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    ‘32 Sounds,’ a Film Performed Live, Probes the Power of Listening

    Sam Green’s documentary about the physics and emotions attached to sound comes to BAM with a live score performed by JD Samson and Michael O’Neill.Early in Sam Green’s relentlessly curious documentary “32 Sounds,” the filmmaker asks an employee of the British Library Sound Archive — one of the world’s largest collections of audio recordings — if she has a favorite sound. Choosing among the archive’s nearly 7 million options, she cues up a 1987 recording of the mating call of the Moho braccatus, a Hawaiian bird with dark plumage and bright shocks of yellow sprouting from its legs.The Moho braccatus was declared endangered in 1973, and by the early 1980s its population had dwindled to two, one male and one female. In 1982, the female was killed in a storm. And so this heartbreaking recording depicts the male’s determined mating call — a lilting, hauntingly hopeful whistle — ringing out five years after the death of the only bird who could possibly answer it.The Moho braccatus’s mating call is one of the most memorable of the 32 sounds Green alludes to in his freewheeling documentary’s title; there are also, among others, muffled gurgles from inside the womb (sound number one, naturally), the sound of a tree falling in the woods (playfully and expertly reconstructed by the Foley artist Joanna Fang), and even the sound of silence, as demonstrated by a particularly delightful montage of a wide variety of musicians performing “4’33”,” by John Cage.At the beginning of a showing of “32 Sounds” Friday evening at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Fisher theater, following celebrated runs at Sundance and SXSW, Green himself announced to the audience, “We’re going to make a documentary film about sound,” highlighting the transitory and participatory nature of what was about to take place. “32 Sounds” is the latest of what the Oscar-nominated Green calls his “live documentaries,” a hybrid form that combines conventions of a film screening, a theatrical performance and a live concert to create a unique and ephemeral experience. (His previous works include “The Love Song of R. Buckminster Fuller,” which featured the rock band Yo La Tengo performing an original score at screenings, and “A Thousand Thoughts,” which he made in collaboration with the writer Joe Bini and the Kronos Quartet.)At live showings of “32 Sounds,” Green himself provides in-person narration, while the musicians JD Samson and Michael O’Neill perform, in real time, Samson’s eclectic, largely electronic score. With the narrator and musicians seated in front of the movie screen, proudly displaying their processes, the effect is as though one has unscrewed the top of a traditional documentary to expose its busily whirring component parts.Samson demonstrating the wonders of a whoopee cushion.Maria Baranova-SuzukiEach audience member is also given a pair of headphones — Green and his crew travel with 500 of them — to better immerse themselves in the film’s soundscapes, and particularly for its experiments with binaural audio. Among the lively cast of characters Green meets in his wide-ranging meditation on sound and human memory is the Princeton physicist Edgar Choueiri, who experiments with recordings that mimic three-dimensional sound. He demonstrates this viscerally, shaking a matchbox at various points around a binaural microphone; wearing headphones, the listener can detect the clattering matches moving around in space. It’s heady and spine-tingling, like high-tech ASMR.While there’s certainly a specific charm to seeing “32 Sounds” live (particularly during a five-minute interactive dance break, when Green invites audience members to walk up to the stage and feel the quaking power of a pair of subwoofers as Samson acts as D.J.), the filmed narrative is engaging and richly visual enough that “32 Sounds” would still achieve many of its most spectacular effects at home, preferably through a pair of good headphones. (It played virtually at Sundance and is the first of Green’s live documentaries that, in addition to being performed live, will eventually be able to stream.)If there’s a star of “32 Sounds” (aside from the human ear), it’s the spirited Annea Lockwood, an 82-year-old experimental composer who has been making field recordings of rivers for more than 50 years. There’s a contagious wonder on her face as she invites Green, and the viewer, to listen to the loquacious chatter of organisms picked up by her underwater microphone. She prefers the term “listening with” rather than listening to — a non-hierarchical way of framing humans’ coexistence with the sonic environments all around them.Much like Cage’s “4’33”” or the composer Pauline Oliveros’s philosophy of “deep listening,” Green’s film aims to sharpen the viewer’s (er, listener’s) sense of hearing by redirecting awareness to the everyday environmental sounds one too often takes for granted. His 95-minute exploration prefers to leapfrog across several dozen scintillating surfaces, though, rather than approaching the type of depth or stillness Lockwood seeks with her river recordings. The formal structure of “32 Sounds” is a nod to François Girard’s 1993 experimental biopic “Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould,” and its chattily inquisitive tone is occasionally reminiscent of an audiovisual episode of “This American Life.”What gives the film a lingering gravitas, though, is how often Green’s sonic journeys lead him back to contemplating grief and loss. One man’s trash is another man’s aural treasure, as Green finds with the answering machine tapes he’s saved to preserve the voices of deceased loved ones. Lockwood admits that part of the reason she “listens with” the chirping creatures in her backyard each evening is that she finds the experience of listening to music too emotionally intense since her longtime partner, the composer Ruth Anderson, passed away several years ago.In the earliest days of recorded sound, Green points out that the phonograph — the first technological development to allow deceased people’s voices to have an afterlife — was sometimes advertised as a means of “stopping death.” His film serves as a poignant reminder that, for all the incredible technical advancements of the past century or even the past decade, that particular goal still remains elusive. But whether through the personal preservation of sonic mementos like wax cylinders, voice mail messages or any number of yet-to-be-invented formats, that impossible impulse to press pause on mortality is likely to echo, like the Moho braccatus’s persistent call, well into the distant future. More

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    Lin-Manuel Miranda to Miss Oscars After Wife Tests Positive for Virus

    Lin-Manuel Miranda won’t be attending the Oscars on Sunday, he said on Twitter on Saturday, out of an abundance of caution after his wife tested positive for the coronavirus this weekend. He added that she was “doing fine,” and said that he had tested negative.Made it to Hollywood…This weekend, my wife tested ➕ for COVID.She’s doing fine. Kids & I have tested ➖, but out of caution, I won’t be going to the Oscars tomorrow night. Cheering for my TickTickBoom & Encanto families w my own family, alongside all of you, ALL of you. -LMM— Lin-Manuel Miranda (@Lin_Manuel) March 26, 2022
    Mr. Miranda is up for the best original song Academy Award for the song, “Dos Oruguitas” from the Disney musical “Encanto.” It is the first song he’s written from “beginning to end in Spanish,” he told Vulture magazine in January.Besides his colleagues in “Encanto,” Mr. Miranda says he will also be cheering on the cast and crew of the movie “Tick, Tick … Boom!,” which was Mr. Miranda’s directorial debut. It has received two Oscar nominations — one for Andrew Garfield in the best actor category and one for best film editing.The last time Mr. Miranda, who created the Broadway musical “Hamilton,” was a nominee at the Oscars was in 2017 for the song, “How Far I’ll Go” from “Moana.” If he wins on Sunday, Mr. Miranda would join the small number of Hollywood heavyweights who have EGOT status — those who have won an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony — which includes Rita Moreno, Audrey Hepburn, Whoopi Goldberg and John Legend.After last year’s socially distanced Oscars with separated seating areas, movie lovers were hoping for a return to normalcy with this year’s ceremony, back at its longtime home at the Dolby Theatre. (Last year’s show took place at Union Station in Los Angeles with less fanfare.) On Friday, the Academy updated its Covid policies, saying in a news release that “those who tested positive for Covid-19 and are within a zero to five-day window from the date of their first positive test are not permitted to attend under any circumstances.” More

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    Samuel L. Jackson, Danny Glover, Liv Ullmann and Elaine May Get Honorary Oscars

    Denzel Washington and Bill Murray were on hand to present the awards during the off-camera ceremony.On Friday night in Hollywood, a Marvel superhero accepted an honorary Oscar from one of the biggest movie stars in the world.Too bad it wasn’t televised.The scene was the Governors Awards, an intimate ceremony at the Loews Hollywood Hotel where Samuel L. Jackson was given that Academy Award by an absolutely delighted Denzel Washington, who threw his arms around Jackson as they rocked back and forth, laughing. The 73-year-old honoree reminisced about a career that has included an Oscar-nominated “Pulp Fiction” performance as well as multiple appearances as the superspy Nick Fury in Marvel movies.“I got out there to entertain audiences the way Hollywood entertained me: Make them forget their lives for a few hours and be thrilled, awed or excited in the big room where make-believe lives,” Jackson said.He eyed his new piece of golden hardware. “When I got this call last year, it was unexpected,” Jackson said. “But I guarantee you, this thing is going to be cherished.”Though the honorary Oscars were once a staple of the live telecast, they were stripped from the show in 2009 because of still-continuing concerns over the its length. That led the academy to create the Governors Awards, an untelevised ceremony devoted solely to the honorary Oscars that also became one of the schmooziest nights of the season, a party where dozens of would-be contenders vied for face time with voters.Explore the 2022 Academy AwardsThe 94th Academy Awards will be held on March 27 in Los Angeles.Oscars Preview: Looking to catch up quickly on all the basics ahead of the event? This guide can help. The Hosts: Regina Hall and Wanda Sykes plan to keep the show moving and make it funny, though they will acknowledge the war in Ukraine.A Win for Streaming: A streaming service film could win the Oscar for best picture for the first time. A few years ago, it would have been hard to imagine.‘Seen That Before?’: Four of the best picture nominees this year are remakes or reboots of earlier films.Best Actress Race: Who will win? There are cases to be made for and against each contender, and no one has an obvious advantage.That element of the show was dramatically curtailed this year, when the Governors Awards were delayed from their original Jan. 15 berth because of Covid fears. By the time Jackson and writer-director Elaine May, actress-director Liv Ulmann, and actor Danny Glover gathered last night to receive their honorary awards, voting for this year’s Oscars had already been closed for days, and many of the nominees instead opted for Friday-night parties thrown by their agencies and studios.But while the ceremony was smaller, the speeches were allowed to go on at great length, as there was no frantic network executive demanding they be trimmed. Glover acknowledged as much after he spent several minutes speaking off the cuff about the political activism that led him to receive the academy’s Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. He also made room to lavish praise on Ulmann as well as his presenter, Alfre Woodard.“I haven’t referred to the teleprompter at all,” Glover said with an apologetic smile. “Sometimes we actors get a little lost without a script.”The Norwegian actress Ulmann told several stories about the winding path that led her to become a key collaborator with the director Ingmar Bergman. For a long time, Ulmann said, she was made to feel bashful about her calling.“In Norway, you have to live by a certain rule: Don’t brag,” she said, before slyly adding: “That’s why I brought 20 people tonight. They can tell Norway, ‘It is true, she got an Oscar.’”Our Reviews of the 10 Best-Picture Oscar NomineesCard 1 of 10“Belfast.” More

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    How to Watch the Oscars 2022

    A guide to everything you need to know for the 94th annual Academy Awards on Sunday night.The 94th annual Academy Awards haven’t even gotten started yet, and there’s already drama.First, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences demoted eight below-the-line and short film categories to a preshow, angering many in Hollywood who say the professionals in those races are essential to filmmaking. Next, the best director favorite, Jane Campion of “The Power of the Dog,” faced a backlash when she suggested at the Critics Choice Awards that the tennis superstars Venus and Serena Williams had never had to compete against men as she had. Campion later apologized. And then, Rachel Zegler, a star of “West Side Story,” which earned seven nominations, revealed in an Instagram comment that she hadn’t been invited to the ceremony. She was later asked to be a presenter, and the academy confirmed on Wednesday that she would attend.So pop some popcorn, make an Oscars bingo card — trust us, you’ll want “golden hour” and “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” on there — and settle in for what may be the most normal Oscar ceremony of the past two years.What time do the festivities start?The ceremony, which returns to the Dolby Theater in Los Angeles this year, will begin at 8 p.m. Eastern, 5 p.m. Pacific — if you’re watching at home, that is. For the first time, eight of the 23 categories — film editing, sound, original score, production design, makeup and hairstyling, live-action short, animated short and documentary short — will be handed out in an in-person-only preshow that the producers are calling the “golden hour.” That starts at 7 p.m. Eastern, 4 p.m. Pacific, with highlights from the presentations later edited into the live broadcast. (The move is part of an effort to raise the broadcast’s ratings after they hit a record low in 2021.)On television, ABC is the official broadcaster. Online, if you have a cable login, you can watch via abc.com/watch-live/abc, or if you’re an ABC subscriber, via the ABC app. You can also watch via a live TV streaming service like Hulu + Live TV, Sling TV, AT&T TV Now, YouTube TV or FuboTV, which all require subscriptions, though many are offering free trials.Is there a red carpet?Yes, Oscars fashion is back! The academy is opening the red carpet an hour earlier than usual, at 4 p.m. Eastern, 1 p.m. Pacific, to accommodate the earlier arrivals for the eight “golden hour” awards. (Those attending the Oscars are asked to be inside the Dolby by 7 p.m. Eastern, 4 p.m. Pacific.)Explore the 2022 Academy AwardsThe 94th Academy Awards will be held on March 27 in Los Angeles.The Hosts: Regina Hall and Wanda Sykes plan to keep the show moving and make it funny, though they will acknowledge the war in Ukraine.‘Seen That Before?’: Four of the best picture nominees this year are remakes or reboots of earlier films.Best Actress Race: Who will win? There are cases to be made for and against each contender, and no one has an obvious advantage. Hollywood Legend: Danny Glover will receive an honorary Oscar for his activism. He spoke to The Times about his life in movies and social justice.Return to the Playground: For his Oscar-nominated short film “When We Were Bullies,” Jay Rosenblatt tracked down his fifth-grade classmates.ABC will have red carpet coverage beginning at 1 p.m. and running most of the afternoon, with a break for national and local news. The official Academy Awards preshow, “The Oscars Red Carpet Show,” begins airing on ABC at 6:30 p.m. Eastern, 3:30 p.m. Pacific. With Vanessa Hudgens, Terrence J and the fashion designer Brandon Maxwell as hosts, it will offer a behind-the-scenes look at the big night with red carpet coverage and interviews.Who will be hosting?Regina Hall, Amy Schumer and Wanda Sykes will be teaming up, the first time the ceremony will have a host since 2018.How is the competition shaping up?Thirty-eight features and 15 shorts are nominated in 23 categories this year, and Campion’s queer western “The Power of the Dog” leads the pack with 12 nominations. A category to watch will be best supporting actor: If Troy Kotsur, who plays the deaf father of a hearing daughter in “CODA,” can pull off the win over Kodi Smit-McPhee, who was an early favorite for his work in “The Power of the Dog,” that could bolster the best picture chances for “CODA.” Also relevant is the best adapted screenplay race, where “CODA” won out over “The Power of the Dog” at the BAFTAs. “CODA” losing one or both could be an indication that best picture is going to “The Power of the Dog.”What entertainment is planned?The eclectic lineup includes Shaun White, Tony Hawk, and Serena and Venus Williams as presenters, as well as the first live performance of “We Don’t Talk About Bruno,” the earworm from Disney’s animated musical “Encanto.” There also be tributes to “The Godfather,” which is celebrating its 50th anniversary, and the James Bond franchise.Will the Russian invasion in Ukraine be mentioned?Yes. The hosts told The Times there will be a segment devoted to it.Our Reviews of the 10 Best-Picture Oscar NomineesCard 1 of 10“Belfast.” More

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    You Don’t Know Much About Jay Penske. And He’s Fine With That.

    For the media executive Jay Penske, awards season is money season. It’s the time of year when Disney and Netflix, along with the other studios and streamers, demonstrate their love for the talent by spending millions on For Your Consideration ads in Variety, The Hollywood Reporter and Deadline, as well as the niche outlets Gold Derby, IndieWire and TVLine. All of those publications, which cover things of special interest to Oscar and Emmy voters, are part of Penske Media Corporation.Mr. Penske, a 43-year-old son of a billionaire, has expanded his company greatly in the last few years, pulling off a series of buy-low acquisitions that have turned him into a behind-the-scenes power broker. In addition to the Hollywood trades, he owns Rolling Stone, Billboard, Vibe and Women’s Wear Daily, and he has a controlling stake in the annual South by Southwest festival.“Jay Penske has become the Rupert Murdoch of entertainment publications,” said Stephen Galloway, a former executive editor of The Hollywood Reporter who is now the dean of the Chapman University film school.The flurry of deals, announced in a steady drumbeat of news releases, was not all that sexy, given Mr. Penske’s focus on old-school publications at a time when Substack and TikTok were hot topics in media circles.But the moves have made him someone to be reckoned with, a mogul who can shape perceptions of Hollywood and its players. And his company has become a prime landing spot for the tens of millions spent annually on Oscars and Emmys advertising, a market that has heated up in recent years as streaming platforms spare no expense in their quests for prestige and attention.Mr. Penske made himself into a publisher after growing up the youngest son of the automotive industry titan Roger Penske, a onetime professional racecar driver, known as the Captain, who started his business, Penske Corporation, once his racing days were done. The father’s success made the Penske name all but inescapable. On any street you may see one of the more than 360,000 trucks and vans belonging to his transportation fleet, with the family name in bold black lettering on the side.Up until a decade ago, Jay Penske was one of many scions looking to move upward in Los Angeles. From the start, he was driven by a desire to make the family name known for something other than his father’s accomplishments, said the media entrepreneur Rafat Ali, who met Mr. Penske more than a dozen years ago. “I think he has a chip on his shoulder and wants to prove himself,” he said. “He was hustling back then not to be known as Penske — to prove himself not to the world, but to his family.”Mr. Penske, who declined to be interviewed for this article, entered publishing in earnest in 2009, when he bought Deadline Hollywood Daily, a take-no-prisoners entertainment news site started by the journalist Nikki Finke. A few years later, it became apparent that his ambitions went beyond watching over a scrappy digital outlet, when he set his sights on Variety, the age-old show business publication that was challenged by the transition to online media.The veteran Hollywood executive Sandy Climan put him in touch with Daniel S. Loeb, a hedge fund investor, and the two hit it off over breakfast at the Montage Beverly Hills. Months later Mr. Penske called Mr. Loeb to say he was closing in on a Variety deal — but his financing had collapsed.A 2015 cover of Variety, the trade publication acquired by Penske Media in 2012.via VarietyThe Hollywood Reporter, a Variety competitor, came aboard in 2020.Victoria Will (cover image), via Hollywood Reporter“He’s super-close to his dad,” Mr. Loeb said. “His dad could have written that check in a heartbeat. But I think Jay would rather have let the deal go off the rails before going to his dad for anything other than emotional support.”Mr. Loeb’s fund provided the $26 million in debt and equity Mr. Penske needed to clinch the sale. (That investment made Mr. Loeb a part owner of Variety; Mr. Penske has since bought back his stake, Mr. Loeb and a Penske Media spokeswoman said.)After acquiring Variety, he continued his spree, picking up faded properties at bargain-bin prices. In 2014 he bought Fairchild Fashion Media, the owner of Women’s Wear Daily, from Condé Nast. In 2017 he bought Jann Wenner’s 51 percent stake in Rolling Stone; two years later he acquired the remaining 49 percent, after a cash infusion from a Saudi company. In 2020 Mr. Penske bought 80 percent of The Hollywood Reporter, Billboard and Vibe.Last year he made his move on South by Southwest, becoming a majority shareholder in the annual tech, film and music festival, which had run into money troubles because of the pandemic. (It made its return this month, after having been shut down the last two years.) Along the way Mr. Penske added ARTnews, Art in America, Dirt, Beauty Inc. and Spy.“Jay grew up with great wealth, but in L.A. there are rooms that are not open to just any rich guy,” said Matthew Belloni, who leads entertainment industry coverage for a new publication, Puck, and who was the top editor of The Hollywood Reporter before Mr. Penske took over. “Owning all of these publications makes him a must-know.”In an industry that rewards attention seekers, he stands apart because of his penchant for privacy. He avoids red carpet events, almost never gives interviews and has no social media footprint. “He prefers to let the brands speak for themselves,” a Penske Media spokeswoman said.Illustration by Tom Hodgkinson; Xavier Bonilla/NurPhoto, via Getty Images‘Dragon, Dragon’Mr. Penske lives in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles with his wife, Elaine Irwin, 52, a former Victoria’s Secret and Calvin Klein model who was previously married to the rock star John Mellencamp, and their daughter. He keeps an apartment in New York and recently bought Hog Cay, a private island in the Bahamas.He grew up in New York City, Monmouth County, N.J., and Bloomfield Hills, Mich., where Penske Corporation has its headquarters. Family vacations took place at Deer Valley in Utah, a ski resort that was partly owned by his father from 1987 to 2017. “They were a country club family,” said Tom Bernard, the co-president of Sony Pictures Classics, who lived for a time near the Penskes and knew the young Jay.One of five siblings in a boisterous, competitive family, he distinguished himself in hockey and lacrosse at the Lawrenceville School, a boarding school in New Jersey, and Orchard Lake St. Mary’s, a Catholic prep school in Michigan. He was an all-state hockey player, and in 1997 he was named an All-American lacrosse player. A photo of him still hangs in a St. Mary’s athletic facility, showing him mid-stride on the lacrosse field in his No. 7 jersey, which the school retired.His father is a grand figure, beloved in the racing world. He started Penske Corporation in 1969 after racking up 55 victories behind the wheel. One of his company’s divisions owns the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, the home of the Indy 500. Another subsidiary runs Team Penske, the organization whose drivers have won more than 600 races. In 2019, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Jay Penske and Ms. Irwin were among the guests in the Oval Office who looked on as former President Donald J. Trump placed the medal around the patriarch’s neck.Jay showed signs that he would go his own way not long after his 2001 graduation from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He moved to Los Angeles and threw himself into businesses that had nothing to do with the nuts, bolts and engine noise of the family trade. An early venture was Firefly Mobile, a company that offered phones designed for children, with large buttons. He also bought promising URLs, including Mail.com, which he built into an email portal business and eventually sold at a profit.The writer A. Scott Berg, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his biography of Charles Lindbergh and a National Book Award for his study of the editor Maxwell Perkins, was a friend and mentor to Mr. Penske when he was new to Los Angeles. The two bonded over their shared love of books, Mr. Berg said in an interview, adding that he was struck by the younger man’s apparent distaste for Hollywood and the media.“When I met Jay Penske, he viewed two industries with contempt: show business and magazines,” Mr. Berg said. “For whatever reason, he seems to have changed his mind. Maybe he recognized their commercial value, or maybe he came to appreciate their content. One thing I knew from the night I met him in the summer of 2002 was that he was a serious bibliophile.”Jay Penske and his wife, Elaine Irwin, at a Ralph Lauren event in New York in 2018.Wonwoo Lee/ZUMA, via Alamy Mr. Penske gave full expression to his passion when he opened a bookshop in the Beverly Glen neighborhood of Los Angeles. He named it Dragon Books, after a collection of tales he had loved as a child, “Dragon, Dragon,” by John Gardner. The store, with its 18th-century French mantel, wood paneling and Doric columns, became a favorite of antiquarian book lovers. Two hundred people, including his parents, attended the opening in 2006, and Mr. Berg did a brief write-up for Vanity Fair.“While a serial prep-school expellee, he became a serious reader of 19th-century novels,” he wrote of Mr. Penske. “Soon he began collecting, starting with works by Kierkegaard and Mencken. When moving to Los Angeles in 2002, he discovered he had 28,000 volumes, half of which he’s now selling to sustain his passion for new acquisitions. He shelved each book himself, and he often mans the cash register.”He didn’t hold himself entirely aloof from his father’s world. In 2007, with the investor Steve Luczo, he started an IndyCar team, Luczo Dragon Racing. Now fully owned and operated by Mr. Penske and called Dragon Racing, it has competed in the Formula E racing series, for electric cars, for nearly a decade.In 2009, he dove into publishing with the purchase of Deadline. Built on Ms. Finke’s lively voice, it was a gleefully rude digital upstart that made Variety and The Hollywood Reporter seem like house organs for the movie studios and talent agencies. Mr. Penske and Ms. Finke added some reporting muscle when they lured Nellie Andreeva away from The Hollywood Reporter and Mike Fleming from Variety. Deadline’s minuscule staff regularly scooped the competition.With Mr. Penske’s entree into the media business came media attention. The gossip site Gawker took notice of him — at age 30 he was seen at parties in the company of the Benihana heiress Devon Aoki — and labeled him “the hard-partying Si Newhouse Wannabe of Bel Air,” a reference to the longtime Condé Nast chairman.Ms. Finke left Deadline after Mr. Penske’s purchase of Variety amid reports that she preferred that he remain focused on Deadline, rather than attempt to revive a competitor. She started a new blog and used it to refer to him as “Little Lord Fauntleroy.” After mediation with Mr. Penske, she shut down the site; since then, she has not reported on the entertainment industry. (Ms. Finke declined to comment.)Her onetime colleague Mr. Fleming had nothing but praise for the publisher. In an interview, he noted that Mr. Penske flew to New York to attend the wake for his father, who died in 2012 from injuries sustained during Hurricane Sandy. “That told me everything I needed to know,” said Mr. Fleming, who is now Deadline’s co-editor-in-chief with Ms. Andreeva.The visit took place during an eventful time for Mr. Penske. The year 2012 was also when he got arrested in Nantucket. According to a Nantucket Police Department report, Mr. Penske and his brother Mark were urinating in a parking lot outside the Nantucket Yacht Club late at night when a woman approached. “Jay turned and continued to urinate on her boots,” the report said. After the woman alerted the police, the brothers apparently tried “to flee.”An officer intercepted Jay, and his brother was found on the back staircase of an apartment building, according to the report. The Penskes were locked in a police station cell, only to be released soon afterward. Coverage of the incident was widespread, with reports in Auto Week, The Daily Mail, ESPN and Politico, among other publications.Mr. Penske has not spoken publicly of that night and has kept his silence when faced with public criticism in other instances. One came after his 2017 purchase of a Black church in the Venice neighborhood of Los Angeles for $6.3 million. Mr. Penske’s plan to convert it into a home for his family drew protests. He has since sold the property.In 2018, he accepted a $200 million investment from the Saudi Research and Media Group, a publicly traded company. The investment became a point of contention later that year, when Jamal Khashoggi, a critic of the Saudi government who wrote a regular opinion column for The Washington Post, was murdered and dismembered in a Saudi consulate office in Turkey. The United States government concluded that the killing had been carried out by a team reporting directly to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler.Mr. Penske did not publicly address the investment, even as his publications reported on the pressure faced by companies with financial ties to Saudi Arabia. In some articles, the Penske outlets mistakenly reported that his company had received money from the Saudi Public Investment Fund, which is overseen by Prince Mohammed, rather than the Saudi Research and Media Group. After The Wrap reported on the matter, a number of Penske Media articles were updated to correct the error.“PMC has disclosed the small minority investment from SRMG to all of its stakeholders and brands,” a Penske Media spokeswoman said in a statement. “Any statement to the contrary is purely an attempt to create a false narrative. It is further disclosed in every article any PMC brand writes about Saudi Arabia.”Jay Penske watches the action at the Indianopolis Motor Speedway during a practice run before the Indianapolis 500 in 2012.Brent Smith/Reuters, via Alamy‘This Guy Is Serious’Ten Penske Media employees interviewed for this article describe their boss as someone who stepped up for publications in trouble. “Jay Penske came in and saved this business,” said Dea Lawrence, the chief operating and marketing officer of Variety. “He is a hero to the publishing world.” His company has more than 1,350 employees, according to the Penske Media vice chairman Gerry Byrne, nearly half of them journalists and content creators.After the company bought a controlling stake in Vibe and Billboard, which have offices in New York, he flew there to meet with each new employee. “This was in the middle of the pandemic, and so I thought, ‘Wow, this guy is serious!’” said Datwon Thomas, the editor in chief of Vibe. Mr. Thomas met Mr. Penske for lunch at Bryant Park Grill in Midtown. “Jay knew a lot about me and my background,” he said, “and he knew a lot about Vibe.” Four other Penske Media employees said that Mr. Penske makes a practice of meeting with each of his new employees soon after acquiring a property.Mr. Penske will sometimes play hardball with the staff. When Tatiana Siegel, a longtime Hollywood Reporter journalist, accepted a job at The Ankler, a subscription newsletter started by the show business writer Richard Rushfield that has expanded under the former Hollywood Reporter top editor Janice Min, Mr. Penske put a stop to the move. Ms. Siegel’s contract included a noncompete clause, and Mr. Penske held her to it. The parties eventually agreed that Ms. Siegel would decamp to Rolling Stone, committing 80 percent of her work to it, with the remainder going to The Ankler.“Jay has been by far the best owner I’ve worked under at The Hollywood Reporter,” said Ms. Siegel, who joined the magazine in 2003. “My situation was unique, and it was resolved amicably.”The upstart publications Puck and The Ankler pose a new threat to Penske Media’s hold on entertainment coverage. The competition is reminiscent of what took place more than a decade ago, when Deadline had the old guard quaking. Mr. Rushfield said that start-ups may have an advantage over entrenched publications, because they are not beholden to anyone.“If you’re at a publication like Variety, for example, the number of things a studio has over you is hard to keep track of,” Mr. Rushfield said. “You need friendly access to studio executives and agents gift wrapping your scoops. You need people for covers. You need people to speak at your conferences.” The result, he continued, is that “publications with different business models, and more aggressive reporting, can elbow their way in.”Mr. Penske may be able to counter the newcomers through the magic of synergy. The addition of South by Southwest has given him another way to promote all things Penske. The latest iteration of the festival, which is in Austin, Texas, included concerts hosted by Rolling Stone and live episodes of podcasts from The Hollywood Reporter and Deadline.Shortly before the first day, Variety published a glowing article headlined “‘SXSW Is My Whole Life’: An Ode to the Austin Festival as It Makes Its In-Person Return.” You can read it online, where, up until Oscar voting ended on March 22, it was surrounded by For Your Consideration ads. More

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    Streaming Has Won the Hollywood Debate. Is Best Picture Next?

    A few years ago, the entertainment industry was arguing over whether movies on streaming services even counted as a film. Now, one is poised to win the Oscars’ top prize.Three years ago, Hollywood was engaged in a knock-down, drag-out fight over the future of cinema — what, exactly, constitutes a film — with the Oscars as the boxing ring.Netflix and other streaming insurgents insisted that the delivery route was irrelevant, that a film could be primarily viewed on an iPhone and still be a film. Theaters? Ticket sales? It didn’t matter.The Hollywood establishment, or at least most of it, was incensed: Big screens, they argued, are part of the very definition of cinema. “Once you commit to a television format, you’re a TV movie,” Steven Spielberg told a reporter at a European press junket at the time. “You certainly, if it’s a good show, deserve an Emmy, but not an Oscar.”And now?Unless the predictions are wrong and something unexpected awaits inside those gold leaf-embossed envelopes at the 94th Academy Awards on Sunday, a streaming service film — in a first — will win the Oscar for best picture. “CODA,” a dramedy from Apple TV+ about the only hearing member of a deaf family, is favored to receive the prize, having already won top honors at the predictive Producers Guild Awards, Screen Actors Guild Awards and Writers Guild Awards.A Netflix film, “The Power of the Dog,” could nudge past “CODA” to win the best picture trophy, awards handicappers say. But most are not predicting a win for nominees from traditional studios, including “Belfast” and “West Side Story.” Apple TV+ and Netflix have both campaigned aggressively, with Apple spending an estimated $20 million to $25 million to promote “CODA” and Netflix’s push for “The Power of the Dog” costing even more.“CODA,” which stars Troy Kostur and Marlee Matlin, has already won top honors from the Screen Actors Guild.Apple TV+For an industry in turmoil, with tech giants like Apple and Amazon upending entertainment-industry business practices and threatening Hollywood power hierarchies, the welcoming of a streaming service into the best picture club would amount to a seismic moment. Television and film have been merging for years, but lines of demarcation remain, with the Oscars as one. (Last year’s winner, “Nomadland,” from Searchlight Pictures, a traditional studio, was mostly seen on Hulu, but only because a lot of theaters were closed; it played in roughly 1,200 theaters in the United States and had an exclusive IMAX run.)Explore the 2022 Academy AwardsThe 94th Academy Awards will be held on March 27 in Los Angeles.The Hosts: Regina Hall and Wanda Sykes plan to keep the show moving and make it funny, though they will acknowledge the war in Ukraine.‘Seen That Before?’: Four of the best picture nominees this year are remakes or reboots of earlier films.Best Actress Race: Who will win? There are cases to be made for and against each contender, and no one has an obvious advantage. Hollywood Legend: Danny Glover will receive an honorary Oscar for his activism. He spoke to The Times about his life in movies and social justice.Return to the Playground: For his Oscar-nominated short film “When We Were Bullies,” Jay Rosenblatt tracked down his fifth-grade classmates.Among this year’s best picture nominees, “I think there’s a lot of the academy that might not even know what is a streaming movie and what isn’t a streaming movie,” said the producer Jason Blum, whose Oscar-nominated films have included “Get Out,” “Whiplash” and “BlacKkKlansman.”The digital forces that have reshaped music and television have been chipping away at cinema for a long time. “If ‘CODA’ and Apple win, which seems pretty likely, it will be in part because of Netflix, which has been banging on the academy door for years, and fighting the good fight — or the bad fight, depending on who you ask — to get streaming movies considered,” Mr. Blum said.The pandemic accelerated the disruption. Traditional studios like Paramount, Universal, Sony, Warner Bros. and Disney rerouted dozens of theatrical films to streaming services or released them simultaneously in theaters and online. For the second year in a row, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, citing the coronavirus threat, allowed films to skip a theatrical release entirely and still be eligible for Oscars. The academy had previously required at least a perfunctory theatrical release of at least a week in Los Angeles.This is about more than Hollywood egotism. The worry is that, as streaming services proliferate — more than 300 now operate in the United States, according to the consulting firm Parks Associates — theaters could become exclusively the land of superheroes, sequels and remakes. The venerable Warner Bros. has slashed annual theatrical output by almost half and built a direct-to-streaming film assembly line. Last week, Amazon boosted its Prime Video service by acquiring Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the old-line studio behind “Licorice Pizza,” which is nominated for three Academy Awards, including best picture.In a year when Hollywood largely failed to jump-start theatrical moviegoing, streaming services solidified their hold on viewers. Global ticket sales totaled $21.3 billion in 2021, down from $42.3 billion in 2019, according to the Motion Picture Association. (Theaters were closed for much of 2020.) Some theater companies have gone out of business, others have merged; the world’s biggest theater chain, AMC Entertainment, racked up $6 billion in losses over the past two years and its stock has dropped 66 percent since June. At the same time, the number of subscriptions to online video services around the world grew to 1.3 billion, up from 864 million in 2019, the group said.One film that struggled at the box office was Mr. Spielberg’s “West Side Story,” which received an exclusive run in theaters (per his wishes) of about three months. It collected about $75 million worldwide (against a production budget of $100 million and global marketing costs of roughly $50 million). “West Side Story” is now available on not one but two streaming services, Disney+ and HBO Max, where it has almost assuredly been viewed more widely than in theaters. But the film was never able to recover — among Oscar voters — from being branded a box office misfire. It received seven nominations, and is poised to win in one category, for Ariana DeBose as best supporting actress.Mr. Spielberg’s also-ran presence in the current Oscar race makes the ascendance of streaming contenders all the more striking: a lion in the fight to keep the Academy Awards focused on theatrical films is pushed aside. However unlikely, it is possible that “West Side Story” could come from behind and win the best picture trophy. So could Kenneth Branagh’s “Belfast,” for that matter. Such an outcome would be a bit like 2019, when academy voters, turned off by an over-the-top campaign by Netflix to push “Roma” to best picture glory, instead gave the prize to “Green Book,” a traditional film from Universal Pictures.“The Power of the Dog,” from Netflix, is seen as another strong contender for best picture.Kirsty Griffin/NetflixIn 2019, the Oscars-centered clash between Old Hollywood and New was so heated, particularly on Twitter, that the Justice Department sent an unusual letter to the academy warning that changes to its eligibility rules could raise antitrust concerns. At the time, there was a push inside the 10,000-member academy to come up with a reasonable way to ensure that only films with robust theatrical releases were eligible for Oscars.Flickers of resistance remain.“There are many great companies that are streamers that like to loosely throw around the word ‘cinema’ without supporting it as cinema,” said Tom Quinn, chief executive of Neon, the indie studio behind “Parasite,” which won the 2021 Oscar for best picture, and “The Worst Person in the World,” a screenplay and international film nominee this year. He was referring to the tendency by the majority of the streaming companies to limit a film’s theatrical release, opting instead to release it on their apps.Our Reviews of the 10 Best-Picture Oscar NomineesCard 1 of 10“Belfast.” More

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    ‘The Adam Project’ | Anatomy of a Scene

    Film directors walk viewers through one scene of their movies, showing the magic, motives and the mistakes from behind the camera.Film directors walk viewers through one scene of their movies, showing the magic, motives and the mistakes from behind the camera. More

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    Priyanka Chopra Jonas and Riz Ahmed Toast South Asians at Pre-Oscars Party

    South Asians in Hollywood celebrate their achievements this year.BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — The dirty secret about film industry parties is that they’re rarely fun. Hardly anyone feels like they’re in with the in-crowd. There’s a lot of posturing, peacocking and busying oneself with one’s phone.The opposite was true at a party to celebrate the achievements of South Asians in this year’s Oscars race on Wednesday night.Three weeks ago, Maneesh K. Goyal, a New York restaurateur, was talking with Anjula Acharia, who is Priyanka Chopra Jonas’s manager, and Shruti Ganguly, a film producer. “We realized there were 10 Oscar nominees of South Asian descent this year,” Mr. Goyal said. “My immediate response: ‘We should throw a party.’”Ms. Chopra Jonas signed on as a host, and so did Mindy Kaling, Kumail Nanjiani and Bela Bajaria, the head of global TV at Netflix. The United Talent Agency offered its Beverly Hills offices.“I wasn’t sure if we’d be in a conference room, or something,” said Richa Moorjani, a star of “Never Have I Ever,” who wore an embroidered blazer and matching pants by a Dubai label named OTT.The party was held at the United Talent Agency offices in Beverly Hills.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesJanina GavankarKrista Schlueter for The New York TimesPoorna Jagannathan, center, and Radhika Jones, right.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesNo beige carpeting here: Around 5 p.m., guests filtered into an airy courtyard with a gazebo decked out in gold streamers. They were proud to be in one another’s presence. “To have this depth of talent, to have enough nominees to throw a party, this was not the case five years ago,” Ms. Bajaria said. “It’s not just writers, directors and on-screen talent. There are agents, assistants and executives” — like herself — “who have green-light authority.”As Ms. Bajaria surveyed the crowd of 125, the actress Poorna Jagannathan sidled over and grabbed her arm. “Have you seen the new Indian Barbie?” Ms. Jagannathan said, referring to the limited-edition doll released for Women’s History Month, and who Ms. Jagannathan thinks Ms. Bajaria looks like (“I’m not so sure about that,” Ms. Bajaria said).Who needs plastic when real world role models abound? At the bar: Radhika Jones, the Vanity Fair editor, in a Falguni & Shane Peacock dress, and Noora Raj Brown, Goop’s head of communications. By the step-and-repeat: Janina Gavankar, of “The Morning Show,” in a fuchsia crop top and trousers, and the comedian Lilly Singh, in a suit with fringe cuffs.Under the streamers: Aziz Ansari, the comedian and actor who recently released a Netflix special; Manish Dayal, who stars in the medical drama “The Resident”; and Riz Ahmed, the actor and rapper, who is up for two Oscars this year, for the short film “The Long Goodbye” and the animated feature “Flee.”Riz Ahmed gave a speech.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesLilly Singh and Jay Sean, right.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesThe aloo tikki station.Krista Schlueter for The New York Times“It’s really emboldening when you’re surrounded by people who share your experience,” Mr. Ahmed said, addressing the party as pink streaked the sky.Collaborations were discussed. (“Make business plans,” Ms. Chopra Jonas said.) Trade secrets were disclosed. (“If you need an Indian outfit, Kynah is a one-stop shop,” Ms. Moorjani said.)Although the party officially ended at 8, dozens of guests lingered for another hour, even though the aloo tikki station and bar had closed.“A lot of us grew up trying to hide our racial identity and culture,” said the actor Adrian Dev (“Westworld”), who wore a navy blue sherwani. “Now I’m the exact opposite.” More