Aurelia Butler
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Watch Mikey Madison Take a Mansion Tour in ‘Anora’
The writer, director and editor Sean Baker narrates an early sequence from his film, which also features Mark Eydelshteyn.In “Anatomy of a Scene,” we ask directors to reveal the secrets that go into making key scenes in their movies. See new episodes in the series on Fridays. You can also watch our collection of more than 150 videos on YouTube and subscribe to our YouTube channel.When Ani (Mikey Madison) agrees to meet one of her young strip-club clients, Ivan (Mark Eydelshteyn), at his home, she is taken aback by just how lavish that home is. That’s the setup for this scene from “Anora,” which follows the budding relationship, both transactional and emotional, between the title character, Ani, and Ivan.This sequence takes place before Ani learns that Ivan is the son of a Russian oligarch, and it is crafted to give both Ani and the audience an eye-opening look at the outsize abundance of Ivan’s space.Narrating the scene, the film’s writer, director and editor, Sean Baker, said, “I wanted the camera to essentially be following Ani, but also be seeing the world through Ani’s eyes.” He achieved this by keeping the cuts to a minimum. After Ani rings the doorbell and Ivan answers, the bulk of the sequence unfolds in one shot, following her with a hand-held camera (operated by the cinematographer Drew Daniels) as she marvels over the mansion.“It really sets up the geography,” Baker said, “because the geography is going to be extremely important later on in the film.”Read the “Anora” review.Learn more about Mikey Madison.Sign up for the Movies Update newsletter and get a roundup of reviews, news, Critics’ Picks and more. More
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New York’s Wu-Tang Clan Street Signs Sell Out in a Blink
The 100 replicas of the “Wu-Tang Clan District” sign on Staten Island, where the group was formed in 1992, were gone in less than two hours.New York celebrated the Wu-Tang Clan by releasing on Thursday 100 replicas of the street sign on Staten Island named for the group. They were all snapped up in less than two hours.The Wu-Tang Clan was formed in Staten Island’s Park Hill neighborhood in 1992, and went on to become one of hip-hop’s most beloved and influential acts. The city named an intersection in Park Hill “Wu-Tang Clan District” and unveiled the sign in 2019.The commissioner of the city’s Transportation Department, Ydanis Rodriguez, called the group “a legendary part of Staten Island’s North Shore,” in a statement replete with puns and references to Wu-Tang’s music.The department began monthly releases of limited-run replicas in June to honor famous New Yorkers and events. The proceeds go to the city’s general fund. The first one marked Pride Month with a sign reading Christopher Street/Stonewall Place, where a police raid of the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar, set off unrest in 1969. That replica sold out in under three hours.The replicas, which the Transportation Department sells for $75, are produced by the shop that makes New York City’s street signs. The department has compared them to limited-edition sneaker drops.The other releases include replicas of the signs honoring the Brooklyn hip-hop superstars the Notorious B.I.G. and the Beastie Boys, and Mariano Rivera, the Yankees legend. All the releases sold out quickly. More
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Netflix and Lifetime Christmas Movies Strip Down With ‘Hot Frosty’ and More
With “Hot Frosty,” “The Merry Gentlemen” and “A Carpenter Christmas Romance,” holiday fare is headed in a shirtless new direction.Fans of Christmas romance usually know exactly what to expect when tuning in to any of the dozens of new movies on cable and streaming platforms each year.For 90 minutes or so, they’ll see a city slicker return to her immaculately decorated small hometown for the holidays. A local guy will sweep her off her feet. The scenery will be snow-covered. The music will be merry. And a quick peck on the lips will reliably signify the lovers’ happy ending.This year, however, some holiday films are stripping down. Literally.“Hot Frosty” and “The Merry Gentlemen” on Netflix and “A Carpenter Christmas Romance” on Lifetime employ many of the usual tropes, but they’ve ditched the sweaters and fleeting embraces for steamier visuals. Here, in a move seemingly born of the realization that women are a key viewing demographic of the genre, the men are often shirtless and on display to be ogled by the female townsfolk. The kisses are passionate. And, in at least one instance, the lead characters have s-e-x.Judging by the moans and longing gazes, these fictional women have been deprived of carnal fulfillment during holidays past. Modern Christmas movie viewers have been left wanting, too.“Way back before Lifetime and Netflix, the old idea of a merry Christmas was filled with mistletoe, which invited transgressional romantic and sexual activity,” said Robert J. Thompson, the director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University. He also noted the presence of sexual undertones in everything from Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol” (a party scene where blindfolded revelers identify one another by touch) to songs like “Santa Baby” and “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus.”Chad Michael Murray, left, and Hector David Jr. are part of a male revue in “The Merry Gentlemen.”Katrina Marcinowski/NetflixWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
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“Youth (Homecoming)”: Review of Film by Wang Bing
In the finale of Wang Bing’s nonfiction trilogy, garment-factory workers return to their families and wrestle with the questions all young people do.What happens when young people with jobs in the big city return to the homes they left behind? It’s a question that powers a whole bevy of films, including Hallmark’s holiday offerings. But it’s perhaps less expected in a 152-minute Chinese documentary, the final installment in a trilogy stretching nearly 10 hours.“Youth (Homecoming)” (in theaters), directed by the eminent filmmaker Wang Bing, is shorter by at least an hour than its predecessors, “Youth (Spring)” and “Youth (Hard Times).” Wang shot the films over about five years, spending time with the myriad young people, mostly in their late teens and 20s, who travel to the city of Zhili to work in garment factories. No one subject is the main protagonist in the “Youth” trilogy; instead, we see a collage of faces and personalities, all of whom toil very long hours for very little pay.“Spring” is the most cheerful of the films, showing the laborers as they arrive and get busy at their machines, often singing to pop music and talking about love. “Hard Times,” which covers the winter months, shows them struggling to get paid by bosses who skip town or try to drive down wages. The workers begin to organize, but it’s a battle with little chance of victory.In “Homecoming,” as the title suggests, many young people return to their remote villages for the New Year’s break when the factories slow down. We travel with them on packed, long-haul trains and traverse muddy mountain paths. Now families enter the picture, identified in the film only by their relationships to the laborers. Two of the subjects, Shi Wei and Fang Lingping, marry their romantic partners during this downtime. Others converse with loved ones about their plans or other subjects. Eventually the young people go back to Zhili, only to discover that employment is not always easy to come by.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
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Clint Eastwood and the Power of a Squint
Shape-shifters by design, actors have their methods but many also have distinguishing features — sunburst smiles, rolling walks — that become their signatures. Memorable performers, after all, don’t simply catch our gaze, they seize it, holding and keeping it tight. And few performers have held us as powerfully as Clint Eastwood, who has cemented himself […] More
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Johnny Gandelsman’s ‘This Is America’ at the Met Museum
Johnny Gandelsman has commissioned 28 pieces for his project “This Is America,” which explores themes of love, hope, inequality and injustice.In a quiet corner of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the violinist Johnny Gandelsman took a few deep breaths and began to play.“Sky above us,” he sang, with the cellist and songwriter Marika Hughes. “Ground below us; 360 support around us. Cut discursive thought.”It was Wednesday morning, the day after the presidential election, and Gandelsman, 46, a recent recipient of the MacArthur “genius” grant, was rehearsing “This Is America.” He will bring this project, a collection of 28 pieces he has commissioned and begun to record since 2020, to the Met’s American Wing for a marathon performance spread over Friday and Saturday, with the aim to capture the modern American spirit: its love and hope, but also its inequality and injustice.
This Is America – An Anthology 2020-2021 (ICR023) by Johnny Gandelsman“This Is America” began four years ago, but, Gandelsman said: “The rhetoric is still the same; the injustices are still the same. I am doing everything I can to represent these voices and support them and uplift them.”For the project, Gandelsman, who was born in Moscow and grew up in Israel before coming to the United States at 17, provided composers with $5,000 and simple instructions: to write a piece for solo violin that responds to the times we are living in. They responded with a variety of styles, including contemporary classical music, jazz, world music and electronics.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
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‘The Last Rifleman’ Review: A World War II Veteran Hits the Road
Pierce Brosnan plays a man who sneaks out of his retirement home to attend the 75th anniversary of the D-Day landings in this charming, but corny drama.“The Last Rifleman” is a sporadically affecting drama that stars Pierce Brosnan as a World War II veteran who sneaks out of his retirement home in Belfast to attend the 75th anniversary of D-Day in France. At 16, Artie (Brosnan) was petrified to be in Normandy; now 92 and three-quarters (he insists on the fraction), he’s hellbent on confronting his metaphorical ghosts.The story is lifted from the true adventures of an octogenarian British soldier in 2014, a caper also captured in the 2023 film “The Great Escaper” starring Michael Caine. This take by the director Terry Loane and the screenwriter Kevin Fitzpatrick is equal parts tenderhearted and heavy-handed. Artie absconds in a laundry truck to the ballad “Don’t Fence Me In” and, while on the lam, confesses his decades-old anguish to an American corporal audaciously named Lincoln Jefferson Adams (a touching John Amos in one of his final roles). Most strangers are kind, even a former member of the Hitler Youth (Jürgen Prochnow). For balance, in one scene some nasty teenagers play soccer with Artie’s underwear.Corny, yes. But charming, too, like when a nurse (Tara Lynne O’Neill) delivers a mini-monologue of reasons Artie’s too ill to travel that plays out like a clown car of ailments. Loane can also be cynical as he pans across a glut of tacky victory souvenirs. Brosnan, who is 71, gamely ages himself up and has fun rapping on cellphones with a cane and punctuating moments with a pained “Ooh! Ahh!” Yet, a climax where the humble survivor reels with emotions he’s never allowed himself to feel is truly sniffle-worthy.The Last RiflemanRated PG-13 for language and rather chintzy battle scenes. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on most major platforms. More
