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      Q&A With Dylan Bachelet of ‘Great British Baking Show’

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      Dylan Bachelet lost in the finals of “The Great British Baking Show,” but he was a breakout star for his fashion as well as his baking. Now, he’s a professional chef.Dylan Bachelet, the 20-year-old finalist on “The Great British Baking Show,” generated plenty of buzz for the season with his good looks and his baking talent. He drew comparisons to all sorts of fictional characters: Captain Jack Sparrow of “Pirates of the Caribbean,” anime characters, cartoon cats. When asked about how his style choices were leading to those comparisons, Cristina Spiridakis, a Hollywood costume designer, said “Maybe he’s just a Gen Z kid with good style.”This turned out to be true, as Mr. Bachelet, self-described as “arty,” has always loved creative pursuits, including fashion and baking.“Baking is a creative outlet for me,” he said in a phone interview during a day off from his job as a chef de partie, or line cook, at The Five Fields, a Michelin-starred restaurant in London. “In the same way I have a vision of something I want to wear looking quite cool, I’ll have a dish in mind. I just try and work my way to that goal and learn from it.”He also discussed his fashion and his experiences on the show, the finale of which began streaming in the United States on Friday.This interview was edited and condensed for clarity.What were you were thinking about when getting dressed for the show: the weather, the baking, the cameras, the 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

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      ‘Dune: Prophecy’ Season 1 Episode 3 Recap: The Meaning of Sacrifice

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      “Sisterhood above all” is the motto of Valya and Tula’s secretive organization, but its meaning seems to depend on which sister is saying it.Season 1, Episode 4: ‘Sisterhood Above All’They share a last name and a mission, but Valya and Tula Harkonnen are two very different women. At least that’s what “Dune: Prophecy” primed us to believe until this week’s episode.Tula, played by Olivia Williams as an adult and Emma Canning as a young woman, is the sensitive one, the sister who goes along to get along. Her older sister, Valya (Emily Watson all grown up, Jessica Barden in flashbacks), is the one who rages against House Atreides for slandering her great-grandfather as a traitor. She is equally angry with her own family, especially her mother, Sonya (Polly Walker), and her uncle, Evgeny (Mark Addy), for meekly accepting their fate of exile on Lankiveil, a frozen wasteland of a planet. Sonya warns Tula and her brother, an aspiring politician named Griffin (Earl Cave), to stay away from their sister, a “wolf” who will devour them both with her ambition.But both siblings are fond of Valya. Why wouldn’t they be? For one thing, the three of them seem to be the only members of the family willing to show one another consistent affection. For another, Valya saved Griffin from drowning by using the Voice on him, forcing his muscles to swim through icy water to the surface.So when Griffin is murdered, allegedly by an Atreides, after Valya encourages him to get involved in Imperial politics, her thirst for vengeance consumes Tula as well. The younger sister poses as the lover of a young Atreides, then massacres him and the entire male side of his family the night before a big traditional hunt. She spares only a disabled young teenager named Albert (Archie Barnes, whom you may remember as the bold young Lord Oscar Tully from “House of the Dragon’), to whom she had been friendly the day before.Thus, House Harkonnen has its vengeance — not that Tula and Valya’s older relatives are anything but aghast. It’s not only the murders they object to; it’s also the involvement of Tula, of whom they clearly have a higher opinion than they do of Valya.But the Harkonnen sisters weren’t out to curry their family’s favor with this mission; Valya, at least, was more interested in scoring points with the Sisterhood’s mother superior, Raquella, who had encouraged her to go home and take care of family business so that she could fully commit to the order. Her disgraced surname hangs around her neck like a millstone — Raquella’s granddaughter and apparent successor, Dorotea, hates Valya for being a Harkonnen as much as for anything else. You can almost feel Valya’s defiance as she makes her move via Tula: Fine, Dorotea. I’ll give you something to hate me for.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

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      Earl Holliman, Rugged, and Familiar, Screen Presence, Dies at 96

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      Earl Holliman, an iron-jawed actor who earned a star on Hollywood Boulevard for a prolific career that included a corral full of Westerns, an appearance on the first episode of “The Twilight Zone” and a turn as Angie Dickinson’s boss on the 1970s television drama “Police Woman,” died on Monday at his home in Studio City, Calif. He was 96.His death was confirmed by his husband, Craig Curtis, who is his only survivor.While never a household name, Mr. Holliman was a seemingly ubiquitous presence on both the big and small screen, collecting nearly 100 credits over a career that spanned almost five decades.Ruggedly handsome, he was a natural choice for Westerns, war movies and police procedurals. Among his many notable films were “The Bridges at Toko-Ri” (1954), starring William Holden and Grace Kelly; “Gunfight at the O.K. Corral” (1957), starring Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas; “The Sons of Katie Elder” (1965), with John Wayne and Dean Martin; and “Sharky’s Machine,” the 1981 Burt Reynolds detective thriller.Over the years, he also popped up in many television series, including “Gunsmoke,” “CHiPs” and “Murder, She Wrote.”Mr. Holliman’s career started with promise. He broke through in the Depression-era romance “The Rainmaker” (1956), winning a Golden Globe for best supporting actor for playing the impulsive teenage brother of a lovelorn woman (Katharine Hepburn) who encounters a grifter (Mr. Lancaster) promising rain in drought-ravaged Kansas.A relative unknown, Mr. Holliman managed to win the role over Elvis Presley, who was then rocketing to fame as a rock ’n’ roll trailblazer, but who took time out to read for the role. (Mr. Holliman apparently had little to worry about: “Elvis played the rebellious younger brother with amateurish conviction — like the lead in a high school play,” Allan Weiss, a screenwriter who saw the audition, recalled.)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

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      ‘The Agency’ Is a Slick and Pleasing Spy Drama

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      Based on the French show “The Bureau,” the new Showtime series stars Michael Fassbender as a spy who must readjust to life after living undercover.Pity the C.I.A. agents deploying their enhanced interrogation techniques, beating hostages and meddling; truly it is they who suffer. It’s hard work being a spy — but the hardest work of all is loving yourself.“The Agency,” beginning Friday on Paramount+ (and debuting on Showtime at 9 p.m. Sunday), is set mostly within the London office of the C.I.A., where one of the primo dudes (Michael Fassbender), code name “Martian,” has been abruptly yanked back from a mission in Ethiopia. He was undercover there for six years, living as Paul and falling in love with Sami (Jodie Turner-Smith), a Sudanese historian and political activist. He wasn’t ready for the mission to end, and he is definitely not ready for their relationship to end — but c’mon, what are a few bent rules in the interest of hot-people diplomacy?“This isn’t national security; this is personal,” Martian insists to his boss (Jeffrey Wright). “It’s the agency,” the boss bellows back. “Nothing is personal!” Ooooh!The series is based on the terrific French show “The Bureau,” and in the four episodes (of 10) made available for review, it deploys a lot of spy-show standards: the rookie to whom everything must be explained, the ambitious but naïve flunkies, the secretly cooperative foreign attaches, the higher-ups who seem institutional and out of touch until they drop some monologue wisdom on our heroes.Fassbender’s mesmerizing performance is the biggest draw here, giving viewers a real taste of what it’s like to love a liar. We’re never quite sure what his angle is, how much of his seemingly vulnerable moments are all part of the game. He finds an intriguing sparring partner in the agency’s therapist (Harriet Sansom Harris), with whom he is required to meet on account of how hard it is to reintegrate into real life after living undercover for so long. Other story lines for secondary and tertiary characters feel comparatively unmoored.But on the whole, it’s all very slick and overtly, pleasingly fancy-schmancy. The show’s reflective-surfaces budget alone puts some national G.D.P.s to shame. The London of “The Agency” is a pallid grayscape where even the mall is dreary, where real life is the same color as CCTV footage. Every move here is surveilled, and the show revels in that constant unease. As the saying goes, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you. More

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      ‘Dune: Prophecy’ Season 1, Episode 2 Recap: The Agony

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      Valya has shown that she is clearly willing to sacrifice whatever, and whomever, it takes to accomplish her goal. Season 1, Episode 2: ‘Two Wolves’Desmond Hart is an anomaly. He is alive after a sandworm attack that should have left him in the belly of the beast. He knows of the Sisterhood’s secret plan to play puppet master with the universe’s rulers as their marionettes. He can burn people to death using only his mind, apparently from light years away. He can resist the Voice, with which Mother Superior Valya Harkonnen has subdued even other powerful members of her own Sisterhood.He has no compunction about consigning a child to an agonizing death, or about torturing that child’s father for displaying insolence toward the emperor he serves. He’s a scary dude.He also has a point.There’s no question where “Dune: Prophecy” wants your sympathies to lie regarding this guy; burning a little boy to death won’t win you many fans. However, in its second episode, the show reveals that Mother Valya is playing a game in which, up until recently, she was the only real player on the field. By installing her Truthsayers throughout the Imperium, she has managed to manipulate not only the emperor and his aristocratic frenemy, Duke Richese, but also the rebel forces responsible for taking down spice harvesters on Arrakis and infiltrating the imperial palace. When the rebel cell has outgrown its usefulness, she has no problem ordering its exposure and destruction. It’s all for the greater good, after all.The same is true of the orders she gives back at the Sisterhood’s home base. To her sister Tula’s dismay, Valya orders that Tula’s star pupil, Lila (Chloe Lea), undergo “the Agony.” This portentously named process, a version of which is undergone by Paul Atreides and his mother, Lady Jessica, in the “Dune” films, involves ingesting a poison with no antidote. With proper command of the body on a cellular level, an acolyte can break the poison down, unlocking her “genetic memory” — the collected knowledge and wisdom of all her maternal forebears — and becoming a Reverend Mother in the process.Why Lila? A powerful empath, she is secretly the great-great-granddaughter of Mother Raquella, the Sisterhood’s founder and the first woman to (involuntarily) undergo this process. If Lila is able to contact Raquella within her own mind, Valya believes that they can learn more about their founder’s prophecy concerning “the Reckoning” and “the Burning Truth.”But training for the Agony usually takes many years, and this is a rush job, precipitated by the coming of Desmond Hart and the monkey wrench he has thrown into the Sisterhood’s plans.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

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      ‘Glicked’ Fans Rejoice in Bloodshed and Broadway Songs

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      Swords clashing and blood curdling screams of gladiators emanate from one room. Across the hallway, witches belt out show tunes.That’s the sound of “Glicked.”Last year, moviegoers swarmed to see “Barbenheimer” — the combined name for “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” — when the films opened on the same day. Now, there is a push from the casts and fans of “Gladiator II” and “Wicked” — which both opened across the country on Friday — to recreate that energy for another double feature with a blended name.Isabelle Deveaux and Emma Rabuano skipped out of theater six at the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in Brooklyn at 2:38 p.m. on Friday, after watching “Gladiator II.”At 6:15 p.m., the pair, both 25, planned to return to the Alamo Drafthouse to see “Wicked.” The crossover, Ms. Deveaux said, “felt so specifically catered to our interests.”Diego Gasca of Los Angeles went with friends to the opening day of “Wicked” at AMC Lincoln Square 13 in Manhattan, but he said that he was not interested in seeing “Gladiator II.”Colin Clark for The New York TimesOn the surface, the two films, which have a combined running time of over five hours, appear vastly different. One is a family friendly musical prequel to “The Wizard of Oz,” while the other is an R-rated epic sequel about murder, war and the Roman Empire. But Ms. Deveaux and Ms. Rabuano see some common ground in the films.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

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      West Bank Settlement Supporters Have Big Hopes for Trump’s Presidency

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      As Donald J. Trump nominates staunch supporters of Israel to key positions, advocacy groups are taking aim at the departing administration’s policies.The Biden administration this week imposed sanctions on more groups and individuals it accuses of having ties to Israeli settlers inciting violence in the occupied West Bank, a last-ditch show of disapproval of Israelis’ annexation of land there before U.S. policy on the issue most likely swings the other way under the next administration.When President-elect Donald J. Trump returns to the White House next year, he could easily revoke the February executive order authorizing the sanctions or, even, some pro-settlement activists hope, use the order to go after Palestinian organizations instead.Texans for Israel, a Christian Zionist group, and several other settler supporters and organizations this month renewed a challenge to President Biden’s order in federal court, arguing that it was being applied unconstitutionally, targeting Jewish settlers and violating the rights of Americans exercising freedom of religion and speech in support of them.The case highlights the growing international controversy over West Bank settlement amid the war in the Gaza Strip and the great expectations of the settler movement and its supporters of another Trump presidency.Israel seized control of the West Bank from Jordan in a war in 1967, and Israeli civilians have since settled there with both the tacit and the explicit approval of the Israeli government, living under Israeli civil law while their Palestinian neighbors are subject to Israeli military law. Expanding Israel’s hold over the West Bank is a stated goal of many ministers in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government.The international community largely views the Israeli settlements as illegal, and Palestinians have long argued that they are a creeping annexation that turns land needed for any independent Palestinian state into an unmanageable patchwork.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

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      Pamela Hayden, the Voice of Bart’s Friend Milhouse, Retires From ‘The Simpsons’

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      Ms. Hayden voiced many “Simpsons” characters since the show started in 1989. She’s most famously the voice of Bart’s awkward 10-year-old best friend.Pamela Hayden, who has voiced characters on “The Simpsons” since it began in 1989 and famously played Bart’s nerdy best friend Milhouse Van Houten, announced on Wednesday that she was retiring from the show.Ms. Hayden, 70, said on her Facebook page that after 35 years she would stop performing on “The Simpsons” and would “pursue other creative outlets.” Episode seven of season 36, scheduled to air on Nov. 24, will be her final episode.“One thing that I love about Milhouse is he’s always getting knocked down but he keeps getting up,” Ms. Hayden said in a tribute video posted on “The Simpsons” social media pages. “I love the little guy.”Credited with voicing dozens of Simpson’s characters, including one of Milhouse’s bullies, Jimbo Jones, Ms. Hayden’s most famous character is Milhouse. His blue hair and big eyes are accentuated with large, round glasses. The clumsy, shy 10-year-old is one of the most endearing characters in Springfield, thanks in part to his halting, sheepish voice and his stubborn resilience.Milhouse, named after former President Richard Milhous Nixon, often finds himself following his best friend, Bart, into trouble as a gullible sidekick. Throughout the show, Milhouse often cites his mother’s concerns for his safety as an excuse to not go on adventures. In one instance, Milhouse relayed that his mother “says solving riddles is an asthma trigger.”Hayden, left, has voiced the character of Milhouse and others for 35 years.FOXWe 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