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      What’s on TV This Week: ‘Snowfall’ and the N.A.A.C.P. Image Awards

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      The final season of the drama series “Snowfall” airs on FX, and the 54th annual N.A.A.C.P. Image Awards are live on BET.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, Feb. 20-26. Details and times are subject to change.MondayRUTHLESS: MONOPOLY’S SECRET HISTORY 9 p.m. on PBS. This documentary follows the true origin story of the popular board game Monopoly, and Parker Brothers’ shady patent of the game. Highlighting the inventor and feminist Lizzie Magie, a community of Quakers and an unemployed Depression-era engineer, viewers will learn about the true creator of Monopoly and how it became a board game staple.Henry Fonda in “Young Mr. Lincoln.”Criterion CollectionYOUNG MR. LINCOLN (1939) 10:30 p.m. on TCM. Directed by the Academy Award-winning filmmaker John Ford, this biographical drama airing on Presidents’ Day focuses on the early life of President Abraham Lincoln. By delving into the people and experiences that influenced him, the film follows a young Lincoln (Henry Fonda) in his journey from grocer to lawyer and ultimately to his interest in politics. In his 1939 review of the film for The New York Times, Frank S. Nugent described it as “not merely a natural and straightforward biography, but a film which indisputably has the right to be called Americana,” adding that “it isn’t merely part of a life that has been retold, but part of a way of living when government had advanced little beyond the town meeting stage.” In 2003, “Young Mr. Lincoln” was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.TuesdayDON’T LEAVE ME BEHIND: STORIES OF YOUNG UKRAINIAN SURVIVAL 10 p.m. on MTV. Airing three days before the one-year anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, this documentary focuses on the stories and experiences of Ukrainian teenagers who have been displaced by the war — using the journeys of two specific refugees in Poland as a vehicle to examine the trauma of such displacement, separation from family and the resilience developed to adapt to a new life.WednesdaySNOWFALL 10 p.m. on FX. Set in Los Angeles in the 1980s, this series takes inspiration from stories of C.I.A. involvement in the birth of the crack cocaine epidemic. The show follows the increasingly intertwining narratives of Franklin Saint (Damson Idris), a young drug dealer; Teddy McDonald (Carter Hudson), a C.I.A. agent; and El Oso (Sergio Peris-Mencheta), a Mexican wrestler. “‘Snowfall’ is, when it’s on its game, one of the most engrossing shows on TV,” wrote the Times critic Mike Hale in 2021. The sixth and final season is centered around a brewing civil war that threatens to destroy Franklin’s family, and the actions he takes to survive.ThursdayVivien Leigh and Marlon Brando in “A Streetcar Named Desire.”Everett CollectionA STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE (1951) 4:30 p.m. on TCM. This multiple Oscar-winning film, featuring an array of award-winning actors, follows the story of Blanche DuBois (Vivien Leigh), a disgraced high school teacher from Mississippi struggling with her mental health, as she moves to New Orleans to seek refuge and start a new life with her sister, Stella (Kim Hunter), and Stella’s abusive husband, Stanley (Marlon Brando). The drama — adapted from Tennessee Williams’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play of the same name — “throbs with passion and poignancy,” Bosley Crowther wrote in his 1951 review for The Times. Williams collaborated with the film’s director and screenwriter on the screenplay.FridayA FEW GOOD MEN (1992) 8 p.m. on BBC America. Adapted by Aaron Sorkin (“To Kill a Mockingbird”) from his 1989 Broadway play of the same name and directed by the Emmy-award winning actor and filmmaker Rob Reiner, this legal drama follows the military lawyer Lt. Daniel Kaffee (Tom Cruise) as he defends two Marines charged with the murder of a colleague at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. Inspired by an incident that took place at the naval base in 1986, the film explores the intersection of internal politics and justice in cases involving military personnel. “The screenplay is a good one, directed with care and acted, for the most part, with terrific conviction,” wrote Vincent Canby in his 1992 review of the film for The Times.SaturdayAnthony Anderson at the 2020 N.A.A.C.P. Image Awards.Chris Pizzello/Invision, via Chris Pizzello/Invision/APN.A.A.C.P. IMAGE AWARDS 8 p.m. on BET. An annual awards ceremony presented by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People to honor outstanding performances by people of color in film, television, music and literature, this year’s Image Awards will be the first in-person event in three years. Hosted for the ninth year in a row by the “black-ish” star Anthony Anderson, the event will air live from the Pasadena Civic Auditorium, in California. New categories have been added to this year’s ceremony, including outstanding hairstyling, outstanding makeup and outstanding costume design. Notable nominees include the films “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” “The Woman King” and “Till”; and the actors Daniel Kaluuya, Will Smith, Keke Palmer and Letitia Wright.SundayWHEN METAL RULED THE ’80s 9 p.m. and 10 p.m. on REELZ. This documentary series from Viacom International Studios UK explores the stories behind the rise of metal, a dominating force in the U.S. and British music scenes in the 1980s. The series begins with the 1970s origins of the metal glam scene, following the genre’s evolution through the formation of groups like KISS and Guns N’ Roses. The first two episodes, one hour each, feature performance footage and interviews with figures such as Marty Friedman, the lead guitarist for thrash metal band Megadeth; Derek Shulman, the record executive who signed Bon Jovi; and Michael James Jackson, a producer for the KISS hit album “Lick It Up.” More

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      ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’ Wins Big at the BAFTAs

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      The German-language antiwar movie won best film, best director and five other awards at Britain’s equivalent of the Academy Awards.Felix Kammerer starred in the antiwar movie “All Quiet on the Western Front,” which won best film at the BAFTAs.Reiner Bajo/Netflix, via Associated PressIn a shock to this year’s awards season, “All Quiet on the Western Front,” a German-language movie set in the trenches of World War I, was the big winner at the EE British Academy Film and Television Arts Awards in London on Sunday night.The Netflix movie was named best picture at the awards, commonly known as the BAFTAs. The antiwar film beat four higher-profile titles, including “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” the sci-fi adventure starring Michelle Yeoh, and “The Banshees of Inisherin,” Martin McDonagh’s dark comedy about the ending of a friendship on a small island.“All Quiet” also beat Baz Luhrmann’s “Elvis” biopic and “Tár,” Todd Field’s drama about a conductor accused of sexual harassment. Based on Erich Maria Remarque’s 1929 novel of the same title, “All Quiet on the Western Front” won six other awards, including best director for Edward Berger, best adapted screenplay and best film not in the English language.During the ceremony, Berger seemed overcome by the wins. While accepting the award for best adapted screenplay, he mentioned the movie’s antiwar message and Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine.‘Tár’: A Timely Backstage DramaCate Blanchett plays a world-famous conductor who is embroiled in a #MeToo drama in the latest film by the director Todd Field.Review: “We don’t care about Lydia Tár because she’s an artist; we care about her because she’s art,” our critic writes about the film’s protagonist.An Elusive Subject: Blanchett has stayed one step ahead of audiences by constantly staying in motion. In “Tár,” she is as inscrutable as ever.Back Into the Limelight: The film marks Field’s return to directing, 16 years after “In the Bedroom” and “Little Children” made waves.One Indelible Scene: An episode of generational and ideological strife involving Lydia and an earnest student is more complicated, and simpler, than it might seem.“There are no heroes in any war,” he said.Edward Berger won best director for “All Quiet on the Western Front” at the BAFTAs. He mentioned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in his acceptance speech for best adapted screenplay.Justin Tallis/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images“All Quiet” was expected to do well at the awards, Britain’s equivalent of the Oscars. When the BAFTA nominations were announced last month, it secured 14 nods and tied with Ang Lee’s 2000 action film “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” for the highest number of nominations for a movie not in the English language.British critics raved about the movie upon its release. Danny Leigh wrote in The Financial Times that Berger “expertly handled” the challenge facing any antiwar film: how to stop war from looking glamorous. “Here, dawn quagmires lit by dots of orange flame and troops mad-eyed with animal fear register both as fine cinema and potent fury,” Leigh said.Peter Bradshaw said in The Guardian that “All Quiet” was “a powerful, eloquent, conscientiously impassioned film.”American critics were less effusive. Ben Kenigsberg, writing in The New York Times, said the film “aims to pummel you with ceaseless brutality.”The BAFTAs have long been seen as a bellwether for the Oscars, scheduled for March 12, because of an overlap between their voting bodies. “All Quiet” is nominated for nine categories at those awards, including for best film.Steven Spielberg’s award favorite “The Fabelmans” wasn’t nominated for best movie or best director at the BAFTAs; it received one nomination, for best original screenplay.Before “All Quiet” swept the main prizes, this year’s BAFTAs, held at the Royal Festival Hall in London, had a variety of winners, with the major acting gongs being shared by three different films.Cate Blanchett won best actress for playing a conductor in crisis in “Tár.” She beat nominees that included Viola Davis for her performance in “The Woman King,” Danielle Deadwyler for her role as Emmett Till’s mother in “Till,” and Yeoh for “Everything Everywhere All at Once.”Accepting the prize, a tearful Blanchett thanked her fellow nominees for “breaking the myth that women’s experience is monolithic.”Cate Blanchett won best actress for playing a conductor in crisis in “Tár.” Henry Nicholls/ReutersAustin Butler won the best actor award for his title role in “Elvis.” Butler last month took the same prize at the Golden Globes and was nominated for best actor at the Oscars.“The Banshees of Inisherin,” one of this award season’s most highly touted movies, did not leave the BAFTAs empty-handed, taking four awards, including best original screenplay, best supporting actor for Barry Keoghan and best supporting actress for Kerry Condon.The ceremony, hosted by Richard E. Grant, was short on drama, though Carey Mulligan, nominated for “She Said,” was accidentally announced as the best supporting actress instead of Condon.The incident occurred when Troy Kotsur, the deaf star of “CODA,” was announcing the category’s winner with an interpreter. The mistake was edited out of the show’s television broadcast in Britain. More

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      Sal Piro, ‘Rocky Horror Picture Show’ Superfan, Dies at 72

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      Like many others, he was riveted by the film and attended numerous midnight showings. Unlike many others, he made it the focus of his life.On a cold, snowy night in January 1977, Sal Piro waited in line outside the Waverly Theater in Greenwich Village to see “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” for the first time. A campy science-fiction/horror musical whose characters include the cross-dressing mad scientist Dr. Frank-N-Furter, it had been developing a following for its Friday and Saturday midnight showings for several months.Mr. Piro didn’t know much about the film, which follows a couple (played by Susan Sarandon and Barry Bostwick) as they seek help at Frank-N-Furter’s castle after their car gets a flat tire. But he was impressed that one of his friends had already seen it 19 times.“So we got in line, made friends with some of other people on line and, once inside, we were both amazed and gobsmacked and under its spell,” the songwriter Marc Shaiman, a friend who was with Mr. Piro that night, recalled in an email.Mr. Piro remembered his excitement at seeing the giant disembodied red lips that open the film with the song “Science Fiction Double Feature”; the infectious “Time Warp” dance; and Tim Curry’s dramatic entrance as Frank, singing “Sweet Transvestite.”“Image followed image and the impact on me was tremendous,” Mr. Piro wrote in “Creatures of the Night: The Rocky Horror Picture Show Experience” (1990), one of three books he wrote or co-wrote about the film. “I began living the movie as it unreeled.”Fans like Mr. Piro soon became fanatics. Showings turned into extreme exercises in audience participation. They dressed as the characters. They shouted comments at the screen. They danced in the aisles during the musical numbers. They threw rice at the wedding scene.Mr. Piro’s love of the movie lasted the rest of his life. In the spring of 1977, he founded the “Rocky Horror Picture Show” Fan Club with several friends, who chose him as their president. He would ultimately see the film some 1,300 times.He was still the club’s president — and the face of the “Rocky Horror” fan universe — when he died on Jan. 22 at his home in Manhattan. He was 72.His sister, Lillias Piro, said the cause was an aneurysm in his esophagus.Mr. Piro is credited with helping to turn the “Rocky Horror” mania that started at the Waverly into a broad phenomenon that spread to other theaters, in New York City and around the world.He organized events with members of the film’s cast and sent out newsletters keeping fans up to date. He coordinated fans’ performances at theater showings, where he would head to the stage to introduce the film with a chant that began “Give me an ‘R’” and eventually spelled out “Rocky.”“He was a very honest guy, you believed in him,” Lou Adler, a producer of the film, said in a phone interview. “He didn’t have ulterior motives. The fan club wasn’t a business or a means to something else, but to make it the very best for the fans, because he was one of them.”In 2010, to celebrate the release of “Rocky Horror” on Blu-ray, Mr. Piro led a “Time Warp” dance with 8,239 participants in West Hollywood, Calif., which Guinness World Records certified as the largest such dance ever.Showings of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” turned into extreme exercises in audience participation, with audience members dressing as the movie’s characters.Larry C. Morris/The New York TimesWhen a young couple walked through the rain to a mad scientist’s castle with newspapers over their heads, audience members similarly sought shelter.Larry C. Morris/The New York TimesSalvatore Francis Martin Piro was born on June 29, 1950, in Jersey City, N.J. His father, Paul, was a construction worker, and his mother, Eileen, was a waitress.Mr. Piro attended Seton Hall University from 1968 to 1972, the last two years at the university’s Immaculate Conception Seminary School of Theology, but he did not earn a degree.He taught theology and directed plays at Roman Catholic high schools in New Jersey for three years before being laid off in June 1976. He spent that summer as the drama director of an all-girls camp before moving to Manhattan to pursue a career as an actor.He waited tables and got some roles — and then came “Rocky Horror.”A scene from “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” featuring, from left, Tim Curry, Barry Bostwick and Susan Sarandon. Mr. Piro saw the movie more than 1,300 times.Michael Ochs Archives/Getty ImagesBefore it was a movie, “The Rocky Horror Show,” written by Richard O’Brien, had opened in 1973 as a stage musical in London. It became a smash hit there and had a brief run on Broadway two years later.The film flopped in limited release in September 1975, but it was revived in early April 1976 as the midnight show at the Waverly.And then came Mr. Piro, Mr. Shaiman and an expanding group of like-minded fans who became part of the early vanguard of audience participation. For Mr. Piro, talking back to the screen brought back memories of 1961, when he was 10 years old and watching “Snow White and the Three Stooges” at a theater.“I remember that just as Snow White was about to bite into the poisonous apple, a voice from the theater warned audibly, ‘You’ll be sooorry!’” he wrote in “Creatures of the Night.”Mr. Shaiman, the future Tony Award-winning composer and co-lyricist of “Hairspray,” said that he and Mr. Piro, friends from community theater in New Jersey, felt compelled to shout their comments at the screen once others began.“Sal & I, both HUGE hams, knew we had to join in,” said Mr. Shaiman, who added that he had seen the film more than 70 times.Mr. Piro, Mr. Shaiman and others in the small group who saw “Rocky Horror” early on will be the subject of a scripted movie, based on “Creatures of the Night,” to be filmed this summer.“It’s hard to think of making the movie without him,” Adam Schroeder, one of the producers, said by phone.Mr. Piro’s involvement in “Rocky Horror” was consuming, but it wasn’t a paying job. Over the years, he wrote greeting cards, a column for The Fire Island News, the three “Rocky Horror” books and the questions for a “Rocky Horror” trivia game.He had a handful of film and TV roles — he played a “Rocky Horror” M.C. in a 1980 episode of the series “Fame” and a photographer in “The Rocky Horror Picture Show: Let’s Do the Time Warp Again” (2016), a made-for-TV remake of the original film.From 1991 to 2014 he worked at the Grove Hotel, in the Cherry Grove community on Fire Island, first as the entertainment director of its Ice Palace nightclub and then as the manager of both the hotel and the nightclub. He also wrote and directed theatrical shows for the Arts Project of Cherry Grove.In addition to his sister, he is survived by two brothers, James and Joseph.Mr. Adler said that he saw Mr. Piro at a film event last month at IFC Center, as the Waverly, where “Rocky Horror” became a hit, is now known.“He said to me we’re both reaching ages where something might happen to either one of us,” said Mr. Adler, who is 89. If that happened, he said Mr. Piro asked him, “Who’s going to watch over Rocky?” More

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      Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert Win DGA Award for ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’

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      The duo triumphed for “Everything Everywhere All at Once.” The guild’s winner has won the best director Academy Award 17 of the last 20 times.BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — The Directors Guild of America gave its top prize for feature-film directing on Saturday night to Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan for their sci-fi hit, “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” starring Michelle Yeoh as the unlikely savior of an embattled multiverse. It is only the third time in DGA history that a duo has won the best-director prize, after Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins (“West Side Story” from 1961) and Joel and Ethan Coen (the 2007 “No Country for Old Men”).“What the hell?” a gobsmacked Kwan said while accepting their prize at the ceremony, held at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills.Scheinert, who said months ago that he had never expected their unusual film to become a major awards contender, was similarly stunned. “This is crazy!” he said.“Everything Everywhere” is the second film co-directed by Scheinert and Kwan, who began their career in music videos before making the leap to the big screen with their 2016 film “Swiss Army Man,” starring Daniel Radcliffe as a flatulent corpse.Their point of view is far quirkier than what the Directors Guild tends to go for, but earlier in the night, Kwan said he had been taught to think that being a director was more like being a party host than a general, and thanked his crew “for bringing their best selves to our ridiculous, absurd, beautiful, personal party.”Scheinert and Kwan triumphed over stiff competition, including Steven Spielberg (“The Fabelmans”), who is the most honored filmmaker in DGA history, with 13 nominations and three wins. The other nominees were Todd Field (“Tár”), Martin McDonagh (“The Banshees of Inisherin”) and Joseph Kosinski (“Top Gun: Maverick”).Next month’s best-director race at the Oscars will present another competitive matchup, with the same men nominated except for Kosinski, who was replaced by “Triangle of Sadness” helmer Ruben Ostlund. Still, Scheinert and Kwan can now be presumed to have the edge in that race, since the DGA winner has won the best director Oscar 17 of the last 20 times.Though no women were nominated in the feature-directing race, the DGA award for documentary filmmaking went to Sara Dosa for “Fire of Love,” about volcano-obsessed scientists. And the DGA prize for the best first-time filmmaker went to Charlotte Wells for the father-daughter drama “Aftersun,” which received an Oscar nomination for lead actor Paul Mescal. Since “The Lost Daughter” director Maggie Gyllenhaal won the same DGA trophy last season, this is the first time the first-timers’ award has gone to female filmmakers in back-to-back years.Here are the top winners. For the complete list, go to dga.org:Feature: Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, “Everything Everywhere All at Once”First-Time Feature: Charlotte Wells, “Aftersun”Documentary: Sara Dosa, “Fire of Love”Television Movies and Limited Series: Helen Shaver, “Station Eleven” (“Who’s There”)Dramatic Series: Sam Levinson, “Euphoria” (“Stand Still Like the Hummingbird”)Comedy Series: Bill Hader, “Barry” (“710N”) More

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      Stella Stevens, Hollywood Bombshell Who Yearned for More, Dies at 84

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      She starred alongside the likes of Elvis Presley and Jerry Lewis. But she wanted to direct and write, and she felt held back by industry sexism.Stella Stevens, whose turn as an A-list actress in 1960s Hollywood placed her alongside sex symbols like Brigitte Bardot, Ann-Margret and Raquel Welch, but who came to resent the male-dominated industry that she felt thwarted her ambitions to be more than a pretty face, died on Friday at a hospice facility in Los Angeles. She was 84.Her son, the actor and director Andrew Stevens, said the cause was Alzheimer’s disease.Ms. Stevens was among the last stars to emerge from Hollywood’s studio system, an arrangement that guaranteed her work but, she often said, also limited her creative aspirations. She won a Golden Globe in the “most promising newcomer” category for her role in “Say One for Me” (1959), a musical comedy starring Bing Crosby and Debbie Reynolds, but felt coerced into joining the cast of “Girls! Girls! Girls!” (1962), an empty Elvis Presley vehicle.Like Ms. Welch, who died on Wednesday, Ms. Stevens was ambivalent, if not outright indignant, about being cast as a Hollywood sex symbol. She described herself as introverted and bookish, and she sought to work with auteurs like John Cassavetes, who cast her as the female lead in “Too Late Blues,” his 1961 drama about a jazz musician (played by Bobby Darin).”I wanted to be a writer-director,” she told the film scholar Michael G. Ankerich in 1994. “All of a sudden I got sidetracked into being a sexpot. Once I was a ‘pot,’ there was nothing I could do. There was nothing legitimate I could do.”She worked with many of the top directors and actors of the 1960s. She starred as the love interest of the title character, a timid college professor who undergoes a personality transformation, in “The Nutty Professor” (1963), which Jerry Lewis wrote, directed and starred in; “The Courtship of Eddie’s Father” (1963), a romantic comedy directed by Vincent Minnelli; and “The Silencers” (1966), a spy spoof starring Dean Martin.In between, though, she had to take a series of mediocre roles in mediocre movies, and critics came to view her as a star who was perpetually kept away from realizing her full potential.From left, Shelley Winters, Carol Lynley, Roddy McDowall and Ms. Stevens in “The Poseidon Adventure” (1972).20th Century FoxTwo exceptions came in the early 1970s: She acted opposite Jason Robards in “The Ballad of Cable Hogue” (1970), a comic western directed by Sam Peckinpah, and as part of an all-star cast assembled for “The Poseidon Adventure” (1972), joining Ernest Borgnine, Shelley Winters and Gene Hackman in an overturned ocean liner.By then her sex-symbol days were fading, and Ms. Stevens hoped to have the time and reputation to become a director. But female directors were almost unheard-of at the time, and her attempts to get support for what she called “a marvelous black comedy” that she wanted to make met repeated dead ends.“Every man I’ve gone to for four years has smiled at me and then double‐crossed me,” she told The New York Times in 1973. “Every man I’ve talked to in every office in this industry has tried his best to discourage me from directing. They don’t want me to find out it’s so easy because it’s supposed to be terribly hard.”Stella Stevens was born Estelle Caro Eggleston on Oct. 1, 1938, in Yazoo City, Miss., though she often told interviewers she was from a town called Hot Coffee, a nearby community. Her agent said anything sounded better than “Yazoo.”Her father, Thomas, worked for a bottling company in Yazoo, and her mother, Estelle (Caro) Eggleston, was a nurse. When Stella was still young, they moved to Memphis, where her father worked in sales for International Harvester.Stella dropped out of high school at 15 to marry Herman Stephens. They had one child, Andrew, and divorced in 1956. (She later changed her surname to Stevens because, she said, it was easier for people to pronounce.)Ms. Stevens in 1968. She worked with many of the top directors and actors of the 1960s, but she also had to take a series of mediocre roles in mediocre movies.Jack Kanthal/Associated PressShe returned to school after the divorce and earned a high school diploma. She enrolled at Memphis State College, now the University of Memphis, with plans to become an obstetrician.She also took up theater. A role in a college production of William Inge’s “Bus Stop” brought an invitation to audition in New York, and by 1959 she was in Los Angeles, on a three-year contract with 20th Century Fox.She finished three movies in six months, including “Say One for Me,” but the studio dropped her soon after. With a young son to feed, she took an offer from Playboy to pose nude for $5,000. After the shoot, she said, Hugh Hefner, the magazine’s publisher, would pay her only half and told her that she had to work as a hostess at the Playboy Mansion to earn the rest.Before the photos ran she signed a new contract, with Paramount. She asked Mr. Hefner to cancel the magazine feature, but he refused, and she appeared as Playmate of the Month in the January 1960 issue, a few months before winning her Golden Globe.“People don’t realize how horrible men can be toward a beautiful woman with no clothes on,” she told Delta magazine in 2010.Her relationship with Playboy remained complicated. Despite her anger at Mr. Hefner, she posed nude for the magazine two more times. She then sued Mr. Hefner and Playboy in 1974, citing several instances of invasion of her privacy, but the case was thrown out because the statute of limitations had expired.In 1998, Playboy named Ms. Stevens 27th on its list of the 20th century’s sexiest female stars, just behind Sharon Stone.Ms. Stevens in 2002. She became a regular guest star on television shows. Frederick M. Brown/Getty ImagesIn addition to her son, Ms. Stevens is survived by three grandchildren. Her longtime partner, Bob Kulick, died in 2020.Despite her career’s post-1960s fade, Ms. Stevens remained eager to work. She turned to television and had roles in some 80 episodes over the next four decades. Most of them were guest appearances on shows like “Murder, She Wrote,” “The Love Boat” and “Magnum P.I.,” though she was also a member of the regular cast of several shows, including the soap opera “Santa Barbara.”When she did return to film, it was often for soft-core erotic thrillers and campy horror movies, like “Chained Heat” (1983), in which she played a prison warden, and “The Granny” (1994), in which she played a wronged grandmother who comes back to life to get revenge on her scheming family.She eventually did get into the director’s chair, for “American Heroine,” a 1979 documentary, and “The Ranch,” a 1989 comedy starring her son. She also wrote a novel, “Razzle Dazzle” (1989), which featured a thinly fictionalized version of herself.“I don’t feel I’ve been successful yet,” she told The Vancouver Sun in 1998. “I’m still waiting to be discovered. I see myself as a work in progress. I keep trying to work and improve and do things I’m proud of.”Danielle Cruz contributed reporting. More

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      ‘Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey’ Review: Willy-Nilly Killy Old Bear

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      A childhood favorite gets a threadbare horror treatment.He’s ruthless and occasionally machete-wielding like Jason Voorhees. He’s seen surrounded by bees like Candyman. And he’s got an appetite for, as the subtitle suggests, blood and honey. This isn’t your grandparents’ Winnie the Pooh. In 2022, the A.A. Milne-created character rumbled and tumbled into the public domain. Now, with this horror take on the beloved bear, the British filmmaker Rhys Frake-Waterfield has taken it upon himself to see how much mileage he can get out of a gimmick. As it turns out, it’s not much.Pooh Bear and his pals in the Hundred Acre Wood have been mutated from the cuddly animals of childhood imagination into grotesque and cannibalistic monsters. When Christopher Robin (Nikolai Leon) abandons the creatures to go to college, their resentment toward him curdles into bloodlust, and Pooh and Piglet decide to terrorize a group of five nearly identical-looking and underwritten young women (led by Maria Taylor) vacationing in a rental home nearby. From there, the film limps from one slasher cliché to the next, with little gusto.It’s rather disappointing that Frake-Waterfield’s movie is so threadbare. Though it is intermittently handsomely assembled, displaying the director’s eye for composition, “Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey” barely exploits its premise. It’s not funny enough to have anything clever to say about its gag, and it’s not exciting enough to be a competent horror movie. It hardly leans on the easiest component that should make the film: that the misdeeds of our youth can just as easily come back to haunt us.Winnie the Pooh: Blood and HoneyNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 24 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania’ Review: Splat

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      The latest installment in the Marvel franchise never takes flight despite its hard-working cast, led by Paul Rudd and a new villain played by Jonathan Majors.Busy, noisy and thoroughly uninspired, “Ant Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” is the latest, though doubtless not the last, installment in a Marvel franchise that took unsteady flight in 2015. Simply titled “Ant-Man,” that first movie was two hours of nonsense and branding, and disappointing enough to suggest that the character would be more farm-team material than A-lister. Given Marvel’s own superpowers, though, the movie turned out to be a hit, ensuring that the buggy guy would dart around for a while. Three years later, the agreeably buoyant sequel “Ant-Man and the Wasp” followed, and was an even greater success.“Quantumania” will most likely vacuum up yet more cash, partly because there’s not much else shiny and new in theaters now, never mind that this movie isn’t especially new or shiny. A hash of recycled ideas and schtick, it borrows from Frank Herbert’s “Dune,” the “Star Wars” cycle and Marvel’s own annals and largely serves as a launching pad for a new villain, Kang (Jonathan Majors). Once again, after some perfunctory table-setting, Ant-Man a.k.a. Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) and his brainiac romantic partner, Hope Van Dyne a.k.a. the Wasp (Evangeline Lilly), suit up, flying high and zipping low to save their family and the world amid quips, the usual obstacles and household drama. (Kathryn Newton plays the Ant kid.)Directed by Peyton Reed from Jeff Loveness’s barely-there script (the first movies each had multiple writers), “Quantumania” bops along innocuously at first, buoyed by the charm and professionalism of its performers and by your narrative expectations. Something is going to happen. After some jokey blather and reintroductions (hello again, Michael Douglas), it does, and once again Ant-Man et al. are sucked into the so-called Quantum Realm, a woo-woo alternative universe filled with swirls of color and looming threats. It’s there that Hope’s mother, Janet (Michelle Pfeiffer), as you’re laboriously reminded, spent many enigmatic years and where, after the some narrative delay, the mysteries of that adventure are revealed.The Realm features darkly ominous hues, fractal shapes, biomorphic organisms, streams of fire and strange beings, including Bill Murray, as a lord, who briefly drifts in on the vapors of his celebrity and flirts with Pfeiffer before drifting out to cash his paycheck. Murray notwithstanding, there are enough attractions to keep your eyes engaged, and the creature design is fairly witty. It isn’t pretty; the palette runs toward dun and dull red with slashes of marine blue. But it is diverting to see how movies realize alternative realities, and at least some of the C.G.I. wizards here — who do yeoman’s work in movies like “Quantumania” — seem to have spent time studying the deep-space images captured by the Hubble Telescope.As is too often the case in the franchise realm, far less attention has been paid to the story. None of what transpires is surprising, which puts the burden on the actors. Rudd is fine. A professional cutie-pie, he is a reliably anodyne presence, a human warm blanket. Good-looking but not dangerously so, he has easy charm and a signature crinkly smile that telegraphs that he isn’t worried, so you shouldn’t be, either. Mostly, he excels at playing a durable Hollywood type — the ordinary guy who proves extraordinary — a character that flatters half the audience and will never go out of style as long as men run Hollywood.Pfeiffer, Majors and Douglas (as Hope’s equally big-brained dad) are the truer stars of this show, and each brings something valuable to the mix. (Lilly’s character now feels like an afterthought.) For the most part, Majors strikes important poses while glowering imperiously. But he brings some complicated, wounded intensity to his role, and while his sotto-voce delivery sometimes edges into near-parodic Shakespearean overstatement, he effortlessly holds your attention, as do the sublimely chill Douglas and Pfeiffer. Douglas has even less to work with than Pfeiffer, who turns out to be the movie’s M.V.P., but they’re both wonderful to watch even when doing nothing much at all, which of course is its own kind of superpower.Ant-Man and the Wasp: QuantumaniaRated PG-13 for comic-book violence. Running time: 2 hours 5 minutes. In theaters. More