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    Jess Search, a Force in the Documentary Genre, Dies at 54

    As one of the leaders of Doc Society, she supported countless filmmakers, with an emphasis on underrepresented groups and unconventional stories.Jess Search, a producer on dozens of important documentaries and a catalyst on many more as one of the directors of Doc Society, a nonprofit organization she helped found in 2005 that supports documentary filmmakers, died on July 31 in London. She was 54.Doc Society said in a statement that the death, in a hospital, was caused by brain cancer. Search had announced last month that she was stepping away from the organization because of her illness.Search had been a central figure in the documentary scene in Britain and beyond for years. She was gender nonconforming (she used the pronouns “she” and “her” but preferred not to use the gendered courtesy title Ms.), and she had a special interest in promoting work by filmmakers from underrepresented populations or that dealt with out-of-the-mainstream subjects.She was a producer or executive producer on some of those films, like Matthew Barbato’s “Alexis Arquette: She’s My Brother” (2007), about a sex reassignment surgery, and Agniia Galdanova’s “Queendom,” which was released earlier this year and is about a queer Russian performance artist.Her family and colleagues said she was even more devoted to her work at Doc Society, which she led with several other directors and which describes itself as “committed to enabling great documentary films and connecting them to audiences globally.” Since its founding, it has backed hundreds of documentary projects, supporting emerging filmmakers financially and with expert input.“Jess was a builder,” Laura Poitras, director of the Oscar-winning “Citizenfour” (2014), about Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who leaked classified information, said by email. “A builder of communities, infrastructures (material and immaterial), and imaginations.”That film had support from Doc Society, which at the time was called the Britdoc Foundation. (The name changed in 2017 to better reflect the organization’s global focus.) So did “While We Watched” (2022), about the travails of independent television journalism in India, on which Search is credited as an executive producer. Vinay Shukla, its director, called Search “ragingly courageous and resolutely funny.”“It was an impossible film,” he said by email, “and I’d wake up to find new holes in our boat everyday. I would spin and spiral. And then I’d get on a call with Jess and everything would be all right. She would read me poems over Zoom while figuring out my legal strategy. She was always 10 steps ahead.”Tabitha Jackson, who was director of the documentary film program at the Sundance Institute for years and was the Sundance Film Festival director from 2020 to 2022, said Search invigorated the entire genre.A poster for “While We Watched,” about the travails of independent television journalism in India. Search was an executive producer.MetFilm Distribution/Courtesy Everett Collection“In her championing of the field of independent film, and the art of impact and the impact of art, Jess often said that ‘If you are going to move people to act, first you have to move them,’” she said by email, “and that was apparent in the many independent films she was deeply involved in.”“But beyond individual films,” she added, “her strategic laser focus and abundant kinetic energy evangelized and galvanized a collective that could turn a moment into a movement and a challenge into an opportunity for transformation.”Jess Search was born on May 15, 1969, in Waterlooville, England, near Portsmouth, to Phil and Henrietta Search. She grew up in Sevenoaks, southeast of London, and attended Tonbridge Grammar School before earning a bachelor’s degree in politics, philosophy and economics at Oxford University. In 2008 she added a master’s degree from Cass (now Bayes) Business School.In an interview at the 2021 BFI London Film Festival, Search said she had no particular career aspirations after earning her undergraduate degree but chose her path for an unusual reason.“I knew I was gender nonconforming,” she said, “and at that time, leaving university at the very beginning of the ’90s, I knew that I couldn’t work anywhere that had any kind of formal or informal dress code.”Being a lawyer or management consultant was out, she said, “because I’ll have to turn up every day wearing clothes I don’t want to wear.”“So,” she added, “I was like, ‘I think I’d better go into the media,’ because that seemed like a space where it was less formal.”An uncle working in television hired her as his assistant. That led to a job as a commissioning editor for independent film and video at Britain’s Channel 4, which at the time was programming a wide variety of documentaries. In the BFI interview, she expressed a particular fondness for “the Box,” a cardboard box where unsolicited films and ideas for films were collected.“This box was full of amazing, crazy stuff that people just sent in to us,” she recalled in the interview. The channel programmed mainstream documentaries as well, she said, but the Box provided “that sense that anything might happen, that anything might be in there, and you might hear from anyone around the world with something to say.”In 1998 Search was one of the founders of Shooting People, a networking organization for people in the documentary world. In late 2004 Channel 4 shut down its independent film and video department, prompting her and others to start what became Doc Society.Search is survived by her wife, the producer and director Beadie Finzi, and their children, Ella Wilson and Ben Wilson.The outpouring of tributes to Search on social media and elsewhere after her death included a statement from Joanna Natasegara, an Oscar-winning producer who had worked with her.“She believed documentaries could change the world,” she said, “and she spent much of her life lifting up others and proving her thesis.” More

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    Thanks to Carol Burnett and Dolly Parton, New Life for a 1988 Film

    “Tokyo Pop,” starring Carrie Hamilton, a daughter of the comedian, was a critical hit that had fallen into obscurity and has now been restored.When “Tokyo Pop” opened in April 1988, critics were upbeat, at least about its lead actress, Carrie Hamilton, a newcomer to movies who had appeared on TV’s “Fame.” The Los Angeles Times critic Sheila Benson wrote that Hamilton stalked through the film “straight into our hearts.” In The New York Times, Walter Goodman praised the movie, about an aspiring American pop star in Japan, for its “rhythm and zing.” The opening titles were designed by the artist Keith Haring at the height of his fame.But by November 2019, when a print of “Tokyo Pop” played at the Japan Society in Manhattan, the film had fallen into obscurity. The theatrical distributor, Spectrafilm in Canada, was long defunct. Although VHS copies existed, the movie never made it to disc or streaming. Even its director, Fran Rubel Kuzui, hadn’t seen it — her debut feature — in three decades. And Hamilton, a daughter of Carol Burnett, had died of cancer at 38 in 2002.But the Japan Society showing proved to be the start of the film’s second life. During the post-screening Q. and A., Sandra Schulberg, president of the preservation organization IndieCollect, volunteered from the audience that she would love to restore and rerelease the film. After a complicated search for original elements, and financial help from backers including Burnett and Dolly Parton, that restoration is here. “Tokyo Pop” opens Friday at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and will continue at engagements throughout the country.“You don’t think about that when you make something: How will I feel about this in 35 years? Especially your first film,” Kuzui, 78, said at an interview in New York in June, the day after the restoration had its premiere at the Museum of Modern Art.Hamilton with Diamond Yukai in “Tokyo Pop,” directed by Fran Rubel Kuzui. She herself hadn’t seen the film in three decades.Kuzui Enterprises, via Kino LorberAlthough she used to love seeing the video on Blockbuster shelves, and every year or so would get queries from festivals, she knew little about what had happened to the film, other than that she paid $40 a month to keep the internegative in storage. In the pre-internet days, without the distributor, there wasn’t much way to check in on the film’s afterlife, she explained. Thanks to digital and streaming, she added, “my generation is the first generation that I’ve seen that really is having an opportunity to look back on work in such a broad sense.”The fish-out-of-water scenario of “Tokyo Pop” was personal to Kuzui, who was raised in Great Neck, N.Y., and is married to Kaz Kuzui, a Japanese film producer whom she met when she was a script supervisor and he was an assistant director. The movie centers on Wendy (Hamilton), a backup singer in New York who on impulse travels to Japan at a time when American culture was all the rage there. With the language barrier a struggle, she is helped by Hiro (Yutaka Tadokoro, now better known as Diamond Yukai), a frustrated rock musician who speaks a little English. They begin a relationship and, with some reluctance, she joins his band covering American hits. Hamilton herself wrote — and is shown performing — the closing-credits song.Although Kuzui wrote the screenplay with her friend Lynn Grossman, “Tokyo Pop” was made with a mostly Japanese crew — unusual at the time for any American director, let alone a woman. Kuzui remembered that even her calls of “Action!” were perceived as unfeminine shouting.Part of the subtext of the movie, she said, was that she didn’t want to become an example of a gaijin, or foreigner, who was dependent on Japan. When Wendy’s star starts to rise there, it’s because she’s viewed as a novelty. “Foreigners in Japan — they were not held to, and they still aren’t held to, exactly the same rules that Japanese people follow,” Kuzui said. If she was going to be successful as a director, she felt, it couldn’t be with that sort of advantage.Although she and Kaz have divided their time between the United States and Japan for 40 years — they made much of their living handling the Japanese distribution of American independent films like the Coen brothers’ “Barton Fink” and David Lynch’s “Wild at Heart” — Kuzui said that for a long period, she would go back and forth every six to eight weeks because she lacked a visa. She has always seen herself as living in the United States. “I really didn’t start living in Japan until the pandemic,” she said.Hamilton’s mother, Carol Burnett, said she remembered the actress telling her she had a difficult time with her bleached hair.Kuzui Enterprises, via Kino LorberKuzui went on to direct only one other feature, which many more people saw: “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” (1992). Pointing to an admiring 2022 article in The Atlantic, Kuzui believes that even that film may receive the kind of re-evaluation that she anticipates for “Tokyo Pop.” It’s in the zeitgeist, she said, that audiences are giving a fresh look to work made in the 1980s and ’90s.Kazu Watanabe, who programmed “Tokyo Pop” at the Japan Society and now runs distribution at Grasshopper Film, discovered the film while curating a series on outsiders making movies in Tokyo. He thought the movie held up, even in small ways, and, unlike some films of the era, seemed in tune with modern sensibilities. “There’s a scene where the two leads are in bed together, and then she changes her mind, doesn’t want to sleep with him,” he said. “And it’s done so matter-of-factly. There’s no big dramatic scene about it.”Schulberg of IndieCollect said she wanted to restore the film in part because it was a remarkable directorial debut by a woman “who in my view never got the opportunities and attention she deserved.”Burnett, speaking by phone in early July, before the actors’ strike, recalled when Hamilton was shooting the film. “I remember she had a terrible time, she said, with her hair, because the bleach or whatever it was over in Japan made her hair fall out,” Burnett said, with a laugh. “So she wore a lot of scarves and kind of had to make do with what she had.” In an anecdote Burnett also recounted in “Carrie and Me” (2013), her book about her relationship with her daughter, she said that Marlon Brando somehow saw “Tokyo Pop” and called Hamilton to discuss a project — which Hamilton turned down.While Burnett occasionally searches for her daughter on YouTube and reads the comments, keeping tabs on her “small following,” she added, “I’m thrilled that, again, after all these years, people are going to discover her all over again.” More

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    Children’s Movies to Stream: ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ and More

    This month’s picks include a stereotype-defying shape-shifter, superpowered shelter pets and the newest “Guardians of the Galaxy” adventure.‘Nimona’Watch it on Netflix.Nimona is a shape-shifter, a monster, a misunderstood hellion with a heart of gold. Voiced by Chloë Grace Moretz, the title character busts into a futuristic world where knights defend the castle and the powerful might not be as benevolent as they’d like the citizens to believe. Based on a best-selling graphic novel by ND Stevenson and directed by Nick Bruno and Troy Quane (who also co-directed “Spies in Disguise”), this 2023 animated feature from Netflix gives young children a mile-a-minute main character who slides between “good guy” and “bad guy” status, defying the usual stereotypes. Stevenson has called the story a transgender allegory, and the L.G.B.T.Q. representation is a welcome change from the usual kids’ movie universes, where knights fall in love with princesses, not with each other. Here, Riz Ahmed voices Ballister Boldheart, a knight who has been wrongly accused of murdering Queen Valerin (Lorraine Toussaint). Ballister reluctantly allows Nimona to help him take down a corrupt system, prove his innocence and reunite with his partner, Ambrosius Goldenloin (Eugene Lee Yang). As a character, Nimona has zero chill and might prove a little tough for adults to watch for any length of time, but my son was entertained by the character’s constant motion, chaotic energy and what-will-come-next transformations.‘Miraculous: Ladybug & Cat Noir, The Movie’Watch it on Netflix.Many youngsters will already be familiar with the hit French series “Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug & Cat Noir,” about two Parisian teen superheroes named Marinette (voiced by Cristina Vee for the English-speaking cast) and Adrien (Bryce Papenbrook), who secretly transform into Ladybug and Cat Noir to save their city from villains. They’re members of The Miraculous, a group of protectors who vanquish evil all over the world. This time, the superheroes get nearly two hours of screen time to join forces and stop the evil Hawk Moth (Keith Silverstein) from unleashing destruction throughout the City of Light. Directed by Jeremy Zag, who co-wrote the screenplay with Bettina López Mendoza and also wrote the songs, the 2023 movie amps up the action, with plenty of scenes in which Ladybug and Cat Noir fly over Parisian landmarks and battle the bad guys. There are musical numbers, moments of valor, and enough silly humor and flirty banter between the real-life teenagers and their alter egos to keep elementary-age kids watching. The vibrant reds and purples that make the series stand out visually are on full display, and the same girl power theme that defines the series carries over to the film.‘Heroes of the Golden Mask’Rent it on Amazon Prime and Vudu.In this Arcana Studios 2023 production directed by Sean Patrick O’Reilly, an orphan named Charlie (voiced by Kiefer O’Reilly) is trying his best to survive on the mean streets of his city. Just as Charlie is about to get nabbed by the cops for another petty crime, a door opens and a strange figure offers him a quick escape in the form of a magic portal. Charlie hops through, and he’s transported to an ancient Chinese kingdom called Sanxingdui. He meets an unlikely group of golden-masked superheroes who tell Charlie they need his help defeating a ruthless enemy set on conquering the kingdom. At first Charlie schemes to help the heroes with the secret intention of taking the golden masks, but lessons are learned and Charlie discovers that money and greed aren’t the most important things in life. The animation looks a little like a low-budget video game, and the writing and performances are definitely not awards-season worthy, but Patton Oswalt voices a blue ogre named Aesop, Ron Perlman voices Kunyi, and Christopher Plummer, before his death, voiced the character Rizzo. It’s a bit of a mishmash, but if your kid is craving swordplay, winged tigers and dragons that look like they mated with a moose, give this one a try.‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3’Watch it on Disney+.The final installment of the director James Gunn’s “Guardians of the Galaxy” trilogy, released in May, might not go down as the best of the three, but it should entertain older elementary school and middle school kids who’ve come to love Peter Quill/Star-Lord (Chris Pratt), Gamora (Zoe Saldaña), Groot (voiced by Vin Diesel), Rocket (voiced by Bradley Cooper) and Drax (Dave Bautista). When we meet back up with the Marvel gang, Star-Lord is grieving Gamora, who died in “Avengers: Infinity War.” Never fear, though! Gamora (sort of) returns to the crew in the form of a time-traveling variant, but this Gamora has no memory of her relationship with Peter. The story largely centers on Rocket, and the Guardians’ attempts to save his life and take down the High Evolutionary (Chukwudi Iwuji), an evil scientist who created Rocket and who is now intent on mutiny. Cooper brings some genuine emotion to Rocket’s journey, and Iwuji portrays a formidable villain.‘DC League of Super-Pets’Watch it on Max.One could easily imagine this movie being pitched in a conference room: An animated superhero movie, but about their pets! The delightful simplicity of it would be tough to pass up. Here, we have Dwayne Johnson voicing Superman’s dog, Krypto, a pup whose favorite chew toy is a little squeaky Batman doll. Youngsters won’t care about the voices behind the adorable super-pets, but Kevin Hart, Keanu Reeves, Kate McKinnon, Natasha Lyonne and Marc Maron make a formidable cast. Krypto was sent to Earth as a puppy to look after Superman (voiced by John Krasinski), so the two have a sweet bond that might make both children and adults feel a little weepy because dogs are the best. Krypto can fight crime, but he’s a misfit when it comes to relating to non-superhero dogs. When Superman proposes marriage to Lois Lane (Olivia Wilde), he takes Krypto to a shelter to meet some other dogs, so he won’t feel like a third wheel, and just like that, a league of super-pets is formed. With a screenplay by the “Lego Batman Movie” writers Jared Stern and John Whittington, this 2022 charmer, directed by Stern and Sam Levine, has enough action, sweetness and humor to warrant multiple viewings. More

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    Japan’s High School Baseball Tournament is the Sound of Summer

    Created 75 years ago for the country’s prestigious high school baseball tournament, Yuji Koseki’s “The Crown Will Shine on You” stirs memories as it inspires new ones.In addition to being a starting pitcher for the Toronto Blue Jays, Yusei Kikuchi is an accomplished karaoke crooner who is proud of his spirited version of the fight song of his former team in Japan, the Seibu Lions. Asked if he knew the words of a more popular song, “Eikan ha Kimi ni Kagayaku,” or “The Crown Will Shine on You,” during on an off day between starts, the competitor in him took over.Standing in full uniform at the visitor’s dugout in Minnesota, he smiled broadly and began singing in Japanese (loosely translated):As clouds dissipate, sunlight fills the skyOn this day especially, the pure white ball flies highAnswer the jubilation around you, oh our youthWith your smiles of sportsmanshipThe crown will shine on youAs cherry blossoms are to spring, “The Crown Will Shine on You” is the melody of summer in Japan. It was composed by Yuji Koseki in 1948 for the wildly popular National High School Baseball Championship. And on Sunday, as they have for the last 75 years, players from the 49 prefectural champions will march into Koshien Stadium in Nishinomiya to open the single-elimination summer tournament, lifting their knees high and marching to Koseki’s song.“It’s the sound of summer,” Kikuchi said. “For sure, the sound of summer baseball. You don’t just hear it if you’re fortunate enough to advance to Koshien Stadium for the national tournament, it’s played throughout the prefectural rounds as you’re trying to advance to the national stage as a way to motivate you to play your best.”Kikuchi marched into Koshien Stadium as a sophomore and senior. Kenta Maeda, a starting pitcher for the Minnesota Twins, marched in as a sophomore.“It’s a melody that stays in your head,” Maeda said. “I think every Japanese person thinks of the summer baseball tournament when they hear it. For me, it reminds me of my high school years and making it there that one summer, for sure.”Koseki was born in 1909 in Fukushima, a small city 180 miles north of Tokyo. He joined Nippon Columbia, the licensee for the American label Columbia Records, as a composer in 1930. Despite having minimal interest in sports, he dabbled in team fight songs because the marching element appealed to him.He probably did not imagine that his career would become intertwined with Japan’s most popular sporting event.The annual event, which was created in 1915 as the National Middle School Championship Baseball Tournament, was halted for four years during World War II. Play resumed in 1946, and under Allied occupation Japan underwent many social and economic reforms. Among them was a revision of its education system that created a new, three-year curriculum called high school.For the annual summer baseball extravaganza at Koshien, this meant an official name change, denoting it as the National High School Baseball Championship, beginning with the 30th edition in 1948. To celebrate the change, organizers sponsored a national competition for a theme song. Koseki, who was 38 at the time, won.The champions from 49 prefectures compete at the annual tournament.Kyodo News, via Getty ImagesIn his autobiography, Koseki wrote that he drew inspiration from the end of the war — continuation of the tournament meant a continuation of peace. The soothing sounds of batted balls and youthful exuberance would replace the tension of blaring air raid sirens that had become commonplace.He wanted an uplifting, forward-thinking song. He explained his process.“For inspiration, I went to Koshien when it was completely empty and stood atop the mound,” Koseki wrote. “As I imagined what it would be like to be thrust into the emotions of fierce competition, the melody of the song sprung naturally into my mind. Standing on that mound was absolutely the right way to grasp it.”Koseki’s influence at Koshien Stadium goes beyond the tournament as well, because he also composed “Rokko Oroshi,” a fight song for the stadium’s home team, the Hanshin Tigers.Koseki was commissioned to compose the song when a professional league formed in 1936. Originally titled “Song of the Osaka Tigers,” the march has thrived as the longest continuing team fight song in Nippon Professional Baseball and is as synonymous with the Tigers as the team’s black-and-gold pinstriped uniform.“For inspiration, I went to Koshien when it was completely empty and stood atop the mound,” Yuji Koseki said of his inspiration to write “The Crown Will Shine on You.”The Asahi Shimbun, via Getty ImagesThe song has even developed a cultish following akin to Harry Caray’s rendition of “Take Me Out To The Ball Game,” which still has the Wrigley Field faithful clamoring for celebrity renditions during the seventh inning stretch 25 years after Caray’s passing.Countless musicians and celebrities have recorded versions of “Rokko Oroshi,” but perhaps the most famous came from one of Hanshin’s players. Tom O’Malley, a former Mets infielder, spent four years with Hanshin, hitting over .300 each season, but his most lasting impression came off the field.He recorded a version of “Rokko Oroshi” in Japanese and English in 1994. True to Caray, it appealed to the masses for being endearingly off-key. The original recording sold more than 100,000 copies and a remastered digital version was released in 2014, 18 years after O’Malley’s career in Japan ended.Koseki was inducted posthumously into the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame last month for his musical contributions to both professional and amateur baseball. Twenty years earlier, he had received a far more surprising endorsement from Sadaharu Oh, who is Japan’s home run king and played for the rival Yomiuri Giants. Before the 2003 Japan Series, Oh, then managing the Fukuoka Daiei Hawks, was asked about the song he would once again be forced to hear as an opponent.“‘Rokko Oroshi’ actually has quite a nice rhythm and is a likable song,” Oh told reporters. “Even though it’s the opposition’s fight song, the truth is it inspires all of us. The fight songs Mr. Koseki composed have a way of uplifting all those who play sports.” More

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    Myron Goldfinger, 90, Architect of Monumental Modernist Homes, Dies

    His houses, which dot the Hamptons and other parts of the New York region, include a residence featured in “The Wolf of Wall Street.”Myron Goldfinger, whose monumental modernist homes around New York made him a favorite architect of the city’s rich and powerful during the 1980s, died on July 20 in Westchester County, N.Y. He was 90.His daughter Thira Goldfinger and his wife, June Goldfinger, said the death, at a hospital, was from liver cancer.Mr. Goldfinger designed his homes by amassing basic shapes — half-circles, blocks, triangles — into dramatic sculptural statements that seem both modern and ancient, as if a Roman palace had lost all its ornamentation but otherwise escaped the wear of time.He first gained prominence with his own weekend retreat, which he built in 1970 in Waccabuc, a hamlet in northern Westchester. Its plan was simple: A rectangular block topped by two perpendicular triangles. But the structure, four stories tall, was full of surprises, like a hidden rooftop patio where the triangles intersected.Like the architect Louis Kahn, who had been his mentor at the University of Pennsylvania, Mr. Goldfinger sought to fuse modern styles with features found in vernacular Mediterranean architecture: barrel vaults, interior courtyards, vast blank walls.“All architecture must eventually fade and return to dust,” he wrote in the introduction to “Myron Goldfinger: Architect,” a 1992 compendium of his work. “The fashion of the moment is so temporary. Only the timeless basic geometry repeats in time.”Millennium House, designed by Mr. Goldfinger and built in Montague, N.J., in 1978. His expansive, theatrical designs fit perfectly with the lavish ethos of the era. Norman McGrathHis success came not only from his timelessness but also his timeliness. His expansive, theatrical designs fit perfectly with the lavish ethos of the 1980s. His giant walls accommodated massive works of art; his wide picture windows allowed c-suite clients to imagine that they were, indeed, masters of the universe.His homes dot the suburban landscape from northern New Jersey to southwest Connecticut, but his best-known projects lie in the wealthier enclaves that stretch east from New York City on the Long Island shore — above all in the Hamptons, where an influx of luxury buyers were looking for something different than the area’s traditional shingle-style homes.“He was a complete original,” Timothy Godbold, an interior designer and the founder of Hamptons 20th Century Modern, a preservation group, said in a phone interview. “He was completely pure in his aesthetic, which was geometry.”Mr. Goldfinger’s interiors were likewise spectacular. Fitted out by his wife, an interior designer, they included bridges, conversation pits and intimate hallways that led to living rooms with double-height ceilings. They were at once trophies to be displayed and cozy escape pods from the bustle of Manhattan.In 1981 he designed a home for Fred Jaroslow, the chief operating officer of Weight Watchers, in Sands Point, on Long Island’s North Shore. A pile of blocks, cylinders and vaults, it has an almost completely windowless facade, save for a kitchen aperture, a concession to Mr. Jaroslow’s wife.The back is the opposite: Double-height windows, a pool and a broad lawn opening to the water make it an inviting space for entertaining. The house gained prominence when Martin Scorsese used it as the setting for a debauched party hosted by Leonardo DiCaprio’s corrupt broker in the 2013 film “The Wolf of Wall Street.”Myron Goldfinger in 1965. He designed his homes by amassing basic shapes — half-circles, blocks, triangles — into dramatic sculptural statements.The New York TimesMyron Henry Goldfinger was born on Feb. 17, 1933, in Atlantic City, N.J., to William and Bertha (Sass) Goldfinger. His father was a mail carrier, his mother a homemaker.As a child growing up working class on the Jersey Shore, Myron gawked at the stately homes in some of his hometown’s more affluent neighbors, like Marven Gardens to the south.“I guess we all search for a certain meaning and understanding of life,” he wrote in the foreword to “Myron Goldfinger: Architect.” “I know I am always building the houses I never lived in as a boy.”He graduated from Penn with a bachelor’s degree in architecture in 1955, then served two years in the Army, designing cabinets at the Pentagon. Afterward he spent almost a decade working for large and small design firms in New York, including the office of Karl Linn, a noted landscape architect; the giant Skidmore, Owings & Merrill; and the office of Philip Johnson.In 1966, he decided to go off on his own, opening a firm with June Matkovic, whom he married that same year. Through Mr. Johnson, he also secured a teaching position at the Pratt Institute, a design and engineering university in Brooklyn, where he stayed for a decade.Along with his wife and daughter, he is survived by another daughter, Djerba Goldfinger, and a grandchild.Later in his career, Mr. Goldfinger expanded beyond the New York area, designing luxury villas on the Caribbean island of Anguilla and two homes in the Southwest, including one in Santa Fe, N.M., for himself and his wife.David Michael KennedyMr. Goldfinger wrote two other books, “Villages in the Sun: Mediterranean Community Architecture” (1969) and “Images of the Southwest” (2008), both of which explored vernacular architecture and how it reflected its surrounding landscape, history and culture.“I love the intuitive artistic sense that drove these ancient peoples,” he told The Santa Fe New Mexican in 1996. “It was an organic process that used whatever materials were available in a basic, honest fashion.”Later in his career, Mr. Goldfinger expanded somewhat beyond the New York area, designing a series of luxury villas on the Caribbean island of Anguilla and two homes in the American Southwest, including one in Santa Fe, for himself and his wife. They had fallen in love with the region, and amassed a sizable collection of Southwestern art.Today, many critics and preservationists speak of Mr. Goldfinger’s work in the same sentence as that of Charles Gwathmey and Richard Meier, two world-renowned modernists who likewise designed homes around New York City.If they are better known, it may be because they also completed high-profile public works — Mr. Gwathmey and his partner, Robert Siegel, renovated the Guggenheim Museum in 1992, and Mr. Meier designed the Getty Center in Los Angeles. Mr. Goldfinger’s single significant nonresidential work was a synagogue in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn.His work also went out of fashion for a time, as postmodernism swept in and clients returned to more traditional styles. But, Mr. Godbold said, the pendulum may be swinging back: On social media, he often sees younger architecture fans fawning over a Goldfinger house.“We’re all going to be loving it in a few years,” he said. More

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    Satchmo’s Wonderful World: Louis Armstrong Center Amplifies An Artist’s Vision

    New jazz and exhibition spaces, and an inaugural show curated by Jason Moran, feature the trumpeter’s history, collaged onto the walls.You can find anything in Queens. And yet for decades, the Louis Armstrong House Museum has been a well-kept secret on a quiet street in Corona. The longtime residence of the famed jazz trumpeter, singer and bandleader, it is a midcentury interior design treasure hidden behind a modest brick exterior.The museum’s new extension, the 14,000 square foot Louis Armstrong Center, blends in a little less. It looks, in fact, a bit like a 1960s spaceship landed in the middle of a residential block. By design, it doesn’t tower over its neighboring vinyl-sided houses but, with its curvilinear roof, it does seem to want to envelop them. And behind its rippling brass facade lie some ambitious goals: to connect Armstrong as a cultural figure to fans, artists, historians and his beloved Queens community; to extend his civic and creative values to generations that don’t know how much his vision, and his very being, changed things. It wants, above all, to invite more people in.“The house is relatively small,” said Regina Bain, executive director of the House Museum and Center, speaking of the two-story dwelling where Armstrong lived with his wife, Lucille, from 1943 until his death in 1971. “But his legacy is humongous. And this is the building that will help us to launch that.”The Center, 25 years in development, includes exhibition, research and education areas, and, for events, a 75-seat performance space whose blond wood and intimacy recall Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola, the Jazz at Lincoln Center venue.“I think that this will do something that we haven’t quite seen in a jazz space,” said Jason Moran, the jazz pianist and composer, who was the Center’s inaugural exhibition curator. “That’s also something that my community needs to witness, too. It needs to watch, how can we take care of an artist’s history? And what else can it unleash in a community that might not even care about the art, but might care about something else related to it? Armstrong gives us all those opportunities to do that.”The new Louis Armstrong Center in Corona, Queens, designed by Caples Jefferson Architects, whose roof recalls a grand piano. The architects wanted to give their blueprint the sense of joy that Armstrong brings in his voice and music.Albert Vercerka/EstoThe longtime residence of the jazz trumpeter, singer and bandleader Louis Armstrong is a midcentury interior design treasure hidden behind a modest brick exterior.Ike Edeani for The New York TimesFor the architects, Sara Caples and Everardo Jefferson, the project was a puzzle in how to link two structures — the Center is across the street from the Armstrong House Museum — with the spirit of a musical legend. Their inspiration came by going back to the music, and to Armstrong’s street-level roots. “That kind of neighborhood that jazz actually emerged from — that wasn’t an elite creation, it was a popular creation,” Caples said. “And yet it was the music that revolutionized how we think, how we listen, how we think about nonmusical things, even.” They rounded the front of the Center to nod to the Armstrong house; its brass curtain echoes the color of his horn, and — the musically fluent may notice — the staggered hoop-shapes and columns in the entryway map out the notes of his most celebrated songs, like “What a Wonderful World” and “Dinah.”They also wanted to give their blueprint the sense of joy that Armstrong brings, the smile that you can feel in his singing voice. When they started the project, Jefferson called an uncle who’s a jazz saxophonist to ask — really, what made Armstrong so special? “And he said, you know, when you hear his music, you feel like dancing down the street,” Jefferson said.At the ribbon-cutting ceremony earlier this summer, trumpeters performed on the Armstrong house balcony and, across the road, on the upper deck of the Center, a fanfare that started with the opening bars of “West End Blues” and ended with “It’s a Wonderful World.” “It was an incredible moment — the building participated as a reflector of sound back to the street,” Caples said. Afterward, schoolchildren were invited in to plonk around on a Steinway.Visitors in the interior of the Louis Armstrong Center, 25 years in development, includes exhibition, research and education areas and a performance space.Ike Edeani for The New York TimesOn display is Armstrong’s Selmer Trumpet, engraved mouthpiece and monogrammed handkerchief. The gold-plated trumpet was a gift from King George V.Ike Edeani for The New York TimesIke Edeani for The New York TimesBuilt on the site of a former parking lot, with $26 million in mostly state and local funding, the new Center encompasses Armstrong’s 60,000-piece archive, including 700 tapes that were once housed miles away at Queens College. From that collection, Moran has curated the first permanent exhibition, “Here to Stay,” with a multimedia, interactive centerpiece of audio, video, interviews and songs. There’s Armstrong’s gold-plated trumpet — a gift from King George V — complete with his favorite imported German lip balm and the mouthpiece inscribed “Satchmo,” his nickname — and his collage art. (He made hundreds of pieces, paper cutouts on tape cases.) His first and last passports, among the ephemera, show his evolution from New Orleans-born youth player to a global icon in a tuxedo and an irrepressible grin.Armstrong was himself a documentarian, traveling with cameras and recording equipment and turning the mic on himself, his friends and loved ones in private moments — telling jokes backstage, opining at home. As a Black artist with an elementary school education, who was born into segregation, he went on to hobnob with presidents and royalty and to meet the pope. “He really marks a way of being a public figure,” Moran said. “And he has to weigh how he does that. If he’s getting a chance not only to tell his story with his trumpet in his mouth but through these microphones, then what are the stories he wants to tell, not in public? Those become important.”Jason Moran, the jazz musician, curated the opening exhibition, “Here to Stay” at the new Louis Armstrong Center in Corona.Ike Edeani for The New York TimesOne place his vision is most evident is in his reel-to-reel tape box collages, rarely displayed publicly until now. Armstrong used them as an outlet for years.“If he has a press clipping, maybe it wasn’t favorable, he could cut it up and make a collage,” Moran said. A photo in the exhibition shows him, after a trip to Italy, pasting his art work on the ceiling of his den, fresco-style. (Lucille Armstrong, a former Cotton Club dancer who was his fourth wife, put a stop to that.)Moran recalled that when Armstrong talked about his process and why he liked making collages, he explained that with just the push-pull of material on a small canvas, you can change “the story that you were given.” It echoed his expertise as a musician, Moran said, learning how to play background, on the cornet, with King Oliver, his early mentor, or foreground as he redefined what it meant to be a soloist, upending his destiny along the way.The exhibition also has the artist Lorna Simpson in a video reflecting on Armstrong’s collages and how they compartmentalized an enormous and complex life into the manageable and portable square of a tape case. “Armstrong archives and recontextualizes his public life by hand, to be layered and collaged onto the walls of his private life,” she said.Most of Armstrong’s collages were made in the den of his Corona, Queens home, from reel-to-reel tape boxes. In the 1950s, his love of collage spilled onto the walls of his den, which he adorned with photographs, newspaper clippings, and anything else he had at hand, eventually covering portions of his ceiling.Ike Edeani for The New York TimesLouis Armstrong created over 500 collages as covers of his tape collection, generating a priceless art and music catalog. Left: The box for Reel 27 features a German publicity photo of the musician, a snapshot of an unidentified man and “Gems from Buenos Aires.” Center: Reel 18, a photograph of Armstrong preparing to dine and Bing Crosby’s Musical Autobiography album on Decca. Right: Reel 68, with a reproduction of a photo of him with his mother and sister in New Orleans.Ike Edeani for The New York TimesThe gallery display (by C & G Partners) is full of circular motifs, reminiscent of musical notes or records. In determining the palette for the Center, Jefferson and Caples, the architects, looked at Armstrong’s art and his wardrobe; his home, with rooms in shades of electric blue or creamy peach, was mostly styled by Lucille. But he loved it — especially the spaces with gilded or reflective surfaces. “So it gave us the cue that we should not be too mousy,” Caples said, “and that this was a public building where there could be some expansiveness.” The club space at the Center, which recently hosted a rehearsal of trumpeters for the Newport Jazz Festival’s Armstrong tribute — taking place this weekend in Rhode Island — is a vibrant red.Moran made sure there was a book from the Armstrongs’ vast collection in every vitrine. “They had that kind of political library that was investigating their role in society,” he said. (They also were creatures of their era: The full archives include Playboy anthologies and vintage diet recipes; a guide called “Lose Weight the Satchmo Way” — heavy on the lamb chops — is displayed in the exhibition.)Lucille and Louis Armstrong traveled the world with customized luggage. Left: Armstrong’s passport for his first tour of England in 1932. Under occupation, Armstrong listed himself as an “Actor and Musician.” Right: Armstrong’s final passport in 1967, after years of being “America’s Ambassador of Goodwill.”Ike Edeani for The New York TimesEven a longtime Armstrong devotee like Marquis Hill, one of the Newport trumpeters, was moved by these personal mementos. (He snapped a picture of the handwritten recipe for Armstrong’s favorite dish, red beans and rice.) A half-century-old recording of Armstrong discussing how important it was to listen to all kinds of music inspired a Hill composition for Newport, commissioned by the Center. Its jazz club, he said, is “going to be a new space for what Louis Armstrong wanted, to keep pushing the music forward.”As part of an artist in residence program this fall, the Grammy winning bassist and singer Esperanza Spalding will present her project with the choreographer Antonio Brown that explores the era when people danced to jazz. Rooting herself in Armstrong’s history, and expanding his vision, Spalding said in an email, would “develop ways to re-merge and re-awaken the dialogue between these essential modalities of human expression — the improvising body and the improvising musician.”Under Bain, the executive director,the Center is also hosting new programming, including dance and yoga classes, trumpet lessons and events that engage the mostly Spanish-speaking community, whether through music or social activism.“Louis and Lucille were two Black artists who owned their own home in the ’40s,” Bain said. “Why can’t we have a workshop here about homeownership for our neighbors? If it’s in the legacy of Louis and Lucille — that’s what this space can also be.”Since it opened on July 6, the Center has exceeded visitor estimates and is adding more hours and drawing fans from across the country. “He was one of the heroes I was taught about,” said Jenne Dumay, 32, a social worker from Atlanta who plans music-oriented trips with friends, focusing on Black history. “This museum gives me insight that I didn’t learn in my textbooks.”Among the final work Armstrong created, after a lengthy hospital stay in 1971, was a six-page handwritten ode to Corona, and his happy, quotidian life there. In looping script, he extols the virtues of his Schnauzers as watch dogs (“When the two start barking together — oh boy, what a duet”), and his favoriteChinese restaurant.It is one of the treasures that Moran — who said Armstrong’s spirit-lifting music helped him through the pandemic — cherishes most. Armstrong’s handwriting, he noted, slants upward on every page. “The text is just so inherently aspirational,” Moran said. “It’s in line with how he holds his trumpet” — pointing up to the sky — “how his eyes look when he plays. It’s a slight thing, but it tells us: this is how he thinks about life.”Additional reporting by Chris Kuo.The Louis Armstrong Center34-56 107th Street, Queens, N.Y.; 718-478-8271; louisarmstronghouse.org. More

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    in Movies

    ‘Shortcomings’ Review: Dazed and Confused

    Directed by Randall Park, this charming comedy about a Japanese American man’s belated coming-of-age touches upon fascinating questions of identity but fails to dig below the surface.“Shortcomings,” the directorial debut of the actor Randall Park, opens with a movie-within-the-movie: it’s a spoof of “Crazy Rich Asians,” playing at an Asian film festival in the Bay Area. As Ben (Justin H. Min), a Japanese American cinephile, and his girlfriend Miko (Ally Maki), a festival organizer, step out of the theater, Ben blasts it as “a garish mainstream rom-com that glorifies the capitalist fantasy of vindication through materialism and wealth.”I nodded enthusiastically. Too bad Ben turns out to be a jerk.If the meme “the worst person you know just made a great point” were a movie, it would be “Shortcomings.” Ben’s opinions aren’t wrong — market-tested corporate ploys at diversity do deserve our skepticism, for instance, and the toilet-bowl art of Ben’s hipster co-worker (Tavi Gevinson) does deserve the snide laugh it elicits from him — but he is self-absorbed and fickle. His moping and griping are unearned, lobbed like wet blankets at anyone trying to actually do something with their lives, like Miko, or his best friend, Alice (Sherry Cola).“Shortcomings” traces the belated coming-of-age of Ben, as Miko abruptly leaves for New York for the summer and Ben fumbles around, dating different women and confronting the looming closure of the art house movie theater where he works. His character arc isn’t new: Hollywood has given us numerous stunted heroes who slowly, begrudgingly, come to realize their, err, shortcomings. Where Park’s movie, adapted from a 2007 graphic novel by Adrian Tomine, feels fresh is in the way it brings Ben’s Asian American identity into the mix. Is his maladjustment a consequence of his experience of otherness, or is he just a regular old man-child?Ben, for his part, invokes and denies racism opportunistically: He is dismissive when Miko accuses him of ogling white women, but quickly labels her new lover, Leon — a white man, played hilariously by Timothy Simons, who speaks Japanese and busts out Taekwondo moves — a “rice king.” Ben isn’t being fair — but neither is the scorned date who tells Ben that his lot in life is owed only to him, not to his race. What these arguments get at is the genuine struggle, familiar to people of color, to wrest some agency from a world that tells us who we can and cannot be.Park’s film isn’t intrepid enough to really plumb the thorny terrain of that struggle. The movie is funny and touching, with a star-making performance by Min and a script full of lovely, self-aware little touches: When Jacob Batalon, who plays one of Ben’s co-workers, derides the “Spider-Man” movies that the actor himself stars in, I chuckled. But it’s shot like a sitcom — flat, shiny, perfunctory — and structured like one, too, with quip-heavy vignettes that resolve in pat conclusions. Ben surely deserves his comeuppance, but “Shortcomings” traces too neat a narrative journey to that end, leaving a trail of unexplored questions and missed opportunities in its wake.ShortcomingsRated R for some references to sex and pornography, and some disturbingly unintelligible punk art. Running time: 1 hour 32 minutes. In theaters. More

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    The Conductor John Wilson Doesn’t Like Musical Distinctions

    With the Sinfonia of London, Wilson has explored the variety of music — light and serious alike — that defined his musical upbringing.The conductor John Wilson spends a lot of time doing what he calls “home scholarship”: reconstructing lost scores from MGM musicals, correcting mistakes in orchestral parts and preparing new editions of pieces that can seem illegible.Then, he “fixes” his orchestra, the Sinfonia of London, a project-based ensemble that Wilson revived in 2018, which will appear at the BBC Proms on Sunday. Sometimes, he offers the players work via text message. “I’ve always had a say in who’s in the orchestra,” he said, “because it has to be the right kind of sound.”Wilson, who was born in Gateshead, England, in 1972, has always opted for this front-loaded way of working, in which the conductor actively engages in the types of logistics that others might find menial.“You’d be amazed at the difference good quality orchestral parts make to performance,” he said. “They can make it or break it. You can hit the ground running without having to decipher things.”All this preparation, he said, is to resuscitate the Sinfonia’s sound of old, “a sound in my head which never left me.” Wilson has a sentimental streak when it comes to his formative influences, and the origin story behind his rejuvenation of the Sinfonia, which disbanded in 2002, is romantic.When he was 11 and realized that he could buy classical records in his local, pop-oriented HMV, he picked out a copy of the Sinfonia of London’s “English Music for Strings,” conducted by John Barbirolli. That recording was from the ensemble’s earliest era, when it was a freelance recording orchestra made up of London’s premier chamber players and section principals, from 1955 to 1969.Then, during college, Wilson assisted the composer Howard Blake, who had brought back the orchestra and led it from 1982 to 2002. Wilson’s long-held obsession with the idea of reviving an orchestra, and a desire to record Korngold’s Symphony in F sharp, helped drive the orchestra’s relaunch in 2018. In the five years since, his edition of the orchestra has recorded 26 albums.Live performances from the ensemble are rarer, but no less anticipated than its award-winning recordings. In two sold-out nights of meaty, early-20th-century orchestral works at the Aldeburgh Festival in June, the Sinfonia produced two dazzlingly colorful performances, underpinned by a ravishing, at times eccentrically exuberant string sound. Yet Wilson’s gestures were economical to the point of near detachment from the ecstatic sounds around him, unleashing a fuller vocabulary of movements only a handful of times.It’s a different story in rehearsals. There’s an affability between Wilson and the players, many of whom he’s had relationships with for two decades. (“I feel very much as if I’m one of them,” he said in an interview later.) But that didn’t stop him tersely admonishing them for not giving “sheer naked concentration.”“The whole point of this overture is to be violently on the beat,” Wilson said during a rehearsal of William Walton’s exceedingly rhythmic “Scapino.”While working with the orchestra, “John is demanding from beginning to end,” said John Mills, a leader of the Sinfonia. “Most of us enjoy that; that’s why we come back,” he added. “We want to be in that very demanding, high-achieving environment, where most of us, 90 percent of the time, feel like we’re impostors. You’re surrounded by brilliant players, and then you talk to the other players, and they feel exactly the same.”The Sinfonia of London, despite the history of its name and the cohesiveness of its sound, is still in essence a session orchestra. Wilson aims “for a different kind of homogeneity,” Mills said. For string players, that means conserving bow to make long, spinning, bulge-free lines, and finding a vibrato that Mills described as “almost invisible”: narrow, fast and drawn from inside the note, rather than added on as an optional extra.“There’s plenty of sizzling vibrato,” said Charlie Lovell-Jones, another leader of the orchestra, making “a sound you can chew.”While he growing up, Wilson said, “music was just music.”Alex Ingram for The New York TimesWilson also encourages individuality within the sound, in part because of the kinds of players he books. “I have an orchestra full of artists,” he said. During one session, Mills and Wilson realized they had nine British orchestral leaders in the section, alongside some top freelancers, and a selection of chamber players.With the Sinfonia, Wilson prioritizes a particular repertoire. At Aldeburgh, they performed Rachmaninoff, Elgar and Respighi; at the Proms, they perform Lili Boulanger’s “D’un Matin de Printemps,” Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto and Walton’s First Symphony. Their Ravel, Dutilleux and Korngold recordings have won awards, and their next major recording project is a complete version of Ravel’s “Daphnis and Chloe,” featuring new parts that took Wilson 18 months to compile.He’s drawn to orchestral scores driven primarily by color, craft and texture. “I guess I’ve never ever grown tired of the possibilities of what we call the modern orchestra,” he said. “There are so many things you can do with an orchestra to make it sound.”Exploring the orchestra by color has led Wilson down some unusual avenues. With the BBC Philharmonic, he has recorded a third volume of orchestral works by Eric Coates, a prolific composer of light music. He’s drawn to the slithering sound of Frederick Delius, and to oddities like the “garish but amazing” Stokowski orchestration of Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in C sharp minor. Wilson recently conducted two performances of the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta “Princess Ida” on period instruments, with “tiny trombones and cornets and gut strings and everything.”Wilson is a period performance specialist, but the periods he’s interested in aren’t Baroque. The John Wilson Orchestra, which he founded in 1994, and which would later bring him broader recognition through a 10-year run at the Proms, became known for “historically informed” performances of Gershwin, Rodgers and Hammerstein, and Golden Age movie musicals.During that time in his career, Wilson didn’t exactly feel pigeonholed, but, he said, “so many people’s perceptions of what I actually did were just skewed compared to reality.”Shifting his energies to the Sinfonia of London — in part, because of a spate of canceled dates for the John Wilson Orchestra during the pandemic — has coincided with more of a focus on the variety of music that shaped his musical upbringing. Wilson was a largely self-taught pianist and percussionist, who had “a general light music education” in northeast England, playing in Gilbert and Sullivan shows, brass bands and operetta, and fixing his own orchestras for performances of musicals like “West Side Story.”“Music was just music,” he said, “and I was lucky to grow up with movies on in the background and LPs from Sinatra, all performed to an exalted level.”Wilson grew up with a value system in which musical distinctions between “light” and “serious” were much less pronounced than elsewhere in the country. A few weeks before he moved to London to study at the Royal College of Music, he had an encounter with a soprano from a local choir after he performed a piece by Coates.“She said, ‘I hope you don’t take all that rubbish down with you when you go to London,’” he recalled. “I was shocked. She said, ‘You’ll be laughed out of the place when you go to the Royal College of Music.’ It had never crossed my mind that people wouldn’t take to that sort of music.”Wilson has continued to champion light music in all its varieties. “In its own way, it’s a very pure kind of music,” with “a direct emotional appeal.” It’s a sound and feeling that he heard in Barbirolli’s strings, and that he brings to the Sinfonia of London today: strong, immediate and indisputable. More