Powell

If you’ve seen some of Glen Powell’s movies, including “Top Gun: Maverick,” “Hit Man,” “Anyone But You” or “Twisters,” you probably already know that a large part of the actor’s appeal is that he goes down smooth and easy.

With good looks and lots of charm, he’s certainly leading man material. But there’s also a streak, particularly in his Richard Linklater film “Hit Man,” of a goofball comedy nerd dying to break out from that handsome shell (see also: Jon Hamm), even if he was there to promote a new action film, “The Running Man.”

It sure feels like that sensibility is what helped make for a remarkable episode of “Saturday Night Live” with Powell hosting for the first time. It was the silliest episode so far this season, and by some miracle, just about every sketch in the episode worked, at least on a basic comedic level.

Powell wore wigs, most notably in a military sketch about bobs versus bangs; yes, the hairstyles. He did Norwegian and Irish accents in respective sketches about overenthusiastic actors in a Nordic film and one modeled after Liam Neeson’s “Taken” films. He even wore a long ponytail and sang in a pre-recorded musical number about men who miss their ex-girlfriend’s dad (Powell was one of the dads). But he was also a great supporting player to Marcello Hernández in a sketch about comedian Sebatian Maniscalco at a bachelor party and one about a woman (Ashley Padilla) who joins friends at a restaurant after a disastrous hair salon visit. And he did some good silent acting in a visual gag-driven sketch in which AI technology brings old photos to life badly.

It was a week where even the return of former cast member Will Forte, who appeared in three new MacGruber sketches where the character finds out he’s in the Epstein files (explosions follow), didn’t fully overshadow a lot of other very good pieces.

Two quick notes about this week’s episode: Padilla continues to help anchor the show with excellent sketch performances, this time as the hair styling victim, a shocked grandmother in a nursing home and as White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt in the cold open. As each episode goes by with Padilla billed as a featured player instead of a full cast member, it feels like a mistake that’s growing.

Second, this was the first time in years that “Weekend Update” had no guest segments. We’ll get to that in a bit.

Musical guest Olivia Dean performed “Man I Need” and “Let Alone the One You Love.”

President Trump (James Austin Johnson) cold opens are getting to be a mixed blessing; the impression is still solid, and the president is certainly in the news enough to warrant addressing every week. But the format of the sketch, beginning with the premise of the news of the week and then being interrupted by a meta Trump monologue, feels reflexive at this point, the easy answer for wrapping up increasingly disjointed and weird news cycles. At the White House, Leavitt downplays news of the release of Jeffery Epstein’s emails, defending the president as, “loving too much and possibly too young.” When a reporter asks about millions of dollars being sent to Argentina, she tries to turn attention back to the files, which leads to Trump appearing and asking questions such as, “If there were something incriminating in the files, why would I cover them up?” and “If I were innocent, wouldn’t I just release the files?” The president offers to sell framed copies of the Epstein emails at $800 a pop. The rambling defense leads to a Trump Multiverse Theory, which posits that Trump exists across many timelines and we happen to live in the worst one.

In Powell’s monologue, the actor admits he’s been so publicized that even he’s tired of seeing his own face. “You know who is not tired of seeing my face?” he asked. “Your mom.” Powell pushed back against the narrative that he was an overnight success; he’s been acting since he was 10, starting with commercials and safety videos, while growing up in Austin, Texas. Powell revealed that he was supposed to host “SNL” four years ago as part of the publicity tour for “Top Gun: Maverick.” But when the movie was delayed because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the offer was put on hold. A UPS driver who showed up when Powell was celebrating the initial news about hosting “SNL” ended up in a selfie with the actor and his family. Powell said his sisters tracked down the driver and Powell invited him to come see the show. Thus, Mitch the UPS Driver appeared in the monologue and again at the end of the show for the goodnights. Glen ended the monologue saying, “The best things in life don’t happen overnight. No one knows that better than UPS.”

Best sketch of the night: AI has not advanced enough to get crotches right

A family is visiting their grandmother for Thanksgiving at an assisted-living facility and as a treat, they’ve used an app to animate some of her old black-and-white photos using artificial intelligence. But the AI can only imagine so much; it brings to life a dog with tails on both ends instead of a head, an old family friend who takes off his pants to reveal a Ken doll-like crotch (Mikey Day) and a horrifying baby that folds like an accordion as an atom bomb goes off in the background. Padilla’s reactions and the silent comedy from Day and Powell take this sketch over the top.

Also good: Of course MacGruber is in the Epstein files, how could he not be?

It’s always nice to see Will Forte back on “SNL,” and this time he brought back his most popular character for three short video segments continuing the story of MacGruber, the tech wiz who always ends up failing to disarm a ticking time bomb. This time, the clock is ticking as MacGruber’s companions (Powell and Chloe Fineman) figure out that MacGruber is in the Epstein files. Their first clue? Just after thumbing through a copy, he immediately tries to shred the entire document. Over three sketches, MacGruber stalls, deflects, then eventually decides to testify against those who actually engaged in behavior worse than his on Epstein’s island — until he finds out he could get paid lots of money to keep quiet. Cut to the sketch-ending explosion.

‘Weekend Update’ winner: No guest segment, but two very funny bits

Usually on “Weekend Update,” cast members such as Bowen Yang or guests come on to do a few minutes as a character or as themselves. This week, there apparently wasn’t time for that, so “Update” was nothing but Colin Jost and Michael Che jokes. There were two that stood out, however. One was about a salacious rumor involving Trump and former President Bill Clinton that’s very difficult to discuss in detail in this space. A video that ended up with a very obviously spliced piece of audio as a punchline went over so well Jost had to stop to collect himself from laughing so hard. The other was a great, simple joke about the U.S. Mint ending production of pennies. “Makes no cents!” Che exclaimed. Nice one, Che.

Look around lately and 20th century science fiction has become 21st century fact. Real life in the year 2025 — the date in which Stephen King set his 1982 novel “The Running Man” — involves technological surveillance, corporate feudalism, infotainment propaganda and extreme inequality, all things that his story about a grisly game show predicted. King, like the great sci-fi authors Philip K. Dick and George Orwell before him, was writing a cautionary tale. But the decades since have seen people take their bleak ideas as a blueprint, like when Elon Musk bragged on X that the Tesla Cybertruck is “what Bladerunner would have driven,” missing the point that we don’t want to live in a dystopia (and that Bladerunner isn’t even Harrison Ford’s name in “Blade Runner”).

The timing couldn’t be better — and worse — for Edgar Wright to remake “The Running Man,” only to put no fire into it. He and his co-writer Michael Bacall have adapted a fairly faithful version of the book, unlike the 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger meathead extravaganza. (The only way to suffer through that one is if you imagine it’s a parody of pun-driven testosterone flicks.) Tellingly, they’ve left off the year 2025 and only lightly innovated the production design with spherical drones. But there’s little urgency or outrage. Instead of a funhouse mirror of what could be, it’s merely a smudged reflection of what is.

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Glen Powell stars as Ben Richards, a cash-strapped, employer-blacklisted father who begrudgingly agrees to be a contestant on a television hit that no one has survived. There’s only one network, FreeVee, and its goals overlap enough with those of the government that the distinction between them isn’t worth parsing. Every day Ben dodges a death squad, he’ll earn money for his wife, Sheila (Jayme Lawson), and sick baby, up to a billion “new” dollars if he can last a month. (The updated bills have the Governator’s face printed on them.)

But as ever, the game is rigged. The network’s boss, Dan Killian (Josh Brolin), and smarmy host Bobby T (Colman Domingo) rally viewers to turn Ben in for a cash prize, fibbing that he’s a freeloader who refuses to get a job, the typical tax-leeching scapegoat trotted out to turn the middle class against the poor and the poor against themselves. One enraged FreeVee-addicted granny (Sandra Dickinson) genuinely believes Ben eats puppies. “She used to be a kind, clever woman,” her son says with resignation.

Clearly, Wright wants to make a political satire that echoes the drivel of our own actual news. The politics are there in the armored vehicles rolling down city streets and the masked militias out to nab Ben for the bounty money. Yet we don’t feel the paranoia of eyeballs over the streets, even though it turns out that there’s no way to disguise Powell’s foxlike features under a silly stick-on mustache. A hustler named Molie (William H. Macy) warns that the TVs themselves are watching people. It doesn’t really feel like they are. I’ve felt more uneasy in a house with an Alexa.

As for the satire, this faintly cruder version of right now doesn’t have much bite. Little we see is surprising, stimulating or even that futuristic. Screens blare commercials for a drink called Liquid Death (real) and a Kardashian-esque reality show called “The Americanos” (essentially real). The film’s sole representative of upper-middle-class normality — a hostage named Amelia (Emilia Jones) — could trade places with any Pilates instructor.

When an underground rebel, Bradley (Daniel Ezra), breaks down how the network chases ratings by flattening people into archetypes, he’s not telling today’s audience anything it doesn’t already know. King wrote the character as an environmental activist; here, he’s more of a TV critic. Likewise, Bradley’s crony Elton (Michael Cera) has mutated from a pathetic idealist to a Monster-chugging chaos agent — as if “Home Alone’s” Kevin McCallister grew up to join Antifa. Elton’s motivations don’t make sense, but at least Cera barges into the movie with so much energy that his sequence is a hoot. Chuckling that he likes his “bacon extra crispy” as he takes aim at a police squad, he also breaks the seal on this remake’s use of bad puns. From his scenes on, the script crams in as many groaners as it can.

Wright has talent for casting actors that pop. Domingo’s fatuous celebrity host is fantastic, even doing the retro running man dance with Kid ‘n Play aplomb. We see just enough of Ben’s fellow competitors, played by Katy O’Brian and Martin Herlihy, to wish we had more time with them. One of the hunters, Karl Glusman, has so much intensity that I’ll be looking out for what he does next. Pity that the charismatic Lee Pace’s main villain has to spend most of the film covered by a shroud.

Meanwhile, Powell is being put through his own test of Hollywood survival. Everyone seems to agree that he’s the next movie star, but he hasn’t yet landed the right star-making vehicle. Here, as ever, he’s being treated like a Swiss Army knife on a construction site: Handy at a lot of things from humor to action to drama to romance, but his character lacks the oomph to truly showcase his skills. We’re told over and over that Ben is the angriest man in the world, but Powell’s innate likability, that cocky-charming heroic twinkle in his eye, makes him come across peevish at worst. His best moments are all comedy, like when Ben slaps on a thick brogue to hide out as an Irish priest, or his snappy back-and-forth with a psychologist who puts him through a word-association test. (Anarchy? “Win.” Justice? “Hilarious.”)

Still, I missed the truly misanthropic lead of King’s novella, a sour bigot radicalized to see himself not just as a cog in a machine but as a spoke in a revolution. There’s lip service to that idea here, but the film doesn’t take itself seriously enough to give us the chills. It’s not fair to judge “The Running Man” by how closely it hews to the book — and if you remember King’s ending, then you know there’s no way Wright could have pulled that off, although his fix is pretty clever. But tonally, there’s just not enough rage, gore or fun.

Maybe Wright feels the same way too. He’s been wanting to make this movie since 2017 and had the lousy luck to do it for Paramount in the year that the studio embraced the government and sacrificed its employees for its own billion-dollar reward. There’s no bleaker satire than making it through “The Running Man’s” end credits, past images of a raised fist that reads “Together Against the Network,” to see the last words on screen: A Skydance Corporation. Or maybe there is, if someone makes a documentary about what Edgar Wright may have had to cut.

Donald Trump

Former President Donald Trump is pictured in this photo provided by the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office in Atlanta on August 24, 2023. Trump surrendered on a 13-count indictment for efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election in Georgia. Photo courtesy of Fulton County Sheriff’s Office/UPI | License Photo

Nov. 10 (UPI) — President Donald Trump is pardoning Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell and dozens of other allies who have been accused of trying to subvert the 2020 election, according to U.S. Pardon Attorney Ed Martin.

The list of 77 people pardoned by Trump was published late Sunday on Martin’s personal X account.

“No MAGA left behind,” he said.

The proclamation signed by Trump was dated Friday.

“This proclamation ends a grave national injustice perpetrated upon the American people following the 2020 presidential election and continues the process of national reconciliation,” the document states.

Those pardoned were tied to efforts to overturn the 2020 election, including participation in what has become known as the fake electors scheme. The strategy involved the creation of false slates of pro-Trump electors in every battleground state that he lost to Biden, including Georgia.

Among those pardoned were four of Trump’s 17 co-defendants in a case concerning the effort in Georgia, including Kenneth Chesebro, the alleged architect of the scheme. Powell, Scott Hall and Jenna Ellis were the other three.

Trump, who was among those charged in Georgia, was specifically not granted a pardon.

“This pardon does not apply to the president of the United States,” the document states.

Others granted pardons include Mark Meadows, Trump’s former chief of staff during his first term, and former Trump adviser John Eastman.

On his first day of his second term in office in January, Trump issued pardons and commutations of sentences for more than 1,500 people convicted for their participation in the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, including those who injured police officers.

He has also issued pardons to former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, convicted on corruption charges, former Hunter Biden business partner Devon Archer and former Las Vegas City Council member Michele Fiore.

Bam Adebayo had 25 points and 10 rebounds, Norman Powell added 21 points in his return to Southern California and the Miami Heat held off the Clippers 120-119 on Monday night.

Powell was a key member of the Clippers for three seasons before being traded to the Heat before this season.

Andrew Wiggins scored 17 points and Kel’el Ware added 16 to help the Heat end a two-game losing streak and win on the road for the second time in five games. Miami is 1-2 to open a four-game trip.

James Harden scored 29 points and Kawhi Leonard added 27 as the Clippers lost at home for the first time in four games this season.

Ivica Zubac had nine points and 12 rebounds for the Clippers. Derrick Jones Jr., Bradley Beal and John Collins each scored 12 points.

The Heat shot 54.2% from the field and made 12 of their 25 three-point attempts to 50% for the Clippers, who were 17 of 41 from long range. The Clippers had 21 turnovers that the Heat turned into 37 points.

Miami led 120-116 after two free throws from Adebayo with 56 seconds remaining. Adebayo missed a shot inside with 26 seconds left and Harden made a three-pointer on the other end with 20 seconds left to pull the Clippers within a point.

The Clippers had a chance to win it, but Leonard missed a 26-foot step-back three-pointer at the buzzer.

The Clippers trailed by as many as 13 points in the third quarter before getting even 105-105 with 9:55 remaining on a three-pointer from veteran Chris Paul.