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    Oscars Gets Higher Ratings Than Last Year’s Academy Awards

    The Academy Awards on Sunday night drew a larger audience than last year, when viewership plunged to an all-time low, but interest remained depressed amid disruptions to television- and movie-watching habits.The 94th edition of the awards show attracted 15.4 million viewers on ABC and a 3.2 rating among adults between 18 and 49 years old, according to a preliminary report from Nielsen released to ABC on Monday. The early results showed a 56 percent improvement on the 9.85 million people who watched last year’s event, according to ABC, though the show was still the second-least-watched Oscars ever on record.Initial viewership figures evolve in the days after the show to factor in West Coast audiences as well as out-of-home and livestream viewing.The telecast took a bizarre turn more than two hours in, when Will Smith strode onstage and slapped Chris Rock in the face for telling a joke about his wife. Mr. Smith then returned to his seat, and less than an hour later, he won the best actor prize.The early data did not indicate whether there was a surge in viewership after the slap, which immediately ricocheted around the internet.Organizers have been desperate to reverse a yearslong ratings slide for the Oscars, which saw viewership last year plummet 58 percent. To perk up interest, they hired the comics Regina Hall, Amy Schumer and Wanda Sykes to host a show that had been hostless since 2019; relegated some awards to a pretaped segment to hurry along what still clocked in at more than 3.5 hours; and invited fans to vote on Twitter for their favorite film (Zack Snyder’s “Army of the Dead”).The broadcast hit its peak in 1998, when 55.2 million viewers tuned in to watch “Titanic” sweep the awards, and has struggled to retain its cultural relevance since. Awards shows took an additional hit during the pandemic but had already been facing criticism for being too white, too long, too politicized and too boring. Viewership for the Grammy Awards, which will be held this weekend, slumped 53 percent to a new low last year; NBCUniversal declined to even broadcast this year’s Golden Globes.Mr. Smith’s attack happened after Mr. Rock, who was handing out the award for best documentary, joked about Mr. Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, and her closely cropped hair.“Jada, I love you — ‘G.I. Jane 2,’ can’t wait to see it, all right?,” he said, referencing the 1997 film ‘G.I. Jane,’ which featured Demi Moore sporting a buzz cut.The joke prompted an eye roll from Ms. Pinkett Smith, who has been vocal about her struggles with alopecia, a condition that leads to hair loss. Mr. Smith then marched onto the stage, slapped Mr. Rock, turned around and returned to his front-row seat. Then, using an obscenity, he yelled at the comedian to stop speaking about Ms. Pinkett Smith.The slap appeared onscreen, but many viewers in the United States did not hear Mr. Smith shout at Mr. Rock because ABC cut the sound. That left many viewers initially wondering if the attack was real or a skit. Uncensored clips soon shot around the internet, leaving no doubt that it was real.Mr. Smith won best actor for his role in “King Richard.”Ruth Fremson/The New York TimesForty minutes later, Mr. Smith won the best actor trophy for his role in “King Richard.”He returned to the stage to receive the award — his first — and delivered an emotional speech apologizing to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and to his fellow nominees, but not to Mr. Rock.“I hope the academy invites me back,” he said at the end of his speech.The outburst divided Hollywood. The academy said it “condemns the actions of Mr. Smith” and that it was starting an inquiry. The actor Mark Hamill called it the ugliest Oscars moment, while the comedian Kathy Griffin said it was “very bad practice.”Tiffany Haddish, a comedian who co-starred with Ms. Pinkett Smith in the film “Girls Trip,” described Mr. Smith’s protective display as “the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.” Piers Morgan, the British television host, wrote that he felt “moved to defend” Mr. Smith.Ariana DeBose, Troy Kotsur and Jessica Chastain with their Oscar statues on Sunday night.Noel West for The New York TimesThe confrontation jolted a broadcast whose most exciting moments earlier had included historic acting wins by Ariana DeBose of “West Side Story” and Troy Kotsur of “CODA” and a surprise appearance by the rapper Megan Thee Stallion in a performance “We Don’t Talk About Bruno,” the hit from “Encanto,” which won best animated feature.Despite being aired on a broadcast network, the night underscored the upheaval to theatergoing and traditional television caused by streaming services and online platforms.“CODA,” which featured Mr. Kotsur as a deaf fisherman trying to relate to his hearing daughter and was snapped up by Apple TV+ for $25 million after debuting at the Sundance Film Festival last year, was the first film from a streaming service to win a best picture Oscar. Jane Campion, the director of Netflix’s “Power of the Dog,” beat out Steven Spielberg, who directed “West Side Story,” to claim the directing trophy.But the Oscars telecast continued to draw advertising attention. ABC sold out of spots for commercials the week before the show, which featured ads from Crypto.com, Pfizer, Rolex, Verizon and more. Many companies also tried to take advantage of the altercation between Mr. Smith and Mr. Rock by posting memes of the slap, to which marketing experts reacted with dismay. More

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    Does the Academy Hate Movies? Our Critics on the 2022 Oscars.

    Whatever you make of the slap, the telecast as a whole was a frustrating night of television that seemed based on a misunderstanding of what makes films great.Our chief film critics reflect on an Oscar night that went pretty much as expected — until it didn’t.A.O. SCOTT “The greatest night in the history of television,” said Chris Rock, a few seconds after Will Smith slapped him. Not a bad off-the-cuff punchline (so to speak). But until that moment — and Smith’s tearful, unrehearsed acceptance speech when he won best actor a short time later — it had been a dull and frustrating evening of television. Few surprises in any category (except maybe when “Belfast” won for original screenplay). Sentimentality triumphing over craft (except when Jane Campion won best director). A gnawing sense that the academy doesn’t understand movies, and maybe even hates them.MANOHLA DARGIS Bingo! Mind you, I don’t think the academy and its roughly 10,000 members hate movies; they just sometimes have really terrible taste, like everyone else, except you and me. But I think that as a TV show, the Oscars absolutely have contempt for the art, as the unfunny jokes about the hosts not finishing “The Power of the Dog” underscored.SCOTT The slap did not dispel any of that, but it did distract Twitter, which convulsed with takes about what it meant. We can get to that (or not!), but for the moment I want to stick with the question of what kind of television this was. American viewers did not actually see it on their screens. When the image froze, I thought my laptop had crashed, and it was only when people started posting uncensored video from Australian and Japanese broadcasts that anyone here knew what had happened. During Smith’s speech, the cameras cut away to Venus and Serena Williams, and then to the Oscars logo. Here was a spontaneous, complicated, emotionally intense moment — serving up more raw and painful human drama than “CODA,” “Belfast” and “King Richard” combined — and ABC just could not deal with it.DARGIS To be uncharacteristically fair about my favorite hate-watch, ABC wasn’t alone in not being able to deal. Initially, when ABC cut off Smith’s rebuke to Rock, I thought that the janky antenna that I use the rare times I watch broadcast TV had failed. Like a lot of people, I don’t watch as much traditional TV as I once did, which is part of the show’s and ABC’s intractable problem. That the network or the Oscar producers, or both, lost their nerve wasn’t surprising given that they’d already failed by not presenting some of the essential awards live.Will Smith’s slapping Chris Rock clearly overshadowed the evening.Ruth Fremson/The New York TimesSCOTT The way the “below-the-line” awards were banished to an earlier, pre-broadcast ceremony and then spliced into the main event was nonsensical. Are the acceptance speeches of cinematographers and costume designers inherently more telegenic than those of composers and editors? As it happens, Jenny Beavan, winning her third costume Oscar (for “Cruella”), was glamorous and genuine and funny, and her celebration of craft and professionalism represents the best of the Oscars. So do the honorary awards, which were held Friday night and featured Denzel Washington and Samuel L. Jackson hugging and cracking each other up as Washington presented Jackson with his trophy. Why wouldn’t the TV audience want to see that?DARGIS Even so, this year’s event started off pretty OK, particularly given horrific world events. One of the three hosts, Regina Hall, deftly handled the bit about administering faux Covid tests to some of the men in the room, even as the camera focused on her rear. It was stupid Oscar shtick — surprise — yet as it went on (and on), I kept thinking about the fact that the United States alone is approaching one million pandemic deaths. I’m not sure how the show could have addressed Covid’s grievous toll, but asking for a moment of silence, of all things — as it did with Ukraine — might have been worse.Of course now all the focus is on the slap, which was embarrassing and very sad. Smith seems to be going through something deeply complicated, to the point that he sabotaged his own triumph. As for the rest of the show, it lacked dramatic shape and momentum, partly because those canned awards would have given the live event more tension and emotion. There was no buildup, just bits … and an obituary musical number. Among other things, the show didn’t give viewers a coherent point of focus, the way it has when Jack Nicholson or Meryl Streep sat front and center representing the art and industry, a place that this year should have been reserved for Denzel Washington, who looked mighty uncomfortable in that chair.SCOTT The endless pre-Oscar hand-wringing about how to shore up ratings and make the show more relevant demonstrates a lack of confidence that was very much in evidence last night. The hosts were fine. The movies that won were fine.Except for those idiotic “fan” awards. They were, somewhat hilariously, hijacked by the Zack Snyder Twitter militia. The most memorable movie moment (of all time? of the century? it was hard to tell) is supposedly that scene from “Justice League” when Flash enters the Speed Force. And the most popular movie (of 2021) was “Army of the Dead,” which beat other curiosities like “Cinderella” and “Minimata.”Is this the death of cinema?DARGIS LOL. (Also: Did you see “Minimata”?) The Oscars are a TV show, and while they reflect certain industry trends, like the transformation of the big studios, they don’t have much to do with cinema, which is doing just fine, as you and I keep saying and writing and muttering. The Oscars generated lower ratings and angry snark when independent films like “Breaking the Waves” and “Secrets & Lies” received nominations in 1997 — “The English Patient” swept, winning best picture — only to rebound with “Titanic” the next year.SCOTT The more things change, the more they stay the same. One thing that has gotten worse is the unfortunate journalistic habit of equating the state of the Oscars with the state of movies. Even when television is great, the Emmys are terrible. Nobody seriously thinks that bad Grammy Awards spell the death of pop music, or that a given year’s National Book Awards reveal much about the health of literature. But movie journalism has elevated the Oscars to a position of absurd importance.“CODA” was the first Sundance premiere to win best picture.Ruth Fremson/The New York TimesDARGIS As an epic-sized commercial for movies, the Oscars just don’t often make good television. That’s kind of funny-strange given how many movies look like TV, which means it’s time to bring up Apple TV+’s “CODA.” It’s hard to believe it would have won best picture if voters had been forced to watch it on the big screen, though maybe it would have. It’s a nice, little, pedestrian heart-tugger, so it fits perfectly on TV. It’s the kind of movie that we’ve seen repeatedly at Sundance; but it isn’t the kind that inspires colleagues to proselytize about it the way they did with, say, “Beasts of the Southern Wild.” But that’s the Oscars, right? One year, “Moonlight” wins; two years later, “Green Book” does — and then, boom, “Parasite” wins.SCOTT “CODA” is the first best picture winner to premiere at Sundance, as well as the first to be distributed by a streaming service. It also won all of the three categories in which it was nominated, none of which were for lead performances or technical achievements, making it a fascinating outlier. Its victories — especially Troy Kotsur’s supporting actor win, a wonderful Oscar-night moment — are part of the academy’s continuing efforts to present a more diverse, inclusive face to the world.And it’s worth pointing out that the 94th Oscars were not so white, or so male, as most of their precursors. For the second year in a row — and the third time ever — the best director is a woman. The best picture was directed by a (different) woman. The best documentary feature is the work of a Black filmmaker, Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson. The best supporting actress, Ariana DeBose, is the first openly queer woman of color to win an acting Oscar. You and I have been covering Hollywood long enough to be wary of overstating its progress or believing its promises, but I also wonder if the defensiveness and insecurity that surround the Oscar broadcast amounts to a form of backlash.DARGIS Both Kotsur’s and DeBose’s acceptance speeches were lovely, and each offered moments of grace during an otherwise often awkward, poorly paced slog of three and a half hours, plus change. As to your wondering if the increasing diversity of the awards winners has provoked a backlash — well, yeah, I bet! The movie industry is changing and is no longer the citadel of white male power that it once was. At the same time, the old guard is holding strong and the Oscars often seem more like aspirational visions of the industry rather than its reality.SCOTT Aspirational and also, as we saw last night, wildly dysfunctional. That’s entertainment! More

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    ‘Camelot’ Is Returning to Broadway, Reimagined by Aaron Sorkin

    The Lincoln Center Theater production, with a new book by Sorkin and directed by Bartlett Sher, will open in December.Lincoln Center Theater said Monday that it would stage a revival of the classic musical “Camelot” on Broadway this fall, with a new book by the screenwriter Aaron Sorkin.The revival is to be directed by Bartlett Sher, who in 2019 directed a one-night concert performance of “Camelot,” starring Lin-Manuel Miranda to benefit Lincoln Center Theater. The project will be a second joint Broadway venture between Sher and Sorkin, who previously collaborated on a stage adaptation of “To Kill a Mockingbird” that opened in 2018. Sher has also directed several Golden Age musicals for the nonprofit Lincoln Center Theater, including “South Pacific,” “The King and I” and “My Fair Lady.”“Camelot,” first staged on Broadway in 1960, is based on the novel “The Once and Future King,” which, in turn, was based on the British legend of King Arthur. Lincoln Center Theater described the show as “about the quest for democracy, striving for justice, and the tragic struggle between passion and aspiration, between lovers and kingdoms.”“Camelot” features music by Frederick Loewe and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner; Lerner and Loewe also wrote “My Fair Lady.” Lincoln Center Theater said that Sorkin’s book would be “reimagined for the 21st century” but based on the original written by Lerner.The musical has been revived on Broadway several times, most recently in 1993, and was adapted as a film in 1967.The new production is scheduled to begin performances Nov. 3 and open Dec. 8 at Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont Theater, which is a 1,080-seat Broadway house. No casting has been announced. More

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    Review: In Stefano Massini’s ‘7 Minutes,’ It’s Make or Break

    The author of “The Lehman Trilogy” sets his new work in a fictional textiles factory, where workers debate in real time the new owners’ demands.Though based on real events, “7 Minutes,” produced by Waterwell in association with Working Theater, is a piece of hopeful fantasy. It envisions a roomful of people in profound disagreement. Despite disparities of attitude and background, these people listen, respectfully, to one another’s arguments. In our increasingly partisan society, “7 Minutes” offers a portrait of representative democracy — functional, unmired — in action. Can you believe it?Written by the Italian playwright Stefano Massini (author of “The Lehman Trilogy”), and translated by Francesca Spedalieri, this American premiere, at HERE, is set at Penrose Mills, a fictional Connecticut textiles factory. New owners, backed by foreign investors, have taken it over. As the play opens, 10 members of the workers’ executive committee, all women and nonbinary employees, are huddled in the break room waiting for news of the new owners’ demands. (The break room — fluorescents and stained paneling above, linoleum below — is designed by You-Shin Chen and lit by Hao Bai, who also provides the ominous sound design.)After a few increasingly tense minutes, Linda (Ebony Marshall-Oliver), the committee’s spokeswoman — and its 11th member — arrives. The factory will not close, she tells her co-workers. Benefits and salaries will remain stable. But the owners have asked for one small concession: a seven-minute reduction in the employees’ break time. And they require a decision in just over an hour, which means that the debate in the 90-minute play unfolds in real time.From left, Danielle Davenport, Marshall-Oliver, Mahira Kakkar, Simone Immanuel and Layla Khoshnoudi in “7 Minutes.” Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“7 Minutes” is smart. It’s also chilly, as if someone has run the air conditioning at full. And while the documentary framing lends it currency, it can feel familiar. The play, which transposes conflict between management and workers onto conflict between worker and worker, has dramatic antecedents as far back as Clifford Odets’s “Waiting for Lefty” (a drama about unionized cabdrivers so galvanizing that on opening night the audience joined the actors in calls to strike) and as near as Lynn Nottage’s “Sweat” and Dominique Morisseau’s “Skeleton Crew.”At first Linda’s is the only no vote. But as the play progresses, generational rifts emerge as well as differences of ethnicity and pay rate, and several of the other workers shift to her side. (This makes a work like Reginald Rose’s teleplay “Twelve Angry Men” one more forerunner.) On an individual basis, the concession isn’t onerous. The seven lost minutes themselves don’t really matter, and certainly not when compared with the possibility of layoffs or a lockout. But almost immediately the minutes take on symbolic value: Why should the workers reward the new owners? What precedent would a yes vote set?Ultimately, the vote becomes a referendum on freedom, a mostly abstract concept, and the security of a steady paycheck.Linda’s fiercest opponent, Danielle (Danielle Davenport), needs to keep her medical insurance. She has no time for abstraction. “Do you want to start a fight because of your doubts?” Danielle asks.Linda replies, “And do you want to keep the peace, no matter the cost, because of your fears?”Massini has an obvious interest in capitalist systems and the ways in which they can deform individuals and societies. In this production, directed by Mei Ann Teo, ideas dominate, with character consistently subordinated to debate. This is partly a problem of translation. The real conflict on which the play is based took place in a French factory. Massini moved it to Italy. Waterwell’s version uproots it to Connecticut, but without any real feeling of place or circumstance. It could be anywhere.The language is oddly formal (“May they all die,” “If 10 think red, the 11th must blush”) and largely undifferentiated among the characters, who are given only the thinnest carapace of background. The stronger actors — Marshall-Oliver and Davenport among them — can fill in these blanks, but the weaker ones struggle to flesh out the women and nonbinary workers behind the words.This renders “7 Minutes” a play that makes you think. But in contrast to Nottage’s and Morisseau’s works, which consistently ground the political within the individual, it is never one that makes you feel. Democracy without emotion? That’s a fantasy, too.7 MinutesThrough April 10 at HERE, Manhattan; here.org. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. More

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    What’s on TV This Week: ‘How to Survive a Pandemic’ and the Grammy Awards

    A documentary about the race for the Covid-19 vaccine airs on HBO. And this year’s Grammy Awards are on CBS.Between network, cable and streaming, the modern television landscape is a vast one. Here are some of the shows, specials and movies coming to TV this week, March 28-April 3. Details and times are subject to change.MondayWARRIOR WOMEN WITH LUPITA NYONG’O 8 p.m. on Smithsonian. In the Marvel movie “Black Panther,” Lupita Nyong’o starred as a skillful combatant fighting for the fictional nation of Wakanda. Her character was partly inspired by the Agoji warrior women of West Africa, known for fighting on behalf of the Kingdom of Dahomey, an empire that existed for more than 200 years beginning in the 17th century in present-day Benin. In this program, Nyong’o hosts an exploration into the history of these real-life women.WRITING WITH FIRE 10 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). Nominated for the Academy Award for best documentary feature, “Writing With Fire” highlights the journalists of Khabar Lahariya, India’s only women-led news outlet. The reporters, who are in the Dalit caste, work to expose injustices, corruption and other social issues in the country amid a male-dominated media landscape. “At a time when the profession faces increasing dangers in India, the film’s faith in the powers of grassroots journalism is nothing short of galvanizing,” Devika Girish wrote in a review for The New York Times.TuesdayHOW TO SURVIVE A PANDEMIC (2022) 9 p.m. on HBO. This feature-length documentary looks at the journey to develop and distribute Covid-19 vaccines. It begins in early 2020 and follows the largest public health effort in history, following the work of scientists while exploring the way corporate greed and governmental failures may have affected their progress.WednesdayMichael Cera, left, and Jonah Hill in “Superbad.”Melissa Moseley/Columbia PicturesSUPERBAD (2007) 5 p.m. on E! Michael Cera and Jonah Hill play two awkward high school best friends in this comedy. a classic in the genre of boyish coming-of-age movies. Before graduating from high school, the two set out to score some liquor and head to a party — and the process is less than smooth. Make it a 2000s comedy double feature with Adam McKay’s STEP BROTHERS (2008), which airs right after at 7:30 p.m. on E! Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly play another awkward pair, who engage in an escalating rivalry when they become stepbrothers in their 30s and must live in the same house.ThursdayTO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD (1962) 8 p.m. on TCM. The film adaptation of Harper Lee’s 1960 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel garnered critical success and three Academy Awards. Set in Alabama, it details Atticus Finch’s defense of Tom Robinson, a Black man accused of raping a white woman. Narrated by Atticus’s daughter, the film is a powerful, delicately told story of the Jim Crow era.Pete Holmes in “How We Roll.”Cliff Lipson/CBSHOW WE ROLL 9:30 p.m. on CBS. This new series is based on the professional bowler Tom Smallwood, played by the comedian Pete Holmes. Tom loses his job at an automotive plant in Michigan, but with the support of his wife and kids, he decides to pursue his dreams of becoming a professional bowler. In an interview with The Times, Holmes, who starred in the HBO show “Crashing” but is probably best known as a stand-up comic, said he was excited to have another TV role. “If it’s funny, I’ll do it,” he said. “I love acting — and this is almost blasphemy in my circle — as much as I love doing stand-up.”FridayJERROD CARMICHAEL: ROTHANIEL 9 p.m. on HBO Jerrod Carmichael is an open book in his third HBO stand-up special, which was taped in February 2022 at the Blue Note Jazz Club in New York City. “I’ve been trying to be very honest because my whole life is shrouded in secrets, and I figured the only route I haven’t tried is the truth,” he says in a teaser for the show. The special airs in advance of his “Saturday Night Live” hosting gig on Saturday.A scene from “Fire Shut Up in My Bones” at the Metropolitan Opera.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesGREAT PERFORMANCES AT THE MET: FIRE SHUT UP IN MY BONES 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). Terence Blanchard, the jazz trumpeter and composer best known for scoring a host of Spike Lee films, became the first Black composer to have a show put on by the Metropolitan Opera with “Fire Shut Up in My Bones,” which was also the company’s first in-person production after its Covid-19 shutdown. The opera is based on a 2014 memoir by the Times columnist Charles M. Blow about growing up in Louisiana. “In his score, Blanchard deftly blends elements of jazz, blues, hints of big band and gospel into a compositional voice dominated by lushly chromatic and modal harmonic writing, spiked with jagged rhythms and tart dissonance,” Anthony Tommasini wrote in his review for The Times.SaturdayTHE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER (1968) 8 p.m. on TCM. John Singer (Alan Arkin) is a deaf and mute man who moves to a small Southern town to be closer to his friend Spiros Antonapoulos (Chuck McCann), also deaf and mute, who has been committed to a mental institution. The film follows John as he befriends people in the new town and makes an impact on their lives.SundayTHE 64TH ANNUAL GRAMMY AWARDS 8 p.m. on CBS. Originally scheduled for Jan. 31 in Los Angeles and postponed in response to a surge in Omicron cases nationwide, the Grammys are finally slated to take place in Las Vegas on Sunday. BTS, Lil Nas X, Olivia Rodrigo and Billie Eilish are among this year’s performers, and Trevor Noah will return as the host. With 11 nominations, the composer and bandleader Jon Batiste leads all artists. Doja Cat, Justin Bieber and H.E.R. follow with eight nominations each. In the lead-up to the event, organizers announced that Kanye West would not be allowed to perform, citing troubling online behavior, but he is still in the running for five awards. More

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    ‘Billions’ Season 6, Episode 10 Recap: The Dragon’s Heart

    Neither Chuck nor Prince has really moved on, even if everyone around them seems ready to.Season 6, Episode 10: ‘Johnny Favorite’There’s a valedictory note in the air. It starts in the office of the New York state attorney general, where Chuck’s newly minted replacement, Dave Mahar, leads a send-off toast to her ex-boss. It is echoed in an all-hands meeting called by Mike Prince, held at his own home — a meeting that turns into a booze and molly-fueled dance party D.J.ed by Questlove.Even Chuck relents eventually to letting his father; his best friend, Ira; and his buddy Judge DeGiulio (Rob Morrow) drag him to a fancy Lake George retreat, where the hope is that he can forget his troubles for a weekend and be steered toward his next station in life: chief counsel for a defense contractor, perhaps? Nothing a few drinks, some bison rib-eyes and some short-term female companionship — with a little boost from Dr. Swerdlow (Rick Hoffman) — can’t sort out.But neither of our two central antagonists has really moved on, even if everyone around them seems ready to. Prince’s shindig is largely an attempt to change the narrative, and Chuck’s only personal breakthrough after obsessing over Prince all weekend is in having determined his next move against him. Guys like them don’t take losing lightly, and in the span of two episodes, Chuck has destroyed Prince’s Olympic dreams, and Prince has destroyed Chuck’s political fortunes. For both men, the fight is far from over.From the start, Chuck is openly wary of the excursion his father and friends have put together for him. He refuses to relinquish his phone, preferring to remain tapped into the grid in order to establish his next route to power. When it comes to clay pigeons, he easily outshoots the rest of his party, metaphorically displaying his still extant killer instinct. (Chuck with a gun: Now there’s an image.) His turn in a sensory immersion chamber becomes a battle with a rich loudmouth named Ronald Chestnut (Matthew Lillard), a fight that continues when Chestnut attempts to pick up the group of women attached to Chuck’s gang at the retreat’s bar.Chuck dispatches this goon with his usual verbal dexterity, earning a round of applause from the whole establishment. But even as Swerdlow and his father retire to their rooms with their conquests of the evening, Chuck is planning his next line of attack. You simply cannot take the fighter out of him.As for Prince, he recognizes that his team is still smarting from the Olympic loss and needs to share in the spoils of his victory, however pyrrhic, over Chuck. He triggers the fight-or-flight instincts of all his employees — with one important exception — by giving them a day off and calling for an all-hands meeting at his home that evening. His plan is relatively simple: To use his favored analogy, he has slain his dragon; now all that remains is for the army that backed him to share in the devouring of the dragon’s heart, in the form of a celebratory rager.And it is indeed a wild night, from the perspective of a “Billions” fan at least. Making good on weeks of tension, Taylor Mason makes a pass at the witty and glamorous Rian; Rian rebuffs Taylor, saying she could never risk falling in love with a co-worker — only to wind up spending the night with Prince. In this relatively sexless season of the show, this is wild stuff.But there is one Prince Cap employee not in attendance: Wendy Rhoades. It’s not that she objects to Prince’s defenestration of her ex-husband; on the contrary, she seems to understand and accept this as something Prince needed to do. It’s the why of it, not the what of it, that concerns her as the company’s performance coach. What is it that Prince seeks, she wonders. Fear? Respect? Love?Over the course of a lengthy colloquy, Prince admits to requiring all three. By leaving the staff in suspense as to the nature of the all-hands meeting, he taught them to fear him. By centering the meeting on Chuck’s ouster, he earned their respect. And by turning it into a bacchanal, he won their love. It’s a psychological-manipulation hat trick!If you get the sense from all this that Prince thinks very highly of himself, compared with even his own most valued employees, you’re correct. Punishing Chuck isn’t enough to make up for having lost the Olympics. He tells Wendy that his end goal is to become that once-in-a-millennium figure who uses his talent, power, and fortune to leave the world a better place than it was when he found it, rather than, in Wendy’s profane parlance, “[expletive] the world up.” (How this squares with sleeping with one of his employees is anyone’s guess; it certainly casts doubt on his repeated promise to his semi-estranged wife, Andy, to prioritize their relationship.)And oh, did you know that Wendy is writing a book, and has in fact finished it by the time this episode ends? It sure was news to me!When you put all the pieces together, you’re left with one of the strangest and most unsettling, and unsettled, episodes of “Billions” in quite some time. Chuck, Prince, Taylor, Wendy — they all seem to be “at the precipice of a crossroads,” as “The Sopranos” would put it. For all its complexity, this episode is essentially a holding pattern, a brief reprieve before the masters of the universe at its heart select their next lines of attack.Here’s hoping they let the power go to their heads. If they didn’t, we wouldn’t have much of a show, would we?Loose Change:In a side plot, Kate Sacker is steered by Wags to a working relationship with Bobby Axelrod’s black ops guy, Hall (Terry Kinney). It’s Hall’s job to dig up the kind of dirt on Kate that no one else can find — precisely the sort of dirt that could be dredged up and used against her by a determined congressional opponent. In fact, Hall uncovers dirt even Kate didn’t know existed: Turns out, her father (Harry Lennix) paid off her prep school’s headmaster in order to prevent serious consequences for Kate’s vandalism of an administration building during a protest. When she angrily confronts her old man about this, he frames it as a matter of safeguarding the progress of Black people generally. It’s enough to put Kate’s dreams of high office on standby.In another relatively minor story line, Taylor meets with Mafee and is aghast to learn he hasn’t done anything to grow the small fortune in cryptocurrency gifted to him by Bobby Axelrod. Mafee insists that had he tried to parlay the gift into something bigger, the money would have owned him rather than the other way around. I’m not quite sure how this plays into Taylor’s later decision to make a pass at Rian, but it does seem connected in some ineffable way.“You see a bully, you have to step in”: This is Ira’s assessment of Chuck’s fundamental character. It ties in with Chuck’s fixation on the fact that Prince attended the hearing that led to Chuck’s ouster instead of letting it play out from a distance. Prince is a person who has to see his victories happen firsthand, which makes him vulnerable.It’s worth noting that Chuck very clearly chafes at Dave’s takeover of his office. He hired her to work for him, not to replace him. I wonder if he’ll ever get over it.Chuck compares the immersion chamber to the film “Altered States,” written — and subsequently disavowed — by Paddy Chayefsky. In fact, he’s surprised that this is the first Chayefsky reference the employees have heard. Is he talking about the staff at the retreat, or the writers of “Billions”?The episode takes its title, “Johnny Favorite,” from the name of a character in the director Alan Parker’s supernatural noir film “Angel Heart,” starring Mickey Rourke, Robert De Niro and Lisa Bonet. It’s a movie Rian and her co-worker Winston have become obsessed with, growing less sure of their interpretations of the story with each new viewing. You’ve gotta love a movie that makes you more confused over time rather than less.Speaking of movies, Chuck and his crew go through a lengthy recreation of the U.S.S. Indianapolis monologue from “Jaws,” only in this case it’s Charles Sr. ruing the deaths of dozens of people burned to death in a nightclub he owned during his stint as — let’s be blunt — a slumlord. It’s hard to tell which he regrets more, the deaths or his implication in them. Yikes. More

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    Review: ‘Confederates’ Talks Race in Double Time

    In Dominique Morisseau’s promising new play, the action is in the ideas and the setting bounces between the Civil War era and the present.“This play is not like all of my others,” Dominique Morisseau writes in an author’s note in the script for “Confederates.” The new play, about two Black women living in different times but dealing with similar oppression, carries several signatures of Morisseau’s work and yet uses narrative techniques that are departures for her. It makes sense then that “Confederates,” which opened on Sunday at the Pershing Square Signature Theater, feels like an elegant experiment, thoughtful and put-together but not quite realizing its full potential.“Confederates,” which was commissioned by the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and Penumbra Theater, begins with Sandra (Michelle Wilson), a political science professor who has just found an offensive photoshopped image of an enslaved woman on her office door. A few minutes later she’s gone and we’ve stepped back in time to the Civil War, where we meet Sara (Kristolyn Lloyd), a fierce young enslaved woman who will become a spy for the Union.These women and their contemporaries are the alternating focal points of the play, directed by Stori Ayers. The attention shifts so rapidly from one story to the other that they become two halves of a dialogue.Michelle Wilson as Sandra, a college professor, in “Confederates.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesKristolyn Lloyd as Sara, an enslaved woman and Union spy in the Civil War era.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesRachel Hauck’s scenic design — two antique chairs, a bench and a side table with drawers, surrounded by the towering white columns and high balcony of a plantation house — is neutral and, at eye-level, uninspiring. But through the heights of the house’s architecture and the spaces between the columns, the set creates a dimension and depth that makes it seem as if the background extends into the ornate corridors and rooms of a Southern home.Known for her Detroit cycle, including “Skeleton Crew,” which just completed its debut Broadway run last month, Morisseau typically opts for realism and traditional, chronological storytelling. In fact, she excels at it; she examines the intersections of race, class and gender through characters that feel as real as a neighbor you hear kicking off his boots at the end of a workday.This play’s structure, however, is different. There’s a textbook quality to it; every scene baldly illustrates a theme, whether it’s the sexualization of Black women, the ways institutions turn Black women against one another, or how expectations of Black men and Black women differ. What action there is consists of arguments and discussions usually involving two or three people, with everything else taking place in the background. For Sara, that means the usual toils of the plantation and the not-so-distant gunshots of the war, which she imagines spells freedom. For Sandra, it’s her search for the perpetrator of the photo and her troubled relationships with her colleagues and students.Morisseau blurs this binary by having the three other characters in the play double-cast: Abner (Elijah Jones), Sara’s brother who escaped the plantation to fight for the Union, is also Malik, one of Sandra’s students. In the past there’s Missy Sue (Kenzie Ross), the plantation owner’s daughter and Sara’s childhood friend; in the present, she is Candice, Sandra’s talkative student assistant. LuAnne (Andrea Patterson) is a house slave when she isn’t Jade, in the present day a colleague of Sandra’s. Morisseau cleverly mirrors the conversations between story lines, so, for example, Missy Sue naïvely adores her slave friend the way Candice idolizes her Black professor.Jones, left, as Malik, a student of Sandra, right.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAyers’s direction, along with Ari Fulton’s clever tear-away costumes and Nikiya Mathis’s chic array of wigs and hairstylings, is liveliest in the transitions from the past to present, and in the production’s tiny anachronisms, like a slave giving dap. It appears that the play is going into more experimental territory as the characters’ entrances and exits begin to overlap across the timelines, but Ayers seems wary of doing anything more than having them pass like anonymous commuters at Port Authority. Too often her approach seems procedural, but there are moments when the direction shows spunk, as in the flashier transitions, when someone marches or struts to the music, which switches between old racist ballads like “Dixie” and “Oh! Susanna” to rhythmic original songs arranged by Jimmy Keys (a.k.a. J. Keys).Though the show uses the ancillary characters as the points of contact between Sara’s world and Sandra’s, the two women themselves don’t actually meet. “Confederates” creates this tension between its two parts but doesn’t do anything with it. If Morisseau has built her stories with this inherent magic of alternating settings, allowing us to time-travel with her through a discussion of racial politics then and now, why not try to allow the worlds of the two protagonists to extend a bit more? Why not go bigger? Get more bizarre?Because there’s a certain isolation to the story; we’re in the Big House or Sara’s cabin or we’re in a university office. “Confederates” wants to keep our eyes on the two main institutions here (slavery, academia), each of which breeds or fosters its own forms of oppression. Each scene so clearly illustrates a point in the play’s thesis on race that the stakes don’t seem real; we’re just in the realm of discourse.At least Morisseau doesn’t let the pedagogic obscure the poetic. Her language is as gorgeous as always — and just as sharp. So a conversation about sexuality leads LuAnne to say, “Nature ain’t no slave. It move to its own rhythm,” using the terms of enslavement as a way to talk about the untamable lusts of the body. And Morisseau can dress up an atrocity in a metaphor without obscuring the horror beneath the surface, as when Sara describes seeing slaves “whipped so bad looked like their skin came alive and was crawling on they own flesh.”Beautiful language that’s wedded to tales of adversity — the play is full of such paradoxes, another one being that “Confederates” is a work about racism that is truly funny. There’s a lightness to the satire, but it’s not in the writing alone; the roughly 90-minute production has a nimble cast.From left, Kenzie Ross as the master’s daughter, Missy Sue, with Lloyd, as Sara. Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesJones brings an animated repartee to his characters’ interactions, and Ross successfully plays up the cluelessness of her white characters (“OMIGOD. I was completely racist just then,” she exclaims as Candice, owl-eyed in shame with mouth agape). Patterson oozes cool as the brusque, sharpshooting Jade but has less heft to her characters.Wilson embodies the poised and self-assured academic in a red power suit, but the character doesn’t allow her to show much range, while Sara is the play’s most rewarding role, incorporating both a brassy brand of satire and ferocious politico-historical oration. Lloyd easily hits the comic notes and channels a Harriet Tubman-esque bearing in Sara but isn’t as comfortable holding the deeper emotions of the character.Morisseau is a fabulous playwright, so much so that even in her plays’ flaws her brilliance still shines through. And seeing an artist try something new in her art is exciting. What’s even more exciting than that? Anticipating how much further — in her settings, in her stories — she can go.ConfederatesThrough April 17 at the Pershing Square Signature Center, Manhattan; signaturetheatre.org. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. More

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    Zelensky, Roots in Show Business, Presses for an Oscar Appearance

    KYIV, Ukraine — He has spoken with two movie stars by video call from the bombarded and encircled city of Kyiv.His aides lobbied the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for an Oscar night show of support. He rereleased his own television show on Netflix in the middle of the war.President Volodymyr Zelensky, the actor turned wartime leader of Ukraine, has dedicated most of his public appearances to appeals to Western nations for lethal weaponry to fight the Russians: tanks, jets and missiles.But Mr. Zelensky, who before he became president had starred in romantic comedies and performed stand-up routines, has also pressed for celebrities and artists to speak up for his country, in what aides say is a worthwhile effort to solidify Ukraine’s global soft power advantage over Russia.“We live in the modern world, and we know that opinion makers and celebrities are important,” said Ekaterine Zguladze, a former deputy minister of interior now involved in the Ukrainian government’s effort to win support from artists, musicians and celebrities. “Not only politicians shape the world.”Ms. Zguladze added: “Right now, there exists genuine solidarity around the world for Ukraine. And this solidarity is not because of the heartbreaking images of destroyed cities and human tragedy, but because of the values we all share.”But Ukraine’s appeal to the academy, the organization that awards the Oscars, has encountered drama of its own.Before the show, organizers said the war would be noted and the human toll honored, but had not committed to a video appearance by Mr. Zelensky, said Brian Keith Etheridge, a sitcom writer based in Los Angeles. He helped coordinate the Ukrainian government’s outreach to the academy, with help from Mila Kunis, an actress of Ukrainian origin, and her husband, Ashton Kutcher.“The concern that we were told is, they don’t want to overly politicize the show,” Mr. Etheridge said. “If Zelensky just says ‘thank you’ it will remind people, and it could raise millions of dollars. It’s such a giant platform just to have his face show up.”Sean Penn in Rzeszow, Poland, last week after leaving Ukraine, where he had been making a documentary about the Russian invasion.Angelos Tzortzinis/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesSean Penn, who had been filming a documentary in Ukraine when the war broke out, has called for a boycott of the Oscars if Mr. Zelensky is not permitted to appear by video and vowed to smelt his own awards if the academy snubs the Ukrainian leader. The award statues are made of gold-plated bronze.If the Oscar producers do not allow an appearance for “the leadership in Ukraine, who are taking bullets and bombs for us, along with the Ukrainian children that they are trying to protect, then I think every single one of those people, and every bit of that decision, will have been the most obscene moment in all of Hollywood history,” Mr. Penn told CNN in an interview.Speaking at a news conference on Thursday, the producers said they intended to commemorate the war’s toll but did not commit to a video appearance by Mr. Zelensky.“We’re going to be very thoughtful about how we acknowledge where we are in the world,” Will Packer, a producer of the Oscar ceremony, said Thursday at a news conference.Of a possible appearance by Mr. Zelensky, he said: “The show is in the process, so that’s not something that we would definitively say one way or another at this point. As I’ve mentioned before, we want to be fun and celebratory, but we certainly are going to do that in a respectful way.”Preparations at the Dolby Theater in Hollywood on Saturday, before the Sunday’s Oscars ceremony.Ruth Fremson/The New York TimesThe comedic actress Wanda Sykes, one of the ceremony’s co-hosts, noted of Mr. Zelensky, “Isn’t he busy right now?”While Mr. Zelensky’s aides have pressed for support during the show in whatever form it takes, seeking any avenue to win public backing in the West, the value of celebrity support in a shooting war is not universally acknowledged in Ukraine.“Ultimately, it’s important what is happening on the ground,” Oleksandr Danylyuk, a former secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, said. “Everybody is doing what they can. I don’t know if one more speech of Zelensky will make a difference. But it’s good those who initiate it want to do it. Everybody wants to help in any way possible.”But Mr. Danylyuk said that “in the end, you need results,” like supplies of fighter jets, tanks or missiles for the Ukrainian Army.Mr. Zelensky has pressed on all fronts to convey to a broad audience, and particularly to countries that are providing weaponry, the moral imperative of supporting Ukraine in the war.Mr. Zelensky addressing Congress by video this month. He has worked to persuade a broad audience of the moral imperative of supporting Ukraine in its war against Russia.Sarahbeth Maney/The New York Times“In general, Zelensky is really following the news from Hollywood and looking for opportunities for support,” Serhiy Leshchenko, an adviser to the president’s chief of staff, said in an interview.The push for backing for Ukraine during the Oscars began a week ago, after Mr. Zelensky spoke on a video call from Kyiv with Mr. Kutcher and Ms. Kunis, to thank the couple for raising $35 million for Ukrainian refugees and humanitarian aid in a GoFundMe campaign, Mr. Leshchenko said.Ms. Kunis most recently starred in “Breaking News in Yuba County” and has a planned movie release by Netflix, “Luckiest Girl Alive.”“Ukrainians are proud and brave people who deserve our help in their time of need,” she wrote in the fund-raising appeal. “This unjust attack on Ukraine and humanity at large is devastating and the Ukrainian people need our support.”After the video call, Mr. Zelensky’s aides sought a last-minute slot at the Oscar ceremony.Mr. Zelensky has always had a keen sense of image and storytelling in politics. Earlier this month, he said he was aware that his repeated televised appeals for resistance, and continued presence in the beleaguered capital, had turned him into a symbol of bravery in many countries.President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine at a news conference early this month in Kyiv, the capital.Lynsey Addario for The New York TimesThe Oscars are also a natural fit for an appeal by his government for humanitarian assistance, as many of his top aides are also movie industry veterans.The chief of the presidential administration, Andriy Yermak, was a media lawyer and movie producer. The head of the domestic intelligence agency, Ivan Bakanov, had been the director of the Kvartal 95 studio. A chief presidential adviser, Serhiy Shefir, was a screenwriter and producer whose major credits included a hit romantic comedy film, “Eight First Dates,” and a television series, “The In-laws.”Before becoming president of Ukraine, Mr. Zelensky played a president in his own television series, “Servant of the People,” which was rereleased on Netflix this month. The character, a teacher, is propelled to the presidency after he goes on a tirade against corruption, which is filmed by his students in a video that goes viral.Maria Varenikova contributed reporting from Kyiv, and Matt Stevens from New York. More