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      Emma Thompson and the Challenge of Baring All Onscreen at 63

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      It’s the shock of white hair you notice first on Emma Thompson, a hue far more chic than anything your average 63-year-old would dare choose but one that doesn’t ignore her age either. It’s accompanied by that big, wide smile and that knowing look, suggesting both a wry wit and a willingness to banter.And yet, Thompson begins our video call by MacGyvering her computer monitor with a piece of paper and some tape so she can’t see herself. “The one thing I can’t bear about Zoom is having to look at my face,” she said. “I’m just going to cover myself up.”We are here across two computer screens to discuss what is arguably her most revealing role yet. In the new movie “Good Luck to You, Leo Grande,” directed by Sophie Hyde, Thompson is emotionally wrought and physically naked, and not in a lowlight, sexy kind of way.Thompson plays Nancy, a recently widowed, former religious schoolteacher who has never had an orgasm. At once a devoted wife and a dutiful mother harboring volumes of regret for the life she didn’t live and the dull, needy children she raised, Nancy hires a sex worker — a much younger man played by relative newcomer Daryl McCormack (“Peaky Blinders”) — to bring her the pleasure she’s long craved. The audience gets to follow along as this very relatable woman — she could have been your teacher, your mother, you — who in Thompson’s words “has crossed every boundary she’s ever recognized in her life,” grapples with this monumental act of rebellion.“Yes, she’s made the most extraordinary decision to do something very unusual, brave and revolutionary,” Thompson said from her office in North London. “Then she makes at least two or three decisions not to do it. But she’s lucky because she has chosen someone who happens to be rather wise and instinctive, with an unusual level of insight into the human condition, and he understands her, what she’s going through, and is able gently to suggest that there might be a reason behind this.”Daryl McCormack and Thompson in “Good Luck to You, Leo Grande,” which the screenwriter Katy Brand wrote with the actress in mind.Searchlight PicturesThompson met the challenge with what she calls “a healthy terror.” She knew this character at a cellular level — same age, same background, same drive to do the right thing. “Just a little sliver of paper and chance separates me from her,” she quipped.Yet the role required her to reveal an emotional and physical level of vulnerability she wasn’t accustomed to. (To ready themselves for this intimate, sex-positive two-hander that primarily takes place in a hotel room, Thompson, McCormack and Hyde have said they spent one of their rehearsal days working in the nude.) Despite a four-decade career that has been lauded for both its quality and its irreverence and has earned her two Academy Awards, one for acting (“Howards End”) and one for writing (“Sense and Sensibility”), Thompson has appeared naked on camera only once: in the 1990 comedy “The Tall Guy,” opposite Jeff Goldblum.She said she wasn’t thin enough to command those types of skin-baring roles, and though for a while she tried conquering the dieting industrial complex, starving herself like all the other young women clamoring for parts on the big screen, soon enough she realized it was “absurd.”“It’s not fair to say, ‘No, I’m just this shape naturally.’ It’s dishonest and it makes other women feel like [expletive],” she said. “So if you want the world to change, and you want the iconography of the female body to change, then you better be part of the change. You better be different.”For “Leo Grande,” the choice to disrobe was hers, and though she made it with trepidation, Thompson said she believes “the film would not be the same without it.” Still, the moment she had to stand stark naked in front of a mirror with a serene, accepting look on her face, as the scene called for, was the most difficult thing she’s ever done.“To be truly honest, I will never ever be happy with my body. It will never happen,” she said. “I was brainwashed too early on. I cannot undo those neural pathways.”She can, however, talk about sex. Both the absurdities of it and the intricacies of female pleasure. “I can’t just have an orgasm. I need time. I need affection. You can’t just rush to the clitoris and flap at it and hope for the best. That’s not going to work, guys. They think if I touch this little button, she’s going to go off like a Catherine wheel, and it will be marvelous.”Several women have written screenplays for Thompson. That’s because “she always somehow feels like she’s on your side,” Brand said.Charlotte Hadden for The New York TimesThere is a moment in the movie when Nancy and Leo start dancing in the hotel room to “Always Alright” by Alabama Shakes. The two are meeting for a second time — an encounter that comes with a checklist of sexual acts Nancy is determined to plow through (pun intended). The dance is supposed to relieve all her type-A, organized-teacher stress that’s threatening to derail the session. Leo has his arms around her neck, and he’s swaying with his eyes closed when a look crosses Nancy’s face, one of gratitude and wistfulness coupled with a dash of concern.To the screenwriter, Katy Brand, who acted opposite Thompson in the second “Nanny McPhee” movie and who imagined Thompson as Nancy while writing the first draft, that look is the point of the whole movie.“It’s just everything,” Brand said. “She feels her lost youth and the sort of organic, natural sexual development she might have had, if she hadn’t met her husband. There is a tingling sense, too, not only of what might have been but what could be from now on.”Brand is not the first young woman to pen a script specifically for Thompson. Mindy Kaling did it for her on “Late Night,” attesting that she had loved Thompson since she was 11. The writer Jemima Khan told Thompson that she had always wanted the actress to be her mother, so she wrote her a role in the upcoming film “What’s Love Got to Do With It?”“I think the thing that Emma gives everybody and what she does in person to people, and also via the screen, is that she always somehow feels like she’s on your side,” Brand said. “And I think people really respond to that. She will meet you at a very human level.”The producer Lindsay Doran has known Thompson for decades. Doran hired her to write “Sense and Sensibility” after watching her short-lived BBC television show “Thompson” that she wrote and starred in. The two collaborated on the “Nanny McPhee” movies, and are working on the musical version, with Thompson handling the book and co-writing the songs with Gary Clark (“Sing Street”).Thompson in “Nanny McPhee Returns.” She’s at work on a musical version of the franchise.Liam Daniel/Universal PicturesTo the producer, the film is the encapsulation of a writer really understanding her actress.“It felt to me like Katy knew the instrument, and she knew what the instrument was capable of within a few seconds,” Doran said. “It isn’t just, over here I’m going to be dramatic. And over here, I’m going to be funny, and over here I’m going to be emotional. It can all go over her face so quickly, and you can literally say there’s this feeling, there’s this emotion.”Reviewing “Leo Grande,” for The New York Times, Lisa Kennedy called Thompson “terrifically agile with the script’s zingers and revelations,” while Harper’s Bazaar said Thompson was “an ageless treasure urgently overdue for her next Oscar nomination.”The obvious trajectory for a film like this should be an awards circuit jaunt that would probably result in Thompson nabbing her fifth Oscar nomination. But the film, set to debut on Hulu on Friday, will not have a theatrical release in the United States.Thompson doesn’t mind. “​​It is a small film with no guns in it, so I don’t know how many people in America would actually want to come see it,” she said with a wink.That may be true. But more consequently, because of a rule change by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences that reverts to prepandemic requirement of a seven-day theatrical release, “Good Luck to You, Leo Grande” is not eligible for Oscar consideration, a reality that the director Sophie Hyde is not pleased with.“It’s really disappointing,” Hyde said. “I understand the desire to sort of protect cinema, but I also think the world has changed so much. Last year, a streaming film won best picture.” She argued that her film and others on streaming services aren’t made for TV. They are cinematic, she said, adding, “That’s what the academy should be protecting, not what screen it’s on.”Thompson, for one, seems rather sanguine about the whole matter. “I think that, given the fact that you might have a slightly more puritanical undercurrent to life where you are, that it might be easier for people to share something as intimate as this at home and then be able to turn it off and make themselves a nice cup of really bad tea,” said Thompson, laughing. “None of you Americans can make good tea.” More

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      ‘Good Luck to You, Leo Grande’ Review: Pleasure Principles

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      Emma Thompson and Daryl McCormack bring knowing vulnerability to this amusing story of a foxy prostitute and the woman who hires him.If “Good Luck to You, Leo Grande” were a book, it might make a fine choice for a tipsy book club evening. And although the film about an older woman hiring a male prostitute feels ever so briefly like an updated tease of romance-novel fantasies, as directed by Sophie Hyde and written by Katy Brand, “Leo Grande” proves to be a tart and tender probe into sex and intimacy, power dynamics and human connection.The actors Emma Thompson and Daryl McCormack find and then build steadily on the appealing and complex chemistry of their characters as this two-hander unfolds in a mildly posh, yet nondescript hotel room. The film starts with the satiny handsome Leo walking down a street with greet-the-day ease; he’s a professional getting into character. He knocks on the door of a hotel room where Nancy Stokes awaits. She has secured his services, but is still nervous about that decision. Upon Leo’s arrival, Nancy begins nattering — a lot. She has cause to: She’s a retired schoolteacher and widow; and she’s never done anything remotely like this. And by “this” we mean take her own pleasure seriously.Leo is a sex-positive, 20-something from Ireland. His familial ties are frayed, and Nancy tugs on those threads out of interest, out of guilt, but also to reassert control when she feels exposed. Issues of class figure into her judgments; but the movie feels oddly mum about race. (McCormack is biracial.)While Nancy might not be limber enough for every sexual position on her check list (for which she dons reading glasses to consult), Thompson is terrifically agile with the script’s zingers and revelations. A relative newcomer, McCormack moves between wit, compassion and vulnerability with grace. In the most transactional sense, Nancy gets even better than what she paid for. Thanks to Thompson and McCormack’s delicate dance, so will audiences.Good Luck to You, Leo GrandeRated R for sexual content, nudity and some blue language. Running time: 1 hour 37 minutes. Watch on Hulu. More

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      U.A.E. Bans ‘Lightyear,’ Disney Film with Same-Sex Kiss

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      The United Arab Emirates banned the animated film, an offshoot of the “Toy Story” movies, from its cinemas. Censors in Indonesia and Malaysia are also considering restrictions.Disney’s new movie “Lightyear,” an offshoot of the “Toy Story” franchise, faces bans or restrictions in parts of Southeast Asia and the Middle East over a scene that features a kiss between two women. The animated film opens around the world this week.The United Arab Emirates has banned “Lightyear” from public screenings, and Malaysia has asked Disney to cut several scenes from the film before it can be shown in local cinemas, according to officials in the Muslim-majority countries.In Indonesia, the nation with the world’s largest Muslim population, the chairman of the Film Censorship Board told The New York Times on Wednesday that the kissing scene could potentially violate a law that prohibits movies that show “deviant sexual behavior.”“The Film Censorship Board doesn’t want to be drawn into the vortex of debate over pro L.G.B.T. versus anti-L.G.B.T.,” said the chairman, Rommy Fibri. “But that kissing scene is sensitive.”Disney did not respond to repeated requests for comment.The international backlash against “Lightyear” is a fresh public relations headache for Disney, whose growing willingness to publicly defend L.G.B.T.Q. people has made it a somewhat unlikely cultural lightning rod in the United States.Disney has described “Lightyear,” which was created by Pixar Animation Studios and directed by Angus MacLane, as the “definitive origin story” of the character Buzz Lightyear, a space ranger who starred in the 1995 film “Toy Story” and several sequels.“Lightyear” focuses on the friendship between Buzz (voiced by Chris Evans) and another space ranger, Alisha Hawthorne (Uzo Aduba). Alisha marries a woman, and in one scene she greets her wife with a kiss.Disney’s chief executive, Bob Chapek, came under intense pressure earlier this year from many of the company’s employees to take a forceful stand against anti-L.G.B.T.Q. legislation that was moving through the legislature in Florida, which is home to the Disney World resort.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida signed the bill into law in late March, and Disney publicly condemned it. The Florida House later voted to revoke Disney World’s special tax designation, a privilege that the theme park near Orlando had held for more than a half century.The international backlash to “Lightyear” has generated far less public attention in the United States than Disney’s clash with Mr. DeSantis. But it’s a reminder for the company that cultural clashes over children’s content do not end at the U.S. border.In the United Arab Emirates, the government’s Media Regulatory Office said on Twitter this week that “Lightyear” was not licensed for screenings in domestic cinemas because it had violated the country’s “media content standards.” The agency did not elaborate or respond to a request for comment.In Malaysia, “Lightyear” can be screened in its current form on Netflix, but the Film Censorship Board has asked Disney to change several scenes, including a “romantic” one, before it can be shown in cinemas, said a spokesman for the Ministry of Home Affairs.In Indonesia, Mr. Rommy of the Film Censorship Board said officials there had flagged the kissing scene to Disney and were waiting for the company to send the completed film, with subtitles, for censorship review. “We aren’t saying that we reject the movie,” he said.A movie with a homosexual kissing scene would likely not pass a censorship review in Indonesia because of a 2019 law that prohibits movies with “vulgar sexual activity” or sexual content that is “deviant” or “unreasonable,” Mr. Rommy added.Openly gay, lesbian and transgender people face persecution across the Islamic world. In Malaysia, legislation targeting them is rooted in religious courts and British colonial-era prohibitions for Muslims and non-Muslims. In Indonesia, where nearly nine in 10 of the country’s 270 million people are Muslim, some politicians have tried to associate L.G.B.T.Q. people with immorality, disease and the subversion of Indonesian culture.Italia Film International, a company that distributes Disney films in the Middle East and has promoted “Lightyear” on its website, did not respond to requests for comment.It was unclear as of Wednesday how the movie would fare in other countries around the Middle East and Asia. The film censorship authorities in Saudi Arabia and China, a major market for Hollywood studios, did not respond to requests for comment.In Singapore, the Infocomm Media Development Authority said in a statement this week that viewers should be 16 or older to view “Lightyear.” It described the film as the “first commercial children’s animation to feature overt homosexual depictions,” and said that Disney had declined its suggestion of releasing two versions of the film, including an edited one for younger viewers.“While it is an excellent animated film set in the U.S. context, Singapore is a diverse society where we have multiple sensibilities and viewpoints,” Cheryl Ng, who chairs the agency’s film consultation panel, said in the statement.Muktita Suhartono More

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      ‘Raisin in the Sun’ and ‘The Harder They Come’ Part of Public Theater Season

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      Two new works by Suzan-Lori Parks will be included in a season that delves into “relationships between Black and white America.”The Public Theater’s 2022-23 season will feature a mix of works rooted in history and new pieces that speak to current cultural shifts — toward racial justice, equity and disability rights. The season kicks off with a production of Lorraine Hansberry’s 1959 play “A Raisin in the Sun,” about a Black family’s bid to move into a house in a white neighborhood of Chicago, directed by Robert O’Hara (“Slave Play,” “A Long Day’s Journey Into Night”). Performances are scheduled to begin Sept. 27.This is not O’Hara’s first interpretation of the classic: He also directed a version in 2019, starring S. Epatha Merkerson, at the Williamstown Theater Festival. (The Public Theater said this will be a new production, not a remounting of the Williamstown staging.) He is also a playwright (“Barbecue,” “Bootycandy”), and in 2010 he wrote his own sequel to Hansberry’s play, “The Etiquette of Vigilance.”The season will also include the New York premiere of “Baldwin and Buckley at Cambridge” — conceived by Greig Sargeant, and developed it as member of Elevator Repair Service, and directed by John Collins — starting Sept. 24. The play re-enacts a 1965 debate between the writer and civil rights advocate James Baldwin and William F. Buckley Jr., the founder of National Review and an architect of the 20th-century conservative movement, for which they were asked if “the American Dream is at the expense of the American Negro.” The show had its premiere last fall at the Philadelphia Fringe Festival.Oskar Eustis, the artistic director of the Public, said he wants to help put Hansberry and Baldwin “back at the center of our dramatic tradition.” Baldwin, a towering literary figure, found less success as a dramatist, partly because of the mostly white cultural gatekeepers of the ’60s and ’70s. Hansberry became the first Black woman to be produced on Broadway when “A Raisin in the Sun,” premiered there in 1959, but died just a few years later in 1965.“It’s absolutely vital for our understanding of this current moment, particularly in terms of relationships between Black and white America,” Eustis said in an interview. “It’s also saying, ‘Hey, Shakespeare isn’t the only classic voice that matters.’”The upcoming slate of shows balances lessons from the past with insights into the future of theater. The New York premiere of “Where We Belong,” by Madeline Sayet, a member of the Mohegan tribe, grapples with the legacy of Shakespeare and colonization. Mei Ann Teo will direct the show, which is being produced with Woolly Mammoth Theater Company in association with the Folger Shakespeare Library. Performances are set to begin Oct. 28.For Eustis, Sayet’s solo piece fits well into the current cultural movement. “It’s a wave that has picked us up and thrown us forward, and said, ‘It is time to really deal with the legacy of slavery,’” Eustis said. “‘It is time to really turn and fundamentally alter race relations in this country.’”Artists who have previously had works staged at the Public — like Suzan-Lori Parks, the theater’s writer in residence; James Ijames; and Erika Dickerson-Despenza — will return this season with new plays.Parks’s “Plays for the Plague Year,” which will be staged in November, began as a collection of plays that the playwright wrote each day from March 2020 to April 2021. It will be followed by “The Harder They Come,” featuring Jimmy Cliff’s songs and a book by Parks, in the winter of 2023. The work is a new musical adaptation of the 1972 Perry Henzell film, about a young singer (played by Cliff) in Jamaica eager to become a star only to become an outlaw after being pushed to desperate circumstances. Tony Taccone will direct, with codirection by Sergio Trujillo, and choreography is by Edgar Godineaux.“That longevity of a relationship with a major artist is hugely important, not only to Suzan-Lori, but to making a statement to the field that it’s possible to spend a life in the theater,” Eustis said. “You can actually keep your feet in the theater and ground your whole career.”“Good Bones,” written by Ijames (who won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for drama for “Fat Ham,” which is currently onstage at the Public in its New York premiere), will have its world premiere in the spring of 2023. The play, directed by Saheem Ali, explores gentrification and the growing price of the American dream. “Shadow/Land,” by Dickerson-Despenza (who won the Blackburn Prize for her play “Cullud Wattah”) and directed by Candis C. Jones, is the first installment of a 10-play cycle about the Hurricane Katrina diaspora. The Public produced it as an audio play during the pandemic. Performances also begin in spring 2023.Ryan J. Haddad will make his Off Broadway playwriting debut with “Dark Disabled Stories,” about strangers he encounters while navigating a city not built for cerebral palsy, in the winter of 2023. Jordan Fein is directing the play, produced by the Bushwick Starr and presented by the Public. It probes discrimination in favor of able-bodied people. More

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      David Morse Steadies Himself With Daily Devotions and His Own Cooking

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      The actor, who was just in “How I Learned to Drive” on Broadway, also has an affection for bluegrass, reading out loud and his Mercedes Sprinter van.In 1997 David Morse and Mary-Louise Parker racked up raves and Off Broadway awards in Paula Vogel’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “How I Learned to Drive.”Twenty-five years later, Morse and Parker reprised their roles on Broadway — he as Uncle Peck, a charming pedophile; she as Li’l Bit, the niece he preys on — and captured Tony nominations.The new production was first explored a decade after the initial run, but Morse had yet to return to the stage and didn’t want his last play to be his next one. And while the timing seemed right when he committed to this show two years ago — he’d since appeared on Broadway in “The Seafarer” and “The Iceman Cometh” — he was nonetheless intimidated by the impact, at once stunning and gut-wrenching, of the original on both audiences and the cast.He was especially concerned for Uncle Peck.“I thought he doesn’t stand a chance in this new world,” Morse said. “Paula tried to make him a compelling and understandable human being despite what he does, and I was afraid of the judgments about him. It would just be too hard to make that leap that Paula wanted people to make.”He needn’t have worried, Morse admitted during a Zoom interview from his Midtown apartment — he lives in Philadelphia when he’s not working — to discuss why daily devotions, cooking his own food and his new R.V. are imperatives in his life.“The play has the power it always had, and our ages have actually helped in some ways,” he said. “There are layers that weren’t there before, and I think that really just comes with having lived some life.”Here are edited excerpts from the conversation.1. Reading Out Loud Whenever I read a book, I read it out loud from beginning to end. I get to act all of the characters and be in their world. I discovered this joy when I was about 9 or 10. I finished reading “Old Yeller” in my bedroom on a Saturday morning. I lay in my bed aching in my heart and crying. I had to share the book with my family. So we sat around the dining room table and I read to them, crying my way through the end of “Old Yeller” all over again.2. His Faith I was confirmed in the Episcopal church in my teens. But when I first came to New York, in 1977, I was very much at odds with faith and the church. My consciousness was changing and I had a fury at institutions. It was at that point that I read C.S. Lewis’s “Surprised by Joy.” His story about his own struggles with faith helped me through a particularly turbulent time. Sometime in those years I memorized the daily devotions for morning and close of day from the Book of Common Prayer. Since then, I have pretty much not missed a day saying both services in private.3. Bluegrass and Country I did a terrific movie called “The Slaughter Rule,” and my character was a lover of old-time bluegrass and country. I had to play and sing, and every time I opened my mouth I felt like such a phony. It was not a shining moment for me, but I have loved it ever since.At the time we were listening to the Louvin Brothers. Their story is fascinating. Now there are women I like to listen to and people that kind of cross over like Brandi Carlile. And Sturgill Simpson is another one I love because he’s sort of anti-country and country at the same time. He really, really loves the roots of bluegrass but does his own thing with it.4. “Cocaine & Rhinestones” Podcast People who really know music, talking to other people who really know music, are fascinating to me. One of my favorites is “Cocaine & Rhinestones” by Tyler Mahan Coe. It is a one-man epic production about the history of country music. I think I would have approached the music in “The Slaughter Rule” with a little more courage if I had had his work to listen to before I did it.5. Cooking for Health I have had significant food sensitivities most of my life. Forget the craft table on sets. Most restaurants, when they try to be helpful, offer food that is so plain and boring it is hard to swallow. So I prepare pretty much every meal I eat every day of my life. I developed my own recipe for wheat-free pancakes and made weekly batches, which I would carry with me everywhere so I could get enough calories when I was working or traveling. I did that for 25 years at least.6. Road Trips for Work I love to drive on my own to faraway locations when I get a new job. It’s a great way to transition my mind. When it came time to do “How I Learned to Drive” two years ago, I took a trip down to South Carolina because it’s where the character is from. I went to the rivers where he would go fishing, went to the courthouse and listened to trials, just tried to absorb as much of that world as I could. And it started feeling new. Then they shut down during rehearsals. But once it was starting again, I took another trip just to be open, open, open to whatever comes.7. His Mercedes Sprinter R.V. I have always wanted to share the places I have seen with my wife, Susan [Wheeler Duff], and our three kids, but food and hotels have been too much of a challenge for us to do it together — until this past year. Susan ingeniously suggested we get an R.V. to travel in. So during the pandemic we bought an extended Mercedes Sprinter van and got in a long line of like-minded people to have it customized into a camper out near Boulder, Colo. In September, we picked up our new best friend, and we set off across the country with a king-size bed, a full kitchen and a toilet we still haven’t used. It was glorious.8. Audiobooks It’s amazing how much of this country you can cover listening to “Moby-Dick.” Right now, while I work out, I am listening to Frank McCourt read “Angela’s Ashes.” His writing seems so pure and effortless, as does his brilliant reading of it. I have been asked to record a number of very good books. Two of my favorites have been Stephen King’s “Revival” and Doris Kearns Goodwin’s “Leadership: In Turbulent Times.” I love doing it. It fits me.9. Accents When I have to work on a new character with an accent, I will choose a book to read out loud. I don’t really like to practice the accent with the lines. The first time we did “How I Learned to Drive” I chose [Michael Shaara’s] “The Killer Angels.” I haven’t told Mary-Louise Parker this, but this time I chose the wonderful book she wrote called “Dear Mr. You.” Please don’t tell her I told you.10. His Wife, Susan Wheeler Duff My wife is many things, including an excellent writer of two books and many articles, a voracious and keen reader, the fierce and devoted mother of our children, an excellent actress, a rising and prominent presence in the world of bridge, and my love and companion for the past 41 years. In fact, we were married on June 19, 1982, 40 years ago this very day. Any day with Susan is a cultural essential. More

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      ‘Halftime’ Review: Let’s Get Loud

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      In the Netflix documentary about Jennifer Lopez’s life and career by the director Amanda Micheli, the political moments are brief, and then it’s back to rehearsal.A film about Jennifer Lopez and her performance at the Super Bowl in 2020 was bound to generate headlines, but the Netflix documentary “Halftime” makes sure it happens. The multihyphenate’s accomplishments can stand on their own without, for instance, a single publicity baiting remark from her boyfriend, the actor Ben Affleck.His cameo is only a small part of the brand management at play here as the director Amanda Micheli does her best to effectively tell a full-bodied story that reaches beyond what it seems Lopez wants you to know.A political moment — like when Lopez calls President Trump an expletive for his remarks connecting Mexican immigrants and crime — is only a political moment for so long, and then it’s back to rehearsal or the makeup chair. Complex topics like being a woman in a male-dominated movie industry and Hollywood double standards are explored briefly; more often, Lopez comments on fan-service subjects like the tabloids and that iconic Versace dress from the 2000 Grammys.The most captivating arc is how and why Lopez became so outspoken during the Trump era. She says that worrying about her children’s futures, and “living in a United States she didn’t recognize,” galvanized her. But even those scenes build tediously to what should feel like a more triumphant ending, when she shares why she couldn’t, in good conscience, agree to take the Super Bowl halftime stage without standing against anti-immigration measures. By the end, Lopez wins her fight with the National Football League to include children in cages as a human rights statement.In “Halftime,” she is seen in top J. Lo form, an empowering Hollywood icon with an inspirational story to share. Is that reason enough to watch this scattershot portrait? It depends on if she had your love to begin with.HalftimeNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      How Elvis Measured His Success: With Watches

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      The legend’s hips weren’t the only things keeping time, says Catherine Martin, the production designer for Baz Luhrmann’s new biopic.Of all the swagger and style that defined Elvis Presley — the gyrating hips, the clothes, the cars, the smirk of all smirks, that hair! — his collection of watches probably didn’t elicit giddy screaming across teen-dom in the late 1950s.But “Elvis,” a new biopic of the singer’s life, celebrates it all. Directed by Baz Luhrmann (with, one assumes, the same panache that all but turned the music and the dancing into characters in films like “Moulin Rouge!” and “Strictly Ballroom”), the movie is said to be a homage to a humble man whose love of collecting and trading watches was often overlooked during his all-too-brief 42 years.Elvis Presley in 1968. “He would swap watches with strangers whose watches he admired,” said Catherine Martin, the costume and production designer for Baz Luhrmann’s “Elvis” biopic.Getty Images“Watches were a symbol of his success and a big part of his story, and he gathered more valuable watches as his career developed,” said Catherine Martin, the four-time-Oscar-winning costume and production designer for the film, in a phone interview from her home in her native Australia. “They were a status symbol, and yet Elvis traded and gave watches away. He would swap watches with strangers whose watches he admired. It was crazy.”Ms. Martin, who also is a producer on the film and is married to Mr. Luhrmann, said she saw Presley’s love of watches as essential to telling his story: The way he wore and collected and traded watches reflects the image he created for himself as “the King,” but blended with his folksy roots.“Elvis was an absolutely iconoclastic dresser, and he was always accessorizing watches,” Ms. Martin said. “He reinvented himself constantly throughout his career. We don’t think of him as shocking now, but in the ’50s it was like he was a member of the Sex Pistols.”That radical transformation of Presley, played by Austin Butler in the film, provides much of the story line for “Elvis,” including his tumultuous relationship with his manager, Col. Tom Parker (Tom Hanks), who discovered the singer in 1955.Watches are an ever-present, if not obvious, element in many of the film’s scenes, Ms. Martin said, particularly because Presley always put a great deal of thought into how he wore and accessorized timepieces.“Even in the 1968 TV special, in his black leather outfit, he had a custom leather wristband made for a Bulova Accutron Astronaut,” she said, referring to Presley’s famous televised comeback concert. “A lot of the watches he wore were about technological style advances. He was always interested in what the latest watches were.”The watch that started it all was one he owned just as he was hitting it big: the triangular Hamilton Ventura, created by the American industrial designer Robert Arbib and known as the world’s first battery-powered watch. It became a signature for Presley — showing up in a gold version in his 1961 film “Blue Hawaii” — and for the watch company, which reintroduced the “Elvis watch” in 2015 to mark what would have been his 80th birthday. (It also was seen in all four “Men in Black” movies.)The “Elvis” director Baz Luhrmann with the Oscar-winning costume and production designer Catherine Martin, who is his wife, at the Met Gala in May. Angela Weiss/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images“It just happened that we didn’t end up with the ‘Elvis watch’ because it’s such an iconic watch and so well known that we didn’t want it to be a main part of the story,” Ms. Martin said. “There is so much more to tell over 40 years. I don’t want to deny that this watch was super important in the Elvis story, but watches were in general.”One example would be the Omega Constellation he wore while stationed in Germany with the U.S. Army from 1958 to 1960. Made of pink gold with a black “sniper” dial, it was one of the originals in the Constellation line. Presley later gave it to Charlie Hodge, a friend and fellow musician.Antiquorum auctioned the timepiece in June 2012, expecting it to fetch $10,000 to $20,000; it sold for $52,500.And there was a second Omega Constellation, given to Presley in 1961 by his record company, RCA. The 33-millimeter white gold watch has a silver dial, with 44 round diamonds accenting the bezel, and a case back that is engraved, “To Elvis, 75 Million Records, RCA Victor, 12-25-60.” Lettering beneath the Omega logo shows that RCA purchased the watch from Tiffany & Company.Legend has it that Presley swapped it for a fan’s watch, and the fan’s nephew put the watch up for auction with Phillips in 2018. It sold for 1.8 million Swiss francs (about $1.87 million today), making it at the time the most expensive Omega ever sold. The highest bidder: Omega itself, which added the watch to its museum collection in Bienne, Switzerland.“The character arc of Elvis is fascinating, as is the fact that he was an extraordinary stylist who created his own look,” said Ms. Martin, who oversaw Mr. Butler’s watches in the new film. “He became super famous super fast, and watches were important to him to show that he had made it.”Warner Bros.One watch that was prominent late in Elvis’s career was the Rolex King Midas, which has an asymmetrical case with a wide integrated bracelet and was designed by Gerald Genta, the name behind such legendary watches as the Royal Oak and the Nautilus. Concert promoters gave the Midas to Presley in 1970 for performing six days of sold-out concerts, and it is now on permanent display at Graceland, Presley’s home in Memphis, where he died in 1977.“The King Midas is a very unusual shape, and Baz happens to own one, so Austin Butler wore that in the movie,” Ms. Martin said. “Some watches were borrowed or purchased online. Some were so valuable that it was impossible to have them on set, so we had duplicates made.”The subject of the film, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival last month, certainly falls into the larger-than-life category that Mr. Luhrmann and Ms. Martin seem drawn to in filmmaking (like their 2013 version of “The Great Gatsby”).“The character arc of Elvis is fascinating, as is the fact that he was an extraordinary stylist who created his own look,” Ms. Martin said. “He became super famous super fast, and watches were important to him to show that he had made it.” More

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      You Need a Horror Movie Friend for a More Frightening, Less Lonely Life

      by

      You can’t undo what is terrible about the universe, but you can stand against it together.I was in graduate school when I realized the importance of having a Designated Horror Friend. I spent a lot of time in creative-writing workshops, moderating my tone to sound “productive” while offering my peers feedback on their work. We were all careful with one another, but a layer of brutality ran just below the surface, an implicit understanding that sometimes calling a classmate’s story “interesting” meant you actually thought it was trash. Our politeness kept the program from descending into violence, but it sometimes left me craving a more honest, instinctual response.One thing that helped keep me sane was horror cinema. Horror is a natural companion to the experimental fiction that I love — Clarice Lispector, Renata Adler, Samuel Beckett, James Joyce — in the sense of its belief that beneath ordinary reality lies a second and darker layer of existence. In these films, mood is not subservient to message: The mood is the message, working to disperse the sedative haze of the everyday. Not everyone in the program was receptive to this point of view.Horror deniers often claim there’s nothing emotionally valuable in the experience of being frightened. I disagree.So it meant something to me when a classmate named Angie suggested that we meet up to see “Let the Right One In” at the second-run movie theater in town. It wasn’t a natural pick for a friend date: huddling together in the dark and watching the story of a child-size vampire ensnaring a young boy into emotional slavery. Even the theater was strange, its lobby full of humming, buzzing, life-size animatronics you had to walk past to get to the box office.But Angie seemed excited, and I said yes, trying not to let myself hope that this would be more than a one-time thing. After getting our tickets, we settled in with cheap popcorn and soda, and as the lights dimmed in the theater, Angie leaned over and whispered in my ear about a “Twin Peaks”-themed Halloween party they were planning to throw and a classic slasher movie we should watch together soon. I saw the future unspool before me: more frightening, less lonely.A lot of people hate horror movies, but I don’t. In fact, I frequently find myself strong-arming my friends and loved ones into watching something scarier than they would prefer, just for the company. It’s a difference of philosophy as much as a difference in taste. Horror deniers often claim there’s nothing emotionally valuable in the experience of being frightened. I disagree. When I first watched “The Last Unicorn” (a horror movie masquerading as a children’s cartoon) at age 8, the image of a naked harpy devouring a witch was burned into my brain, but so was the realization that the conditions that created the harpy also allowed for the unicorn. The existence of horror is inevitably proximate to the existence of wondrous possibility.Meeting another person who loves horror as much as I do, then, is like meeting a fellow traveler from my home country while stuck somewhere distant and strange. There is a shiver of recognition, a sense of immediate union. Of course, I can watch horror movies by myself — and I frequently do, because my husband doesn’t like them — but choosing to be scared with another person means choosing to be vulnerable together, which creates a bond that can’t be replicated any other way.Angie and I built our friendship on horror cinema of all types and quality, from David Cronenberg to David Lynch to every installment of “The Purge.” We cringed at the body horror in “Goodnight Mommy” (lips sealed with superglue; a cockroach crawling into someone’s mouth) and celebrated when Florence Pugh’s bad boyfriend in “Midsommar” was burned alive inside a bear. But it wasn’t just the movies that we loved. It was the fact that when we watched them together, our mutual appreciation amplified their strength. Horror movies articulate that the world is horrible and that the most horrible thing of all is simply that we are alive and fragile and bound for death. There is no protection from this, no other way out of this life. People you love will get sick — maybe you will. Violence will be done by charismatic strangers and, worse still, by lovers and friends. But sharing that understanding with someone makes the world, perhaps paradoxically, less scary. You can’t undo what is terrible about the universe, but you can stand against it together.Recently I was outside exercising when my dog started barking by the back gate. I looked up and saw a man in a black ski mask standing in my backyard, by my bicycle — an image simultaneously so legible (man, mask) and incomprehensible (stranger; why?) that my mind went blank. The man noticed me staring and gave a casual wave before strolling to the fence and jumping over.There are places in the world where reality bends: dark alleys, calls from unknown numbers, a sudden face where a face should not be. These are tropes in horror fiction for a reason, and one of them had just appeared in my yard. I was vulnerable, and never had this fact been clearer to me. But strange to say, I found it as exhilarating as scary. Perhaps because I’d been preparing for this moment my whole life, and because I knew that I was not alone; because someone had been preparing with me.I ran inside, and after my husband and I called the police, I called Angie.Adrienne Celt is the author of “The Daughters,” “Invitation to a Bonfire” and, most recently, “End of the World House.” More