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      ‘Turning Red’ Review: Beware the Red-Furred Monster

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      A 13-year-old girl becomes a red panda when she loses her cool in Domee Shi’s heartwarming but wayward coming-of-age film.A quirky Asian teenager transforms into a giant red panda whenever she gets excited … even the premise gives me pause. Which makes the task of reviewing the new Disney/Pixar film “Turning Red” (on Disney+ March 11) especially tricky. Because that’s the idea behind this sometimes heartwarming but wayward coming-of-age movie, which toes the line between truthfully representing a Chinese family, flaws and all, and indulging stereotypes.Meilin Lee (voiced by Rosalie Chiang) is a typical 13-year-old girl: she dances, has crushes on boys and has a cohort of weird but loyal besties who share her obsession with the glossy-lipped members of the boy band 4*Town. She’s also Chinese Canadian, living in Toronto in 2002, where her family maintains a temple. There she helps her loving but overbearing mother, Ming (Sandra Oh), and tries to be the perfect daughter — even when that means burying her own thoughts and desires in the process. This becomes a lot more difficult when she goes through her changes — not of the period variety, but the panda kind.The character writing and design are where “Turning Red,” directed by Domee Shi, most succeeds. Mei has the relatable swagger of the middle school cool nerd — she’s creative and confident, and also has a perfect report card. The tomboy skater girl Miriam, the deadpan Priya and the hilariously fiery Abby form a funky trifecta of gal pals who are Mei’s emotional safety net. And Ming strikes an impressive balance between dictatorial and doting, dismissing Mei’s friends and interests but also stalking her at school to ply her with steamed buns.Shi finds subtle yet effective ways to illustrate the personalities of even the ancillary characters, from the stiffly applied makeup of Mei’s grandmother (Ho-Wai Ching) to the flamboyant open-toed footwear of the gang of aunties who follow Grandma Lee around. And the animation of Mei’s hair in her panda form — how it lays flat when she’s calm or spikes upward when she’s mad — reinforces her emotional shifts.It’s no surprise that these kinds of expressions are where Shi’s direction most shines; as in her 2018 Oscar-winning Pixar short “Bao,” “Turning Red” lives and breathes on the complex emotional relationship between a mother and a child preparing to leave the nest. And also as in “Bao,” in which a mother raises a steamed bun child from birth to adulthood, here again Shi uses a culturally specific metaphor to convey her characters’ emotions.This is where “Turning Red” gets sticky: though the plot’s red panda magic is rooted in its characters’ cultural traditions (the Lees honor an ancestor who defended her family with the power of a red panda), these details aren’t enough to absolve the film of its kid-friendly version of exoticism. After all, its characters profit off Mei’s cute and foreign transformation.And when it comes down to the movie’s conflict, the antagonists are the women in Mei’s family. Or, more accurately, the suffocating cultural traditions and familial expectations that are embodied by the women. The fact that Mei’s grandmother gets the kind of shady introductory scene that you’d expect of the head honcho in a mobster flick, and that these women share the red panda affliction, means they fall into a formula of cold, emotionless Asian women. Is the film tackling the stereotype or fulfilling it? The line is too blurry to tell. By the end, a bit of understanding, empathy and a pandapocalypse reassures us that the stoic Asian dames aren’t the source of the problem but also victims, like Mei. Though I wonder what the movie would look like if the conflict wasn’t enacted solely in the form of these women.“Turning Red” offers satisfying morsels despite its messiness, like the few throwbacks to the early aughts, including Tamagotchis and pre-BTS boy band mania. (4*Town’s criminally catchy songs, written by Billie Eilish and her brother, Finneas O’Connell, are perfect reproductions of 2000s pop hits.)It’s too bad that “Turning Red” fumbles its storytelling, because at the very least it has fun when it lets its fur fly.Turning RedRated PG. Running time: 1 hour 39 minutes. Watch on Disney+. More

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      ‘Last Exit: Space’ Review: Not-So-Final Frontiers

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      The director Rudolph Herzog, with his father, Werner Herzog, narrating, explores the feasibility of off-world colonization.In the documentary “Last Exit: Space,” the director Rudolph Herzog grabs a baton from his father, Werner Herzog, and continues his dad’s explorations of oddball aspiring visionaries. The topic is space colonization: who might do it and how, and, ultimately, what reaching for the stars says about living on Earth.The initial interviewees, including a father and daughter preparing for D.I.Y. spaceflight in Denmark and a scientist using the Ramon Crater in Israel to mimic the surface of Mars, offer pitches that are a bit utilitarian for the Herzog house style. The movie grows weirder when it looks further out, to the possibility of space travel across 5,000 years. A “leading space sexologist” considers the problem of cross-generational inbreeding. A geneticist describes his lab’s 500-year plan to build humans more physically resistant to the ravages of space.It’s not all wonderment. Werner, who delivers his peerless voice-over, explains that life on Mars might be less exciting than it sounds: “A crew of hardy astronauts would hunker down in radiation-proof bunkers enjoying drinks of recycled urine.” The anthropologist Taylor Genovese warns that corporate colonies on Mars would be a means of creating a feudal system, with a work force trapped on another planet.“Last Exit: Space” is variably engaging depending on who’s talking, and a late but typical shift toward mysticism (a group in Brazil believes it was descended from aliens) is a letdown from what came before. The movie gives a stimulating but standard-by-Herzog-standards treatment to a stellar subject.Last Exit: SpaceNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 20 minutes. Watch on Discovery+. More

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      Cities and States Are Easing Covid Restrictions. Are Theaters and the Arts Next?

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      Cultural institutions face tough decisions: Is it safe to drop mask and vaccine requirements, and would doing so be more likely to lure audiences back or keep them away?When music fans walked beneath the familiar piano-shaped awning and into the dark embrace of the Blue Note Jazz Club in Greenwich Village this week, a late-pandemic fixture was missing: No one was checking proof of vaccination and photo IDs.A special guest visited to herald the change. “Good to be back out,” Mayor Eric Adams of New York told the overwhelmingly maskless audience Monday, the day the city stopped requiring proof of vaccination at restaurants and entertainment venues. “I consider myself the nightlife mayor, so I’m going to assess the product every night.”It is a different story uptown, where Carnegie Hall continues to require masks and vaccines and the Metropolitan Opera goes even further, requiring that all eligible people show proof that they have received their booster shots — safety measures that always went beyond what the city required but which reassured many music lovers. “We want the audience to feel comfortable and safe,” said Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager.With cities and states across the country moving to scale back mask and vaccine requirements as coronavirus cases fall, leaders of cultural institutions find themselves confronted once again with difficult decisions: Is it safe to ease virus safety measures, and would doing so be more likely to lure audiences back or keep them away?Their responses have varied widely. Broadway will continue to require masks and proof of vaccination through at least the end of April. The Smithsonian Institution in Washington announced that it would drop its mask requirement for visitors to its museums and the National Zoo on Friday, following moves by major art museums in places like Chicago and Houston. Some comedy clubs in New York that ditched masking mandates months ago are weighing whether to continue to require proof of vaccination.“At the beginning of this, many arts organizations were having to develop their own policies before there were clear government guidelines,” said Matthew Shilvock, the general director of the San Francisco Opera. “As we come out of this, again, you’re finding arts companies having to find their own way.”The Metropolitan Opera continues to require masks and proof of vaccination and booster shots, and to limit food and drink consumption to one part of the opera house.Todd Heisler/The New York TimesIn interviews, leaders of almost a dozen cultural groups across the country emphasized the need for caution and carefulness. But they noted that each of their situations are distinct. In museums, patrons can roam large galleries and opt for social distance as they please. In theaters and concert halls, audience members are seated close together, immobile for the duration of a performance. Opera houses and symphony orchestras tend to draw an older and more vulnerable audience than night clubs and comedy clubs.The feedback arts leaders say they are getting from visitors has differed: Some said that they had felt increasing pressure to ease their rules in recent weeks, while others said the vast majority of their audience members have told them that they were more likely to visit venues that continue to maintain strict health and safety requirements.“For every one person who complains about the mask requirement, we have probably about 10 people who express unsolicited gratitude for the fact we are choosing to still have masks in place,” said Meghan Pressman, the managing director and chief executive of the Center Theater Group in Los Angeles. She said she would be “surprised” if her organization changed its masking rules before Broadway does.On Broadway, which was shut down by the pandemic for more than a year, officials have said that theater operators would continue to require masks and proof of vaccination through at least April. “We do look forward to welcoming our theatergoers without masks one day soon, and in the meantime, want to ensure that we keep our cast, crew and theatergoers safe so that we can continue to bring the magic of Broadway to our audiences without interruption,” Charlotte St. Martin, the president of the Broadway League, said in a statement.The Metropolitan Opera, which was the first major arts institution to require people entering their opera house to be both vaccinated and boosted, never missed a performance during the height of the recent Omicron surge, and is in no rush to ease its safety measures. “For us, safety comes before Covid fatigue,” said Gelb, the general manager. “So we’re going to err on the side of caution.”But the company has eased some of its backstage protocols: Soloists were not required to wear masks during recent stage rehearsals of Verdi’s “Don Carlos,” which helped some work on their diction as the company sang it in the original French for the first time.Like the Met, the New York Philharmonic and Lincoln Center are also maintaining their mask and vaccine mandates for the moment. Carnegie Hall continues to require masks and proof of vaccination, but recently dropped its policy of briefly requiring booster shots. Masking and vaccine rules also remain in place at the San Francisco Opera, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Opera and Center Theater Group.Two of New York’s premier art-house cinemas are taking different approaches — at least for now. Film Forum’s website says that proof of vaccination is no longer required and that masks are encouraged but not required. Film at Lincoln Center will continue to require proof of vaccination and masks through Sunday, but plans to relax its policy next week.The Metropolitan Museum of Art has stopped checking vaccine cards but is still requiring masks indoors.Seth Wenig/Associated PressA recent poll conducted by The Associated Press found that half of Americans approve of mask mandates, down from 55 percent who supported the mandates six months ago and 75 percent who supported them in December 2020.Choosing what to do is not easy.Christopher Koelsch, the president of the Los Angeles Opera, said that the surveys he has reviewed suggest that roughly a third of audience members would only come to performances if a mask mandate was in place — but that roughly a third would refuse to come if masks are required.“No matter what decision you make,” he said, “there are people who are going to be upset with you and believe that you are making the wrong decision.”Some museums are in an in-between moment. The Metropolitan Museum of Art stopped checking vaccine cards as of Monday but still requires masks. And the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City is likely to lift its mask mandate this month, said Julián Zugazagoitia, the museum’s director.As mask mandates fall in schools, restaurants and other settings, he said, he felt “almost forced” to follow suit. “What I’d like to see us do is keep this as a suggestion,” he said of wearing masks indoors.Other art venues have already changed their rules. Officials at the Art Institute of Chicago said the museum eliminated its requirements for masks and vaccines on Feb. 28 in line with new governmental policies. The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston — one of the first major American museums to reopen after the country went into lockdown in March 2020 — also relaxed its most recent mask mandate last week. As it did previously in the fall, the museum is now recommending — but not requiring — masks for visitors and staff.“We’ve had an increasing number of visitors and staff inquire about why we haven’t — or when are we going to — relax the mandatory mask requirement,” said Gary Tinterow, the museum’s director.At the Broadway Comedy Club in New York, patrons have been allowed inside maskless for some time. But Al Martin, the club’s president, said he has been debating whether to stop requiring that his guests be vaccinated.On one hand, he said, checking people at the door required him to add staff members, which costs money. And he estimated that he has lost roughly 30 percent of his audience because of the mandate. On the other, he said, he liked having a city vaccine mandate to fall back on. “It gave a degree of safety and assurance to people,” he said.He ultimately decided to do away with the vaccine mandate at his club as of Monday despite his personal concern that the city “might have been slightly premature” in rolling back the rules.He reserves the right to change his mind about his club’s policy, he said.“If I see my business drop 40 percent because people are not feeling safe in my venue,” he said, “we’re going back to the vaccine passport.” More

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      Who Will Win This Year’s Wild Best Actress Race?

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      There are cases to be made for and against every contender, and no one has an obvious advantage in this upended season.The best actress category is doing the most.Without a strong front-runner to dominate the field, nearly every awards show is offering a different lineup of ladies as we hurtle toward the March 27 Oscar telecast. Will that make it hard to predict the ultimate winner? Yes, but I’m choosing to revel in the chaos.After all, the only actress who hit every notable awards precursor was the “House of Gucci” star Lady Gaga, who wasn’t even nominated for an Oscar. And while you’d normally look to this weekend’s BAFTA ceremony, the EE British Academy Film Awards, to offer some sort of clarity — as it did last year, when the organization picked the eventual Oscar winner, Frances McDormand for “Nomadland” — not a single one of BAFTA’s best actress nominees made the Oscar lineup this year.Like I said, chaos! But fluid races are often more fun, and each of the five Oscar nominees has some notable pluses and minuses that could keep us guessing until the very end. Here’s my rundown.Jessica Chastain, ‘The Eyes of Tammy Faye’The case for her: A big, prosthetics-laden performance in a biopic is exactly the sort of thing that awards voters tend to go for, but even Chastain seemed shocked when she prevailed over a tough field at last month’s Screen Actors Guild Awards. Another win in the best actress category at the Critics Choice Awards this Sunday could give her some serious momentum, and it doesn’t hurt that she recently starred in the HBO series “Scenes From a Marriage,” offering a prestige-TV display of her range that can help contextualize the work she did as the lavish-lashed evangelist Tammy Faye Bakker. Also, after two previous nominations, you could argue that she’s due for a win.The case against her: “The Eyes of Tammy Faye” came out all the way back in September and failed to make much of a splash with critics or moviegoers. And though that SAG victory gave Chastain a nice, televised bump, only one of the last three best actress winners there also prevailed with Oscar, suggesting a recent trend of academy members going their own way.Explore the 2022 Academy AwardsThe 94th Academy Awards will be held on March 27 in Los Angeles.A Makeover: On Oscar night, you can expect a refreshed, slimmer telecast and a few new awards. But are all of the tweaks a good thing?A Hit: Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s “Drive My Car” is the season’s unlikely Oscar smash. The director Bong Joon Ho is happy to discuss its success.  Making History: Troy Kotsur, who stars in “CODA” as a fisherman struggling to relate to his daughter, is the first deaf man to earn an Oscar nomination for acting. ‘Improbable Journey’: “Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom” was filmed on a shoestring budget in a remote Himalayan village. In a first for Bhutan, the movie is now an Oscar nominee.Olivia Colman, ‘The Lost Daughter’The case for her: It isn’t easy to win a pair of best actress Oscars in short succession, but after Frances McDormand snagged two of the past four trophies in this race, why shouldn’t Colman add another to the Oscar she won for “The Favourite”? (I suspect she came very close to winning a best supporting actress Oscar last year for her sympathetic performance in “The Father,” and that will only raise her chances.) It helps, too, that she’s the only best actress candidate from a film with a screenplay that was also nominated — in fact, “The Lost Daughter,” about a conflicted mother, took the screenplay award and two more this past week at the Independent Spirit Awards, including the show-closing trophy for best film.The case against her: Despite all of that love from the Indie Spirits, Colman’s performance wasn’t even nominated by the group, and she was snubbed again by BAFTA even though British actors are ostensibly her main constituency. (I told you this best actress race was screwball!) Some Oscar voters simply aren’t sympathetic to her character’s doll-stealing arc, and there’s always the chance that her co-star Jessie Buckley’s presence in the supporting actress category might dilute Colman’s candidacy, since they play the same woman at different ages.Penélope Cruz, ‘Parallel Mothers’The case for her: The membership of the academy is growing ever more international, which probably helped Cruz leap into this lineup and may even push her toward a win. Sony Pictures Classics is handling “Parallel Mothers,” and Cruz’s late-breaking momentum recalls the studio’s “The Father,” which netted a lead-actor win for Anthony Hopkins last year after it peaked just as his competitors’ films began to fade. And in a field of polarizing performances, Cruz’s well-reviewed work offers a chic choice that Oscar voters can feel good about taking.The case against her: Cruz is the only actress on this list who was snubbed by SAG, BAFTA, the Golden Globes, and the Critics Choice Awards, and though it’s harder to score with those groups when you’re delivering a performance that’s not in English, that still leaves her with no real place to pop before the Oscars.Nicole Kidman, ‘Being the Ricardos’The case for her: Doesn’t Nicole Kidman seem like the sort of movie star who should have two Oscars by now? Her only win came almost 20 years ago, for “The Hours,” and when Colman and Cruz are also vying for a second statuette, Kidman could credibly claim that she’s been waiting the longest for her pair. Kidman’s “Ricardos” co-stars Javier Bardem and J.K. Simmons were nominated, too, suggesting that the academy’s sizable actors branch has real affection for the film. And of all of the best actress candidates who transformed themselves to play a real person, Kidman may have had the highest difficulty curve to overcome, since her character, Lucille Ball, was a once-in-a-lifetime comic genius.Our Reviews of the 10 Best-Picture Oscar NomineesCard 1 of 10“Belfast.” More

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      Taylor Tomlinson: A Comic With the Confidence of a Star

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      On her new Netflix special, “Look at You,” she demonstrates tight joke writing, carefully honed act-outs and a ruthless appetite for laughs.The moment I knew that the stand-up comic Taylor Tomlinson was going to be a star was not after she made the precociously funny debut special, “Quarter-Life Crisis,” at the age of 25. Or her assured follow-up, “Look at You,” which premiered on Netflix this week. Or even after the news that she’s writing and starring in a movie about her own life (directed by Paul Weitz).It was the minute after the comic Whitney Cummings insulted her bangs.This took place on Cummings’s podcast, one of two freewheeling episodes that Tomlinson, now 28, appeared on during the pandemic that were also filmed and released on YouTube. For most of their chummy conversations, Tomlinson appeared polite, deferential, even in awe of her friend and mentor, a more seasoned stand-up, writer and television star. But when Cummings offhandedly suggested her protégé might need help from a stylist with her new haircut, the temperature in the room plummeted.“Are you serious?” Tomlinson asked, shooting a look that jarred the voluble Cummings into juddering paralysis. Tomlinson diagnosed the insult as a disingenuous play for content and calmly told Cummings to stop. Then came the counterpunch. Shifting from her friend to the camera, she told a story of pitching a television show with Cummings that described her, brutally, as an underminer. Tomlinson wrapped up this entertaining story with a compliment, saying she learned how to stand up to Cummings from Cummings. Along with teaching a lesson that it’s always best to tread carefully when commenting on a new hairstyle, Tomlinson displayed steel, poise, showmanship and a willingness to get tensely uncomfortable, which can help turn a good joke into a great one. More than anything, she showed a commanding ability to quickly pivot without fluster. Small talk can reveal big things.The bangs were gone by the time Tomlinson shot “Look at You,” but it did not escape my notice that after an arty opening shot of her all alone in the audience, she began her set with jokes about them. “It’s been a rough couple years,” she said, setting up expectations of talk about the pandemic. “I got bangs at one point.”This new hour has the confidence to start slowly but build, anchored by three or four superb extended bits. Tomlinson has emerged as one of the youngest comics with multiple Netflix hours because of tight joke writing, carefully honed act-outs and a ruthless appetite for laughs. With a quick smile and wide, alert eyes, her comic persona leans into a wholesome, cheerful affect, a Christian upbringing and impeccably basic cultural references (Harry Potter, Taylor Swift). This provides a solid backdrop for incongruously dark swivels, sometimes accompanied by the kind of shimmies Steph Curry does after hitting a shot near half court.Her gift is making weighty subjects come off as breezy. There’s no way a special that covers night terrors, panic attacks, bipolar disorder, a dead mother and a disturbingly blunt father, along with suicidal thoughts, should seem this delightful. That requires skill and savvy. Take her six-minute chunk on her mother dying young. These jokes are carefully massaged, contextualized and accented to work for any crowd, and among her strategies to lighten the mood is arguing that it’s OK to laugh because the death of her mother helped her career.“Do you think I’d be this successful at my age if I had a live mom?” she asks, flashing the kind of condescending disappointment given to someone ordering lobster at a diner. “She’s in heaven. I’m on Netflix. It all worked out.”Tomlinson has a people pleaser’s ability to ingratiate. In her new special, she says she looks like someone who would be better at meeting your mother than at sex. “I’ll meet your mom all night long,” she boasts. But to get a laugh, she’s just as happy to play the jerk. “Lot of my friends are settling down,” she says. “Some are just settling.”Tomlinson taped her first special after a breakup with her fiancé. Since then, she has clearly spent many hours with a therapist, which makes its way into many jokes. Ever since Maria Bamford dug into the subject of mental health, it has been explored thoroughly in stand-up, particularly in the last year or two, and we may be reaching the point of exhaustion. And Tomlinson occasionally risks veering into a kind of comedy that doesn’t fully digest and transform therapy into jokes.And yet, the strength of her best bits is the specificity and depth of her analysis of her own psychology. There are few jokes with the classical structure breaking down the difference between men and women, but more investigation into her own eccentric personality. She attributes her tendency to rush into relationships as a reaction to her mother’s dying so early in her life, and builds many jokes out of her trust issues, including a wonderfully performed series of punch lines about how she interprets any kindness from a boyfriend as a tactic. “Oh, is this your move?” is her refrain, about everything from opening the car door to staying together for six decades.Her first special was a portrait of a young fogy, but this new one zeros in on her self-protective cynicism and exaggerates it until it’s an absurd cartoon. The funniest parts of these jokes are in the subtext, how Tomlinson performs knowingness in a way that can be truly clueless. But unlike many comics who find laughs in saying the wrong thing, her act never comes off as character comedy. It’s a testament to her acting ability that even when you know she’s presenting a deluded version of herself, you buy it.For a comic her age, Tomlinson is remarkably nimble, able to pivot from light to dark, innocent to dirty, chummy to aggressive. Whatever gets the laugh. If there is something missing from her comic tool kit, it might be a certain vulnerability. She can push right past that, and understandably so. She’s dealing with grave issues, like a parent’s death or a wounding comment, and her emotional armor needs to be thick. Notably, she allows it to get a little thinner when it comes to more modest concerns like, well, her bangs. It’s in that bit that she sits in insecurity.“Having bangs is exactly like being on mushrooms,” she says. “The whole time you’re like: Do I look weird?” More

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      ‘Calendar Girl’ Review: A Portrait of an Angel of Fashion

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      This documentary follows Ruth Finley to shows and tributes as she reluctantly brings her decades-long career to a close.Fashion is a cosmos unto itself, as so many books, articles and films insist on reminding us. And so it has its own angels and demons — as you know, the Devil wears Prada. In this firmament, Ruth Finley, who died in 2018 at the age of 98, was unquestionably one of the angels.Finley is introduced to us as a nice lady in her 90s who sits patiently with folded hands as she’s made up before heading onstage to receive another award for her work. Her dress is understatedly elegant; she speaks of her old friend Bill Blass as one of her favorite designers.Finley, in this opening scene and subsequent ones, is celebrated for creating a publication which you may have never heard of, but which has been vital for keeping the fashion industry on schedule: “Fashion Calendar.” It is perfectly described by its title.A subscription publication that took no ads, the calendar was simplicity itself: a grid describing who was showing what, and, most important, when they were showing it. It never ran illustrations or outgrew its use of typewriter font. And Finley was slow to take it into the online world, where it resides today.“Calendar Girl,” directed by Christian D. Bruun, follows Finley to shows and tributes as she reluctantly brings her decades-long career to a close.Finley’s story is also the story of how New York became a fashion powerhouse: Her own discernment, and her kindness to up-and-coming designers, is recounted in sometimes nostalgic detail.This affectionate portrait is also well grounded. Finley is remembered as a hard worker among other hard workers. Despite the extremes often associated with the fashion industry, in Finley’s narrative, there’s very little haughty self-regard or hyperbole on display.Calendar GirlNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 31 minutes. Rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      How the ‘Encanto’ Soundtrack Became a Smash

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      With its eighth week at No. 1 on Billboard’s album chart, the LP featuring songs from Lin-Manuel Miranda is a lesson in how fans drive hits from social media to streaming services.The soundtrack to Disney’s “Encanto” had an inauspicious start on the Billboard 200 album chart, arriving at No. 197 after the animated film’s release in November, just below Bob Seger’s “Greatest Hits” and a Notorious B.I.G. reissue.But this week the soundtrack, featuring songs by Lin-Manuel Miranda and a score by Germaine Franco, notches its eighth week at No. 1 — one of only three albums with a run this long in the last five years — while Miranda’s song “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” slipped to second place on the Hot 100 singles chart after five times at the top.What happened in between is an object lesson in how songs become hits now, with tracks elevated by fans through streaming and social media, and radio often lagging behind the curve.For “Encanto” and “Bruno,” the key factor was TikTok. Soon after the film became available for streaming on Disney+ on Christmas Eve, fans shared their reflections there and acted out scenes from the movie, about an extended family in Colombia that has been touched by magic.“The first instance on TikTok was people posting that these characters look like me and my family, that I’m seeing myself in this picture,” said Ken Bunt, president of the Disney Music Group. “Then it fairly quickly moved into another phase, where people were doing the dances and singing to it.”Explore the World of ‘Encanto’Disney’s new film, about a gifted family in Colombia, pairs stunning animation with spellbinding songs by Lin-Manuel Miranda.Review: “Encanto” charms with its focus on family dynamics, fantastic feats of wizardry and respect for Latino culture, writes our film critic.The Voice of Mirabel: Stephanie Beatriz, who won over fans with her role in “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” discusses taking on the lead role in the film.An Enchanting Soundtrack: The film’s album of music recently climbed to the top of the Billboard 200, displacing Adele’s “30.”A Slice of His Homeland: A Times reporter watched “Encanto” with her Colombian father. Here’s what they thought.Once ignited on TikTok — where videos tagged #wedonttalkaboutbruno have been viewed 3.5 billion times — “Bruno” and other soundtrack songs, like “Surface Pressure,” began to dominate Spotify, Apple Music and other audio streaming outlets. The soundtrack ousted Adele’s “30” from No. 1 on Billboard’s album chart in early January and has since held that slot every week but one.Since its release, “Encanto” has had the equivalent of just under one million sales in the United States, according to MRC Data, the tracking service used in compiling Billboard’s charts. This week, “Encanto” tops the rapper Kodak Black’s new “Back for Everything” (No. 2) and albums by Morgan Wallen (No. 3), Gunna (No. 4) and the Weeknd (No. 5).On the singles chart, “Bruno” was replaced at No. 1 by Glass Animals’ “Heat Waves,” a song released nearly two years ago that was resuscitated as a TikTok meme and recently got a fresh boost on the radio.Even with the imprimatur of Miranda, the Tony-, Emmy- and Grammy-winning creator of “Hamilton,” “Encanto” might have seemed a long shot as a mainstream pop hit. The album is a pan-Latin fusion that draws on Colombian folk styles like vallenato and bambuco, with touches of salsa, Broadway bombast and rock en Español.In the past, Disney might have leaned on a Broadway-style ballad, with a globally recognized star singing in English, to propel one of its soundtracks. (Think Elton John’s “Can You Feel the Love Tonight” from “The Lion King,” which went to No. 4 in 1994.)“Encanto” flips that playbook, showcasing Colombian stars like Carlos Vives and Sebastián Yatra. “Bruno,” a complex ensemble piece with a classic cha-cha beat, is credited to six of the film’s cast members. “Dos Oruguitas,” the first song Miranda wrote from start to finish in Spanish, is nominated for an Oscar.To record the album, producers brought in Colombian specialists to help bring authenticity to the rhythms and instrumental arrangements; most of the sessions, which took place last year, were conducted remotely.But even with its use of acoustic instruments like the cuatro and the tiple — two relatives of the guitar — the sound of “Encanto” is not as distant from the pop mainstream as it may seem. Mike Elizondo, one of the album’s producers, who has worked with Dr. Dre, Fiona Apple and the band Twenty One Pilots, pointed out the heavy bass that drives songs like “Bruno,” and the presence of synthesizers that would not be out of place on a rap hit.“When we were making the music to the soundtrack, Lin was very encouraging,” Elizondo said in an interview. “‘Let’s not try and water anything down,’” he recalled Miranda saying. “‘Let’s not feel like we have to follow any of the rules of prior soundtracks.’”Even so, “Bruno” was almost entirely absent from radio for most of its ascent. Disney did not begin promoting it to radio stations until late January, Bunt said. In recent weeks, “Bruno” has had fewer than 4,000 spins a week on radio stations. By comparison, in the week that Adele’s “Easy on Me” first reached No. 1, in October, American radio stations played it more than 18,000 times.Videos shared on social media helped contextualize the story behind “Bruno” in a way that radio play never could. TikTok clips show fans enacting the story, while a Disney clip on YouTube translates the lyrics into 21 languages, including Norwegian, Thai and Korean. The latest viral mutation in the success of “Bruno” is mash-ups with Doja Cat or Bruno Mars (get it?).In a sense, those videos capitalize on one of the advantages of any successful soundtrack, from the days of “Saturday Night Fever” to “Frozen,” Disney’s last comparable blockbuster: a story line that links the songs together and lets fans relive the film through its hits. That has become vital in the streaming age, when individual songs are increasingly disconnected from their albums.“They’re like potato chips: you can’t eat just one,” said Gary Trust, Billboard’s senior director of charts. “With ‘Encanto’ songs, you can’t just listen to one. You want to relive the whole story.” More

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      Daniel Radcliffe to Star in Off Broadway ‘Merrily’ Revival

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      A new production of Stephen Sondheim’s “Merrily We Roll Along” is to be staged late this year by the nonprofit New York Theater Workshop in the East Village.The actor Daniel Radcliffe will star in an Off Broadway revival of “Merrily We Roll Along,” a Stephen Sondheim musical that famously flopped on Broadway but in the decades since has become an oft-produced and beloved show.The new production, directed by Maria Friedman, is sure to be a tough ticket to get, given Radcliffe’s celebrity and the size of the venue: It is to be staged late this year by the nonprofit New York Theater Workshop at its 199-seat main stage in the East Village.Sondheim, in an interview days before his death last November, said he was looking forward to the production. Friedman, a British musical theater star with a long history of performing in Sondheim musicals, first directed “Merrily” at the Menier Chocolate Factory in London in 2012; that production, hailed by The Guardian with a five-star review, transferred to London’s West End in 2013, and Friedman then directed a run at the Huntington Theater in Boston in 2017.“Merrily” is an unusual show, written in reverse chronological order, about a trio of artists whose close friendship, and shared dreams, unravel over the years. The musical, featuring songs by Sondheim and a book by George Furth, ran on Broadway in 1981; it closed 12 days after opening. The abbreviated Broadway run was the subject of a well-received 2016 documentary film, “Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened”; Richard Linklater is now spending 20 years making a film adaptation of the musical starring Ben Platt and Beanie Feldstein.Ben Brantley, then the co-chief theater critic for The New York Times, called “Merrily” “the much-loved problem child of Sondheim’s musicals.” He saw Friedman’s production in London, where he called it “heart-clutching,” and in Boston, where he deemed it “transcendent.” The show, with an admired score and a critiqued book that builds toward a rooftop moment where the three main characters meet, has been repeatedly rethought; Jesse Green, the current Times chief theater critic, once described himself as “someone who’d gladly patronize a dedicated ‘Merrily’ repertory theater, perhaps on that rooftop, running nothing but reworked versions in perpetuity.”New York Theater Workshop, best known as the birthplace of “Rent,” said Monday that its production of “Merrily” would run in “late 2022”; it did not announce dates. Radcliffe will play Charley Kringas, a lyricist and playwright; the theater did not announce other cast members.The cast of “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.” Radcliffe, center, starred in the 2011 Broadway revival.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesRadcliffe, who vaulted to fame by portraying Harry Potter on film, has starred in several Broadway and Off Broadway plays; he also starred in a 2011 Broadway revival of the musical “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.”The “Merrily” production is the final show chosen by James C. Nicola, who has been the artistic director of New York Theater Workshop since 1988, and who is planning to step down in June. Nicola saw the original production on Broadway, and in the decades since, he said, the show “eerily, uncannily, has managed to entwine itself into my own life.”“I had never before heard or read any work of art that seemed to understand me — in fact, all of us Boomers in that precise moment of our lives,” he said by email. “‘Merrily We Roll Along’ is once again magically finding its way into my life.” More