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      Malcolm D. Lee on ‘Space Jam: A New Legacy’ and Directing LeBron James

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      The filmmaker recalls the “organized chaos” that went into making the new film and the studio pickup games with Chris Paul and other pros.The making of “Space Jam: A New Legacy” was a head-spinning exercise in the unfamiliar for the director Malcolm D. Lee.For one thing, the film went into production less than a week after he officially signed on to direct the film. Lee was a late addition in summer 2019, taking over directing duties from Terence Nance. The script was still in development. Lee, the veteran director of comedies like “Girls Trip” (2017) and “The Best Man” (1999), had never worked with animation before and had never seen the original “Space Jam,” the 1996 basketball-Looney Tunes crossover starring Michael Jordan.On top of all that, Lee was charged with taking care of a movie built around LeBron James, one of the most popular athletes in the world. James had appeared on the big screen before (most notably in a supporting role in the 2015 romantic comedy “Trainwreck”) but had never anchored a feature.“It was organized chaos,” Lee, 51, said in an interview this week.The director met James a decade earlier when they had discussed making a film together, but it never came to fruition. The new project is a gamble for both Lee and James: It will inevitably be compared to the now-beloved original in the same way that James is continually measured against Jordan. If it flops, a movie literally billed as “A New Legacy” may be damaging to James’s own.The movie is, if nothing else, self-aware. At one point, James, playing himself, notes how poorly athletes fare when they try to act. (Similarly to the original, other pro basketball players — including Damian Lillard, Anthony Davis and Diana Taurasi — have cameos.) The film also features Don Cheadle as the villainous manifestation of an algorithm named, well, Al G. Rhythm, who kidnaps James, his youngest son (Cedric Joe) and the rest of the Warner Bros. universe.James and Bugs share the screen.Warner Bros. In addition to preparing for the film, James, 36, also had to stay in shape for the N.B.A. season. Lee said that on shoot days, James would wake up at 2 a.m. and work out till 6 a.m., then show up for a full day on set.In an interview, Lee, who is the cousin of fellow filmmaker Spike Lee, discussed his own love for basketball and how he directed a star without a traditional acting background. Here are edited excerpts from our conversation.Did you grow up playing basketball?The third grade really is when I started playing organized basketball. I wasn’t as into it as my brother and my dad were encouraging me to. I started playing in this league in Brooklyn called the Youth Basketball Association. My dad coached a year. In fact, it’s funny, too, because Spike, who was living with us at the time, was the assistant coach. [Lee is 13 years older than his cousin.]No kidding.Swear to God. And Spike will tell you himself. There was one week when my dad went down to Alabama — that’s where he’s from — and Spike had to coach us. We had an undefeated season until that date, so Spike was sweating coaching us. And we actually got the victory. He didn’t want to spoil my father’s streak.What was your first conversation with LeBron like when you took the “Space Jam” gig?I think LeBron had the same agenda as everyone else in that he wanted to make the movie great. He wanted to make sure that I knew what I was doing, that my vision was clear and that he’d be taken care of. Not coddled, but that there was a leader aboard who was going to say, “This is what we’re going to do and this is how are we going to do it.” I assured him that there could be delays — I just don’t know — but I’m a professional, I’ve been in this for a long time and I will make sure that you’re taken care of.Lee signed onto the film late in the process. “It was organized chaos,” he said.Justin Lubin/Warner Bros.Did you have any reservations about working with a basketball star who doesn’t have the traditional acting training that someone like Don Cheadle has?Not really. LeBron’s been in front of the camera since he was 18 years old. Now, I mean, “Oh, those are just interviews,” but people get asked the same questions over and over again. So he’s got some rehearsed responses. He also was very funny. He wants to be good. He was good in “Trainwreck.” There’s some actors that get something and say, “OK, that’ll cut together.” And some that are just natural. I think LeBron has a lot of natural ability.Without spoiling it, there is a scene where LeBron has to convey a vulnerable emotion toward his son. Is there anything in particular either you or he did to prepare for that scene? Because that had to be out of his comfort zone.For sure. Look, the first thing that I try to get with any actor is trust, right? I have to trust them. They have to trust me because I’m going to ask them to go to some places that they aren’t necessarily comfortable going. So yes, we did talk about something before he delivered some of those lines. Then we did a couple of takes — just let him get warmed up. If I’m not getting what I’m looking for, then I’ll say, “Why don’t you think about this? And don’t worry about the line so much. Just have this in your brain and then say it.”From left, Nneka Ogwumike, Cedric Joe, Damian Lillard, Anthony Davis, Klay Thompson and Diana Taurasi on the set. Scott Garfield/Warner Bros.Film is a director-driven medium, and basketball is very much player-driven in that players can get coaches fired or disregard them entirely. Did that dynamic ever come into play in the course of filming?No. I don’t think there was ever any “I want to do it this way and I don’t care what you have to say.” I think LeBron likes to be coached. He’s a master of his craft. But at the same time, people are in your corner whose job it is to say: “Make sure you do this. Think about this. I’m seeing this on the court. You’re not seeing blah, blah, blah.” And I think he takes that information. Same thing with acting.During the filming of the original “Space Jam,” Michael Jordan hosted scrimmages with other N.B.A. players. Was there anything like that here?There was a court built for [James] on the Warner Bros. lot. I did go to one pickup game and that was thrilling for me, because I’m a huge basketball fan. Chris Paul was there, Ben Simmons, Anthony Davis, JaVale McGee, Draymond Green.You didn’t ask to play?Hell no.What an opportunity, man!Are you kidding? The opportunity to get embarrassed. A lot of those guys come into the gym, they don’t know I’m the director of the movie. They’re like, “Who’s this dude?” I can’t be like, “Hey, how you doing? I played intramurals at Georgetown.” That’s not going to impress anybody. More

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      Ford and Mellon Foundations Expand Initiative for Disabled Artists

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      The foundations are adding $5 million to the Disability Futures program, which will continue through 2025 with two more classes of 20 fellows each.The Disability Futures initiative, a fellowship established by the Ford and Andrew W. Mellon Foundations last fall to support disabled artists, is expanding. The foundations announced on Friday that they will commit an additional $5 million to support the initiative through 2025, which will include support for two more cohorts of 20 fellows.The fellowship, which was created by and for disabled individuals, was conceived as an 18-month initiative. It provided 20 disabled artists, filmmakers and journalists, selected from across the United States, with unrestricted $50,000 grants administered by the arts funding group United States Artists.But Margaret Morton, the director of creativity and free expression at the Ford Foundation, said it was clear from the beginning that it couldn’t just be a one-off venture.Projects undertaken by members of the first cohort will be showcased at the first Disability Futures virtual festival, on Monday and Tuesday, with programming from some of the country’s leading disabled artists, writers, thinkers and designers. It is free and open to the public.Among the highlights: A session on disability portraiture with the filmmakers Jim LeBrecht and Rodney Evans, the painter Riva Lehrer and the journalist Alice Wong; a conversation exploring the connections between climate justice and disability justice led by Patty Berne; and a virtual dance party hosted by the garment maker Sky Cubacub, with music by DJ Who Girl (Kevin Gotkin). Evening runway performances from models wearing items from Cubacub’s Rebirth Garments and a meditation experience with the initiative Black Power Naps, featuring Navild Acosta and Fannie Sosa, are also on tap.“It’s been really profound for me to see how much the fellows chosen in the first cohort were interested in elevating others in the community,” Emil J. Kang, the program director for arts and culture at the Mellon Foundation, said in an interview on Thursday.The next class of fellows will be announced in 2022. They are chosen by peer advisers who are themselves disabled artists.But the feedback from the first class, Morton said, was frank: Do even better in the selection process.“One of the fellows challenged us,” she said, about there being only one Native American fellow. “And we appreciated that and were challenged to get it right and make sure we have a deeper pool.”The grants offer flexible compensation options. The money can be distributed in a lump sum, in payments or even be deferred, depending on what works best for the artist.The fellowship “has made an incredible difference in my life and career,” the writer and photographer Jen Deerinwater said in an email. “It’s allowed me more financial freedom, without the risk of losing my disability and health care services, to pursue more artistic pursuits such as music.”The pandemic has made foundation leaders “deeply aware” of the challenges disabled professionals face, Morton said. About one in four adults in the United States has a disability, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.“We gained a deeper impression and perspective about what it’s like to navigate through the world,” she said.The program’s overarching goal is to help the artists make connections, Morton said.“Our biggest dream is visibility,” she said. For audiences to see the artists and for funders to see that “they should start investing in disabled practitioners.” More

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      Anthony Bourdain Documentary ‘Roadrunner’ Seeks to Understand His Death, Career and Struggles

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      “Roadrunner” takes an intimate look at Mr. Bourdain’s career and his struggles, using archival footage and interviews from members of his inner circle.In 2016, Anthony Bourdain sat back in a leather coach to talk to a therapist in Buenos Aires, Argentina. It was the first time he had gone to a session since his parents sent him to one after catching him with drugs as a teenager. He put on his reading glasses, and went through a list he called “all of my ailments and problems.” More

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      ‘The Boys in Red Hats’ Review: Cool Story, Bro

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      This documentary explores the incident on Jan. 18, 2019, when a high school student grinned and stared at a Native American demonstrator at a raucous Lincoln Memorial gathering.Jonathan Schroder’s “The Boys in Red Hats” is a maddening instance of a movie at war with itself. That’s appropriate enough since its subject is the encounter on Jan. 18, 2019, between white high school students and a Native American demonstrator at the Lincoln Memorial. The incident became a viral flash point over one teenager’s grinning in the face of the Native American elder.As an alumnus of the students’ school, Covington Catholic in Kentucky, Schroder presents this film as his journey toward understanding. He hears out pooh-poohing parent chaperones, agitated former students, one student’s attorney and a current pupil whose identity is concealed. Black activists on the day and Covington’s penchant for pep rallies are both advanced as explanations for the teens’ behavior.Between a bro-friendly voice-over and “TMZ Live”-style bull sessions with his producer, Schroder’s exploratory pose comes to feel exasperatingly clueless. Yet the film also assembles soothingly sharp commentators who lay bare the power and race dynamics and aggression at play in the Lincoln Memorial encounter. These include Mohawk journalist Vincent Schilling; Anne Branigin, a writer for The Root; and Allissa Richardson, a journalism professor who sees a “textbook example of white privilege.”Schroder’s request to interview the Covington Catholic student who attracted so much ire is turned down, and the same happens (in person) with Nathan Phillips, the Native American drummer. (I don’t even know where to begin with his weirdly nostalgic story of being punched in the head by a Covington teacher while a student.)A fizzled ending points fingers at media bias and our “bubbles.” Some viewers of the Lincoln Memorial events might instead invoke the pioneering media theorists The Marx Brothers: “Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?”The Boys in Red HatsNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 27 minutes. In virtual cinemas. More

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      ‘The Hidden Life of Trees’ Review: Magic Kingdom

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      Jörg Adolph uses the sensorial capacities of cinema to thrillingly visualize a German forester’s contention that trees are social, sentient beings.In his best-selling book, “The Hidden Life of Trees,” the German forester Peter Wohlleben drew in millions of readers with a tantalizing hypothesis: that trees are social, sentient beings, who talk to each other, feed and nurse their young, sense pain and have personalities. While Wohlleben’s anthropomorphic language and seductive blend of science and speculation rankled some professionals, this was precisely the selling point for lay readers: an opportunity to see how trees share some of our own traits, and are worthy of our empathy and care.Directed by Jörg Adolph, the documentary “The Hidden Life of Trees” uses the sensorial capacities of cinema to thrillingly visualize Wohlleben’s observations. Jan Haft’s camera peers deep into tree bark, and the entire universes of organisms therein; it captures the blooming of plant life in rapturous time-lapse shots; it lovingly traces the outlines of rustling, sun-kissed canopies. All the while, the voice-over reads snippets from Wohlleben’s book, letting us into the secrets of nature that lie beyond human vision and temporality.These scenes are interspersed with Wohlleben’s field trips and lectures, and as in the book, his accessible style and infectious passion is the main draw here. What the film successfully imparts is not so much scientific certainty as an affecting sense of curiosity and reverence, which Wohlleben deploys to a pragmatic end: to argue for the ecological management of forests, which would ensure their communal health and longevity, and therefore that of humankind. Crouching next to a 10,000-year-old spruce, Wohlleben reminds us of man’s comparative insignificance as well as power. “The only thing it cannot withstand,” he says of the spindly tree, “is a chain saw.”The Hidden Life of TreesRated PG. In German, Korean and English, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 25 minutes. In theaters. More

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      Andrea Arnold Has Directed A-Listers. Her Latest Star? This Cow

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      Arnold’s new documentary, “Cow,” is one of the most moving films at Cannes. “A few times, I’ve just burst into tears about it,” she says.CANNES, France — Andrea Arnold waved her hands in front of her face, trying to keep her composure. “I’m a bit pathetic today, sorry,” the British director said, tearing up.Arnold hadn’t expected to cry during our interview, just as I hadn’t expected to be so moved by her new film, “Cow,” which debuted at the Cannes Film Festival this week. On the face of it, “Cow” hardly sounds like a tear-jerker: It simply chronicles the day-to-day life of Luma, a cow on a dairy farm. She moos, she is milked, she mates and she gives birth.But maybe those black-and-white patterns on a cow’s hide form a sort of Rorschach blot, because as I watched Luma lick her newborn calf or endure the indignity of a milking machine, I began to ponder all sorts of weighty concepts: love, nature, dehumanization and death. Arnold lets her camera linger for a while and as you’re staring into Luma’s enormous eyes, you may start to wonder if it’s the cow you’re recognizing or something within yourself.Previously known for directing “American Honey” and the second season of “Big Little Lies,” the 60-year-old Arnold welcomed the change of pace that “Cow” afforded, and filming (shot on a farm just outside London) stretched for years. Arnold told me she had long wanted to make a documentary about an animal, but she was unprepared for the cinematic and emotional connection she ended up forging with her star.Andrea Arnold in Cannes. She had been working on “Cow” in between projects like “Big Little Lies.”Caroline Blumberg/EPA, via ShutterstockHere are edited excerpts from our conversation.Did you always know you wanted a cow as your subject?I considered all the animals, of course, and I thought about a chicken because chickens usually live for about 90 days and they’ve got amazing personalities. But for some reason, I just kept coming back to the cow. Dairy cows work so hard and they have such a busy life, I thought that would be interesting to look at.How much experience did you have with cows before?When I was about 18, I met my first herd of cows. I was with a boyfriend walking in the countryside, and we just walked to a field of cows and they all came and sat around me. I remember it really vividly because I was just amazed at how huge and gentle they were. Actually, they were all licking me as well.Really? Were you putting your hand out?The natural thing I did was sit down so I didn’t seem threatening, and I guess they were like, “Who are you? What are you?” They’ve got these huge tongues and they were licking my clothes and my hands. At that point, it had a profound effect on me.So once you decided it would be a cow, what’s the first step? How do you cast a documentary subject like that?I wasn’t sure whether we’d need a cow that you could pick out in a crowd. Luma had a very distinct white head, with this sort of black eyeliner around her eyes. She also was described as having some attitude and I loved the sound of that. All the people I spoke to who look after cows say that they do have quite distinct personalities.You can sense that personality, though I couldn’t help but wonder if that’s part of the empathy and projection that’s created when you watch a movie. When you were on the ground observing Luma, could you feel that personality, too?Very much so. I was saying the other day to somebody that I find it very moving when she … [Arnold pauses, tearing up.] I can’t say it, almost. I find it moving now, telling you. A few times, I’ve just burst into tears about it.What is it she did that you found so moving?I always said early on that if the cows are aware of the camera, just let it be honest. We can’t pretend we’re not there and our presence is going to have an impact on the way she behaves. Sometimes, she did get sort of angry with us and head-butt the camera, but I really felt over time that she felt seen. I don’t know if I’m right, but it feels very profound, because the whole point was to see her.Some of the looks she gave us when I was there, I thought, “She’s really looking at me and I’m really looking at her and we see each other.” Obviously, she doesn’t know what this thing is that is filming her, but she could certainly feel that we are focusing on her. I think she felt the gaze. When we were editing, I kept feeling like, “I see you Lu, I see you.”It must have been an interesting thing to return to this in between projects.And I did “Big Little Lies” in the middle of that.A very different production.Very different. This was a project from a very true place in myself, so it was always like a touchstone to go back to it.Would the farm give you a heads up when anything significant was happening with Luma?We were in touch all the time because that’s their lives: Having calves and making milk is what they do, and that’s incredibly hard. They start really early and they work so hard on the farm and they just do it every day. I’d be absolutely exhausted, and I was full of admiration for them at the end of it.And it made me think about our own lives, too.I’m having so much of that reaction from people, which is really interesting. I kind of hoped for that, actually. I’m getting stopped on the street and people are telling me very interesting takes on how they found it and what it brought up for them.What are they telling you?All kinds of things. Some people think it’s really feminist, some people think that it’s about being discarded, some people think it’s about systems. I’m quite enjoying that actually, hearing people’s take on things.As the maker of this film, what surprised you about the final film you’ve made?I hadn’t seen it on the big screen, and that was like seeing it anew. I guess what I found surprising is that I thought, “Gosh, this is tough.” And I’m used to it! I know the story and I’m very realistic about their lives and how it is and … [She tears up again.] It’s so weird! Talking about it really gets me.I never wanted to explain this film, I just wanted to show it and allow people to have their own experience. I knew I was being bold, but I’m not deliberately being bold, I’m just trying to do something that’s pure. I genuinely wanted to know if you followed her around enough, would you connect and see her? I feel like in the world, we don’t see each other. We don’t see other living things.Not in that way.Not in that way. If we could, then things would be different, maybe. More

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      ‘Toofaan’ Review: Raising a Storm

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      The Bollywood director Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra attempts — with some success — to deepen the standard-issue sports drama with sociopolitical strife ripped from Indian headlines.When Aziz Ali (Farhan Akhtar), the starry-eyed gangster at the heart of “Toofaan,” first comes across videos of Muhammad Ali, he’s hooked. Though it goes unsaid, the appeal clearly isn’t just the boxer’s athletic artistry — it’s also his chosen name. To our hero, Ali is one of his own.That surname, and the faith that it represents, becomes the albatross around Aziz’s neck. In “Toofaan,” the Bollywood director Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra attempts — with some success — to deepen the standard-issue sports drama with sociopolitical strife ripped from Indian headlines. Aziz, who hails from a lower-class Muslim neighborhood of Mumbai, finds himself imbued with new purpose when he’s taken underwing by the top boxing coach Nana Prabhu (a superbly committed Paresh Rawal). The grizzled mentor sculpts his overeager student into a formidable talent: a “toofaan” (storm).Nana is a pious Hindu whose grief at losing his wife in a terrorist attack has calcified into Islamophobia. His passion for the sport transcends his faith, but only to a limit. When he discovers that Aziz is dating his daughter, Ananya (Mrunal Thakur), he kicks them both out. “Toofaan” takes a surprisingly gritty turn at this point, switching from slick fight montages to scenes of Aziz and Ananya’s struggle to live as an interfaith couple in Mumbai — a city where cosmopolitanism coexists with crude bigotry.This brief stretch of the movie is its best: life-size, attuned to everyday urban realities, and bravely blunt in its portrayal of prejudice. But Mehra takes the easy way out with a contrived, tragic turn that returns the film in its second half to the much-beaten path of the tarnished athlete fighting to reclaim his honor.ToofaanNot rated. In Hindi and Marathi, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hour 43 minutes. Watch on Amazon. More

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      ‘The Works and Days’ Review: The Time of Our Lives

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      This eight-hour drama follows a woman’s life on her family’s farm.In “The Works and Days (of Tayoko Shiojiri in the Shiotani Basin),” a woman moves through life on her family’s farm in a Japanese mountain village. As her husband falls ill, she spends more and more time on the chores, though visits from friends and relatives bring comfort and joy. Shot over 14 months, the film is a life event in and of itself, spanning eight hours.You may flash back to a line from “Inside Llewyn Davis,” delivered by Bud (F. Murray Abraham) after hearing Llewyn’s (Oscar Isaac) song: “I don’t see a lot of money here.” But watching “The Works and Days,” I began to feel that it could perfectly suit someone breaking a pandemic moviegoing drought: Its homey environs and lushly photographed natural world induce a heightening of the senses and an attention to lovely subtleties of light, color and fellow feeling.How the movie passes the time is how you or I would probably pass the time, or much of it — through the routines and conversations that bind together our moments and ourselves. The film opens with a hilarious drinking session, followed by a drive home that drops us into the domestic sphere at the film’s heart. Tayoko (Tayoko Shiojiri) — whose real diary entries are periodically read in voice-over — is seen minding the household, chatting with neighbors who bring food (a touching community bond), sharing stories with her granddaughter and visiting a shrine. Junji (Kaoru Iwahana), her husband, whom she dotes on, likes to shoot the breeze and watch matches of the board game Go on television.A thread of nostalgia and even regret curls its way through the conversations. The filmmakers, C.W. Winter and Anders Edstrom (who is Tayoko’s son-in-law), linger on objects so that they feel vividly present but also like memories, reminiscent of shots from a lost-and-found camera roll. This isn’t durational cinema that’s dead-set on making you feel the heft of labor (though it can). The directors’ camera eye fosters more of a muscle memory for these places through sonic overtures and finely wrought images of lattices (brambles or wires), opaque screens and windows, and careworn pots. “The Works and Days” also plumbs the depths of night and twilight like few films do, harnessing a theater’s darkness.The movie reflects upon how people organize experience through our memories and our actions, but the filmmakers also have a self-awareness about their steadfast methods. One of the movie’s five sections opens with the following observation: “By the fifth month, one has had his fill of seeing willows.” Their penchant for decentered shots can feel a tad obdurate. But as someone in the film says, what one wishes of the people you love is that you could spend even more time with them — and the same could be said of the loveliest images in this film.The Works and Days (of Tayoko Shiojiri in the Shiotani Basin)Not rated. Running time: 8 hours. In theaters. More