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      Ann Sarnoff, Warner Bros. Chief, Is Set to Leave

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      LOS ANGELES — Ann Sarnoff, the chief executive of the WarnerMedia Studios and Networks Group, will leave the company, with an announcement coming as soon as this week, three people briefed on the matter said.Ms. Sarnoff, who declined to comment, was chosen to lead Warner Bros. in 2019 despite limited Hollywood experience, becoming the first woman to hold the role. She is departing as WarnerMedia, a division of AT&T, is set to complete a merger with Discovery. Ms. Sarnoff’s boss, Jason Kilar, who has been chief executive of WarnerMedia since 2020, announced his exit on Tuesday.Like Mr. Kilar, Ms. Sarnoff found herself without a seat in the game of musical chairs that accompanies the merging of competing companies, said the people briefed on the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential information. The Warner Bros. Discovery management structure is still unknown, but David Zaslav, the chief executive of Discovery, who will run the new company, is expected to take over at least some of Ms. Sarnoff’s portfolio. She has had a dozen direct reports.Her job has involved oversight of HBO and HBO Max; the Warner Bros. movie and television studio; several cable channels, including TBS and TNT; and a large consumer products division. Breaking down the siloed nature of some of those units has been one of Ms. Sarnoff’s accomplishments.After news of her departure became public, Mr. Zaslav said in an email that Ms. Sarnoff had been “a passionate and committed steward,” leading “with integrity, focus and hard work in bringing WarnerMedia’s businesses, brands and work force closer together.” In an email of his own, Mr. Kilar called Ms. Sarnoff a “first-tier human being” and “the definition of a selfless leader.”Ms. Sarnoff’s job security has been the subject of Hollywood gossip for months, with agents and Warner-affiliated producers insisting that she was on her way out and some members of her team insisting the opposite. That kind of speculation can be deadly in show business, with whispers congealing into conventional wisdom, often resulting in an irrecoverable position of weakness in the view of Hollywood’s creative community.To be fair, Ms. Sarnoff, whip smart and affable, never got the opportunity to really do her job. The pandemic shut down the entertainment business roughly seven months after she started. AT&T, which hired her, decided to spin off WarnerMedia last May.Before joining WarnerMedia, Ms. Sarnoff held leadership roles at Nickelodeon, the Women’s National Basketball Association, Dow Jones and BBC America. More

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      ‘Meat the Future’ Review: The Growth of a ‘Clean Meat’ Start-Up

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      In her new film, the documentarian Liz Marshall depicts the rise of Upside Foods, a company that produces meat from animal cells.With drama series about defective start-ups — like “The Dropout” and “WeCrashed” — in the spotlight, it’s weird to see a Bay Area-based biotech operation take off without turmoil. Yet that is the ultimate goal of Upside Foods, a new company headed by a cardiologist, Uma Valeti. By taking animals out of the process of meat production, the company hopes to minimize all kinds of strife to humans and livestock alike. In her new documentary, “Meat the Future,” the director Liz Marshall detachedly depicts Upside’s rise, starting in 2016. Opening narration by Jane Goodall describes this as “the next agricultural revolution.” But if you’re not well-versed in bioengineering or food regulation, it’s a bit of a slog.The film centers mainly on Valeti as he works to get Upside — originally Memphis Meats, as it’s called throughout the documentary — off the ground. Upside advances along with its technology, which seeks to grow real meat from animal cells, an endeavor known in some circles as the “clean meat movement.” By eliminating industrial agriculture, “Meat the Future” explains, companies like Upside could significantly reduce deforestation, methane production, animal mistreatment and the spread of disease.It’s certainly compelling to think about a future where the United States is free from industrial agriculture, but that fantasy is the most interesting thing on offer here. For the many, many people whose eyes glaze over at the mere mention of agricultural policy and scientific technicalities, this straightforward film will be about as engaging as a corporate PowerPoint — with no graphics.Meat the FutureNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 24 minutes. Available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      ‘RRR’ Review: A Hero (or Two) Shall Rise

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      Scenes of glorious excess make the screen hum with energy in S.S. Rajamouli’s action epic set in British colonial India.It’s not long in “RRR” before a tiger and a wolf collide midair during a brawl with one of the film’s two musclebound heroes. Scenes of glorious excess make the screen hum with energy in the latest feature from S.S. Rajamouli, the director of the “Baahubali” blockbusters.Set in 1920s India before independence, “RRR” pairs two of the country’s biggest stars, N.T. Rama Rao Jr. (known as “Jr. NTR”) and Ram Charan, as superfriends from either side of a bloody colonial divide. A goofily gallant Jr. NTR plays Bheem, a warrior from the Gond tribe, while Charan smolders as Ram, a fearsome police officer who is underestimated by his white superiors. (The characters are inspired by two rebel heroes from the era, Komaram Bheem and Alluri Sitarama Raju.)Bheem journeys to Delhi to rescue a Gond girl enslaved by the British governor and his wife, a couple of sadists. Ram has orders to identify and capture Bheem by going undercover with revolutionaries. Instead, the men unwittingly make fast friends when they save a child stranded on a river that’s on fire. (As one does.)But their missions get inevitably entangled, and Rajamouli (who collaborated on the story with his screenwriter father, Vijayendra Prasad), stirs in an aw-shucks courtship between Bheem and the governor’s not-racist niece (Olivia Morris).Ram Charan in “RRR.”DVV EntertainmentRajamouli shoots the film’s action with hallucinogenic fervor, supercharging scenes with a shimmering brand of extended slow-motion and C.G.I. that feels less “generated” than unleashed. Here-to-there plot filler in “RRR” is instantly forgiven with each wild set-piece: Ram furiously tunneling through a hundred-strong mob outside his garrison, or the rumbling dance-off (the “Naatu Naatu” musical number) where Bheem and Ram giddily exhaust the British cads and delight the ladies.The rousing anticolonialist battle royal concludes with one final fist-pump: an end-credit song celebrating political figures from across India.RRRRated PG-13 for violent sequences, some intense language and general mayhem. With subtitles. Running time: 3 hours 7 minutes. In theaters. More

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      Cole Sprouse on Finding a Healthy Balance in Hollywood

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      The former child actor wanted to leave showbiz. Now, the “Moonshot” and “Riverdale” star is finding he can act and tend his photography career as well.“I hope you don’t mind, I’m going to be scarfing down this chicken wrap at the same time we talk,” Cole Sprouse politely informs me as he sits in the kitchen wearing a fuzzy, baby blue sweater. The wrap in question is already halfway to his mouth.Sprouse is used to multitasking.He and his twin brother, Dylan, began their professional acting careers when they were infants and worked steadily throughout their childhoods, sharing prominent roles on “Grace Under Fire” and in the Adam Sandler film “Big Daddy.” Cole went on to play Ross’s son on “Friends” before reteaming with Dylan in the Disney Channel sitcom “The Suite Life of Zack and Cody” (Cole played the brainy Cody). The tween hit led to a spinoff series, TV movie — and mega kid stardom for the twins. By age 18, they’d effectively burned out.But after graduating from New York University with a degree in archaeology, Cole Sprouse fulfilled a promise he’d made to his manager to give one more round of TV auditions a go before quitting the industry for good. He booked the role of the brooding outcast Jughead Jones on the CW drama “Riverdale” and was sucked in again.“I started acting when I was so young that I hadn’t actually attempted, as an adult, to think about if I really enjoyed performance,” Sprouse said in a recent video call from Vancouver, British Columbia, where he’s currently filming the seventh season of “Riverdale.” He continued, “When I returned, I reminded myself that I do very much love the art of acting. But I still have a very complicated relationship to celebrity culture.”He’s learned to guard his private life. Rare public comments about his relationships past (namely, with his “Riverdale” co-star Lili Reinhart) and present (the model Ari Fournier) are scrutinized by fans and widely recounted by entertainment outlets. He started a secondary Instagram account devoted solely to sharing the photos he takes of strangers while they’re trying to sneakily snap photos of him. “It was an attempt to go, ‘Hey, I actually have agency in the situation, too,’” he explained. “It helped me a lot.”Sprouse with Lili Reinhart and KJ Apa in “Riverdale.”Michael Courtney/The CWHis latest role is the lead in the HBO Max rom-com “Moonshot” — not to be confused with the unrelated 2022 releases “Moon Knight” and “Moonfall.” In the near future, where robots run coffee shops and Mars is being colonized, Sprouse plays Walt, a hapless college student who hitches a ride on a Mars-bound rocket alongside Sophie (Lana Condor) in an attempt to reach another girl on Mars he thinks could be the One.Intermittently puffing on a vape pen after finishing the chicken wrap, Sprouse spoke about billionaires, the effects of childhood fame and turning 30.These are edited excerpts from our conversation.“Moonshot” is a futuristic take on a conventional romantic comedy. Are you a rom–com fan?I have my favorites, and they’re all over the map. I’m a huge “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” fan, for example. And though there’s a heavy romantic element throughout it, most people would just call that a comedy — and yet, by all genre boundaries, it is a rom-com.I think for so long romantic comedies were put down as “chick flicks,” something lowbrow that only a female audience would care about. Male-centric entries like “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” made some people rethink that notion.The general trend with the arts always starts with a large female fan base really falling in love with something. In a lot of cases, we see the female audience braving the territory first, and then everyone follows. Ultimately, with “Moonshot,” we set out to make a movie that didn’t really take itself super seriously, that we had a lot of lighthearted fun on, and we were able to weave an old married couple dynamic into Lana and I’s relationship.Opposite Lana Condor in “Moonshot.”Warner Bros.The film also throws some solid punches at the billionaire space race: Zach Braff’s Elon Musk-esque character admits he could have used his fortune to solve world hunger dozens of times over, but went to Mars instead. How do you feel about the current space cowboy endeavors of people like Musk and Jeff Bezos?Oh, I think it’s tremendously masturbatory. It’s a ridiculous thing. When I was studying archaeology, we used to have this conversation about the resurrection of the mammoth. The conversation would always devolve into two camps: the camp that really wanted to see the mammoth walk the earth again. And the camp that was going, “Hey, we have active species that are currently going extinct. If we put the resources you are talking about putting into the already extinct mammoth and shift that focus to the present, we could do way more good.” I feel like this conversation about space cowboys is very similar. I’m in the camp where I go, let’s focus on the present. We have an active space that we are living in that is currently decaying. We need to shift focus and resources to here.So, no chance you’re booking a commercial ticket on a rocket any time soon.No, I’m already such a paranoid freak when it comes to flying. I couldn’t imagine what my control-freak nature would do when we started taking off. I would be a nervous wreck.People like to talk about former child stars in this dichotomy of either they spiral out of control or, somehow, “come out OK.” Do you think it’s possible for anyone to actually come through that experience unscathed?My brother and I used to get quite a bit of, “Oh, you made it out! Oh, you’re unscathed!” No. The young women on the channel we were on [Disney Channel] were so heavily sexualized from such an earlier age than my brother and I that there’s absolutely no way that we could compare our experiences. And every single person going through that trauma has a unique experience. When we talk about child stars going nuts, what we’re not actually talking about is how fame is a trauma. So I’m violently defensive against people who mock some of the young women who were on the channel when I was younger because I don’t feel like it adequately comprehends the humanity of that experience and what it takes to recover. And, to be quite honest, as I have now gone through a second big round of this fame game as an adult, I’ve noticed the same psychological effects that fame yields upon a group of young adults as I did when I was a child. I just think people have an easier time hiding it when they’re older.The Sprouse twins on “The Suite Life of Zack and Cody.”Joel Warren/Disney ChannelAfter it was announced that “Riverdale” had been renewed for a seventh season, a lot of memes popped up imagining your reaction when you heard the news. The general internet consensus seemed to be that you were completely distraught to have to do another season. Is that accurate?[Laughs] It’s not completely accurate. One, because I’ve just assumed we’re going to see the finality of our [seven-season] contracts. Two, I think the internet assumes — because of how insane our show is — that we’re probably doing a bit worse than we actually are. It’s easy to forget that people love the show. And I do think it’s going to be much more appreciated in 10 years than it is right now. It would be pretty pompous of me to say that another season of financial stability is not something that would be appealing. Though I’m not going to lie. The memes do make me laugh.You’ve built a side career as a professional photographer, mainly in fashion. What is it about that medium that made you want to pursue it?When I was in school, I was traveling a lot for archaeology, so I always had my camera and I was taking almost anthropological-type photos of the people I was meeting, the culture I was surrounded by. And then, just by being in New York City, I got wrapped up in fashion work and built a portfolio. That was my main source of revenue until “Riverdale” Season 2.You’re turning 30 in August. Does this decade feel like the start of a new chapter?Definitely. ​​I feel like my ducks are in a row better than they’ve ever been. We’re also seeing the conclusion of a program I’ve spent the majority of my 20s on, so there is this world of possibilities that lies before me at the end of this production that I find incredibly appealing and intoxicating. And, I hate to break it to everybody, but I’m not the only 30 year old playing a teen on television.You made it to college in “Moonshot.” You’re starting to age up.Just stringing them along, slowly but surely. In an ideal world, when “Riverdale” finishes, I would love to be doing one to two movies a year and photography the rest of the time. And the logical intersection of those two worlds will eventually be directing.We’re living in a time of extreme nostalgia for the ’90s and 2000s. Is there any chance you’d go full circle and do a “Suite Life” reboot?I don’t think I’ll ever return to that. Not that I have a problem with other people doing the reboots thing. I’m just a big believer that if something is beautiful in the past, you should let it stay beautiful. To bring it into the future feels a bit like reheating a really good, fresh meal in the microwave. It would be hard to be in my 30s and go [in a deep growl], “Zack and Cody are back, man!” More

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      Tony Hawk Discusses His Broken Leg

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      A documentary chronicles the challenges of Hawk’s skating career. He sat down to discuss the devastating leg injury that made promoting it (and walking) a challenge.While everyone’s attention was focused elsewhere, another thing happened at this year’s Oscars. Tony Hawk, the world’s most iconic skateboarder, unveiled his latest trick: Standing without a cane.Hawk, 53, took the stage with Kelly Slater and Shaun White to introduce a James Bond movie montage, but it was Hawk’s mobility that seemed the most notable. Less than three weeks before, he had snapped his right femur when he misjudged the landing on a McTwist — a 540-degree aerial rotation. It’s a trick he’s done tens of thousands of times. That day, though, his speed was off.“After I fell,” he said, “I rolled over and my leg didn’t.”Surgeons repaired the bone with a titanium rod, and a physical therapist designed an aggressive rehab regimen, but neither offered a timeline for recovery. Their reticence granted Hawk something like permission. The next day, he posted a video of himself crutching his way down a hospital corridor.A week later, he shared another video where he tentatively skated across the bottom of his ramp.Hawk was able to walk unassisted onto the stage during the Oscars but he used a cane at the various related events.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesHis unmistakable goal in an aggressive therapy regimen was to walk unassisted onto the Dolby stage. Hawk’s stick-to-it-iveness is the stuff of legend — his quest to land the sport’s first 900-degree spin spanned four White House administrations — but his approach to this rehab is, in technical terms, bananas.Hawk’s femur break came the day before HBO released a trailer for “Tony Hawk: Until the Wheels Fall Off,” a long-awaited documentary about his life and career which spends ample time on his injuries. Directed by Sam Jones, the film excavates the roots, reaches, and complex consequences of his perseverance.In many ways, the documentary is an unlikely coming-of-middle-age story, for both Hawk and skateboarding, with an arc shaped by loss. The loss of innocence, sure, and loved ones, certainly and sadly, but Hawk’s other losses have sometimes liberated him rather than constrained him. Like most skaters, he sees skateboarding as his means of self-expression, yet the medium is more chisel and stone than brush and canvas. Every failed attempt, passing year, and snapped femur becomes a chunk of unessential marble that must be cast aside for the sculpture to emerge. It is an art born of battering, but what many fail to see is that the skater isn’t the one chipping away with the hammer and chisel; the skater is the stone.With the documentary set to premier on Tuesday, Hawk sat down over the weekend to discuss his life, his career and the injury that will require even more reinvention.This conversation has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.Jones’s vision for what a documentary about Hawk could be was what convinced Hawk to participate.Sam Jones Pictures/HBO Documentary FilmsHow’s the recovery going?I just had some X-rays, and I’ll see my doctor on Monday. His attitude is basically that my leg is never going to be stronger than it is now, so if I can handle the pain, then go for it. I’m in uncharted waters here, but it’s all on me. If I can drop the cane by next week, I’ll be on track.On track?We have an event on the weekend of May 12 in Las Vegas, and I want to skate in that demo. Devo, Modest Mouse, Descendents, and Warish are playing, and the best vert skaters will be skating all weekend. We’re never going to get that lineup again, so I don’t want to miss it.Your documentary comes out this week. It’s an inspiring ride. What made you want to tell your story now?It was Sam. Had anyone else done it, the story would’ve been formulaic: You have some ups and downs, then you find massive success, then the credits roll. Sam was interested in the whole trajectory. Anyone else would say my career ended 15 to 20 years ago. I like to think I’m still relevant and pushing boundaries, and Sam did, too. I also feel like I have enough distance after coming through my own challenges, so now was the right time to tell the story.Hawk’s professional skating career stretches back to the early 1980s, with some tricks taking him decades to perfect.HBO Documentary FilmsThe film doesn’t shy away from the challenges you’ve faced on and off your board, but it also gives a glimpse into how much you’ve changed.My wife Catherine [Obreht] was the catalyst. Our connection was so special, the idea of being able to envision a life with her, that’s why I wanted to make such a positive change. One of the moments in the doc is where Stacy Peralta is calling people around me after I’d taken a heavy fall. He was worried about me slamming like that at my age. One of the first people he called was Catherine. That’s how you get to me. The person I seek advice from starts and ends with my wife.Another theme in the film is the toll skating takes on the body, especially an aging one.Yeah, I didn’t expect that to be such a focus. I understand it, but when you see so many bad falls in close succession, you don’t realize that most of my skating now is goofing around with my friends and trying to relearn fairly basic tricks from the 80s. Before I broke my leg, I think I was skating the best I have in the last five or ten years. Not the best I’ve ever skated, but the best in recent years. I got cocky on a McTwist, and that’s on me. In general, I feel like I’m a much wiser skater now. I can still get obsessive about tricks, but I can also relax. I’m much more calculated now, more aware of worst-case scenarios. I guess that’s a form of maturity?Is there something you want people to take away from the doc?I hope it champions skateboarding for them. Yes, you’re seeing the grit and hard work and sometimes the setbacks, but I hope audiences see what skateboarding can do for someone; it can give them a sense of identity and self-confidence that maybe nothing else could. That’s exactly what happened for me.For all the things you’ve gotten from skateboarding, you’ve given back as well. What can you tell readers about The Skatepark Project?When I was young, I had a skatepark in my area. It was the only place where I felt like I belonged. At the time there were maybe five skate parks in America? I never took that for granted, so when I had a position of influence, the first thing I wanted to do was provide that kind of opportunity and environment for underserved communities. I wanted to offer that to youth that felt disenfranchised like I did. That’s still the priority, and The Skatepark Project staff does incredible work; they deserve all the credit. It’s amazing because skateboarding is for everyone, absolutely everyone, and that’s not true of other sports. Go to any skatepark and if it’s light out, the park is in use. What other sports facility is like that?So what’s next?I want to put weight on my leg. I want to skate the demo at the Weekend Jam in Vegas. Before I got hurt, I was working on a new video part, so I hope to be able to finish that. The irony is that before I broke my leg I was toying around with the idea of doing a farewell tour of demonstrations. I don’t know if anyone would be interested in that, but maybe? We’ll see. More

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      Michelle Materre, Champion of Black Independent Film, Dies at 67

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      Through her distribution company and an educational series, Ms. Materre was for decades a tireless advocate for underrepresented filmmakers.Michelle Materre, a distributor and educator who promoted Black women’s voices in film and released influential independent movies by Black creators, died on March 11 in White Plains, N.Y. She was 67.A friend, Kathryn Bowser, said the cause was oral cancer.Ms. Materre was an early proponent of independently released works by Black female directors, beginning at a time when diversity in independent film was far from the forefront of the cultural conversation.Her company, KJM3 Entertainment Group, worked on distribution for major films; one of its first projects was the marketing of Julie Dash’s “Daughters of the Dust.” Widely viewed as a masterpiece of Black independent cinema and said to have been the first feature film by a Black woman to have a wide release, “Daughters of the Dust” was inducted into the Library of Congress’s National Film Registry in 2004.The New York Times critic A.O. Scott wrote in 2020 that “Daughters of the Dust,” which tells the story of Gullah women off the Sea Islands of South Carolina and Georgia in the early 20th century, “has sent ripples of influence through the culture,” inspiring the imagery in Beyoncé’s visual album “Lemonade” and the director Sofia Coppola’s aesthetic. Ava DuVernay, the director of “Selma,” also regularly cites the film as an influence.Ms. Dash, in a remembrance for the International Documentary Association, wrote, “We remain forever grateful for Michelle and team KJM3 for the initial run of ‘Daughters of the Dust’ in 1992; it would not have been a success without them.”From left, Barbara-O Jones, Trula Hoosier and Alva Rogers in Julie Dash’s ‘“Daughters of the Dust,” one of the first films handled by Ms. Materre’s distribution company, KJM3 Entertainment Group.Cohen Media Group/Everett CollectionKJM3 Entertainment was formed in 1992 and released 23 films before it ceased operation in 2001. Another of the company’s most influential distribution efforts was “L’Homme Sur Les Quais” (“The Man by the Shore”) (1993), a drama by Raoul Peck, the Haitian auteur who went on to direct “I Am Not Your Negro,” the 2016 documentary about race in America based on the writings of James Baldwin.Ms. Materre’s passion for bringing unsung masterworks to wider audiences animated her career. In 1999, she started Creatively Speaking, an effort to package short films from underrepresented filmmakers into full-length programs organized thematically. It has grown into a major cultural player, holding regular screenings at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and educational panels about diversity in filmmaking at the New School and elsewhere.“One Way or Another: Black Women’s Cinema, 1970-1991,” which compiled short films into a longer project, was one acclaimed Creatively Speaking project. In 2017, The New Yorker’s Richard Brody called it the most important repertory series of the year.In a 2019 interview for the New School, Ms. Materre said she started Creatively Speaking because she saw a lack of opportunity — a theme throughout her career.“I found that there weren’t very many outlets for filmmakers of color and women filmmakers who hadn’t reached the possibility of making feature films yet,” she said. “They were making short films — all these amazing short films, but nobody was ever seeing them.”Once she began producing these films, she added, “people gravitated towards them like crazy.”In the International Documentary Association tribute, Leslie Fields-Cruz, the executive director of Black Public Media, wrote that Ms. Materre “understood why Black films need special attention when it comes to distribution and engagement.”“There are multiple generations of filmmakers, curators, distributors and media arts administrators,” she wrote, “whose lives and careers have been impacted simply because Michelle took the time to listen and to care.”Ms. Materre, right, with Kathryn Bowser of KJM3 Entertainment, left, and Kay Shaw of the National Black Programming Consortium at the premiere of the film “Follow Me Home” in New York in 1997. Ozier Muhammad/The New York TimesMichelle Angelina Materre was born on May 12, 1954, in Chicago. Her father, Oscar Materre, was a Chicago firefighter and owned a paint business. Her mother, Eloise (Michael) Materre, was a real estate agent.She grew up in Chicago and attended the Chicago Latin School. She then earned a B.S. in education from Boston State College and a master’s in educational media from Boston College.In 1975, she married Jose Masso, a Boston public-school teacher. They divorced in 1977. She married Dennis Burroughs, a production technician, in 1990; that marriage, too, ended in divorce. She is survived by her sisters, Paula and Judi Materre. Ms. Materre’s work at Creatively Speaking was centered in New York City; in addition to distributing films, she often organized panels and screenings of little-seen works like “Charcoal” (2017), the Haitian director Francesca Andre’s short film on colorism and skin lightening practices in the Black community.Ms. Materre consulted on the production and distribution of numerous films and served on the boards of the Black Documentary Collective, New York Women in Film and Television, and other groups promoting underrepresented filmmakers.In 2000 she began teaching at the New School in New York City, where her courses focused on diversity and inclusion in media.In a remembrance for The New School Free Press, Ms. Materre’s colleague Terri Bowles, with whom she taught a course at the New School, wrote, “She radiated a love of media and cinema, immersing her students, colleagues and friends in the vernaculars of the image, its myriad presentations and its critical importance.” More

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      Estelle Harris, George’s Mother on ‘Seinfeld,’ Dies at 93

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      Employing a high-powered screech, she took maternal exasperation and paranoia to comedic heights as one of the show’s most frequently recurring characters.Estelle Harris, who hyperventilated her way into the hearts of millions of “Seinfeld” fans as George’s mother, Estelle Costanza, died on Saturday in Palm Desert, Calif. She was 93.Her son Glen Harris announced the death in a statement sent by Ms. Harris’s agent.In 27 episodes — starting in 1992 during the fourth season of “Seinfeld,” around the time that the show became a pop culture sensation, and continuing until its final episode in 1998 — Ms. Harris embarrassed and harangued her son, one of the show’s four main characters, George Costanza (Jason Alexander), and his father, Frank (Jerry Stiller).During her character’s meltdowns, often in response to slights and offenses to propriety, Ms. Harris deployed a screech that had the urgency of a hyena in its death throes. When she whined about “waiting for hours,” that final word had three, maybe four moan-like syllables. The combination of stiffness and violence in her gesticulations expressed a forbidding level of psychological tension.Ms. Harris knew how to make outrage into a joke.“You don’t play comedy,” she told The Chicago Tribune in 1995. “It’s like that Jewish expression ‘crying laughter.’ All through the centuries the Jews had such terrible things happen to them that they had to laugh a little harder.”Her “Seinfeld” debut was one of the series’ most famous episodes: “The Contest.” After George’s mother catches him having a private moment with one of her issues of Glamour magazine, she falls in shock, throws out her back and enters a hospital.“I go out for a quart of milk; I come home and find my son treating his body like it was an amusement park,” Ms. Harris said. “Too bad you can’t do that for a living” — and now, with her voice rising, she used her working-class New Yorker’s accent to milk the script’s sarcasm: “You could sell out Madison Square GAAARDEN. Thousands of people could watch you. You could be a BIIIG STARRR.”That set the template for her subsequent appearances, including on other beloved episodes like “The Fusilli Jerry” (1995) and “The Rye” (1996). She began her scenes in a sane register of a volatile emotion — recrimination, self-pity, bafflement — and by the end of the sequence arrived at an outburst so intense it could only be farcical.Ms. Harris’s success in the role led to other opportunities to play the shrill and unhinged, including in the “Toy Story” movie franchise, for which she provided the voice of Mrs. Potato Head.At the height of the popularity of “Seinfeld,” Ms. Harris found herself with the kind of celebrity that drew looks on the street. Something in the emotionality with which she portrayed Estelle Costanza had prompted fond recognition in a national audience.“Black people, Asians, WASPs, Italians, Jews — they all say, ‘Oh, you’re just like my mom,’” she told The Tribune.Estelle Nussbaum was born on April 22, 1928, in the Hell’s Kitchen section of Manhattan, where her Polish-Jewish parents owned a candy store. She grew up largely in Tarentum, Pa., a coal-mining town where her parents moved to help relatives run a general store and to provide Estelle a gentler setting for her childhood.Though she faced antisemitic taunts in her small town, Estelle found an outlet in stage performances. Her father, who she said “spoke the King’s English,” insisted that she take elocution lessons from a young age.Ms. Harris in 2010 at the premiere of “Toy Story 3” in Hollywood. She provided the voice of Mrs. Potato Head in the movie.Kevin Winter/Getty ImagesShe moved back to New York in her late teens and later married Sy Harris, a salesman of window treatments. They had three children, and for a while, Ms. Harris was a homemaker.She wound her way through dinner theaters and television commercials, including a 1983 spot for Handi-Wrap: “It don’t mean a thing, if it ain’t got that cling: doo-wrap, doo-wrap, doo-wrap,” she sang with schmaltzy enthusiasm.After her big break on “Seinfeld,” Ms. Harris’s other major credits included the movies “Out to Sea” (1997), starring Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau, and “My Giant” (1998), with Billy Crystal.Mr. Harris died last year. In addition to her son Glen, Ms. Harris is survived by another son, Eric; a daughter, Taryn; three grandsons; and a great-grandson.In her Tribune profile, Ms. Harris said she had complained to Larry David, the co-creator of “Seinfeld,” about her character’s constant yelling, but experience proved him right: “The more I yell, the more they laugh,” she said.Ms. Harris admitted that her personal life prepared her for the part.“I yell at my husband, but he doesn’t mind,” she said. “He’s grateful for the attention.”Tiffany May More

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      Stream These 10 Titles Before They Leave Netflix This Month

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      U.S. subscribers are losing a bunch of titles in April. Here are the best of the bunch.Oscar season is over (finally), but this month’s slate of movies leaving Netflix in the United States is full of winners and nominees past and present, as well as a handful of cult items and action epics. Toss these titles — nine movies and one favorite ’90s TV show — into your list before they’re gone. (Dates reflect the final day a title is available.)‘The Killing of a Sacred Deer’ (April 4)Although his most recent feature, the Oscar-winning “The Favourite,” was decidedly more audience friendly, the Greek writer and director Yorgos Lanthimos has carved out a niche as one of the more provocative (sometimes mercilessly so) filmmakers of his time. After his first English language film, the pitch-black comedy “The Lobster,” he reunited with Colin Farrell for this heavy slab of psychological horror about a heart surgeon whose strange friendship with a twisted teenage boy (Barry Keoghan) prompts a series of horrifying events. Lanthimos masterfully creates a feeling of creeping dread and uncomfortable uncertainty, much of it thanks to Keoghan, who harnesses a truly disturbing screen presence; like Farrell, he is in “The Batman,” and moviegoers who thought that was a bleak picture may find this one too hard to swallow.Stream it here.‘The Florida Project’ (April 5)Sean Baker is one of our most adventurous and emotionally curious filmmakers, his work dropping in on highly specific subcultures and scenes without feeling distanced or anthropological. In this 2017 comedy-drama, he settles in to “The Magic Castle,” a budget motel located near Walt Disney World, its clientele a mix of hoodwinked tourists and struggling long-timers like Halley (Bria Vinaite) and her six-year-old daughter, Moonee (Brooklynn Prince). Baker carefully situates his contrast of haves and have-nots; Disney World is only a short walk away, but the lives enjoyed by its patrons seem impossibly out of reach. Willem Dafoe picked up a well-deserved Oscar nomination for his work as the motel’s good-natured manager.Stream it here.‘Miss Sloane’ (April 18)The newly minted Oscar winner Jessica Chastain stars in this political thriller from John Madden (the “Shakespeare in Love” director, not the other one) as a tough-as-nails D.C. lobbyist who finds herself in the sights of the powerful gun lobby. Chastain made a specialty of these sturdy, sharp women who get the job done — the character is not far removed from her roles in “Zero Dark Thirty,” “A Most Violent Year,” and “Molly’s Game” — but she finds the shadings and contours that make the character unique while Jonathan Perera’s smart screenplay feels like an authentic peek at how the sausage is made in Washington.Stream it here.‘The Artist’ (April 25)Oscar loves movies about the movies, and this 2011 comedy from the writer and director Michel Hazanavicius (which won five prizes, including best picture) isn’t just a film about the industry: It is steeped in stylistic and narrative influences from throughout film history. Hazanavicius tells his story of the bumpy transition from silent to sound cinema by dramatizing that transition, recalling the inside-Hollywood angle of “Singin’ in the Rain”; the secondary story, about a fading star’s romance with a rising talent, evokes the many remakes of “A Star is Born.” Yet “The Artist” isn’t just a game of “spot the homage.” The filmmaking is clever and the performances are inspired, particularly those of the best actor winner Jean Dujardin, of the best supporting actress nominee Bérénice Bejo and of John Goodman, cast perfectly as a cigar-chomping studio head.Stream it here.‘Dawson’s Creek’: Seasons 1-6 (April 30)Fresh off the success of his script for the original “Scream,” the screenwriter Kevin Williamson got the greenlight from the nascent WB network to create this long-running drama, chronicling the lives of loves of a group of teens in the fictional hamlet of Capeside, Mass. Williamson’s winkingly self-aware style doesn’t go down quite as smoothly here as it does in the “Scream” films, but it offers its own trashy pleasures, its scripts rife with romances and hookups and unrequited crushes. And the show is now noteworthy for its keen casting eye: Katie Holmes, Joshua Jackson, James Van Der Beek and Michelle Williams make up the core ensemble, with Scott Foley, Jane Lynch, Busy Philipps and Seth Rogen among the recurring cast.Stream it here.‘Léon: The Professional’ (April 30)Natalie Portman made her film debut in this 1994 action picture from the French writer and director Luc Besson (“La Femme Nikita”), playing a young woman whose family is executed by corrupt D.E.A. agents. She talks her enigmatic neighbor (Jean Reno) into providing not only refuge but also training; he is a contract killer, and she wants revenge. Besson stages a series of spectacular set pieces, each more ingenious than the last, culminating in a barn burner in which Leon seems to take on the entire New York Police Department. Portman is already a movie star, and Reno is quietly effective — an excellent counterpoint to Gary Oldman, who chews scenery by the fistful as the most unhinged of the bad guys.Stream it here.‘Snakes on a Plane’ (April 30)This 2006 action film from David R. Ellis was one of the first films that was, in effect, rewritten by the internet. Based solely on its title and the presence of Samuel L. Jackson, the movie became something of a viral sensation before its release, prompting its filmmakers to reshoot scenes and rework the tone to mirror more closely the goofy B-movie its “fans” had come to expect. The result is a bit of a mess, particularly in its laborious first act. But once the snakes start to attack at the 30-minute mark, it’s goofy, gory fun, a spirited riff on ’70s disaster movies, with an abundance of gruesome but funny shock effects and an admirably game performance from the unflappable Jackson.Stream it here.‘Snatch’ (April 30)The director Guy Ritchie made a big splash on the indie circuit with his low-budget, high-energy crime comedy “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels” in 1999; this successor was also a kind of bigger-budget remake, pursuing similar situations and aesthetics but with more resources and bigger names. Chief among the big name actors is Brad Pitt, who appears under a mop of messy hair and barks most of his dialogue in an indecipherable dialect — hinting at the character-actor work he pursued, as a sideline, as he approached middle age. “Snatch” is fast, funny and flashy; it is style over substance, sure, but what style.Stream it here.‘Stripes’ (April 30)Three years before achieving total cultural ubiquity with “Ghostbusters,” Bill Murray, Harold Ramis and the director Ivan Reitman teamed up for this uproariously funny service comedy. Murray and Ramis (who was also one of the writers) play slacker pals who, more out of boredom than patriotic duty, enlist in the U.S. Army, where they do their best to turn the disciplined, humorless environment of basic training into a nonstop party. It’s like Abbott & Costello’s “Buck Privates” crossed with “Animal House,” and it’s exactly as fun as that sounds. Warren Oates is a superb foil as their drill sergeant, while John Candy, Joe Flaherty, John Larroquette, Judge Reinhold, P.J. Soles, Dave Thomas and Sean Young turn up in memorable supporting roles.Stream it here.‘The Town’ (April 30)Ben Affleck followed the triumph of his feature directorial debut, “Gone Baby Gone,” with this taut and gripping crime picture, adapted from the Chuck Hogan novel “Prince of Thieves.” Affleck co-wrote, directed and stars as Doug MacRay, the ringleader of a group of tough Boston thieves who hatch a plot to steal millions in cash from Fenway Park — a heist complicated by shifting allegiances, a tenacious F.B.I. agent (Jon Hamm) and Doug’s blossoming romance with a potential witness (Rebecca Hall). Affleck’s sure hand with actors — Chris Cooper, Blake Lively, Pete Postlethwaite and Jeremy Renner round out the ensemble — and his firm sense of time and place give the film a confidence that more than makes up for the familiarity of its storytelling.Stream it here.Also leaving: ‘August: Osage County’ (April 26); ‘Moneyball,’ ‘The Shawshank Redemption,’ ‘Superman Returns’ (April 30). More