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    Jason Aldean Video for ‘Try That in a Small Town’ Pulled Amid Backlash

    The country singer, who released the song in May, said the tune is an ode to the “feeling of a community” he had growing up. Critics say it is offensive.Country Music Television has pulled a music video for the song “Try That in a Small Town,” by the country music superstar Jason Aldean, which was filmed at the site of a lynching, amid accusations that its lyrics and message are offensive.The video, released in May, was shot in front of the Maury County Courthouse in Columbia, Tenn., a site known for the 1927 mob lynching of Henry Choate, an 18-year-old Black man, and is interspersed with violent news footage, including protests. An American flag is draped between the building’s central pillars, while Aldean, strumming a guitar, lists what he imagines as big city behavior that would not be well received in a small town; “carjack an old lady”; “cuss out a cop”; “stomp on the flag.”State Representative Justin Jones of Tennessee, a Democrat, condemned the song on Twitter, describing it as a “heinous song calling for racist violence” that promoted “a shameful vision of gun extremism and vigilantism.”On Tuesday, CMT confirmed by email that it had stopped airing the video on Monday, but did not offer any explanation. The news was first reported by Billboard.Aldean defended himself on Twitter, asserting that he had been accused of “releasing a pro-lynching song” and being “not too pleased” with the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests.“These references are not only meritless, but dangerous,” he said. “There is not a single lyric in the song that references race or points to it — and there isn’t a single video clip that isn’t real news footage — and while I can try and respect others to have their own interpretation of a song with music — this one goes too far.”Aldean then made reference to his performance in 2017 at an outdoor music festival in Las Vegas, where a gunman opened fire from a hotel room, killing 58 people.“NO ONE, including me, wants to continue to see senseless headlines or families ripped apart,” Aldean said. The song, he added, referred to the “feeling of a community” he experienced growing up, where neighbors took care of one another, regardless of differences in background or belief.“My political views have never been something I’ve hidden from, and I know that a lot of us in this Country don’t agree on how we get back to a sense of normalcy where we go at least a day without a headline that keeps us up at night. But the desire for it to- that’s what this song is about,” Aldean said.BRB Music Group, which represents Aldean, could not be immediately reached for comment. More

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    Las Vegas Police Search Home in Investigation of Tupac Shakur’s Murder

    Nearly three decades after the rapper was killed in a drive-by shooting after leaving a boxing match, the police said that they had searched a home in Henderson, Nev.The Las Vegas police have executed a search warrant in connection with the fatal drive-by shooting of the rapper Tupac Shakur in 1996, the department said Tuesday, reinvigorating the investigation into the unsolved death of a mythic figure in hip-hop.Shakur, who sold millions of albums and had reached No. 1 on the charts, was shot as he was leaving a Mike Tyson-Bruce Seldon prizefight in Las Vegas when a Cadillac pulled up alongside the BMW he was riding in. He died less than a week later at the age of 25.The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department said in a statement that it had served the search warrant in Henderson, Nev., a city outside of Las Vegas, on Monday. It declined to comment further.Shakur’s “All Eyez on Me” was one of the first double albums in hip-hop. He began acting onscreen in the early ’90s, starring as the male lead opposite Janet Jackson in John Singleton’s 1993 romantic drama “Poetic Justice.” When he died, the critic Jon Pareles wrote in The New York Times that he had “described gangsterism as a vicious cycle, a grimly inevitable response to racism, ghetto poverty and police brutality.”His murder has been the speculation of books, documentaries, television series and films. For some, the failure to charge anyone for Shakur’s killing — as well as for the fatal shooting of the Notorious B.I.G. six months later — became signs of institutional failure, prompting calls for the police to revisit the case.Shakur, who was one of the most popular rappers in the world when he was killed, saw his legend grow after his death, as dozens of posthumous albums, books, documentaries and films were released. There was even a concert featuring a Tupac Shakur hologram. In 2017 he was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.Part of the investigation over the years has included a brawl involving Shakur and his entourage at the MGM Grand hotel after the boxing match. But in more than 25 years, no arrests have been made. The police department has cited a lack of cooperation from people close to Shakur as a reason for the stalled investigation. More

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    How Do You Tell the Story of 50 Years of Hip-Hop?

    Hip-hop is a fount of constant innovation woven into nearly every corner of American life. So don’t look for cohesion: Lean into the cacophony.Sean “Puffy” Combs in a celebratory mood. In the mid-1990s, labels like Bad Boy helped bring rap to the center of American culture.Johnny Nunez/GettyHip-hop is a wondrous and centerless tangle, ubiquitous even if not always totally visible.It is a fount of constant innovation, and a historical text ripe for pilfering. It is a continuation of rock, soul and jazz traditions, while also explicitly loosening their cultural grip. It is evolving more rapidly than ever — new styles emerge yearly, or faster, multiplying the genre’s potential. And it has impact far beyond music: Hip-hop is woven into television and film, fashion, advertising, literature, politics and countless other corners of American life. It is lingua franca, impossible to avoid.It is far too vast to be contained under one tent, or limited to one narrative. The genre is gargantuan, nonlinear and unruly. It has its own internal quarrels and misunderstandings, and its stakeholders are sometimes friends and collaborators, and sometimes view each other warily.So when trying to catalog hip-hop in full, it’s only reasonable to lean into the cacophony. The package that accompanies this essay does just that, collecting oral histories from 50 genre titans of the past five-plus decades. The number matters. It’s an acknowledgment that at 50 years old — a mild fiction, but more on that later — hip-hop is broad and fruitful, enthralling and polyglot, the source of an endless fount of narratives. Its fullness cannot be captured without sprawl and ambition. Many voices need to be heard, and they won’t always agree.Side by side, there are stylistic innovators, crossover superstars, regional heroes, micromarket celebrities. There are those who insist on their primacy and see themselves as a center of gravity, and those who are proud students of the game and understand their place in hip-hop’s broader artistic arc. There are those who are universally recognized, and those known mainly by connoisseurs. There are agitators and accommodationists. The revered and the maligned. Some even play with the boundaries of what rapping is ordinarily considered to be.All taken together, these artists form a family tree of the genre, one that highlights bridges between groups that are typically discussed separately, and that underscores the ways in which rappers — no matter the city they hail from, or the era in which they found their success — have been grappling with similar circumstances, creative questions and obstacles.The Cold Crush Brothers in the Bronx, 1979. Joe Conzo, via Easy A.D.These 50 histories detail hip-hop from countless vantage points: the past forward, and vice versa; the underground upward; the less populated regions outward; the big cities out into the suburbs. They tell the story of a makeshift musical movement that laid the foundation for the defining cultural shift of the past few decades.Fifty years ago, though, that outcome seemed fanciful at best. In the 1970s, Bronx block parties gave way to nightclubs, and talking D.J.s laid the foundation for dedicated M.C.s to begin taking over. Soon, the intrusion of capitalism removed and packaged the part of these live events that was the easiest to transmit: rapping.Then it was off to the races. By the mid-1980s, the hip-hop industry was a small club but big business, as audiences around the country were primed by the commercial release of recordings from countless New York artists. A wave of soon-to-be-global stars arrived: Run-DMC, LL Cool J, the Beastie Boys. Hip-hop became worldwide counterculture.Run-DMC in 1985, onstage in Providence, R.I.John Nordell/Getty ImagesBy the dawn of the 1990s, it flowered everywhere in this country — the South, the West, the Midwest — and seeped into the global mainstream. In the mid-90s, thanks to the work of Biggie Smalls and Puffy, Tupac Shakur and Dr. Dre, Bad Boy and Death Row, it became the center of American pop music, despite resistance from those convinced rock was destined to forever reign supreme.Into the 2000s, the genre’s power center shifted from the coasts to the South, where the genre was flourishing (largely away from the scrutiny of the major labels) in Miami, Houston, Virginia, Atlanta and Memphis. 2 Live Crew, the Geto Boys, Missy Elliott, Outkast, Three 6 Mafia — each had absorbed what was being imported from the rest of the country and created new lingo and sonic frameworks around it. Hip-hop was becoming a widely shared language with numerous dialects.T.I. onstage in his hometown, Atlanta, in 2005.Ray Tamarra/Getty ImagesAll the while, the genre was expanding, becoming more commercially successful and inescapable with each year. It became centrist pop, which in turn spun off its own dissidents: the New York and Los Angeles undergrounds of the 1990s; the progressive indie scenes of the 2000s; and the SoundCloud rap of the 2010s. In the past 20 years, hip-hop has been responsible not only for some of the biggest pop music of the era — Drake, Kanye West, Jay-Z, Cardi B — but its templates have become open source for performers in other genres to borrow from, which they did, and do, widely. Hip-hop became a crucial touch point for country music, for reggaeton, for hard rock, for K-pop and much more.What’s striking in the histories collected in this package is how no part of that ascent has been taken for granted. In every era, there were stumbling blocks. For each artist, there was a promise of a scene just out of reach. And for all of these rappers, that meant leaning in to a new idea of what their version of hip-hop could be, and hoping ears would meet them in this untested place.Missy Elliott performing in New York in 2012.Jerritt Clark/FilmMagic, via Getty ImagesThere is also the matter of untold history — to read these recollections is to be continually reminded of those who are no longer here to share their tales. There is a punishing catalog of before-their-time deaths just below these stories, a reminder that canons can’t include songs that never got to be made.As for the 50th anniversary, well, it is a framing of convenience. The date refers to Aug. 11, 1973, when DJ Kool Herc — in the rec room of the apartment building at 1520 Sedgwick Ave. in the Bronx — reportedly first mixed two copies of the same album into one seamless breakbeat. That is, of course, one way to think about hip-hop’s big-bang moment, but by no means the only one. If you think of rapping as toasting, or talking over prerecorded music, or speaking in rhythmic form, then hip-hop has been around longer than 50 years. Just ask the Last Poets, or DJ Hollywood, who would improvise rhymes on the microphone as he was spinning disco records. There are also, depending upon whom you ask, others who had previously mixed two of the same record.Kanye West’s Saint Pablo tour opener in Indianapolis in 2016.AJ Mast for The New York TimesBut the canniness and the cynicism of attempting to enshrine a date that everyone can stand behind reflects a darker and more worrisome truth, which is that, for decades, hip-hop was perceived as disposable, a nuisance, an aberration. Commemoration and enshrinement seemed far-fetched. For a long time, hip-hop had to argue for its rightful place in pop music, and pop culture, facing hostilities that were racial, legal, musical and beyond.Insisting that the genre has an origin point, therefore, is really just another way of insisting on its importance, its stability and its future. You can quarrel with the specific details — and many do — but not with the intent, which is to ensure that no one again overlooks the genre’s power and influence.That said, hip-hop was never going anywhere, because no style of pop music has been as adaptive and as sly. Hip-hop directly answers its critics, and it voraciously consumes and reframes its antecedents. It is restless and immediate, sometimes changing so quickly that it doesn’t stop to document itself. So here is a landing place to reflect, and a jumping off point for the next 50 or so years. More

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    In Hollywood Strike, Actors and Studios Are ‘Far Apart’ on Key Issues

    The actors’ union and the organization that bargains on behalf of the studios traded statements underscoring how much work needs to be done to reach an agreement.As tens of thousands of actors go into their fifth day of a strike versus the Hollywood studios, the two sides have shown no signs of returning to the bargaining table — and are even exchanging barbed messages that underscore how far apart they are.Late Monday, leadership of SAG-AFTRA, the actors’ union, sent members a 12-page memo laying out its demands and the studios’ counterproposals. They “remain far apart on the most critical issues that affect the very survival of our profession,” the note said.“We marched ahead because they intentionally dragged their feet,” it continued.The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, the organization that bargains on behalf of the studios, answered with a note to the news media arguing that the message from the union “deliberately distorts” the offers it had made.“A strike is not the outcome we wanted,” the alliance said. “For SAG-AFTRA to assert that we have not been responsive to the needs of its membership is disingenuous at best.”Thousands of Hollywood actors went on strike on Friday after failing to reach a new contract with the major studios, including old-line companies like Paramount, Universal and Disney and tech giants like Netflix, Amazon and Apple.The actors joined 11,500 screenwriters who went on strike 78 days ago, the first time both unions had walked out at the same time since 1960. The writers have not returned to the bargaining table with the studios since their negotiations collapsed in early May.SAG-AFTRA’s note said the two sides remained far apart on several key issues, including compensation, guardrails against artificial intelligence, and health care and pension costs.The union’s leadership said it had asked for 11 percent wage increases in the first year of a new contract; the studios came back with an offer of 5 percent, the union said.When it comes to artificial intelligence, the union’s leaders said they had argued for a number of provisions to protect them “when a ‘digital replica’ is made or our performance is changed using A.I.”They said the studio alliance “failed to address many vital concerns, leaving principal performers and background actors vulnerable to having most of their work replaced by digital replicas.”The studios said that the union’s note to its members “fails to include the proposals offered verbally” during negotiations, and that its overall package was worth more than $1 billion in wage increases, improvements on residuals (a type of royalty) and health care contributions.Regarding artificial intelligence, the studios said they had offered a “groundbreaking proposal, which protects performers’ digital likenesses, including a requirement for performer’s consent for the creation and use of digital replicas or for digital alterations of a performance.”Union leadership sent out a chart laying out each proposal and the studios’ response. Over more than two dozen proposals, the studio response amounted to one word, according to the union: “Rejected.”“So who’s making the T-Shirt that says ‘Rejected’?” the actress Senta Moses posted on Twitter.“This is why we’re on strike,” the union note said. “The A.M.P.T.P. thinks we will relent, but the will of our membership has never been stronger. We have the resolve and unity needed to defend our rights.” More

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    Music for (Waiting in) Airports

    Songs that take flight from Liz Phair, John Denver and more.Liz Phair, not pretending she’s in a Galaxie 500 video.Rahav Segev for The New York TimesDear listeners,If you’re anything like me, you’ve already spent way too much of this summer in airports.* Flight delays are up, and the recent spate of severe weather hasn’t exactly helped. This means you’re going to need something to listen to while killing time in the terminal.Brian Eno understood. In the mid-1970s, he got the idea for one of his most enduring works during a long, stressful flight delay at an airport in Cologne, Germany. Wouldn’t the whole experience be a bit more tolerable, he wondered, if the airport piped serene, unobtrusive sounds throughout the terminals? He began experimenting with this concept, and it eventually led to the gorgeous and indefatigably useful “Music for Airports” (1978), his first declared work of what he called “ambient” music. The album and his subsequent installments in the ambient series spawned a fruitful, still thriving genre, and in a 2016 list of the 50 Best Ambient Albums of All Time, Pitchfork ranked “Music for Airports” at No. 1.I’m not saying your flight delay needs to be as productive as Eno’s; I won’t judge if you fail to conceive an entirely new genre of music before boarding ends. All I’m saying is that you could use some music to soothe your nerves and put your plight into a larger context. That’s where today’s playlist comes in. A few of its songs — from Liz Phair, John Denver and the Byrds — are explicitly about flight, inspired by the fresh perspective that changes in scenery and altitude can bring. Others aren’t quite as direct but still have a kind of weightless expansiveness. One of them is, at least ostensibly, about a hot-air balloon, but I think that still counts.Hopefully this playlist is longer than your flight delay. But if you still need something to listen to when it’s done, there’s always “Music for Airports.” (And Jon Pareles’s playlist of Eno’s 15 best ambient tracks.)Listen along on Spotify as you read.1. Caroline Polachek: “The Gate”Hopefully you won’t spend too much time “standing at the gate,” to quote this ethereal, tone-setting opener from Caroline Polachek’s 2019 album, “Pang.” (Listen on YouTube)2. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers: “Learning to Fly”As on many of the songs here, flight serves as a kind of emotional metaphor on “Learning to Fly,” the 1991 hit from Petty and the Heartbreakers’ Jeff-Lynne-produced album “Into the Great Wide Open.” (In October 2017, shortly after Petty’s death, Bob Dylan played a beautiful cover of this song live, as a tribute to his fellow Wilbury.) (Listen on YouTube)3. Neko Case: “Lady Pilot”“We’ve got a lady pilot, she’s not afraid to die,” Neko Case sings on this impressionistic adventure from her great 2002 album, “Blacklisted.” (According to the International Society of Women Airline Pilots, only 5.8 percent of the world’s airline pilots are female. Not even close to enough!) (Listen on YouTube)4. The Byrds: “Eight Miles High”Commercial planes don’t actually fly eight miles high, but the Byrds apparently thought “Six Miles High” didn’t sound as cool. What does sound unequivocally cool, still, is Roger McGuinn’s 12-string guitar; his playing on this pioneering psych-rock song was influenced by both Ravi Shankar and John Coltrane. (Listen on YouTube)5. Liz Phair: “Stratford-on-Guy”The perspective-shifting experience of flight makes poets of us all — especially when you have a window seat. Liz Phair perfectly captures the view from 27D on this track from “Exile in Guyville”: “As we moved out of the farmlands and into the grid, the plan of a city was all that you saw.” (Listen on YouTube)6. Howlin’ Wolf: “Mr. Airplane Man”On this song from the compilation “Change My Way,” the blues great Howlin’ Wolf implores Mr. Airplane Man to fly down to Jackson and deliver an urgent message to his baby: “Aahhhheeeeeee, ahhhehehehe!” (Listen on YouTube)7. John Denver: “Leaving on a Jet Plane”Next time you’re not sure what to do with yourself while waiting for a connecting flight, remember that John Denver wrote this song during a layover. Pretty good use of his time, I’d say. (Listen on YouTube)8. The 5th Dimension: “Up, Up and Away”Hopefully by the end of this playlist, you’ll be taking flight, like this exuberant, comfortingly retro 1967 tune by the Fifth Dimension. Preferably in an airplane and not a hot-air balloon, but at this point I don’t blame you for looking into alternate forms of transportation. (Listen on YouTube)Aahhhheeeeeee,Lindsay*Remember Friday’s Amplifier, when I told you about my experience seeing the North American opening date of Beyoncé’s Renaissance World Tour? I almost didn’t make it to the show at all because my flight to Toronto was canceled — and then my flight out of Toronto was canceled as well. I was stranded there for two extra days, which I mostly spent on hold with various airlines. Now I know how Drake felt when he was runnin’ through the 6 with his woes.The Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“Music for (Waiting in) Airports” track listTrack 1: Caroline Polachek, “The Gate”Track 2: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, “Learning to Fly”Track 3: Neko Case, “Lady Pilot”Track 4: The Byrds, “Eight Miles High”Track 5: Liz Phair, “Stratford-on-Guy”Track 6: Howlin’ Wolf, “Mr. Airplane Man”Track 7: John Denver, “Leaving on a Jet Plane”Track 8: The 5th Dimension, “Up, Up and Away”Bonus tracksFor more practical air travel advice, some of my colleagues at the Travel desk put together this handy guide that I really should have read before my trip to Toronto.And, RIP Jane Birkin, so much more than the namesake of a bag! Among many other things, Birkin was also a catalyzing collaborator with both the incomparable Serge Gainsbourg and the great filmmaker Agnès Varda, and of course a singular vocalist and songwriter in her own right. Spin “Jane B.” and “Di Doo Dah” today in her honor. More

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    Summer Fashion Inspired By Eric Rohmer’s Films

    The outfits featured in the late French filmmaker’s work, celebrated by a new Instagram account, offer an antidote to all that is plastic and pink.She’s rolling in the grass dressed in sunflower yellow, kissing a man about whom she’s passionately ambivalent (“Boyfriends and Girlfriends,” 1987). She’s strolling through the countryside in a fleecy blue sweater, having no fun at all (“The Green Ray,” 1986). She’s lounging on a beach in a red bikini and ivory bucket hat, about to embark on a confusingly ambiguous friendship with the shirtless Frenchman she’s observing (“A Summer’s Tale,” 1996).This is summer love, Eric Rohmer-style: It isn’t easy, but it sure is chic.The outfits featured in the late French filmmaker’s works have long been celebrated, and continue to build a following, now quite literally, on an Instagram account called @Rohmerfits, which debuted in May.Rohmer’s films, which spanned the 1960s to 2000s, were famous for their unhurried plots: Characters bounce around France, in between the countryside, the seaside and the city; they analyze their romantic entanglements; they read Balzac; they seduce and irritate each other — and they do it all while wearing Mediterranean-blue sweaters, high-waisted jeans, billowy cotton shirts and pops of red.“There’s just this air about them where you want to be within them,” Alexandra Tell, the creator of @Rohmerfits, said of the costumes. The characters are “often on vacation, so you want something that’s sort of breezy that you can move in,” she said. “His clothes aren’t extravagant, but they’re elegant in this easy, ineffable way.”The secret to such aesthetic ease may lie in Rohmer’s devotion to naturalism. Like his contemporaries Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut, Rohmer, who died in 2010, began as a film critic. These critics-turned-auteurs “were very much against a sense of artificiality that stemmed from the shooting in studios,” said Ludovic Cortade, a film scholar who teaches French cinema at New York University.Amanda Langlet plays Margot in “A Summer’s Tale” (1996). Rohmer often asked actors “to come up with several costume options that would reflect their own tastes,” said Ludovic Cortade, a film scholar.via The Criterion ChannelAn extension of that naturalism, Professor Cortade said, was Rohmer’s decision not to use costume designers for many of his films, and instead asked actors “to come up with several costume options that would reflect their own tastes, which was a great strategy to convey a sense of authenticity.”The aesthetic is a sharp contrast to movies like the upcoming “Barbie,” which will be released this month. While “Barbie” plays with literal plastic, Rohmer did the opposite. “Maybe the ‘Barbie’ world is more reflective of our reality,” Ms. Tell said, while Rohmer’s earthy naturalism now “feels like more of an escape.”Though the looks were fastidiously curated by Rohmer, they never felt forced, Professor Cortade said. In “Boyfriends and Girlfriends,” for example, a marigold tank top and belt, as worn by Blanche, who is played by Emmanuelle Chaulet, match the color of some orange juice in a glass cup. “You can see the wrinkles in the clothes,” said Ms. Tell, a 32-year-old writer and curatorial assistant who lives in Brooklyn. “It’s very tactile.”The outfits’ simplicity allows audiences to focus on the characters and their relationships as they grapple with complex questions of morality and love. Though Rohmer’s tone could be witty and farcical, his films astutely tackled “the challenges of personal interactions and the awkwardness behind that” — a dynamic that has only been heightened with the advent of digital technology, Professor Cortade added.In “Boyfriends and Girlfriends,” a marigold tank top and belt, as worn by Blanche, who is played by Emmanuelle Chaulet, match the color of some orange juice in a glass cup.via MetrographIn “The Green Ray,” Delphine is wearing a crimson blazer when she says to a friend, played by Rosette, through sobs: “I need a real vacation.”via The Criterion ChannelOnce she does go on vacation, Delphine wanders around morosely, lonely and dressed in all blue.via The Criterion ChannelIn other words, it’s Rohmer’s blend of aspiration and realism that keeps his films — and costumes — so fresh, Ms. Tell said: His characters, like Margot in “A Summer’s Tale,” played by Amanda Langlet, wear clothes you would wear, but better styled. They too have challenging so-called situationships, but with the handsome Gaspard, played by Melvil Poupaud, and amid the backdrop of a grassy path.In one scene in “The Green Ray,” Delphine, played by Marie Rivière, moans about going on vacation with her family after a breakup. Clad in a glorious crimson blazer, Delphine says through sobs: “I need a real vacation.” A friend, played by Rosette, convinces her to join a trip to Cherbourg, promising her they’ll “have fun and meet people.” Instead Delphine wanders around against the muted sun, morosely, lonely and dressed in all blue. More

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    ‘Barbie’ vs. ‘Oppenheimer’: The Real Winner May Be the Box Office

    The toy-based comedy is expected to draw $100 million; the biopic half that. But in an uneven year for movies, the duel seems to be engaging audiences.It’s a matchup for the ages, up there with Ali vs. Frazier, the Hatfields vs. the McCoys and Athens vs. Sparta.Well, let’s not get carried away.But it is fair to say that with “Barbie” vs. “Oppenheimer,” Hollywood has not captured the popular imagination in this way for quite some time. On Thursday night, the two wildly incongruous Hollywood megamovies arrive in theaters after weeks of internet meme-ification and questionable marketing tie-ins. (We’re looking at you, Barbie-inspired Burger King sandwich topped with what looks like chewed bubble gum.) Together, the movies could generate the biggest crowds at North American multiplexes in four years, numbers not seen since before the pandemic, box office prognosticators said.“‘Barbie’ and ‘Oppenheimer’ are basically the perfect frenemies at the box office this weekend,” said Dave Karger, the Turner Classic Movies host. “Yes, they’re technically competitors, but they’re largely going after different audiences, and the Barbenheimer hype seems only to be helping both films.”Greta Gerwig’s candy-coated “Barbie,” which cost an estimated $145 million to make, not including marketing costs, has the potential to earn $100 million in the United States and Canada through Sunday, according to analysts who track audience interest and use complex formulas to forecast box office performance. Christopher Nolan’s weighty “Oppenheimer,” which cost at least $100 million before marketing, is looking at around $50 million in domestic ticket sales over the same period.Warner Bros., citing presales of about $30 million, said it was expecting closer to $75 million in weekend ticket sales for “Barbie.” (Studios try their darnedest to downplay expectations.) The studio has booked the PG-13 comedy onto about 4,200 screens in North America.Universal Pictures, the studio behind “Oppenheimer,” an R-rated historical drama about the making of the atomic bomb, declined to comment. It will unfurl Nolan’s film on about 3,600 domestic screens.“Barbie” has a run time of just under two hours. “Oppenheimer” stretches three, limiting the number of screenings that theaters can squeeze into the weekend. “Oppenheimer,” however, has the benefit of playing on most of North America’s large-format screens, which come with a ticket surcharge of up to $12 in New York. IMAX is devoting its entire footprint to Nolan’s opus for the next three weeks (to the chagrin of Tom Cruise, who hoped his “Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One” would continue to play on some of those screens after opening last week).AMC Entertainment, the world’s largest cinema chain, said on Monday that more than 40,000 people had purchased tickets to see “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” as a double feature, up from 20,000 last week.Hollywood urgently needs a weekend that exceeds — or even meets — expectations. This was the year when moviegoing was finally supposed to bounce back from the pandemic, which closed many theaters for months on end and sped the growth of streaming services in homes. At last, cinemas would reclaim a position of cultural urgency.But ticket sales in the United States and Canada for the year to date (about $5 billion) are down by about 20 percent from the same period in 2019, according to Comscore, which compiles box office data. Blips of hope, including strong sales for the innovative “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” and the hyper-violent “John Wick: Chapter 4,” have been blotted out by disappointing results for expensive franchise films like “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania,” “Shazam! Fury of the Gods” and “Fast X.”The latest “Mission: Impossible” film arrived last weekend to solid results, but below what Hollywood had been expecting.Ticket buyers seem to be tiring of new installments in decades-old franchises. What is succeeding? For the most part, characters that have not been onscreen in recent memory (“The Super Mario Bros. Movie”), new chapters in series that are not as well worn (“Creed III”) and movies that cater to audiences ignored by Hollywood (“Sound of Freedom,” which has been promoted by the right).For all of her world domination, Barbie has never before had her own big-budget movie. “Oppenheimer” is based on the 2005 biography “American Prometheus” by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin. “Both studios went all-in on original films, directed by notable auteurs with an interest in pushing the envelope,” said Paul Dergarabedian, a senior Comscore analyst. “These are not the tried-and-true safe bets that are the hallmark of the summer movie season.”“Barbie” has major movie stars — Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling — while “Oppenheimer” cast the lesser-known Cillian Murphy in the title role. “Barbie” is aimed at women, while “Oppenheimer” has the edge with men. One represents what many cinephiles loathe about Hollywood: movies based on toys. The other was written and directed by one of Hollywood’s most serious cinephiles.Comedy against drama. The brightest side of human imagination vs. the darkest. Creating worlds, destroying worlds.The contrasts are irresistible.While rare, such box-office matchups are not without precedent. Just ask Nolan. In July 2008, his sinister Batman movie “The Dark Knight” (Warner Bros.) arrived head-to-head with Universal’s silly, sun-drenched “Mamma Mia!” His was No. 1 that weekend, but both movies became runaway hits. More

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    Margot Robbie’s Best Barbie-Inspired Looks From Her Press Tour

    The actors’ strike effectively ended the “Barbie” film’s press tour. But Margot Robbie’s pink-carpet outfits are worth remembering.The actors’ strike has hit the brakes on the hot pink convertible that is the “Barbie” film’s press tour.Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling and other stars of Greta Gerwig’s forthcoming movie inspired by the doll are unlikely to appear on pink carpets until further notice in solidarity with SAG-AFTRA, the actors’ union. That means the parade of neon fashion led by Ms. Robbie has probably come to an end.Ms. Robbie, who was styled by Andrew Mukamal, had her pick of designers throughout the press tour, from vintage Versace to Vivienne Westwood. But several of the actress’s best looks took inspiration from Barbie’s clothing archive, including a black-and-white-striped swimsuit the doll wore when it was introduced in 1959, a prim skirt suit from the ’80s and a swirly minidress Barbie wore in the ’90s.Those outfits, seen here alongside the Barbie clothes that inspired them, struck the exact right balance between kitschy and chic. “It’s not subtle,” Ms. Robbie said in an interview with People, “but it’s very fun!”This Barbie is glamorous.Mattel; Lia Toby/Getty ImagesEnchanted EveningAt the “Barbie” premiere in London, Ms. Robbie wore a Vivienne Westwood gown accented by a white tulle stole and a three-strand pearl necklace. The look recreated the glamorous get-up of the “Enchanted Evening” Barbie introduced in 1960.This Barbie works hard and plays hard.Mattel (Barbie); Jung Yeon-Je/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images; Chung Sung-Jun/Getty ImagesDay to NightThe “Day to Night” Barbie doll, released in 1985, was ready for work and play. Its transitional wardrobe inspired what Ms. Robbie wore at the Seoul premiere: a Versace pencil skirt and blazer, which morphed into a sequined pink bodice and tulle skirt.This Barbie is classic. Mattel; Warner Bros.Original BarbieIn Sydney, Ms. Robbie wore a Hervé Léger bandage dress that paid tribute to the black-and-white one-piece swimsuit worn by the original Barbie. The actress, like the doll, completed her look with white sunglasses and black open-toe shoes.This Barbie is a star.Mattel; Nina Prommer/EPA, via ShutterstockSolo in the SpotlightThe strapless, sequined mermaid gown Ms. Robbie wore to the film’s Los Angeles premiere was a custom Schiaparelli recreation of the dress for the “Solo in the Spotlight” Barbie, a doll released in 1960.This Barbie is groovy. Hector Vivas/Getty ImagesTotally HairIn an abstract Pucci minidress, hot pink Manolo Blahnik heels and long, crimped blond locks, Ms. Robbie channeled the style of “Totally Hair” Barbie, introduced in 1992, at a photo call in Mexico City.This Barbie knows how to accessorize.Mattel; Hector Vivas/Getty ImagesEarring MagicBalmain made the pink leather minidress Ms. Robbie wore to the film’s Mexico City premiere. The look took inspiration from “Earring Magic” Barbie, released in 1992, down to its low-slung belt and chunky earrings.This Barbie is ready for Palm Springs.Mattel; Jon Kopaloff/Getty ImagesPink & FabulousAt a press appearance in Los Angeles, Ms. Robbie wore a custom Valentino halter dress that referenced the “Pink & Fabulous” Barbie, a doll introduced in 2015.This Barbie is polished.Mattel; Lee Jin-Man/Associated PressSparkling PinkThe bedazzled three-piece Moschino set that Ms. Robbie wore in Seoul was an updated version of the skirt suit worn by the “Sparkling Pink” Barbie, released in 1964.This Barbie is Ms. Robbie. Mattel; Steve Marcus/Reuters‘Barbie’: The MovieOf all Ms. Robbie’s Barbie-inspired outfits, the most meta might have been the pink-and-white gingham set she wore at CinemaCon in Las Vegas. The look referenced a dress Ms. Robbie wears in the “Barbie” trailer and the frock made for a new Barbie doll based on Ms. Robbie’s likeness.Elizabeth Paton More