44 h. ago Trump’s gilded Oval Office was the perfect setting for his and Bukele’s grotesque spectacle | Julia Carrie Wong

The president’s penchant for the gaudy has been mocked but the menace beneath was clear when he met El Salvador’s leaderThe Oval Office meeting of Donald Trump and Nayib Bukele on Monday was a grotesque spectacle. Both men, elected to lead nominally democratic countries, have described themselves as dictators, and they exuded that sense of smug impunity. While reporters sought answers on the fate of Kilmar Ábrego García, a 29-year-old father of three who was wrongly deported to El Salvador’s notorious Cecot mega-prison, Trump and Bukele disclaimed responsibility, joked about further deportations, and engaged in casual slander of Ábrego García, who is not, and has never been alleged to be, a terrorist.And then there was the gold. So much gold. Continue reading...

Politics

50 h. ago Seth Rogen's jokes about Trump are CUT from science award show coverage

Comedian Seth Rogen's jokes about US president Donald Trump have been cut out of the broadcast of one of the most prestigious science awards shows in the world. 

Politics

52 h. ago Donald Trump calls Harvard a ‘joke’ and says it should be stripped of funds – US politics live

President says university should lose government research contracts after it refused demands to accept outside political supervisionSeveral international students who have had their visas revoked in recent weeks have filed lawsuits against the Trump administration, arguing the government denied them due process when it suddenly took away their permission to be in the US. The actions by the federal government to terminate students’ legal status have left hundreds of scholars at risk of detention and deportation. Their schools range from private universities like Harvard and Stanford to large public institutions like the University of Maryland and Ohio State University to some small liberal arts colleges. At least 901 students at 128 colleges and universities have had their visas revoked or their legal status terminated since mid-March, according to an Associated Press (AP) review of university statements and correspondence with school officials. In lawsuits against the Department of ...

Politics

66 h. ago James Corden's obscene joke about Dame Judi Dench cut from broadcast of LA science awards

The actor, 46, was met with awkward silence when he made a lurid gag about Dame Judi Dench and Dr Anthony Fauci at the Breakthrough Awards in LA

Events

3 d. ago Seth Rogen attack on Trump edited out of science awards show coverage

Presenting an award at the Breakthrough prize ceremony, the actor and writer allegedly accused the president of destroying American scienceA pointed criticism of President Trump’s policies on science by Seth Rogen was edited out of the filmed coverage of an annual science awards show, it has emerged.According to the Hollywood Reporter, which was one of the sponsors of the event, Rogen was one of the presenters at this month’s Breakthrough prize ceremony, a high profile and lavishly funded awards programme recognising “outstanding scientific achievements” co-founded by, among others, Google co-founder Sergey Brin and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and which describes itself as “the Oscars of science”. Continue reading...

Events

3 d. ago Seth Rogen’s Trump joke cut from awards show after awkward response

Actor’s comments ‘clearly’ made co-presenter Edward Norton ‘uncomfortable’

Politics

3 d. ago Seth Rogen’s Trump joke cut from awards ceremony after awkward response

Actor’s comments ‘clearly’ made co-presenter Edward Norton ‘uncomfortable’

Politics

5 d. ago PSA: Apple TV+ is just £2.99 a month for the next three months

Can’t wait to watch Murderbot or catch up on Seth Rogen’s The Studio? There’s never been a better time to subscribe

Economics

8 d. ago Australian comedian ditches US trip due to concern she could be denied entry over Trump jokes

Alice Fraser thought she was being paranoid until her lawyer advised her jokes about Donald Trump and Elon Musk could be scrutinised at US airportElection 2025 live updates: Australia federal election campaignGet our afternoon election email, free app or daily news podcastAn award-winning Australian comedian has cancelled a planned trip to the US after receiving legal advice that she could be stopped at the border due to her previous jokes about the Trump administration.Alice Fraser, who has appeared on Australia’s ABC and the BBC and toured internationally, was due to head to New York in the first week of May to promote her recently published book.Sign up for the Afternoon Update: Election 2025 email newsletter Continue reading...

Politics

1 week ago White House jokesters announce 'Week 11 Wins' as Trump 'unleashes economic prosperity'

The Orange Manbaby's tariff announcement sent the world's stock markets into a spiral with an estimated $11trillion dollars knocked off the value of globe's markets

Politics

2 w. ago How Jason Isaacs became the latest White Lotus star to have a renaissance

The Harry Potter and Death of Stalin actor has found fame with a new audience in hit TV showHe has worked in the industry for more than three decades, and appeared in blockbusters, but for a long time Jason Isaacs had managed to eschew the limelight.Then came The White Lotus, and suddenly the 61-year-old Liverpudlian became an internet sensation. He presented an award at the Brits, and was part of ITV’s Oscars coverage last month, bemusing viewers with his refreshing honesty. “Whoever at ITV decided to get Jason Isaacs as part of their coverage is a genius,” one fan commented. Continue reading...

Events

2 w. ago First Trump joked he wanted a third term. Then he got serious | Moira Donegan

The US president made himself explicit this week by saying: ‘I’m not joking’ when asked about his ambitions to stay in officeJokes have a specific relation to Trumpian politics: they are the tip of the spear for introducing illegal or once-unacceptable ideas to the public, under a thick gloss of irony or plausible deniability, to advance a far-right agenda.In 2016, Donald Trump’s support from the young, online “alt-right” was underestimated in part because so much of the profession of love for Trump, and for his racist and authoritarian ambitions, came in the form of supposed jokes. Trump himself, meanwhile, uses humor to charm and titillate, making jokes to demean adversaries, get audiences on his side, and hint, with winking coyness, about his next move. This has been his strategy for years.Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist Continue reading...

Politics

2 w. ago Help! Why are none of the new Beatles cast from Liverpool? | Peter Bradshaw

So Sam Mendes has cast his Beatles tetralogy, but none are from Merseyside. Don’t worry, I’ve just invented the Beatles Cinematic Universe Sam Mendes has announced the cast for his colossal four-film Beatles extravaganza: Harris Dickinson as John, Paul Mescal as Paul, Barry Keoghan as Ringo and Joseph Quinn as George – and to tumultuous acclaim he brought his Fab Four on stage at the CinemaCon event in Las Vegas, a now well-established affair in the film world, incidentally, satirised in a forthcoming episode of Seth Rogen’s TV comedy The Studio.I’m sorry to say, however, that Sam has almost entirely ignored the casting suggestions that I made in February last year. For what this is worth, I went with Leo Woodall as Paul, Finn Wolfhard as George, Harry Melling as Ringo and Barry Keoghan as John (though Barry got Ringo in the end). But I like to think that Sam Mendes and his producer Pippa Harris were thinking on more or less the same lines as me. Interestingly, there are no American...

Politics

2 w. ago Fox reporter's hilarious Biden joke leaves Donald Trump and Kid Rock in stitches

Kid Rock joined Trump in the Oval Office for a bold, star-spangled event promoting a crackdown on ticket scalping. Fox News' Peter Doocy delivered a one-liner with perfect comedic timing.

Politics

2 w. ago I’ve got the message: security leaks are no laughing matter | Stewart Lee

Is it worth me writing jokes about Trump’s US? It looks like they are targeting even their mildest visa-carrying criticsDuring the Brexit era, it became obvious many comments under these columns were being placed by Russian trolls, with slightly strange grasps of idiomatic English, cut-and-pasting blocks of approved pro-Putin and anti-EU texts to change the direction of the discourse. Their posts read like the computer from 2001: A Space Odyssey, but trained on 90s MTV Europe presenters’ accents and Russia Today op-eds.I began to bait the bots by inserting deliberately incomprehensible, but also somehow provocative, sentences into my pieces, culminating in the following paragraph, from the summer of 2016, after which point the Russian provocateurs left me alone: Continue reading...

Events

2 w. ago From Hollywood’s goofy stoner to serious satire: the reinvention of Seth Rogen

The former manchild’s performance as an industry suit in new series The Studio shows how far he has come in HollywoodIn Seth Rogen’s new satirical series, The Studio, Rogen plays the newly appointed head of a major Hollywood production company – and there was a time when that alone would have been the joke.The goofy, schlubby, pre-eminent manchild of mainstream comedy, handed the role of a powerful industry suit – the fish-out-of-water jokes would have written themselves. But Matt Remick, Rogen’s character in The Studio, isn’t a manchild but a man: a pretty regular middle-aged one, trying to do good, honest work in a sour, cynical business. Continue reading...

Politics

3 w. ago So long, Scorsese! Is The Studio the TV show that will finally kill off Hollywood?

Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s new satire of Tinseltown is astonishingly starry, wildly intelligent and – just possibly – the perfect encapsulation of the film industry’s death croakIt’s never exactly a done deal when Hollywood decides to take itself on. The film industry is such a roiling combination of wealth, jealousy, fear and obliviousness that, when the right person decides to send it up, the results can be spectacular. Look at Sunset Boulevard, Barton Fink – or even Bowfinger – and you’ll see work that knows when to go for the jugular to inflict maximum damage.On the other hand, Hollywood satires can all too readily fall into the cliches they’re deliberately trying to send up. They’re romanticised. There are too many chummy cameos. They lose their nerve. Look at Charlie Day’s film Fool’s Paradise, or 1997’s An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn (a movie about the name used when a film is so bad the director wants to remove his name from the credits, which was in turn so b...

Events

3 w. ago The Studio viewers delighted as Hollywood star makes acting return after 15 years

Actor-turned-director ‘stole the show’ in second episode of new comedy

Politics

3 w. ago The Studio review – Seth Rogen’s Hollywood satire is fast, furious and beautifully fun

An unimpeachably brilliant cast, plus astonishing guest stars (Efron! Theron! Scorsese!) create wonderful chaos in this tale of a movie studio executive’s calamitous attempts to climb the greasy poleThe war between art and commerce is an ancient and bloody one. The chair of Continental Studios, Griffin Mill (Bryan Cranston) is keen to deliver a decisive blow with the hammer of his newly acquired IP. Because “if Warner Bros can make a billion dollars off the plastic tits of a pussyless doll, we should be able to make TWO billion off the legacy brand of Kool-Aid.” He has just fired his long-serving studio head, Patty Leigh (Catherine O’Hara), for her preference for art and is on the verge of promoting studio executive Matt Remick (Seth Rogen) to the big job. What’s a guy – even if he is a devoted cinephile who dreams of adding his contribution to the illustrious roll call of meaningful movies, even if Patty has been his friend and mentor for years – to do? He kisses the ring, takes th...

Politics

3 w. ago What to stream: 'Mufasa: The Lion King,' Timothée Chalamet, Will Smith, Seth Rogen and Atomfall

Will Smith releasing his first album in 20 years, the 14-track “Based on a True Story,” and “Mufasa: The Lion King,” Barry Jenkins’ photorealistic prequel to the 1994 animated classic, are some of this week’s new streaming entertainment releases

Politics