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      How GKids Became the A24 of Animation

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      The small distributor has outsize influence because it handles Studio Ghibli films in the United States. Its titles have earned 13 Oscar nods.When the Irish animated film “The Secret of Kells” received a surprise Oscar nomination in 2010, GKids, the boutique distribution company that mounted a stealthy but mighty grass roots campaign on its behalf, had been around for only a little over a year.Back then, the company’s entire operation consisted of two full-time employees and one part-timer. But this year, Hayao Miyazaki’s “The Boy and the Heron” became GKids’s 13th release in their 15-year history to receive a nomination from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for best animated feature. The hand-drawn movie has a real shot at winning and becoming the first GKids release to do so.How has a small outfit focused on animation managed to have such an outsized effect in Hollywood?Eric Beckman, a former music industry executive, founded GKids with the intent of redefining American audiences’ perception of animation as more than a children’s medium. At the time, family-friendly, computer-generated and stylistically similar studio productions had an even tighter stronghold on animation in the United States than they do today.GKids has since filled a precious gap by consistently releasing bold animated work from around the world. For more than a decade now, it has also been entrusted with the North American distribution of titles in the catalog of the revered Japanese animation house Studio Ghibli, maker of “The Boy and the Heron.”Beckman started in animation in a roundabout way. He co-founded the New York International Children’s Film Festival in 1997 with Emily Shapiro, his wife at the time. While the festival was not strictly an animation showcase, it allowed Beckman to develop meaningful relationships with numerous animation companies, including Studio Ghibli.“The Secret of Kells” landed a surprise Oscar nomination in 2010 thanks to a stealthy GKids campaign.GKidsWe 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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      Robert Downey Jr. and Christopher Nolan on ‘Oppenheimer.’

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      Christopher Nolan and Robert Downey Jr. have each worked on some of the most lucrative and beloved superhero films of our time, many of them with enormous star-filled casts, so how is it that the two had never worked together on a movie before now, superhero or otherwise?Their paths crossed, sort of, on “Batman Begins” (more on that later). But it took a different kind of summer blockbuster, a three-hour biopic about the triumphs and travails of a theoretical physicist working in New Mexico in the 1940s, to finally bring them together.Since its release in July, “Oppenheimer” has amassed nearly $1 billion in worldwide ticket sales, earned critical raves and been nominated for scores of awards, including 13 Oscars. Among those nominations are three for Nolan, 53, for best picture, best director and best adapted screenplay, and a best supporting actor one for Downey, 58, for his performance as Lewis Strauss, the title character’s Salieri-like nemesis. The nominations are hardly their first — counting “Oppenheimer,” Downey has received three, Nolan, eight — but neither has ever won before and now they’re both considered front-runners.The day after the Oscar nominations were announced, the two got together on the Universal studio lot to talk about how they first met, what winning an Oscar would mean to them, and why so many people didn’t notice that that balding, sweaty guy who had it in for Oppenheimer was actually Robert Downey Jr.These are edited excerpts from our conversation.Nolan working with Downey on “Oppenheimer.”Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal PicturesThis is your first time working together. How did you two meet?ROBERT DOWNEY JR. Here’s what I never got to ask you. We met in a lobby somewhere. You were casting, was it “Batman Begins” or “The Dark Knight”?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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      Christopher Nolan Wins DGA Award

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      After four losses, this is the first guild victory for the “Oppenheimer” director. Winners there have won the Academy Award 18 of the last 20 times.The Directors Guild of America on Saturday night handed its top prize for feature-film directing to Christopher Nolan for his hit biopic, “Oppenheimer,” starring Cillian Murphy as the physicist who helped design the atomic bomb. This is the latest major trophy Nolan’s film has won, after taking top honors from the Golden Globes and Critics Choice Awards last month.“The idea that my peers would think that I deserve this means everything to me,” the 53-year-old director said in his acceptance speech.Though this is Nolan’s first DGA win, he is a favorite of the guild and has received four other nominations that stretch back to his 2001 breakthrough, “Memento.” This year he was up against the filmmakers Greta Gerwig (“Barbie”), Yorgos Lanthimos (“Poor Things”), Alexander Payne (“The Holdovers”) and Martin Scorsese, whose nod for “Killers of the Flower Moon” — his 11th from this group — made him the guild’s second-most-nominated filmmaker after Steven Spielberg.Nolan is widely considered the front-runner for the best director Oscar, a bid that was only strengthened by his victory here, since the DGA winner has gone on to take home the Oscar 18 of the last 20 times. At the Academy Awards next month, he’ll once again face off against Scorsese and Lanthimos, though Oscars voters swapped Gerwig and Payne for Justine Triet (“Anatomy of a Fall”) and Jonathan Glazer (“The Zone of Interest”).Judd Apatow, who hosted the DGA Awards, alluded to Gerwig’s headline-making Oscar snub in a joke about how things could have been worse: “I’ve never even been mentioned in an article about the people who got snubbed!” he said.The DGA prize for the best first-time director went to Celine Song, whose romantic drama, “Past Lives,” was nominated for best picture at the Oscars. This award has gone to a female filmmaker three years in a row, a first for this organization, with Song following in the footsteps of Charlotte Wells (“Aftersun”) and Maggie Gyllenhaal (“The Lost Daughter”).“The best way I can honor this incredible recognition for my very first film is to promise that I’ll keep directing films as best as I can for as long as I can,” Song said. “I’m going to keep going. Thank you so much!”Here are the top winners. For the complete list, including reality shows and children’s programming, go to dga.org.FilmFeatureChristopher Nolan, “Oppenheimer”Read an interview with the director.First-Time FeatureCeline Song, “Past Lives”Read our review.DocumentaryMstyslav Chernov, “20 Days in Mariupol”Read our review.TelevisionDrama Series“The Last of Us,” Peter Hoar (for the episode “Long, Long Time”)Comedy Series“The Bear,” Christopher Storer (“Fishes”)Television Movies and Limited Series“Lessons in Chemistry,” Sarah Adina Smith (“Her and Him”) More

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      Daisy Ridley Loves Every Single Track of This Stormzy Album

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      When the star of the film “Sometimes I Think About Dying” listens to “This Is What I Mean,” she says, “I don’t shuffle it, nothing. It’s perfect.”For her latest movie, “Sometimes I Think About Dying,” Daisy Ridley plays Fran, a drab, standoffish, occasionally obnoxious office worker. Strangely enough, she found it exciting.“Fran is a woman who loves her job; she loves her routine,” Ridley said in a video interview from London. “She thinks about dying, but she doesn’t want to die. She has just created this very rich inner world for herself because she struggles to connect with people in a real-life way.”Then a new guy moves into a cubicle near hers.“I would not say the film is one of fireworks,” she said. “I would describe it as embers of something being ignited.”Ridley is of course better known for her role as Rey in the “Star Wars” films. She will wield her lightsaber once again in the upcoming “Star Wars: New Jedi Order,” although she hadn’t yet read the script when we spoke.“What I know is the story is really cool, really exciting and very worthwhile,” she said, before explaining why hot baths and reality TV and “Small Worlds” by Caleb Azumah Nelson and Stormzy’s “This Is What I Mean” are among her cultural necessities. “I did not think I would be coming back, but when I was told the story, I was like, ‘OK, that’s [expletive] awesome.’”These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1Back RollersI did a film called “Young Woman and the Sea,” about the first woman to swim the [English] Channel, a German American called Trudy Ederle. I was doing an awful lot of swimming, and my body was pretty messed up afterward. My spine felt like it had been a bit compressed. So since that movie, whenever I roll, my back goes crrrkk the whole way. But there’s nothing nicer than the feeling.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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      Harmony Korine’s ‘Aggro Dr1ft’ Makes Los Angeles Debut

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      Critics panned “Aggro Dr1ft,” but the film found its intended audience in a surreal experience at a Los Angeles strip club.At the Los Angeles premiere of the filmmaker Harmony Korine’s “Aggro Dr1ft,” which was held on Wednesday night at Hollywood’s Crazy Girls strip club, scantily clad dancers shimmied on three small stages.Mr. Korine, a 51-year-old experimental artist known for directing 2012’s “Spring Breakers,” has been seeking to understand and capitalize on youth culture since he wrote the 1995 cult classic “Kids” when he was only 19. That’s why the enigmatic filmmaker, actor, photographer, painter, D.J. and author is aiming to disrupt the traditional cinematic release format by offering immersive experiences for a group of film, fashion, skate and fine art ventures, which he launched with “Aggro Dr1ft.”At the film’s first public screening, which drew about 400 people, a smoke machine blew softly overhead, creating fog reminiscent of the pouring rain outside. A merchandise station for EDGLRD, Korine’s multimedia design collective — and his D.J. moniker — was set up in the back corner offering branded T-shirts, hoodies, skateboards and more. The screening was followed directly by D.J. sets from the music producer AraabMuzik and from Mr. Korine himself.The film, shot with an infrared lens, was screened inside Hollywood’s Crazy Girls strip club.Gabriella Angotti-Jones for The New York TimesA merchandise station featured “Aggro Dr1ft” skateboards and clothing.Gabriella Angotti-Jones for The New York TimesShowing a movie at a strip club is an unusual choice, which is typical of EDGLRD’s rollout strategy, according to the company’s head of film strategy and development, Eric Kohn.“What we’re leaning into with this company is a more expansive approach to creativity,” Mr. Kohn said. “We’re trying to engineer a new way to get this kind of work out in the world that isn’t beholden to the limited economics of the film market. You’ve never seen a movie in a strip club before but you’ve also never seen a movie like this before.”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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      New True Crime: ‘Lover, Stalker, Killer’ and ‘Mostly Harmless’

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      Two new movies reflect the range of quality in the booming genre. They also raise questions about why we are drawn to such stories.Remember the old “Arrested Development” axiom that “there’s always money in the banana stand”? For streamers, that banana stand is true crime, judging from the rate at which these movies are turned out. Many of the lurid tales of kidnapping, murder and stolen identities have been covered already in podcasts, but documentaries add tantalizing visual elements — photographs of the deceased, talking-head interviews, archival footage — that apparently keep fans coming back.Of course, as entertainment goes, this is nothing new. Flicking through cable stations years ago would reveal plenty of documentaries and docudramas that retold similar tales. What’s changed is how bingeable they are — you can listen to endless podcasts and watch endless streaming shows, one after the other — and, perhaps as significantly, how the anonymity of the internet has become a key feature of both the crime and the investigation.Two of this week’s new releases fit this mold, and also indicate the quality range of these kinds of films, from passable to genuinely revelatory. (Both, incidentally, have already gotten the podcast treatment at least once.)On the lesser end is the Netflix documentary “Lover, Stalker, Killer,” directed by Sam Hobkinson, which recounts the ordeal that a man named Dave Kroupa went through when he started receiving strange, menacing messages from an ex-girlfriend he met through dating apps. The tale is mildly twisty, and Kroupa and several others participate in the documentary, which makes it watchable. But the major turn happens far from the end of the film, and it’s hard to maintain tension after that. Most of the filmmaking feels perfunctory, too. Yet, as our critic Glenn Kenny put it in his review, “By now these are accepted conventions, so there’s little point in complaining.”My expectations weren’t all that high for the Max documentary “They Called Him Mostly Harmless,” directed by Patricia E. Gillespie, about a dead hiker found in Florida’s Big Cypress Natural Preserve. He was emaciated and had no identification on him but, curiously, did have food and cash. Trying to identify his body, law enforcement found itself at a standstill, with no idea who he was.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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      Five Black Romantic Movies to Stream

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      For Valentine’s Day and Black History Month, watch these selections that brim with Black love, heartache and desire from across the diaspora.Much like Blackness is not monolithic, neither is Black love. The relationships in this collection range from young passions to midlife romance, and the types of movies range from glossy studio pictures to vital queer indies. They are poetic, comedic, rapturous and politically minded films — told with soul-stirring intimacy.‘The Best Man’ (1999)Rent or buy on most major platforms.It’s been years since Harper Stewart (Taye Diggs) has seen his old college buddies. With his best friend, Lance (Morris Chestnut), a star running back, getting married to Mia (Monica Calhoun), he must travel to New York City to attend their wedding. That prospect would be easier if Harper, a writer, didn’t base his new book off his friends’ lives. During the long weekend leading up to the wedding, Harper works to keep Lance from reading the novel, which contains a secret he’s kept from the groom, and from acting on his desires with an old flame, Kendra (Nia Long).Composed of a deep ensemble — Terrence Howard, Sanaa Lathan and Regina Hall included — the film follows multiple relationships as these adult friends confront their romantic futures through biting humor and unflinching honesty. And thankfully, it kicked off a charming romantic film and TV franchise.‘Boomerang’ (1992)Stream it on Paramount+.The Black romantic studio pictures of the 1990s were far different from their 1970s Blaxploitation predecessors. Rather than depicting an urban milieu populated by hustlers and pushers, the films that arrived during the newer decade captured an emerging, well-educated Black middle and upper class occupying high rises and boardrooms.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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      In ‘The Taste of Things,’ the Food Was Prepared by the Actors

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      “The Taste of Things” didn’t use cooking doubles, but a pro offscreen helped guide the stars. Getting the meals right was everything to the director Tran Anh Hung.Viewers may emerge from “The Taste of Things” desperate to find a restaurant that serves a good vol-au-vent, a turbot in hollandaise sauce or the meringue-coated ice cream confection known as baked alaska. But while the film, set in France at the end of the 19th century, features period-appropriate cuisine designed by the celebrated chef Pierre Gagnaire, the secret to what makes it so enticing isn’t the menu. It’s the gestures.“Something that is very important for me, from my childhood, is that I like watching people working with their hands,” said Tran Anh Hung, who received the best-director prize for the movie at the Cannes Film Festival in May. He remembered that as a boy in Vietnam — he has lived in France since 1975 — he would spend the whole day watching someone craft a door. He brought that interest in handiwork to “The Taste of Things,” which opens in New York on Friday. The drama centers on the relationship between an epicure, Dodin Bouffant (Benoît Magimel), and his longtime cook and lover, Eugénie (Juliette Binoche). Their romance is in some ways expressed more through cooking and eating than through words, which is one reason that accentuating the sensuality of the food was important for Tran.But keeping the mechanics of cooking in sync with the apparatus of filmmaking is not easy, as Tran and past makers of foodie cinema have discovered. In “The Taste of Things,” there were no cooking doubles for the stars: Binoche and Magimel performed all the preparations that are shown onscreen themselves, Tran said.Jonathan Ricquebourg, the film’s cinematographer, recalled seeing Gagnaire at work and understanding what he was in for. “I realized how fast the magic disappeared,” he said. “When you take out a meal from the oven, for instance, the meal is very nice for a bunch of seconds.” But that disappears, he added, “when the crust is opening, because there is a changing of temperature.”A chef offscreen was instructing the actors as they worked.Carole Bethuel/IFC FilmsWe 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