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      Can Works Like 'Don't Look Up' Get Us Out of Our Heads?

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      In the doomsday smash and Bo Burnham’s pandemic musical “Inside,” themes of climate change, digital distraction and inequality merge and hit home.An Everest-size comet is hurtling toward Earth, and in exactly six months and 14 days, the planet will be shattered to pieces, leaving every living creature to perish in a cataclysm of fire and flood. In “Don’t Look Up,” Netflix’s hit climate-apocalypse film, this news largely bounces off the American public like a rubber ball. And they return to their phones with a collective “meh” — opting to doomscroll instead of acknowledging certain doom IRL.With the hope of snapping the masses from their stupor, Jennifer Lawrence’s character, a young scientist with a Greta Thunberg-like disdain for the apathetic, screams into the camera during a live TV appearance: “You should stay up all night every night crying when we’re all, 100 percent, for sure, going to [expletive] die!” She’s swiftly dismissed as hysterical, and an image of her face is gleefully seized on for the full meme treatment. (More spoilers ahead.)What the internet has done to our minds and what our minds have done to our planet (or haven’t done to save it) are two dots that have been circling each other for some time. Now, onscreen at least, they’re colliding, resonating with audiences and tapping into a particular psyche of our moment.In “Don’t Look Up,” a satirical incision from Adam McKay with only humor as an anesthetic, these themes are lampooned in equal measure and in no uncertain terms. Though heavy with metaphors — most important, the comet signifying climate change — its message is clear and not open to interpretation: Wake up!That the movie amassed 152 million hours viewed in one week, according to Netflix, which reports its own figures, suggests a cultural trend taking shape. There’s a hunger for entertainment that favors unflinching articulation and externalization over implication and internalization — to have our greatest fears verbalized without restraint, even heavy-handedly, along with a good deal of style and wit.Learn More About ‘Don’t Look Up’In Netflix’s doomsday flick, Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence are two astronomers who discover a comet headed straight for Earth.Review: It’s the end of the world, and you should not feel fine, writes the film critic Manohla Dargis.A Metaphor for Climate Change: With his apocalyptic satire, the director Adam McKay hopes to prompt the audience to action. Meryl Streep’s Presidential Turn: How the actor prepared to play a self-centered scoundrel at the helm of the United States.A Real-Life ‘Don’t Look Up’ Moment: The film revives memories of a nail-biting night in the Times newsroom two decades ago.Look at “Inside,” Bo Burnham’s pandemic comedy-musical masterpiece from Netflix last year, in which he pools themes of climate disaster with Silicon Valley’s commodification of our thoughts and feelings, and its reliance on keeping us jonesing for distraction. (In the 2020 documentary “The Social Dilemma,” tech experts who had a hand in building these structures sounded an alarm over what they’d done.)Bo Burnham skewers the internet’s effects on humanity and the planet throughout his Netflix special “Inside.” NetflixIn his sobering song “That Funny Feeling” which has more than 6.7 million views on YouTube alone, Burnham sums it up in one lyric: “The whole world at your fingertips, the ocean at your door.”“Twenty-thousand years of this,” he goes on, “seven more to go.” Most likely a nod to the Climate Clock, which displays messages like “the Earth has a deadline.”At the start of Jim Gaffigan’s new Netflix comedy special, “Comedy Monster,” he responds to opening applause by saying, “That almost makes me forget we’re all going to be dead in a week. I’m kidding. It’ll probably be a month” — seemingly referencing both the pandemic and general vibe.And “Squid Game,” a wildly violent, rich-eat-the-poor satire from South Korea that was a global smash for Netflix last year, while not about climate change, explored many of the same themes as “Don’t Look Up” — wealth inequality, greed, desensitization and voyeurism — flicking at the same anxieties and offering a similar catharsis.As with “Squid Game, ” some critics were lukewarm about “Don’t Look Up” — for being too obvious, shallow and shouty — but many climate scientists were moved and appreciative. In therapy, we’re often told that the best way to address our demons is to speak them out loud, using words that don’t skirt the issues or make excuses for them. Otherwise, they will never seem real, thus can never be dealt with. In “Don’t Look Up,” most people don’t snap out of their daze until the comet is finally in physical view. Do the popularity of shows and movies that don’t mince messages reveal a growing readiness to bring our common dread out of the deep space of our subconscious — to see it, to say it, to hear it?We’ve long been enveloped by a 24-hour news cycle that unfurls in tandem with social media feeds that give near equal weight to all events: Clarendon-tinged vacation photos, celebrity gossip, snappy memes and motivational quotes are delivered as bite-size information flotsam that sails alongside news of political turmoil, mass shootings, social injustice and apocalyptic revelations about our planet.“Squid Game,” a global streaming sensation last year, explores themes of wealth inequality, greed and desensitization.NetflixAs Burnham, personifying the internet in his song “Welcome to the Internet,” with more than 62 million YouTube views, asks: “Could I interest you in everything all of the time?”Next month, Hulu will premiere the mini-series “Pam & Tommy,” a fictionalized account of the release of Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee’s personal sex tape, which was stolen from their home in 1995 and sold on what was then called the “World Wide Web.” The show presents the tape as helping the web become more mainstream by appealing to base human compulsions — an on-ramp to what would lie ahead.The pandemic has sent us further down this rabbit hole in pursuit of distraction, information, connection, all the while we try to shake that sense of impending doom.At one point in “Inside,” while curled up in the fetal position on the floor under a blanket surrounded by jumbles of cords — an image worthy of a pandemic-era time capsule — Burnham, his eyes closed, ruminates on the mess we’re in.I don’t know about you guys, but, you know, I’ve been thinking recently that, you know, maybe allowing giant digital media corporations to exploit the neurochemical drama of our children for profit — you know, maybe that was a bad call by us. Maybe the flattening of the entire subjective human experience into a lifeless exchange of value that benefits nobody, except for, you know, a handful of bug-eyed salamanders in Silicon Valley — maybe that as a way of life forever, maybe that’s not good.In “Don’t Look Up,” the chief “bug-eyed salamander,” a Steve Jobs-like character and the third richest man on the planet, is almost completely responsible for allowing the comet to collide with Earth; his 11th-hour attempt to plumb the rock for trillions of dollars worth of materials fails. In the end, he and a handful of haves escape on a spaceship, leaving the remaining billions of have-nots to die.Juxtaposed with Jeff Bezos, one of the richest men on Earth, launching into space on his own rocket last year — a trip back-dropped by pandemic devastation (and a passing blip on the cultural radar) — is beyond parody … almost.Near the end of “Don’t Look Up,” Leonardo DiCaprio’s character, an awkward astronomer turned media darling, delivers an emotional monologue. Staring into the camera, he implores: “What have we done to ourselves? How do we fix it?” Funny. We were just asking ourselves the same thing. More

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      Documentary Critical of Disney, From the Disney Family

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      A harsh portrait of pay inequality at the company, premiering at Sundance on Monday, was directed by the granddaughter of one of the founders.Three years ago, Abigail E. Disney began to publicly excoriate the Walt Disney Company for its “obscene” pay inequality, with Robert A. Iger, who was then chief executive, at one end of the scale and hourly theme park workers at the other. The company founded by her grandfather and great-uncle repeatedly returned fire, at one point calling her assertions a “gross and unfair exaggeration of the facts.”But Ms. Disney has refused to back down, even though the company recently agreed to a 16 percent raise for certain theme park workers. In fact, she is escalating her campaign — and, for the first time, bringing along two of her three siblings.“The American Dream and Other Fairy Tales,” an activist-minded documentary about the pay gap between corporate haves and have-nots, will premiere on Monday as part of the Sundance Film Festival, which is being held digitally because of the pandemic. Ms. Disney and Kathleen Hughes directed the film; Ms. Disney’s sister, Susan Disney Lord, and a brother, Tim, are among the executive producers. The movie positions the entertainment company that bears their name as “ground zero of the widening inequality in America.”To paint that harsh picture, Ms. Disney and Ms. Hughes profile four Disneyland custodians, who, at the time of filming (prepandemic), earned $15 an hour. They all struggle mightily with soaring housing costs in Southern California. One says he knows Disneyland workers who have had to “make a decision between medication or food.”Intermittently, the filmmakers cut to photographs of Mr. Iger, who was Disney’s chief executive from 2005 to 2020, a period of stunning gains for stockholders (including Ms. Disney and other members of her family). Viewers are reminded that Disney awarded him a pay package in 2018 worth $65.6 million. Stock awards tied to the acquisition of 21st Century Fox assets made up 40 percent.Ms. Disney and her sister are then shown reminiscing about their grandfather, Roy O. Disney, who founded the company in 1923 with his brother, Walt. “I cannot see him taking $66 million home for a year’s work in the same year when, at the same company, people can’t afford food,” an indignant Ms. Disney says. Her sister responds, “That would never have happened — that would never have happened.”The Disney family has not been involved in managing Disney since their father, Roy E. Disney, stepped down from the board in 2003 and led a shareholder revolt that resulted in Mr. Iger’s ascension. Roy E. Disney died in 2009.The New York Times was allowed to view the film ahead of its premiere. Disney, which was not given early access, responded to queries about the film’s content and tone with the following statement:“The well-being and aspirations of our employees and cast will always be our top priority. We provide a leading and holistic employment package that includes competitive pay and comprehensive benefits for our cast members to grow their careers and care for their families. That starts with fair pay and leading entry wages, but also includes affordable medical coverage, access to tuition-free higher education, subsidized child care for eligible employees, as well as pathways for personal and professional development.”The statement added, “We are committed to building on our significant efforts to date.”Recent developments at Disneyland cut against the film’s narrative. In December, unions representing 9,500 custodians, ride operators and parking attendants ratified a new contract that lifts minimum starting pay to $18 an hour by 2023 — up from $15.45 last year, a 16 percent increase — and includes seniority-based bonuses. Disneyland has almost returned to full staffing after being closed for more than a year because of the pandemic, a spokeswoman said. The Anaheim resort employs roughly 30,000 people.Mr. Iger has also left the company. Ms. Disney tells viewers that she decided to make the film because she was frustrated and angry at his “curt” response to an email she sent him in 2018 about theme park employee pay. He declined to comment for this article.Ms. Disney has faced claims of discrimination and unfair treatment from former employees at one of her companies, Level Forward, which helps finance and produce entertainment projects with a social justice focus. (“There’s fair criticism in there,” Ms. Disney told The Hollywood Reporter last year.)In an interview via Zoom, Ms. Disney and Ms. Hughes, an Emmy-winning television newsmagazine producer, said they were “encouraged” by the Disneyland pay increase but said it wasn’t enough — that around $24 an hour was the needed “living wage.”“If everything’s different, then why did the new C.E.O. walk away with $32.5 million for a not very profitable year?” Ms. Disney said. She was referring to Bob Chapek. Disney reported $2 billion in profit for 2021, compared to a loss of $2.8 billion in 2020. Before the pandemic, Disney was generating $10 billion annually in profit.The filmmakers are still looking for a distributor. They hope to use Sundance to generate interest from Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV+ or another Disney competitor. In addition to its condemnation of Disney, “The American Dream and Other Fairy Tales” takes on a host of complicated subjects, including the evolution of capitalism, shifting government economic policies and racial injustice.“I want changes to the entire system — from C.E.O.s generally and from Wall Street especially — that result in the recognition of the dignity and humanity of every single worker,” Ms. Disney said.Ms. Disney is a prominent member of the Patriotic Millionaires, a group that pushes for higher taxes on businesses and wealthy individuals like themselves. As she has said over the years, it is a position that some of her own family members have a difficult time understanding. (That appears to include a brother, Roy P. Disney, who has supported Mr. Iger and is not involved with “The American Dream and Other Fairy Tales.”)Lest anyone think the film is her final word on the subject of pay inequality at Disney and other companies, she ends her documentary with these words: “To be continued.” More

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      Louie Anderson and the Compassion of America’s Eternal Kid

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      He displayed an empathetic humanity that he shared offstage with his friend Bob Saget. The loss of both comics represents the end of an era.One of the first killer jokes in the stand-up act of Louie Anderson was about the meanness of older brothers. Imitating one of his own in an intimidating voice, he warned that there was a monster in a swamp nearby. With childlike fear in his eyes, Anderson reported that he avoided that area “until I got a little older and a little smarter and a little brother.”Pivoting to the future in an instant, he adopted the older brother voice, pointing to the swamp and telling his sibling: “That’s where your real parents live.”Anderson, who died Friday at 68 from complications of cancer, had five brothers and five sisters, but over the course of a sterling comedy career spanning four decades, he established a much larger family of colleagues. The comedian Bob Saget, who also died this month, was a younger brother of sorts. They started in stand-up on the West Coast around the same time and had breakthroughs in the same 1985 episode of HBO’s “Young Comedians Special” (hosted by Rodney Dangerfield), which back then was second only to “The Tonight Show” as a springboard for stand-up careers.Just last May, Anderson and Saget took part in a loving conversation on a podcast, reminiscing and laughing, and gingerly approaching topics with the sensitivity and warmth of intimates catching up during the long, isolating pandemic. It’s funny and now, considering the loss of both men, terribly heartbreaking. Both still prolific in their 60s, they sounded joyful about the current moment and were looking to the future. Saget talked about wanting to direct a movie that would appeal to everyone, and Anderson said he wished to play Fatty Arbuckle.None of that will happen, of course, and as these friends talked about their careers, it struck me that losing them represents the end of a key part of an era.Clockwise from top left, Yakov Smirnoff, Jeff Altman, Tim Thomerson,  Anderson, Jim Carrey, Pauley Shore, Mitzi Shore and Saget at a celebration of the Comedy Store’s 20th anniversary in 1992.Chris Haston/NBCUniversal, via Getty ImagesWhen you think of the 1980s comedy boom, the first artist that comes to mind for many is Jerry Seinfeld and his clinically observational brand of humor. For others, it might be the rock-star flamboyance of Eddie Murphy or Andrew Dice Clay. But in the days of three major networks, the culture incentivized a warmly inclusive, rigorously relatable comedy that could appeal to a broad mainstream and, at its best and most resonant, had an empathetic humanity.The outpouring of love for Bob Saget took some by surprise and was in part a testament to his good-natured, filthy humor and personal generosity. But it was also because of a vast audience that saw him as the friendly paternal face on “Full House” and “America’s Funniest Home Videos.” That comedy fans also knew him as one of the dirtiest joke tellers around burnished and deepened his reputation. But if Saget became one of the few cultural figures who could be described as America’s Dad (does any current star get described in such sweeping terms these days?), Anderson fit seamlessly into an equally idealized role as our culture’s eternal kid.There was a boyish innocence and sweetness to Anderson that never left him, even when he was playing a mother on “Baskets,” a remarkable and sincere performance that marked the start of his acclaimed second act (which included his turn in “Search Party”). Like Saget, Anderson had a broad résumé as an actor, author and television host, but he was a stand-up at heart who never stopped touring. I saw him do a 90-minute set in 2018, and he had the low-key improvisational, searching energy of someone still obsessed with finding an incredible new bit.There was a remarkable consistency in Anderson’s work from his early stand-up to his later performances, in spirit and also in subject matter. This included a focus on food: No one told more fat jokes, like his longtime opening line, which he used during his first appearance on “The Tonight Show” and again on “Conan” last March: “Listen, I can’t stay long. I’m between meals.”More prominently, his great topic was family, particularly his ever-optimistic mother and irate father. (As soft-spoken as he could be, Anderson could also yell as much as Sam Kinison.) While his early comedy featured plenty of punch lines, Anderson’s great gift was acting out stories, brilliantly evoking moments with quick-change characterizations, displaying the depth and technique of a seasoned actor.Anderson in his much-praised turn as a mother on “Baskets.” Erica Parise/FXIn one lovely, unusually nuanced scene for his 1987 hour at the Guthrie Theater, near his hometown, St. Paul, he recalled his parents fighting. It begins with a teasing imitation of his father, a classic belligerent blowhard of an old-timer. In Anderson’s telling, he was the kind of guy who would say things like, “When I was a kid, they didn’t have schools. I had to find smart people and follow them around.”In the show, his father boasts in a brusque, nonsensical rant about being a veteran of “World War I, World War II, everything, Korea, everywhere.”Leaving the scene for an instant, Anderson explained that as a boy, he had to look to his mother for the truth — then he unfurrowed his brow, flattened his face and utterly transformed into a soft-spoken woman gently shaking her head. As the audience cracked up, he lingered silently before lowering his voice and saying: “World War II.” There’s something about the quietness of the way he has her explain this that is touching. His mother wants to correct the record but not humiliate. The scene escalates into a fight, and while it could have been incredibly dark, it somehow isn’t.The reason, I think, is that the core of Louie Anderson’s art has always been a bend-over-backward compassion, a grace for everyone, including (maybe especially) those he teases or criticizes, like his father.It’s a quality that can seem in short supply, but it’s one you hear so vividly in that podcast with Saget, who asked Anderson if he ever thought of being a therapist or minister. Anderson replied that he found therapy in comedy.Because they’re comedians, the talk eventually turned to death, specifically Dangerfield’s funeral in 2004. Saget officiated at the service and said he was actually heckled by Jay Leno. In the podcast, Saget thanked Anderson for sticking up for him. Anderson told him: “I know that must have hurt you, what he did. I wasn’t going to let you hang there. Jay probably just did it out of nervousness. Maybe he needed to do that to not burst out crying.”Leno is a polarizing figure for comics of their generation, and to his detractors, he’s an unsentimental joke-telling machine, which might have been part of the subtext when Saget quickly responded to Anderson’s suggestion that Leno was trying to avoid shedding tears: “I don’t think he does that.”In the gentle way a friend does, Anderson disagreed. “I bet he does.” Saget then immediately changed his mind, almost as if he recognized that the humanity of this thought outpaced the fun of his gibe.“All I ever want to do is hug you,” he said to Anderson at one moment.It was unusually sentimental for a comedy podcast, but that these old friends got to share this final moment of connection is no small thing. More

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      Five Science Fiction Movies to Stream Now

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      If you’re interested in alien invasions, vivid dreamscapes or adorable cats, this collection of streaming picks may be just right for you.‘Come True’Stream it on Hulu.At one point in Anthony Scott Burns’s deeply unsettling movie, a character brings up the influential science-fiction writer Philip K. Dick. It’s a daunting reference point to set for yourself, especially because the film explores one of Dick’s favorite subjects — the porous borders of reality. Amazingly, “Come True” lives up to the challenge.The teenage Sarah (the elfin, magnetic Julia Sarah Stone) tries to live a normal life despite being so alienated, for unknown reasons, from her mother that she has chosen to be homeless. Enrolling in a sleep study may help with two of Sarah’s problems at once: finding a bed on a semiregular basis and figuring out why she is plagued by nightmares — the movie’s elaborately designed dreamscapes are absolutely terrifying.“Come True” borrows from sci-fi, psychological drama and horror to send viewers on a journey to the outer limits of the unconscious. It bravely refuses pat explanations, or even to provide a general road map — it is as slippery and disorienting as a dream. This, of course, is only a mild reflection of the hell Sarah is going through, but it does create a constant state of dread in the viewer; at its best “Come True” brings to mind Jonathan Glazer’s cult darling “Under the Skin.” And the final shot will make your head spin.‘Reminiscence’Stream it on HBO Max.Let’s get one thing out of the way: For the most part, Lisa Joy’s debut feature as director was not greeted with positive reviews.But watching “Reminiscence” — which Joy, a co-creator of the series “Westworld,” also wrote — with an open mind suggests a misunderstanding about the film’s nature.Set in a futuristic Miami half-flooded by rising waters, the movie has a hard-boiled exterior: Hugh Jackman’s Nick Bannister is a brooding investigator whose specialty is time rather than space. He and his associate, Watts Sanders (Thandiwe Newton), help people retrieve and relive their memories, no matter how submerged they might be.But if you go in expecting a futuristic noir or a sci-fi parable about climate change, you are bound to be disappointed: “Reminiscence” is a romance, albeit one set in a soggy world. It is entirely preoccupied with Nick’s obsession with Mae (Rebecca Ferguson), a sultry singer plying her trade in joints from Miami to New Orleans. He can’t stop thinking about her, and his all-consuming obsession is to find her again. If anything, the film sits at the unexpected center of a Venn diagram combining Alfred Hitchcock’s surrealist exploration of the psychoanalytical unconscious, “Spellbound,” and Nicholas Sparks‘s tales of fervent love. The straightforward thriller scenes aren’t all that effective, but the ones dealing with the crushing weight of love are.‘Coma’Rent or buy on most major platforms.Some housekeeping: There are quite a few movies named “Coma,” so make sure you look for the recent Russian one. And if you prefer subtitles to the ubiquitous English dub, head over to the version streaming for free (with ad breaks) on IMDb TV.Not that the dialogue in all that important in Nikita Argunov’s film, which often looks like an M.C. Escher drawing come to C.G.I. life.One day, a ragtag group of cool-looking strangers saves Viktor (Rinal Mukhametov) from menacing creatures that appear to be made of black dust. His new friends take Viktor to safety in a universe in which the laws of physics don’t apply — chunks of entire buildings float upside down, bridges levitate in the sky and link airborne islands. This is a world made up of what goes on in the minds of people who are in a coma, a fantastical reality that feels unfinished because it is based on those collective brains’ partial awareness. (Clearly, inner space stands in for outer space in this week’s column.)While this sounds “Tenet”-like complicated, the movie has a certain playfulness that defies the highfalutin concept. The visuals can lack a certain depth at times, but the 2-D feel has a particular old-school fun appeal, as if the actors were agitating in front of painted backdrops. Plus, a lot of scenes boil down to the group trying to escape those black beasties, which are known as Reapers. Sometimes all you need is a good chase scene, even if it’s topsy-turvy.‘Alien Outbreak’Stream it on Vudu.This scrappy British indie is streaming on Vudu for free with ad breaks, which gives you a few seconds to grab a drink and puzzle an existential mystery: How can a filmmaker set such a precisely composed mood and create such accomplished set pieces, and at the same time tolerate such a lackadaisical, to put it mildly, approach to acting?Five Movies to Watch This WinterCard 1 of 51. “The Power of the Dog”: More

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      Meat Loaf, ‘Bat Out of Hell’ Singer and Actor, Dies

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      In his six-decade career, the singer, born Marvin Lee Aday, sold millions of albums and acted in films including “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” and “Fight Club.”Meat Loaf, the larger-than-life rocker whose 1977 debut album, “Bat Out of Hell,” was one of the best-selling albums of all time, died on Thursday. He had given conflicting information about his age over the years, but was widely reported to have been 74.His death was confirmed by his manager, Michael Greene. A statement on the musician’s Facebook page said his wife was by his side and that his friends had been with him in his final 24 hours. A cause of death was not given.Meat Loaf, who was born Marvin Lee Aday and took his stage name from a childhood nickname, had a career that few could match. In six decades, he sold more than 100 million albums worldwide, the statement said, and appeared in several movies, including “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” and “Fight Club.”“We know how much he meant to so many of you and we truly appreciate all of the love and support as we move through this time of grief in losing such an inspiring artist and beautiful man,” the statement said. “From his heart to your souls … don’t ever stop rocking!”Meat Loaf’s death came just a year after that of Jim Steinman, the songwriter who wrote “Bat Out of Hell,” a record that brought operatic rock to audiences at a time when, in the face of disco and punk, it couldn’t have been more unfashionable. The pair met when Mr. Steinman was commissioned to co-write a musical called “More Than You Deserve,” which ran at the Public Theater in New York in 1973 and 1974. Meat Loaf auditioned and later joined the cast.Jim Steinman, left, with Meat Loaf in 1978. Mr. Steinman wrote all the songs on Meat Loaf’s debut album, “Bat Out of Hell,” which became one of the best-selling albums of all time.Michael Putland/Getty ImagesLater, Mr. Steinman was trying to write a post-apocalyptic musical based on “Peter Pan,” but, unable to secure the rights for the tale, he turned the work into “Bat Out of Hell,” bringing in Meat Loaf to give the songs the style and energy that made them hits. The title track alone is a mini-opera in itself, clocking in at nearly 10 minutes and featuring numerous musical breakdowns. The album’s seven tracks also included the songs “Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad” and “Paradise by the Dashboard Light.”Meat Loaf and Mr. Steinman went on to have legal disagreements, but still worked together, writing a sequel to “Bat Out of Hell” in 1993 — “Bat Out of Hell II: Back Into Hell” — which included “I’d Do Anything for Love (but I Won’t Do That),” Meat Loaf’s only track to top the Billboard 100 singles chart. The song also won him the 1994 Grammy Award for best rock vocal solo performance.“Bat Out of Hell III: The Monster Is Loose,” released in 2006, also included some songs by Mr. Steinman, who created a musical based on “Bat Out of Hell” that premiered in England in 2017. Mr. Steinman died in April 2021 at age 73. Meat Loaf told Rolling Stone shortly afterward that Mr. Steinman had been the “centerpiece” of his life.Some critics could be sniffy about Meat Loaf’s music and spectacle. John Rockwell, reviewing a 1977 live show for The New York Times, started by remarking that “Meat Loaf is the rather graceless name that a large rock performer has chosen for both himself and for the band built around his singing.” Despite that, Mr. Rockwell was soon convinced that Meat Loaf was worthy of being the center of attention. “He has fine, fervent low rock tenor, and enough stage presence to do without spotlights altogether,” he wrote, adding that, “one had to admire the unabashed intensity with which he was willing to wallow in such soap‐opera silliness.”Meat Loaf ultimately released 12 studio albums, the last being “Braver Than We Are” in 2016.In addition to his music, Meat Loaf also appeared in dozens of television shows and movies, according to IMDb. His first major role came in 1975 in “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” where he played Eddie. He also appeared in “Wayne’s World” (1992), “Spice World” (1997) and “Fight Club” (1999). More recently, he had a role in several episodes of the TV series “Ghost Wars” from 2017-18.Marvin Lee Aday was born and grew up in Dallas, the son of Orvis Wesley Aday, a former policeman, and Wilma Artie Hukel, an English teacher. “I stayed at my grandmother’s house a lot,” Meat Loaf wrote in “To Hell and Back,” his 1999 autobiography, adding that he did not know if those stays were because his mother was busy working or because she did not want him to see his father “on a bender.”According to his autobiography, Meat Loaf was born on Sep. 27, 1947, but news reports of his age varied over the years. In 2003, he showed a reporter from The Guardian newspaper a passport featuring a birth date of 1951 and later said about the discrepancy, “I just continually lie.”Meat Loaf at a news conference promoting his album “Bat Out of Hell III: The Monster Is Loose” in 2006.Bobby Yip/ReutersAs an adult, Meat Loaf said he changed his first name to Michael from Marvin because of childhood taunts about his weight and, he said, the emotional impact of a Levi’s jeans commercial that had the slogan, “Poor fat Marvin can’t wear Levi’s.”He later cited the commercial when petitioning to change his name, which the judge granted it within 30 seconds, Meat Loaf wrote in his autobiography.Meat Loaf also told numerous stories about how he got his stage name, including one about a high school stunt in which he let a Volkswagen run over his head. Afterward, a child shouted, “You’re as dumb as a hunk of meat loaf.” But Meat Loaf wrote in his autobiography that the name came from his father: “He called me Meat Loaf almost from the time my mother brought me home.”Meat Loaf had health problems throughout his career. He had heart surgery in 2003 after collapsing onstage at Wembley Arena in London and told an audience in Newcastle, England, in 2007 that the concert was “probably the last show I’ll ever do” after another health scare.Meat Loaf performing in the Netherlands in 2013.Ferdy Damman/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIn 2013, he told The Guardian that he was definitely retiring from music after another farewell tour. “I’ve had 18 concussions,” he said. “My balance is off. I’ve had a knee replacement. I’ve got to have the other one replaced.” He wanted to “concentrate more on acting,” he added, since “that’s where I started and that’s where I’ll finish.”A full list of survivors was not immediately available. More

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      Watch a Seductive Moment in ‘The Power of the Dog’

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      Jane Campion narrates an intimate scene between Benedict Cumberbatch and Kodi Smit-McPhee.In “Anatomy of a Scene,” we ask directors to reveal the secrets that go into making key scenes in their movies. See new episodes in the series on Fridays. You can also watch our collection of more than 150 videos on YouTube and subscribe to our YouTube channel.A cowboy’s tough veneer is cracked in this sequence from “The Power of the Dog,” Jane Campion’s period look at the American West.The film (on Netflix) features Benedict Cumberbatch as Phil Burbank, a man who spends a lot of time on the family ranch he runs with his brother (Jesse Plemons), making life unpleasant for many of those around him, namely his brother’s new wife, Rose (Kirsten Dunst), and her son, Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee).But in this scene, which comes late in the movie, Phil has been warming up to Peter, and invites the younger man to watch him work on the weaving of a rope. The sequence has elements of a seduction, though the intentions of each character may be more complex than what they seem in the moment.In her narration, Campion said she loved the scene because “it’s the culmination of their relationship and so many different parts of the film that have been seeded right from the very beginning coming together.”The dialogue here is spare. It’s more about glances, close-ups of rope work and the methodical way the two characters feel each other out. An eerie and heightened score by Jonny Greenwood add to the tension of the moment.Read the “Power of the Dog” review.Sign up for the Movies Update newsletter and get a roundup of reviews, news, Critics’ Picks and more. More

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      ‘The Power of the Dog’ | Anatomy of a Scene

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      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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      Why the Costumer of 'The Gilded Age' Is Being Driven Out of Business

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      Helen Uffner has dressed Broadway, Hollywood and TV shows for more than 40 years. But high-rise developers and Amazon distribution centers are making it impossible to store her extraordinary vintage collection.Helen Uffner began her love affair with old clothes as a young teenager, wandering into estate sales near her family’s home in Queens, unnerving her father, who had immigrated to this country as a Holocaust survivor and worried that people would think he could not afford to outfit his daughter properly. As a high school student in the mid-1960s, she would go to auction houses in Greenwich Village to buy vintage clothes and antique jewelry, using her babysitting earnings. With the prospect of a career in period fashion lacking promise, she sensibly joined a management consultancy after college. Soon enough the sexism got to her so she quit and decided to monetize her passion, drawing from the large collection she had already amassed which, at the time, focused on Victorian lingerie.Over the next 40 years or so, Ms. Uffner established a celebrated business renting out vintage clothes to theater, film and television productions from an inventory considered unparalleled. Initially, she ran the business out of her apartment — supplying the wardrobe for “Out of Africa,” “Zelig,” “The Color Purple.” By the late 1990s, when that model was no longer sustainable, she moved to a 6,000-square-foot space in the garment district, which made it easy for Broadway costume designers to visit and for actors to come in for fittings. Within a decade though, the unforgiving pace of real estate development in New York would threaten her viability, and now, in an all-too-familiar scenario, the pandemic economy was taking an extinction-level toll.It was a paradox though because even as the performing arts have suffered immeasurably during the past two years, film and television production in New York City has mostly returned to prepandemic levels and is ramping up. In September, Netflix opened a 170,000-square-foot studio in Brooklyn, and Ms. Uffner has been involved with one of the most anticipated series of the year, “The Gilded Age,” Julian Fellowes’s follow-up to “Downton Abbey,” set in turn-of-the-century New York (and starting Monday on HBO).Challenges began for Ms. Uffner in 2006, when the landlord of the building she occupied in Midtown “invited” her, as she put it, to break her lease early. He was selling the building and wanted her out, but moving thousands of racks of clothing was going to be an ordeal. At the same time commercial rents were soaring and the city’s garment industry had all but disappeared, large loft-like spaces given over to corporate offices. Eventually, in 2008, Helen Uffner Vintage Clothing moved to Long Island City, after its proprietress faced fines of $1,000 a day if she did not vacate her existing space.The transition was not easy. Fashion houses, which also rent from the collection as a means of inspiration, began returning things by FedEx, Ms. Uffner told me, “as if we were in another state.” But over the next several years, Long Island City became popular enough that it was now a place where a marketing executive at Ralph Lauren might actually live. So by 2018, Ms. Uffner inevitably found herself in the same predicament she had faced earlier — the building she was in near Queens Plaza would be redeveloped and she would have to move. She ultimately settled into another space in Long Island City only to confront the drama all over again — her current building is planned for demolition to accommodate the construction of a high-rise.In the past, Ms. Uffner had several competitors, also independently owned, but nearly all have fallen away. If she shut down, the impact on the costume industry would be profound. Tom Broecker, an Emmy Award-winning costume designer who has relied on Ms. Uffner for decades described her collection of women’s wear from the early 20th century as extraordinary. “In the entire world, Helen is the only person who has cotton dresses from that period,” he told me.Even a move to Industry City, in Brooklyn, where the city has been trying to revive garment manufacturing, would be difficult from his point of view. In addition to film and theater projects, Mr. Broecker works on “Saturday Night Live,” where he might have to come up with a piece of old clothing in a span of two hours, making a trip from Rockefeller Center to a semi-inaccessible quarter of Brooklyn unfeasible.Understanding the importance of her enterprise to New York’s creative life, the city via the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment has said it is trying to help Ms. Uffner relocate, but without broad commercial rent regulation, there is little that can be accomplished. Over the years, she told me, landlords have added fees to monthly rent bills with impunity. In the beginning she was paying rent, electricity and property tax. In a subsequent space, the landlord added gas, and then came requirements to contribute to the local business improvement district.While Covid has tanked the price of office leasing, vast warehouse space of the kind Ms. Uffner needs is at a premium because of the demand coming from Amazon and other e-commerce sites that have become even more attractive to consumers during the pandemic. The city suggested a space in Hudson Yards, she told me, that was going to cost more than five times what she was paying.Five Movies to Watch This WinterCard 1 of 51. “The Power of the Dog”: More