CATEGORIES

A Body of Horrors - How The Substance turned Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley into one of the year's best movie monsters.

Coralie Fargeat's outré satire about modern beauty standards is a cautionary tale and 2024's wildest psychodrama, in which Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley slowly transform into a modern Frankensteined wonder. When Elisabeth Sparkle (Moore), a 50-year-old actress turned TV fitness instructor, is fired by a network executive who deems her too old, she makes a Faustian bargain, injecting herself with neon-green plasma that lets her live every other week as a sexy, spotless 20-something named Sue (Qualley). But each time Sue overstays her welcome, parts of Elisabeth's body age at punishing rates. Soon enough, she will become Monstro Elisasue, a distorted ogress who looks like Anjelica Huston in The Witches, if that movie had been 17 times more sinister.

Theater - Artificial Theatrics - Ayad Akhtar's play about AI is missing a human touch.

Here's an ai prompt: Write me a vehicle for a movie star intent on making a debut on Broadway. Let's say he's a veteran of superhero flicks, so we want a character akin to his persona and a subject that comes with some contemporary relevance; maybe, because he played a tech genius onscreen, we have him wrestle with the vanguard of technology onstage. He's also acclaimed as a dramatic actor, so let's throw in a few hefty themes: addiction, suicide, adultery, trauma, and, for that genuine flawed great man zing, a pinch of misogyny.

Boy Meets World - Actor Mark Eydelshteyn's first English-speaking role is a vape-smoking, frenzied son of a billionaire in Sean Baker's fairy tale gone wrong.

Mark eydelshteyn and I are in a car zooming down a mountain road on the first day of the Telluride Film Festival in Colorado. The young actor sits in front, while I’m in the back with two of the film’s publicists. His eyes light up as the driver informs him that his seat has a massager; he can’t believe such a thing exists. A few minutes later, he exclaims, “Guys, it really works! Let’s stop in a few minutes and change seats so you can try it out.” ¶ About half an hour later, as we settle in for our conversation in a restaurant with a dramatic view of the valley below, his buoyant mood has changed somewhat. He looks at me and asks quietly, “In your eyes, who am I?” ¶ Even stranger is what he says next: “I’m nothing.”

The System: Zak Cheney-Rice - Kamala's Comedown How the Harris campaign became a grim slog.

After an exuberant summer, an autumn chill has descended on Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign. The joyous rallies that were all over the news between mid-July, when Harris replaced Joe Biden atop the Democratic ticket, and the August convention, where she and Tim Walz accepted the party nomination, have quieted into more familiar spectacles. Her once-ascendant polling numbers have stalled and her campaign has become cautious, granting TV interviews mostly to a handful of local news channels in swing states. If the first month of her candidacy was an exhalation after the suffocating defeatism under Biden, the last weeks before Election Day have felt like a collective holding of breath.

Neighborhood News: The World's Largest Plumbing Repair - New York City's principal water-supply aqueduct gets a bypass operation.

The Delaware aqueduct, 85 miles end to end, is the longest tunnel in the world. It invisibly brings about half of New York City’s water, just over 500 million gallons per day, down from the Catskills to a holding basin in Yonkers. It’s about as old as Joe Biden, and it has not been drained for repairs since he was in high school. The stretch where it crosses under the Hudson (from Newburgh to Wappinger) passes through crumbly limestone, and it has been leaking for decades, now losing up to 35 million gallons of water daily. The best solution has been, as with many aging circulatory systems, bypass surgery. Getting down there required digging a pair of holes, 900 and 700 feet deep, then boring two and a half miles across to connect them. Two billion dollars and a decade later, that new tunnel is ready to connect to the old, and that means shutting the aqueduct off for eight months. Even just draining it so work can begin is a huge job. This summer, there were practice “dewatering events,” as the Department of Environmental Protection calls them. It’s a winter project because we use less water then.

Too Close to the Sun

With 143, Katy Perry joins the cursed ranks of pop flameouts this year.

The City's Newest Music Festival Was a Gay Dream

All Things Go brought young queer fans in front of many of their idols (just not Chappell Roan).

Eleven Madison Park Goes Casual, Sort Of

Daniel Humm is serving truffled tofu and negroni coladas at Clemente Bar.

A Cantonese Comeback

Cha Cha Tang can be frustrating, but it offers moments of excellence.

They Moved to Sutton Place

After 18 years in a Noho loft and three in a Paul Rudolph pleasure palace, Christine and John Gachot decided to try a prewar classic seven.

THE ACCIDENTAL DAY CARE IN MY LIVING ROOM

When our sons' Brooklyn nursery lost its license, we figured we could host the children at home until the problem was resolved. How long could it take?

HOW MUCH LONGER CAN THE ERIC ADAMS MACHINE LAST? CITY HAUL

In mid-september, shortly after the New York City police chief resigned amid a federal criminal investigation and Mayor Eric Adams’s chief counsel quit, apparently because her client wasn’t heeding legal advice, and a couple of retired Fire Department officials were arrested on bribery charges, Ingrid Lewis-Martin disappeared from City Hall.

Life Choices: Esme Benjamin Time for Canada?

Heading into the election, a cottage industry of expatriation consultants has emerged.

103 MINUTES WITH ...Owen Thiele

The ultimate L.A. nepo friend” sold a show about his own life.

They're Not in Kansas City Anymore - Todd and Emily Voth's bold pied-à-terre in Herzog & de Meuron's

When emily and todd voth sold their natural-soap company, Indigo Wild, in 2018, the couple realized they could spend more time away from their century-old home in Kansas City, Missouri. So they decided to get a Manhattan pied-à-terre. Todd became intrigued by “this wonderful Herzog & de Meuron building that towers above everything,” he says, referring to 56 Leonard, a.k.a. “the Jenga Building.” They bought this three-bedroom corner unit on the 29th floor.

It's Not Complicated - Ta-Nehisi Coates's writing on race fueled a reckoning in America. | Now he wants to change the way we think about Israel and Palestine.

It was mid-august, roughly a month and a half before his new book, The Message, was set to be published, and Ta-Nehisi Coates was in my face, on my level, his eyes wide and aflame and his hands swallowing his scalp as he clutched it in disbelief and wonder and rage. At the Gramercy Park restaurant where we’d met for breakfast, Coates, now 48, looked noticeably older than the fruit-cheeked polemicist whose visage had been everywhere nearly a decade before, when he released Between the World and Me, his era-defining book on race during the Obama presidency, and the stubble of his beard was now frosted with white. But he was possessed still with the conviction and anxiety of a young man: deeply certain that he is right and yet almost desperate to be confirmed. He spoke most of the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories, a central subject of his book. “I knew it was wrong from day one,” he said. “Day one—you know what I mean?”

Intelligencer - The National Interest: Jonathan Chait - Exploiting Violence Trump blames liberals for the attempts on his life. He doesn't care who gets hurt now.

Donald Trump is a threat to democracy. That was true before the first assassination attempt on the former president, on July 13, and it remains true now, after the second attempt, which was foiled at his golf course on September 15. Political violence in general, and assassinating presidential candidates specifically, also poses risks to democracy. There is no contradiction between these ideas whatsoever. Yet Trump’s supporters have responded to both attempts on his life by muddying the waters, exploiting the near tragedies with cynical efforts to redefine critiques of Trump’s authoritarian inclinations as violent provocation.

Neighborhood News: Aaron Judge Unchained - In this career season, he saw a mini-slowdown in early September. That's over now.

Friday the 13th, and Aaron Judge was in a slump—or rather, what passes for a slump in this epic 2024 season of his. He hadn’t homered in 16 games, his longest dry spell in the majors. The superstitious chatter around the clubhouse held that he’d appeared on a kiddie show in late August and, through some inchoate psychic mechanism, had his mojo sapped. This Friday-night game was the second in a four-game series against the Red Sox, and in the bottom of the seventh inning Boston was up 4-1. After throwing two called balls, the Sox reliever Cam Booser had to get one over, and he did approximately what he’s supposed to do: keep it low and away. It wasn’t low or away enough. Judge dug his bat under and lifted the ball 368 feet, over the Canon ad in left field. Grand slam, Yankees take the lead. Judgemania—mounting all summer, held in tension during two weeks of merely good hitting— exploded yet again. Final score: 5-4.

The Truths and Distortions of Ruby Franke -The Mormon mother of six built a devoted following by broadcasting her family's wholesome life on YouTube. How did she end up abusing her children?

In 2015, Ruby Franke, a 32-year-old Mormon woman in Utah, became another parent sharing her family’s life on YouTube. The first video on her now-defunct channel, 8 Passengers, begins with old footage of her standing in a modest kitchen, her five children gathered around in anticipation as she cuts into a cake to reveal the gender of her sixth child. The video jumps to a scene at the hospital shortly after her new daughter’s birth. Resting in bed, Ruby cradles the baby and her youngest son, a serious-faced 3-year-old boy in blue overalls. “Can you show me where her nose is?” she asks him as he points. “Where’s her eyes?” When an elder son reports that the camera is almost out of battery, Ruby replies softly, “Go ahead, turn it off. That’s okay.”

623 Minutes With ...Dr. Thaïs Aliabadi - The Beverly Hills OB/GYN who delivers Kardashian and Bieber babies.

The Aliabadi formula has become very popular in Los Angeles of late. Aliabadi is big on preventive care. She uses the MyRisk genetic test, a tool that weighs personal and family history to calculate a patient’s risk for hereditary cancers; she listens to her patients carefully for signs of endometriosis and PCOS; and she assesses the ideal time to freeze eggs. Earlier this year, Olivia Munn credited Aliabadi with saving her life when those tests helped catch her breast cancer. When asked in an interview what her favorite thing about L.A. is, Rihanna said simply, “My gynecologist.” Aliabadi sees Olivia Culpo, members of various royal families, and the entire Kardashian-Jenner clan; she advised SZA to remove her dangerous breast implants and delivered Emma Roberts’s baby and, a month ago, Justin and Hailey Bieber’s son, Jack Blues.

A Shiksa Love Story

Erin Foster has spent the past decade turning her Hollywood life into content, to mixed results. Her new Netflix rom-com series, based on her own conversion to Judaism, might change that.

Hot Commodity

In Sally Rooney's novels, love is always being bought, sold, or reduced to tropes. But this is also what makes it real.

900 Lives of Tana Mongeau

Is one of the internet's most infamous chaos agents capable of cleaning up her act?

Soho Will Get a New Artists' Restaurant

Manuela, from the founders of Hauser & Wirth, is equal parts showroom and dining room.

How's the Hyssop?

Cafe Mado is a worthy return to locavore eating.

A Wonk in Full- Ezra Klein, glowed-up and post-coup, was almost a celebrity at the convention.

Ezra Klein, glowed-up and post-coup, was almost a celebrity at the convention. Ezra Klein, who is known to keep his passions in check, did not have the right credentials to get into the arena. The Secret Service didn't recognize the New York Times' star "Opinion" writer and podcaster, but eventually he was able to figure out how to get in to where he belonged. This was, after all, as much his convention as any journalist's, since its high-energy optimism turned on the fact that President Joe Biden was no longer leading the ticket and, starting early this year, Klein had led the coup drumbeat.

The Afterlife of Donald Trump - The presidential hopeful contemplates his campaign, his formidable new opponent, and the miracle of his continued existence.

Donald Trump raised his right hand and grabbed hold of it. He bent it backward and forward. I asked if I could take a closer look. These days, the former president and current triple threat-convicted felon, Republican presidential nominee, and recent survivor of an assassination attempt-comes from a place of yes. He waved me over to where he sat on this August afternoon, in a low-to-the-ground chair upholstered in cream brocade fabric in the grand living room at Mar-a-Lago.

Danzy Senna Can't Stop Thinking in Black and White

Her latest novel holds diminishing returns.

Live, Laugh, Love

Dick jokes meet sentimentality in a wily Sandler-Safdie collab.

Tim Burton Is Great Again

A long-awaited sequel revels in gore and nostalgia.