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    ‘Saturday Night Live’: Ana de Armas and the First Warm Day of the Year

    The “Blonde” star was the host and Karol G was the musical guest on an episode that was light on topical moments.Well, you can’t open “Saturday Night Live” every time with a sketch about the indictment of former President Donald Trump. Following a week with few significant news developments in that case, and rather than pivoting to, say, President Biden’s trip to Ireland, “S.N.L.” took a break from topical satire to instead seek comedy in the weather.This installment of “S.N.L.,” hosted by Ana de Armas (“Blonde”) and featuring the musical guest Karol G, kicked off with a would-be red-carpet segment called “The First Warm Day of the Year Arrivals Show.” As a co-host played by Heidi Gardner explained, high temperatures hit New York several weeks ahead of schedule. “And while that may be terrifying on a climate level,” she said, “the warm weather can only mean one thing: all the freaks, crazies and weirdos are headed to Central Park.”Enter a progression of cast members playing single-serving characters, including Mikey Day as Older Man Doing an Aggressive Power Walk, Michael Longfellow and James Austin Johnson as Two Perverts Who Came to the Park to Pleasure Themselves, and Devon Walker and Punkie Johnson as a pair of Park Employees Who Do Not Care About Their Jobs. Asked how she would handle people who aren’t obeying the rules, Johnson bestowed the park with an unofficial motto: “You do you,” she said.Opening Monologue of the WeekDe Armas, who was born and raised in Cuba, became the latest “S.N.L.” host to perform a portion of her monologue in Spanish. After stepping onto the stage of Studio 8H, she told the audience, in Spanish, that she’d had an incredible year and was happy to be on the show, adding: “Just kidding. I speak English.” (She also explained that she’d learned English “the way everyone who comes to this country does, by watching ‘Friends.’”)De Armas follows other recent “S.N.L.” hosts whose monologues included brief bilingual portions, including Anya Taylor-Joy (who concluded her opening remarks and welcomed her musical guest, Lil Nas X, in Spanish) and Pedro Pascal (who offered love to his family members in Chile and asked them to stop giving out his phone number). Later on Weekend Update, Sarah Sherman referenced de Armas’s remarks, playing a meditation guru who joked that the anchor Colin Jost would end up in his dressing room after the show, “still fuming about the bilingual monologue.”De Armas’s linguistic skills were also put to use in a sketch where she, Marcello Hernández and Karol G ran rings around a mediocre high-school Spanish teacher, played by Day. (If you’re unclear why Karol G wore a T-shirt opposing Photoshop, it was probably a reference to the singer’s dispute with GQ magazine, whose Mexican edition published a cover photo of her that she said had been heavily edited and did not represent her.)Fake Movie Trailer of the WeekIf a brightly colored “Barbie” movie, co-written and directed by Greta Gerwig and stocked with an all-star cast, can become one of the summer’s hottest box-office prospects and an endless source of internet memes, well, why not a film that brings the world of American Girl dolls to life? This segment quickly makes clear why: it would be depressing as hell. While cheerful pop music plays in the background, we meet eerily chipper dolls like Samantha (Chloe Fineman), an orphan whose parents died in a boating accident, and Addy (Ego Nwodim), a runaway slave. Don’t get too attached to Kirsten (Gardner), who says she wants to end cholera and then coughs blood into a handkerchief.Weekend Update Jokes of the WeekOver at the Weekend Update desk, the anchors Jost and Michael Che riffed on the leak of American intelligence documents by a 21-year-old National Guard airman.Jost began:The person who allegedly leaked classified Pentagon documents on social media has been identified as Jack Teixeira, who is a Massachusetts Air National Guardsman, I assume in a school play. Teixeira shared the document in a private social media group that members say started as a place where young men could play war-themed video games, bond over their love of guns and post racist memes. And now it’s ruined. It was revealed that just before his arrest, Teixeira contacted the members of his group and said, “Guys, it’s been good — I love you all.” And of course, his friends all replied, “Gay.”Che continued:The online group Teixeira started was named Thug Shaker Central. Thug Shaker Central is also what Colin calls Atlanta. President Biden is trying to downplay the recent leak of classified U.S. documents that were posted on social media. Because when you’re over 80, a couple of leaks is nothing to be embarrassed about.Weekend Update Desk Segment of the WeekMolly Kearney, the first openly nonbinary cast member on “S.N.L.,” used a desk appearance on Weekend Update to comment on a recent wave of anti-transgender bills — as well as the harness that uncomfortably delivered Kearney to the stage, providing a useful metaphor throughout this commentary. “I tried to call down but no one could hear me,” Kearney said. “At one point I heard a crew guy say, ‘Is she going to die up there?’ And then another guy was like, ‘You mean, are they going to die up there?’ And then they walked away and didn’t help — which feels a lot like how trans people are being treated right now.” More

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    Ishay Ribo, Religious Pop Star, Is Winning Over Secular Israel

    The songs of Ishay Ribo, who was raised in a settlement on the West Bank, are a staple of Israeli radio. He is part of a wave of singers from religious backgrounds who are also gaining a wider audience.The singer and his songs were highly religious. His concert venue, on a kibbutz developed by secular leftists, was definitely not. His audience of many hundreds? It was somewhere in between: some secular, some devout, an unusual blending of two sections of a divided Israeli society that rarely otherwise mix.Ishay Ribo, 34, is among a crop of young Israeli pop stars from religious backgrounds, some from Jewish settlements in the occupied territories, whose music is attracting more diverse listeners, and featuring prominently in the soundscape of contemporary Israeli life.This has surprised Mr. Ribo himself.“I never imagined I’d play to this kind of crowd,” he said, backstage after the show earlier this year at Kibbutz Gan Shmuel, a town in northern Israel originally founded as a collective farm. A decade ago, he said, “This kind of crowd just didn’t really exist.”In addition to Mr. Ribo, other singers from a religious background — like Nathan Goshen, Hanan Ben-Ari, Akiva Turgeman and Narkis Reuven-Nagar — have also in recent years gained a wider audience. And their popularity reflects a changing Israeli society.Fans of Mr. Ribo at the Jerusalem Theater, where he performed in January. Avishag Shaar-Yashuv for The New York TimesThe religious right has expanded its influence on politics and society, escalating a clash between secular and sacred visions of the country that underlies the country’s ongoing judicial standoff. At the same time, religion has taken on a more prominent, and less contentious, role in the mainstream music scene.In less than two decades, religious singers have moved from the cultural fringe to widespread acclaim, “not only among their people, but in all Israel,” said Yoav Kutner, a leading Israeli music critic and radio presenter.“If you don’t listen to the words,” Mr. Kutner added, “they sound like Israeli pop.”Mr. Ribo is perhaps the clearest example of this shift. Forgoing the erotic and the profane, his wholesome songs are often prayers to God — but sung to pop and rock music played by his band of guitarists. “Cause of causes,” he addresses God in one of his biggest hits. “Only you should be thanked for all the days and nights.”In 2021, that track, “Sibat Hasibot,” was the most played song on Israeli radio stations, religious and secular alike.“It’s part of my duty,” Mr. Ribo said in a recent interview. “To be a bridge between these two worlds.”Mr. Ribo’s journey toward that bridging role began in the early 2000s, on the bus to his religious school.His family had immigrated from France a few years before. They led an ultra-Orthodox and ascetic life on a settlement in the occupied West Bank, just outside Jerusalem.The family did not have a television, and Mr. Ribo attended an ultraconservative Jewish seminary. He listened to music on religious radio stations — often liturgical poems sung in synagogues. He typically heard secular music only on the bus to school, playing from the driver’s radio.“I had this musical ignorance,” Mr. Ribo said.At age 11 or so, he began recording simple songs on a portable cassette player. Then as now, his lyrics were infused with piety, Mr. Ribo said. But the tunes were inspired by the mainstream singer-songwriters he’d heard on the school bus.Some four years later, Mr. Ribo bought a guitar and formed a band with another seminary student. He began to practice and dress as a Modern Orthodox Jew, forgoing the dark coats and wide-brimmed hats of the ultra-Orthodox for jeans and sweaters.But his awareness of contemporary music and its customs was still patchy. At his band’s first gig, Mr. Ribo played with his back to the audience, unaware of the need to engage with the crowd.Unlike many Israelis from ultra-Orthodox Jewish backgrounds, he paused his religious studies at age 22 to serve for two years as a conscript in the army. After finishing service in 2013, he tried to build a hybrid musical career — playing religious music to both secular and devout audiences.Mr. Ribo and his father studying the Torah in Jerusalem.Avishag Shaar-Yashuv for The New York TimesHe imagined his melodies might sound like Coldplay, the popular British rock band, but his lyrics, he added, “would be about God and faith.”The challenge was that there were few templates then for such a crossover career.Only a few religious artists, like the folk singer Shlomo Carlebach, had built a secular following. The most successful religious artists were often those, like Etti Ankri and Ehud Banai, who had started out secular, became more devout, and then took their original audiences along with them.Mr. Ribo’s problem, initially, was that the music industry “didn’t understand what I had to offer,” he said.When he sent his music to mainstream record labels, they all turned him down.Mr. Ribo forged ahead, self-releasing the first of five albums in 2014. He hired a secular manager, Or Davidson, who marketed him as if he was a secular client — booking him to play at mainstream venues and securing him airtime on nonreligious radio stations. Gradually, his secular fan base expanded.Mr. Ribo’s 2021 hit, “Sibat Hasibot,” was the most played song on Israeli radio stations, religious and secular alike.Avishag Shaar-Yashuv for The New York TimesIt was sometimes a fraught balancing act.Religious Jews criticized him for playing at secular concert halls. Secular Jews opposed his performances at religious venues where men and women sat separately. And when he played to both audiences at secular venues, the staff could not provide kosher food for his religious fans. Even his parents were too religiously observant to attend some of the venues.But the two-pronged approach ultimately worked. Four of his five albums were classified as gold or above — selling more than 15,000 copies in the small Israeli market. Secular pop legends, including Shlomo Artzi, began to perform duets with him, and he began to build an audience among diaspora Jews. Later this year, he is scheduled to headline Madison Square Garden, Mr. Davidson said.To an extent, Mr. Ribo’s appeal is rooted simply in the catchiness of his songs, his clean-cut demeanor and sincere performances.“Even though I’m secular, I came to watch him because he’s lovely,” said Adiva Liberman, 71, a retired teacher attending his concert at Kibbutz Gan Shmuel.“Not everyone is paying attention to the lyrics,” she added. “They’re just attracted to the melody.”The scene after Mr. Ribo’s concert at the Jerusalem Theater. His music attracts a diverse crowd of secular and religious Israelis.Avishag Shaar-Yashuv for The New York TimesMr. Ribo’s rise comes amid not only a political shift rightward in Israel, but demographic changes as well. Religious Israelis, who have more children than secular Israelis, are the fastest-growing part of the population, allowing them to exert greater cultural influence.Daniel Zamir, an Israeli jazz star who turned religious as an adult, said Mr. Ribo’s broad appeal is part of “a bigger process of Israeli society moving toward tradition.”Simultaneously, Mr. Ribo’s rise embodies a converse but complementary trend: greater willingness among some religious musicians to cater to and mix with mainstream audiences, and greater demand among religious audiences for music with a more contemporary sound.It’s “a dual process,” Mr. Zamir said. Mr. Ribo is emblematic of “this new generation that saw that you could be religious and also make great music,” Mr. Zamir added.For some secular consumers, the rise of “pop emuni” — “faith pop” in Hebrew — has been jarring. “I am not interested in hearing prayers on my radio,” wrote Gal Uchovsky, a television presenter, in a 2019 article about the proliferation of Mr. Ribo’s music. “I don’t want them to explain to me, even in songs that brighten my journey, how fun God is.”Mr. Ribo’s latest song, “I Belong to the People,” also caused discomfort among liberal Israelis. Released in early April, it is an attempt to unite Jews at a time of deep political division in Israel. But critics said it unwittingly sounded condescending to people from other faiths, implying they were idolatrous.Mr. Ribo has also caused discomfort within the religious world. Some ultra-Orthodox Jews, particularly their religious leaders, feel he has delved too far into secular society.Early in his career, Mr. Ribo personally felt so conflicted about this that he sought his rabbi’s approval for his work. To avoid alienating his religious base, there are still some lines he refuses to cross.“I’d love to write a classic love song — but I won’t,” Mr. Ribo said. “It’s not my job or duty.”Still, some feel he has already compromised too much. In a popular sketch performed by an ultra-Orthodox comedy duo, an ultra-Orthodox man is asked if he knows any secular singers.The man pauses, then replies: “Ishay Ribo!”“I’d love to write a classic love song — but I won’t,” Mr. Ribo said. “It’s not my job or duty.”Avishag Shaar-Yashuv for The New York TimesGabby Sobelman More

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    A Director and a Rock Band Are Redrawing the Contours of Anime

    For hits like “Your Name” and now “Suzume,” Makoto Shinkai has worked with Radwimps on the narrative as well as the score. The results have won awards.Since the 2016 release of the global megahit “Your Name,” the stirring music in the animated epics of the Japanese director Makoto Shinkai has become inextricable from their transporting images.Shinkai’s recent high-stakes melodramas about star-crossed teenage lovers and impending supernatural catastrophes move to the up-tempo songs and luminous instrumental tracks of the Japanese rock band Radwimps. On multiple occasions, the band’s compositions have also persuaded the filmmaker to make significant changes to his narratives.In U.S. theaters Friday, “Suzume,” a fantastical saga inspired by the 2011 Tohoku earthquake, represents the third collaboration between the acclaimed storyteller and the musicians.The international popularity of Shinkai’s films has in turn broadened Radwimps’ audience to include fans beyond Japan’s borders. The band will kick off its first North American tour this weekend in San Jose, Calif.“Radwimps and I are two wheels of the same bicycle,” Shinkai, 50, said via an interpreter at a hotel in West Hollywood, Calif. “We need each other, and we are pushing one another forward.”Before enlisting Radwimps, Shinkai had worked with the composer Tenmon, a colleague from his time in video games, on the scores for his short films and early features.But on the more ambitious “Your Name,” a body-swap tale about a boy and a girl connected through time and space, Shinkai sought to differentiate himself from the influential anime production company Studio Ghibli, and from its co-founder, Hayao Miyazaki, in particular. Over the years, as Shinkai’s profile grew, the director said, journalists continually described him as “the next Miyazaki coming out of Japan.” Despite his unabashed admiration for the master animator, Shinkai disliked the constant comparisons.“For ‘Your Name,’ I wanted to do something Miyazaki would never do in one of his films, which was use rock music,” he said.When Shinkai, who had been a Radwimps fan for years, first approached the band in 2014, the artists had been playing together for over a decade but had yet to create music for movies. The lead singer and songwriter, Yojiro Noda, 37, saw this as a chance to reinvigorate the band and push its artistic boundaries while he learned new skills like orchestration.Upon reading the screenplay, Noda quickly turned around the songs “ZenZenZense” (“Past Past Life”), which became the propulsive soundtrack for the opening sequence, and the power ballad “Sparkle.”On “Suzume,” Shinkai, center, worked with Radwimps’ Yojiro Noda, right, as well as the composer Kazuma Jinnouchi.Suzume Film Partners“When I get the script, it’s like a ritual for me to write a few songs just right away without filter and without overthinking it,” Noda, speaking during a recent video interview from Tokyo, explained through a translator.From ages 6 to 10, Noda lived in the United States, and while his English vocabulary during that time was limited, two words stuck with him: “rad,” to describe something exciting, and “wimp,” with its negative connotation. Putting them together created an oxymoron that he thought fit his band, which he started with middle-school friends in the early 2000s.Radwimps has gone through multiple configurations over the years, with some members departing or going on hiatus. Its current lineup is Noda, who also plays guitar and piano; the bassist Yusuke Takeda; and the guitarist Akira Kuwahara.Once Noda decides on the melody and lyrical theme based on Shinkai’s text, he shares it with his bandmates, who enrich the sound with their instruments, synthesizers and percussion.The beautifully hyperbolic lyrics, however, are all Noda’s. “He’s one of the very few poets left in Japan right now who can write the way he does,” Shinkai said.The composer, who’s also written and performed English-language versions of some of the songs created for Shinkai’s animated romances, explained: “All of the music for ‘Your Name’ came from that longing to see each other that was so genuine and pure between the two characters, Mitsuha and Taki.”The “Your Name” soundtrack album debuted at No. 1 on the Japanese national album chart and stayed there for another week. That distinction came on top of the monumental box-office success that eventually turned the film into the third-highest-grossing Japanese production in the country’s history, animated or otherwise.“Radwimps’ music was essential to the success of ‘Your Name,’” Shinkai said. “It really propelled that film into a worldwide social phenomenon.”For Shinkai, Noda’s interpretation of his stories “feels like his way of giving me feedback on my screenplay, but it just happens to come in the form of music.” These exchanges, he believes, have become essential for him to see the full potential of what the film can be.Through his music, Noda essentially provided feedback on the “Suzume” screenplay, Shinkai said.CrunchyrollOn their second outing together, “Weathering With You” (2020), in which a young man must choose between love and saving Tokyo from torrential rain, Shinkai decided to expand a pivotal sequence where the protagonists fall from the sky after he listened to the choir voices featured in “Grand Escape,” one of the early songs Radwimps produced for the movie.Something similar occurred with “Suzume.” Noda delivered “Tamaki,” a song about the aunt and guardian of the 17-year-old title character. Inspired by the tune, Shinkai realized Tamaki’s relevance and added more interactions between her and Suzume. Such changes can be made because the band comes on board long before the visual development starts.For the theme song, “Suzume no Tojimari” (also the name of the film in Japan, where it’s already a hit), Noda listened to Shinkai’s suggestion that the music should capture the scent of the earth itself and the sound of the wind.They also agreed that since a girl is at the center of this whimsical coming-of-age saga, the track needed a female singer. After scouring multiple social media platforms for the right voice, they came across a TikToker named Toaka. She had no professional experience, but videos of her singing at home impressed them.Radwimps has now received three Japan Academy Awards — the country’s Oscar equivalents — for best music, one for each of their collaborations with Shinkai. (For “Suzume,” they shared the prize with composer Kazuma Jinnouchi, who created some of the score’s instrumental moments.)With no plans for the partnership to end, Noda thanks destiny, a concept crucial to the director’s metaphysical adventures, for bringing them together.“Shinkai often tells me there’s no limit to creativity,” Noda said. “He’s an inspiration, and writing songs for his anime is always going to be something special for me.” More

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    After She Traded One Patagonia for Another, Tragedy Couldn’t Keep Her Away

    The documentary “Wild Life” tells the story of Kristine Tompkins, a former chief executive who retired at 43 and moved to South America for love and conservation.SANTA PAULA, Calif. — Kristine McDivitt Tompkins’s idea of sibling bonding is a monthlong trip to Antarctica on an icebreaker ship, including an icy dunk into the frigid waters of the Ross Sea, kayaking, hikes on icebergs and a lot of time analyzing maps.“It’s heaven down there,” said Ms. Tompkins, the former chief executive of the outdoor-apparel company Patagonia. Sipping tea in her Southern California ranch home last week as her English Labrador, Finneaus, and her brother’s Lab, Beto, strolled in and out of her living room, she recalled an expedition she took with her brother a few months earlier.“Some people were really ready to get out,” she said. “I could have turned and gone back the other way.”After her Antarctic sojourn, she headed to Chile and Argentina, working on conservation projects she and her husband had begun some three decades earlier. Ms. Tompkins, 72, has doubled down on those efforts in recent years, including meeting with Chile’s president recently to discuss donating land for a new national park.Ms. Tompkins is the subject of “Wild Life,” a new documentary from Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, the Oscar-winning duo behind “Free Solo.” The film tells the story of Ms. Tompkins and her husband, Doug Tompkins, a founder of the North Face and the apparel company Esprit, as well as the ambitious — and controversial — conservation projects they started after leaving their corporate careers behind.In an interview, Ms. Tompkins said she was as committed as ever to her conservation efforts, helping her find purpose seven years after a deadly kayaking accident upended her life.In a way, her life as an environmentalist began when Ms. Tompkins was a teenager in Southern California, where she befriended Yvon Chouinard; her family’s beach house neighbored his. She started working in shipping at his climbing-equipment company, and, after college, she became one of the first six employees at a company he founded in 1973, Patagonia.She had her fingerprints on many parts of the business, helping pick the typeface in the original logo, producing catalogs and heading imagery. Eventually, she rose to lead the company for years in the 1980s and 1990s.Despite loving the work, she started to feel that something was missing.“I was really kind of choking and sensing a kind of desperate need to figure out something else that would be as interesting and engaging as Patagonia,” she said, adding, “Sometimes your body hangs there, but your heart is gone, your mind.”She ran into Mr. Tompkins, whom she had previously met. He had recently cashed out of his half of Esprit, reportedly for about $150 million, lamenting his role in the consumption-driven economy and wanting to focus on conservation.For Ms. Tompkins, the encounter not only opened a door to a relationship but also shed light on her own search for a new mission.“It was love immediately, but it was also, ‘That’s what I want to do,’” she recalled. “It was the light bulb. It was the flash.”As they grew closer, she took a plunge. At 43, she retired from Patagonia, joining Mr. Tompkins only days later on the farm he had moved to in southern Chile.“I wanted an extreme life, and I mean really extreme, and I didn’t know that that’s what I was looking for and couldn’t find on my own,” she said. “But I think that’s what I recognized in him.”Newlyweds Who Generated SuspicionThe couple were married in 1994, he at age 51, she at 44. The first years in their adopted home proved isolating and difficult as Ms. Tompkins found that she needed to improve Spanish and that the rainy and cold conditions of Patagonia took some getting used to.They focused on buying up parcels of land — hundreds of thousands of acres at a time — from which they removed livestock, fencing and invasive species in an effort to restore the land.Kristine and Doug Tompkins at their home in Chile. The couple’s conservation efforts in the Patagonia region were initially regarded with sharp suspicion.Diane Cook and Len Jenshel/Getty ImagesTheir efforts were met with fierce local opposition and suspicion. Complaints ranged from criticisms that they were stunting development and disrupting the livelihoods of local farmers to more conspiratorial theories (Mr. Tompkins was accused of plotting to send the region’s water to China or replace local cows with American bison). The couple, Mr. Tompkins especially, attracted a robust group of adversaries that included, at various times, Argentine and Chilean government figures, an energy company, the Catholic Church and the salmon industry.“People were used to the idea of foreign corporations coming into Chile and buying land to exploit it,” said Nadine Lehner, who served as executive director of one of the Tompkinses’ organizations. “But the idea of coming in to conserve it was quite a new idea, and as such, I think, generated a lot of suspicion.”As they navigated their new marriage, they continued to pursue projects in Chile and Argentina and established an organization, Tompkins Conservation. Ms. Tompkins tapped into her managerial instincts, keeping projects moving while Mr. Tompkins set out an overall vision and occasionally grew fixated on the design of specific structures in the parks.The relationship “worked in that he’s a tough guy, but he respects it when you stand up to him — and she’s tough,” Mr. Chouinard said. “And she stood up to him and he respected that, and it worked.”‘I Wouldn’t Let Him Go’On Dec. 8, 2015, Mr. Tompkins was on a kayaking trip on General Carrera Lake, which straddles Chile and Argentina, with a group of friends, including Mr. Chouinard. Ms. Tompkins, who was several hours away by car, had discreetly given a member of the group a satellite phone, a device that Mr. Tompkins and Mr. Chouinard hated. After a while, emergency calls started to come in. Mr. Tompkins’s kayak had capsized in windy conditions, and he had spent about an hour in the frigid water before being taken out.When she found out, she crawled underneath the parked small plane he would often fly to explore the parks. “I wouldn’t come out,” Ms. Tompkins said, adding, “I didn’t want any part of it.”Mr. Tompkins died before she reached the hospital.“I just crawled up in his bed, and I wouldn’t let him go,” she said through tears, adding, “He was lucky to have lived that long, considering how he lived his life.”In her grief, Ms. Tompkins felt lost and unsure of how to proceed, but she ultimately decided to double down on her conservation efforts.“Let’s go for broke,” she recalled thinking.Carolina Morgado, the executive director of Rewilding Chile, which grew out of Tompkins Conservation, described her in that moment as a woman who “transformed her grief in power.”In 2018, Tompkins Conservation finalized a deal with the Chilean government in which the organization donated over a million acres of conservation land, with the government adding roughly nine million acres to create five new national parks and expand three. In total, the organization has created or expanded 15 national parks, protecting over 14 million acres in Argentina and Chile — an initiative that continues. The organization and its offshoots have also taken up so-called rewilding efforts, reintroducing jaguars, red-and-green macaws, giant anteaters and other species.For the husband-and-wife directors of “Wild Life,” which opened in theaters on Friday and will come to Disney+ on May 26, Ms. Tompkins proved to be a compelling subject. (Mr. Chin and Ms. Vasarhelyi’s previous documentaries covered the Thailand cave rescue and a climber’s attempt to ascend Yosemite’s El Capitan without a rope.)“Climbing El Cap is really amazing, but what’s more badass than saving the planet?” Mr. Chin said.For Ms. Vasarhelyi, Ms. Tompkins’s story is one of reinvention after profound loss.“We made this film for our kids,” Ms. Vasarhelyi said, adding, “While climate change may seem so big, while losing the love of your life may seem so big, step by step, effort by effort, you can address these things, we can do something.”But Ms. Tompkins calls herself cynical, saying she worries deeply about climate change. “On a good day, it’s grief,” she said. “On a bad day, it’s despair.” But she’s not throwing in the towel, she said: “I’m going the other direction.”Like many people, Ms. Tompkins occasionally despairs about the state of the planet. But rather than throwing in the towel, she throws herself into conservation projects: “I’m going the other direction.”Adam Amengual for The New York TimesMs. Tompkins is still involved with Patagonia, serving on its board and living near its headquarters. She even has thoughts on the evolution of Patagonia apparel into the de facto outfit for a certain variety of tech and finance worker. (Sometimes, the uglier a product, “the more heavily it would be sold into the business community,” she recalled.)Ms. Tompkins said that with her recent trip to Antarctica, as in her relationship with Mr. Tompkins and her conservation work, “what I still look for is this icy clarity and confrontation of extreme circumstances and harshness and difficulty. I think it makes me feel like I’m breathing.”Alain Delaquérière More

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    10 Reasons to Rediscover John Cale

    A listening tour of the musician’s wildly eclectic seven-decade career.Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesDear listeners,For today’s playlist, I have a treat for you: a deep dive into the world of a musician I find endlessly fascinating — John Cale.Cale is best known as a founder of the Velvet Underground, where he played viola and very occasionally sang, but that association hardly does him justice. The Welsh musician was in the V.U. for just three years before creative differences with his perpetual frenemy Lou Reed came to a head; his wildly eclectic solo career has now lasted nearly six decades and is more than worth your time.Even as a longtime admirer of Cale’s music, immersing myself in his catalog earlier this year I discovered entire albums — even entire eras — I was unfamiliar with. A high percentage of them were totally awesome. I found myself saying things to friends like “You have to hear ‘Honi Soit,’ this wild post-punk album he made in 1981 …”I went to Los Angeles to interview Cale in January, and he shared so many fascinating insights and star-studded anecdotes — when he said “Andy,” he meant Warhol; when he said “David,” it was Bowie. I couldn’t fit them all in my story, so I’ve peppered some of them in here, along with notes from some of his illustrious admirers, including Patti Smith, Todd Haynes and James Murphy.Whether you’re a Cale devotee revisiting some classics or someone who still gets him confused with John Cage (as several people confessed to me after the piece was published), I hope this playlist makes you feel like you’re having tea with Graham Greene.Listen along here on Spotify as you read.1. John Cale: “Fear Is a Man’s Best Friend” (1974)Cale’s incendiary fourth solo album, “Fear,” was the one that made Patti Smith recruit him to produce “Horses” — not only did she love its anarchic sound, but she found the stark, close-up shot of Cale’s face on the cover striking because it reminded her of her hero Arthur Rimbaud’s “Illuminations.” (It was all in the cheekbones, she says.) I’m with Patti: This whole album ranks among Cale’s best, and the opening track is both an early example of punk rock’s spirit and an inviting portal into Cale’s musical universe. (Listen on YouTube)2. The Velvet Underground: “Venus in Furs” (1966)While Lou Reed brought a pop sensibility to the VU’s sound (he got his start as an in-house songwriter for the low-budget novelty label Pickwick Records), Cale brought avant-garde adventurousness, particularly a fascination with the hypnotic qualities of drone, which he honed in the Dream Syndicate with Tony Conrad and La Monte Young before he joined the Velvet Underground in 1965. “Venus in Furs,” from the Velvet Underground’s epochal debut album with Nico, would be an entirely different song without the low, molten drone of Cale’s electric viola. (Listen on YouTube)3. John Cale: “Paris 1919” (1973)“Paris 1919” was the first solo Cale song, and album, that I heard. He’s such a natural fit for the stately chamber-pop sensibility of this album — the perfect-postured piano-playing; the indelible Welsh accent — that I mistakenly assumed all his records sounded like this. A few years later, when I dug deeper into his catalog, I discovered its contained serenity makes the album something of an outlier, but it’s still probably his most popular release, and one of his best. (Listen on YouTube)4. John Cale: “Big White Cloud” (1970)Cale was still finding his distinct voice on his first solo album, “Vintage Violence,” but it certainly has its moments of sublimity — the best of which is the drifting, dreamy “Big White Cloud.” (Listen on YouTube)5. John Cale and Terry Riley: “Ides of March” (1971)Here’s something from the more avant-classical side of Cale: a long, gloriously cacophonous composition driven by piano and not one but two drummers, from “Church of Anthrax,” a collaborative and mostly improvised album he made with the experimental musician Terry Riley. “Ides of March” basically sounds like a bunch of stuff falling out of a closet for 11 minutes straight, in the most compelling way possible. I’m a huge fan of this album and was delighted to find in my reporting that Todd Haynes is, too — it’s one of the more obscure in Cale’s discography, but we enthusiasts are quite passionate about it. (Listen on YouTube)6. John Cale: “Honi Soit (La Première Leçon de Français)” (1981)As I was researching Cale, this album, “Honi Soit” from 1981, was my most thrilling discovery. (Hey, the guy has released 17 solo albums; even a fan like me can’t always keep up!) Cale’s approach was so consistently ahead of its time that he was easily able to slot into various emerging genres as the decades went on. “Fear,” along with his production for Smith and the Stooges, heralded him as a godfather of punk, while “Honi Soit” proves he understood post-punk and new wave just as intuitively. The refrain in this pummeling track is “Honi soit qui mal y pense,” an old Anglo-Norman phrase that is still the motto of the British chivalric Order of the Gartner; it’s roughly translated as “shame on anyone who thinks evil of it.” Leave it to Cale to make something so esoteric sound immediately catchy. (Listen on YouTube)7. Lou Reed and John Cale: “Work” (1990)Reed and Cale met up again for the first time in years at Warhol’s funeral in 1987; their friend’s unexpected death hit them both hard and they wanted to find a way to pay tribute. Their offering was the 1989 album “Songs for Drella,” which they workshopped at various locations around New York City, like St. Ann’s Warehouse and the Brooklyn Academy of Music. LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy (a John Cale superfan) told me that the album’s starkly minimalist production had an impact on him. “Up until then I didn’t know you could leave a song like that and be confident enough to say it was done,” he marveled. I, too, love the clean outlines of Cale’s antic piano and Reed’s insouciant guitar, all the better to hear them clash. (Listen on YouTube)8. John Cale: “Hallelujah (Fragments)” (1991)Before it was the woefully over-covered, culturally ubiquitous standard that it is today, “Hallelujah” was a semi-obscure Leonard Cohen track that hadn’t made much of an impact when it was first released in 1984. It was, however, the song that Cale chose to cover on a 1991 Cohen tribute album — which turned out to be the version that initially caught Jeff Buckley’s ear. The rest, for better or worse, is history. Cale and I discussed the song quite a bit, and we both bemoaned the way “Hallelujah” has transformed into a solemn, self-serious dirge. Cale’s expertly inhabited version certainly gets at the wry, Cohenian humor that most other interpreters miss, especially in his delivery of the line, “There was a time when you let me know what’s really going on below/But now you never show it to me, do ya?” Said Cale, correctly: “It’s cheeky, isn’t it?” (Listen on YouTube)9. Brian Eno and John Cale: “In the Backroom” (1990)Though their time in the studio together was contentious, Cale and fellow art-rocker Brian Eno created something compelling and unexpectedly accessible in “Wrong Way Up,” a collaborative album released in 1990. The album is best known for the songs that Eno sings — especially the bright, poppy “Spinning Away” — but I like this more laid-back, poetic number that Cale sings in a cool murmur. (Listen on YouTube)10. The Velvet Underground: “Lady Godiva’s Operation” (1968)And here’s one more Velvets classic for good measure, from the final VU album Cale appeared on, the caterwauling “White Light/White Heat.” With all due respect to Reed, I love the few moments when Cale sang lead with the Velvets. There’s something so deliciously creepy about his vocals here, but at the same time they’re always imbued with a signature elegance. (Listen on YouTube)I’m the bishop and I’ve come to claim you with my iron drum,LindsayBonus tracksI was sad to hear last week about the passing of former Luscious Jackson keyboardist Vivian Trimble, at the way-too-young age of 59. Luscious Jackson was a refreshing presence during that unfortunately brief moment in the mid-to-late ’90s when a whole bunch of interesting female musicians actually got played on rock radio, and I always dug the group’s singles, like the slinky “Under Your Skin” and the groovy “Ladyfingers.” In Trimble’s honor, I’ll recommend this 1997 performance of the band’s big hit “Naked Eye” on “Late Night With Conan O’Brien” featuring Trimble on keys, gorgeous backing vocals and effortlessly cool dance moves.The Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“10 Reasons to Rediscover John Cale” track listTrack 1: John Cale, “Fear Is a Man’s Best Friend”Track 2: The Velvet Underground, “Venus in Furs”Track 3: John Cale, “Paris 1919”Track 4: John Cale, “Big White Cloud”Track 5: John Cale and Terry Riley, “Ides of March”Track 6: John Cale, “Honi Soit (La Première Leçon de Français)”Track 7: Lou Reed and John Cale, “Work”Track 8: John Cale, “Hallelujah (Fragments)”Track 9: Brian Eno and John Cale, “In the Backroom”Track 10: The Velvet Underground, “Lady Godiva’s Operation” More

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    Lucinda Williams Tells Her Secrets

    The singer-songwriter reveals herself in a memoir that captures her adventures with charming rogues, puzzled music executives and her own demons.NASHVILLE — “Bless your heart!”Lucinda Williams delivered the Southern benediction in her distinctive drawl. She has a memoir coming out soon, and Ms. Williams, the celebrated singer-songwriter who has been compared to Raymond Carver for the acuity of her work, was nonetheless not too sure about this particular literary endeavor. So when a visitor complimented the book, “Don’t Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You,” she beamed. Like many a writer, she said she had a hard time letting go. “I thought, ‘I’m going to write this book and turn it in when I’m done,’” she said. “Much to my dismay it doesn’t work that way.”She wanted more time, and she missed the editorial eye and encouragement of her father, the poet and literary scholar Miller Williams, who died in 2015. Like his daughter, he was known for the gritty realism of his work, and they often performed together. For years he had looked over her lyrics — he was the king of grammar, she said — until she sent him “Essence,” the title song from her 2001 album, and he told her, as she recalled: “‘Honey, this is as close to pure poetry as you’ve come.’ And I said, ‘Does this mean I’ve graduated?’”It has been 25 years since Ms. Williams’s breakthrough, “Car Wheels on a Gravel Road.” That collection of anthems to love, loss and yearning made her an overnight success, as she said wryly, at age 45. Despite the stroke she suffered in 2020, she still looks vibrant and tough, with her smoky blue eyes and roughed up, rock ’n’ roll hair. Walking is a challenge (she takes it slow these days) and she can’t yet play guitar, but her voice is thrillingly unaffected.About that voice. Emmylou Harris once said Ms. Williams could sing the chrome off a tailpipe. Bonnie Raitt, in a phone interview, called it “unique, truly American and drenched in raw grit and soul and vulnerability.”Steve Earle, Ms. Williams’s occasional collaborator and old friend, described it this way over Zoom: “Have you ever been in New Orleans or Mobile or someplace really far South when the gardenias start to bloom? There’s a moment when the scent just permeates everything and there’s a viscosity to it and it’s substantial and that’s what her voice has always reminded me of. There’s an automatic atmosphere. Chet Baker was like that. Merle Haggard. The mood happens as soon as they open their mouths.”Ms. Williams, 70, and her husband, Tom Overby, who is also her manager and collaborator, live in a white clapboard bungalow with a peaked roof, gingerbread trim and a neat square of lawn. They moved to East Nashville from Los Angeles in February 2020, after which came a series of blows: the tornadoes that tore through the city in early March, flattening neighborhoods and shearing off part of their roof; the coronavirus pandemic, which shut things down a week later; the Covid death of her dear friend John Prine; and the stroke, which bludgeoned her in November.Ms. Williams onstage at the Palomino Club in Los Angeles.Michael Ochs Archives/Getty ImagesThe house was sparsely furnished with a pair of velvety sofas; metal shelves and storage containers spilling over with books, CDs and vinyl albums; and lots of audio gear. On the kitchen island, a bright yellow vase was filled with yellow button flowers. The gray walls were bare, save for a white board that proclaimed, “Lu’s Schedule. Today is the first day of the rest of your life.”“I have a bit of brain fog from the stroke,” Ms. Williams said, nodding at the board, “dates and days and such, but I think I always had that.”Mr. Overby, a loquacious man with bushy gray hair, rolled his eyes in assent. He’s the memory in the marriage, she added.In “Don’t Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You,” Ms. Williams writes of her decades playing for tips and spaghetti dinners and the perfidy of the record companies that didn’t know how to characterize her roots-inspired, renegade rocking style and her novelistic writing. “We don’t know what to do with this,” she said she was told over and over again. “It’s too country for rock and too rock for country.” It was somehow fitting that a British independent label, Rough Trade Records, signed her for her 1988 album, “Lucinda Williams.”She writes of the Hollywood director hired to make a video for “Right in Time,” the languid ballad about a woman’s desire from the “Car Wheels” album. As she recounts, he arrived for dinner at a restaurant thoroughly drunk before propositioning her, sloppily, while her boyfriend was in the bathroom. When she found his idea for the video corny, she sent him packing. She goes on to tell the story of the six-year odyssey to get the album made — the setbacks caused by vacillating record company executives and her dogged commitment to her own high standards. For her troubles, Ms. Williams was labeled a perfectionist, which, for a woman in a male-dominated industry, was not a compliment.“She just stood her ground and emerged a gleaming, burnished jewel,” Ms. Raitt said. “It doesn’t make you popular when you stand your ground, and that’s why she’s excellent.” A strong woman in the music industry is seen as “a control freak and a bitch,” she added, while a strong man is hailed as “an auteur and a genius.”Ms. Williams performing with Steve Earle at Town Hall in New York in 2007.Rahav Segev for The New York TimesMs. Williams turned to Mr. Earle to help her get the album finished. “He’d say, ‘It’s just a record, Lu,’” she said. “He was trying to help me get perspective. I was losing my perspective. He’d be like: ‘The vocal is great. You’re singing your Louisiana ass off. When are you going to trust somebody?’ I had hardly made any records before, compared to other artists, so the whole process of being in the studio was terrifying. It was my own neuroses. It’s not like I was brave or anything.”She has often been bedeviled by jitters. In 1994, when she won a Grammy thanks to Mary Chapin Carpenter’s hit version of her song “Passionate Kisses,” she was too nervous to attend the ceremony. Rosanne Cash had sent her to a Nashville boutique for an outfit, but she bailed at the last minute.“The truth is I was not just self-conscious, but also scared,” she writes in the memoir. “I feared that I didn’t belong. It’s a feeling I’ve been trying to shake my entire life. It’s a riddle I believe many artists have been trying to solve for centuries. It takes enormous fortitude to create the work in the first place, but then once it’s time to put it out in the world, the confidence required to go public is unrelated to the audacity that created the work.”“It was my fear of the unknown,” Ms. Williams said. “Of being around people with money and nice clothes and nice teeth or whatever.”She managed to make it to the Grammy ceremony in 1999, when “Car Wheels on a Gravel Road” was honored as the year’s best folk album. But when her name was called, she found herself walking away from the stage. Mr. Earle, who was up for the same award, yelled out to her, as she told it: “‘Lulu! You’re going the wrong way!’ I was horrified. God. Thanks, Steve!”“Lucinda is one of the great geniuses of popular music, so how could she have struggled?” Ann Powers, a music critic for NPR, said. “A lot of it is personal and a lot of it is structural. The dynamic of how to corral a bunch of guys was complicated, it still is, but even more so then when women were relatively sparse in rock ’n’ roll circles.”It can be hard for bandleaders like Ms. Williams to be the only woman in the room. Ms. Raitt called it the problem of “women’s voices,” which “hits the mom button” for many men.Ms. Powers added, “In her music, she’s often questioning herself, expressing her vulnerability in profound ways.”“So it makes sense that she would have struggled to claim her authority,” she continued. “So often with artists the very thing we love about them is what poses a challenge for them in their life and work.”In any case, in addition to earning a Grammy, “Car Wheels” hit the Billboard charts, a first for Ms. Williams, and went gold. Critics reviewed it in ecstatic terms, and the record producer Joe Boyd called it “the ‘Blonde on Blonde’ of the 1990s,” referring to Bob Dylan’s canonical record.At home in Nashville.Kristine Potter for The New York TimesAs Ms. Williams’s fame grew, so did the dedication of her fans. She writes of the woman who began masturbating at a show in New Orleans and kept at it even as she was removed by security. (When Ms. Williams and her band heard the story after their set, they were fascinated, as she recalled: “Was she wearing pants? How did it work?”) There was the couple that sent her lingerie. The woman who delivered a crate of Vidalia onions because she’d heard Ms. Williams liked them. One fan, a drug counselor who credited his sobriety to Ms. Williams, had one of her songs tattooed in its entirety on his back. Then there are those who have sent her letters saying how much they appreciate “Sweet Old World,” her mournful lament for someone who died by suicide.Ms. Williams was born in Lake Charles, La., and grew up in New Orleans, Mexico and Chile, with stopovers in towns in Mississippi, Utah and Georgia. Her father, the son of a Methodist clergyman and early civil rights activist, sold encyclopedias and refrigerators before his mentor, Flannery O’Connor, recommended him for a poetry position at Loyola University in New Orleans. Hence the constant moving.“I’m so sorry,” Mr. Williams said when he first heard “Car Wheels,” which paints a picture of tense domesticity and a peripatetic family life. Her mother, Lucille, a thwarted pianist, was also the child of a minister — of the fire and brimstone variety — and she suffered from mental illness and self-medicated with alcohol. Lucinda and her siblings were mostly raised by their father and stepmother, his former student and the family’s babysitter. (Awkward at first, as Ms. Williams notes in the book.)Theirs was a Bohemian academic household, imprinted by the politics of the era. Mr. Williams was the host of a bibulous literary salon that included Charles Bukowski, the hard-living poet. As a teenager, Lucinda handed out “Boycott grapes” leaflets in front of a grocery store and played protest songs at demonstrations. When she refused to recite the Pledge of Allegiance in her New Orleans high school, her father said, “Don’t worry honey, we’ll get you an A.C.L.U. lawyer.” And when she was finally thrown out, after joining a civil rights march, he was unfazed.“To hell with it,” he told her. “You weren’t learning anything there anyway.” She spent a semester at the University of Arkansas, where her father was then teaching, but she dropped out to play music for tips at a club in New Orleans.Ms. Williams took the title for her memoir from the chorus of “Metal Firecracker,” a song from the “Car Wheels” album, one of her many compositions about “the poets on motorcycles” who are her preferred type.These men fill the pages of her memoir. There was the gentle crew member who turned violent after he moved in with her and made away with her third Grammy — for best female rock vocal performance in 2002 — and a good bit of her collection of folk art. And the erudite charmer who was her first long-term boyfriend and who died of cirrhosis of the liver in his 40s. The haunting “Lake Charles” is an elegy for him.Ms. Williams and Tom Overby, her husband and collaborator, at the Americana Music Association Honors and Awards Show at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville.Terry Wyatt/Getty ImagesThe man in “Metal Firecracker” was a charismatic bass player who doggedly pursued her while they were touring for her 1992 album, “Sweet Old World.” (“Metal firecracker” was his nickname for the tour bus.) Against the advice of bandmates, Ms. Williams succumbed, which meant breaking up with her boyfriend at the time, who reacted by busting up the furniture in their hotel room. The new suitor had a few irons in the fire, as she learned later, and when the tour was over, he vanished. He told her, in a wince-inducing phone call, “I love you but this relationship doesn’t fit my agenda right now.” At any rate, as she writes, she got a song out of it. Three, as it happens.Ms. Williams and Mr. Overby, a former music executive who is not a rogue but a bit of a poet, married onstage in Minneapolis in 2009. (When they were dating, she writes, his male colleagues warned him off: “Be careful. Our reps on her label tell us she’s literally insane.” He ignored them.) Her father wrote their vows and performed the ceremony. When they both declared, “Loving what I know of you, trusting what I do not yet know,” the audience roared with laughter.There is some dispute about who proposed to whom. Ms. Williams claimed it was Mr. Overby. In her recollection, he turned to her during a tour and asked if she wanted to go shopping for diamonds.Mr. Overby shook his head. “We were on the bus and out of nowhere you go, ‘So when are you taking me shopping for diamonds?’”Ms. Williams: “I did?”Mr. Overby: “You did!”Ms. Williams: “But you liked it.”Ms. Williams suffered a stroke in 2020, but her voice is intact. Her next album comes out in June.Kristine PotterMr. Overby organized a trip to a jewelry store owned by friends in Omaha, lining it up with a performance, but Ms. Williams was so nervous she couldn’t get off the bus until just before the store closed. When she saw the array of rings, she panicked. Mission aborted. They tried again the following year, and again she was flummoxed. Years later, they bought a pair of rings in Los Angeles — and Ms. Williams promptly lost them, her husband said.“Misplaced them,” she said, correcting him.The couple may not be the best jewelry collaborators, but lately they have worked nicely in the studio on Ms. Williams’s new album, “Stories From a Rock ’n’ Roll Heart,” out in June. As they did in their homage to John Prine, which they wrote after he died of Covid. Ms. Williams performed it last year at a tribute to him. It tells the story of a night long ago when Ms. Williams and Mr. Prine thought they might write a song together. They spent many jolly hours careering from bar to studio but never quite got down to the task.John and me were going to get togetherAnd write a song one timeGot about as far as the midtown barAnd ordered up a bottle of wineWhat could go wrong, working on a song?Then we got to talking, not looking at the timeTelling stories about folks we knowHad another bottle of wineWe were having funWhat could go wrong? More

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    ‘The Pope’s Exorcist’ Review: A Head-Spinning Genre Mash-Up

    The buddy-priest action-comedy-horror hybrid we didn’t know we wanted has finally landed.It’s hard to pick the most surreal part of Julius Avery’s new horror film. It could be that the main character is based on the very real Rev. Gabriele Amorth, who used to be the Vatican’s chief exorcist (in a head-spinning twist, William Friedkin, the director of “The Exorcist,” once made a documentary about him). Or maybe it’s that Father Amorth is portrayed as an espresso-drinking, scooter-riding maverick by Russell Crowe in one of his most engaging performances in years. He is dispatched by the Pope (the cult Italian actor Franco Nero) to an isolated Spanish abbey where a young boy, Henry (Peter DeSouza-Feighoney), has started producing ungodly growls, changing colors and shapes, and making inappropriate moves on his mother (Alex Essoe, a Mike Flanagan horror regular).Amorth has his work cut out for him, but luckily he is paired with the inexperienced but game Father Esquibel (Daniel Zovatto), which adds a dollop of buddy-priest action comedy to an already genre-full plate. The two men have excellent, er, chemistry with the ancestral evil figure who has taken over Henry and is magnificently voiced by Ralph Ineson. Avery (“Samaritan”) drives the film at a pace as caffeinated as Amorth himself, and manages to incorporate legitimate scares into a plot halfway between Indiana Jones and a Dan Brown potboiler, with camp touches worthy of Ken Russell.“The Pope’s Exorcist” ends with a shameless suggestion that there is room for a sequel or even an entire series. It is not an unwelcome prospect.The Pope’s ExorcistRated R for demon-induced expletives and glimpses of naked ladies. Running time: 1 hour 43 minutes. In theaters. More

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    ‘The Last Kingdom: Seven Kings Must Die’ Review: Flesh Wounds

    Soldiers face off over the fate of England in this overbearingly glib costume drama.Far too often, “The Last Kingdom: Seven Kings Must Die,” an incomprehensible period epic based on the five-season television series “The Last Kingdom,” mistakes the mere presence of blood for a compelling narrative.Set during the 10th century, before England was a united kingdom, the movie, directed by Ed Bazalgette, takes place as the recent death of King Edward and the ascent of his son Aethelstan (Harry Gilby) threaten a fragile peace among the country’s Pagan and Christian nation states. The loyal Lord Uhtred of Bebbanburg (Alexander Dreymon), a man of deep honor, wants to avoid a conflict that he thinks will continue for generations.What occurs is a series of events rather than a story. If you haven’t watched the TV show, itself adapted from novels by the author Bernard Cornwell, then keeping up with the web of allegiances, characters and story lines will prove difficult. In this film alone, Uhtred’s sword is stolen, his land and title are stripped away, and a conniving Danish king, Anlaf (Pekka Strang), seeks to exploit him. Ingilmundr, the lover and Svengali of Aethelstan, also wants to turn the impressionable ruler against Uhtred.The theme of Christian guilt in the face of homophobia bears no dramatic fruit. The film’s culminating battle isn’t much heartier: The compositions lack clarity, the score of undulating voices is comically clichéd and the visual effects are a dingy, nauseating mess. There are no stakes in a film that not only takes seven royal lives — it snatches several brain cells with them.The Last Kingdom: Seven Kings Must DieNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 51 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More