Stephen Colbert on Trump: ‘Continuing to shovel steaming piles of nominee into his cabinet’

Late-night hosts talked Donald Trump’s nomination of Dr Mehmet Oz to his administration, and the ongoing scandals around his attorney general pick, Matt Gaetz.Donald Trump “is continuing to shovel steaming piles of nominee into his cabinet”, said Stephen Colbert on Tuesday’s Late Show. On Tuesday, Trump announced the pseudoscience advocate and former TV host Mehmet Oz as the administrator of Medicare and Medicaid. “OK so he’s still just picking people he sees on TV,” said Colbert. “Next up, the head of Amtrak goes to Thomas the Tank Engine

Jon Stewart to Democrats: ‘Exploit the loopholes’

Late-night hosts talk Donald Trump’s “White House Tinder” cabinet selection process and Republicans’ willingness to exploit loopholes to get their way.Jon Stewart returned to his Monday evening perch at The Daily Show to urge Democrats to act like Republicans and “exploit the loopholes” to thwart Donald Trump’s agenda.“Even those putting up resistance to Trump’s agenda don’t seem to understand who they’re dealing with,” said Stewart before a clip of Elizabeth Warren accusing the president-elect of breaking the law by failing to sign an ethics pledge before the deadline.“I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Republicans are playing chess, and the Democrats are in the nurse’s office because they glued their balls to their thigh,” said Stewart

Bram Stoker’s Dracula: Francis Ford Coppola’s very horny vampire epic

This year marked the long-awaited return of the American film-making legend Francis Ford Coppola to the cinema, with Megalopolis: a $120m self-financed “fable” with a go-for-broke sensibility, about a time-defying architect trying to build the city of the future in the wake of his wife’s untimely death. Fans of its deranged overtures may do well to revisit Coppola’s other maximalist fable about a time-defying man grappling with his wife’s untimely death: Bram Stoker’s Dracula.It was lead actress Winona Ryder who first brought the project to Coppola – as an apology after she abruptly quit Coppola’s third Godfather film (to be infamously replaced by his daughter, Sofia). Coppola’s version of the gothic novel brings the bloodthirsty Count (a brilliant Gary Oldman) out of the shadows and into the forefront, reimagining the character as a tragic war hero, who – in renouncing God after the suicide of his wife, Elisabeta (Ryder) – is condemned to eternal life as a vampire. Years pass, and the shape-shifting Dracula discovers that the reincarnation of his wife, Mina (also Ryder), resides in 19th century London, where he eventually seduces her at the exhibition of a newfangled entertainment: the cinematograph

‘I hit the boom operator’s car with an arrow. He was inside’: how we made Robin of Sherwood

Richard “Kip” Carpenter, the writer, wanted our outlaws to be young. I’d once directed Michael Praed and had cast Ray Winstone in Scum. So Michael played Robin and Ray was his brotherly companion Will Scarlet. Then I spotted Clive Mantle and Phil Rose at a birthday party and said: “You two – Little John and Friar Tuck!” Marion was harder to find, until I suggested making her a redhead and thought of Judi Trott, who I’d cast in a terrible American TV film about Charles and Diana. They went for it straight away

Inequality in the arts is not new | Letters

Regrettably, the Sutton Trust’s confirmation of baseline class inequity in the arts isn’t new news (Young working-class people being ‘blocked’ from creative industries, study finds, 13 November). What is sad is that those charged with making and delivering arts policy have consistently failed to alleviate it.This is surely not due to a lack of data, when as long ago as 1985, the Brighton, Parry and Pearson study revealed that more than half of all artists came from the top two social classes. Even then, the inadequacy of arts employment prospects was the core reason.Forty years later, post Tory austerity cuts, post the pandemic’s put-artists-last arts policies, it’s deja vu

On my radar: Peter Biskind’s cultural highlights

Born in 1940, Peter Biskind is a cultural critic and film historian whose books include Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, The Godfather Companion and Star: How Warren Beatty Seduced America. Between 1981 and 1986 Biskind was editor-in-chief of American Film magazine, and was executive editor of Premiere magazine from 1986 to 1996. His writing has appeared in publications including the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Rolling Stone and Sight and Sound. His latest book, Pandora’s Box: The Greed, Lust, and Lies That Broke Television, explores the behind-the-screens story of the golden age of TV, from The Sopranos to streaming.Anora (dir Sean Baker, 2024)Anora has got a lot of attention this year, and it won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, which Sean Baker dedicated to sex workers