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Last week, comedian Dave Chappelle marked his return to television by hosting “Saturday Night Live,” the highest-rated episode of the series in three years. He provided a searing, acclaimed monologue at the top of the show and even brought back a host of beloved characters from his acclaimed Comedy Central sketch series “Chappelle’s Show.” But now, Chappelle continues his comeback with even more news: he will premiere three new stand-up specials on Netflix.

Read More: ‘Saturday Night Live’ Review: Love Is Not A Victory March, But Dave Chappelle’s Comeback Is

Chappelle and director Stan Lathan will produce an original stand-up comedy special exclusively for Netflix, while the other two will be never-before-seen specials from Chappelle’s personal comedy vault. All told, these three represent Chappelle’s first concert specials since 2004’s “Dave Chappelle: For What It’s Worth.” They are slated to be released simultaneously in 2017.

Chappelle...

Last Week’S Review: ‘Saturday Night Live’ Review: Love Is Not A Victory March, But Dave Chappelle’s Comeback Is

Last week, IndieWire wrote that Dave Chappelle’s episode of “Saturday Night Live” was so transcendently good, it felt like an outlier. It hit all of the right notes, politically and otherwise, at precisely the time audiences wanted to hear it the most. This week’s episode, anchored by beloved former “SNL” cast member Kristen Wiig, went a little differently.

The Thanksgiving episode was mostly fluff, and while it threw some political punches, it often felt as if the cast members were having an infinitely better time than the audience. So, what did work? Let’s take a closer look.

Host: Kristen Wiig

Kristen Wiig is a joy. That’s never a question; nearly everything she touches turns to gold. Her enthusiasm and appreciation for the 8H stage shone through in her performances all night,...

The long-running sketch series “Saturday Night Live” has come under much criticism over the past year for allowing president-elect Donald Trump to host the show last year and thus normalizing and/or softening his bigoted rhetoric. The criticism heightened this past weekend when cast member Kate McKinnon as Hillary Clinton opened the show by singing “Hallelujah” as a tribute to Leonard Cohen’s passing and Clinton’s loss. Suffice it to say, it was a divisive performance. Some found it to be a moving acknowledgement of our precarious times, others found it to be tone-deaf given the show’s track record over the past year. Now in response to criticism of the show, actor Alec Baldwin, who played Trump on the show during this past year, has come out and said that NBC execs “kill” attempts for “SNL” to tell people who to vote for.

Read More: ‘Saturday Night Live...

Last Week’S Review: The Saviors Take Center Stage in ‘The Cell’

Whose Episode Is It?

We’re back at Alexandria, so there are plenty of familiar faces, with some focus given to Michonne, Rosita, and Spencer. But the star of the show, of course, is Rick. You’ll recall that Negan’s goal in “The Day Will Come When You Won’t Be” was to break Rick and ensure his obedience. As the Saviors’ “business relationship” with Alexandria begins, Negan is there to personally confirm that Rick is truly broken. It’s about as fun and exciting as it sounds.

Man Is the True Monster

I’ve made it clear that Negan’s smarmy shtick doesn’t work for me, and his arrival at the beginning of “Service” is almost self-parody. He walks up to Alexandria’s gate whistling a jaunty tune, then immediately sings, “Dun dun dun duuun!

In the days leading up to Dave Chappelle’s episode of “Saturday Night Live,” people were wondering if Chappelle would revive any of his characters from his beloved sketch series “Chappelle’s Show.” The comedian hadn’t planned on it at first, but then he saw the recent episode of “The Walking Dead” in which Negan kills Glenn and Abraham with a barbed wire-wrapped baseball bat and changed his mind.

Read More: ‘Saturday Night Live’ Review: Love Is Not A Victory March, But Dave Chappelle’s Comeback Is

In the sketch, Chappelle plays Negan as he walks up and down a line of people deciding whom he should kill. The potential victims turn out to be some of the most famous characters from “Chappelle’s Show”: crack addict Tyrone Biggums, player haters Silky Johnson and Beautiful, played by Donnell Rawlings, white news anchor Chuck Taylor, Chappelle’s impression of...

“Saturday Night Live” addressed two events in its cold open: Hillary Clinton’s loss to Donald Trump in the 2016 Presidential Election and the death of singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen. Cast member Kate McKinnon played Clinton on the show throughout the election and she reprised the character once again for a tribute to Cohen. On a dark stage, McKinnon sang a somber, emotional rendition of Cohen’s most famous song “Hallelujah” as recognition of Cohen’s passing and Clinton’s loss. After the song was complete, she addressed the camera and said, “I’m not giving up, and neither should you,” before starting the show.

Read More: ‘Saturday Night Live’ Review: Love Is Not A Victory March, But Dave Chappelle’s Comeback Is

Though the performance was acclaimed by many, it nevertheless proved divisive in the aftermath of Trump’s presidential win. “SNL” has been harshly criticized for inviting Trump onto their...

There are two key elements determining how much you’ll appreciate Nat Geo’s new event series, “Mars,” a hybrid of scripted and documentary storytelling that blends present-day space footage and expert interviews with a fictional narrative about the first manned mission to Mars:

First, where you prioritize finding a new planet to sustain human life in light of recent events. Considering the damaging-to-catastrophic ecological effects coming our way thanks to the newly elected officials’ stance on climate change — a.k.a., How important is it that the human race has somewhere to go when Earth is totally fucked? — we think this might be up there on your list of concerns. Second, how much you like the idea of watching “The Martian” without Matt Damon’s natural charisma.

Read More: Election 2016: Joss Whedon and ‘Saturday Night Live’ Taught Us How and Why Comedy Can Fail to Inspire

The latter...

The heavy metal group Slipknot and the cult action film “Crank” may not have much in common face, but creators from both entities have come together to adapt a hyper-violent graphic novel. Slipknot co-founder Shawn Crahan, a.k.a. “Clown,” and “Crank” co-director Mark Neveldine have brought Joe Casey’s “Officer Downe” to the big screen. Written by Casey himself, the film stars Kim Coates (“Sons of Anarchy”) as Officer Downe, a deceased police officer resurrected from the dead to keep fighting crime. Watch an exclusive clip from the film below.

Read More: 11 Films We Cannot Wait to See at the 2016 Los Angeles Film Festival

Neveldine serves as “Officer Downe’s” producer. He and his partner Brian Taylor have previously directed both “Crank” and its sequel “Crank 2: High Voltage,” as well as the sci-fi thriller “Gamer” and the superhero sequel “Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance.” They have also wrote...

The Italian auteur is to receive the Pardo d’onore at the Locarno Film Festival in August.

Italian director Marco Bellocchio is to be honored with the Pardo d’onore Swisscom at this year’s Locarno Film Festival.

Bellocchio’s debut feature Fists In The Pocket screened at Locarno in 1965, winning the Vela d’argento, and the film will play again this year as a special Piazza Grande screening on August 14. The restored print is being sold internationally by The Match Factory.

Bellocchio will also take part in a masterclass in the Spazio Cinema.

A regular visitor to Locarno, the Italian auteur’s Victory March played in competition in 1976. He was president of the jury in 1997 and in 1998, the Festival featured a major retrospective of his work.

Previous recipients of the Pardo d’onore include Jean-Luc Godard, Ken Loach, Sidney Pollack, William Friedkin, Jia Zhang-ke, Alain Tanner, Werner Herzog and, in 2014, Agnès Varda...

Marco Bellocchio

Italian filmmaker Marco Bellocchio will be awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the 68th Venice International Film Festival.

The new version of Bellocchio’s Nel nome del padre (In the Name of the Father, 1971) will be screened at the festival following the awards ceremony for the Golden Lion, in the Sala Grande at the Palazzo del Cinema. This version is not a restoration, but an entirely new, “current” work, culled by the director from the original film’s material. The original film was released in 1971.

He is known for his works: Nel nome del padre (1971), Marcia trionfale (Victory March, 1976), psychological drama Il gabbiano (1977), Salto nel vuoto (A Leap in the Dark, 1980), Diavolo in corpo (Devil in the Flesh, 1986), La condanna (The Conviction, 1991), Il sogno della farfalla (1994), Il principe di Homburg (The Prince of Homburg, 1977), La balia (The Nanny, 1999) Buongiorno, notte (Good Morning, Night, 2003) and L’ora...