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    ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ Debuts Apple’s New Film Strategy

    Martin Scorsese’s three-and-a-half-hour epic is the first of three high-profile movies the tech company will give wide theatrical releases in the coming months.The box office results for Martin Scorsese’s new film, “Killers of the Flower Moon,” will be revealed on Sunday and analyzed by reporters and industry insiders. Did the movie perform well? Did it fall short? Did Leonardo DiCaprio’s inability to promote the film because of the actors’ strike ultimately mean fewer people went to see it?This is a normal opening weekend practice for any major theatrical release, but it will be a first for Apple Studios, the producer and financier of the $200 million movie. It is teaming up with Paramount Pictures to release the three-and-a-half-hour R-rated film in more than 3,600 theaters.Until now, Apple’s films were streaming-first. But “Killers of the Flower Moon” won’t reach its streaming service, Apple TV+, for at least 45 days. It is Apple’s clearest embrace of movie theaters since the start of Apple TV+ four years ago, and the first of three major theatrical releases from the company scheduled for the next six months.During Thanksgiving weekend, Sony Pictures will work with Apple to release Ridley Scott’s “Napoleon,” starring Joaquin Phoenix. In February, Apple is joining forces with Universal Pictures to release the spy caper “Argylle” in theaters around the country.Bradley Thomas, a producer of “Killers of the Flower Moon,” called Apple’s partnerships “comforting,” because traditional studios have decades of experience with theatrical releases.“So Apple is dipping its toe into it,” he said. “They aren’t taking the whole thing on by themselves.”The producer Kevin Walsh, who began developing “Napoleon” with Apple in 2020, has watched its approach to theatrical release evolve. The turning point, he said, came after the top Apple TV+ executives Jamie Erlicht and Zack Van Amberg saw the success that Paramount had with “Top Gun,” which brought in $1.5 billion at the global box office last year.“What ‘Top Gun’ did to the box office they are trying to emulate with movies like ‘Napoleon,’ and ‘Formula 1,’” Mr. Walsh said in an interview, referring to the upcoming Brad Pitt movie that Apple is making with the “Top Gun” director Joseph Kosinski. “I think there is money to be made, of course, for spectacle movies in the theater. But they also serve as a massive billboard for the Apple TV service when they are successful and rolled out well.”Apple’s recent embrace of movie theaters is welcome news for a movie theater business that has been upended by streaming companies’ penchant for making films largely for their at-home services. Netflix first disrupted the long-held tradition of the theatrical release by putting films in a limited number of theaters for a limited time — usually the minimum required to appease filmmakers and qualify for Oscar consideration.Amazon Studios recently reversed its approach, giving commercial films like Ben Affleck’s “Air” significant time in theaters before releasing them to streaming subscribers.Ridley Scott’s “Napoleon” will open in theaters on Thanksgiving weekend.Sony Pictures and Apple Original FilmsBut Apple, with its deep pockets, reputation for secrecy (it doesn’t share streaming subscriber numbers and declined to comment for this article) and interest in controlling all components of its ecosystem, has surprised some with its willingness to team up with others to market its films to moviegoers. It’s a situation that leaves the company open to the vagaries of the theatrical marketplace.And “Killers,” with its high price tag, has to do big business to become a success. Analysts are predicting that the film could fetch anywhere from $18 million to $30 million in its opening weekend. That would be a tough beginning even for a film by Mr. Scorsese, whose movies traditionally have staying power in theaters and often eventually gross close to five times what they brought in on opening weekend. The film’s long run time and dark subject matter — the plot revolves around the murders of Native Americans — could also be commercial hurdles.“We are a little more bullish than the industry expectations floating around,” said Shawn Robbins, an independent box office analyst, who predicts the film will open in the $30 million range. “The film certainly has its hills to climb with a long run time and DiCaprio’s absence from the press circuit.”But “strong reviews and Mr. DiCaprio’s own box office history — especially with Mr. Scorsese — provide ample amounts of good will for audiences,” he added, and work in the film’s favor. “The market hasn’t had a high-profile film targeted toward adults for a while.” (“Oppenheimer,” with a similar run time and equally serious subject matter, defied odds this year and earned $942 million worldwide.)While Apple has said very little about its shift in strategy, theater owners are ecstatic.Apple is “a major company that has the ability to do a lot of high-quality work, and I think that the recognition on their part that movies belong in theaters is a strong signal,” Michael O’Leary, chairman of the National Association of Theater Owners, a trade association, said in an interview. “Prioritizing theatrical will help them get major filmmakers to come into their tents, and to create even more dynamic, entertaining fare in the years ahead.”Mr. Scorsese and his co-writer, Eric Roth, began adapting David Grann’s nonfiction book “Killers of the Flower Moon” in 2017. Paramount agreed to finance and distribute the film, but when the production costs soared, the studio brought in Apple in 2020 to finance the project.Others wanted it, said Mr. Thomas, who initially purchased the adaptation rights to “Killers” with his partner, Dan Friedkin. It was Apple, however, that guaranteed a full theatrical release — a must for Mr. Scorsese, whose last film, “The Irishman” for Netflix, had a truncated run in theaters.Paramount stayed on in a deal that saw Apple reimburse the studio for its development costs on the movie and a portion of Mr. Scorsese’s overall deal, according to two people with knowledge of the agreement, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the details were not public. Paramount controls all theater bookings and media buys for the film’s trailers and commercials, while Apple controls its publicity and marketing materials.Apple made similar, though less expensive, deals with Sony Pictures for “Napoleon” and Universal Pictures for “Argyle,” with Sony and Universal sharing the marketing costs with Apple and handling each film’s distribution.And while all three studios would like the opportunity to enter into long-term partnerships with Apple, the tech giant has not committed to any one partner.“I’d be surprised if they take a single-studio approach for distribution,” said Tim Bajarin, chief executive of Creative Strategies, a high-tech research firm based in Silicon Valley. “Apple is willing to work, and they have shown that they can work well, with multiple studios. I think that track is more likely to be what they’ll use in the future. They are extremely calculating.” More

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    The Rolling Stones Release ‘Hackney Diamonds,’ and More New Songs

    Hear tracks by Kali Uchis, Helena Deland, Olof Dreijer and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new tracks. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at theplaylist@nytimes.com and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once-a-week blast of our pop music coverage, and The Amplifier, a twice-weekly guide to new and old songs.The Rolling Stones, ‘Tell Me Straight’Most of “Hackney Diamonds,” the Rolling Stones’ first album of their own songs since 2005, is a romp that celebrates their sheer tenacity, their guitar riffs and their tight-but-loose musical reflexes — the way the band still kicks, defying mortality. True to Stones album tradition, Keith Richards takes lead vocals on one song, “Tell Me Straight,” and as usual it’s a little more ragged and unguarded than the rest. “I need an answer — how long can this last?” he sings. “Don’t make me wait — is my future all in the past?” He could be singing about a longtime friendship, a strained romance, or maybe a band that has endured, despite friction, through six decades.Kali Uchis, ‘Te Mata’The Colombian American songwriter Kali Uchis has proved herself in both up-to-the-minute Pan-American pop and retro excursions. “Te Mata” (“It Kills You”) is richly retro, a cha-cha that gracefully and emphatically rejects an abusive ex. “If you’re looking for the culprit, then look in the mirror,” she taunts in Spanish. “I’m with someone who makes me happy.” Strings, horns and jazz-tinged piano back her as her vocal rises from aplomb to icy contempt, never sacrificing sheer elegance.Caroline Polachek, ‘Dang’One percussive syllable — “Dang” — sums up the sound of this track, an outtake from “Desire, I Want to Turn Into You,” the album Caroline Polachek released earlier this year. Polachek, Cecile Believe and Danny L Harle concocted a staccato, stop-start production laced with full silences and out-of-nowhere samples. A repeated “dang” is also the bulk of the lyrics of the chorus; elsewhere, Polachek allots some melodic phrases to toy with permanence and impermanence, observing, “Maybe it’s forever, maybe it’s just shampoo.” The tone is casual; the construction, impeccably zany.Ana Tijoux, ‘Tania’The French-Chilean songwriter Ana Tijoux lost her sister Tania to cancer four years ago. “Tania” — from Tijoux’s album due in November, “Vida” (“Life”) — is a fond, celebratory tribute; Tijoux recalls her sister struggling in hospitals, but chooses remembrance over mourning. “Your memory always lives in the memories you wanted,” she promises. “We sing here, we dance here, we feel you here.” The track melds Andean rhythms with reggae, and envisions a solace “beyond every earthly plane.”Helena Deland, ‘Saying Something’Helena Deland ponders language, friendship and time in “Saying Something.” It’s a soothing, folky song about a fraught moment, when “Knowing what to say isn’t easy/Words feel like treacherous footing.” Her acoustic guitars and close-harmony vocals promise solace, even as she confesses her need: “Say something to me.”Nailah Hunter, ‘Finding Mirrors’The harpist, singer and songwriter Nailah Hunter floats enigmatic portents in “Finding Mirrors,” a single from an album, “Lovegaze,” due in January. “Don’t wanna fight you, don’t wanna win/Gold inscriptions all on your skin,” she sings. She’s cushioned by low synthesizer tones, illuminated by glimmering harp notes and prodded by undercurrents of percussion; the song stays suspended in its own limbo.Julie Byrne with Laugh Cry Laugh, ‘Velocity! What About the Inertia?’“What ever happened to slow, slow dancing?” Julie Byrne asks in a song that’s made for it: a two-chord reverie with echoey guitars and subdued percussion. Written by Laugh Cry Laugh’s bassist, Emily Fontana, with some lyrics by Byrne, the song finds bliss in the stasis of a long romance: “I’ll love you always/Our names carved in the table,” she muses.Dawn Richard, ‘Babe Ruth’A rap comparing herself to a sports hero (and a candy bar) is the least innovative component of “Babe Ruth” from Dawn Richard’s new EP, “The Architect.” Everything else stays in creative flux. A blurry, glitchy intro segues into an electro thump, a house bounce and a jazz-rock guitar solo that ends as if awaiting another metamorphosis.Olof Dreijer, ‘Cassia’Olof Dreijer, the electronic producer who’s half of the duo the Knife, has released a frisky solo instrumental EP, “Rosa Rugosa,” that toys constantly with riffs, rhythms and permutations. The melodic lines of “Cassia” use sliding, wriggling tones that always feel a little slippery, and Dreijer subverts them further with syncopated cross-rhythms and blipping countermelodies; the 4/4 motion is constant but cheerfully contested all the way through. More

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    Lauryn Hill Continues to Evolve on Her ‘Miseducation’ Anniversary Tour

    Celebrating the 25th anniversary of “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill,” as well as her legacy with the Fugees, the singer and rapper reveled in the power of reinvention.“She is having so much fun onstage” was the surprised thought that ran through my mind as Lauryn Hill kicked off her Ms. Lauryn Hill & Fugees: “Miseducation of Lauryn Hill” 25th Anniversary Tour at the Prudential Center in downtown Newark on Tuesday night.Having grown up in nearby South Orange, N.J., her joy was partly because she was at home, and partly because we were all there to celebrate that a quarter of a century ago, she made history with her 10-times-platinum multigenre album “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill.” Its 10 Grammy nominations yielded five wins, which was a record for a female artist, and “Miseducation” became the first hip-hop LP to take home album of the year.Perhaps Hill was also amped by the high stakes of the performance. Earlier this year, her Fugees group mate Pras was found guilty for an illegal foreign influence scheme, leading some to predict that this full reconciliation of Pras, Hill and Wyclef Jean would be their final tour as a trio.Or maybe, I was projecting glee back onto her since this was the first of her concerts at which I’ve felt fully at ease since attending her initial solo tour back in 1999. Every time since — including when I bought tickets to her performance at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland in 2009, only for her entire European tour abruptly canceled — I’ve been disappointed by her inconsistency.Most of those shows came after Hill settled a suit with four musicians, known collectively as New Ark, who said she hadn’t properly credited them for their contributions to the sound and success of “Miseducation.” With the exception of the taping and release of “MTV Unplugged” in 2001, she had gone into a self-exile. “I had to step away when I realized that for the sake of the machine,” she later told Essence magazine, “I was being way too compromised.”From left: Wyclef Jean, Hill and Pras of the Fugees. The group’s set featured guest stars and beloved songs.Maansi Srivastava/The New York TimesWhen she returned to the stage a few years later, she had so radically rearranged the songs from the beloved “Miseducation,” they were often unrecognizable.The revisions stung fans hard because the music had spoken so directly to so many — including me. “Miseducation” was released on my 23rd birthday on Aug. 25, 1998, and because of that simple calendar fact, I thought the album was all mine. Back then, I was in transition — between a relationship with my college boyfriend and the young man who would become my life partner. I was obsessed with her B-side cuts “When It Hurts So Bad” and “I Used to Love Him” with Mary J. Blige, since these breakup songs captured my range of emotions: “What you need ironically/Will turn out what you want to be” became my mantra as I moved from heartache to hopefulness.The album was so tied up with a younger version of myself that I understood it only through nostalgia, failing to appreciate who Hill was becoming in the present. A more mature way of experiencing her live was to let go of my expectations and recognize that she was innovating, recreating and disproving past accusations of unoriginality. “There’s no way I could continue to play the same songs over and over as long as I’ve been performing them without some variation and exploration,” she wrote in 2018. “I’m not a robot. If I’d had additional music out, perhaps I would have kept them as they were.”In Newark this week, as Hill appeared onstage in a bright red ruffled corseted gilet, bedazzled sunglasses and a jeweled kufi, she entranced the crowd, reminding us that she was one of our generation’s definitive preachers and now prodigal daughters. She opened each song in its familiar arrangement, and then quickly switched up its tempo, genre or melody.The soulful “Final Hour” was remixed with the beat of “Money, Power & Respect,” the Lox’s collaboration with DMX and Lil’ Kim; the marching band from Hill’s alma mater Columbia High School joined her live band onstage for “Doo Wop (That Thing)”; Latin jazz beats were interspersed throughout the tender “To Zion,” a song for her oldest son that was not merely a tribute, but a complete triumph.The music was set to a backdrop of images that featured quotes from Frantz Fanon and Marcus Garvey, Hill’s personal home videos, and a montage of Black artists and activists including Josephine Baker and Angela Davis. My favorites showed Hill over time, which seemed in direct conversation with the beautiful black-and-white photographs of the musician looking into a mirror from the liner notes of “Miseducation” itself.For those unaccustomed to Hill’s latest style, her musical digressions often sound dissonant. In a way, they are right. The remixes can be disinviting, and many fans near me in the crowd found it hard to keep up with her changes. Whereas Taylor Swift’s note-for-note versions of her old albums are celebrated, I am increasingly intrigued by Hill’s appetite for revolutionizing her older material.Hearing these songs rearranged not only forced me to pay closer attention to her powerfully packed lyrics and melodic rhyme flow, but also reactivated my sense of curiosity, anticipation and admiration for her.Hill is known for rearranging the songs from “Miseducation” onstage.Maansi Srivastava/The New York TimesIn a genre like hip-hop, where remixing, sampling and turning older music into the new is a core artistic principle and central practice, Hill’s experimentation is not that surprising. But as a female rapper, she has often been held to a double standard and has had to play by different rules. Onstage, she isn’t merely entertaining us; she’s showing us what it means to have to reclaim this album as fully hers, while pushing her artistry into the future.It is a big ask from an artist with only one full album. And it’s a meaningful challenge to the very notion of the “great” album, which has a timelessness that is as dependent on its spirit of innovation and production value as well as our personal connections to it — how much we loved it, and the vision of ourselves that it projected back onto us when we heard it for the first time. As we celebrate the 50th anniversary of hip-hop, is it possible to both champion Hill’s groundbreaking contributions to the genre while also allowing the album itself to grow up as much as we have?An answer of sorts came during another part of the show. When Pras and Wyclef finally joined Hill for the second set, their reunion relied on our familiarity with the Fugees’ catalog — “Vocab,” “Zealots,” “The Mask” — and at one point, there were more than eight people onstage with mics, including guests such as John Forte, Outsidaz and Remy Ma, for a roaring rendition of “Cowboys.” It was a joy to see the three intact and their playful competitiveness and musical chemistry restored. While being flanked by so many of her male peers, Hill still commanded the space as she always did, proving her mettle as one of our greatest M.C.s.But as the Fugees set wore on, I began to long for the “Miseducation” one. Suddenly, I wanted to linger in the unpredictability of Hill’s arrangements, her constant improvising, her seamless movement between singing and rapping.By finally accepting Hill’s ability to change, I realized that I had misread so much before. Here was an artist — once again, and on tour — rewriting the rules of hip-hop, and American popular music at large. She was not just teaching us how to hear “Miseducation” differently, but showing us what it looks like for a musician to truly evolve and redefine what we call a classic as something brand-new. More

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    Britney Spears Timeline, From the Conservatorship to Her Memoir

    Before the pop star releases her memoir next week, here’s a look back at her life since the guardianship controlling her affairs was terminated in 2021.In June 2021, Britney Spears spoke to a Los Angeles courtroom, giving an impassioned 23-minute statement about her struggles under the conservatorship that had controlled her personal and business decisions for 13 years.“I’ve been in denial,” she said. “I’ve been in shock. I am traumatized. I just want my life back.”It was the first time the pop star, who rose to fame in the late 1990s, had provided a window into her realities of the legal arrangement that her father, James P. Spears, had petitioned for in 2008, citing her public mental health struggles and possible substance abuse. During the decade-plus that Spears was restricted by the guardianship, she performed a Las Vegas residency and released four albums; behind the scenes, she said, she lived in terror and shame, unable to make decisions about her work or her own body.Five months after Spears’s speech, Judge Brenda Penny terminated the conservatorship.Spears embraced her sudden freedom to speak freely, unloading about family betrayal and years of isolation on her Instagram, her main outlet for communication with her fans. Now, Spears, 41, is making her biggest statement yet with “The Woman in Me,” a memoir that will be officially released on Tuesday. In it, she says that since the end of the conservatorship she has tried to “rebuild my life day by day.”“I’m trying to learn how to take care of myself,” she writes, “and have some fun, too.”Here’s what’s happened since the end of the conservatorship — in the public sphere, at least.Spears’s personal lifeWhen Spears gave her emotional speech to the Los Angeles judge, she said that two of the conservatorship’s restrictions that pained her the most were limitations on getting married and having another baby.Several months after the arrangement ended, she married her boyfriend, Sam Asghari, whom she met when he was in her music video for the song “Slumber Party.” The marriage lasted just over a year; he filed papers asking for a divorce in August. (The book does not get as far as the split, mentioning their relationship only in positive terms.)In April 2022, Spears announced that she was pregnant, but the next month, the couple said that she had had a miscarriage. It would have been her third child, after two sons with her ex-husband Kevin Federline.“I’d been so thrilled to be pregnant that I’d told the whole world,” she writes in the book, “which meant I had to un-tell them.”In the immediate aftermath of the conservatorship’s end, Spears was outspoken on her Instagram about the ways she felt her family had wronged her, but earlier this year, she signaled in an Instagram post that she may be softening, at least toward her mother. Lynne Spears — who, she writes in the book, supported the creation of the conservatorship — showed up at her doorstep, and her daughter appeared to embrace a reconciliation. “Time heals all wounds !!!” she wrote.Tensions between Spears and Federline over their teenage children spilled into public view last year, when the singer’s ex-husband gave an interview in which he said their sons had been unwilling to see their mother. Spears responded by criticizing Federline’s decision to speak publicly about their children; in her memoir, she writes about the highs and lows of motherhood but does not discuss any estrangement with her sons.Her careerSpears last released an album, “Glory,” in 2016; the final date of a limited tour supporting it was in 2018.In her book, Spears says she’s hesitant to jump into making music again, but one person who did entice her back into the studio was Elton John. She says the 76-year-old rocker sent her a video message asking her to collaborate on “Hold Me Closer,” a duet that remixes some of his hits, including “Tiny Dancer.” The recording session took a few hours in the basement of a producer’s Beverly Hills home, she writes, describing the track, which was released in 2022, as the first new song made on her own terms in a long time.“Mind Your Business,” a song with a former collaborator, Will.i.am, was also released this past summer. And a long-gestating Broadway musical about fairy tale princesses fighting for their emancipation that featured her music opened in June, closing a little over two months later. (The singer offered some support to the show in an Instagram post, but she did not attend, and some fans remained leery of a project instigated amid the conservatorship.)In courtSince the termination of the conservatorship, there has been an ongoing legal battle around wrapping up the arrangement that long managed the fortune that Spears had made as an international pop sensation.A judge rejected a request from Spears’s father, known as Jamie, that she be deposed, but he was ordered to sit for a deposition; its details have not been made public. There has been ongoing legal wrangling over some of the accounting from the conservatorship years, as well as over who will pay Jamie Spears’s legal fees.One specific area of dispute involves Jamie Spears’s attempts to secure documents from an investigative firm that accused him in court papers of directing a surveillance apparatus over his daughter’s activities, including placing a “secret recording device” in her bedroom. The singer’s father denied authorizing such a device in a court filing, and he has said for years that his intentions in the conservatorship were always to protect his daughter.Still, the biggest issue at the heart of the case — whether Spears should be in charge of her personal life and estate — remains resolved.“Her civil liberties were stripped away and now they are back, and I think that’s what anyone would want,” Spears’s lawyer, Mathew S. Rosengart, said in a statement this week.Moments in the spotlightPerhaps Spears’s most widely discussed public debacle in the past two years involved a rising N.B.A. rookie named Victor Wembanyama.In July, according to Spears’s account, the singer tried to greet Wembanyama outside of a hotel in Las Vegas when a member of the player’s security team backhanded her in the face. She demanded an apology, but the security team denied that she had been hit directly, saying that a guard had pushed her hand off Wembanyama. No charges were filed.The most consistent magnet for attention in Spears’s life, however, has been the singer’s unfiltered and often eccentric Instagram account. Tabloids regularly seize on photos and videos of Spears dancing in her home and posing in various outfits, at times in the nude.In her memoir, she seeks to explain her instinct toward revealing her inner life to fans.“I know that a lot of people don’t understand why I love taking pictures of myself naked or in new dresses,” she writes. “But I think if they’d been photographed by other people thousands of times, prodded and posed for other people’s approval, they’d understand that I get a lot of joy from posing the way I feel sexy and taking my own picture.”Since the end of the conservatorship, the posts have regularly stirred up debate among fans and observers about whether she has the support she needs post-conservatorship. Earlier this year, fans called the police to check on Spears after her Instagram account disappeared, and last month, another call was put in to the police after she posted a video of herself dancing with a pair of what appeared to be kitchen knives. She clarified on Instagram that the knives were, in fact, props.“So unacceptable for cops to listen to random fans and come in to my home unwarranted,” she wrote on Instagram. “I’ve been bullied in my home for so long now…ITS ENOUGH!”In her book, she writes, “Freedom means taking a break from Instagram without people calling 911.”As some fans fret on social media about how the pop star is handling the effects of being suddenly released from intense, long-term oversight, others insist that this is exactly what the #FreeBritney movement had been working toward: uninhibited free expression.“We always said that we wanted Britney to live her life on her own terms, whatever that may look like,” said Kevin Wu, who started organizing within the #FreeBritney movement in 2019, when fans began to coalesce in opposition to the conservatorship. “I’m trying to live by that and leave Britney alone because I think that’s what she would want.” More

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    Drake Takes on All Comers

    Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon MusicThe new Drake album, “For All the Dogs,” isn’t an innovation in the Drake oeuvre. It’s not a home for stylistic experimentation, or a collection of forward-looking lyrics. Instead, it’s an extension and distillation of what he’s been doing for a decade and a half: tell personal stories cut with boasting, providing a view into the broken heart of a superstar.And yet the album has led to some of the most divisive discourse of Drake’s career, leading to conversations about maturity and misogyny. It also sets the table for debates about what a post-Drake era in hip-hop might look and sound like.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about Drake’s creative boundaries, how he’s managed to ward off stylistic shifts in hip-hop, and how he might approach the middle and later years of his recording career.Guests:Justin Charity, senior staff writer at The RingerDylan Green, contributing writer at PitchforkConnect 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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    As Movie Theaters Embrace Swift, One Showcases Her Exes

    In addition to “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour,” a Milwaukee theater is programming films that feature some of her starry boyfriends.Like movie theaters across the country that are facing the fallout of an actors’ strike and the shift to streaming, the Oriental Theater in Milwaukee was quite pleased to have Taylor Swift’s concert film coming to its screens.But “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour,” which has been a box office rainmaker, comes with an unconventional stipulation: Theaters may only show it Thursdays through Sundays, said Cara Ogburn, the artistic director of Milwaukee Film, which runs the Oriental Theater.So what to do, she wondered, on the other three days of the week?“What if we show all Jake Gyllenhaal movies,” Ogburn suggested offhandedly, initially as a joke. “True counterprogramming.”The idea quickly expanded. The team’s resident Swiftie assured leadership that the theater would not be canceled for a lineup based on the pop star’s famous exes. Then staff members selected qualifying films that also had Halloween-adjacent themes.Starting next week, the three-screen art-house theater will show the original “Twilight” (Taylor Lautner, a.k.a. the werewolf Jacob Black), “Dunkirk” (Harry Styles, a.k.a. One Direction heartthrob turned nondescript World War II soldier), “Crimson Peak” (Tom Hiddleston, a.k.a. a pre-Loki baronet) and, yes, a lot of Gyllenhaal.There’s “Zodiac” on Tuesday.“Enemy” plays on Oct. 29, followed the next night by “Nocturnal Animals.”Then, on Halloween, comes “Donnie Darko.”It may be true that Swift’s songbook is only “minimally about romantic love,” as Taffy Brodesser-Akner recently observed in The New York Times Magazine. But Swift is well aware of the way she has been caricatured for having, as she puts it in “Blank Space,” a long list of ex-lovers who will say she is insane.“We were surprised to discover how many boyfriends she has had who have been in movies,” Ogburn said of Swift, who was connected to Lautner in 2009, Gyllenhaal in 2010, Styles in 2012 and Hiddleston in 2016. (Recently, she has been seen with the N.F.L. player Travis Kelce.)“Then we whittled it down to — what is a good movie?” Ogburn said. Finally, she said, the team had to consider what films it could actually get the rights to show.Independent movie theaters that show more than blockbusters often target specific fan bases. In the same month that the Oriental Theater has organized and branded “The Exes Tour,” it is hosting the Milwaukee Muslim Film Festival and showing older horror favorites and current Oscar contenders like Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon.”But the most vocal crowds are expected for Swift’s concert film, which in many places has become a glitter-filled, Eras-inspired mega event. She has encouraged viewers to treat the outings like the many concerts that captivated fans this year, urging the exchange of friendship bracelets and dancing to the songs that Swifties know by heart.The desire for packed theaters and a concertlike atmosphere might help explain the unique scheduling requirements for “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour,” which collected nearly $93 million domestically in its first weekend. It also has standardized symbolic ticket prices: $19.89 for general admission and $13.13 for everyone else.Ogburn, whose team created a special drink menu for the movie’s run (red wine, for instance, became simply “Red”), said she had not fielded complaints about movie theater etiquette. “We’re kind of into enthusiastic moviegoing,” she said. “A little applauding like you’re at a concert is nothing we can’t handle.”She did wonder whether there would be a less kind reaction to “Donnie Darko,” a 2001 cult classic in which Gyllenhaal’s disturbed character encounters a life-size rabbit.“Will we get Swifties booing?” she asked. More

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    ‘Scary Movie 3’ at 20: Still Kills

    The horror parody’s threequel remains the smartest dumb movie of its era.Just before Halloween 20 years ago, the slasher spoof “Scary Movie” released its third installment, a truly unserious sendup of “The Ring,” “8 Mile,” M. Night Shyamalan and pop culture at large. I died of laughter watching it as a preteen — that it was immature and in bad taste was entirely the point. Two decades and a college degree later, I’m afraid to say, “Scary Movie 3” still kills me.If the threequel had any chance of survival after the studio fired the Wayans brothers from their own franchise, according to Marlon Wayans, it needed a deus ex machina in the style of “Airplane!” and “The Naked Gun.” So, they hired exactly that: the spoof veteran director David Zucker and his “Olivier” of the genre, as Roger Ebert called him, Leslie Nielsen. This inspired union between golden-age 1980s parody and Y2K-era irreverent slapstick gave the cult hit a certain cachet. It was also Hollywood’s last great love affair with its silliest genre.The farce follows the journalist Cindy (Anna Faris), the aspiring rapper George (Simon Rex) and George’s farmer brother, Tom (Charlie Sheen), as they investigate a killer tape, mysterious crop circles and an alien invasion. Regina Hall reprises her role as Cindy’s best friend, Brenda, while Nielsen plays the looney-tunes president of the United States. Queen Latifah slays as (sorry!) Aunt ShaNeequa, the know-it-all oracle, married to Eddie Griffin’s Orpheus.And lampooning “The Matrix Reloaded,” the comedian George Carlin pops in as the Architect, who accidentally returned his kid’s creepy video to Blockbuster instead of “Pootie Tang.” “We loved our daughter, but she was evil. Made the horses crazy, killed our puppies, hid the remote,” the Architect explains. “My wife took her to the old family farm and drowned her in the well. I felt a simple timeout would have been sufficient.”Somewhere between pastiche and schlock, “Scary Movie 3” is more a bricolage of breathless non sequiturs and fourth-wall winks; puns, quips and zeitgeisty references; cockamamie gags and genius line readings — all executed with deadpan precision at a breakneck pace. Don’t worry if you don’t get a joke … a new one is right behind it. Even with those foul, out-of-pocket jokes you can’t make anymore, for better or worse (the Michael Jackson impersonator is still sort of funny), “Scary Movie 3” remains a quotable fan favorite that informed a generation’s brand of humor.A sheriff’s growing hat. Kevin Hart and Anthony Anderson’s paradoxes on the nature of a rat becoming a mouse if it enters a house. “Oooh, Yahtzee!” Never mind its faded shock value, toilet humor or many, many kicks to the groin. The movie is largely held up by its subtle hilarity — the shovel cocked like a shotgun or the perfect delivery behind “Tom, I’ll need a ride home” — throwaway scenes that have you laughing like you’re a kid again.The best parodies turn out coffers, or caskets in this case, for our collective obsessions. Enter: the obligatory celebrity cameo. Schoolgirl versions of Jenny McCarthy and Pamela Anderson stretch the dumb blonde shtick to death. Fat Joe and Simon Cowell appear as themselves at a rap battle. Ja Rule plays a Secret Service agent for some reason. Master P, Macy Gray and Wu-Tang members arrive as backup against the aliens but shoot at each other instead. Part of the fun of the movie today is seeing what 20 years has or hasn’t changed.“Writing ‘Scary Movie 3’ was way harder than writing ‘Chernobyl,’” the Emmy-winning scribe Craig Mazin told British GQ last year. Mazin said that he, along with his co-writer Pat Proft, would count more than 70 script revisions thanks to relentless demands from Bob Weinstein of Miramax to turn the movie into a raunchy sex comedy.Even now, Mazin loves “Scary Movie 3,” as does Zucker, who considers it one of his three best movies. Often asked if he could make his movies today, Zucker has a favorite line: “Sure, just without the jokes.”Nowadays, a good spoof is hard to find. A few theories involve cultural and moviemaking changes, as if we’re post-satire or post-genre. Franchises and tentpoles either don’t even try to beat the Oscar bait allegations anymore, or they commit to the bit so hard that it ricochets more than the car that went to outer space in “F9.”As the decade wore on, no one was safe from the onslaught of parodies, mostly with the word “Movie” in the title (“Not Another Teen Movie,” “Date Movie,” “Disaster Movie,” “Superhero Movie,” et al.). The gag got old, and the spoof soon became a nightmare.It’s fitting, then, that the franchise that single-handedly revived the genre would also deliver the final blow with “Scary Movie V” in 2013. Parody flicks have been dying a slow death ever since, and — shocker — “Scary Movie 3” might have been the killer all along. More

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    in Music

    Review: New York Philharmonic Welcomes Back an Old Friend

    David Robertson returned to the podium to lead the orchestra’s first in a series of performances to celebrate the centennial of Gyorgy Ligeti’s birth.It’s always a good sign when an orchestra’s players light up with smiles at a conductor.And on Thursday night at David Geffen Hall, that happened over and over, with grins passing between the musicians of the New York Philharmonic and its podium guest, David Robertson, throughout a beguiling, smart program.The concert began the Philharmonic’s festivities to celebrate the centennial of the Hungarian-Austrian composer Gyorgy Ligeti’s birth. Robertson led the U.S. premiere of “Mifiso la Sodo,” a short work for chamber orchestra that Ligeti wrote as a student in Budapest in 1948. He began revisions three years later, but never finished the job; the piece lay dormant until last year.With its punchy, fake Italian title, “Mifiso” is crammed full of little musical jokes, show-off brilliance and jovial accents. Ligeti gave it the subtitle “Cheerful Music,” which is both an ironic riposte to the Stalinesque dictums that ruled the Hungarian arts in the 1940s and ’50s and a true description of this piece.Robertson also resurrected a Ligeti work that the Philharmonic hadn’t played since 2004 (conducted by him back then, too): “Concert Romanesc,” or “Romanian Concerto,” a hurricane of color and exuberant virtuosity from 1951 that draws upon Romanian folk music. In this concerto for orchestra, there’s a particularly charming portion in which the basses pluck away, in gritty gutbucket style, while the violins whirl overhead in a zippy dance.Another concerto — the Russian-born, London-based composer Elena Firsova’s Piano Concerto — provided a marked contrast in a delicate work that inverts the genre’s traditional fast-slow-fast structure. Firsova wrote it in 2020 for Yefim Bronfman, who gave its New York premiere on Thursday. (The performance was also the Philharmonic’s first of Firsova’s music.)Firsova’s concerto diverged from the energy of Ligeti by ushering in a meditative pause with a solitudinous, brief introduction. One of her main themes is a wistful, upward-spiraling scale that darts through the piano and the various instruments of the orchestra. Near the end, she retreats into evanescent, gossamer textures from which a haunting, music box-like set of patterns emerges from the glockenspiel, vibraphone, tubular bells and the piano, which is played near the top of its range. Bronfman, an assiduous supporter of Firsova’s work, played with commanding surety.The evening’s second half was devoted to Brahms’s Serenade No. 1, which originally was envisioned as a small chamber piece, but then Brahms kept expanding it. In its final version, the piece’s instrumentation is still lithe — just two each of flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, French horns and trumpets, plus timpani and strings — but the winds and brasses in particular brought in a welcome plushness. The phrasing, under Robertson’s baton, was shapely and intentional, while tracing a persuasive through line back from Ligeti at the start of the program.Robertson’s name has been raised from time to time over the years as a potential music director of the Philharmonic. While that’s unlikely to happen anytime soon, those big grins from players across the stage — not to mention their committed, warm performances — made the musicians’ feelings clear.New York PhilharmonicThrough Saturday at David Geffen Hall, Manhattan; nyphil.org. More