From Eleanor the Great to Emily in Paris: your complete entertainment guide to the week ahead

Eleanor the GreatOut nowJune Squibb stars in Scarlett Johansson’s directorial debut, which premiered at Cannes and tells the tale of the eponymous Eleanor, a senior citizen recently relocated to New York, who strikes up a friendship with a 19-year old – and then stumbles her way into pretending to be a Holocaust survivor.LurkerOut nowA hit at Sundance, this is the story of a lowly retail employee who happens to strike up a friendship with a rising pop star, becoming the Boswell to his Johnson, if Boswell was part of a pop star’s entourage. But the path of friendship with a famous person never did run smooth, and the uneven power dynamic soon prompts some desperate manoeuvring in this psychological thriller.Ella McCayOut nowEmma Mackey stars in the latest from James L Brooks (his first since 2010), a political comedy about an idealistic thirtysomething working in government and preparing to step into the shoes of her mentor, Governor Bill (Albert Brooks). Jamie Lee Curtis co-stars as Ella’s aunt

Stephen Colbert on Trump’s ‘gold card’: ‘Pay-to-play program for rich foreigners’

Late-night hosts tore into Donald Trump’s new “gold card” immigration program and his many weird tangents about grocery prices.Stephen Colbert opened Thursday’s Late Show with a new Christmas jingle about the president: “He’s making a list, checking it twice, then handing that list to the people at ICE. Donald Trump … ruins everything he touches,” he sang. “And lately he’s been pretty handsy, slapping his face on anything in sight.”On Wednesday, Trump put his face on what Colbert called “his long-promised pay-to-play program for rich foreigners”

‘Like lipstick on a fabulous gorilla’: the Barbican’s many gaudy glow-ups and the one to top them all

The brutalist arts-and-towers complex, where even great explorers get lost, is showing its age. Let’s hope the 50th anniversary upgrade is better than the ‘pointillist stippling’ tried in the 1990sThe Barbican is aptly named. From the Old French barbacane, it historically means a fortified gateway forming the outer line of defence to a city or castle. London’s Barbican marks the site of a medieval structure that would have defended an important access point. Its architecture was designed to repel

Maria Balshaw to step down as director of Tate after nine years

Maria Balshaw is to step down as the director of Tate in 2026, after a challenging nine-year tenure when she steered the organisation through the Covid-19 pandemic and had to deal with fluctuating attendance figures and financial instability.Balshaw, who joined as director in June 2017 after a celebrated spell as the leader of the Whitworth in Manchester, said it was a privilege to serve as director but now was the time for her to move on.She said: “With a growing and increasingly diverse audience, and with a brilliant forward plan in place, I feel now is the right time to pass on the baton to the next director. My greatest thrill has always been to work closely with artists, and so it is fitting that Tracey Emin’s exhibition will be my final project at Tate.”Balshaw was described as a “trailblazer” by the Tate chair, Roland Rudd, who said she “has never wavered from her core belief – that more people deserve to experience the full richness of art, and more artists deserve to be part of that story”

‘Astonishing’: how Stanley Baxter’s TV extravaganzas reached 20 million

The description “special” is overused in television schedules; Stanley Baxter’s programmes justify it. The comedian is one of the few stars whose reputation rests on a handful of astonishing one-offs – standalone comic extravaganzas screened in the 1970s and 1980s, first by ITV’s London Weekend Television and then the BBC.In both cases, the networks ended their associations with Baxter not because of lack of audience interest – at their peak, the shows reached more than 20 million viewers – but due to the colossal costs demanded by the performer’s vast and perfectionist visual ambition. One of Baxter’s favourite conceits was to re-create, in witty pastiche, scenes from big-budget Hollywood movies that made it look as if his versions had also spent millions of dollars.Cashflow was further stretched by the fact that Baxter played multiple roles – 18 of them in one sketch

Seth Meyers to Trump: ‘You can’t convince people the economy is good when they can see the truth’

Late-night hosts recapped Donald Trump’s attempts to reassure Americans on the economy as the private sector sheds jobs and grocery prices keep rising.Seth Meyers devoted his main segment on Wednesday’s Late Night to the US economy, which has seen better days. “Costs of everything, from food to electricity, are soaring while employers are shedding jobs,” he explained. “This is when a president needs to show empathy and demonstrate that he knows the plight of hardworking Americans, and – oh no, as I’m saying this I’m remembering who I’m talking about and realizing that there’s no fucking way he’s going to do that.”Instead the president, in an interview with Politico this week, gave the economy the grade of “A+++++”