” is about the star-crossed attraction between Joanne, a Los Angeles podcast host played by Kristen Bell, and Noah, a soulful rabbi played by Adam Brody. Since arriving on Netflix late last month, it has remained at or near the top of the service’s most-watched chart, sharing space with a show from the darker end of the replication factory, “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story.”“Nobody” has generated as much coverage as that grisly docudrama, thanks partly to its charms and partly to its shortcomings, namely its depictions of Jewish women that rely on hoary stereotypes.The draw of “Nobody,” though, is not that the show is so distinctive, it’s that it is so familiar. Rom-coms have thrived on streaming as they have mostly fallen out of fashion in theaters, and for this particular genre “formulaic” is no great diss — it is perhaps the opposite. (“Nobody” isn’t even the best opposites-attract rom-com to arrive on TV recently — that would be Season 2 of “Colin From Accounts,” on Paramount+.) Beyond the show’s ample joys and persistent irritants — “What about our podcast?” is this show’s “can MomTok survive this?” — there’s a Goldilocks ease to the endeavor that one can see as either finely honed or algorithmically precooked; simply reheat and enjoy.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

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Movies

      For ‘Disclaimer,’ Alfonso Cuarón Updates His Terms and Conditions

      by

      Cate Blanchett stars in the acclaimed director’s new TV series, a thriller about a woman whose life is upended by a mysterious novel.About a decade ago, the writer-director Alfonso Cuarón was sent an advance copy of Renée Knight’s book “Disclaimer,” a thriller about a woman whose life is upended when she receives a novel by an unknown author that seems to lay bare her secrets. That novel begins with a disclaimer: “Any resemblance to persons living or dead is not a coincidence.”As Cuarón (“Children of Men,” “Y Tu Mamá También”) read, he could picture each scene in his head. This book, he thought, should be a film. There was just one problem.“I didn’t see how the film that I wanted to do could fit into an hour and 45 minutes,” he said.So Cuarón immersed himself in other projects, like “Roma” (2018), which won him a second Oscar for directing. But a few years later, he began to think about “Disclaimer” again, in the context of more expansive films like Ingmar Bergman’s “Fanny and Alexander” or Sergio Leone’s “Once Upon a Time in America,” works that clocked in at four or five hours.The market for marathon films is small. But Cuarón knew of an alternative: television. And he was mindful that other auteurs, like David Lynch with “Twin Peaks” and Lars Von Trier with “The Kingdom,” had explored that medium before him.Which is how, after a three-decade film career and five Oscars, Cuarón came to make “Disclaimer,” a seven-episode limited series starring Cate Blanchett, Sacha Baron Cohen and Kevin Kline. The first two episodes premiere on Apple TV+ on Friday, with the rest rolling out weekly afterward.In “Disclaimer,” Blanchett plays an acclaimed journalist and documentarian, and Sacha Baron Cohen plays her husband.Apple TV+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