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      ‘The Subtle Art of Not Giving a #@%!’ Review: A Blunt Philosophy

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      The writer Mark Manson is an onscreen guide in this visualization of his self-help book.In this docu-illustration of his popular self-help book, the author Mark Manson, as an onscreen guide, shares his philosophy of fulfillment. The ethos has a lot of parts, but much of it boils down to the idea that life is full of disappointments and that people can get better about accepting them. You have the power to choose how many hoots you give.That might sound like patronizing advice, but Manson delivers it in reassuring, Dude-like koans (he calls for a simple cultural acknowledgment that “most of us suck at most of the things we do — and that’s fine”) that make it go down easy.The director Nathan Price grasps at various ways to visualize Manson’s concepts. We see re-enactments of incidents and friendships that shaped the writer’s life; an animated, graphic novel-style version of the story of Hiroo Onoda, the Japanese soldier who refused to believe that World War II had ended; and cameraphone videos of people lashing out. The last might be a slightly inapt choice, given that it comes sometime after Manson’s feelings on the negative effects of the “human highlight reel of social media.”Manson reveals his epiphanies without ever quite divulging the source of his expertise or filling out his career arc — there’s a bit of a gap between professing to have had only one real job and becoming a best-selling author. (Manson subsequently co-wrote Will Smith’s 2021 memoir.) But if “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a #@%!” helps people, its deficiencies as a movie don’t matter much.The Subtle Art of Not Giving a #@%!Rated R. It’s already pushing things with that title. Running time: 1 hour 37 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘The Wounded Man’: Dark Night, Lost Soul

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      In its unflinching depiction of a French teenager’s violent gay awakening, this 1983 film is among Patrice Chéreau’s most confrontational works.The radical director Patrice Chéreau was a triple-threat who earned praise and courted controversy with his risk-taking plays, operas and films. In its unflinching depiction of a French teenager’s gay awakening, “The Wounded Man” is among his most confrontational works.The film, which premiered in Cannes in 1983 and was released in the United States two years later, has a mainly underground reputation (unmentioned in Chéreau’s 2013 New York Times obituary) and so its current revival at Anthology Film Archives is something of an event.Set in a drab provincial city in France that, by the movie’s end, resembles a vast public loo, “The Wounded Man” signals its vanguard ambitions at the onset. The first head-on shot of a worn hausfrau packing a suitcase might have been lifted from “Jeanne Dielman”; a blast from avant-garde jazz artist Albert Ayler’s sax heralds Henri (Jean-Hugues Anglade) and his family racing for a bus to the train station from which his younger sister will leave for her student vacation.Leaving his family in the waiting room, Henri begins furtively cruising in the crowded terminal without exactly being sure of just what it is that he wants. His characteristic move is to stare, recoil, run and return. Dashing about like a mouse in a maze, he attracts the attention of Bosmans, a well-dressed, middle-aged masochist (Roland Bertin) who may be a doctor, and Jean, a charismatic roughneck (Vittorio Mezzogiorno) who gratifies Bosmans by beating him up in a toilet stall and seemingly pimps for the station’s abundant young hustlers.Bosmans and Henri are both obsessed with Jean, although Bosmans has a yen for Henri as well. Given the rough and tumble — physical as well as psychic — they absorb, any one of them could be the title character. All three are ruled by impulse but only Bosmans is the slightest bit introspective: “There are things you have to do to regret them later on,” he explains. Jean sets up Henri as bait in one appalling scene. He also brings him home to his long-suffering girlfriend (Lisa Kreuzer) after which Henri pilfers Jean’s outfit and begins living in the station.According to a profile of Chéreau published in The New York Times before the movie’s American release, “The Wounded Man” was inspired by Jean Genet’s quasi-autobiographical book “The Thief’s Journal.” Its obsessive characters, abrupt transitions, abstract narrative and hyper-naturalistic attention to detail also recall the French nouvelle romans of Marguerite Duras and Alain Robbe-Grillet.The movie is both stylized and visceral. “The Wounded Man” has nearly as much nudity (all of it male) and graphic sex as “Intimacy,” Chéreau’s “kitchen sink” riff on the anonymous coupling of “Last Tango in Paris.” Still, the careful framing of frenzied activity gives the movie a measure of detachment. (Janet Maslin’s Times review found it “solemn to a fault” and consequently “laced with a certain amount of inadvertent comedy.”)Appearing a couple of years into the AIDS epidemic, “The Wounded Man” was criticized both for its violence and its tormented vision of gay love. Henri’s approach-avoidance ballet inevitably climaxes in a dance of death. Chéreau’s willingness to plumb that abyss mirrors that of his protagonist.The Wounded ManJan. 5-12, Anthology Film Archives, Manhattan; anthologyfilmarchives.org. More

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      Will These Be the 10 Best Picture Oscar Nominees?

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      Now that critics’ laurels and box office results are in, the race for the top honor is clearer. But there’s still room for an outside contender to slip in.Earlier this week, I got a text from a harried colleague. “I’m not ready for Oscar season,” she wrote.I blinked for a second before responding. Ready? This season has been going for months!Of course, I took her point: January ramps things up considerably, since we’re about to get televised awards shows (the Golden Globes on Tuesday followed by the Critics Choice Awards the following Sunday), nominations from the acting, directing and producing guilds, and then the all-important Oscar nominations, which will be announced Jan. 24.But we can already make an educated guess about the titles we’ll hear that day, since your Projectionist has spent the last few months weighing valuable factors like voter buzz, box office battles, laurels from critics groups, below-the-line Oscar shortlists, and influential citations like the Gothams and the American Film Institute Awards. With all that in mind, I’ve arrived at a list of 10 movies that I think currently have the greatest shot at making the best picture lineup.Still, this is an unusual year when even the strongest movies come with significant debits, which means there’s still room for big-budget entertainments (like “Babylon,” “Nope,” “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery” and “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever”), foreign-language films (including “RRR,” “Decision to Leave” and “All Quiet on the Western Front”), and indie films with strong performances (like “The Whale,” “Till,” “She Said” and “Aftersun”) to pull through. At this time last year, “CODA” looked like a middle-of-the-road contender, but a few consequential weeks later, it won enough hearts to clinch the best picture Oscar.So consider these 10 films to merely be the starting lineup, ranked in descending order according to their certainty.Steven Spielberg Gets Personal in ‘The Fabelmans’The director’s latest movie, starring Michelle Williams, focuses on Sammy Fabelman, a budding filmmaker who is a lot like Spielberg himself.Review: “The Fabelmans” is “wonderful in both large and small ways, even if Spielberg can’t help but soften the rougher, potentially lacerating edges,” our critic writes.Michelle Williams: With her portrayal of Mitzi, Sammy’s mother, the actress moves from minor-key naturalism to more stylized performances.Judd Hirsch: The actor has been singled out for his rousing performance in the film. It’s the latest chapter in a career full of anecdotes.Making ‘The Fabelmans’: In working on this semi-autobiographical movie, Spielberg confronted painful family secrets and what it means to be Jewish in America today.‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’Ke Huy Quan and Michelle Yeoh in “Everything Everywhere All at Once.”Allyson Riggs/A24After making a film with sci-fi trappings and outlandish dildo fight scenes, the directors of “Everything Everywhere” never expected it to become an awards-season sensation. Still, if you look under the hood, this movie has everything Oscar voters typically spark to: It’s a critically acclaimed box office hit with a veteran star in a showcase role (Michelle Yeoh), a wildly rootable actor making his long-awaited comeback (Ke Huy Quan), and an original, inventive story that concludes with a series of heartwarming scenes. The only downside (and it could prove to be a potent one) is that many older voters just can’t get past the aforementioned sci-fi trappings and dildo fight scenes, and the film’s appeal is therefore lost on them. Will the passion of the academy’s younger and hipper voters be enough to make up that shortfall and push “Everything Everywhere” to the top?‘The Fabelmans’Though we may think of Steven Spielberg as an Oscar staple, it’s been more than two decades since he won his last statuette, for “Saving Private Ryan” (1998). If voters consider the most successful director of all time to be overdue for another little gold man, they might think it fitting to reward him for “The Fabelmans,” the most personal project he’s ever made. This semi-autobiographical family drama was hobbled by headlines about its meager box office take, but it’s hardly the only prestige drama to struggle in theaters this year. And once the nominations are sorted, the film should fare very well on the preferential ballot for best picture, which favors consensus crowd-pleasers.‘The Banshees of Inisherin’Could nearly half of the 20 acting nominations be sewn up by just two movies? If “Everything Everywhere” overperforms, Yeoh, Quan, and supporting actresses Stephanie Hsu and Jamie Lee Curtis could all be nominated. Ditto Martin McDonagh’s “The Banshees of Inisherin,” which I think has an even better shot at earning nominations for all four of its principal actors: leading man Colin Farrell and his supporting co-stars Brendan Gleeson, Barry Keoghan and Kerry Condon. (Sadly, Jenny the donkey was not eligible last time I checked.) And though McDonagh failed to make it into the best director lineup for his last film, “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,” the stunningly photographed vistas of “Inisherin” ought to put him over the top this time.‘Tár’Don’t be fooled by the recent best picture wins for simple-pleasure dramedies like “CODA” and “Green Book”: There is still a significant bloc of highbrow voters within the academy, and I suspect “Tár” will serve as their standard-bearer. Todd Field’s ruthlessly contemporary drama about a disgraced conductor has already entranced critics: The New York Film Critics Circle and Los Angeles Film Critics Association both awarded Cate Blanchett’s lead performance and voted “Tár” the best film of the year (though the West Coast group split the difference on the latter, claiming a tie between “Tár” and “Everything Everywhere”). Field made the best picture lineup back in 2002 for his first film, “In the Bedroom,” and voters will be pleased to see that their early bet on him has more than paid off.‘Avatar: The Way of Water’From left, Tsireya (Bailey Bass), Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña), Neteyam (Jamie Flatters), Lo’ak (Britain Dalton) and Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) in “Avatar: The Way of Water.”20th Century StudiosJames Cameron’s first “Avatar” was presumed to be the runner-up in 2010’s best picture race, which ultimately crowned his ex-wife Kathryn Bigelow’s military drama “The Hurt Locker.” Can “The Way of Water” succeed where the first film failed? I don’t think it’s got much of a chance at actually winning best picture, since Cameron has often said that the franchise is mapped out over five movies, and voters will probably wait until the far-off denouement to decide the ultimate worth of the series, as they did with the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy. Still, a long list of nominations is all but certain, since the movie is both a blockbuster triumph and a dazzling auteurist work that only Cameron could have pulled off.‘Elvis’It’s been 21 years since director Baz Luhrmann scored an Oscar breakthrough with the musical “Moulin Rouge” — which was nominated for eight Oscars and won two — and I expect he’ll be welcomed back in a big way for this glittery biopic of the iconic singer, played by surefire best actor nominee Austin Butler. One of the year’s only adult dramas to succeed in theaters, “Elvis” plays as though “Bohemian Rhapsody” were executed with actual panache, and Luhrmann’s maximalist aesthetic could even push him into the best director lineup, since that branch goes gaga for technical audacity.‘Top Gun: Maverick’If a well-reviewed action sequel becomes the biggest movie of the year and helps bolster struggling theaters, shouldn’t that be enough to cram it into the best picture race? Well, that argument didn’t get “Spider-Man: No Way Home” into last year’s lineup, but domestic box office champ “Top Gun: Maverick” is already off to a better start, picking up best film nominations from the Golden Globes and Critics Choice Awards that eluded Marvel’s web-slinger. But is this Tom Cruise star vehicle actually about something, or is it just a high-flying entertainment? Oscar voters tend to turn their nose up at action sequels — the only one nominated for best picture in the last 15 years was George Miller’s astonishing “Mad Max: Fury Road” — and the next phase of this awards campaign will have to convince them that there’s more to “Top Gun: Maverick” than meets the eye.‘Triangle of Sadness’After “Parasite” won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival nearly four years ago, the upstart film studio Neon successfully leveraged the movie’s international appeal and turned it into an awards-season darling. Can the studio pull off the same feat for Ruben Ostlund’s social satire “Triangle of Sadness,” which also took the Palme and similarly mines class warfare for big laughs and shocking set pieces? It helps that this cruise-ship comedy has a secret weapon in supporting-actress contender Dolly de Leon, who plays a maid-turned-despot: At a time when most contenders are still wary of ascribing too much weight to the controversial Golden Globes, the Filipina actress has drawn headlines for discussing how much the Globe nomination means to her, and many Oscar voters will be eager to extend her awards-season moment.‘Women Talking’Judith Ivey, left, and Claire Foy in “Women Talking.” Michael Gibson/Orion PicturesAfter a big fall-festival launch, Sarah Polley’s well-reviewed Mennonite drama may have waited a little too long to come out in theaters: It was swallowed in limited release over the Christmas weekend, and will have a rough go expanding into new locations until the Oscar nominations are announced. Still, Polley is a respected actress-turned-director, the ensemble is filled with awards-friendly ringers like Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley and Frances McDormand, and the film’s bracing conversations about gender and sexual assault make a strong case for its relevance.‘The Woman King’Gina Prince-Bythewood’s well-mounted action epic about female warriors in 19th-century Africa has an Oscar-winning star in Viola Davis and a lot of handsome tech elements, though I’m concerned that it didn’t manage to make the Oscar shortlists for its superlative costume design and hair and makeup. (At least Terence Blanchard’s thundering score made the cut in its category.) Next week’s Producers Guild nominations could foretell the film’s ultimate fate, since that group likes to recognize rousing theatrical successes and “The Woman King,” which earned a worldwide gross nearly double its $50 million budget, will almost certainly show up there if it’s got the mettle to impress awards voters. More

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      ‘Don’t Make Me Over’: Dionne Warwick’s Documentary Encore

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      A conversation with the five-time Grammy-winning singer who is the subject of a new career-spanning documentary, “Dionne Warwick: Don’t Make Me Over.”Dionne Warwick refuses to stay put. At 82, the five-time Grammy-winning artist is making stops in Hawaii and Vancouver on her One Last Time tour — she won’t say whether it’s truly her last — tweeting (or “twoting,” as she calls it) to her more than half a million followers, and making appearances on “S.N.L.” and on movie soundtracks like Jordan Peele’s “Nope.” When she retires, she said, she’ll move to Brazil.“I will be laying in Bahia, where I want to spend the rest of my life, enjoying the sunshine, the music, the people and me,” Warwick said.In the meantime, Warwick’s next venture is onscreen. In the documentary “Dionne Warwick: Don’t Make Me Over” (which premieres on CNN Jan. 1 and begins streaming on HBO Max thereafter), she, along with well-known interviewees like Bill Clinton, Stevie Wonder and Alicia Keys, discusses her life and her 60-plus-year music career.Directed by Dave Wooley and David Heilbroner, the film details moments from Warwick’s childhood, including singing in her grandfather’s church in Newark, N.J., and chronicles chart-topping hits like “Walk On By” and “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again,” which were made with the producing and songwriting duo Burt Bacharach and Hal David. Those songs challenged the racial barrier between rhythm and blues and pop. (In 1968, Warwick became the first African American woman to win a Grammy in the pop music category.)As Warwick munched on cheese and crackers at the CNN offices in Manhattan, she talked about being a spokeswoman for the Psychic Friends Network, her motivation to support AIDS research and how she met Snoop Dogg and Chance the Rapper. Following are edited excerpts from the conversation.Warwick being interviewed in the documentary. “The fortunate thing is I could not be categorized,” she said. “I continue to preach the fact that music is music.”CNN FilmsThe documentary is titled “Dionne Warwick: Don’t Make Me Over.” What inspired the name?“Don’t Make Me Over” was my first recording, my very first one, and the genesis of that was something I said to both Burt and Hal. I was promised a certain song, “Make It Easy on Yourself,” and they gave that song to Jerry Butler. I was on my way down to do a session with them and when I walked into the studio, I had to let them both know that I was not very happy about them giving my song away, first of all. That was something that they could never, ever do. Don’t even try to change me or make me over. So David put pen to paper.The documentary discusses your upbringing. What was it like growing up in East Orange, N.J.?It was virtually the United Nations. We had every race, color, creed and religion on our street. We were friends, we walked to school together, I had dinner at their homes, they had dinner at my home. We played at the playground together. We were just kids and hung out with friends. How were you able to create music that appealed to all audiences during the 1950s and 1960s, when rhythm and blues and pop music was racially classified?The fortunate thing is I could not be categorized. That was a joy. I look at — I still do this very day — and I continue to preach the fact that music is music. I don’t look at myself as the person that threw the door open. I just paved the way to let people know, “Yeah, Gladys Knight deserved a Grammy, yeah, the Temptations deserved the Grammy, yeah, Diana Ross deserved it.” Of course! We’re singing music that all of you are listening to, so why are you going to put us in a little box? I ain’t going.By donating all the proceeds of the chart-topping song “That’s What Friends Are For,” you’ve helped raise millions for AIDS research. What led you to get involved with the cause and how does it feel to leave such a lasting impact?We were losing performers, we were losing dancers, we were losing hair people, we were losing wardrobe people, cameramen, lighting people.I’ve lost two people in my group of people around me: my hairdresser and my valet both contracted AIDS. So, now, that’s too close. Let me find out what this is about. And I proceeded to get involved with W.H.O., World Health Organization, and we went to all the health departments in different countries to get a handle on not only what they were doing, but why they were not acknowledging that it’s happening in the country. I was able to help them bring their heads out of the sand and face reality.Warwick performing at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1968.David Redfern/Redferns, via Getty ImagesIn the ’90s, you got involved in the Psychic Friends Network. What encouraged that decision?It was during a period of time when my recordings were not being played on radio as much. It was a way to earn a very, very comfortable living. It paid very well — had to keep my lights on, too. So that’s how that all began.I can’t nor would I ever think about taking it seriously. And anybody that does, you have to look at them with a jaundiced eye.You felt very strongly about gangster rap, and set up an early meeting with Snoop Dogg, Suge Knight and others to encourage them to reconsider their lyrics. How did that conversation go?I called a meeting with them, and I gave them a time to be at my home. I told them not one minute before and not one minute after 7 a.m., I want that doorbell to ring. And it did. We sat and talked for quite a few hours. I told them, “You think I’m part of the problem? Make me part of the solution. Tell me what it is.” I said, “I have no problem with you saying whatever you’re feeling; however, there’s a way to say it.”Have you reached out to any other rap artists recently?Chance the Rapper, that was a funny thing as well. Why would you have to put “rapper” in your name when we all know you rap? Duh.He was more surprised that I even knew who he was, and as a result we’ve become friends. He has my phone number, I have his and we do talk. We recorded together, a wonderful song and not one curse word — a very, very positive message. So it’s not like they can’t do it, and if they need to be led a little bit, hey, that must be my job to do.Amid the pandemic, you rose to Twitter royalty. What’s it like to be crowned the queen of Twitter?They gave me the title. I didn’t take it. I didn’t give it to myself. They all decided I was the queen of Twitter. So yeah, OK, I’ll be your queen of Twitter. In fact, I started a new way of saying Twitter, I call it twoting.Twoting? Why twoting?I didn’t want to say “tweet.”When can we expect the next tweet (or twote) from you?I do it when I feel it. I also follow a lot of tweets that are going on, and when I find one that’s not too pleasing to me, you’ll hear from me.What do you think about the Whitney Houston biopic, “Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody”?I’m very protective of her, and I usually don’t talk about her. She’s at rest now, and I will let her do that. She’s at peace, thank God. He’s [Clive Davis, the record producer] assured me that it is about her music, about her legacy, what she was really all about. There’s no need for it to be anything other than that.What do you hope people will gain from the “Don’t Make Me Over” documentary?I’m hoping that people will finally get to know me, and not think they know me. They’ll get to know Dionne. I’m as human as everybody else. More

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      Meet the Newer, Bolder Michelle Williams

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      With “The Fabelmans,” the Oscar-nominated actress moves from minor-key naturalism to more stylized performances: “I wanted to make work that an audience member had to deal with.”“I’ve been working as hard as I know how to make myself ready for a moment when I would meet a role like this,” Michelle Williams said of her performance as Mitzi in “The Fabelmans.”Sinna Nasseri for The New York Times“You’re really organized,” I said to Michelle Williams.“I’m a Virgo,” she replied.On a rainy, late-November afternoon, Williams sat opposite me in a Brooklyn cafe, beaming with the kind of pleasure you can only get from plotting your day out to perfection. As we spoke, her three children were all occupied and accounted for: Her teenage daughter Matilda was at school, her toddler Hart was napping, and her newborn wouldn’t need to be fed for the next hour and a half.For all those things to come together at the same time was nothing short of a mothering miracle, and though her husband, the director Thomas Kail, was out of town, her own mother had come to New York to pitch in with the kids, freeing Williams to arrive at the cafe with the wide-eyed, can-hardly-believe-it expression of someone who had just pulled off a heist.“This is the perfect guilt-free time because nobody needs me,” Williams said, though she noted it isn’t easy to meet the demands of a press tour while breastfeeding: “I’m on somebody else’s timeline, because I’m the food.”Still, she’s doing all she can to promote “The Fabelmans,” a semi-autobiographical family drama from Steven Spielberg where the 42-year-old actress plays Mitzi, a character Spielberg based on his own mother. Though her dreams of being a concert pianist were put aside to raise her family, Mitzi treats child-rearing as a brand-new creative playground: One day, she’ll pack the kids into the car to go chase a tornado, while another time, she’ll impulsively buy a monkey as a family pet.People might look at the eccentric character and think she’s too much, but Mitzi looks at her life and knows it’s not enough. She’s married to dutiful, dull Burt (Paul Dano) but pines for his best friend (Seth Rogen), a transgression her budding-filmmaker son Sammy only cottons onto when he puts Mitzi in front of his lens. You sense that Spielberg, too, is using Williams as a vessel to better understand his late mother: The director has rarely seemed so wowed by a leading lady, shooting Williams with the same awe Sammy exhibits when he films his mother in the grips of an artistic reverie.Williams has already picked up nominations from the Golden Globes and Critics Choice Awards for her live-wire performance. “I’ve been working as hard as I know how to make myself ready for a moment when I would meet a role like this,” she said. At the Gotham Awards, where she picked up a tribute award in November, Williams drew a line all the way back to her work on the teen soap “Dawson’s Creek,” which she starred in at age 16 alongside actors James Van Der Beek and Katie Holmes.Michelle Williams at the Long Island Bar in Brooklyn.Sinna Nasseri for The New York Times“She seemed so different from the other kids, a creature unto herself even then,” said the actress Mary Beth Peil, who played Williams’s grandmother on the show. “Working with her then, her honesty was almost painful. That’s one of the main things I learned from her, that the camera can see honesty. It’s at the root of every breath she takes.”What motivated her to pursue an acting career at such a young age? “It was like a stand-in for selfhood,” Williams said, “like maybe I could get regard for a woman that I was playing and that would somehow transfer to me, this person that I didn’t really know how to inhabit yet.” As she grew older and won parts in Off Broadway plays or indie films like “The Station Agent,” it felt to her “like I was given a little morsel, and I would tuck it away,” she said. “I collected them and strung them along, and then they started adding up.”With her Oscar-nominated roles in “Brokeback Mountain,” “Blue Valentine” and “Manchester by the Sea,” as well as the naturalistic films she has made with the director Kelly Reichardt (their next collaboration, “Showing Up,” comes out this year), Williams established herself as a top-tier actress capable of unvarnished authenticity. But she is keen to experiment in a more heightened register, as she did in 2011 playing Marilyn Monroe in “My Week With Marilyn” and in 2019 with her Emmy-winning role as the dancer Gwen Verdon in the FX series “Fosse/Verdon.”The Projectionist Chronicles a New Awards SeasonThe Oscars aren’t until March, but the campaigns have begun. Kyle Buchanan is covering the films, personalities and events along the way.Best-Actress Battle Royal: A banner crop of leading ladies, including Michelle Yeoh and Cate Blanchett, rule the Oscars’ deepest and most dynamic race.Golden Globe Nominations: Here are some of the most eyebrow-raising snubs and surprises from this year’s list of nominees.Gotham Awards: At the first official show of the season, “Everything Everywhere All at Once” won big.Governors Awards: Stars like Jamie Lee Curtis and Brendan Fraser worked a room full of academy voters at the event, which is considered a barometer of film industry enthusiasm.In an email, Spielberg, who wrote “The Fabelmans” with Tony Kushner, said, “She has a secret energy that poured from her when she played Gwen Verdon. That went a long way into making her my first choice to play Mitzi.”To hear Williams tell it, that shift to bigger, more stylized performances took a concerted effort; in person, she’s much more contained, with a presence as close-cropped as the pixie haircut she often favors. “It’s good for me to live like that for periods of time because it’s not my natural place,” Williams said, smiling as she recalled how much bigger she had to become to inhabit Mitzi Fabelman. “It’s the most wonderful thing to borrow.”Here are edited excerpts from our conversation.Seth Rogen, Paul Dano and Michelle Williams in a scene from “The Fabelmans.”Universal Pictures and Amblin EntertainmentOften, when you watch these kinds of autobiographical coming-of-age movies, the moms get short shrift. But in “The Fabelmans,” the mother-son dynamic feels like the central story.I couldn’t believe it when I started turning pages in this script. My husband was in the room with me, and I kept saying, “It’s just getting better.” Very often when you have a script, you have a great scene and you think, “Oh, that’s going to be splashy.” And this was just page after page of that, just this undulating, gorgeous aliveness. When I finished, I said to my husband, “It’s a feast. They made her a feast.”It took me a long time to wrap my head around the material because the words and ideas are classic Kushner, through the lens of Steven Spielberg. So it’s filmic and it’s theatrical, which is something that really interests me and I’ve been purposefully concentrating on since I started doing theater again. I prep a lot before a movie, and there was so much to grab hold of. It felt more akin to making a mini-series because the material was so rich.What was the furthest reach for you when it came to playing a big character like Mitzi?In the first part of my career, I was doing sitcoms, TV commercials, soap operas, and I started seeing this other style called naturalism. I wanted that for me, but I had to learn what that was and how to inhabit it, and when I felt like I had arrived at that place that I had yearned to belong in — like with Kelly Reichardt, and every indie movie that I made until I was 30 — the next place that I wanted to go was into something that was more expressionist. That felt like a much further distance to cross.I felt like the journey in my 20s was to finding an authentic way to center myself so that I felt natural inside of my own skin and could offer that to other women that I was playing, but then I wanted to shed that skin completely and be able to find entirely new ways of relating to characters that didn’t always bring me along, that didn’t bind me to just myself for the rest of my working life. That required breaking myself down and then rebuilding myself in somebody else’s image, and making bigger choices.“The journey in my twenties was to finding an authentic way to center myself so that I felt natural inside of my own skin and could offer that to other women that I was playing,” Williams said, “but then I wanted to shed that skin completely and be able to find entirely new ways of relating to characters that didn’t always bring me along.”Sinna Nasseri for The New York TimesWhat do you think drew you toward these more stylized characters?I think one of the things that I realized about naturalism — and it’s still a place that I live, I just made my fourth movie with Kelly Reichardt — is that I also wanted to make work that left a mark and that wasn’t open to projection. I wanted to make work that an audience member had to deal with, where there was less interpretation on their part because the interpretation was really my work. I feel like Mitzi belongs there, and Gwen and Marilyn belong there, and the work that I’ve done in theater belongs there. But it took a lot of learning and a lot of mistakes along the way to be comfortable leaving my own skin.I wonder if that spectrum between naturalism and stylization hasn’t been with you since the beginning. Even with something like “Dawson’s Creek,” you were given pages and pages of very dense, stylized dialogue and you had to find a way to make it sound natural.So much dialogue, oh my God. Twelve pages a day, really verbose. And yeah, the situations and scenarios that you’re working through on “Dawson’s Creek” are a little heightened.But I think people appreciate that you don’t disavow that show, and that you actually made a point of drawing a line back to “Dawson’s Creek” in your Gothams speech.Maybe there’s a connection between firstness and lastness, so I’m constantly reconnecting with my time on “Dawson’s Creek” because every project that I end somehow recalls that to me. But it was an incredible kind of training because you’re also learning these really fundamental things, like how to have a conversation with somebody where you’re looking them in the eye but some part of you is also scanning downward to hit your mark. It’s that kind of technical stuff that seems sort of silly and small that still comes in handy for me.And it’s also kind of funny that on that show, Dawson was so obsessed with Spielberg, and now here you are playing Spielberg’s mom.Oh, it’s so weird! I know. It’s so weird.From left, James Van Der Beek, Michelle Williams, Katie Holmes and Joshua Jackson in a “Dawson’s Creek” episode that aired in 1999. “I’m constantly reconnecting with my time on ‘Dawson’s Creek,’” Williams said.Columbia TriStar Television, via Everett CollectionHow did you feel the day before you started shooting “The Fabelmans”?It felt like when the race is about to begin and you’re on the starting block and your feet are itching and you’re in this state of readiness. It was that kind of high.What had you so excited about inhabiting Mitzi?First of all, it feels good to be her. She was filled with music, so there was an emotional vibration running through her body at all times. I think about the scale of the piano, and that was her range: That’s how low she can go and that’s how high she can hit, so to contain all of that in you for a period of time is thrilling. And it’s the way that she approached so many things as, “Won’t this be so much fun? Won’t this make such an excellent memory for my family?” There was creativity in every aspect of her life, from how she played with the children to how she dressed herself and cut her hair. She was an artist in every fingertip.Tell me about her hair, because that helmet bob is a striking look.The hair was the first thing that we talked about. She was so acutely aware of what looked smashing on her — she wore those Peter Pan collars her entire life and they suited her so beautifully — and that curving haircut was her signature. When you look at pictures of her, they look like film stills, because she looks like a character. She was her own creation, and her entire life and her children’s lives were works of art. Ultimately, that’s what still gives me the chills as a mother of three. I can’t think of a better thing to aspire to.Do you feel the same? Are you creating lives for your children that are like works of art?It’s my aspiration. We’ll see when they’re all grown up how I did.Spielberg ends the movie shortly after Mitzi leaves her husband for another man, but what did you know about the rest of his mother’s life that helped inform how you thought of Mitzi?Later in life, she and Steven’s father had a reconnection and spent their final years together. It’s overlapping love stories, which is ultimately why the story is heartbreaking, because this love hadn’t disappeared between these two people — it had changed and turned into something else. There was still enough love in their relationship to hold a family, but in your one and only life, it still wasn’t enough to make her stay. The bravery of that decision to me! And so I never encountered her as being selfish, or unhinged. I thought this is a woman who is living so truthfully, so expressively and so bravely, and then giving that gift to each of her children because they saw her do it.Many pundits thought you were a lock to win the supporting-actress Oscar for this role, but instead, you chose to be campaigned as a lead in a very competitive awards race.I think that was a conversation that was happening outside of the core group that made this movie, and I don’t really know why there was a disparity. Although I haven’t seen the movie, the scenes that I read, the scenes that I prepped, the scenes that we shot, the scenes that I’m told are still in the movie, are akin to me with experiences that I have had playing roles considered lead. So for myself, or for anybody involved in the movie, I think we were all in unspoken agreement.“She has a secret energy that poured from her when she played Gwen Verdon,” Steven Spielberg, the director of “The Fabelmans,” said. “That went a long way into making her my first choice to play Mitzi.”Sinna Nasseri for The New York TimesYou still haven’t seen “The Fabelmans”?I’m not able to watch my own work. I think the last thing I saw was “Meek’s Cutoff” in a theater with my daughter, so it’s been about a decade.How come?When I’m working on something, I feel so completely inside of it, and when I switch to an audience member, it alters my experience — and the experience is ultimately what I’m in it for. I can’t seem to go back and forth between the two ways to be involved in storytelling, even though I would like to be strong enough and capable of watching myself, figuring out what I would like to technically adjust and then applying it to the next time. I’ve tried to do that, but I’m getting internal bounce-back. I’m happier and maybe healthier just staying in my personal experience of playing these women.Did that make the end of filming “The Fabelmans” more fraught, because it was the last experience you’d really have with the character?On our last day, I grieved like somebody had actually died. I shocked myself by how grief-stricken I was to say goodbye to the woman that I had inhabited and the relationships that I had with these other characters. I still miss being her and having that spirit coursing through mine, so it’s nice to remember her and the urgency of that period of filming. When you’re making something, you feel like the whole world is available material — everything is tingling and anything is possible — and then, once the filming is over, you go back to breakfast tables. Which I clearly love, because I keep doubling down on kids.You seem to throw yourself into that part of your life with equal relish.It’s kind of a great way to live, to careen between these two realities of this incredibly full-on work experience and then this incredibly domestic life. I enjoy the extremity of both, but something else this experience has given me is the reminder to try and synthesize both sides of my brain.In my real life, I’m very practical, I’m very organized. I’m always making lists and feeling great if I check them off, and my work life is a place where I let all of that go and I allow myself to live unbound from time and order and right and wrong. I want to give myself more of that in my everyday life. It doesn’t have to be so linear, and Mitzi is my best reminder for that: Once she knew what she wanted, she wasted no time taking that for herself. It’s how we should all live, don’t you think? More

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      Jeremy Renner Is in Critical Condition After Snow Plowing Accident

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      The actor, known for his role as Hawkeye in Marvel’s Avengers movies, had surgery, his representative said.Update: Jeremy Renner was run over by a 7-ton snow plow, authorities said. The actor Jeremy Renner was in critical but stable condition after being hospitalized with serious injuries from an accident while plowing snow in Nevada, his representative said in a statement.Mr. Renner had surgery on Monday and had “suffered blunt chest trauma and orthopedic injuries” from the accident, the representative, Samantha Mast, said in a statement, adding that Mr. Renner remained in the intensive care unit. The sheriff’s office in Washoe County, Nev., said Mr. Renner had suffered a “traumatic injury” in Reno on Sunday morning. He was the only person involved in the accident and was flown to a nearby hospital, the sheriff’s office said. Mr. Renner has a house in the Mount Rose-Ski Tahoe area, according to The Reno-Gazette Journal.Mr. Renner, 51, has played Hawkeye, a member of Marvel’s Avengers superheroes team, in several movies and a television series. He has also twice been nominated for an Oscar, for his roles in “The Hurt Locker” (2008) and “The Town” (2010).Ms. Mast said Mr. Renner and his family were “tremendously overwhelmed and appreciative of the outpouring of love and support from his fans.”Mr. Renner has shared several updates on social media this winter as the Reno area received large amounts of snow.“Nearly done With sledding hill For the kids,” said a caption on an Instagram video clip showing a snow plow last week.“Lake Tahoe snowfall is no joke,” he said last month in a tweet that showed a vehicle covered in snow.Mr. Renner stars in “Mayor of Kingstown,” a thriller whose second season is set to be released on the Paramount+ streaming service on Jan. 15. Another show, “Rennervations,” which follows Mr. Renner as he helps communities to reimagine purpose-built vehicles, is scheduled to air on Disney+ early this year.The National Weather Service issued a winter storm warning over the weekend for the areas around Reno, in addition to a warning that was in place for the Lake Tahoe Basin. On Saturday and Sunday, the Tahoe Basin at lake level received between 20 and 24 inches of snow, the Weather Service in Reno said.The Weather Service on Sunday advised those with travel plans through the Sierra Nevada to prepare for winter weather driving conditions and warned of icy roads as additional storms arrive. About 22,000 customers in Nevada were without power early Monday after the storm, according to PowerOutage.us, which aggregates data from utilities across the country. More

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      For ‘Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio,’ a Star Built From Tiny Gears and 3-D Printing

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      The studio behind stop-motion hits like ‘Coraline’ and ‘Fantastic Mr. Fox’ started work on the new film in 2008 but had to wait for the technology to catch up.From its earliest stages of development more than 15 years ago, “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio” was envisioned as a stop-motion production. The director explained, “It was clear to me that the film needed to be done in stop-motion to serve the story about a puppet that lives in a world populated by other puppets who think they are not puppets.”He also knew that key members of the cast had to be built by the British studio Mackinnon and Saunders. “They are the best in the world,” he said in a recent video interview. “The starring roles of the movie needed to be fabricated by them.” As the producer Lisa Henson put it, “They do things that other puppet builders do not have the patience or the expertise to do.”“Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio” is the latest example of the efflorescence of stop-motion animation. For decades, the technique was overshadowed by the more expressive drawn animation and, later, by computer-generated imagery. But new technologies have allowed artists to create vivid performances that rival other media.Artists and technicians at Mackinnon and Saunders pushed stop-motion technology in an entirely new direction for “Corpse Bride” (2005) by inventing systems of tiny gears that fit inside puppets’ heads. The animators adjusted the gears between frames to create subtle expressions: Victor, the title character’s groom, could raise an eyebrow or lift the edge of his lip in the start of smile. This technique also enlivened “Fantastic Mr. Fox” (2009) and “Frankenweenie” (2012).“Tim Burton or Guillermo del Toro will bring us the story, then give us the space to say, ‘What can we do with these puppet characters? Let’s find something new to do,’” said Ian Mackinnon, a founder of the firm.Mackinnon and Saunders’ credits include, from left, “Corpse Bride,” “Fantastic Mr. Fox” and “Frankenweenie.” Warner Bros.; Fox Searchlight; DisneyHe likened the mechanics inside puppet heads to components of a Swiss watch. “Those heads are not much bigger than a ping-pong ball or a walnut,” he said, explaining that the animator moves the gears by putting a tiny tool into the character’s ear or the top of its head. “The gears are linked to the puppet’s silicone skin, enabling the animator to create the nuances you see on a big cinema screen,” he said.The Projectionist Chronicles a New Awards SeasonThe Oscars aren’t until March, but the campaigns have begun. Kyle Buchanan is covering the films, personalities and events along the way.Best-Actress Battle Royal: A banner crop of leading ladies, including Michelle Yeoh and Cate Blanchett, rule the Oscars’ deepest and most dynamic race.Golden Globe Nominations: Here are some of the most eyebrow-raising snubs and surprises from this year’s list of nominees.Gotham Awards: At the first official show of the season, “Everything Everywhere All at Once” won big.Governors Awards: Stars like Jamie Lee Curtis and Brendan Fraser worked a room full of academy voters at the event, which is considered a barometer of film industry enthusiasm.The introduction of geared heads was part of a series of overlapping waves of innovation in stop-motion that brought visuals to the screen that had never been possible. Nick Park and the artists at the British Aardman Animations sculpted new subtleties into clay animation in “Creature Comforts” (1989) and “The Wrong Trousers” (1993). Meanwhile, Disney’s “The Nightmare Before Christmas” (1993) showcased the new technology of facial replacement. A library of three-dimensional expressions was sculpted and molded for each character; an animator snapped out one section of the face and replaced it with a slightly different one between exposures. Then the Portland, Ore.-based Laika Studios pushed this technique further, using 3-D printing to create faces, beginning with “Coraline” (2009).For “Pinocchio,” which debuted on Netflix a few months after Disney released Robert Zemeckis’s partly animated version of the story, most of the puppets were built at ShadowMachine in Portland, where most of the film was shot. Candlewick, the human boy Pinocchio befriends in the film, “has threads set into the corners of his mouth which are attached to a double-barreled gear system,” explained Georgina Hayns, an alumna of Mackinnon and Saunders who was director of character fabrication at ShadowMachine. “If you turn the gear inside the ear clockwise, it pulls the upper thread and creates a smile. If you turn it anticlockwise, it pulls a lower thread which produces a frown. It really is amazing.”That was the result of a process that began in 2008, when the Mackinnon and Saunders team made some early prototypes. “By the time Netflix greenlit the film in 2018, we were ready and waiting,” Mackinnon said. “If we’d tried to do ‘Pinocchio’ 10 or 15 years ago, the technology wouldn’t have been there.”Georgina Hayns served as director of character fabrication for the film.Jason Schmidt/NetflixAlthough mechanical heads are used for most of the key characters in the film, Pinocchio himself was animated with replacement faces. Because he has to look like he’s made of wood, he needed to have a hard surface, the animation supervisor Brian Leif Hansen said, explaining that 3,000 of the faces were printed. “His expressions are snappy; the mechanical faces look softer and more fluid compared to Pinocchio. He’s built differently and animated in a different way to set him apart.”The character is the first metal 3-D-printed puppet, Hansen said. Because he’s skinny, “the only way they could make him strong enough was to print the puppet in metal. He’s a strong little guy, quite difficult to break. The animators loved animating him.”Thanks to a team of engineers and the puppet designer Richard Pickersgill, “we’ve moved the replacement technology forward a little bit,” Mackinnon said. The designer “gave Pinocchio spindly limbs and joints that look like Geppetto carved them by hand.”The studio spent a year and a half prototyping Pinocchio before making the first production model. Eventually more than 20 puppets were built to ensure the animators had enough.Several versions of Pinocchio were made for the film. via Mackinnon & Saunders; Jason Schmidt/NetflixThe studio has made figures as big as the “life-sized” Martians in “Mars Attacks” (1996), but most stop-motion puppets are about the size of Barbie dolls — Pinocchio is 9.5 inches tall. The sophisticated creations meant del Toro and his co-director, Mark Gustafson, could get the performances they needed. They looked for inspiration to the films of Hayao Miyazaki, whose characters think, pause and change their minds as they move.“I had a road-to-Damascus moment watching ‘My Neighbor Totoro’ where the father tries to put his shoe on: He misses it twice, then gets it on the third try,” del Toro explained. “Miyazaki says if you animate the ordinary, it will be extraordinary. So we went for failed acts because we wanted to breathe life into these characters.”He estimated that 35 shots had to be redone because “we said, ‘The character is moving, but I don’t see the character thinking or feeling.’ The little failed gestures or hesitations before a movement tell you, ‘This is a living character.’”Gustafson said that failed gestures were especially difficult “because the intention has to be visible — it’s not actually a mistake. I think our brains are really wired to recognize when a gesture is false somehow, so we worked really hard at getting those things to feel as natural as we could.”Replacement faces were used for Pinocchio to make his expressions look snappy. By contrast, characters with mechanical gears like Count Volpe had a softer look.NetflixArtists can change or rework computer-generated and 2-D animation during production, but once stop-motion animators begin moving a puppet, they have to continue to the end of the scene — or start over. They can’t alter what they’ve already filmed, any more than an actor can stop midstride, walk backward a few steps and cross the set differently.“Stop-motion is the art form in animation that is most analogous to live-action, because you are doing real movement, from point A to point B,” del Toro said. “You cannot edit. You’re dealing with real sets and real props, lit by real light. Stop-motion is to live-action what Ginger Rogers is to Fred Astaire: We do the same steps, backwards in high heels.” More

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      Diego Calva and the Detour That Took Him to ‘Babylon’

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      A VHS tape of “Peter and the Wolf,” the Disney animated short from 1946, played on repeat at home when Diego Calva was growing up in the 1990s.Both terrified and tantalized by that first cinematic obsession as a child, Calva discovered the power of audiovisual storytelling in the unnerving leitmotif of the villainous wolf.“Without being able to put in words, it made me realize that I was a little box of feelings and that movies could make them surface,” Calva explained, speaking in Spanish. “That hooked me.”After only one major independent movie, the actor from Mexico City is now starring alongside Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie in his first mega-budget American production: the director Damien Chazelle’s silent-era revel “Babylon,” about the grotesque origins of the Hollywood film industry and why movies fascinate us.Calva, 30, recently received a Golden Globe nomination for best actor in a musical or comedy for his performance as the Mexican-born Manny Torres, who slowly moves up the ranks in 1920s Hollywood — from catch-all production assistant to influential producer.Calva with Brad Pitt in “Babylon,” the Mexican star’s first big-budget American feature. Scott Garfield/Paramount Pictures, via Associated PressHis character functions as the story’s driving force: as both the link between Pitt’s and Robbie’s characters — two successful, often deranged actors — and as the viewer’s guide to this decadent world. Calva gives Manny an adoring naïveté about the movies, which fuels the character’s determination to become a part of them, even if his devotion eventually backfires.While Calva worked hard to win the part, performing wasn’t his original dream. Long before Hollywood called, Calva had ambitions to become a writer-director, as he explained in an interview at a hotel in Beverly Hills. The tall, easygoing novice wore a preppy look comprised of a gray sweater vest over a white T-shirt, black slacks and a pair of shiny black shoes.From a young age, he surrounded himself with friends a few years older who were making short films. Like Manny, Calva helped out in miscellaneous positions behind the scenes of those independent shoots, whether it was catering or holding a boom mic.On one such set, he was asked to step in for an actor who hadn’t shown up, which led to more jobs, mostly unpaid, in front of the camera. He eventually landed his first lead in a feature film, appearing in the director Julio Hernández Cordón’s 2015 gay drama “I Promise You Anarchy,” a festival hit.‘Babylon’: The Essence and the Excesses of the 1920sDamien Chazelle directs Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie in  a tale about Hollywood’s good and sometimes very bad old days.Review: “There’s something juvenile and paradoxically puritanical about Chazelle’s focus on the characters’ drinking and drugging,” our critic writes.Characters: “Babylon” draws on film history just enough to flatter cinephiles and risk their ire. Here is a guide to the real-life figures behind the epic.Visuals: Chazelle and the production designer Florencia Martin discuss how they sought to convey the mythical nature of 1920s Hollywood.Hairstyle: The silent-screen star played by Robbie wears her locks long and frizzy — and that’s by design.The story follows two male skateboarders in a tumultuous romance, as they become involved with criminals trafficking human blood on the black market.On a friend’s recommendation, Hernández Cordón checked out Calva’s Facebook profile. Afterward, the director eagerly reached out to Calva, who had been skating since early adolescence.“Within five minutes of meeting Diego, I knew he was the right person for the part because of his confidence and charisma,” Hernández Cordón said on a video call from Mexico City.While there was no formal casting process, Calva and his co-star, Eduardo Eliseo Martinez, had to agree to the intimate scenes in the screenplay. Their openness to portraying intense desire solidified the director’s trust in them.“I’ve always considered myself a bit punk and I love skating,” Calva said, “so the movie was like bringing to life some situations I was already going through at the time.”As Hernández Cordón pointed out, Calva straddles the line between his middle-class upbringing, raised by a single mother who instilled in him an affinity for the arts, and the street smarts attained by wandering a large metropolis with kids from other socioeconomic backgrounds.“I knew Diego had an innate talent, but I worried that he wouldn’t realize the gift he has,” Hernández Cordón said. “I’m very happy that he’s starting a new chapter with ‘Babylon.’”Calva is up for a Golden Globe for his turn in “Babylon.”Carlos Jaramillo for The New York TimesThat introduction to performing professionally, however, didn’t dazzle Calva enough to make him push his filmmaking aspirations aside.He went on to enroll at the Centro de Capacitación Cinematográfica, one of Mexico’s pre-eminent film schools, to study directing. But to stay afloat financially, Calva took on acting work, which created a conflict with the institution’s policies.Ultimately, he chose to leave the school and returned to acting full time, appearing on TV series and in supporting parts on the big screen, and putting on acting workshops for children.It was during this period of doubt about his future that the opportunity to audition for the third season of the Netflix hit series “Narcos: Mexico” arrived. He aced it. And while playing the real-life drug lord Arturo Beltrán Leyva on the show introduced him to production on a larger scale, Calva couldn’t anticipate what would soon come his way.As Damien Chazelle searched, in late 2019, for a fresh face to star in “Babylon,” he came across Calva’s image amid a stack of headshots. The Oscar-winning director was struck by the actor’s gaze.“There was something of a dreamer in his eyes, something of a poet,” Chazelle said via video. “But I had no idea if he could act.”The character he envisioned Calva for, Manny, is partly inspired by two Latin American filmmakers whose careers started to take off in the 1920s: Enrique Juan Vallejo, the Mexican cinematographer and director, and René Cardona, the prolific Cuban-born director.Calva submitted several self-taped auditions and eventually met with Chazelle online during the early months of the Covid pandemic. The more intrigued Chazelle became by Calva, the more it also became apparent that the actor had limited experience and that his English needed work.Chazelle and Olivia Hamilton, his wife and a producer of the film, “debated whether it was a gamble worth taking with Diego,” Chazelle said. “She had this full 100 percent unwavering belief in him.”Several months into the casting process, Calva began to feel overwhelmed by the life-changing magnitude of the opportunity, which seemed closer to materializing but not yet certain. Aside from executing Chazelle’s increasingly specific notes about his line delivery, improving his English became a priority.In late 2020, Calva finally traveled to Los Angeles to meet with Chazelle and Robbie, who would play Nellie LaRoy, a fictional starlet and Manny’s love interest.Using his cellphone, Chazelle filmed the chemistry read between Calva and Robbie in his backyard. Their palpable energy convinced him that Calva could deliver on his potential.“He had this kind of Al Pacino-level ability to command the camera without seeming to do anything,” Chazelle said. In fact, Pacino’s arc from innocence to corruption as Michael Corleone in “The Godfather” films served as a key reference for Calva’s turn.Robbie admired Calva’s ability to improvise in his second language.“It’s so transformative to act with him because he’s so present that you forget you’re doing a scene,” Robbie said. “He was the greatest scene partner I could ever wish for.”Calva opposite Margot Robbie in “Babylon.” She said Calva is “so present you forget you’re doing a scene.”Scott Garfield/Paramount Pictures, via Associated PressFor Calva, the parallels between him and Manny feel almost like docu-fiction. “I identify with him in wanting to belong in the world of the movies,” he said. The actor’s wide-eyed reactions to an epic set piece early in the sweeping story came from genuine emotion.“My first day on a Hollywood set was also the character’s first day on a Hollywood set,” Calva explained. “All of the expressions of surprise you see on my face are real.”By the time one of the final scenes was shot, in which Manny watches the musical “Singin’ in the Rain” and cries, Calva had been immersed in the universe of Chazelle’s movie for nearly eight months. For that emotional moment, the director asked him to replay “Babylon” in its entirety, from Manny’s point of view, via facial expressions.“It’s such a crazy piece of direction, and he does it,” Robbie said. “You feel everything you’ve felt for the last three hours play out on his face in a few seconds.”“I needed an actor who could really dig deep and summon something,” Chazelle said. “It’s the hardest kind of acting to do because you don’t have the benefit of words, language or even body movement. You have to do it all just in your face, in your eyes.”As Manny rises in Hollywood, he loses perspective, even denying his Mexican identity and claiming to be from Spain. Calva, grounded in advice from his mother, whom he considers his best friend, said he believed that wouldn’t happen to him.“I don’t want to lose my childlike outlook on life, my ability for wonder,” Calva said. “I want to remember the road back home and know that if I make mistakes I won’t lose myself.”For now, Calva plans to remain in Mexico City and build his burgeoning career, but whenever he’s wanted on this side of the border, the actor will joyfully oblige.“They invited me to this party,” Calva said with a hint of mischievous glee. “Getting me out of Hollywood is going to be difficult.” More