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    Princess Leia’s Dress From the Original ‘Star Wars’ Is Up for Bids

    A ceremonial gown worn by Carrie Fisher was believed to be destroyed after the production of “A New Hope,” but it was recently found in an attic and restored.The long, white dress worn by Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia in the final scene of the original 1977 “Star Wars” movie, “A New Hope,” was once thought to have been long gone, destroyed after the film’s production.But the iconic dress was recently found in a London attic and will go up for sale at a live auction on Wednesday. It could sell for as much as $2 million, according to an estimate by Propstore, a company that sells film and TV memorabilia and is organizing the auction.In the film, Princess Leia wore the dress, a ceremonial gown that was made from lightweight silk and styled with a silver belt, during an awards ceremony. In the scene, the princess, who is a leader of the Resistance, honors Han Solo, played by Harrison Ford, and Luke Skywalker, played by Mark Hamill, with medals for their work in helping to save the galaxy.The dress was thought to have been destroyed after filming for the movie had been completed. Brandon Alinger, chief operating officer of Propstore, said it was common during filmmaking in the 1970s for costumes to be destroyed or returned if they were rented.“There was not a great focus on saving this material when that first movie was made,” Mr. Alinger said.The dress was among the items that had been slated to be destroyed, but a crew member of the set recognized it and held on to it. The dress had been stored for years, until recently, when it was found in an attic at the home of the movie crew member in London, Mr. Alinger said.Textile conservators spent months restoring the Princess Leia dress after it was found in “a poor state” in an attic in London, said Brandon Alinger, chief operating officer at Propstore. He wore white gloves to handle the dress at the company facility in Valencia, Calif.Frederic J. Brown/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images“When we first saw it, it was in something of a poor state,” Mr. Alinger said.After the dress was found, textile conservators in London spent eight months working to restore it, removing dust and dirt that had accumulated on it and restitching open seams, according to Propstore.“This is sort of very painstaking work,” Mr. Alinger said. “Imagine someone bent over with a microscope or a magnifying lens, studying the little holes and trying to fill those holes with a similar material.”The dress was conceived of by John Mollo, who won the award for best costume design for “Star Wars” at the Academy Awards in March 1978.“It’s incredibly important because it’s literally the last thing that you see in the original ‘Star Wars’ film,” Mr. Alinger said of the dress. “I think if you’re a ‘Star Wars’ fan, you look at it and it just gels for you.”There are no words spoken in the final scene of the movie — except for guttural noises from the Resistance fighter Chewbacca and beeps from the droid R2-D2.In that scene, the leading characters, Luke Skywalker and Han Solo, walk down a long hall, where a crowd has gathered for the ceremony. Princess Leia places a medal over Solo and then another over the neck of Skywalker. Skywalker and Solo bow before Princess Leia, and then turn around and face those gathered in the hall as they applaud the heroes.The auction for the dress, which began on May 31 for online proxy bids, started at $500,000, and an absentee offer was submitted for $750,000, according to Propstore. Bids can be submitted online or in person at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles.The dress is among more than $12 million worth of TV and film memorabilia that will be sold at the auction, with bids ending on Friday. Items include a shield from the 2004 movie “Troy” that was worn by Brad Pitt while playing the main character, Achilles. More

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    Morgan Wallen Spends 14th Week at No. 1

    The country singer’s latest album, “One Thing at a Time,” has now notched more weeks atop the Billboard chart than any album in more than a decade.The country star Morgan Wallen is back on the road after six weeks of rest, and back once again at No. 1 on the Billboard album chart, notching his 14th nonconsecutive week on top since the release of his latest album, “One Thing at a Time,” in March.With 14 weeks at No. 1, “One Thing at a Time” separates itself from Drake’s “Views,” which totaled 13 chart-topping week in 2016, and gives Wallen the most weeks at No. 1 in more than a decade, since Adele’s “21” ended up with 24 nonconsecutive weeks in 2011 and 2012.This week, “One Thing at a Time” totaled 110,000 album equivalent units, including 139 million in streams and 4,500 in sales, dropping just 1 percent in listener activity since last week, when it returned to No. 1 after two weeks at No. 2. In the 16 weeks it has been out, Wallen’s album has not fallen under 100,000 in equivalent units, tying Bad Bunny’s “Un Verano Sin Ti” for most weeks totaling six figures in the modern counting era, according to Billboard.Wallen’s world tour in support of “One Thing at a Time” resumed last week in Chicago, following six weeks of postponement that the singer said was recommended by doctors for vocal rest. In April, Wallen had abruptly canceled a concert in Mississippi just before he was set to take the stage, angering some fans. Wallen’s tour continues through most of the year, with some rescheduled dates stretching into 2024.In what has become a chart fixture this year, a K-pop group selling collectible CDs also found success this week: Ateez’s “The World EP.2: Outlaw” is No. 2 with 106,000 units, including 101,000 in album sales. Billboard reports that of the 10 albums this year to sell more than 100,000 copies as a complete album, seven have been by K-pop acts offering various CD versions.The rest of the Top 5 includes Gunna’s first album since being released from jail, “A Gift & a Curse,” which totaled 85,000 units at No. 3; Taylor Swift’s “Midnights” at No. 4 with 60,000 units; and SZA’s “SOS,” up to No. 5 from No. 8 with 48,000 units. Wallen’s previous album, “Dangerous: The Double Album,” which spent 10 weeks at No. 1 in 2021, is No. 6. More

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    Kelly Clarkson’s ‘Chemistry’ Draws on Familiar Formulas

    With a big voice and big personal changes to sing about, Clarkson ends up with arrangements that don’t match the power and rawness of the emotions fueling them.When a musician known in part for her fiery breakup anthems announces the dissolution of her marriage, fans can sometimes react with an impolite if somewhat understandable presumption: “Well, at least the divorce album will be good.”That was the response in 2019, when Adele separated from her now ex-husband Simon Konecki, though she certainly fanned the flames: In the promotional cycle for her 2021 album “30,” when a fan asked what her new record would be about, Adele replied with the instantly memed quote, “Divorce, babe, divorce.” Still, she rose to the challenge: “30” was her most radically honest and stylistically adventurous album yet.Earlier this year, when Kelly Clarkson — another beloved, recently divorced powerhouse vocalist — announced the release of “Chemistry,” expectations were high for some scorched-earth catharsis from the woman who unleashed the feel-good breakup song of the millennium, “Since U Been Gone.” After a holiday album and a covers EP, “Chemistry” is the first album of original pop material Clarkson has released in six years, following the debut of her popular, Daytime Emmy-winning talk show and her 2020 split with her husband, Brandon Blackstock. The track list — featuring song titles like “I Hate Love,” “My Mistake” and “Red Flag Collector” — practically screamed divorce, babe, divorce.But Clarkson, 41, said she wanted “Chemistry” to depict a full arc of a relationship, including its high points. “Favorite Kind of High,” an upbeat, electro-pop tune that Clarkson wrote with the producer Jesse Shatkin and Carly Rae Jepsen, attempts to capture the fizz of new infatuation. (A remix by David Guetta kicks the song into an even higher gear.) The slower, sultry “Magic” addresses a more long-term devotion: “Magic takes time, and I’ve got my sights and they’re set on you,” she sings breathily. Clarkson delivers these vocals with her signature virtuosity, but she doesn’t quite inhabit these relatively faceless songs as fully as she does when she’s singing about love gone wrong.Clarkson has always brought a sharp authenticity and feisty independence to her recording career. The popular “Kellyoke” segment on her daytime program has become a showcase for her genuine appreciation for all sorts of music and proof that she can sing expertly in just about any genre.“Chemistry” never quite lives up to her reputation for excellence, though, and it fails to find a sound that fits the rawness of much of its subject matter. The album is often a showcase for the elemental power of Clarkson’s voice and occasionally for her clever turns of phrase as a lyricist, but the arrangements too often rely on modern pop clichés rather than push for innovation or reach back to the soulful traditionalism of her 2017 LP, “Meaning of Life.”The production — helmed by Clarkson’s longtime musical director Jason Halbert and her frequent producer Shatkin, along with new collaborators Rachel Orscher and Erica Serna — often feels excessively compressed and synthetic, keeping Clarkson’s voice and emotion at an unfortunate remove. “Down to You,” with its sassy, hair-flipping energy, has a few zingers — “I tried to be your friend/I won’t make that mistake again” — but its sputtering, faceless chorus demands about 1 percent of her voice’s potential wattage.The wrenching, piano-driven torch song “Lighthouse,” on the other hand, gives her a little more breathing space and puts a spotlight on one of the album’s most impassioned vocal performances. “My Mistake” relies on a more synthetic pop sound, but its swooping melody gives her more room to vamp. It’s one of only two songs on the record Clarkson didn’t help write; she imbues the other, the booming, ’80s-inspired pop-rock standout “High Road,” with a lived-in weariness and convincing emotional maturity: “To become stronger, you have to listen/Keep it open, don’t try to hide it/And if you need love, don’t try to fight it.”Perhaps surprisingly for a record born from the heartbreak of divorce, “Chemistry” is at its most distinct when it abandons the weight of pathos and allows Clarkson to get loose. Across the final trio of songs, starting with the octave-leaping “Red Flag Collector,” she switches gears into a more conversational delivery — teasing out a sensibility shared by country, cabaret and Taylor Swift’s “We Are Never, Ever Getting Back Together” — and lets her quirky personality lead. Steve Martin, of all people, plays banjo on the stylistically restless “I Hate Love,” while Sheila E. provides percussion on the breezy finale “That’s Right.”These three songs may still be about a breakup, but they’re not tear-jerkers: “Turns out I like things that you don’t,” Clarkson sings on the closer, before hitting the beach — which he hated, apparently — and reconnecting with herself. “Chemistry” ultimately feels like a missed opportunity for more depth and daring, but at least it sometimes sounds like a vacation.Kelly Clarkson“Chemistry”(Atlantic) More

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    Jesse McReynolds, Lead Singer in Long-Running Bluegrass Duo, Dies at 93

    He also played mandolin in the act, Jim & Jesse, performing with his brother for 55 years.Jesse McReynolds, for 55 years the lead singer and mandolin player with Jim & Jesse, the first-generation bluegrass duo he established with his older brother, Jim McReynolds, died on Friday at his home in Gallatin, Tenn. He was 93. His death was confirmed by his wife, Joy McReynolds, on her Facebook page.Bluegrass’s longest running brother act, Jim & Jesse developed a smooth blend of harmony singing that contrasted with the more piercing, down-home vocal arrangements of Bill Monroe and the Stanley Brothers. Mr. McReynolds sang the melody line in a crystalline baritone, while his brother, who died of thyroid cancer in 2002, added honeyed tenor harmonies on top.The McReynolds’s instrumental approach likewise was more polished than that of their peers, creating a bridge between the barnyard twang of early sibling duos like the Delmore Brothers and the more streamlined sounds of mid-20th century country music.Typically backed by banjo, fiddle and bass, the duo’s music — built around Mr. McReynolds’s plaintive mandolin playing and his brother’s metronome-like rhythm guitar — was not without its experimental side. Most notable was Mr. McReynolds’s widely imitated cross-picking technique, which employed a flat pick to approximate the three-finger banjo roll of the bluegrass pioneer Earl Scruggs.“I was sort of listening to what he was doing,” Mr. McReynolds said, discussing the origins of his Scruggs-style picking, an approach that influenced mandolin virtuosos like David Grisman and Sam Bush, in a 2019 interview for the website candlewater.com.“I didn’t know how he was doing it. I knew he was using a three-finger roll on it,” he added, but “I was trying to do it with a straight pick so I could play my other style, too.”That other style, which also qualified as an innovation in bluegrass, involved a split-string technique in which Mr. McReynolds used his pinkie to hold down one string of his mandolin’s four pairs of strings while letting its counterpart reverberate, or ring open, to achieve a droning effect. Requiring great precision, this sleight-of-hand produced two distinct notes from a pair of strings which, on the mandolin, were usually played in unison.The duo’s 1963 recording of the instrumental “Stoney Creek” is often cited as the quintessential vehicle for Mr. McReynolds’s prowess as a mandolinist. His Scruggs-inspired “mandolin roll,” though, already could be heard a decade earlier on gospel recordings like “I’ll Fly Away” and “On the Jericho Road.”The McReynolds brothers sometimes incorporated electric and steel guitar into their performances in lieu of bluegrass’s customary banjo and fiddle. In 1969, Mr. McReynolds contributed mandolin to a track on “The Soft Parade,” an album released by the countercultural Los Angeles rock band the Doors.Repertoire was yet another area in which Jim & Jesse were in the bluegrass vanguard. Nowhere was this more evident than with the 1965 release of “Berry Pickin’ in the Country,” a collection of bluegrass covers of Chuck Berry songs, including a chuffing take of “Memphis.” The album proved to be one of the most popular of the brothers’ career.Jesse McReynolds, center, in Nashville in 2014. He continued to perform after his brother Jim died in 2002. Erika Goldring/Getty ImagesTheir untrammeled musical instincts notwithstanding, Jim & Jesse were among the most commercially successful bluegrass acts of the ’60s and ’70s. They placed 10 singles on the country chart, notably “Cotton Mill Man” (1964), a worker’s plaint, and “Diesel on My Tail” (1967), a truck-driving song featuring steel guitar that reached No. 18.Jesse Lester McReynolds was born on July 9, 1929, in Carfax, Va., in the mountains of southern Appalachia. His father, Claude Matthew McReynolds, was a coal miner and amateur banjo player; his mother, Savannah Prudence (Robinette) McReynolds, played guitar, banjo and harmonica and taught her sons to sing gospel harmonies. Mr. McReynolds’s grandfather, the fiddler Charles McReynolds, recorded as one-half of the Bull Mountain Moonshiners at 1927’s Bristol Sessions, the so-called big bang of country music that produced landmark recordings by the likes of Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family.Although raised in a musical family, young Jesse did not take up the mandolin in earnest until he turned 14 and was recovering from an automobile accident that left him with two broken legs. Four years later, he and his brother started a banjo-less string band that played country music throughout southwestern Virginia. It was not until 1952, when they began working with the producer Ken Nelson at Capitol Records, that they first described the music they were making as bluegrass.“We were hesitating over whether we’d even feature the five-string banjo,” Mr. McReynolds said in an interview for the liner notes to “Jim & Jesse and the Virginia Boys: In the Tradition,” a 1987 album released by Rounder Records. “But it turned out that Ken Nelson was expecting us to record as a bluegrass band, so that’s what we did.”Mr. Nelson also encouraged the brothers to change the name of their ensemble from the Virginia Trio, under which they made their first recordings in 1951, to Jim & Jesse and the Virginia Boys. In 1960, after more than a decade of performing on many of the radio barn dances of the era, they began hosting their own syndicated television program, sponsored by the Martha White flour company.The duo was a popular draw on the early ’60s folk circuit, appearing, among other places, at the Newport Folk Festival in 1963. A year later they became members of the cast of the Grand Old Opry, having gained a reputation, like Bill Monroe before them, for attracting elite talent to their band like the fiddle players Tommy Jackson and Vassar Clements.The ensuing decades found the brothers returning to a more traditional approach to bluegrass while consolidating their reputation as one of the premier ensembles in the history of the idiom. Mr. McReynolds served as the affable frontman of the group, his brother as manager of their business affairs.In the late ’80s, Mr. McReynolds toured and recorded with the Masters, a bluegrass supergroup that included the fiddler Kenny Baker, the dobroist Josh Graves and the banjo player and guitarist Eddie Adcock.In 1993, Jim & Jesse were inducted into the International Bluegrass Music Association’s Hall of Fame. Four years later they received a National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.Mr. McReynolds remained active after his brother’s death. Among other projects, he released a 2010 collection of songs written by Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter of the Grateful Dead, a band upon which Jim & Jesse were a formative influence.Besides his wife of 27 years, Mr. McReynolds is survived by a daughter, Gwen; two sons, Michael and Randy; eight grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.Much has been made of Mr. McReynolds’s debt to the ebullient banjo phrasing of Earl Scruggs. While certainly the case, Mr. McReynolds also improvised on his forebear’s technique by reversing the order of the notes he played in his variant of the Scruggs banjo roll to create a more melancholy tonal effect.“Ultimately, I ended up playing the opposite of what he did,” Mr. McReynolds explained, talking about the differences between his technique and that of Mr. Scruggs in a 2017 interview with Bluegrass Today. “My rolls went backwards, while Earl’s rolls went forward.” More

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    ‘Twilight Zone: The Movie’ and the Deadly Accident That Plagued It

    It’s been 40 years since the release of the film, but questions of what risks are permissible in the making of art have persisted.When the anthology film “Twilight Zone: The Movie” opened on June 24, 1983, reviews were mixed; The New York Times’s Vincent Canby deemed it “a flabby, mini-minded behemoth,” and that was a fairly representative view. A middling box office performer, the film may well have been forgotten entirely were it not for another news event, related to the picture, reported that same day: the unsealing of the grand jury indictments against five of the filmmakers, including the director John Landis, for their responsibility in a stunt gone horrifyingly awry, killing three people during the picture’s production.It happened at 2:20 a.m. on Friday, July 23, 1982. Landis’s segment — which concerned a loudmouthed bigot (Vic Morrow) who gets a taste of his own medicine when he steps into the Klan-era South, Nazi Germany and a Vietnam War battle, and is mistaken for the very people he’d previously derided — was to culminate in a spectacular display of stunts and firepower. Chased by a military helicopter, Morrow’s character was to carry two Vietnamese children across a river to safety as a village exploded behind them. But the sequence was poorly planned and barely rehearsed, and the explosions damaged the rotor blades of the chopper, causing the pilot to lose control. The helicopter crashed into the river, dismembering Morrow and the two children: Myca Dinh Le, age 7, and Renee Shin-Yi Chen, 6 (spelled Renee Shinn Chen in The Times’s early reporting).As investigators examined the crash, they discovered that the children’s mere presence on the set had been illegal. Child labor law regulations prohibited children from working at that late hour; further, no on-set child-welfare worker would have permitted them to work in such proximity to explosions or a helicopter. So Landis and one of the producers, George Folsey Jr., went outside regulations, casting children of mutual acquaintances, keeping their names out of the production’s official paperwork and paying them in petty cash. A production secretary recalled Landis joking of the scheme, “We’re all going to jail!”That cavalier attitude carried over onto the “Twilight Zone” set. Landis was described as a “screamer,” prone to temper tantrums and abusive invective, and thus resistant to concerns raised by crew members about the safety of that sequence — or an earlier scene, in which Landis, unsatisfied with the effects achieved by fake gunfire, ordered the use of live ammunition.The director John Landis, center, in February 1987, when he was on trial on charges of involuntary manslaughter. He would later be acquitted.Bob Riha Jr./Getty ImagesCommunication between the director, the special-effects crew and the helicopter pilot was all but nonexistent that night. When a stunt performer noted that the explosion was more forceful than expected in an earlier helicopter shot, Landis reportedly replied, “If you think that was big, you haven’t seen nothing yet.”It took three more years, after the unsealing of those indictments on the film’s opening day, for the case to come to trial. Landis, Folsey and three other defendants were charged with involuntary manslaughter, a felony. The trial was a media sensation, promising “some of the splashy drama of a guns-and-action Hollywood film.” Yet the defendants were acquitted on all charges, thanks to a somewhat bungled prosecution and a seemingly star-struck jury.There were some consequences for the filmmakers and for Warner Bros., the studio behind the picture, including fines for labor violations and settlements in civil suits filed by the families of the deceased. But in spite of the deaths on his set, and the troubling stories of his behavior and decisions leading up to it, the industry rallied behind John Landis. Sixteen significant directors — including Francis Ford Coppola, Ron Howard, John Huston, George Lucas, Sidney Lumet and Billy Wilder — signed an open letter of support for the filmmaker. Several director pals also appeared in cameos in “Into the Night” and “Spies Like Us,” two of the features Landis made between the deaths and his acquittal.Landis also directed the music video for Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” and the feature comedies “Trading Places” and “Three Amigos” in that period. Dan Aykroyd, who appeared in the Landis-directed “Twilight Zone” prologue as well as in “Trading Places” and “Spies Like Us,” dismissed the tragedy: “That was an industrial accident, nothing more.” After the trial, the “Trading Places” actor Eddie Murphy hired Landis to direct his 1988 comedy “Coming to America,” though they clashed during production; while promoting the film, Murphy was asked if he’d ever work with Landis again, to which he replied, “Vic Morrow has a better chance of working with Landis than I do.” But the film was a gigantic hit, and six years later, Landis again directed Murphy in “Beverly Hills Cop III.”Landis’s career would eventually slow down — not because of the deaths, but because his films stopped making money. In a hearing after the “Twilight Zone” deaths, Art Carter, the chief of the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health, said that while speaking to industry veterans and union representatives about tightening safety restrictions on sets, “No one could recall a single instance in which a given movie or television program could not be made because of safety considerations. Rather, it was a matter of spending the necessary money to assure protections.”After the “Twilight Zone” deaths, the Directors Guild of America issued formal, firmer safety guidelines, yet the cutting of budgetary corners has continued to put the lives of actors and crew members in jeopardy. The very day the verdict was handed down in the “Twilight Zone” case, a helicopter crash on the Manila set of “Braddock: Missing in Action III” killed four Filipino soldiers. The camera assistant Sarah Jones was killed by a freight train while working on the low-budget film “Midnight Rider” in 2014. And apparent negligence on sets resulted in the shooting death of the actor Brandon Lee during the production of “The Crow” in 1993 and of the cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of “Rust” in 2021.The questions of verisimilitude versus safety, of what risks are permissible in the making of art, have not gone away in the 40 years since “Twilight Zone: The Movie” was released. But the sole public statement on the matter from Steven Spielberg, who directed another of the film’s segments, remains illuminating. His name was conspicuously absent from the open letter of filmmakers supporting Landis, and in April of 1983, he summed up the experience in a Los Angeles Times interview: “No movie is worth dying for. I think people are standing up much more now than ever before to producers and directors who ask too much. If something isn’t safe, it’s the right and responsibility of every actor or crew member to yell, ‘Cut!’” More

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    Sterling K. Brown Is on His Best Behavior, Just in Case

    The Emmy-winning actor and star of the new movie “Biosphere” is sweet on vegan cookies, his Audi e-Tron and Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye.”The first time Sterling K. Brown read the script for “Biosphere,” his new sci-fi movie with Mark Duplass, he thought, “‘This is very non-Randall-esque,’ which is always one of the criteria that I’m looking for in the next project.”He was referring, of course, to his beloved character in “This Is Us,” which aired for six seasons on NBC and snagged Brown an Emmy, a Golden Globe and a Screen Actors Guild Award.“But being known for a character and being known for a body of work are two different things,” he added.In a video call from Los Angeles — during which one of his sons lugged in a Harry Potter book for his dad to read to him — Brown talked about some of his coming projects in addition to “Biosphere,” which opens July 7: Cord Jefferson’s untitled adaptation of the Percival Everett novel “Erasure”; and “Washington Black,” Brown’s debut as a TV producer.He’ll also reunite with Dan Fogelman, the creator of “This Is Us,” in a Hulu series about a Secret Service agent.“I have a secret man crush on Dan Fogelman, I think because of what he was able to do for me for six years,” Brown said before revealing a few other things he’s been crushing on, like the relationship expert Esther Perel and the Tony-nominated play “Fat Ham.” These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1Trader Joe’s Vegan Oatmeal Chocolate Chip CookiesIs it sugar? Yeah. Is it health food? Not by any stretch of the imagination. But I have a sweet tooth, and it’s vicious. If I have two to three of these cookies, my sweet tooth is sated and I get a chance to go on with the rest of my day.2PelotonI find the instructors on this medium to be exceptional. The level of positivity that they have and the things that they share with you are the kinds of voices that you want reverberating in your head as you take on physical challenges. One of my favorite instructors is Jess Sims.3Audi e-TronIt’s nice to know that you’re not putting anything into the air. And nobody hears you coming. I’m not a flossy man, so I don’t need a car that peacocks too loudly. But I do enjoy comfort. I do enjoy a few bells and whistles. And as far as a luxury vehicle is concerned, I feel it blends in in a pretty nondescript way. I like to flash, but in the least flashy way possible.4Cocoa ButterBeing African American, something happens when you don’t moisturize your skin. You get what we call in the community “ashy,” where you can draw “D-R-Y” across your skin and it just stands out (#notagoodlook). So I drink a lot of water and I moisturize. I keep my skin as supple as I possibly can. Because the alternative for someone with a deeper shade of soul is you look like you’ve been walking around kicking flour.5Esther PerelMy wife and I have been married 17 years, and we’ve known each other since we were 18. The love that you have deepens over time with your partner. But what can suffer is the spontaneity and that spark that you had in the beginning. Esther has given us a couple of tools and insights. Just because we’ve been together this long doesn’t mean that passion has to die.6AlexaAlexa is Encyclopaedia Britannica, basically. If you want something quick-quick, Alexa gives you a fast answer, and then will ask you, “Did that help?” And you’ll be like, “Yes, Alexa, that did. Thank you very much.” I try to be polite. Listen, as A.I. is continuing to develop, and we don’t know if we’re making ourselves extinct to any potential sentient being, Brown is on his best behavior.7‘The Bluest Eye’There can be an inferiority complex that becomes internalized when you don’t get a chance to see yourself presented to the world as beautiful. In “The Bluest Eye,” Toni Morrison encapsulates that internalization in the most profound, poetic and incredible way.8‘Fat Ham’You’re taking the story of Hamlet, you’re putting it in a backyard barbecue in the South with a young, queer, Black male protagonist. It is such a faithful following of Hamlet until it’s not. Then it’s such a delightful departure.9My Children PlayingI played basketball, football, soccer, track, a little bit of Ultimate Frisbee. The joy of watching your children accrue skills and be able to engage with you in something that was such a big part of your own childhood is great.10Crying in the TheaterThe first Broadway show that I ever saw, in 1998, was “Ragtime.” Audra McDonald came out and sang “You have your daddy’s hands.” And I was like, “Is this woman an angel? Is she a real human being?” You want to see Sterling cry? Then I had the privilege of working with Renée Elise Goldsberry. If she sings “It’s Quiet Uptown” [from “Hamilton”] — child, please. I am a mess. More

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    John Williams on ‘Indiana Jones’ and His Favorite Scores

    In a long career making music for the movies, the composer has made an indelible contribution to cinema. Williams shares his thoughts on some landmark works.When the New York Philharmonic honored the work of the film composer John Williams this past spring, the director Steven Spielberg introduced a clip of the opening scenes of “Raiders of the Lost Ark” — without the music. The effect, he noted apologetically, was like something out of the French new wave.The clip was played again, this time with the orchestra joining in. Like magic, the adventuresome spirit of the movie was restored.On June 30, the rugged archaeologist at the heart of that film (played by Harrison Ford) will return for the fifth entry in the franchise, “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.” He’ll be accompanied, as ever, by Williams’s indispensable music.The composer, who turned 91 this year, had said it would be his final film score. Speaking during a video call more recently, he walked back his retirement plans. “If they do an ‘Indiana Jones 6,’ I’m on board.”Ahead of the new film’s opening, Williams shared his thoughts — with contributions from others closely connected to this work — on milestone moments in an extraordinary career.1966‘How to Steal a Million’Williams made some of his earliest contributions to movie music playing piano for the scores of “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” and “West Side Story,” among others. (That’s also him playing the chugging piano riff on the “Peter Gunn” theme for television.)Under the name Johnny Williams, he gradually transitioned, as he put it, “from the piano bench to the writing desk,” composing several light, jazzy scores for comedies. “How to Steal a Million,” an art-heist caper starring Audrey Hepburn, was an early high point. “It was the first film I ever did for a major, super-talent director, in William Wyler,” Williams said.With moments of comedy and tongue-in-cheek suspense, that score was an early clue of “just how versatile John Williams could be,” said Mike Matessino, a producer of numerous Williams soundtracks.Many years later — long after his name had become synonymous with the sound of the cinematic blockbuster — Williams would channel his earlier, funnier work into the jazz-inflected score of “Catch Me if You Can.” That mode “had been residing there in the intervening decades, waiting to come howling to the surface,” Williams said. “It was the easiest thing in the world for me to do, and I was giggling while I was doing it.”1972‘Images’1973‘The Long Goodbye’Working with the director Robert Altman produced a couple of the strangest entries in Williams’s filmography. The soundtrack to “The Long Goodbye,” Altman’s woozy neo-noir starring Elliott Gould as a laconic Philip Marlowe, consists of several cheeky variations on the title tune, including a bluesy nightclub number, a mariachi and a tango.For the psychological horror “Images,” Altman gave Williams the kind of freedom he famously gave his actors. “‘Do whatever you want. Do something you haven’t done before,’” Williams remembers Altman saying.The result was an eerie, fractured score that reflects the deteriorating mental state of the protagonist. The music was a collaboration with the Japanese percussionist Stomu Yamashta, who performed on sculptures by the artists François and Bernard Baschet. Williams said that had he devoted his career to composing for the concert hall rather than the cineplex, his work would have sounded most like his “Images” score.When Spielberg was looking for menacing music to accompany scenes of dread in “Jaws,” he tried sounds from “Images.” But Williams believed the movie needed something more primal, less psychological, and eventually built a theme around two brutish bass notes.1977‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’How to sum up the Williams-Spielberg collaboration? Beginning with “The Sugarland Express” and concluding (for now, at least) with “The Fabelmans,” the partnership has spanned 29 films.Spielberg has described Williams’s score for “Schindler’s List” as “one of the most stunningly evocative gifts that John has ever given us.” It says something about the range of their collaboration that “Jurassic Park” came out the same year, featuring another towering Williams score — infused with an almost religious awe for the prehistoric creatures of the film.In an interview, Emilio Audissino, the author of “The Film Music of John Williams,” made the case that “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” was the movie on which “the two fully realized the mutual advantage and compatibility of their partnership.” One moment in that film captures some of Spielberg and Williams’s alchemy: the musical dialogue between the humans and the otherworldly visitors, itself an artistic collaboration of sorts.Williams remembers spending hours with Spielberg, listening to countless musical phrases. “We were waiting for that eureka moment.”Many years later, Williams figured out why the phrase they ultimately chose (re, mi, do, do, so) feels so perfect. The “re, mi, do” feels musically resolved, he explained, after which “do, so” — the alien response — feels like an appropriately startling interjection. “I realized that 20 years after the fact.”1978‘Superman’Remember when superheroes had memorable themes?The score for “Superman” demonstrated one of Williams’s own musical superpowers: making the unbelievable feel thoroughly believable. His indomitable sounds are essential to audiences’ accepting — and being stirred by — the sight of a man in flight.The director Richard Donner had a theory that the three-note motif in the main theme — the one that makes you want to punch the air in triumph — is a musical evocation of “SU-per-MAN!”Is there anything to that?“There’s everything to that,” Williams told me.1999‘Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace’Williams remembers feeling “a little bit insecure” on the first day of recording “Star Wars” in 1977. But Lionel Newman, the studio musical supervisor, “who was sitting there next to me, said, ‘This is really going to work very well — you’ll see.’”The music for the central “Star Wars” saga was consistently extraordinary even when the films themselves failed to strike a chord. This is true of “The Phantom Menace,” which, despite its 51 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, features some of the composer’s most exciting work. Today, the Carl Orff-inspired symphonic banger “Duel of the Fates” is the most streamed piece of “Star Wars” music on Spotify.“It was pretty indescribable,” Maxine Kwok, a London Symphony Orchestra first violinist, said of the recording session. “I remember getting chills the first time the ostinato started.” Kwok joined the institution partly because she associated it with the music of “Star Wars” — the soundtrack to her childhood. “I grew up with those heroic trumpets and soaring strings. It had a profound effect on me.”Scoring “The Rise of Skywalker” in 2019, after more than 40 years with “Star Wars,” Williams said he didn’t want it to be over. “My feeling was, ‘This is fun. Let’s go back and do nine more.’”2023‘Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny’The “Indiana Jones” movies feature a number of Williams’s most recognizable character themes. They also feature swaths of swashbuckling music precisely calibrated to the action onscreen.“I don’t see John as simply a genius of themes and tunes, which he is of course,” the director James Mangold said. “Rather, it’s John’s moment-to-moment scene work that astounds me. Film scoring is really a kind of duet between the director and the composer. It’s John’s sensitivity to this partnership that most defines his work for me.”On the appeal of scoring a fifth “Indiana Jones” movie, Williams said, “I just thought, if Harrison Ford can do it, I can do it.” The movie features a new theme for the character of Helena, played by Phoebe Waller-Bridge. “I had a wonderful time writing a theme for her,” Williams said.“When John first played that theme for me, with the orchestra, I was wowed, of course,” Mangold said, “completely knocked over by the music. But I was also a bit nervous that it was just too much — too damned lush. Too romantic. John just smiled, gently, and let me babble, because I think he knew it was going to work beautifully.” More

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    Joni Mitchell Finally Returned. Her Fans Were Waiting.

    The crowd at the singer-songwriter’s first announced concert in more than two decades was intergenerational and grateful.The Joni Jam, featuring a cast of collaborators, was part of Brandi Carlile’s Echoes Through the Canyon festival.On the night of June 10 at the majestic Gorge Amphitheater in George, Wash., on the lip of the Columbia River, the 79-year-old singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell played her first headlining show in 23 years. Her appearance had the air of a comet’s return: rare, breathlessly awaited and well worth camping out all night. That many concertgoers had traveled long distances made the experience feel all the more like a Mitchell song — perhaps one of the poetic highway travelogues recorded on her 1976 album “Hejira,” or even one of the romantic, intercontinental voyages she sang about on her 1971 landmark “Blue.” It was a crowd dotted with tie-dye and graying braids, yes, but also one full of lifelong friends reunited, mothers and children bonding over intergenerational musical tastes and enough homemade Mitchell T-shirts to rival Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour. As Mitchell said to the adoring crowd as it held glowing cellphone lights aloft, paraphrasing one of her most memorable songs, “You’re stardust, and golden.”Loretta Pervier Grant, 64, a lifelong Mitchell fan, had never seen her play live. So she and her husband, Larry Grant, 65, drove from Arizona for the show.From left: Rose Paisley, Julie Chinnock, Vivian Pedegana, Lola Pedegana and Greg Pedegana. Rose Paisley’s daughters wore their grandmother’s clothes to the show, including her cowboy boots and jewelry.Dan Waldron and Elizabeth Ford drove from Canada to see Mitchell’s show.Suzanne Park, 64, said she grew up listening to Mitchell’s music in the ’60s and ’70s, and would play her songs on her guitar in high school. More