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      Rudy Franchi, Who Put Movies at the Center of a Technicolor Life, Dies at 85

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      He brought French classics to New York, published a film magazine, worked as a Hollywood publicist and (as seen on “Antiques Roadshow”) thrived selling vintage posters and kitsch.Rudy Franchi, who during a kaleidoscopic life brought French films to New York City, indulged in trysts with Hollywood stars as a publicist, operated one of the country’s largest vintage movie poster businesses and appraised ephemera — most memorably, a lunch menu from the Titanic — on PBS’s “Antiques Roadshow,” died on Aug. 6 in Santa Monica, Calif. He was 85.The cause of his death, at a nursing home, was lung cancer that had metastasized, his family said.Mr. Franchi’s life was highbrow, lowbrow and sometimes surreal.Along with movie posters, his store, the Nostalgia Factory, dealt in kitsch — Mickey Mouse watches, British cookie tins, StarKist “Charlie the Tuna” piggy banks. His career included a stint at a tabloid newspaper fabricating stories, like one that claimed that President John F. Kennedy was living secretly (though comatose) on an island after his assassination.“Rudy was definitely a character,” Grey Smith, a longtime vintage poster appraiser and dealer, said in an interview. “He was fascinating to be around because he had all of these crazy stories, and he could really talk about anything.”Mr. Franchi was not a gadfly, per se, but he was the sort of person whose name was familiar in the letters-to-the-editor departments of newspapers, especially The New York Times. It published six of the many missives he sent in on topics like the foreign exchange rates of American Express traveler’s checks, a critique of Playbill magazine and a brief history of neon signs.In a 2010 episode of “Antiques Roadshow,” Mr. Franchi appraised a grizzly bear skin that its owner said had once belonged to Bette Davis. The Washington Post, via Getty ImagesWe 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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      Apple Rethinks Its Movie Strategy After a String of Misses

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      “Wolfs,” a new film starring George Clooney and Brad Pitt, was going to get a robust theatrical release. But the company is curtailing that plan.When Apple won a bidding war in 2021 for the rights to make the action comedy “Wolfs” with George Clooney and Brad Pitt, it did so in part because it promised the stars it would put the movie into a large number of movie theaters.“Brad and I made the deal to do that movie where we gave money back to make sure that we had a theatrical release,” Mr. Clooney said last year in an interview with the Hollywood trade publication Deadline.But this month, just six weeks before the film was set to show up in thousands of theaters around the United States, Apple announced a significant change in plans. “Wolfs” will now be shown on a limited number of movie screens for one week before becoming available on the company’s streaming service on Sept. 27. (Internationally, it won’t appear in theaters at all with the exception of the Venice Film Festival, where it will premiere on Sept. 1.)“‘Wolfs’ is the kind of big event movie that makes Apple TV+ such an exceptional home for the best in entertainment,” Matt Dentler, the head of features for Apple Original Films, said in a statement. “Releasing the movie to theaters before making it widely available to Apple TV+ customers brings the best of both worlds to audiences.”The film’s director, Jon Watts, told Vanity Fair that he had found out about the change in plans only days before the announcement. “The theatrical experience has really made an impression on me, of how valuable this thing is and how important it is,” Mr. Watts said. “I always thought of this as a theatrical movie. We made it to be seen in theaters, and I think that’s the best way to see it.”Despite the filmmakers’ desires, the about-face follows a middling run at the box office for Apple, which began releasing films into theaters around the country via partnerships with traditional studios in October.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Best Movies From 1999, According to Our Critics

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      In our view, these eight comedies, dramas and more have attained classic status 25 years later. Let us know your own picks.On the 25th anniversary of what many argue is the greatest year in movie history, we asked film staff writers and critics to share the movie from 1999 that they love the best or feel is most overlooked. After reading their picks, let us know your choices.Best Comedy‘Being John Malkovich’Capping a decade of high-concept comedies, Spike Jonze’s “Being John Malkovich” (available on most major platforms) raised the stakes with the most outlandish premise yet: When a downtrodden puppeteer (John Cusack) takes an office job to make ends meet, he discovers a hidden portal there that allows him to enter the mind of medium-famous character actor John Malkovich. Jonze’s smartest instinct is to resist piling onto a concept that’s already perilously clever. Instead, the movie is underplayed, intimate and even a little scuzzy-looking. But that approach to Charlie Kaufman’s surprising screenplay leaves room for viewers to wonder as they watch: Why are we so certain that our lives would improve with even a modicum of fame? And are these bodies the wrong containers for what we feel inside? KYLE BUCHANANBuchanan’s other 1999 favorites: “eXistenZ,” “Three Kings,” “Election,” “The Talented Mr. Ripley”Best Drama‘Beau Travail’Claire Denis’s film focuses on the French Foreign Legion soldiers stationed in Djibouti.Pathé TVA haunting exploration of desire and violence, Claire Denis’s “Beau Travail” (available on major platforms) takes place in the East African country of Djibouti, a onetime French territory. There, French Foreign Legion soldiers practice drills, their bodies synced and individualities subordinated. At times, they dance with African women, their gazes uneasily summoning up the history shared by the formerly colonized and their colonizers.Loosely inspired by Herman Melville’s novella “Billy Budd,” Denis’s beguiling tour de force takes shape after one soldier (Grégoire Colin) rescues another, an act that disturbs a sergeant (Denis Lavant). The soldier “seduced everyone,” the sergeant says in voice-over. “Deep down I felt a sort of rancor, a rage brimming.” With minimal dialogue, ravishing visuals and meticulous attention to sensuous detail, Claire Denis elliptically charts what binds these men — tracing lines between love and hate, past and present, nation and self, masculinity and militarism — in a film that remains as disturbing as it is seductive. MANOHLA DARGIS

      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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      ‘A League of Their Own’ Grandstand Destroyed in Fire

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      The field and wooden grandstand in Ontario, Calif., were the backdrop for the 1992 movie about a women’s baseball league.The wooden grandstand, locker rooms, press box and dugout of Jay Littleton Ball Park, a baseball field in California that was featured in the 1992 movie “A League of Their Own,” were destroyed in a fire on Thursday, a city spokesman said.Aerial footage showed scorched debris ringing a grassy baseball diamond at the park in Ontario, Calif., which is about 40 miles east of Los Angeles.Firefighters responding to the fire at 11:25 p.m. local time on Thursday encountered flames engulfing the wooden structures of the stadium, which they were unable to save, Dan Bell, Ontario’s communications director, said on Saturday.“This is an old-school, 1937, all-wood grandstand construction,” Mr. Bell said. “Once it lit, it just went up.”It was not immediately clear what caused the fire. Mr. Bell said the city had closed the field to the public four years ago because of the dilapidated and dangerous condition of the grandstand. The city had been considering finding funds to restore it.Geena Davis, center, and Megan Cavanagh, left, in a scene from “A League of Their Own.”Columbia Pictures“A League of Their Own,” which also starred Madonna, Rosie O’Donnell and Tom Hanks, told the story of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, a professional league founded in 1943 when many minor league teams were disbanded because the draft was sending players and other men to fight in World War II. The league lasted 12 seasons.In one memorable scene from the movie, the character played by the actress Geena Davis does a split and makes a spectacular catch in front of the grandstand.In addition to “A League of Their Own,” the ballpark served as a setting for the 1992 movie “The Babe,” starring John Goodman, and the 1988 movie “Eight Men Out.”Representative Norma J. Torres, Democrat of California, whose district includes Ontario, said on social media on Friday that the site had been “generations of families’ favorite ballpark since the 1930s.”The park, which the city designated a historic landmark in 2003, was originally called the Ontario Ball Park, home to the semiprofessional baseball team, the Ontario Merchants.It was, at that time, a modern baseball facility with a wooden grandstand that could seat 3,500, team locker rooms and a press box complete with radio transmission towers on the roof, according to a historic structure report conducted by the city in 2019.Because wood construction was susceptible to fire, most professional baseball stadiums from the early 20th century were built with less flammable materials, such as brick, concrete and steel.For economic reasons, amateur ball parks like Ontario’s continued to be built of wood, the report said.The park was later renamed for Jay Littleton, a semiprofessional baseball player from Ontario who went on to work as a Major League Baseball scout, according to a 2003 obituary. More

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      Venice Film Festival: Marina Cicogna’s Glamorous Legacy

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      Cicogna, who died in November, was the face of the Venice Film Festival for decades and a pioneer for women in the Italian film industry. She also knew how to throw a party.She threw at least one party that would have made Bacchus envious, photographed Greta Garbo and Marilyn Monroe (both friends), co-produced the Oscar-winning “Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion” and distributed films by the directors Luchino Visconti, Luis Buñuel and Pier Paolo Pasolini, among others. If a person can personify a global film festival, Marina Cicogna was for decades the face of the Venice Film Festival.Born in 1934, two years after her maternal grandfather, Giuseppe Volpi (who was one of Benito Mussolini’s finance ministers), helped found the festival, Cicogna (pronounced chi-CONE-ya) helped transform it into a global event. She also championed Italian cinema as a producer and distributor, and she pushed the boundaries of what women could achieve in a male-dominated industry.For those who knew Cicogna, who died in November at 89, she was not only a striking and glamorous figure but a generous and endlessly curious filmmaker. In addition to her grandfather’s enormous legacy — not to mention the family’s tremendous wealth — her mother, Countess Annamaria Volpi di Misurata, owned Euro International Films, which laid the groundwork for Cicogna’s immersion into Italian cinema.“When Marina appeared as a distributor and producer in the second part of the ’60s, she was a new and important presence,” said Gian Piero Brunetta, a historian of Italian cinema who wrote “The Venice International Film Festival, 1932-2022.” “Marina was in the perfect moment to interpret the change happening in Italian cinema. Movies at this time were able to open a dialogue with the intelligence of the audience and address present problems. Marina was a protagonist in all of this.”Cicogna at the Venice Film Festival in 1957. She was a fixture at the festival, which her family helped create. Mario De BiasiArchivio Mario De BiasiMondadori, via Getty ImagesThat individualism was evident to those around her, from the world’s biggest stars to writers, directors and those who benefited from her commitment to the festival and the burgeoning Italian film industry after its post-World War II neorealism stage. (A festival spokeswoman confirmed that there were no official plans to honor Cicogna at this year’s festival, which runs Wednesday through Sept. 7.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘The Interview’: Jenna Ortega Is Still Recovering From Child Stardom

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      If you have a tween daughter, as I do, you know that Jenna Ortega is a big deal. In 2022, Ortega starred as the title character in Netflix’s “Addams Family” reboot, “Wednesday,” and quickly became beloved by viewers for her character’s snarky, dark and brutally honest personality. The show was a hit, and suddenly Wednesday — and by extension Ortega — were everywhere: on merch, on the streets for Halloween and all over the internet doing her meme-able dance moves. It was the kind of star-making, culture-saturating role that is life-changing for a young actor. It was also, as Ortega told me over the course of our two conversations, completely disorienting to become so famous so fast.Listen to the Conversation With Jenna OrtegaThe actress talks about learning to protect herself and the hard lessons of early fame.Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Amazon | iHeart | NYT Audio AppOrtega didn’t appear out of nowhere. She started as a child actor on the Disney Channel, played the young version of Jane in the CW series “Jane the Virgin” and later starred in the “Scream” and “X” horror franchises. Now she is 21. Her next big role is in the new movie “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” the sequel to Tim Burton’s 1988 classic, which opens nationwide on Sept. 6. (Burton also directed several episodes of “Wednesday.”) Ortega plays the daughter of Winona Ryder’s character, and she told me that they bonded over each having found enormous success in Hollywood at a young age.When we spoke — I caught her in Ireland, where she was filming the second season of “Wednesday” — I found Ortega to be a thoughtful and curious person who, like many young people, is still finding out who she is. “I’m just navigating,” she says of this stage of her life. “I’m on my own little personal expedition.” Only she is doing it under the glare of a massive spotlight.When did you first see the original “Beetlejuice”? Honestly, I can’t really put a date on it. I feel like I had to have seen it maybe when I was 8 or 9. I was terrified of everything when I was younger. I actually had a recurring nightmare about Beetlejuice. I saw a really terrible Halloween costume before I really knew what the movie was, and I think that the mold and smearing, bleeding green and black Party City makeup gave me a scare. I just remember that image, and then I watched the movie later, and I thought, Oh, man, this is what the guy was dressed as. This is just as scary.What were your nightmares about Beetlejuice? I shared a room my entire life growing up. I was the bottom bunk on a bunk bed, and I had a dream that Beetlejuice would come down and swing around the banister to my bunk wearing a Superman cape, and he would offer me grape juice and say, “Got any grape?” More

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      Venice Film Festival: How It Became an ‘Oscar Launchpad’

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      For the past decade, not a year has gone by without major awards-season contenders bowing at the festival.These days the race for the Oscars starts in Venice. Of the past 10 best picture winners, four have premiered on the lagoon, including, most recently, Chloé Zhao’s “Nomadland” in 2020. That film also took the festival’s main prize, the Golden Lion, making it the second film after Guillermo del Toro’s “The Shape of Water” (2017) to claim that double distinction.This is a remarkable turnaround for a film festival, which opens on Wednesday and runs through Sept. 7, whose international standing was slipping in the early aughts. Much of the credit for this reversal of fortune goes to the festival’s leader, Alberto Barbera. When Barbera’s current term as artistic director began in 2012, the festival was struggling to attract films by Hollywood studios.“It was much easier to go to Toronto to spend less money and to make a proper promotion for the domestic market,” Barbera said, referring to the Toronto International Film Festival, which is held in early September. “But losing the presence of Hollywood studios was a big risk for Venice,” he continued, adding that he feared a disastrous chain effect if major American studios turned their backs on his festival.After Alberto Barbera became the artistic director of the Venice Film Festival in 2012, he went to Los Angeles twice a year to court Hollywood executives.Yara Nardi/ReutersBarbera convinced the Venice Biennale, which runs the festival, to renovate screening rooms and facilities that had not been updated in decades. He also flew to Los Angeles twice a year to meet with the heads of studios and independent film companies to court them.In his second summer on the job, Barbera’s efforts bore fruit when the festival opened with Alfonso Cuarón’s “Gravity,” which starred George Clooney and Sandra Bullock.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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      Venice Film Festival: Filmmakers Race to Finish Their Movies

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      With the Venice Film Festival beginning, filmmakers are racing to the finish line to have their work ready for screening.When a movie is selected to premiere at a festival, it’s a time of celebration for the filmmakers. But it’s not an end to their labors.Very often, there’s work left to be done on the movie before it’s unveiled to the world. While fans excitedly scroll through the latest showcase at an upcoming festival, some of the filmmakers might still be sweating over making their movies look and sound exactly as intended.It’s all a normal part of the process when postproduction and festival calendars overlap, whether at the Venice Film Festival, which opens on Wednesday and runs through Sept. 7, or at Cannes or Sundance.After Venice announced its latest lineup, many filmmakers were still polishing the sound mixing, color correction and visual effects of their movies. In late July, Dea Kulumbegashvili, the Georgian director of the competition title “April,” was still completing aspects of her film about an obstetrician who performs illegal abortions.A still from the film “April.” Memo FilmReached at Studio Babelsberg in Potsdam, Germany, she said she was waiting on around 10 shots with visual effects that needed to be finalized. She described the nature of the effects somewhat enigmatically as “a character” in the film that required a careful eye across many long-sequence shots.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