Aurelia Butler

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    What Would Strikes Do to Oscar Season?

    The delay of some big titles, like “Dune: Part Two,” has ramifications for coming releases like “May December” and “Killers of the Flower Moon.”Three years after the pandemic forced the majority of Oscar season to take place on Zoom, Hollywood may be facing another circumscribed awards circuit.Dual strikes by SAG-AFTRA and the Writers Guild of America have already had a significant effect on this year’s movie calendar: Studios have opted to push several big theatrical releases like “Dune: Part Two” to 2024, since SAG-AFTRA is prohibiting its members from promoting major-studio films amid the walkout. That same ban could radically reshape the Oscar season landscape, since awards shows and the media-blitz ecosystem built around them depend on star wattage to survive. (The strikes have already prompted the Emmys to move from September to January, and other ceremonies could be delayed, too.)So what will the season look like if the strikes continue into late fall or winter? Expect these four predictions to come to pass.Streamers will be at a major advantage.The post-pandemic theatrical landscape is already difficult enough for prestige titles: Last year, best-picture nominees “The Fabelmans,” “The Banshees of Inisherin,” “Tár” and “Women Talking” all struggled to break out at the box office. Subtract the months of press that the stars of contending films are called upon to do, and the financial forecast for specialty films grows even more dire. If striking actors aren’t available to promote this season’s year-end titles, many studios will think twice about releasing them.Streamers don’t have the same problem, since they worry more about clicks than box office numbers. So far, Netflix, Apple and Amazon have been proceeding full speed ahead with their awards-season slates: Though the actors in streaming films like “Nyad” (with Annette Bening as the long-distance swimmer); “Saltburn” (a thriller about obsession); and “Killers of the Flower Moon” (a historical drama starring Leonardo DiCaprio) may not be free to do much press, there’s ultimately no more effective advertisement for a streamer than simply throwing big pictures of a movie star on the app’s home page.Lily Gladstone and Leonardo DiCaprio in “Killers of the Flower Moon.” Because of the strike, they can’t promote the film.Apple TV+, via Associated PressDirectors are the new stars.The monthslong awards circuit can raise a filmmaker’s profile considerably: Near the end of their seasons, auteurs like Bong Joon Ho (“Parasite”) and Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan (“Everything Everywhere All at Once”) were as recognizable as movie stars, and often just as mobbed at awards shows. Still, if the actors strike continues for several more months, studios will need to rely even more on their directors, since they may be the sole representatives of their films who are available for big profiles, audience Q. and A.s and ceremonies.Well-established auteurs like Martin Scorsese (“Killers of the Flower Moon”) and Christopher Nolan (“Oppenheimer”) will be at a particular advantage here, as will new-school academy favorites like Greta Gerwig (“Barbie”) and Emerald Fennell (“Saltburn”). The latter two have a significant side hustle as actors, which may prove appealing in a season that will lack thespian faces, though their fellow actor-turned-director Bradley Cooper will be in a bit of a bind: How can he promote “Maestro,” his forthcoming Leonard Bernstein movie, if he also stars in it?‘Barbenheimer’ could rule again.The dual release of “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” proved to be the cinematic event of the summer, as Gerwig’s doll comedy broke box-office records and Nolan’s biopic defied the doldrums that have recently plagued prestige dramas. Both films were already poised to be major awards contenders, but the decimation of the year-end theatrical calendar will only reinforce their dominance.For old-school voters who still prefer to support theatrical releases instead of streaming films, “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” might as well be running unopposed. The punt of “Dune: Part Two” to 2024 will only further help those two films’ awards cases, as the craft categories where the first “Dune” dominated — like production design, sound, editing and visual effects — are now decidedly up for grabs.“Barbie” may have an advantage with Oscar voters who prefer to support films released in theaters.Warner Bros.Up-and-coming actors may miss out on breakthroughs.Awards season can sometimes feel like a glamorous grind, requiring stars to commit to months of near-constant interviews, actor round tables, audience Q. and A.s, and hotel-ballroom hobnobs. Still, the season is invaluable when it comes to raising an actor’s profile. Up-and-comers become A-listers through their sheer ubiquity, and some of this season’s rising stars will miss out on the career glow-up that’s possible from a prolonged awards press tour: I’m thinking of people like “May December” actor Charles Melton, who nearly steals the movie from its leading ladies, Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore (who play an actress and a Mary Kay Letourneau-like teacher, respectively).Though it would be a fine line to walk, it’s possible that some of the smaller studios may seek interim agreements with SAG-AFTRA that would allow actors to do Oscar-season press. For example, A24 has secured interim agreements with SAG-AFTRA to continue shooting films since it is not among the studios the guilds are striking against. Could the company secure a similar carve-out that would allow the cast of its summer hit “Past Lives” to become awards-show fixtures? If the strikes continue and no such arrangements are possible, Oscar voters may be forced into an unprecedented position: Without all the usual noise that surrounds an awards contender, they’ll simply have to decide whether to nominate a performance based on its merit alone. What a concept! More

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    Bruce Springsteen Postpones Shows for Treatment of Peptic Ulcer Disease Symptoms

    The 73-year-old singer’s medical advisers made the decision to postpone the shows, according to the announcement.Bruce Springsteen announced on Wednesday evening that he would postpone performances scheduled with the E Street Band for the rest of September, as he is treated for symptoms of peptic ulcer disease. The 73-year-old singer had been scheduled to perform Thursday in Syracuse, N.Y., and seven more times at various venues in the Northeast and in Ohio over the rest of the month. “We’re heartbroken to have to postpone these shows,” he said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter. The post continued: “We’ll be back to pick up these shows and then some. Thank you for your understanding.” Springsteen’s medical advisers made the decision to postpone the shows, according to the announcement. The new slate of postponed concerts comes weeks after Springsteen postponed two August shows because of an illness. Those shows were postponed until next year, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. Peptic ulcer disease causes sores to develop on the lining of the stomach and can cause stomach pain, heartburn, bloating and nausea, according to the Mayo Clinic. Springsteen and the E Street Band had just capped a string of three shows at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, his home state. More

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    Gary Wright, Who Had a ’70s Hit With ‘Dream Weaver,’ Dies at 80

    He was a pioneer in using synthesizers, and his friendship with George Harrison led to a spiritual awakening that also influenced another hit, “Love Is Alive.”Gary Wright, a spiritually minded singer-songwriter who helped modernize the sound of pop music with his pioneering use of synthesizers while crafting infectious and seemingly inescapable hits of the 1970s like “Dream Weaver” and “Love Is Alive,” died on Monday at his home in Palos Verdes Estates, Calif. He was 80.The cause was complications of Parkinson’s disease and Lewy body dementia, his son Justin said.The New Jersey-bred Mr. Wright rose to prominence in the late 1960s after relocating to London and helping to form the bluesy British progressive rock band Spooky Tooth.He soon befriended George Harrison, with whom he would collaborate frequently over the years, including playing keyboards on that former Beatle’s magnum opus triple album, “All Things Must Pass,” released in 1970.Their long friendship would have a lasting impact on both Mr. Wright’s life and his music. Mr. Harrison introduced him to Eastern mysticism, giving him a copy of “Autobiography of a Yogi,” by Paramahansa Yogananda, who helped popularize yoga and meditation in the United States, and Mr. Harrison traveled with him to India.Mr. Wright with George Harrison performing on “The Dick Cavett Show” in 1971. The two collaborated frequently over the years.ABC Photo Archives/Disney General Entertainment Content, via Getty Images“That was his life path after that,” Justin Wright said in a phone interview. “Deep down inside of him, he was searching for something, and this was the answer for him.”His spiritual awakening helped spawn “Dream Weaver,” a track from his 1975 album, “The Dream Weaver,” which hit No. 7 on the Billboard album chart and rocketed him to fame. The song was inspired by the yogi’s poem “God, God, God,” which includes the line “My mind weaves dreams.”Mr. Wright begins the song with the lyrics “I’ve just closed my eyes again/Climbed aboard the dream weaver train/Driver take away my worries of today/And leave tomorrow behind.”The “Dream Weaver” single, swept along by a wave of lush electronica that bordered on the interstellar, soared to No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 in March 1976. The song became a soft-rock touchstone, appearing in such movies as “Wayne’s World” (1992) and “The People vs. Larry Flynt” (1996), as well as on a 2010 episode (called “Dream On”) of the musical comedy-drama television series “Glee.”It was not the only smash hit from that album. That July “Love Is Alive,” like “Dream Weaver,” rose to No. 2 conjuring the languid sexuality of the waterbed era. Mr. Wright performed at stadium shows on the same bill as heavyweights like Peter Frampton and Yes, standing out among the guitar gods with his strap-on keyboard, known as a keytar.While his biggest hits became emblematic sounds of the 1970s, Mr. Wright had taken an unconventional musical approach on the album “The Dream Weaver”: He relied almost entirely on keyboard instruments, including a Minimoog synthesizer, as opposed to guitars, foreshadowing the synth-pop boom of the early ’80s.Mr. Wright playing his strap-on keyboard known as a keytar during a performance in 2001. Richard E. Aaron/Redferns, via Getty Images“The theme of having only keyboards, drums, voices — and no guitars — came accidentally,” Mr. Wright said in a 2010 interview with Musoscribe, a music website. When he went back and listened to the demos he had recorded, he said, “I thought, ‘Wow. This sounds good. It doesn’t really need guitars.’”Gary Malcolm Wright was born on April 26, 1943, in Cresskill, in northeast New Jersey. He was the middle of three children of Lou Wright, a structural engineer, and Anne (Belvedere) Wright.His mother helped instill in him an interest in music and acting, driving him to piano lessons and eventually to auditions. Their efforts paid off when he made an appearance on the seminal science fiction TV series “Captain Video and His Video Rangers” and later won a role in the 1954 Broadway musical “Fanny,” starring Florence Henderson.“I originally came into the play as an understudy to the main role, and then I picked up the main child role,” Mr. Wright said in a 2014 interview with Smashing Interviews magazine. “I was only 11 and 12 during those years. It was an amazing experience to act and sing every night before sold-out audiences and sing with a full orchestral band.”Within a few years, he abandoned the stage and screen “to be a normal kind of person in school, playing sports and Little League baseball and that kind of thing,” he told Smashing Interviews. While attending Tenafly High School, he played in various rock groups, including a duo called Gary and Billy with his school friend Bill Markle. Their single “Working After School” was played on the TV show “American Bandstand.”After high school, Mr. Wright attended William & Mary in Virginia for a year before transferring to New York University, where he switched his focus to medicine. After graduating in 1965, he briefly enrolled in medical school before moving to Berlin to study psychology.Losing interest in a life in clinical practice, he went back to music, helping to form a band that built a following in Europe; at one point it opened for the rock group Traffic in Oslo. There he caught the attention of Chris Blackwell, the founder of Island Records. Mr. Blackwell summoned him to England to join a band called Art, which evolved into Spooky Tooth.Mr. Wright, center, played the organ and sang with the progressive rock group Spooky Tooth in the 1960s. He was flanked by the lead guitarist Luther James Grosvener, left, and the singer and pianist Mike Harrison. Seated were the bassist Greg Ridley, left, and the drummer Mike Kellie. Daily Mirror/Mirrorpix, via Getty ImagesSpooky Tooth temporarily disbanded in 1970, and a year later Mr. Wright released his first solo album, “Footprint.” That album featured Mr. Harrison on guitar on the track “Two Faced Man,” which the two performed with Mr. Wright’s band Wonderwheel on “The Dick Cavett Show” in 1971.In addition to his son Justin, Mr. Wright is survived by his wife, Rose (Anthony) Wright; another son, Dorian; a sister, Lorna Lee; and two grandchildren. His marriages to Christina Uppstrom, the mother of his sons, and Dori Accordino ended in divorce.Along with his work with Mr. Harrison, Mr. Wright was a session keyboardist for Harry Nilsson, B.B. King and Jerry Lee Lewis, and he continued to record solo albums.In the Musoscribe interview, he discussed his 2010 release, “Connected,” and the album’s hook-laden opening track, “Satisfied,” in terms that could have applied to “Dream Weaver.”“The word ‘hook’ means drawing people into something,” he said. “When I write songs, I always try to make them that way — catchy — so that people will remember them. They’ll be more embedded in people’s consciousness.” More

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    Terence Blanchard, Pushing Jazz Forward From a New Perch

    The trumpeter and composer follows the premiere of two Met operas with an appointment as executive artistic director of SFJazz in San Francisco and a Jazz Masters honor.Two big announcements came down recently about the trumpeter and composer Terence Blanchard — both monumental, neither one a surprise.In June, the National Endowment for the Arts announced that Blanchard, 61, would receive a 2024 Jazz Masters fellowship, the highest lifetime-achievement honor available to a United States-based improviser.Then a month later, as if a reminder that this lifetime still has a few major chapters ahead, the nonprofit organization and performance center SFJazz named Blanchard its executive artistic director. Hardly any other musician has so solid a grasp on the scope of what’s going on in jazz today — and no institution is as committed to reflecting, even goading, its growth.A six-time Grammy winner, Blanchard possesses one of the most commanding and slippery trumpet styles in jazz, and for almost a decade he has led one of its most reliable ensembles, the E-Collective, full of musicians a couple of decades his junior. He has written and recorded over 40 film scores, including for most of Spike Lee’s movies. Despite being a conservatory dropout himself, he has become a leading educator, helping shape programs at U.C.L.A., the University of Miami and the Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz. And in recent years, he has made headlines for the back-to-back Met premieres of his two operas, “Fire Shut Up in My Bones” and “Champion.”All of which makes for relevant job training for the new role. “The thing that I’ve always loved about SFJazz is that they don’t treat the music like it’s a fossil,” Blanchard said in a phone interview. “It’s a living, breathing, ongoing thing. And they respect young artists who are bringing something different to the table.”Blanchard is taking the reins directly from SFJazz’s founder, Randall Kline, who has run the organization since it started in 1982, always with a passion for what’s next. “I remember thinking how much I love that dude,” Blanchard said. “He was just a serious music lover who happened to be a promoter.”Blanchard onstage at the SFJazz Gala in June 2022.Drew Altizer PhotographySFJazz began as a jazz festival and traveling presenter around San Francisco. It convened a house ensemble of all-star musicians, the SFJazz Collective, in 2004, and opened the $64 million, state-of-the-art SFJazz Center in 2013. This week, Blanchard and Kline will both be at the kickoff for the center’s 2023-24 season, the last booked by Kline.SFJazz’s board chair, Denise Young, who led the search for Kline’s replacement, said Blanchard stood out because he “had a vision that matched what we believed was important to this music in these times.”Blanchard will relish the chance to pick up on one of Kline’s pet obsessions: bringing new technologies to the SFJazz stage. And as a musician who consistently uses his platform to speak about social issues — recording music with Cornel West, dedicating an album to the memory of Eric Garner, putting narratives of Black queer life into song — he’s also eager to confront questions of unequal access in a city where inequality continues to balloon.He’d like to keep SFJazz high-tech, but low-barrier when it comes to entry. To promote “outreach into the community,” he said, he envisions a matinee concert program directed at students in local high schools, and a series of traveling shows that might bring SFJazz-level talent into some of the Bay Area’s more neglected neighborhoods.Last week Blanchard stole an hour for an interview from his new office there. The building buzzed around him as the team prepared for the season launch, and by the end of the call an assistant was hovering, waiting to whisk him away to a donor meeting.Born and raised in New Orleans, Blanchard broke out on the New York scene in the early 1980s — the so-called Young Lions era, when many were longing for a return to the halcyon sounds of midcentury jazz. In 1982, he joined Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, taking over the trumpet chair from Wynton Marsalis, his childhood friend. Then he followed Marsalis onto the roster of Columbia Records, where he recorded a series of straight-ahead albums with a quintet he and Donald Harrison led.While Marsalis doubled down on Neo-Classicism, founding and directing Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York as a beacon of tradition, Blanchard has veered toward the cutting edge. With his E-Collective, he has emulated Blakey in one crucial way: His side-musicians are all significantly younger. On other fronts, Blakey wouldn’t recognize much of that quintet’s tool kit: the electronic effects, the hip-hop backbeats, the swatches of distorted guitar and electric bass.So there’s something poetic about seeing Blanchard — the Young Lion-turned-innovator — land at SFJazz, which has long been positioned as a kind of left-coast alternative to Marsalis’s JALC. “The idea was eclecticism: Don’t fly the flag of one thing,” Kline said in an interview. “San Francisco at the time had all these amazing scenes going: There was an Asian American jazz scene, there was this kind of trad-jazz scene, there was this hard-core avant-garde thing going, there was Brazilian music and Afro Cuban music.”To the extent that SFJazz has developed a winning formula, Kline said, “it’s been a formula around being open.”That conviction came in handy when Blanchard was invited to SFJazz in the mid-2010s for a series of artist residencies. He had recently composed “Champion,” which tells the tragic story of the world champion boxer Emile Griffith, and an opera company in San Francisco was hoping to stage it. The center had never done an opera before, and sure, this wasn’t exactly “jazz,” but it was just the kind of ambitious project that the center was built to handle.“The thing that I’ve always loved about SFJazz is that they don’t treat the music like it’s a fossil,” Blanchard said. “It’s a living, breathing, ongoing thing. And they respect young artists who are bringing something different to the table.”Ike Edeani for The New York Times“It fit so perfectly with our programming aesthetic, and also getting creative around the space,” Kline said. “It was just as good as it gets.”When Blanchard had first been approached about an opera commission in the early 2010s, he was thrilled. His father had sung opera, and he had grown up hearing Puccini and Verdi in the house, along with the sounds of jazz and Black popular music. But he wasn’t sure where to begin.So he did what he’d done at so many inflection points throughout his career: He went to his teacher, Roger Dickerson, a now 89-year-old composer and pianist and a New Orleans music giant in his own right, who had helped Blanchard write his first large-scale compositions.“He told me, ‘Stop thinking about writing an opera, just tell a story,’” Blanchard remembered. “That was extremely helpful for me, because then I wasn’t trying to live up to something.”“Tell your story” is, of course, a catchphrase among jazz musicians. But partly thanks to his work with Dickerson, Blanchard has developed a special aptitude for using music to narrate ideas and convictions — which swiftly moves listeners past any fixation on genre. Dickerson also thinks of it as a reminder that complexity, nuance and misdirection don’t have to dilute narrative drive — or even relatability — but can in fact enhance a story line.“He could pick up on little things that I would show him, and very quickly discover the inside meaning of it. That is, make it his own,” Dickerson said in an interview, remembering Blanchard’s interpretive skills even at age 16. That ideal — learn the fundamentals, and then make something undeniably yours — is something that Blanchard has passed on to his own students.Ambrose Akinmusire, who studied with Blanchard in the 2000s, remembered him stopping class whenever he heard students making direct references to old jazz tropes. “We don’t do that here,” he recalled him saying.On the flip side, Blanchard remembers having to convince the cast of “Fire” that they should draw upon their whole musical lexicon. “I’m listening to them warm up, and I’m realizing a lot of those singers grew up in the church, sang gospel, some of them were jazz singers — but they were all taught to throw that away when you sing opera,” he said.“I said, ‘Listen man, bring all of that back to your performance. This is a current story, so hearing gospel in the middle of this is no problem. Hearing you sing a blues phrase, because you’re a jazz musician, is no problem. And, man, I can’t tell you the type of performances we got out of people.” More

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    TV Shows and Movies Streaming in September 2023: ‘The Wheel of Time,’ ‘Gen V’ and More

    Spinoffs and chillers abound in a month filled with tons of new television. Here’s the best of what’s coming to Amazon, Max, Apple TV+ and others. Every month, streaming services add movies and TV shows to its library. Here are our picks for some of September’s most promising new titles. (Note: Streaming services occasionally change schedules without giving notice. For more recommendations on what to stream, sign up for our Watching newsletter here.)New to Amazon Prime Video‘The Wheel of Time’ Season 2Started streaming: Sept. 1Season 1 of this handsome-looking fantasy series introduced some of the major characters and concepts from the first book of the novelist Robert Jordan’s hefty “The Wheel of Time” saga. Season 2 adapts parts of the second and third books — “The Great Hunt” and “The Dragon Reborn” — and continues moving the pieces into place for the grand apocalyptic battle prophesied at the start of the story. Rosamund Pike returns as the mystic Moiraine, who is helping a group of young people escape the shadowy forces pursuing them. Josha Stradowski plays Rand al’Thor, who may be his land’s last best hope to stand up against the Dark One and his minions — or may be the one to usher in a new age of chaos.‘Neighbours: A New Chapter’ Season 1Starts streaming: Sept. 18The original run of the soap opera “Neighbours” began in 1985 and concluded in 2022 after 38 seasons and nearly 9,000 22-minute episodes. During that time, the show’s melodramatic tales of suburban Melbourne life were seen around the world and introduced viewers to future stars like Natalie Imbruglia, Kylie Minogue, Radha Mitchell, Guy Pearce and Margot Robbie. Now Amazon Studios and Fremantle Australia are bringing the series back, along with some of the old cast (including Pearce), who join an array of new characters. Plans are to run 200 episodes a year for the next two years on Amazon’s ad-supported, free-to-stream Freevee service, where viewers can also watch the older episodes, giving Americans a chance to immerse themselves in these Australians’ love affairs and personal crises.‘Gen V’ Season 1Starts streaming: Sept. 29A spinoff of the adults-only superhero satire “The Boys,” this action-dramedy series is set at a special school for young crime fighters, where the students engage in the same kinds of cliques, rivalries and romances that happen in any normal school but with the constant threat that super powers make every conflict more dangerous. A few of the adult characters from “The Boys” will drop in on the new show (which has a creative team drawn from some of that show’s writers and producers); but the focus here is on the kids, who have a lot in common with classic comic book super teams like the X-Men and the Teen Titans. Expect plenty of irreverence and dark humor, along with some sly takedowns of familiar superhero mythology.Also arriving:Sept. 1“God. Family. Football.”Sept. 5“One Shot: Overtime Elite”Sept. 8“Sitting in Bars with Cake”Sept. 12“Kelce”Sept. 15“A Million Miles Away”“Wilderness” Season 1“Written in the Stars” Season 1Sept. 22“Cassandro”Sept. 22“The Fake Sheikh”Norman Reedus in the latest “Walking Dead” spinoff, “The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon.”Emmanuel Guimier/AMCNew to AMC+‘The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon’ Season 1Starts streaming: Sept. 10Like “The Walking Dead: Dead City” earlier this year, the latest entry in the long-running, ever-expanding “Walking Dead” franchise takes one of the most popular characters from the show’s original run and plops him in another part of the world. Norman Reedus reprises his role as Daryl Dixon, a talented marksman and tracker who had to overcome his loner tendencies to become a vital part of an embattled postapocalyptic community in the American southeast. In this new series, Daryl takes his talents to France, where he allies with a tough nun (Clémence Poésy) who shows him the unique ways that continental Europe handled the zombie outbreak and helps him to figure out who he can trust.Also arriving:Sept. 1“Perpetrator”Sept. 8“Blood Flower”Sept. 10“Ride With Norman Reedus” Season 6Sept. 15“Elevator Game”Sept. 20“Thick Skin”Sept. 22“The Angry Black Girl and Her Mother”Sept. 29“Nightmare”LaKeith Stanfield in a scene from “The Changeling,” based on the Victor LaValle novel.Apple TV+New to Apple TV+‘The Changeling’Starts streaming: Sept. 8Like the Victor LaValle novel that inspired it, the supernatural horror series “The Changeling” combines everyday drama with terrifying nightmares, in a story that sprawls across multiple generations. LaKeith Stanfield plays Apollo, a shy book dealer who is haunted by memories of the father he barely knew. He is also attracted to a vibrant but eccentric woman named Emmy (Clark Backo), whom he eventually marries. The show’s creator and writer, Kelly Marcel, shifts the narrative focus freely among different characters and different eras, as a crisis with Emmy and their newborn child drives Apollo to confront his troubled family history. In doing so, he finds that his past is shrouded in the kind of wondrous darkness common to fairy tales, and he is challenged to untangle fantasy from fact in an enchanted version of New York City.‘The Morning Show’ Season 3Starts streaming: Sept. 13One of Apple TV+’s flagship series returns for a third season of punchy boardroom drama, set in the modern TV news business. The show is still powered by its two charismatic leads: Jennifer Aniston as the veteran morning show anchor Alex Levy and Reese Witherspoon as Bradley Jackson, a feisty hard news reporter who has become Alex’s co-host. Billy Crudup and Mark Duplass play two of the behind-the-camera bosses who sometimes make morally questionable choices. This season they are joined by Jon Hamm as a cocky tech billionaire who might be able improve their network’s cash-flow. Although “The Morning Show” started as a ripped-from-the-headlines look at how the #MeToo era has upended the male-dominated media, the series has since opened to encompass other hot-button contemporary issues, which in Season 3 include cyberattacks and corporate blackmail.Also arriving:Sept. 20“The Super Models”Sept. 22“Still Up”Sept. 29“Flora and Son”Sinclair Daniel, left, and Ashleigh Murray in a scene from “The Other Black Girl.”HuluNew to Hulu‘The Other Black Girl’ Season 1Starts streaming: Sept. 13Part wry social commentary and part intense mystery-thriller, “The Other Black Girl” examines the racial and gender dynamics of the New York publishing industry. Sinclair Daniel plays Nella, an aspiring assistant editor who befriends Hazel (Ashleigh Murray), her publishing house’s latest hire and the only other Black person in her department. When Hazel’s collegial advice starts derailing Nella’s career — around the same time that Nella starts experiencing some unnerving paranormal activity around the office — she begins looking into her new friend’s past and the history of their employers. Adapted from a best-selling Zakiya Dalila Harris novel, this show finds the humor and the anxiety inherent in the life of a woman who is struggling to stand out in a tough business without losing her identity.Also arriving:Sept. 6“Never Let Him Go”Sept. 13“Welcome to Wrexham” Season 2Sept. 14“Dragons: The Nine Realms” Season 7Sept. 20“American Horror Story: Delicate” Part 1Sept. 22“No One Will Save You”Sept. 27“Love in Fairhope” Season 1Nikesh Patel and Rose Matafeo in scene from Season 3 of the Max series “Starstruck.”Mark Johnson/MaxNew to Max‘Starstruck’ Season 3Starts streaming: Sept. 28This charming romantic comedy is one of the streaming era’s hidden gems, and it is ripe for discovery now that the fall TV schedule has been thinned out by the actors’ and writers’ strikes. Through its first two seasons, “Starstruck” followed the unlikely on-again/off-again love affair between Jessie (Rose Matafeo), a young New Zealander struggling to make ends meet in London, and Tom (Nikesh Patel), an A-list movie star who is smitten with her. Season 3 has the couple going their separate ways but still frequently and awkwardly crossing paths. The show’s short, breezy episodes capture how the “getting to know you” phase of romance can be equal parts exciting and difficult, especially when one of the people involved is rich and famous.Also arriving:Sept. 2“The Venture Bros.: Radiant Is the Blood of the Baboon Heart”Sept. 13“Donyale Luna: Supermodel”Sept. 21“Young Love” Season 1A scene from the Season 4 premiere of “Star Trek: Lower Decks,” which centers on the underlings of a starship.Paramount+New to Paramount+ With Showtime‘Star Trek: Lower Decks’ Season 4Starts streaming: Sept. 7“Star Trek” fans who are still buzzing from the excellent, recently completed second season of “Strange New Worlds” should roll those warm feelings over to the fourth season of the animated “Lower Decks,” which has established its place as one of the best of the modern “Star Trek” shows. Like “Strange New Worlds,” “Lower Decks” balances old-fashioned “interstellar adventure of the week” stories with involved subplots and rich character development. This cute-looking cartoon is fundamentally comic — following the goofy mishaps of a bunch of Starfleet’s least vital employees — but its writers and animators respect the franchise’s lore enough to deliver cleverly plotted, action-packed episodes, season after season.Also arriving:Sept. 8“Dreaming Whilst Black”Sept. 12“Football Must Go On”Sept. 17“The Gold”Sept. 18“Superpower”Sept. 22“Deadlocked: How America Shaped the Supreme Court”Sept. 26“72 Seconds”Colin Woodell as Winston Scott in a scene from “The Continental: From the World of John Wick.”Katalin Vermes/Starz EntertainmentNew to Peacock‘The Continental: From the World of John Wick’Starts streaming: Sept. 22Fans of the first “John Wick” movie will always remember the moment when its weary hit man hero walked into a strange, assassin-friendly hotel called the Continental and was reminded of its arcane codes of behavior. Suddenly a movie that had previously seemed like a low-stakes underworld revenge thriller opened up into something more fantastical and globe spanning, with a dense mythology. The TV mini-series “The Continental: From the World of John Wick” is set in the 1970s and stars Mel Gibson as Cormac, the hotel’s New York manager at that time. Colin Woodell plays a young version of the franchise’s Winston Scott, who is tasked by Cormac to solve a family problem that may threaten the viability of this super secret criminal hideaway.Also arriving:Sept. 4“Chucky” Season 2Sept. 28“Dino Pops” Season 1 More

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    Popcast (Deluxe): ‘Bottoms,’ ‘Hard Knocks’ & Uncovering Rap History

    Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicThis week’s episode of Popcast (Deluxe), the weekly culture roundup show on YouTube hosted by Jon Caramanica and Joe Coscarelli, includes segments on:The queer teen horror-comedy “Bottoms,” the second film from Emma Seligman, which stars Ayo Edibiri and Rachell Sennott, and sends up both teen raunch comedies of the 1980s and 2000s as well as conventional coming-of-age stories. Also discussed: the links between “Bottoms” and the summer blockbuster “Barbie,” and also the Netflix Sandler-family vehicle “You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah.”The summer in reality television, including “Hip Hop Treasures,” “Hard Knocks: Training Camp with the New York Jets,” and the social media storytelling that’s accompanied Deion Sanders’s arrival as coach of the football team at University of Colorado Boulder.Recent books about hip-hop mixtapes and fashionCaroline Calloway’s “Scammer,” which turns several waves of viral infamy into a feisty memoirSnack of the weekConnect 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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    in Movies

    ‘Portrait of the Queen’ Review: Seeking Fresh Angles on a Familiar Face

    This documentary attempts to give a unique look at Queen Elizabeth II by speaking to photographers who took portraits of her.Endless is the stream of programs that have, over the last 70 years, documented the life of Queen Elizabeth II. Yet “Portrait of the Queen” takes on a unique angle, examining the creation of the queen’s public image by, in its most effective moments, speaking to a handful of photographers who have taken her portrait throughout her reign.It’s a relatively interesting perspective to use in considering a monarch who remained obstinately inscrutable from her coronation in 1953 to her death in 2022, at 96. Indeed, the documentary’s most illuminating beats come from the photographers’ recollections of private moments with the queen, when they observe her guarded persona punctuated by flickers of vulnerability.Unfortunately, these scenes are few and far between in a film bogged down by superfluous sequences and formal inconsistencies: an overused, tonally confused score; two narrators (one of whom is a too-moodily-shot Charles Dance); and talking-head interviews that flit between ordinary citizens and seemingly random celebrities, including Susan Sarandon and Isabella Rossellini. (Fabrizio Ferri, the film’s director and a fashion photographer, clearly called in a favor or two.)Elements that could have made for a somewhat intriguing documentary get lost in what amounts to a tedious piece of agitprop that ultimately regurgitates the dutifully respectful picture of Elizabeth we’ve seen time and time again.Portrait of the QueenNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 20 minutes. Rent or buy on most major platforms. More

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    Jessica Lange Leads Starry Cast in Paula Vogel’s ‘Mother Play’

    “Mother Play,” set in the 1960s, will feature Lange as a mother raising two children, played by Jim Parsons and Celia Keenan-Bolger.Jessica Lange, Jim Parsons and Celia Keenan-Bolger will return to Broadway next spring to star in a new family drama by the acclaimed playwright Paula Vogel.The show, called “Mother Play,” begins outside Washington in 1962, and is about a strong-willed mother raising two children as the family relocates.Lange, 74, will play the mother. She is a two-time Oscar winner (for “Tootsie” and “Blue Sky”) who won a Tony Award in 2016 for playing another difficult mother — Mary Tyrone in a revival of “Long Day’s Journey Into Night.”Keenan-Bolger, 45, is a four-time Tony nominee who won the prize in 2019 for “To Kill a Mockingbird”; she will play the daughter. Parsons, 50, who last appeared on Broadway in a 2018 production of “The Boys in the Band,” will play the son.Vogel, who is considered one of the nation’s leading teachers of playwriting as well as a top practitioner of the craft, won a Pulitzer Prize in 1998 for “How I Learned to Drive,” which was later staged on Broadway in 2022. She has had one other Broadway outing with the play “Indecent,” which was staged in 2017.“Mother Play” will be directed by Tina Landau (“SpongeBob SquarePants”) and presented on Broadway by Second Stage Theater, a nonprofit dedicated to work by living American writers. The play is scheduled to begin previews April 2 and to open April 25 at the Helen Hayes Theater, which is a small Broadway house owned by Second Stage.“Mother Play” will follow Second Stage’s Broadway production of “Appropriate,” a 2014 drama by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, also at the Hayes. That production will be directed by Lila Neugebauer and will star Sarah Paulson; previews begin Nov. 29 and the opening is scheduled for Dec. 18. More