Aurelia Butler

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    New York Film Festival Pitches Its Ever-Expanding, Global Tent

    Standout selections include “Nickel Boys,” the Mumbai-set “All We Imagine as Light” and the documentary “Dahomey,” about African repatriation.Every year, the New York Film Festival sets up a big tent at Lincoln Center and invites its hometown to the greatest show on earth, or at least to watch some of the finest movies from across the globe. This year is no different, with standout selections that include the opening-night attraction, “Nickel Boys,” RaMell Ross’s tender, beautifully expressionistic adaptation of the Colson Whitehead novel; “All We Imagine as Light,” Payal Kapadia’s delicately observed, stirring drama about three women living in Mumbai; and “Dahomey,” Mati Diop’s intellectually electrifying documentary about the fraught complexities of repatriation.Over the decades, the festival’s tent has grown larger and its attractions more expansive. The main lineup and the Spotlight section feature a mix of established and lesser-known auteurs, as well as a smattering of stars. This is where you can find the recommended latest from Mike Leigh (“Hard Truths”) and Pedro Almodóvar (“The Room Next Door”), as well as the second and third parts of Wang Bing’s absorbing documentary trilogy about young people in China — “Youth (Hard Times)” and “Youth (Homecoming)” — which together run a whopping 378 minutes, about an hour longer than Julia Loktev’s 324-minute “My Undesirable Friends: Part I — Last Air in Moscow,” about journalists in today’s Russia.Marianne Jean-Baptiste in Mike Leigh’s “Hard Truths.”Creativity MediaIn 1963, its inaugural year, the festival presented 21 new feature films, and created a major stir. Not everyone on Lincoln Center’s board had been happy about the prospect of movies sharing space with the performing arts, with one member carping, “What’s next, baseball?” The festival programmers pushed on, and the film lovers came running. A critical and financial success, the ’63 iteration even made the cover of Time magazine, which trumpeted that the event “may well mark for Americans a redefinition of what movies are and who it is that sees them.” Six years later, the cultural legitimation of movies hit another milestone with the formation of what’s now known as Film at Lincoln Center, which runs the festival.Given that such snobbism about movies now seems quaintly absurd, and given too the ubiquity of festivals, it can be difficult to convey what the New York Film Festival meant when it was founded. Although Cannes and Venice had been around for decades, festivals hadn’t yet emerged as the crucial international distribution network that they are now for smaller, less mainstream work. In 1963, the big Hollywood studios were releasing bloated epics like “Cleopatra,” and art houses and audiences were both quickly growing. Yet the movies still had a maddening reputation problem. In an editorial titled “The Film as Art” published the day the first festival opened, The New York Times made a sweetly sincere case for the event.“Moviegoers and moviemakers are divided into two unequal parts in this country,” the editorial began. “The vast majority of the moviegoers go to see what the moviemakers call ‘product.’” The selections in the festival, by contrast, the editorial continued, “dignify movies in this country; tell the world that we too are interested in cultural efforts.” I’ve quoted these words before, and I’m sure that I laughed the first time I read them. Even so, they bear repeating given the state of the art and industry, especially in the United States, where movies are still referred to as product (and content) and the Oscar race tends to generate more attention than the movies do. These days, any defense of art bears repeating.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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    Stream Maggie Smith’s Greatest Performances

    In “Downton Abbey,” “A Room With a View” and dozens of other films and television series, she delighted audiences with her portrayal of sharp, tart-tongued and often wryly funny Englishwomen.Maggie Smith, who was 89 when she died on Friday, made her professional stage debut on Broadway in the 1950s, when she was still in her early 20s. In the decades that followed, she worked steadily in movies and television, while regularly returning to the theater.Smith won her first Oscar for the title role in “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie” (1969), a charismatic and manipulative teacher who has a profound and, at times, destructive effect on the lives of the teenage girls in her charge. She went on to win another Oscar, a Tony and four Emmys, and became known in her later years for playing a particular type of Englishwoman: sturdy, smart, sharp-tongued and rooted sometimes stubbornly in the traditions of the past.Audiences in the 21st century came to love Smith in two recurring roles: as the heroic Professor Minerva McGonagall in the “Harry Potter” movies and as the coolly disapproving dowager countess Violet Crawley in the period TV drama “Downton Abbey.” But her career was long and eclectic, with a mix of serious and comic characters, in both supporting and leading roles. Here are 10 of Smith’s best performances that are available to stream:1972‘Travels With My Aunt’Rent or buy it on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu or YouTube.Though she was only in her late 30s at the time, Smith took an early step toward her most familiar screen persona — the dynamic and unforgettable older relative — in this adaptation of Graham Greene’s offbeat adventure novel. Filling in for Katharine Hepburn (who differed with the studio and with her old friend, the director George Cukor, on how best to tell her character’s story), Smith ended up nabbing her third Oscar nomination, playing the eccentric globe-trotter Augusta Bertram, who enlists a stuffy, middle-aged Londoner in one of her illicit moneymaking schemes while hiding her true connection to him. Smith builds an outsize yet complex character via flashbacks that show how she learned to eschew conventional mores and to enjoy life on her own terms.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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    Watch a Chaotic Rehearsal in ‘Saturday Night’

    The director Jason Reitman narrates a sequence from his film about the production of the first episode of “Saturday Night Live.” Spoiler alert, making the show wasn’t easy.In “Anatomy of a Scene,” we ask directors to reveal the secrets that go into making key scenes in their movies. See new episodes in the series on Fridays. You can also watch our collection of more than 150 videos on YouTube and subscribe to our YouTube channel.Creating chaos onscreen requires a lot more planning than it might seem. That’s the case in this sequence from “Saturday Night,” the latest film from Jason Reitman, which looks at how the first episode of the long-running NBC sketch comedy show “Saturday Night Live” came together.In the scene, the “S.N.L.” cast members John Belushi, Gilda Radner, Dan Aykroyd and Garrett Morris are rehearsing a sketch.“At the beginning, you know, it’s going through the normal steps and trying to figure out camerawork,” Reitman says of the scene in his narration, and by the end, “it’s a total catastrophe.”So how did Reitman go about building this out-of-control situation? For one, he put his background actors through a boot camp, where they learned how to do the jobs of the crew people they were portraying. And beyond that, he created detailed plans for the production team to follow.“We had to choreograph this movie like a dance film,” Reitman said. “I’d have a giant whiteboard like a football coach. And I would have to write plays for all the extras and background actors and crew, just so everyone would know where to be.”Read the “Saturday Night” review.Sign up for the Movies Update newsletter and get a roundup of reviews, news, Critics’ Picks and more. More

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    Q&A: Maisy Stella of ‘My Old Ass’ on Her Rise to Fame

    Maisy Stella stars in “My Old Ass,” a new coming-of-age film. After years as a child actor, she says it was going to high school that helped her prepare.Maisy Stella couldn’t have guessed that the thing that would prepare her for her first major film role would be … being a regular teenager.In 2012, when she was 8, a video of her and her older sister, Lennon, singing Robyn’s “Call Your Girlfriend” took off online — a narrower era of the internet when harmonized covers and cup percussion could charm millions of strangers. The duet, which now has more than 31 million views, landed the pair a segment on “Good Morning America.” Soon after, they were cast in the soapy country music drama, “Nashville.”But it was a four-year pause from acting Ms. Stella took after six years on “Nashville” to attend high school that laid the groundwork for her return to the screen. Now, she stars in “My Old Ass,” where she plays Elliott, a restless teenager whose mushroom trip conjures her 39-year-old future self (played by Aubrey Plaza). The film, written and directed by Megan Park, plays with the buoyant idealism of youth, face-to-face with the hard-earned wisdom of adulthood.Ms. Stella’s high school sojourn of backpacks and lockers and prom — all the things she had romanticized from watching movies — turned out to be just the dose of adolescence she needed to play a starry-eyed Elliott.“My prep for ‘My Old Ass’ was those four years,” Ms. Stella, 20, said. “I can’t imagine how different I would have been in the movie if I had been working consistently since the time I was eight.”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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    ‘SNL’ Debut Cast and Crew Look Back on 50 Seasons

    As the historic 50th season of “Saturday Night Live” gets underway, its very first episode has become a piece of show-business mythology: the story of how a group of misfit writers and performers, led by a 30-year-old Canadian upstart named Lorne Michaels, put together a counterculture comedy-variety show in Manhattan amid interpersonal conflict, last-minute changes and substance abuse, and somehow established a television institution.It’s a legend so revered that it has inspired a new film, “Saturday Night,” directed by Jason Reitman, in which a cast of young actors portraying the Not Ready for Prime Time Players (as well as the show’s producers and crew members) act out a version of events as they might have unfolded on that fateful evening of Oct. 11, 1975.For the people actually involved in the debut broadcast of what was then called “Saturday Night” — the writers, cast members, comedians and musicians — that excitement and energy is only one part of the tale. They remember the creation of the NBC show — the long buildup to its premiere, the performance itself and the aftermath — as sometimes hectic, sometimes carefully organized. It was a period full of head-butting, but one that also fostered camaraderie and lifelong friendships. And it never would have happened without some crucial, 11th-hour discoveries, or the right people in place to make those realizations.But at no point did they wonder if they were about to make history. “I don’t think it concerned us one way or the other,” said Chevy Chase, a founding cast member and writer. “We were going to do what we do, and if you laugh, great, you laugh. You’ll tell somebody else about it, and they’ll laugh the next time.”Here, some of those participants share their memories of how “Saturday Night” came to life.Jane CurtinJane Curtin said that she realized the show was catching on when she left 30 Rock and on the street “you’d pass by people and they would shake.”NBCU Photo Bank/Getty ImagesCurtin had acted in theater, commercials and a Boston-area improv group, the Proposition, when she auditioned for “Saturday Night” in summer 1975. At her callback, Curtin expected a conversation with producers: “I walked in the door,” she recalled, “and they said, ‘OK, what have you prepared?’ The classic anxiety dream.” Fortunately, she had some old material in her purse. “It was a big purse,” Curtin said.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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    As ‘Saturday Night Live’ Starts 50th Season, Here’s What Cast and Crew Remember About the Debut

    As the historic 50th season of “Saturday Night Live” gets underway, its very first episode has become a piece of show-business mythology: the story of how a group of misfit writers and performers, led by a 30-year-old Canadian upstart named Lorne Michaels, put together a counterculture comedy-variety show in Manhattan amid interpersonal conflict, last-minute changes and substance abuse, and somehow established a television institution.It’s a legend so revered that it has inspired a new film, “Saturday Night,” directed by Jason Reitman, in which a cast of young actors portraying the Not Ready for Prime Time Players (as well as the show’s producers and crew members) act out a version of events as they might have unfolded on that fateful evening of Oct. 11, 1975.For the people actually involved in the debut broadcast of what was then called “Saturday Night” — the writers, cast members, comedians and musicians — that excitement and energy is only one part of the tale. They remember the creation of the NBC show — the long buildup to its premiere, the performance itself and the aftermath — as sometimes hectic, sometimes carefully organized. It was a period full of head-butting, but one that also fostered camaraderie and lifelong friendships. And it never would have happened without some crucial, 11th-hour discoveries, or the right people in place to make those realizations.But at no point did they wonder if they were about to make history. “I don’t think it concerned us one way or the other,” said Chevy Chase, a founding cast member and writer. “We were going to do what we do, and if you laugh, great, you laugh. You’ll tell somebody else about it, and they’ll laugh the next time.”Here, some of those participants share their memories of how “Saturday Night” came to life.Jane CurtinJane Curtin said that she realized the show was catching on when she left 30 Rock and on the street “you’d pass by people and they would shake.”NBCU Photo Bank/Getty ImagesCurtin had acted in theater, commercials and a Boston-area improv group, the Proposition, when she auditioned for “Saturday Night” in summer 1975. At her callback, Curtin expected a conversation with producers: “I walked in the door,” she recalled, “and they said, ‘OK, what have you prepared?’ The classic anxiety dream.” Fortunately, she had some old material in her purse. “It was a big purse,” Curtin said.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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    Will Ferrell-Harper Steele Documentary Drops on Netflix

    Will Ferrell and Harper Steele, a former “Saturday Night Live” writer, use a road trip to navigate their relationship now that she is out as a trans woman.The road movie is a time-honored Hollywood genre, and it’s a good format for a documentary, too. Something about getting in a car and driving down the interstate feels quintessentially American and holds the potential for revelation. I’ve seen plenty that serve up only pablum about finding common ground and tolerating each other. But a country so full of contrasts and contradictions is excellent fodder for whoever is holding the camera.“Will & Harper” (streaming on Netflix) is a surprisingly insightful entry into the category. Directed by Josh Greenbaum (who has made comedies like “Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar,” among other things), the documentary begins like any conventional road movie might: Two old friends get in a car on the East Coast and point their headlights west.But these are no ordinary friends. Will is Will Ferrell, the comedian and star. Harper is Harper Steele, one of Ferrell’s oldest friends, dating all the way back to their days at “Saturday Night Live,” where they started the same week in 1995. Ferrell, of course, was a performer. Steele was a writer from 1995 to 2008; for four of those years, she was the show’s head writer.In 2021, Steele sent an email to a close circle of friends, coming out as a trans woman. Ferrell, seeking to support her, proposed they go on a road trip across the country, during which he could navigate his relationship with Steele and they could also explore America. What would they learn? They’d find out.The result, unsurprisingly, is very funny. These are two top comedy minds, and Ferrell, at least, is among America’s most recognizable celebrities, no matter what color the state. Steele, on the other hand, is dealing with a new reality. When she was younger, she. had traveled across America, but as a trans woman she encounters a different landscape. Ferrell is there as a companion and, at some points, a defender. Being a trans woman in America can draw a wide variety of responses from others.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