Aurelia Butler

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    How Stop-Motion Yetis Emerged From Film Hibernation

    “The Primevals,” a movie in the lineage of “Jason and the Argonauts,” was filmed 30 years ago. It has finally been released.Movies like “Dune: Part Two” and “Challengers” arrived in theaters later than expected because of last year’s actors’ strike, and Hollywood experienced significant production setbacks during the coronavirus pandemic.But “The Primevals,” about a group of researchers who discover gigantic yetis and other prehistoric creatures, made those movie delays look minuscule when it was released in theaters in March.It was filmed in 1994.The live-action movie, which was delayed because of funding woes and then the death of its director, David Allen, incorporates a stop-motion animation technique in which puppets are painstakingly photographed and brought to life through a series of frames, as with a children’s flipbook. The retro look conjures up an earlier era of filmmaking, before computer-generated imagery took over visual effects.“It’s like an archaeological find,” said Juliet Mills, who plays one of the movie’s researchers. “It’s like entering a time machine watching this film.”Mills and the other actors had doubted that the movie would ever reach theaters. Even before Allen died, the film’s development had been plagued by outsize expectations and financial challenges.David Allen, left, and Chris Endicott working behind the scenes on “The Primevals.” Allen conceived the movie in the 1970s and began directing it in the 1990s.Full Moon FeaturesWe 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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    Going Behind the Scenes of ‘Popcast (Deluxe)’

    The weekly culture roundup show, hosted by Jon Caramanica and Joe Coscarelli, celebrates its first anniversary on May 31.Times Insider explains who we are and what we do and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.When you walk into the “Popcast (Deluxe)” recording studio on the second floor of the New York Times office in Manhattan, the first thing you notice is two colorful chairs in the center of the room with black microphones perched on the seat backs.“We were thinking ‘elevated basement,’” said Jon Caramanica, a pop music critic for The New York Times and a host of the show, a weekly culture review on YouTube. “It’s a little ‘Wayne’s World.’”Mr. Caramanica and his co-host, the Times pop music reporter Joe Coscarelli, picked out the furniture for their studio at Horseman Antiques on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn. The chairs are among many quirky personal touches they’ve added to the space — books, photography from their work at The Times, lots of junk food — that, like the show, blend a highbrow and lowbrow aesthetic.Both Mr. Caramanica and Mr. Coscarelli were treading new ground when they began hosting “Popcast (Deluxe),” The Times’s first video podcast, together one year ago. The show is a spinoff of “Popcast,” a weekly pop music podcast that Mr. Caramanica has hosted since 2016. For the “deluxe” version with a broader view of pop culture, the idea was to take something that was already working — the easy and playful rapport between Mr. Caramanica and Mr. Coscarelli, a frequent “Popcast” guest — and adapt it for YouTube, a video platform that podcasts were increasingly moving into.“We want to go where smart, curious, pop-culture-interested people are living,” Mr. Coscarelli said. “YouTube was the obvious next place.”The pair records on Mondays and releases segments of the conversation throughout the week on YouTube, as well as a full audio episode on Wednesdays. For the week of May 13, Mr. Caramanica and Mr. Coscarelli had decided to cover the feud between the hip-hop giants and rivals Drake and Kendrick Lamar, as well as Zendaya’s star turn in the tennis film “Challengers,” and they allowed a Times Insider reporter to observe.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 Dead Don’t Hurt’ Review: A Foursquare Western From Viggo Mortensen

    Mortensen gives his film a nested, at times unnecessarily complicated structure, but with performances this good, it’s hard to mind much.In making an honest go at reviving the movie western, Viggo Mortensen — who directed, wrote and stars in “The Dead Don’t Hurt,” in addition to composing its score — delivers a few different westerns in one.Not counting a deathbed prologue, the film initially seems to be staking out a claim in the law-and-order corner of the genre. Mortensen, as a bereaved sheriff named Holger Olsen, appears skeptical when a town dullard stands accused of six murders and apparently claimed not to remember any of them. The local courthouse — a makeshift affair cobbled together in the saloon — is not the most forgiving place for the wrongfully accused, or for anyone. (At one point, in lieu of slamming a gavel to call for order, the judge fires a gun upward twice, then glances toward the ceiling to make sure it won’t cave in.)We’ve already seen the killer. Weston Jeffries (Solly McLeod), the entitled and vicious son of the area’s leading rancher, Alfred Jeffries (Garret Dillahunt), is introduced mid-spree: He is first seen emerging from the saloon and casually shooting two people in a single take before the title card appears, dangling above a corpse.But before “The Dead Don’t Hurt” can become a film about a good sheriff’s efforts to correct a miscarriage of justice, it flashes back to tell the story of another character, Vivienne Le Coudy (played as an adult by Vicky Krieps). A brisker, more classically mounted western might have kept her offscreen, relegating her to the sheriff’s back story.Painting on a bigger canvas, Mortensen gives his film a nested, at times unnecessarily complicated structure. (Vivienne’s French Canadian childhood gets somewhat superfluous flashbacks of its own.) Once the grown Vivienne meets Olsen — she prefers calling him by his last name — they set out to build a life together. Olsen is an able carpenter; Vivienne has a knack for shooting fowl. She cleans up his dusty, drab parcel of land and inspires him to add some greenery.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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    Albert S. Ruddy, 94, Dies; Producer Won an Oscar for ‘The Godfather’

    A creator of the sitcom “Hogan’s Heroes,” he went on to win a second Academy Award for “Million Dollar Baby,” the boxing film starring Hilary Swank and Clint Eastwood.Albert S. Ruddy, who found early success in television as a creator of “Hogan’s Heroes,” the situation comedy about Allied prisoners outwitting their bumbling Nazi captors in a P.O.W. camp, and then became a movie producer who won Oscars for “The Godfather” and “Million Dollar Baby,” died on Saturday in Los Angeles. He was 94.His death, in a hospital, was confirmed by his wife, Wanda McDaniel, and his daughter, Alexandra Ruddy.Mr. Ruddy was a gravelly-voiced former systems programmer and shoe salesman who, by the time Paramount Pictures was preparing to film “The Godfather,” had become known for the unlikely success of “Hogan’s Heroes” and for producing a couple of movies that had come in under budget.“Ruddy is a tall, thin, nervously enthusiastic man who sees himself as a shrewd manipulator,” Nicholas Pileggi wrote in The New York Times Magazine in 1971 about the making of “The Godfather,” an adaptation of the Mario Puzo novel about the Corleone crime family. “Ruddy had always been able to talk his way through obstacles.”Among the many hurdles he faced as “The Godfather’s” producer was the animosity toward the prospective film shown by Italian Americans, civic-minded ethnic groups like the Sons of Italy and members of Congress, who thought the movie would perpetuate gangster stereotypes. Paramount feared economic boycotts.The person who concerned Mr. Ruddy most was Joseph Colombo Sr., the reputed Mafia crime boss who had founded the Italian American Civil Rights League. He had persuaded the F.B.I. to stop using the terms Mafia and Cosa Nostra in its news releases.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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    How A.I. Has Changed Music, and What’s Coming Next

    Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon MusicWhether you know it or not, you’ve likely encountered A.I. — artificial intelligence — in your music consumption over the past year. Maybe it was Ghostwriter releasing a song with a fake “Drake” and “the Weeknd” in collaboration that took over the internet last year. Or maybe it was Drake himself rapping as “Tupac” and “Snoop Dogg” during the recent Kendrick Lamar beef. Or maybe it was a new track by the country superstar Randy Travis, who suffered a stroke in 2013, and hasn’t sung a song since.In these ways and more, A.I. has become the dominant disrupter to music creation and distribution. And those use cases are merely the tip of the iceberg — A.I. is being used in playlisting, demo recording, and in the case of two hyped startups, Suno and Udio, consumer-level music-making.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about the ways in which A.I. has been deployed by musicians, the legal and philosophical questions it generates, and the sub rosa ways A.I. companies hope to weave their products into the music production and consumption of the future.Guests:Rachel Metz, who covers A.I. for BloombergKristin Robinson, who covers the music business for BillboardConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica. More

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    The Man Behind the Muppets

    As his company grew, Henson minted his leadership style. “I called him a gentle anarchist,” Erickson said.Oz added, “He never criticized, ever. He never told us what to do. He was the boss, but he was the boss as a brother, almost.”Making Henson laugh was the goal.On “The Muppet Show,” Erickson said, “even when the cameras were off and they called ‘Cut,’ everybody stayed in character and played jokes on Jim, or teased him or each other.” More

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    ‘Young Woman and the Sea’ Review: Fighting Sexism and Rough Waters

    Daisy Ridley plays Gertrude Ederle, who persuades her father to pay for swim lessons, and then goes on to be a pioneer.In a brassy set piece from the 1952 classic “Singin’ in the Rain,” its star, Gene Kelly, impersonates a newbie hoofer seeking fame on the Great White Way. “Gotta dance!” he exclaims to anyone he meets. In “Young Woman and the Sea,” Trudy Ederle is fond of singing the 1921 hit “Ain’t We Got Fun.” First loudly, with a ukulele, to convince her early-20th-century immigrant dad to spring for swimming lessons; later, softly, to herself as she prepares to become the first woman to swim across the English Channel. It’s her way of proclaiming “Gotta swim!”The real-life Gertrude Ederle was so utterly compelled that she put her hearing, already damaged by a childhood bout with the measles, at serious risk with her immersions. Based on a biography by Glenn Stout that contains some pretty provocative and reasonably well-supported theories about the ups and downs of her career, this Disney movie runs with those theories hard. Ederle, played by Daisy Ridley, runs up against not just the garden variety sexism of her time, but some male sponsors and coaches who actively sabotage her sporting efforts.This is one of those movies that proves, when they’ve got a mind to, they can still make them like they used to. Which is to say, its production values are top-notch, the cast uniformly competent or better (Ridley is particularly winning), and the filmmaking language — the director here is Joachim Ronning, whose last at bat with Disney was the 2019 critical misfire “Maleficent: Mistress of Evil” — is meticulously calculated to deliver a rousing climax and an appropriately heartwarming coda.It’s also rather rich in cliché. When Trudy is tempted to give up her sport, three angelic little girls show up as if on cue and one tells her, “It’s because of you I was allowed to swim.”Young Woman and the SeaRated PG for intense swimming maybe. Running time: 2 hours 9 minutes. In theaters. More

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    ‘Haikyu!! The Dumpster Battle’ Review: Drama on the Court

    This film extends the story told in an anime series about high school volleyball teams.For someone unfamiliar with “Haikyu!!,” the anime adaptation of a slice-of-life manga about a high school volleyball team, the premise may seem a bit niche. And yet the series, which continues in the form of the film “Haikyu!! The Dumpster Battle,” has always excelled at making its wholesome sports drama accessible to every kind of audience — especially those who may not know anything about volleyball.The series focuses on Shoyo Hinata, a short teenager who dreams of becoming a volleyball champion like his idol, a small-statured ace called the Little Giant. He enrolls at the Little Giant’s former high school, Karasuno, and joins the volleyball team with his middle school nemesis, Tobio Kageyama. The two boys form a superhuman pair that helps revitalize the team and offers Karasuno the opportunity to return to its former glory.Directed by Susumu Mitsunaka, “The Dumpster Battle,” which feels like more of an extended episode than a stand-alone film, picks up during Karasuno’s heated competition at the spring nationals. They are set to go against Nekoma, another team with which they’ve been caught for years in a friendly rivalry. The match takes up the entire movie, with flashbacks and series callbacks fully contextualizing the relationships and stakes at work in the game.As in every match in the series, the Dumpster Battle uses imaginative visual metaphors to depict each team’s offensive and defensive strategies and overall playing philosophies. Karasuno is the crow, with Hinata’s awe-inspiring leaps above the court represented by a crow making an airborne attack. Nekoma is the cat, grounded with solid defense, stalking and manipulating its prey until it can find the right moment to clip the crow’s feathers. And both of these underdog squads want to earn respect and fight their way out of the dumpster.Leading Nekoma is Kenma Kozume, an apathetic teen with no stamina and little athletic prowess who would rather play video games than volleyball. But Kenma, whom Hinata befriended at a training camp earlier in the series, is also Nekoma’s mastermind, meticulously planning their attacks while his teammates make up for the athleticism he lacks.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