Movies

Subterms

    More stories

    • 100 Shares99 Views

      in Movies

      ‘The Killer’ Review: Stylistic Action Without the Heart

      by

      In this South Korean film, a teenage girl kidnapped by human traffickers brings an assassin out of retirement to save her.It was only days ago that the retired assassin Ui-gang (Jang Hyuk) was enjoying a happy life with his wife (Bang Eun-jung). Now, after the kidnapping of a girl in the director Choi Jae-hoon’s muscular action flick “The Killer,” Ui-gang is facing down a barrage of goons in a narrow hallway to rescue her. He doesn’t flinch when an ax whizzes past his ear. Instead, with unblinking precision, he tears through two would-be killers while a shocked group of tough guys watch in fear from an elevator.Choi spends the first half of the film building back to this moment: Ui-Gang’s wife wants to take a trip with her friend, who has a teenage daughter, Yoon-ji (Lee Seo-young). An unamused Ui-gang is charged with babysitting the girl while the pair go on vacation. Soon after they leave, the 17-year-old is kidnapped by a sex-trafficking ring with Russian ties. Whoever is pulling the strings specifically wants Yoon-ji and Ui-gang needs to kill that person to save the girl.While the tightly choreographed action scenes in “The Killer” take their cue from “John Wick” and “The Man From Nowhere,” the film lacks heart.Adapted from the novel “The Girl Who Deserves to Die” by Bang Jin-ho, the screenwriter Nam Ji-woong’s undercooked script leaves the interpersonal dynamics between Ui-gang and his wife underwritten. While the nimble Jang holds together the robust action sequences — bloody freakouts often captured in slow motion — no one else grounds any of the scenes with any emotion. Consequently, “The Killer” fails to land a real knockout blow.The KillerNot rated. In Korean, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. In theaters. More

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in Movies

      ‘My Name Is Sara’ Review: Keeping Secrets in Close Quarters

      by

      In this intermittently powerful if somewhat stiff-jointed Holocaust drama, a Jewish girl poses as a gentile and works as a nanny for a Ukrainian farmer and his wife.In the Holocaust drama “My Name Is Sara,” a Jewish girl hides out with a Ukrainian farming family and works as a nanny in exchange for food and shelter. Posing as a gentile, Sara (Zuzanna Surowy), tells the farmer, Pavlo (Eryk Lubos), and his wife, Nadya (Michalina Olszanska), that her name is Manya and that she has run away from a troubled home life.Pavlo and especially Nadya appear to harbor suspicions about her story and lack of papers. Nadya repeatedly tests Sara. She asks her to cross herself, feeds her pork and summons her to help the boys with Christian prayers — something that Sara, for reasons revealed later on, does with relative ease. But even if the household mildly warms to Sara, the danger of discovery does not abate for nearly two years.The film is sharp at illustrating how Sara is never totally safe, and how survival requires improvising again and again. Anti-Semitism is all around her even apart from the occupying Nazis. When she discovers that Nadya is having an affair, the balance of leverage and loyalties grows even more complicated.Directed by Steven Oritt and written by David Himmelstein, the movie dramatizes some of the real wartime experiences of Sara Shapiro, born Sara Goralnik, who died in 2018. While the suspense and power of her story come through, the film can be clunkily expository and, with regard to tensions between Sara and Pavlo, frustratingly vague. Furthermore, having the Ukrainians mostly speak English with one another — despite the presence of Polish, Russian and German elsewhere in the movie — distracts from the verisimilitude.My Name Is SaraNot rated. In English, Polish, German and Russian, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 51 minutes. In theaters. More

    • 150 Shares139 Views

      in Movies

      A Global Hit, ‘Notre Dame de Paris’ Finally Lands in New York

      by

      The splashy show, an example par excellence of what makes modern French musicals distinctive, begins a run at Lincoln Center.When Americans are asked to name French musicals, their go-to is “Les Misérables,” which opened in Paris in 1980 before an extensively retooled English version went on to conquer the world a few years later.That, or some of the films that Jacques Demy directed in the 1960s, like “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg” and “The Young Girls of Rochefort.”Usually not mentioned on our shores are the wildly popular homegrown stage musicals that appeared in France in the late 1990s. But now the most famous of them, “Notre Dame de Paris,” is having its New York premiere at the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center on Wednesday, and will run there through July 24.One of its creators has issues with the terminology used to describe his work, though.“I don’t think of ‘Notre Dame de Paris’ as musical theater,” the composer Richard Cocciante said by video from Rome, where he was preparing for a concert tour in Italy. “For me it’s a people’s opera. That’s because it’s entirely sung-through. We don’t call the numbers arias, though: ‘Belle’ or ‘Le temps des cathédrales’ stand alone as songs,” he added, mentioning two of the show’s many sweeping ballads and its biggest hits.The show, a spectacle with a cast of 30, made its debut in Paris in 1998.Alessandro DobiciBased, like “Les Misérables,” on an epic 19th-century novel by Victor Hugo (which also inspired the Disney animated film “The Hunchback of Notre Dame,” to name just one of many adaptations), “Notre Dame de Paris” successfully exploited a distinctively French approach to modern stage musicals.The lyricist Luc Plamondon already had a successful career writing for artists both in his native Quebec (a certain belter released an album of his songs, “Dion chante Plamondon,” in 1992) and in France, where he wrote the lyrics for the musical “Starmania” in the late 1970s. (That perennial favorite is returning to the Paris stage in November.)Looking for another long-form project two decades later, Plamondon thought that “Notre Dame de Paris” would be a fitting source and called up Cocciante, who happened to have a tape of odds-and-ends melodies laying around.“The first song began with him singing ‘Time … da-da-da,’” Plamondon, 80, hummed on the phone. He had been thinking of the scene in the 1956 film adaptation in which Anthony Quinn, as the hunchback, Quasimodo, begs Gina Lollobrigida’s Esmeralda, the object of all the men’s attentions, for water. “He’s chained to the wheel and he goes ‘Belle … belle …’” Plamondon continued, quoting the French word for beautiful. “That gave me the idea to replace ‘time’ with ‘belle’ in the song.”And they were off. “From then on it gushed out of both us,” Cocciante, 76, said. “We wrote ‘Notre Dame de Paris’ in a kind of trance.”Hélène Ségara as Esmeralda in the original 1998 production of “Notre Dame de Paris.”Stephane Cardinale/Sygma, via Getty ImagesIn the French answer to a backers’ audition, he played the score on the piano and sang all the parts for the producer Charles Talar, who signed on and booked a run at the Palais des Congrès in Paris for the fall of 1998.It was fitting for Talar to get that venue, which is not a traditional theater but a cavernous concert hall, because he came from the music industry: He wanted to release an album first, then build on it to sell the stage show. It’s an approach Andrew Lloyd Webber successfully used for “Jesus Christ Superstar” and “Evita,” but overall it’s not common in the United States and Britain, where a show precedes its recording.“He assumed he could activate the networks he had built and use some of the same strategies he used to sell records,” Nicolas Talar said on Zoom, recalling his father’s game plan. (Charles Talar died in 2020.) “The idea was to familiarize audiences with the music before the show started. The specificity of French musicals is that we promote them the way we would promote a pop record. If one or two songs become popular, you’re the star of the moment, you get on television and people want to see you,” he added. “The only way to hear ‘Belle’ live was to see the musical.”That song, a trio for the three men in love with Esmeralda, was released in the spring of 1998, months before the show’s opening, and went on to become the biggest-selling single of the year in France.“There was this miracle — I don’t know how else to describe it — of ‘Belle,’” said Daniel Lavoie, 73, who played the archdeacon Frollo in the original production and is back in the cassock for the New York run. “It was almost 5 minutes, which was inconceivable on the radio at the time because they didn’t play anything longer than 3 minutes. I remember that at our first TV appearance we were asked to do the song again. We knew then we were onto something.”Another number, “Le temps des cathédrales,” was almost as popular — many Americans might have discovered it on the 2015 Josh Groban album “Stages” — cementing the status of “Notre Dame” as the It show that year. And unlike in the United States, where stage personalities don’t tend to make a dent on the Billboard Hot 100, it turned the cast members Garou, Patrick Fiori and Hélène Ségara into pop stars. (Lavoie already had an established career as a singer by then.)“Notre Dame” was so huge that other producers followed in Talar’s footsteps, most prominently Dove Attia, who was behind the popular “Les Dix Commandements” (2000), “Le Roi Soleil” (2005) and “Mozart, l’opéra rock” (2009). That last was among the few to actually, er, rock, which may partly help explain why those shows have not had much of an impact in English-speaking countries, where the tolerance for a high ratio of power ballads seems to be lower than in France, Russia or South Korea.A decisive move by the “Notre Dame” team was to have the cast sing live to recorded tracks, which are still used in productions worldwide, though the New York engagement will supplement them with a full orchestra. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” Lavoie said in English, before reverting back to French. “‘Notre Dame de Paris’ was conceived as a show outside of time.”“Notre Dame” has been translated into eight languages and performed in 23 countries, though its producers now prefer presenting it in the original French, which is how its cast of 30 will perform it in New York (with English supertitles). Still, this and similar musicals have faced an uphill battle to win over reviewers at home.“Musical theater doesn’t get much critical support in France,” said Laurent Valière, the producer and host of the weekly program “42e Rue” on French public radio as well as the author of a book about musicals. “The press pans it — sometimes with good reason and sometimes not.” (Full disclosure: I have been a guest commentator on the show.)The French hit factory seems to have hit a snag in recent years as it strains to find successors to the blockbusters of the 2000s. There are oddities like the biomusical “Bernadette de Lourdes,” which is based on the true story of a young girl who claimed to see the Virgin Mary and plays in Lourdes, the town where it all happened. In a different vein is “Résiste,” a jukebox musical based on France Gall’s pop songbook that benefited from a live band playing the original arrangements and contributions from the rising choreographer Marion Motin.Still, “Notre Dame de Paris” endures. “Another distinctive trait is that no matter where it’s playing, it’s staged the same way,” said Nicolas Talar, who is now producing the show and copresenting it in New York. (He also has producing credits on Broadway’s “Funny Girl” and “Moulin Rouge! The Musical.”)“Sometimes we wonder if the show has become outdated, but the themes are evergreen and the music was intentionally arranged to sound timeless, so we keep postponing making changes,” he added. “So far audiences haven’t complained and the show is doing well, so we’re staying the course.” More

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Movies

      Abubakr Ali Gets a Boost From Whale-Watching and Eid Fashions

      by

      As the first Arab Muslim lead in a comic book adaptation, the Egyptian American actor lists the things guiding him as he steps into the spotlight.Growing up in Pasadena, the actor Abubakr Ali never thought he’d play many lead roles. Even after coming up through the acting program at New York University and then the Yale School of Drama — where he graduated alongside the playwright Jeremy O. Harris and “The Gilded Age” actress Louisa Jacobson, the daughter of Meryl Streep — he’d become used to a world in which an Egyptian-born Arab American like himself would be relegated to the margins.When a script for Billy Porter’s directorial debut, “Anything’s Possible,” landed on his lap, he was too busy to thoroughly read and understand his part, but submitted a self-taped audition video anyway. It was during callbacks that he realized he was up for the lead in a classic, John Hughes-style high school rom-com, which starts streaming July 22 on Amazon Prime Video. Ali stars opposite the actress Eva Reign, who is trans.“I had never in my life seen a script where someone like me, or from my background, is a lead, period,” he said on a video call from his apartment in Harlem. “Being used to this industry, I just assumed it was a random side character, because the reality is that ours are two bodies not normally seen in these roles.”He booked the gig, and two days into the film’s shoot last year got a call: He’d landed the title role in “Grendel,” an upcoming Netflix series, which will make him the first Arab Muslim lead in a comic book adaptation.After an early Saturday morning of Eid prayer and working out, the actor, 31, delved into 10 things guiding him through the suddenly watershed year.These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1. Whale-watching This is the nerdiest, stupidest thing about me, but I just love water. Being around bodies of water perks me up, even if I’m just on a car ride and see one. Almost anytime I’m in Southern California, or come anywhere that has whales nearby, I’ll see if I can get on a boat to watch whales. There’s a humbling effect that you feel seeing these giant [expletive] just out in the world daily, doing their thing, moving around. It reminds you that there are things that are bigger than us, having an experience as beautiful as our own.2. Shopping for books (many of which he won’t read) I kind of browse like my immigrant mom does at Macy’s, but at the bookstore, where I just show up because I have nothing better to do. I walk around and see if the store’s employees have any recommendations, and walk away with, like, $100 worth of books, knowing full well I’m only going to read one of them. I’m very vibe-driven when it comes to picking out books. I wish I had a more sophisticated reason, but a good cover will do the job for me.3. The Rose Bowl’s Stadium Fitness program I grew up as an athlete, and my first job was teaching tennis. This was a business I knew through a family friend of mine I met while teaching and it’s a great space to just be outside, move your body and be social. It’s like Barry’s Bootcamp but chill; there’s a familial aspect that feels like home to me. There’s a 75-year-old couple I got to know through the program who become like my surrogate grandparents. It really is a space for everyone, which is beautiful.4. A picture of his family at his N.Y.U. graduation My dad passed away a few years ago, and he was probably the hardest-working and most generous person I know. Seeing this picture of my parents, sister and I reminds me to not forget where I came from. We came into this country with four of us sharing a one-bedroom for two, three years, so it always reminds me to work as hard as my dad did, and with the level of generosity that he had.5. Softness I had a professor at N.Y.U., Orlando Pabotoy, and I don’t think my career, or life, would be where they are were it not for him. He came up one day and said, “Abu, not this [clenching a fist], but this [extending the arm].” I fully recognize that it’s a privilege to be able to allow yourself to feel, but we live in such a jaded, hardened world that I like to remind myself to connect to a softness and openness.Billy [Porter] is very much an actor’s actor, and I was fortunate he trusted me with this character [in “Anything’s Possible”], and allowed me to make the stupid acting choices, to be a little dumb in the best way. The main thing I stuck to was the character’s sort-of lankiness. You don’t see that in most romantic leads, that softness.6. Sabry’s restaurant in Queens It’s this Egyptian seafood restaurant in Little Egypt, where I will very likely be going to tonight. It’s a great place, with amazing food, that reminds me of home a lot: You can order and kind of talk casually in Arabic with everyone; they’ll have a soccer game playing in the background. What I love about it is that it’s very much like Egypt, in its approach, where the waiters are chilling and you really have to tag someone down — and I say that with all the love in my heart. That’s how it is over there. You can get fire seafood and it’s unbelievably cheap. They have the fish sitting on ice, you pick the one you want, and walk out with a $40 bill. Which, for New York seafood, is wild.7. His Yale classmates There were so few of us, and I think something happened with my class where we were really keen on challenging everything around us and having conversations about how to move the industry and form forward. Every single one of them are people I will forever be grateful for, because they gave me a voice, in a way, in relation to my work. Before school, I’d always been kind of, “I’m an actor, I’m here to play a role the best way I can.” Working with them taught me to have something to say behind everything I do, to speak from where I am within my identity.8. Smuggling candy into the movies The candy you can actually stuff somewhere before going in. I’ll always get one of the more niche M & Ms, like caramel or peanut butter. I don’t mix them with the popcorn because they always get lost in there, so I’ll try to scoop them separately, but at the same time. The whole ordeal is genuinely disturbing to watch. If I ever have the money to do it, I would get one of those Coca-Cola Freestyles where you can pick a billion different options, and just go to town.9. “The Seagull” by Anton Chekhov I’ve always been a fan, but if ever I feel bad as an actor, I always look back to when we were doing a production [at Yale], and Meryl Streep was at one of the shows. She comes up to me after — I’ll never forget this — grabs my face, and goes, “Best Konstantin ever.” There’s a 99-percent chance that Meryl Streep was lying to me, or just being gracious, which I can still only be grateful for. But she once played it with Philip Seymour Hoffman in my role, and Louisa was now doing hers. So when she said that to me, I was like, “What the—.”10. Celebrating Eid I got up disastrously early, which is great; dressed nicely, which I rarely do; and went to prayer. I live in Harlem and there’s a large African Muslim population here. It was really beautiful seeing families with all the kids dressed up to the nines; just getting to see Muslims looking and dressing sexy, walking with pride on the streets. Growing up in Los Angeles, that wasn’t a thing you saw, except at prayer, so seeing that on the streets of New York is really joyful, and makes me stand two inches taller. More

    • 113 Shares139 Views

      in Movies

      Beanie Feldstein to Depart ‘Funny Girl’ Earlier Than Expected

      by

      The actress announced on Instagram that she would be leaving the musical at the end of July, two months earlier than previously announced.Beanie Feldstein, the lead actress in the first Broadway revival of “Funny Girl,” announced on Instagram on Sunday night that she would be leaving the production at the end of this month, two months earlier than expected.“Playing Fanny Brice on Broadway has been a lifelong dream of mine, and doing so for the last few months has been a great joy and true honor,” Feldstein wrote in the post. “Once the production decided to take the show in a different direction, I made the extremely difficult decision to step away sooner than anticipated.”Feldstein had previously said that her final show as Brice would be on Sept. 25, but her new end date is now July 31. The show quickly responded on Twitter to say that there would be casting announcements on Monday.Stay tuned, gorgeous… pic.twitter.com/s9DIfSq2Jg— Funny Girl on Broadway (@FunnyGirlBwy) July 10, 2022
      Representatives for the show did not immediately respond to a question about Feldstein’s cryptic comment about the show going in a “different direction.”Feldstein, 29, was best known for her onscreen supporting roles in “Booksmart” and “Lady Bird” as well as her lead role as Monica Lewinsky in the FX series “Impeachment: American Crime Story,” when she was cast in the role that helped make Barbra Streisand a star in 1964. Her Broadway debut was in 2017 as Minnie Fay in “Hello, Dolly!,” which starred Bette Midler. Producers had struggled to bring a Broadway revival of “Funny Girl” to fruition over the years, partly because of the immense challenges of the lead role and the fact that Streisand and Brice seemed to be inextricably linked.Feldstein’s performance received some unfavorable reviews. In The New York Times, the chief theater critic, Jesse Green, wrote, “You root for her to raise the roof, but she only bumps against it a little.”The production, which opened in April at the August Wilson Theater, also features Ramin Karimloo as Nick Arnstein, Brice’s love interest; Jane Lynch as Brice’s doting mother who supports her during her rise as a Ziegfeld star; and Jared Grimes as Fanny’s friend Eddie Ryan. The show received only one Tony Award nomination — for Grimes’s performance — but did not win. The show previously announced that Lynch would be leaving after Sept. 25.“I will never forget this experience and from the bottom of my heart, I want to thank every single person who came to the August Wilson for the love and support you have shown me and our amazing cast and crew,” Feldstein wrote in the post. “The people I have had the great joy of bringing ‘Funny Girl’ to life with every night, both on and off the stage, are all remarkably talented and exceptional humans and I hope you continue to join them on Henry Street after I depart.” More

    • 100 Shares99 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Hollywood Ending,’ a Cradle-to-Jail Biography of Harvey Weinstein

      by

      Ken Auletta looks for Weinstein’s Rosebud in this dispiriting account of the former movie mogul’s life.HOLLYWOOD ENDINGHarvey Weinstein and the Culture of SilenceBy Ken AulettaIllustrated. 466 pages. Penguin Press. $30.As you might expect, there aren’t a whole lot of laughs in “Hollywood Ending,” Ken Auletta’s cradle-to-jail new biography of Harvey Weinstein, the movie mogul convicted of third-degree rape and another sex felony in New York and awaiting trial on further charges in California. When Auletta calls Weinstein’s relationship with his brother Bob “Shakespeare-worthy,” he is placing the story squarely in the tragedy column of the ledger.But then the Broadway star Nathan Lane makes a brief appearance, like Puck cartwheeling onto the set of “Coriolanus.”The year was 2000, and Weinstein’s cultural capital was perhaps at its peak. He was still running Miramax, the prestigious studio that he and Bob had started in 1979, albeit now under Disney’s incongruous but lucrative oversight. He’d recently founded Talk magazine with the editor Tina Brown, then New York’s nimblest puppeteer of high and low culture. He was hobnobbing with politicians, co-chairing a lavish birthday party and fund-raiser for then-Senate candidate Hillary Clinton at Roseland Ballroom. And he didn’t like some of the jokes that Lane, anyone’s dream M.C., had written for the occasion.“I’ll ruin your career,” Weinstein threatened, in Auletta’s retelling, as he “bellied” the elfin actor into a corner.“You can’t hurt me,” Lane retorted. “I don’t have a film career.”Onstage, Lane tauntingly said: “I’m going to do all the jokes Harvey Weinstein wanted me to cut.”This wasn’t the last time that theater, of a sort, would win the day over the producer’s preferred medium. Auletta attended every day of Weinstein’s trial in 2020, narrating the experience here in four chapters. “Trials are not movies, shot under controlled conditions and subject to revision in the editing room,” he writes. “They are live productions, dependent on the chemistry of their participants, and not a little bit of luck.”Books, of which Weinstein is demonstrably fond — his media mini-empire included a publishing imprint — can be like movies. Auletta effectively, if maybe a little too elegiacally, frames this one in the lengthy shadow of “Citizen Kane.” Auletta is, of course, Jerry Thompson, the reporter looking for his antihero’s Rosebud: the mysterious missing object or influence that will explain his personality. But he is also Citizen Ken, magnanimous and avuncular when he encourages his boss at The New Yorker, David Remnick, to publish the young journalist Ronan Farrow’s investigation of Weinstein’s misdeeds. The New York Times’s Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey broke the story five days before Farrow’s piece was published.Ken Auletta, whose new book is “Hollywood Ending: Harvey Weinstein and the Culture of Silence.”via the authorThe well-connected Auletta draws on the work of those journalists and his own interviews with major players, including many surely fascinating hours with the beleaguered brother Bob. As for Harvey, he emails some terse responses to questions, and his representatives haggle over possible interview conditions before ghosting his biographer — but “Hollywood Ending” also mines an extensive profile Auletta wrote of him 20 years ago, and its outtakes. At that time, he had heard of Weinstein’s sex crimes, an open secret for years, but was unable to get victims on the record, and so focused on his subject’s bullying and prodigious appetites. (“Kane” is famous for its breakfast montage. Weinstein’s montage would show him mainlining junk food: peanut M&Ms, French fries when interviewing a defense lawyer — ketchup “creating what looked like bloodstains” — Mentos at the trial and, more recently, contraband Milk Duds.)Weinstein’s reputation for sexual trespass had started early, when he was a concert promoter in Buffalo. As he aged, his influence waned — the whole movie industry waned — just as he was seeking younger prey, from a cohort that “increasingly spent their free time on social networks like Facebook,” Auletta reminds, “rather than going to the movies.”After the producer, then in his 60s, lunged from his office couch at Ambra Battilana Gutierrez, a 22-year-old Miss Italy finalist, in 2015 — “when he reached for her breasts like he was at an all-you-can-eat buffet,” as Auletta puts it — she did what many previous women who had been in her position, scared of Weinstein’s towering power, had been loath to do: She called the police. A publicist’s attempt to discredit Gutierrez was met with indignant cries that she was being “slut-shamed.” The fourth wave of feminism had arrived with a big splash, pulling Weinstein and his ilk into the undertow.And yet the male foreman of the jury that convicted Weinstein, Auletta points out, cited the testimony and behavior of male witnesses, not female victims — “suggesting,” Auletta writes, “that ‘believe women’ may face a steep uphill climb.’” He proposes instead “listen to women”; but one key woman’s voice is cast as soul-crushingly loud.Searching for Rosebud, Auletta alights, for lack of better explanations, on the Weinstein brothers’ flame-haired and apparently flame-tempered mother, Miriam (for whom their company was named, along with their milder father, Max, a diamond cutter who died of a heart attack at 52). A childhood friend told Auletta that Harvey referred to Miriam as “Momma Portnoy,” after the shrill character in Philip Roth’s “Portnoy’s Complaint.”Bob, who somehow avoided growing into a “beast,” as Harvey is repeatedly described here, allows for the possibility of Miriam’s frustration at her life’s limitations. “She could have been Sheryl Sandberg or one of these C.E.O.s of a company. She had that kind of smarts,” he told Auletta. Instead, she proudly brought rugelach to her sons’ headquarters, and had an epitaph worthy of Dorothy Parker: “I don’t like the atmosphere or the crowd.”As there was a roving “fifth Beatle,” so there were a series of Miramax executives nicknamed the “third brother” — loyalists who helped to enable bad behavior — and, chillingly, a sort of “conveyor system to funnel women” to Weinstein’s hotel suites. If you’re not interested in the NC-17 and often disgusting particulars of what happened in those suites, nor in the headsmacking convolutions of nondisclosure agreements, perhaps you’d prefer one of the disgraced protagonist’s recommendations from the more tasteful era he worshiped, Elia Kazan’s autobiography, “A Life,” or a book Weinstein was often seen carrying during trial preparation: “The Brothers Mankiewicz,” by Sydney Ladensohn Stern. Herman Mankiewicz is credited with the screenplay for “Citizen Kane”; his brother, Joe, wrote “All About Eve.”Recalling those great movies, and even some from Miramax’s glory days in the ’90s, feels dispiriting, as the pictures, to paraphrase “Sunset Boulevard,” continue to get smaller. Going along for the ride of Weinstein’s slow rise and fall, even with the able Auletta at one’s side, can feel even more dispiriting, like getting on one of those creaky roller coasters at a faded municipal playland. More

    • 138 Shares139 Views

      in Movies

      Remembering James Caan and His Potent Mix of Swagger and Delicacy

      by

      “The Godfather” helped open up a range of roles for the actor that allowed him to play against type and expectation in wonderful ways.I’m not sure who owned the book, but eventually it ended up in my sweaty young hands. Someone at school had told me about the scene in Mario Puzo’s “The Godfather,” the one in which Sonny Corleone, the reckless eldest son with a Cupid face and a massive endowment, steals off with one of his sister’s bridesmaids. I remember racing through the passage (“her legs were wrapped around his thighs”). It’s no wonder that when I saw Francis Ford Coppola’s film, I was more than ready for James Caan.He was unforgettably perfect — carnal, wild, exciting. Caan may not be the actor you first think of in relation to “The Godfather,” with its astonishment of legends, but the film is impossible to imagine without his volatile, kinetic performance. Quick to anger, quick to fight, Sonny embodies his family’s terrifying violence in its purest, most unpredictable form, the kind that churns from inside, boiling up like magma. Sonny’s anger will be the death of him; it’s preordained: He must die so that his youngest brother, the deliberate, mercilessly disciplined Michael, can take over the family’s murder business.Not every star finds as perfect a vessel as “The Godfather.” Talent counts, yes, and as an actor, Caan was more gifted and nuanced than suggested by his tough-guy persona. But the vagaries of both life and the movie business mean that few actors and fewer stars have long, creatively unimpeachable runs. Timing also matters as does taste, greed, grit and representation. Caan, who died on Wednesday at 82, has two supreme masterpieces in his filmography: “The Godfather” (1972) and Michael Mann’s “Thief” (1981). We can argue about the sweep of his career, but there’s no debating the greatness that he brought to it.As Sonny, opposite Al Pacino’s more coolheaded Michael, Caan embodied the mob family’s most unpredictable violence.Paramount Pictures, via Associated PressCaan’s career emerged from the ashes of the old studio system. Following what was then a familiar career trajectory, he started in TV before moving into film, and was soon terrifying Olivia de Havilland in the schlocky 1964 thriller “Lady in a Cage.” Looking at the film now (don’t bother), their roles are almost comically emblematic of the era’s upheavals. De Havilland was classical Hollywood personified, an elegant emissary of the old studio system, while Caan would soon be among the upstarts who helped create and define that short-lived, creatively intoxicating miracle known as New Hollywood.“Lady in a Cage” is ridiculous, but it helped set Caan’s career in motion. It would take a while for him to find material worthy of his gift, and the performance is less memorable than his outfit, which includes sandals, a tropical shirt that he later loses, exposing the rug that carpets his torso, and villainy’s de rigueur accessory: a women’s stocking pulled over his face. Notably, he’s also wearing snug-fitting jeans, which, like the sandals, were probably meant to signal his thug’s menacing nonconformity but mostly just draw attention to his body. Tight jeans, as attentive fans know, were a staple of Caan’s onscreen closet.It was Howard Hawks, one of the geniuses of the old studio system, who shortly thereafter set Caan on his way by casting him first in “Red Line 7000” (1965) and then, more important, in “El Dorado,” a western headlined by John Wayne and Robert Mitchum. “I was this little punk working with Wayne and Mitchum,” Caan said later, recalling how, during the shoot, he and Wayne almost got into it on set. Mitchum brokered the peace, and the stars and the film came together beautifully. It opened in 1967, the same year that “Bonnie and Clyde” shook up the industry and audiences, and swept aside old Hollywood with its violence, daring and bad attitude.By the time Caan made “The Godfather,” he had established his range in movies as different as Coppola’s directing debut, “The Rain People” (1969), and the 1971 made-for-TV movie “Brian’s Song,” a wildly popular melodrama in which he played the N.F.L. halfback Brian Piccolo, who died young of cancer. Caan also played a tragic football player in “The Rain People,” about a woman (Shirley Knight) who embarks on one of the era’s existential road trips. En route to self-discovery, she picks up Caan’s Kilgannon, a sweet, guileless, brain-damaged former player whose tragically inapt nickname is Killer.Playing a brain-addled football player opposite Shirley Knight in “The Rain People.”Warner Bros., via AlamyWith his thick neck and trapezoidal torso, Caan looked like the athlete he plays, but little about the performance in “The Rain People” is obvious. It’s a heavy role — Killer is the story’s sacrificial lamb — yet Caan, working with Coppola, imbues the part with a subtle, persuasive innocence that doesn’t patronize the character or sanctify his disability. As an actor, Caan certainly could go big and externalize a character’s inner workings (he does a lot around the eyebrows), and Kilgannon has his outsize moments. Yet what makes the character work is the poignant impassiveness that conveys just how brutally life has hollowed him out.Caan’s ability to convey delicacies of feeling wasn’t a singular gift, but, in his finest roles, it worked contrapuntally with his swaggering physicality and the implied roughness telegraphed by his Bronx-and-Queens-cultivated accent. He sounded like a tough, a delinquent, a bad, potentially dangerous guy, even if his better characters were sometimes more complicated. As Caan’s reputation grew (he was a longtime favorite of this paper’s film critics) and a range of roles opened up to him, he played to and against type and expectation, becoming one of the defining faces of New Hollywood.It may come as a surprise just how big Caan was in the 1970s, particularly if you’re really only familiar with “The Godfather.” Two years after Coppola’s film blew up, in an essay on “The Last Detail” that consecrated Jack Nicholson as a major star, The Times’s Vincent Canby also named Caan as one of the era’s other young notables alongside Al Pacino, Dustin Hoffman and Caan’s frequent co-star, Robert Duvall. There are different reasons Caan’s reputation dimmed in the ensuing decades; for one thing, while Nicholson was solidifying his fame as a sailor in “The Last Detail,” Caan was repping the Navy in “Cinderella Liberty” (1973).I love “Cinderella Liberty,” but it hasn’t been canonized like “The Last Detail,” written by Robert Towne and directed by Hal Ashby. But “Cinderella” deserves love, partly because Caan is terrific in it as a sailor who, during an unplanned leave, suddenly becomes involved with a good-time broad (a glorious Marsha Mason). They’re loose and funny and sexy, and together create a raw, unpredictable, memorable romance. Given how aggressively male-dominated so many 1970s classics were, it’s worth remembering that Caan was good with women in more ways than were hinted at in “The Godfather.”MGM, via AlamyThere are all sorts of reasons the decades that followed were not always kind to Caan, including the end of New Hollywood. He made good and forgettable movies, disappeared, re-emerged and matured into avuncular roles. He was discovered by newcomers like Wes Anderson (“Bottle Rocket”) and Christopher McQuarrie (“The Way of the Gun”). For me, though, the second half of Caan’s career is demarcated by “Thief,” the 1981 thriller in which he plays a master burglar. It’s an action film with guns and violence, blowtorches and lots of tough guys, but because this is quintessential Michael Mann, it’s also a romance.When the film was released, some critics objected to what was seen as its softer, mushier side, which feels like critic-speak for the fact that it features a woman. When Caan’s character isn’t cracking safes or skulls, he is having a tender affair with Tuesday Weld’s skittish restaurant hostess. The two fall in love, have one of Mann’s signature soul-baring conversations across a table and adopt a (stolen) baby. It’s complicated. It’s also beautiful and it gets me every time I watch it. And while the film doesn’t end happily — though maybe it does — it ends happily for any viewer who’s open to it, its deep humanity and to Caan’s transcendent performance. More

    • 138 Shares99 Views

      in Movies

      Zawe Ashton Isn’t Here to Be a Victim of Your Projections

      by

      The actress was never offered a period piece until “Mr. Malcolm’s List.” She was given 24 hours to decide whether to do it. Now she’s earning raves.“I haven’t necessarily had the privilege of being cast as the hero,” Zawe Ashton said. “And that’s OK.”This was on a recent steamy afternoon, and Ashton, 37, a star of the Regency-era romantic comedy “Mr. Malcolm’s List,” had cast herself in the role of a woman eating a hurried lunch at the New York office of a film company before heading to the airport. Low-key glamorous in bare feet, a black slip dress and a sweatshirt that read, “There Are Artists Among Us,” she radiated a particular mix of seriousness, playfulness and a questing intelligence.While the more gossipy corners of the internet know the London-born Ashton as the fiancée of the actor Tom Hiddleston — they met during a benefit reading of Harold Pinter’s “Betrayal,” which they later performed on Broadway — she has been a professional actor since elementary school and a playwright since her 20s. She has devoted most of her career to playing and writing about outsiders. Julia, a Regency belle, wouldn’t seem to be one of them. Ashton disagrees.“I think she is,” she said. “There’s something she’s not settling for.”This probably explains why Ashton infuses Julia with a kind of wildness, a hint of waywardness under and around the sparkle. While the reviews for “Mr. Malcolm’s List” have been mixed, Ashton has earned raves. She dominates, a critic for The Hollywood Reporter wrote, “with her razor-sharp comedic timing ensuring thrilling delivery of her tart lines.”Ashton may be better known for her engagement to Tom Hiddleston, but as a woman in the entertainment industry, she’s learned that “people will project onto you in the most intense way.”Heather Sten for The New York TimesNext summer she will appear in the Nia DaCosta-directed “The Marvels,” the follow-up to “Captain Marvel.” Reportedly, she will play the villain. And — after Ashton revealed her pregnancy during a recent screening of “Mr. Malcolm’s List” — at least one more debut is anticipated. Sensibly, she does not talk much about her personal life.Over salad, she discussed period dramas, playing women on the edge and finding truth underneath the corsetry. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.You look like you’re having so much fun in this movie. Are you?I really am. We all really are. We filmed it in a very intense wave of lockdown in Dublin. Our only bonding time was on site, doing the work. We weren’t even allowed to go to a pub. So there was this really rewarding element of coming together in group scenes and working off each other and understanding each person’s unique rhythm. That’s where some of the comedy is coming from, certainly where a lot of the flirtatious energy is coming from.You haven’t done many period pieces. Why this one?The big conversation that’s happening now around representation in period drama is very, very real. The reality is you can be acting for a long time and not be called to that table. There’s a sort of indifference that turns into mystification that turns into sadness around that. This was the first period piece I’ve ever been offered. I had 24 hours to decide, and then it was sweatpants to corsets.What can you tell me about Julia?What I really loved straight off the bat is where we find her, which is coming out into her fifth season in society without having made a match. It has a little tinge of a woman on the edge. She doesn’t want to be a victim of that society, so she rages against the machine. She does some questionable things. But I hope by the end, she has this humbling redemptive moment where she does find a love match with someone who loves her for her flaws, rather than despite her flaws.Opposite Freida Pinto, left, in “Mr. Malcolm’s List.” Ashton has been getting raves for her performance in the film.Bleecker StreetWhat unlocked her character?One of the first things I had to do was tap into something very truthful and authentic. Freida [Pinto, her co-star] and I had conversations about picking up something that felt more culturally specific to us. That was a real breakthrough. That you can leave the Austenification behind and find something that chimes with your experience. Then we had an amazing historian. She was really helpful with stuff like how you would drink tea, how you would walk through the streets of London with a man that you’re related to or not related to. That led to the physical life and then costume, hair and makeup, stepping into a corset, stuffing into a bonnet.Over the last decade you haven’t done many comedies. Why do a comedy now?I joined a very intense movie club during the lockdown. We watched a movie every night and fed back to each other at the end of every Saturday with Sundays off. We went really high and deliberately quite obnoxious — Bergman, Tarkovsky, Rohmer, Bresson. There was a catharsis there, but I definitely have been looking to escape much more through the work I’ve been doing, the people I want to inhabit.Your next project is “The Marvels.” Was a superhero project another escape?I was moving away from acting for a lot of the past five years or so. I did “Betrayal” here in New York without representation [an agent], and, at the end of that, I signed up with some people and I said, I don’t necessarily want to start feeding the machine. I would like to just meet with first-time female directors, or fledgling female directors, specifically directors who are coming from underrepresented backgrounds in our industry. Emma Holly Jones, who directed “Mr. Malcolm’s List,” being one of them. I got set up on a call with Nia DaCosta where we really connected. It was just a seeing of souls. And on the other side of it was a phone call asking me to be part of her new job.In a career devoted to outsiders, her “Malcolm” character wouldn’t seem to be one of them, but Ashton disagreed: “There’s something she’s not settling for.”Heather Sten for The New York TimesRumor has it you’re playing a villain in that film. Or maybe you’ve complicated the idea of a villain?I don’t really know any other way of going about it, to be honest. I have to start with something real and emotional and authentic and build out from there. I have to understand the deeper meaning in my head.I read about your engagement to Tom Hiddleston. Is it true you met doing “Betrayal”? Because the marriage in that play is not a good marriage!Oftentimes, the most distressing, deep work has the happiest companies. The play was called “Betrayal.” But the play behind the scenes was absolute trust.Well, I’m still hoping that your marriage works out better. It’s funny, you’ve been in this business for nearly 30 years, but when I Googled you, the top results all had to do with your personal life. What’s it like to experience this kind of scrutiny?As a woman in this industry, you become quite attuned to your identity as an artist shifting in proximity to different people. That’s not specific to dating someone. If there’s a conversation I would have off the back of this question, it’s really about letting women in this industry know that whatever point of career that you’re in, shore up your identity and reason for being, because people will project onto you in the most intense way. When that happens, you have to have an internal anchor. You have to be delighted and joyful in the work that you do. I’m not here to be a victim of projection. I’m here to continually grow as an artist. More