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    ‘The Three Musketeers’ and the Joy of Old-School Blockbusters

    With its practical effects and broad-minded approach to story, the French franchise revives the pleasures of earlier movie spectacles, but with a Gallic twist.“The Three Musketeers” is to France what Mickey Mouse is to America — a cultural force with a lock on the country’s imagination. The 19th-century cloak-and-dagger tale, written by Alexandre Dumas, has lived countless lives onstage and onscreen, with stars including Charlie Sheen, Charlton Heston, Milla Jovovich and even Barbie resurrecting the classic tale of the Kings guard. It’s as iconically French as the Eiffel Tower, yet, until recently, it had been more than 60 years since the last French movie adaptation.Enter “The Three Musketeers: D’Artagnan” and “Milady,” a gritty two-film franchise by the director Martin Bourboulon that seeks to reclaim this legacy in a major way.“Milady,” the second installment, was released in European theaters earlier this month; “D’Artagnan” played in Europe last spring and is currently available in the United States on demand.Boasting a cast of French national treasures (like Louis Garrel and Romain Duris) and stars with global appeal (like Vincent Cassel, Eva Green and Vicky Krieps), these twin French-language productions were conceived as offensives against the tyranny of Hollywood movies that continue to dominate the French box office. At the end of 2022, not a single French-language production made it onto the list of the year’s top 10 highest-grossing films, signaling a crisis for a country whose cinematic heritage is a point of national pride.“In France, we have the talent, stories, and technicians to make blockbusters that can compete against American offerings,” Bourboulon said. “Big movies shouldn’t be made only by American studios, so we were inspired to take them on.”Shot back-to-back, the two films were completed on a budget of $78 million, financed by partners in France, Germany, Spain and Belgium. That number might seem low compared to that of this year’s Hollywood heavy-hitters, like “Barbie” ($145 million) or “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” ($250 million). Yet, together, “D’Artagnan” and “Milady” represent one of the most expensive French productions of all time. This big investment is part of a larger program from the French distributor Pathé to support tent-pole filmmaking defined by local character and resources.The two films in the franchise were completed on a budget of $78 million.Julien PanieIn early 2023, the studio released “Asterix & Obelix: The Middle Kingdom,” a comparably expensive comedy featuring homegrown I.P. and a star-studded cast (including Cassell and Marion Cotillard). That film faltered at the box-office — and fared even worse with French critics. “The Three Musketeers,” however, has managed to draw respectable crowds in France and keep the reviewers sated, in part because it resembles the kind of action-adventure spectacle we don’t get much of nowadays.Consider the first three “Indiana Jones” movies or “The Mummy,” starring Brendan Fraser. These are old-fashioned extravaganzas, filled with hands-on stunt work and grounded in a real sense of place relative to the artificial CGI backdrops of today’s superhero movies. Intermingling palace intrigue and dry humor with bracing swordplay and horseback races against the clock, “The Three Musketeers” is moodier than these American swashbucklers, but it provides the same kind of guilty pleasure that seems to have been phased out by multiversal travel.Green, who plays the chameleonic femme fatale Milady, was delighted by the films’ practical effects and on-location shoots. The actress is no stranger to big-budget filmmaking, having starred in English-language blockbusters like “Casino Royale.” “With the green screen, it’s like theater. You have to make it up,” she said in an interview. “Here, there was no green screen. The castles, the Normandy landscapes, the extras — we were all there in the present, living the action from the inside.”There are no screen-saver visuals in “The Three Musketeers,” but it also stands apart from its counterparts in the United States for its palpable human intrigue and heavy dose of eroticism. Illicit affairs, heated love triangles and murderous tensions between past lovers propel the plot — and one of the three musketeers is casually revealed to be bisexual after a night of drink and debauchery. Heroic values like honor take on a much heavier significance when musketeers are tormented by the demons of genuinely dark histories. The eldest, played by Cassel, is framed by his enemies: After a murdered damsel is found naked in his bed, he tearfully owns up to his past abuses against women in court.Eric Ruf, left and Civil, center in a still from “The Three Musketeers: Milady.”Pathé Films/M6 FilmsIt’s passionate, borderline racy stuff for characters that tend to get the family-friendly treatment — and these movies are better for it. The narratives of both films are roughly structured around d’Artagnan’s musketeer ascendance, the sinister machinations of Cardinal Richelieu, and, in the second film, the mysteries behind Milady’s malice — but they’re also distinguished by a meandering quality that allows the characters to make love, joke around and get drunk. It’s vintage reupholstered with a sexier silhouette.Some of Pathé’s future tent-pole projects, however, sound more questionable. A lavish rendition of Dumas’s other hit novel “The Count of Monte Cristo” is in the works; as is a two-part biopic about Charles de Gaulle, the French president. Though “The Three Musketeers” was announced as a two-part film, a cliffhanger at the end of “Milady” teases a to-be-continued. Whether or not a third movie is on the table, the series’ characters will live on in two TV spinoffs currently in development: one, centered on Milady; the other, on the first Black musketeer, Hannibal (Ralph Amoussou), who appears briefly in the second film. If these expansions aren’t exactly at a Marvel Cinematic Universe-level of sprawl, the idea of a French Historical Universe provokes an uneasy déjà vu.As superhero fatigue begins to sink into Hollywood, “The Three Musketeers,” with its immersive settings and combat scenes, and its broad-minded approach to story, reminds us that there’s something to be won by going back to the basics. Personality and (close to) real-world thrills can do a lot of the heavy lifting. More

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    ‘Parasite’ Actor Lee Sun-kyun Found Dead at 48

    Mr. Lee, a familiar face on Korean television and movie screens, rose to international fame after starring in the Oscar-winning film.Lee Sun-kyun, the award-winning South Korean actor who rose to international fame after starring in the Oscar-winning film “Parasite,” was found dead in Seoul on Wednesday. He was 48.Mr. Lee had recently been under police investigation on suspicion of illegal drug use, and he denied the accusations. The police said they were investigating the death as a suicide.The police found Mr. Lee’s body in a parked vehicle in central Seoul just before 11 a.m., said Jeon Yu-deung, the chief detective at Seongbuk police station, which is investigating his death. After Mr. Lee’s manager reported him missing earlier in the day, the police found his body using the location signal from his phone. Mr. Jeon said that Mr. Lee had also left what appeared to be a suicide note.Mr. Lee is survived by his wife, two sons and siblings, Mr. Jeon added. His talent agency, Hodu&U Entertainment, said in a statement that a funeral would be held privately and attended by his family and colleagues.Mr. Lee, who was born in Seoul in 1975, studied acting at the Korea National University of Arts and made his first professional appearance in a 1999 music video. He became a familiar face on Korean television when he starred in the dramas “Coffee Prince” and “Behind the White Tower” in 2007. He also played lead roles in the 2010 romantic comedy series “Pasta,” the 2012 thriller “Helpless” and the 2018 psychological drama “My Mister.”Mr. Lee received worldwide recognition for his performance in “Parasite,” a 2019 thriller in which he played the head of a wealthy family in whose house much of the movie takes place. That film won four awards at the Academy Awards in 2020, including for best picture, becoming the first non-English movie to win the award. He and his castmates won a Screen Actors Guild award for their roles.In 2022, Mr. Lee was nominated for best actor at the international Emmy awards for his role in the sci-fi thriller “Dr. Brain.”Police officers investigating a vehicle in which the body of Mr. Lee was found in central Seoul on Wednesday.Yonhap, via Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMr. Lee had been repeatedly questioned by the police in Incheon, a city west of Seoul, since October on suspicion of taking illicit drugs. He denied the accusations in several public statements and said he was the target of a blackmail effort.“I ask that the police make a good judgment about whose side’s statements are credible between me and the blackmailers,” he told reporters this week following a 19-hour interrogation.South Korea’s entertainment industry has recently been shaken by drug abuse scandals amid a nationwide antidrug campaign. The police in March raided the home of Yoo Ah-in, famous for his role in the 2021 Netflix series “Hellbound,” after he tested positive for propofol, marijuana, ketamine and cocaine. South Korea has a strict approach toward drugs. Convicted offenders face six months to 14 years in prison. Citizens can be prosecuted for using illicit drugs even if they do so abroad.The authorities have recently ramped up enforcement, warning that the problem is growing. Drug arrests have surged since President Yoon Suk Yeol declared a “war on drugs.” More than 17,000 people were arrested on drug charges nationwide this year, an increase from about 10,400 in 2019, according to the National Police Agency.If you are having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline or go to SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for a list of additional resources. Go here for resources outside the United States. More

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    The Great 2023 Streaming Movies You May Have Missed

    This collection of gems include character-driven dramas, dark comedies, smart documentaries, and romantic comedies both sunny and disturbing.As 2023 comes to a close, our monthly showcase of hidden gems on your streaming subscription services showcases a handful of worthwhile releases from this year that may have escaped your notice: character-driven dramas, dark comedies, smart documentaries, and romantic comedies both sunny and disturbing.‘A Thousand and One’Stream it on Amazon Prime Video.The writer and director A.V. Rockwell begins this wrenching character drama in New York City circa 1994, and nicely recaptures the look and feel of Gotham indies of that era. But that’s not just window dressing, While ostensibly telling the story of a young woman trying to go straight after a stint at Rikers Island and raise her son, Rockwell folds in relevant reminders of the city’s history in the intervening years and adroitly incorporates them into her characters and their ongoing struggle, reminding us that “quality of life” policing and the dirty business of gentrification are never purely policy issues. Yet it’s more than just a polemic; Teyana Taylor is shattering as the mother in question, Josiah Cross is charismatic and sympathetic as her teenage son, and the revelations of the closing scenes are wrenching and powerful.‘Rye Lane’Stream it on Hulu.A sensation at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, the debut feature from the director Raine Allen-Miller is a zippily paced and endlessly satisfying compressed-timeframe romantic comedy (think “Before Sunrise” and its follow-ups) with a delightfully of-the-moment voice and feel. Dom (David Jonsson) and Yas (Vivian Oparah) meet-cute in an art gallery bathroom; he’s crying in a stall over a fresh breakup, and she’s nursing a broken heart as well (albeit more quietly), and they wind up spending a few whirlwind hours baring their souls and helping each other settle their romantic scores. It’s a venerable setup, rendered with vibrancy and inventiveness by Allen-Miller, and the screenplay by Nathan Bryon and Tom Melia is full of witty, quotable dialogue. But the whole thing would fall apart without the bulletproof chemistry of Jonsson and Oparah; you want them to end up together so much, and that’s half the work of a great rom-com.‘Rotting in the Sun’Stream it on Mubi.Another Sundance breakout, this pitch-black comedy finds the director Sebastián Silva also starring as himself — or rather, a depressed and suicidal version of himself. After nearly drowning at a gay nude beach, Sebastián meets a charismatic but insufferable American influencer, Jordan Firstman (playing himself, and admirably game about it), who tries to engage him in a collaboration. What follows is both psychologically bruising and uncomfortably funny, while posing thought-provoking questions about guilt, privilege and the omnipresence of social media. Most impressively, it reminds us that L.G.B.T.Q. stories don’t have to be about positive representation; Silva allows his queer characters the complexity to be as annoying, difficult and exploitative as his story requires.‘El Conde’Stream it on Netflix.Pablo Larraín, the director behind “Jackie” and “Spencer,” cooks up his most unconventional riff on the biopic yet with this stylized hybrid of dark comedy, social commentary and gore-heavy horror. The premise is delicious, positing that the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet (Jaime Vadell) was, in fact, a literal vampire who faked his own death and went into hiding in the country. The razor-sharp script, by Larraín and the Chilean playwright Guillermo Calderón, ruminates on the parasitic nature of capitalism, wit and intelligence, and the cleverness of the narration (which not only tells the story but wryly comments on it) is topped only by the reveal of who is voicing it. Ed Lachman’s black-and-white cinematography stuns, and Larraín injects the proceedings with genre thrills and bleak laughs.‘Sanctuary’Stream it on Hulu.Margaret Qualley and Christopher Abbott both make brief but impactful appearances in “Poor Things,” one of the awards favorites of the season; viewers who enjoy that cockeyed meditation on sexual mores will find themselves equally fascinated by the duo’s provocative spring two-hander. Abbott stars as Hal, the wealthy scion of a luxury hotelier who is about to take over as the company’s chief executive; Qualley is Rebecca, who first appears to be interviewing him for the job, but is gradually revealed to be his longtime dominatrix, acting out a scene of his own creation. Their tricky psychosexual exchanges, a complex series of shifting power plays and deeply embedded desires, make for situations both highly dramatic and unabashedly erotic — the kind of movie for grown-ups it feels like they never make anymore, until they do.‘Sharksploitation’Stream it on Shudder.The title, for those not in the know, refers to a subgenre of exploitation movies prompted by the earthshaking success of “Jaws”— increasingly silly and derivative stories of shark attacks, grizzled sailors, frustrated scientists, corrupt politicians and swimsuit-clad human sacrifices. Stephen Scarlata’s giddily entertaining documentary tracks the evolution of these pictures, from the direct rip-offs of the ’70s and ’80s to their utterly insane contemporary counterparts, the cheapo disaster hybrids of the “Sharknado” ilk. But it also drills deeper, running down the history of sharks in fiction in general, as well as the (often negative) effects these works have had on the public perception of these much-maligned animals.‘De Humani Corporis Fabrica’Stream it on Mubi.The latest effort from the accomplished documentary filmmakers Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor combines a distinct nonfiction film style — the fly-on-the-wall institutional portrait, most frequently identified with Frederick Wiseman, focusing on a French hospital — and a more experimental approach, utilizing specialized cameras to explore the interiors of the human body during medical procedures. The latter footage, while not for the squeamish, is fascinating, taking a detached and almost fantastical view of our organs and orifices that’s akin to the landscapes of phantasmagorical science fiction. But the straightforward documentary sections are equally transfixing, forgoing talking head interviews for overheard conversations and operating room chitchat (“This guy’s weirdly put together!”), and capturing moments of staggeringly raw emotion and vulnerability. More

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    From ‘Poor Things’ to ‘Barbie,’ a Crybaby Year for Men in the Movies

    In 2023, male characters pouted elaborately after something they saw as their birthright was put in check.I’ve seen the greatest men of my generation regress into petulant babies — at least in the movies. Over and over in this year’s films, male characters throw elaborate temper tantrums, whining, huffing and raging like toddlers in their terrible twos.At Sundance in January, I joined the audience in cackling at “Fair Play,” in which a bratty finance guy devolves into a childish display of irascibility. Come summer, I saw the trend expand with the boffo success of “Barbie,” in which Ryan Gosling’s Ken makes an entire career out of pouting on the beach. And the fall saw a preschool’s worth of new baby men in “Poor Things,” “Dream Scenario” and “Anatomy of a Fall,” and one great baby man of history in “Napoleon.”The meltdowns themselves varied — one barked like a dog, another blasted music, a few made faces, most yelled, many cried — but the trigger was the same: a perceived loss of power to a woman.In “Poor Things,” that male torment is played for farce. Bella Baxter (Emma Stone) has only recently discovered orgasms when she meets Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo), a local rake who piques her interest. Their bond is simple: he is besotted; she relishes his sexual prowess. But trouble arrives when the pair voyages abroad and Bella, eager to indulge in new cuisines, sights and lovers, tires of Duncan’s micromanaging. She tries to send the stage five clinger packing, but he keeps popping up, alternating between profanity-laden outbursts and beseeching appeals to reciprocate his devotion.“I am not understanding this complicated feeling,” Bella remarks dispassionately at one point, as Duncan snivels over her sleeping with another man. The line lands as a joke; Duncan’s weepy reaction is entirely uncomplicated. But Bella’s confusion also hits on something real. Duncan doesn’t own Bella, as much as he would like to, and he sees himself as the victim of that reality.The comedy in “Fair Play,” directed by Chloe Domont, is cast in a darker tone, and centers not on concerns about sex, but career. Here, our petulant man is Luke (Alden Ehrenreich), a hedge fund analyst who, early in the movie, loses out on a promotion to his fiancée, Emily (Phoebe Dynevor). This means that Luke reports to Emily, while she wins coveted face time with the boss.To Luke, a silver-spoon-fed nepotism hire, nothing could be more intolerable. “I think I’m handling everything pretty well, given the circumstances,” he snarls at Emily before shrieking about how she “stole” his job.Luke makes his thinking clear: He wanted the promotion, so it belonged to him. This delusion of entitlement is echoed, to an extent, in Justine Triet’s “Anatomy of a Fall,” a tremendous work of drama that follows a novelist, Sandra (Sandra Hüller), after the sudden death of her husband, Samuel (Samuel Thesis). Samuel was also a fiction writer, albeit a more stagnant one, and openly resented Sandra’s success.In one crucial flashback, Samuel instigates a domestic scuffle with his wife. As the quarrel escalates, Samuel calls her selfish, chastises her for not learning his native language and accuses her of stealing his book premise. Finally, he prods, “I’ve given you too much — too much time, too many concessions. I want this time back and you owe it to me.”The gender dynamics of “Anatomy” are thornier than those in “Fair Play,” but the two films play well side by side. Triet and Domont share an interest in how power seesaws in contemporary straight relationships. By positioning their couples within the same professions and then pushing them to the brink, the filmmakers are conducting a kind of test. In this more equitable era, how do men and women balance being a good partner with self-realizing? At what point does envy trump affection? Is there any going back after it does?These are familiar questions with murky answers. The past decade has seen a cavalcade of bloated, juvenile men throw hissy fits after something they saw as their birthright — authority, prestige, admiration — was put in check. These spectacles can be sinister, pathetic and comical all at once, a semi-contradiction that movies, designed to pull in both directions, are ideally suited to dissect.No film this year synthesized these ideas more plainly than one about a plastic doll. Near the end of “Barbie,” once the Kens unlink arms and Gosling’s Ken stomps into the Dreamhouse, Barbie (Margot Robbie) hurries to comfort him. He sobs. She says she likes him as a friend. And then the pair agree to dismantle Barbieland’s system of male supremacy and instate a more just society.Wiping away tears, Ken confesses, “To be honest, when I found out the patriarchy wasn’t about horses, I lost interest anyway.” It’s funny to think it could be so easy. It’s excruciating to know it’s really not so hard. More

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    It Was a Year of Superhero Fatigue on the Big Screen

    Audiences are showing fatigue when it comes to Marvel’s box office behemoths of recent years. Based on what they were served in 2023, it’s hard to blame them.At the center of 2023’s “The Marvels” is Carol Danvers, a.k.a. Captain Marvel, who, if you’ll recall from the 2019 film “Captain Marvel,” destroyed the all-powerful A.I. leading the Kree empire. Joining Carol Danvers is Monica Rambeau, a.k.a. Photon a.k.a. Pulsar a.k.a. Spectrum, who was first introduced in “Captain Marvel,” then later featured in the Disney+ series “WandaVision,” where she was granted superpowers after an encounter with reality-altering witches. And joining these two Marvels is the teenage New Jersey native Kamala Khan, a.k.a. the titular character of the Disney+ series “Ms. Marvel.”That’s a lot to take in, which is why the first few minutes of “The Marvels” is just a series of flashbacks designed to catch the audience up before the action even begins. Even for dedicated fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the amount of prerequisite knowledge required to watch any M.C.U. movie or show nowadays is tantamount to a college course.And it seems like audiences are tiring of the constant homework assignments. A year of diminishing box office returns is more proof that the casual superhero moviegoer is becoming more and more of a rarity given how much is being asked of them, which is full, multiplatform investment.These franchises are spelling their own downfalls, as the price of entry into the fandoms has become frustratingly high for the dedicated disciples of these worlds, and not at all worth it for casual viewers or prospective new fans. This year has been a prime of example of what happens when a pop-culture movement takes hold of an industry and then overreaches. We’re witnessing Ragnarok.The barrage of offerings and the uniform, assembly-line quality of the plot structures make it easy to forget that the M.C.U. used to excel at providing entryways for those too intimidated or simply not enticed by the grand Avengers throughline. In the series’ Phase One, “Captain America: The First Avenger” jumped to the past for a World War II period piece and “Thor” offered a mystical world of Norse gods. “Guardians of the Galaxy” ventured out even further, to a universe larger than what was happening in Avengers central, with its own funky soundtrack, and “Ant-Man” fittingly zoomed in to a more playful, humbler superhero story. These films not only allowed prospective fans more opportunities to step into the mythology but also added texture to the franchise, diversifying the tones and genres of the films so every new one didn’t feel redundant or strangled into a larger plot.Opening weekends became cultural watershed moments, with the box office numbers to back them up. A-list stars, thrilling action sequences — summers were defined by the superhero blockbuster, with audiences glued to their seats through the M.C.U.’s signature mid- and post-credits scenes, as the films insisted on holding fans at attention until the very last word. The 2010s were defined by the likes of “Black Panther,” “Guardians” and the “Avengers” movies, which for the most part were warmly received by critics and enthusiastically devoured by fans.But Marvel’s narrative fatigue has been building for a while now; in fact, I wrote about this creeping danger as “Avengers: Endgame” and its three-hour runtime landed in theaters. But it isn’t just the storytelling structure that’s been hurting; it’s that middle “c” in the acronym, the cinematic element, that has also declined.“Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” was the highest grossing superhero movie of the year. Marvel Studios/DisneyConsider the latest batch of superhero offerings: Of this year’s films, “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” made the most money, but was dour, off-putting and didn’t offer the closure that the trilogy had seemed to move toward; this sequel was ultimately meant to serve as a changing of the guard, introducing a new lineup of Guardians. “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” was widely panned, and for good reason; it got tangled up in its psychedelic pseudoscience with no payoff but a mishmash of poorly executed visual effects. On the DC Comics side, the most impressive feat “The Flash” managed was casting a problematic lead actor as not one but two versions of the same character in a tedious time-travel plot that had already been pulled off more successfully in the TV series of the same name.And though “The Marvels” was set up to be the big superhero blockbuster of the fall, it was a rote example of the form — unimaginative, unremarkable and purely targeted to audiences already in the know. It has performed miserably since its November release, with Disney president Bob Iger (who oversees Marvel Studios) taking the rare step of publicly admitting the movie’s shortcomings. It’s the worst-performing M.C.U. film so far, and a perfect representation of the exhaustion on both the creative side and audience side.Back when these superheroes were still on print pages and not big and little screens, Stan Lee, the godfather of American comics and the creator of many of these characters, used to include what he called “Bullpen Bulletins” in his issues. These informal letters to readers, including announcements, promotions and context for and commentary on his work, were indicative of Lee’s relationship to the fandom. He fostered a community around his heroes, built from the ground up: He maintained a dialogue with fans, treating them as not mindless consumers but highbrow connoisseurs of the art form.Whatever “Bullpen Bulletin” factor may have ever existed with today’s superhero consumers seems to be fading fast. As franchises — particularly the M.C.U., fueled by Disney’s multibillion-dollar appetite — continue to grow and threaten ever more, ever greater crossovers, it’s becoming more difficult to understand what their endgame is (pun intended) when it comes to their fans. Who wants to watch 30 films and 10 TV series to engage with a franchise that continues to spread itself too thin at the expense of quality filmmaking?Nostalgia alert: Michael Keaton dons the Batman suit once again, with Ezra Miller in “The Flash.”Warner Bros. PicturesThat will be left only to the completionists, who have invested this much time and effort and will see these stories through to the end, and to the fans held hostage by their own nostalgia. There’s a reason the latest go-to cinematic gimmick is callbacks to decades-old incarnations of heroes: the trifecta of Spider-Men in “Spider-Man: No Way Home” and the alternate Batmen from “The Flash.”These cameos don’t serve the ambivalent 10-year-old who never saw Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man movies or Michael Keaton’s Batman. Neither do the several minutes of catch-up flashbacks explaining all the story lines leading into a new movie.The franchises continue to risk fatiguing their current fans and alienating potential ones. More stand-alone films, more inventiveness, more diversions from the grand plots and cookie-cutter setups would give these stories and their fans room to explore, but instead we’re stuck in a cycle of ever-expanding multiverses, narratives and timelines that even the best S.H.I.E.L.D. agents would find impossible to keep straight.The ultimate irony? These commercial superhero machines know exactly how their approaches can be self-sabotage … because they keep offering stories in which their heroes fall into the same trap. The antagonist of “The Marvels” opens rifts that tear through space and time, introducing other realities that can collide and destroy everything. In “The Flash,” Barry Allen (the hero’s alter ego) has to explain to an alternate version of himself that they can’t keep manipulating the time stream. “These worlds,” Barry says, looking at the C.G.I. representations of space and time around him, “they’re colliding and collapsing.” “We did this,” he continues. “We’re destroying the fabric of everything.”Superhero movies changed the industry. No matter what you think about them as art, the upswing of these comic book stories from the margins to the drivers of popular culture was swift and remarkable. But now these Clark Kents and Bruce Waynes and Rocket Raccoons and various Marvels risk orchestrating the end of this Age of Heroes.But like in every superhero movie, there’s hope yet: Stories that end. Characters who die. Universes where the stakes are real and cameos and meta-commentaries aren’t just crutches to bait audiences. Stories that don’t cling to a crumbling concept but perhaps start fresh in another corner of the universe.Superhero movies used to be super. The heroes are still as strong as before. They just need the movies to match. More

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    Willie Nelson, Style Icon

    “Roll me up and smoke me when I die,” Willie Nelson sang from the stage of the Hollywood Bowl during his 90th birthday celebration in April.As usual, Mr. Nelson looked very much at ease. He was wearing a cowboy hat over a red bandanna, and his hair spilled down his back. His trusty guitar, a road-worn classical acoustic model named Trigger, hung from the red, white and blue strap around his neck. At his side was his longtime friend, the equally relaxed Snoop Dogg.The duet with Snoop was one of many high points for Mr. Nelson in 2023, when fans and colleagues expressed their appreciation for one of the great survivors of American cultural life. In February, he won the Grammy for best country album. Two months later, he was joined by Beck, Rosanne Cash, the Chicks, Gary Clark Jr., Sheryl Crow, Keith Richards and other artists for the two-night Hollywood Bowl concert.In November, shortly after his latest book, “Energy Follows Thought: The Stories Behind My Songs,” appeared in indie bookstores and Wal-Marts alike, Mr. Nelson was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. This month, CBS broadcast the Hollywood Bowl concert; and a four-part documentary retrospective, “Willie Nelson & Family,” which made its debut at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, started streaming on Paramount+.But there was a time when Mr. Nelson’s prospects seemed shaky at best, when he was just one of many Nashville strivers who was trying to follow a path mapped out by music executives who supposedly knew better.The turnaround came when he made a break from all that and decided to be fully himself, not only in his musical approach but in how he presented himself to the world.Mr. Nelson, with Sheryl Crow, performed under a portrait of his former self at the Hollywood Bowl in April, during his star-studded 90th birthday celebration.Eduardo Munoz/ReutersThe Willie Nelson who appeared on the covers of the albums he made for RCA Records in the 1960s would seem to have almost nothing in common with the “cosmic cowboy” (as he once described himself) that audiences would come to know and love.On the cover of his 1962 debut album “ … And Then I Wrote,” he is a short-haired fellow wearing a suit and an anxious grin. For his eighth studio album, “Good Times,” released in 1968, he hit a fashion low, posing in golf attire on a putting green while draping himself around a young woman in a miniskirt. The albums sold poorly, and Mr. Nelson grew more and more frustrated by his lack of agency.In addition to foisting upon this sui generis singer-songwriter the image of a generic country star, RCA insisted that he use top-flight session musicians in the recording studio, rather than the down-home band that backed him on the road. It seemed that the label was doing everything to make Mr. Nelson a star but allowing him to be himself.His transformation began in earnest after his farmhouse outside Nashville burned to the ground in 1969. As Kinky Friedman noted in the foreword to Mr. Nelson’s 2012 book, “Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die,” the down-on-his-luck singer launched into his next phase by channeling the spirit of an earlier American iconoclast.“Willie told the Nashville establishment the same words Davy Crockett had told the Tennessee political establishment: ‘Y’all can go to hell — I’m going to Texas,’” Mr. Friedman wrote.Before Mr. Nelson settled on his signature look, he tried out a number of public images, including the good-time golfer on the cover of this 1968 album.In 1972 he settled in Austin, a city known for its progressive politics, laid-back vibe and mix of musical styles, from conjunto to the blues. He grew out his hair, started wearing bluejeans and T-shirts to perform at clubs like the Armadillo World Headquarters and doubled down on his switch from alcohol to pot as his preferred mood enhancer.To keep the sweat out of his eyes, he wore a red bandanna around his forehead. He grew mutton chops, then a scruffy beard. The new look fit the changing times, though it wasn’t a calculated appeal to the counterculture.“It felt good to let my hair grow,” Mr. Nelson reflected in his 2015 autobiography, “It’s a Long Story.” “Felt good to get onstage wearing the same jeans I’d been wearing all damn day. As I look at it, I was turning exactly into the person I was.”He also managed to bridge a great divide in American cultural life. As Turk Pipkin, a writer and filmmaker who has coauthored two books with Mr. Nelson, put it: “He united the hippies and the rednecks.”In 1973, he hosted the first of what would become an annual event, Willie Nelson’s Fourth of July Picnic. The concert, on a ranch in the Texas Hill Country, attracted dyed-in-the-wool country music fans as well as young progressives who were discovering his music through albums like “Shotgun Willie,” released that June on his new label, Atlantic Records.Performing at Willie Nelson’s Fourth of July Picnic near Austin, Texas, in 1974. Mr. Nelson wrote that it “felt good to get onstage wearing the same jeans I’d been wearing all damn day.”Bettmann, via Getty ImagesMr. Nelson’s willingness to follow his instincts was a key to his crossover success, said Peter Blackstock, who frequently covered Mr. Nelson for The Austin American-Statesman.“Cowboys like Willie because he came from a country background and was born and raised in Texas,” Mr. Blackstock said. “What was unusual is that all these people who were listening to Led Zeppelin or Frank Zappa also got interested in Willie. They appreciated the individual streak there.”Though he was considered part of the so-called outlaw country movement, Mr. Nelson couldn’t have chosen a more patriotic day to assemble his flock for a picnic; and his set list in those years, as today, included “Will the Circle Be Unbroken,” “Family Bible” and other songs that reflected his upbringing in the Baptist Church.By 1978, Mr. Nelson was wearing his hair in long braids — a radical act for a male country singer. Even his fellow male “outlaws” Waylon Jennings, Kris Kristofferson and Tompall Glaser adhered to gender norms in their appearances.In 1979, he showed up at the White House waring jeans and a sating jacket to present a Country Music Association award to President Jimmy Carter. That night, Willie smoked what he called “a fat Austin torpedo” on the White House roof.Unlike his fellow country singer Charley Pride, Mr. Nelson did not wear a suit when he met with President Jimmy Carter at the Oval Office in 1979.Harvey Georges/Associated PressMuch has been made of Mr. Nelson’s appreciation of marijuana and advocacy on its behalf. A 1978 profile in High Times magazine began, “Willie Nelson smokes a lot of dope.” In the 1990s, he joined the advisory board of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, or NORML.Despite the waist-length hair and frequent pot-smoking, Mr. Nelson never abandoned his heartland roots. The High Times article quoted a friend who said he drove “a pickup truck with a gun rack”; and Mr. Nelson would go on to be a founder of Farm Aid, the annual benefit concert that has raised millions for American family farmers over the last four decades.As the nation grew more divided, his still had a knack for bringing together opposing camps. In 2015, he stood on a stage in Washington, D.C., to accept the Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song. Applauding him from a few feet away were Representative Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California, and Representative Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California. In its report on the event, The Texas Tribune called Mr. Nelson “the only person who can bring Democrats and Republicans together in the nation’s capital.”Contradictions have defined his life and career. Mr. Nelson is someone who owns a home in Maui, Hawaii, with views of the Pacific Ocean, yet for several years also operated Willie’s Place, a truck stop and biodiesel processing plant in Carl’s Corner, Texas. He has taught Sunday school in Fort Worth, Texas, and praised Las Vegas for its “hustler energy.” He has had his assets seized by the I.R.S. and sung with President Obama at a 2014 benefit concert for veterans.At his 90th birthday concert in April, Mr. Nelson duetted with Snoop Dogg on the 2012 song “Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die.”Joshua Timmermans/Blackbird Presents“The common thinking for almost all of us is to see things as contrary positions, and we all fall into it,” Mr. Pipkin said. “Willie doesn’t necessarily see them as contrary. He doesn’t see the billionaire and the bum in different ways.”Or, as Mr. Nelson put it in his autobiography, “I’m a man of many parts.” More

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    Zita Carno, Concert Pianist, Coltrane Scholar and More, Dies at 88

    A veteran of 25 years with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, she was known as much for her eccentricities as for her exceptional musicianship.Zita Carno in 1960 with the composer Wallingford Riegger. The critic Harold C. Schonberg called her the “perfect interpreter” of Mr. Riegger’s technically difficult “Variations for Piano and Orchestra.”Whitestone PhotoWhen the Bronx-bred pianist Zita Carno auditioned for the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 1975, she played short excerpts from the orchestra’s repertoire for the music director, Zubin Mehta.“Then Mehta said, ‘Come back tomorrow. I want to hear you play the Boulez,’” she recalled years later, referring to the French conductor and composer Pierre Boulez.“Well, I said, ‘I eat that stuff for breakfast,’ which made him laugh.”Ms. Carno was hired and spent the next 25 years as the orchestra’s pianist, capping a career as a widely praised classical keyboardist (she also played the harpsichord and organ) who was also an expert on the music of the innovative jazz saxophonist John Coltrane.Ms. Carno died on Dec. 7 in an assisted living facility in Tampa, Fla. She was 88.Her cousin Susanna Briselli said the cause was heart failure. Ms. Carno had moved to Tampa with her mother after her retirement from the Philharmonic to be near the spring training facility of the Yankees, her favorite baseball team.Ms. Carno was known as much for her eccentricities as for her musicianship.Esa-Pekka Salonen, the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s music director from 1992 to 2009, said in a phone interview that Ms. Carno “had an extraordinary capacity as a musician,” adding, “She could read basically everything — not only Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms but pieces by Hindemith and Richard Strauss, with all sorts of complex transpositions, and play them in real time and in tempo.”Mr. Salonen said that Ms. Carno’s talents transcended sight-reading piano pieces and extended to calculating a full orchestral score in her head. “She had a particular kind of C.P.U. that could process a lot of information in real time,” he said. “She had that kind of unusual brain.”She also frequently used the phrase “Yoohoo, bubeleh!” — “bubeleh” is Yiddish for “sweetheart” — as a greeting in her booming voice.“Those words came out of her with startling regularity,” David Howard, a former clarinetist with the Philharmonic, said by phone. The two collaborated on an album, “Capriccio: Mid-Century Music for Clarinet,” released in 1994.During a rehearsal when Mr. Boulez was conducting the orchestra, Mr. Howard recalled, “He asked Zita to play something a little bit softer and she said, ‘Sure, bubeleh!’“Boulez was as serious and solemn a music figure as ever lived,” he added. “We had to grit our teeth to keep from laughing.”She also used the words “yoohoo” and “bubeleh” in musical scores, To Ms. Carno, “yoohoo” denoted a duplet (a group of two notes), and “bubeleh” was her word for a triplet (a group of three).Joanne Pearce Martin, Ms. Carno’s successor at the Philharmonic, wrote on Facebook after Ms. Carno’s death that she “never erased a single mark of Zita’s in any of the LA Phil keyboard parts. Seeing those ‘Bubulas’ and ‘Yoohoos’ peppered throughout the parts brings a special smile to my face — how could it not?”Ms. Carno, right, performed in an elimination round of the Leventritt Competition, a prestigious international contest for pianists and violinists, in 1959. To her left was Harriet Wingreen. Sam Falk/The New York TimesZita Carnovsky was born on April 15, 1935, in Manhattan and grew up in the Bronx. Her father, Daniel, who immigrated from Poland, was a pharmacist. Her mother, Lucia (Briselli) Carno, who was born in Odessa, Russia, was a homemaker whose piano playing Zita began to imitate when she was quite young — anywhere from 2½ to 4 years old, depending on the account.From ages 4 to 6, Zita traveled with her parents to Philadelphia, where she played duets with her uncle, Iso Briselli, a violin virtuoso, who also coached her, Ms. Briselli, his daughter, said in a phone interview. At 10, she finished writing her first fugue.She graduated from the High School of Music and Art (now the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts) in New York and, in 1952, received honorable mention for a piece she wrote for violin and piano in a composition contest conducted by the New York Philharmonic’s Young People’s Concerts.She attended the Manhattan School of Music, where she earned her bachelor’s degree in 1956 and her master’s the next year.When she made her debut at Town Hall in Manhattan in 1959, the New York Times critic Harold C. Schonberg wrote that she was “without a doubt one of the major young American talents, with splendid technical equipment, brains and finesse.”In October 1960, she was the soloist in a program of Romantic music during four concerts with the New York Philharmonic, with Leonard Bernstein conducting. Mr. Schoenberg called her the “perfect interpreter” of Wallingford Riegger’s technically difficult “Variations for Piano and Orchestra.”In the 1960s, she was a member of the Pro Arte Symphony Orchestra of Hofstra University and the Orchestra da Camera, both on Long Island. She was also in demand for recitals and concerts around the United States. She joined the New Jersey Symphony in the early 1970s and stayed until she left for the Los Angeles Philharmonic.She was also intrigued by jazz. (“She was always interested in cutting-edge music,” Ms. Briselli said.) In 1959, she wrote a two-part article about John Coltrane in The Jazz Review. Explaining his technique, she wrote, “Tempos don’t faze him in the least; his control enables him to handle a very slow ballad without having to resort to the double-timing so common among hard blowers, and for him, there is no such thing as too fast a tempo.”Ms. Carno, who was introduced to Coltrane by the bassist Art Davis, was able to transcribe his solos while listening to him perform.“I used to go equipped with music paper and a few well-sharpened pencils and I would take them down during the performances, which amused Trane no end,” she told Lewis Porter, the author of “John Coltrane: His Life and Legend” (1998).She wrote the liner notes to “Coltrane Jazz,” Coltrane’s second album for the Atlantic label, which was released in 1961.No immediate family members survive.In addition to her musical pursuits, Ms. Carno was an amateur baseball scholar. She wrote articles for the Society for American Baseball Research (about the pitcher Eddie Lopat) and the Baseball Research Journal (about pitchers who were notoriously tough on certain teams).She was also a science fiction fan and frequently commented online about the “Star Trek” television series and films.In a post on the science fiction author Christopher L. Bennett’s website in 2018, she said that she had been researching the Vulcan mind-meld and the half-Vulcan Mr. Spock’s advanced telepathic abilities. “As a result,” she wrote, “I have gained a whole new appreciation of the power of the mind — ‘wuh tepul t’wuh kashek’ in Vulcan — and how Spock was able to use it, especially when it came to getting himself, Captain (later Admiral) Kirk and the great starship Enterprise out of one jam after another.” More

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    Kanye West Apologizes for Antisemitic Comments With Post in Hebrew

    “I deeply regret any pain I may have caused,” wrote the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, who is releasing an album next month.Ye, the rapper and producer formerly known as Kanye West, apologized to the Jewish community on Tuesday for a series of antisemitic comments he made last year.“It was not my intention to offend or demean, and I deeply regret any pain I may have caused,” Ye said in an Instagram post that was written in Hebrew. “I am committed to starting with myself and learning from this experience to ensure greater sensitivity and understanding in the future. Your forgiveness is important to me, and I am committed to making amends and promoting unity.”Ye became embroiled in controversy in October 2022 after wearing a shirt at Paris Fashion Week that said “White Lives Matter” and posting an antisemitic tweet in which he threatened to go “death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE.” In an Instagram post, he shared a screenshot of a text exchange with the producer and music mogul Sean Combs in which he suggested that Combs was controlled by Jewish people.Many organizations, including Adidas and Creative Artists Agency, eventually cut ties with the rapper.The Anti-Defamation League said on Tuesday that Ye’s apology was welcome, while noting that actions speak louder than words.“After causing untold damage by using his vast influence and platform to poison countless minds with vicious antisemitism and hate, an apology in Hebrew may be the first step on a long journey toward making amends to the Jewish community and all those who he has hurt,” a spokesman said in an email.Ye had previously apologized for the tweet but has continued to make antisemitic comments. In one interview with the right-wing commentator Alex Jones, he said, “I love Jewish people, but I also love Nazis” and “I do love Hitler.”The rapper’s next album, “Vultures,” is set to be released on Jan. 12 after a delay. On its title track, Ye raps that he cannot be antisemitic because he had sex with a Jewish woman. More