Movies

We watched LeBron James, Michael Jordan, Kevin Durant and 11 more basketball greats to see how they rate as actors. We were in for a few surprises.Does every N.B.A. superstar really want to be in movies? You might think so, judging by the long and checkered history of players going Hollywood (not to mention the amount of flopping in today’s game). As the newly released “Space Jam: A New Legacy” takes the booming subgenre of films built on hoops talent into the era of remakes, here’s a guide to the best and worst performances by pro basketball players, starting in the 1970s.1979Julius Erving, ‘The Fish that Saved Pittsburgh’Rent it on most major platforms.If we are to believe this goofy 1979 movie — and why not? — basketball at the height of disco meant players doing the splits to celebrate buckets, coaching by astrology and Dr. J as the coolest man alive. Much of his mellow performance is shot in slow motion, adding to its swagger. In one scene, he seduces a woman by taking her to a playground and dunking in street clothes by himself in street clothes. In another, he enters a game by hot-air balloon, wearing a glittery silver uniform, backed by funky soul music. If John Travolta had a sports counterpart, this was it.1979Bernard King, ‘Fast Break’Rent it on most major platforms.In this easygoing drama about a coach (played by Gabe Kaplan at the height of his “Welcome Back, Kotter” fame) who builds an underdog college program, the Knick star Bernard King delivers an understated, lived-in performance as a pool hustler with a silky jump shot. He keeps up with an ensemble of actors without outshining them too much on the court. Compared with the hectic video-game aesthetic of “Space Jam,” this character-driven movie feels refreshingly human.1980Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, ‘Airplane’Rent it on most major platforms.There is no more famous jock cameo than Kareem Abdul-Jabbar playing himself pretending to be an ordinary commercial airplane pilot. The idea that the seven-foot superstar could disguise himself even after being challenged on it by a young fan is one of the countless jokes in this classic comedy. But when his frustration is supposed to turn into anger, Abdul-Jabbar can’t transcend his coolly unflappable stoicism.1992Marques Johnson, ‘White Men Can’t Jump’Rent it on most major platforms.In the greatest basketball movie of all time, this five-time all-star makes a brief but electric appearance as a guy enraged after getting hustled out of money, clearing the courts by swinging a knife around in ineffectual rage. It’s so convincing that you would never know he became famous for basketball, not acting.1994Bob Cousy, ‘Blue Chips’Stream it on Hulu and Paramount+.Nick Nolte, left, with Bob Cousy as an athletic director in “Blue Chips.”Paramount PicturesThis unsung morality tale about a Bobby Knight-like college coach (Nick Nolte, crusty as ever) tempted into corruption is filled with performances by famous players (Shaquille O’Neal, Larry Bird) and coaches (Rick Pitino, Knight). They all capably play versions on themselves, but the revelation here is the Boston Celtic great Bob Cousy, who transforms into a morally ambivalent athletic director. It’s a startlingly assured performance from a Hall of Famer from the early years of the N.B.A.1996Shaquille O’Neal, ‘Kazaam’Stream it on Disney+.Shaq is the most charismatic big man in history, funny in cameos and as a talking head, but as the star of his own movie, his track record is more like his foul shooting. The year before he would make one of the most forgettable DC superhero movies (“Steel”), he delivered this much-mocked performance as a rapping genie in this schmaltzy fantasy. Trying to grant the wishes of a blandly likable white kid with divorced parents, he lumbers through, shouting his lines, mugging and even burping for laughs.1997Dennis Rodman, ‘Double Team’Rent it on most major platforms.Despite winning three Razzie Awards for this Jean-Claude Van Damme flop, Dennis Rodman is actually a plausible action star. He convincingly kickboxes, looks good in flamboyant get-ups (lots of hair die and leather) and wryly delivers corny lines riffing on his persona. (“You’re crazier than my hairstylist.”) All of this movie’s camp humor comes from the glint in his eye, which he needs when delivering one of many basketball references, despite the fact that he’s not supposed to be a player but rather an extremely tall arms dealer.1998Ray Allen, ‘He Got Game’Stream it on HBO Max.Making your major movie debut opposite Denzel Washington must be as daunting as entering the pros and guarding LeBron James in your first game. Exuding innocence and quiet charisma, Ray Allen, in the meaty role of Coney Island basketball prodigy Jesus Shuttlesworth, accounts himself well, even if you never forget he’s moonlighting. He’s persuasive as a diffident, paralyzed high school star with buried anger at his father. It’s a role player of a performance that executes the game plan skillfully, occasionally with panache.1998Gheorghe Muresan, ‘My Giant’Rent it on most major platforms.At 7 foot 7 inches, the Romanian center Gheorghe Muresan was the tallest player in the history of the N.B.A. That was enough for a solid pro career, even if his skills, especially early on, were unrefined. But for amateurs, acting can be tougher than sports. In this Billy Crystal buddy movie, he’s stuck in a slump. It can be hard to understand him (English is not his first language), and in his reaction shots, he might hold another record: least expressive star in the history of comedy.2012Kevin Durant, ‘Thunderstruck’Rent it on most major platforms.When it comes to movies starring Brooklyn Nets, “Uncle Drew,” featuring Kyrie Irving, is flashier and funnier. But there’s nothing in it as impressive as Kevin Durant pretending to be awful at basketball in this rigorously wholesome “Freaky Friday”-like movie in which he accidentally trades talents with a clumsy high school kid. A common trope for this genre (“Space Jam” also includes a plot point with N.B.A. stars losing their skills), Durant really commits to being bad, adjusting his form in subtle and consistent ways. It’s a cringey delight to watch this perfectionist trip making a crossover, airball a dunk and miss his patented midrange shot, over and over again.2018Kyrie Irving, ‘Uncle Drew’Rent it on most major platforms.You know that old guy on the playground who everyone underestimates because he looks slow and out of shape, but then dominates the game through wily moves and sneaky change of pace. Kyrie Irving’s performance is an affectionate ode to this figure, right down to the sweatpants. Most current stars moonlighting in movies perform versions of themselves, so it’s a bold move for Irving to try a completely different character, doing a nice job shifting his posture to a hunch and affecting a weary voice. And if he seemed a little stiff, it’s not easy to act underneath such an elaborate makeup job.2019Kevin Garnett, ‘Uncut Gems’Stream it on Netflix.On-court personality usually doesn’t translate to the screen, but this is a notable exception. Playing an amped-up version of himself, Kevin Garnett was as intense and ferocious getting in Adam Sandler’s face as he was with Patrick Ewing.1996Michael Jordan, ‘Space Jam’Michael Jordan has enough star power to light up a commercial or a “Saturday Night Live” sketch, but his wooden acting needed the animation of Bugs Bunny to make the original Tune Squad a powerhouse.2021LeBron James, ‘Space Jam: The Original Legacy’Stream it on HBO Max.Who’s better: M.J. or LeBron? This endless sports-talk debate over the greatest ever usually focuses on stats amassed and rings won, but now we have another metric to argue over: Who is the best — or more precisely, least terrible — lead actor? It’s close, but James gets the edge, showing more range playing opposite cartoons, pretending to be the overbearing sports dad along with the goofy big-kid corporate hero, even tapping into sloppy sentiment that Jordan reserves for meme-able Hall of Fame inductions. More

The writer Mona Awad on an evening tradition passed down by her mother.Summer brings with it a certain set of rites and rituals — and everyone’s are personal and unique. For our weeklong ode to the season, T has invited writers to share their own. Here, Mona Awad describes the simple pleasures of eating frozen cherries while watching films by Alfred Hitchcock.A few summers ago, I had to have hip surgery. “Might be a long recovery,” my surgeon warned. And as for its success? “We’ll see.” Four to six weeks of crutches followed by three to six months of physical therapy. Pain killers and ice. This would be my summer of uncertainty. This would be my summer of suspense and lying still. This would be my summer of Hitchcock and cold cherries. More

Julia Ducournau becomes the second woman to win the top prize, after Jane Campion in 1993. The surprise reveal came at the start of a chaotic ceremony.CANNES, France — The 2021 edition of the Cannes Film Festival gave its top prize, the prestigious Palme d’Or, to the French film “Titane.”A wild serial-killer story with some of the most controversial scenes of the festival, “Titane” was directed by Julia Ducournau, who became just the second woman to win the Palme, after Jane Campion took the prize in 1993 for “The Piano.”And though “Titane” had been hotly tipped as a prime contender for the Palme, that reveal came much earlier than intended: At the beginning of the closing ceremony, when the jury president, Spike Lee, was asked to announce the first prize of the night, he misunderstood and read off the first-prize winner instead.“Don’t do it!” shouted the actress-director Mélanie Laurent, a jury member seated next to Lee. But the cat was already out of the bag.(At a news conference after the ceremony, Lee said that he had no excuses and that “I messed up,” adding, “I’m a big sports fan. It’s like the guy at the end of the game in the foul line, he misses the free throw or a guy misses a kick.” He also said he apologized to the Cannes organizers. “They said forget about it.”)The accidental “Titane” reveal was only the first of several chaotic moments at the ceremony, as the spoiled Palme reveal was followed by a best-actor prize for Caleb Landry Jones for the Australian tragedy “Nitram.” When a nervous-looking Jones took the stage, he appeared sick to his stomach, said, “I cannot do this,” and beat a hasty retreat.Still, by the time a teary Ducournau was brought out at the end of the ceremony to finally accept her Palme, she had embraced the chaos. “This evening has been perfect,” she said, “because it’s so not perfect.”Julia Ducournau, left with her star, Agatha Rousselle, became the second woman to win the Palme d’Or in Cannes history.Eric Gaillard/ReutersOther major winners included Leos Carax, who took the best-director prize for his eccentric musical “Annette,” best-actress winner Renate Reinsve for the Norwegian romantic dramedy “The Worst Person in the World,” and a pair of ties: The second-place prize was split between “A Hero,” from the Iranian director Asghar Farhadi, and the Finnish drama “Compartment No. 6,” while the third-prize tie went to the Nadav Lapid film “Ahed’s Knee” and “Memoria,” starring Tilda Swinton.At the last Cannes film festival, held in 2019, the Palme winner was “Parasite,” the first major prize Bong Joon Ho’s film took on its path to the best-picture Oscar. Though “Titane” is far too gory to become a major Oscar contender, its Palme win firmly establishes Ducournau as a major international director only two feature films into her career.Correction: July 17, 2021An earlier version of this article misspelled the name of the winner of the best director prize. He is Leos Carax, not Leox Carax. More

Mainstream horror rarely lets queer women be the heroes. The Netflix trilogy takes a defiant stance with a relationship that covers centuries.This article contains spoilers for the “Fear Street” trilogy.Type “queer horror films” into a search engine and you’ll get a bevy of articles poring over every gesture, sentence of dialogue and subtext in movie history, from “Psycho” to “The Babadook.” While queer characters have, in the last two decades, begun to move to the center in films like “Spiral” and “The Retreat,” they’re still too often merely implicit, made to seem like the other, or simply killed off.But in the director Leigh Janiak’s “Fear Street” movies, a Netflix trilogy inspired by the author R.L. Stine’s horror series, queer people not only are the lead characters, but a lesbian romance propels the entire narrative. For Janiak, that was intentional. It was an “opportunity to tell a story that hasn’t been told within that genre very often, if at all,” she said. “That involves creating this queer love story that drove everything.”In Janiak’s recollection, Stine’s stories were mostly “very straight and very white.” But “Fear Street: 1994,” which kicks off the Netflix slasher trilogy that includes successors set in 1978 and 1666, presents a gay Black teenager, Deena (Kiana Madeira), as the heroine. When it comes to her romance with Sam (Olivia Scott Welch), Deena allows nothing to get in the way — not a witch (Elizabeth Scopel) who put a curse on her town back in the 17th century, a killer in a skull mask or an ancient evil incarnate now taking the form of a white male cop (Ashley Zukerman).It’s not easy, as the films show. At the start of “1994,” Deena and Sam have broken up and the latter is passing as straight, with a jock boyfriend to boot, in order to satisfy her homophobic mother and society itself. The ’90s, as any millennial can attest, might have been an era when girls imitated mainstream pop stars like Brandy, Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera, but it also made it hard for those like Deena who fell outside of those cultural norms. She listens to Garbage, rocks oversize flannel and is into girls.Welch and Madeira in the first “Fear Street” film, set in 1994. Amid the scares, genre tropes are upended.Netflix“First of all, she’s not white,” Janiak said. “Second of all, she’s butch. Even if she wanted to try to pass as a straight girl like Sam, she couldn’t. Society looks at her right away and says, ‘I know who you are. I know what you are.’ So, she’s been forced to take ownership of that, but it doesn’t mean it’s easy for her. She’s still a teenager in 1994.”Other characters throughout the updated “Fear Street” universe similarly defy the typical “wholesome, white final girl” trope that has helped to define the genre. Deena and Sam’s classmate, Kate (Julia Rehwald), is an alpha Filipina American cheerleader. Deena’s brother, Josh (Benjamin Flores Jr.), spends hours in AOL chat rooms dedicated to conspiracy theories about the countless murders that have plagued their town, Shadyside, for years. There’s also Martin (Darrell Britt-Gibson), the dutiful mall attendant who’s continually profiled by the police.These characters don’t just play supporting roles or serve as punch lines for the leads. They are the protagonists anchoring the story. In addition to directing a fun, genuinely scary trilogy that thoughtfully pays homage to classics like “Scream” and “Friday the 13th,” Janiak wanted to shine “a light on a whole town of marginalized people that have been told that they’re outside.” She added, “And build that into the DNA. Not just have it be a gimmick of the movies.”They’re also the heroes. In a tender scene in “1994,” when Sam finally stops denying her feelings for Deena moments before the former becomes possessed, Deena makes a crucial vow to Sam. “Tonight, even though we are in hell, I feel like I have another chance with you,” she tells her. “I am not going to lose you again. Because you and me are the way out.”This simple statement is often heard in horror, but it’s usually uttered by a man to his female love interest. In “Fear Street,” the promise of a future feels more significant: It signals a change that requires Deena to be sent back to 1666. There, as Sarah Fier, the queer woman who was persecuted as a witch and hanged on account of her love for another woman (also played by Welch), she can seek justice against the same kind of hatred and violence that keeps Deena and Sam apart in the present day.In “1666,” Janiak wanted to highlight the idea that women who were accused of being witches back then were those who merely didn’t fit the standard.They were labeled witches “because they were other, because they were looking too long at the other girl, or because they didn’t want to get married,” she said. “They weren’t falling in line with whatever societal lines were.”As it turns out, the animus that humankind displays — as with Solomon (also played by Zukerman), who rallies an entire town to persecute Sarah in “1666” — is just as deadly as a witch’s curse, if not more so. It allowed Janiak to look beyond the supernatural scares to examine the evils of our fellow man. “That, to me, is always the scariest thing,” Janiak said. “I thought this was a cool opportunity that we could visit crazy genre villains, but then ultimately get to that underlying thing of ‘Who’s the real monster here?’”Ultimately, the “Fear Street” films are aspirational — though there is obviously much carnage along the way. Deena and Sam help to save the town, but more important, they preserve their love for each other. “The trilogy allowed us to give a little bit of hope that I don’t think usually exists in horror movies,” Janiak said, and with a laugh added, “When you only have an hour and a half, you’ve just got to kill everyone. But the experiment of the movies allowed us to push and question and change things a little bit.”And it was necessary. More

This month’s picks span the globe and range from a solemn meditation on grief to a fight against bloodthirsty sharks.For action fans seeking out new movies on streaming, there are plenty of car chases, explosions and fist fights to sift through. We help by providing some streaming highlights.‘Agent Revelation’Stream it on Amazon.I love inventive microbudget films. It’s rarer to discover these treats in the action genre, since the form often requires higher production values. But “Agent Revelation,” from the writer-director Derek Ting, manages to deliver big thrills on a smaller scale.Ting also stars in this high-concept sci-fi movie as Jim Yung, a C.I.A. reject infected by an alien-made biological weapon: a red dust known as the Ash. While usually deadly to humans, the Ash instead gives Jim heightened reflexes and strength. When Dr. Victoria Jansen (Carole Weyers), the head of a secret underground military installation, hears of Jim’s survival, she recruits him for testing, pushing him through dangerous exercises. These claustrophobic battles featuring tactical movements through mazes provide the film’s biggest action moments.But the smart world-building is equally impressive. Jim comes under the watchful eye of the base’s rich benefactor, Alastair (Michael Dorn), the Morpheus to Jim’s Neo. Alastair teaches Jim how to harness the energy of his powers to wield against the invading aliens. A cross between “The Matrix” and “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” “Agent Revelation” places grand sci-fi imagination into a modest package.‘Great White’Rent or buy on Amazon or Google Play.Since the premiere of “Jaws” in 1975 made sharks a six-letter scare, the toothy predators remain a cinematic go-to for easy frights and outsized action. “Great White,” an Australian-set flick from the director Martin Wilson, follows in the footsteps of “Deep Blue Sea” and “The Meg” to deliver hair-raising survivalist set pieces.The financially submerged couple Charlie (Aaron Jakubenko) and Kaz (Katrina Bowden) provide private airplane tours to travelers. Joji (Tim Kano) and Michelle (Kimie Tsukakoshi), an affluent couple, employ the guides and their cook, Benny (Te Kohe Tuhaka), to transport them to an isolated atoll. Then, the menacing title character disables their plane, leaving them adrift in a raft. To pull through, the stranded humans engage in wild sea battles with the unrelenting shark, leading to an abundance of over-the-top defense methods involving weaponized paddles and flares against a sharp set of pearly whites. After watching “Great White,” it’s still not safe to go back in the water.‘Her Name Was Jo’Stream it on Amazon.If you turned Sean Baker’s “The Florida Project” into a road movie, you might end up with something like the writer-director Joe Duca’s intimate coming-of-age adventure trek “Her Name Was Jo.” The 10-year-old title character (Mary Cate Williams) lives along the Shenandoah River with her abusive, drug-addled stepfather. She dreams of one day traveling to Los Angeles to find her real dad, a folk singer whose records she often listens to for comfort.When her stepfather overdoses, Jo decides to take her best friend, Selma (Elisa Duca) cross country in search of the singer. Along the way the pair steal a car, are held hostage, help a pregnant woman deliver her baby and shoot their way through every hurdle. Closer to a drama than a big action or adventure spectacle, “Her Name Was Jo” is given a tragic edge through a heart-pounding score melded with touching folk ballads.‘Night in Paradise’Stream it on Netflix.For audiences well-versed in gangland films, the South Korean writer-director Park Hoon-jung’s “Night in Paradise” may offer few surprises. Rather, the simple mob thriller gives blood-soaked comfort in its familiarity. Park Tae-goo (Um Tae-goo) is a brash enforcer for the suave crime lord Mr. Yang (Park Ho-san). After the assassinations of Park’s half sister and niece, he is convinced that the hit was placed by a rival kingpin in the Bukseong clan, causing Park to murder that mob boss with the savagery of Viggo Mortensen’s tough guy in “Eastern Promises.”Park runs away to the tiny island of Jeju to hide, where he forms a platonic bond with the terminally ill Jae-yeon (Jeon Yeo-been). The stoic companions navigate a huge, bloody power grab between Yang and the merciless new Bukseong leader, Chief Ma (Cha Seoung-won), as Park becomes their shared scapegoat.The film’s director takes great pleasure in carnage. An extravagant barnyard shootout leads to jets of blood, and later, there’s a gory one-on-20 brawl involving a car key. Vicious knife fights likewise turn bathhouses into slaughterhouses. And all are captured with a clean, steady hand, allowing viewers, with a gleeful smile, to marvel at the unrepentant brutality.‘Riders of Justice’Rent of buy on Amazon, Google Play or AppleTV.When you first see the buzz-cut, salt-and-pepper bearded Mads Mikkelsen as Markus, a Danish soldier stationed in Afghanistan, you assume Anders Thomas Jensen’s “Riders of Justice” will offer only high-octane action. The death of Markus’s wife in a train bombing, however, adds deep, unexpected heart to this revenge flick.Now a single dad to his daughter, Mathilde (Andrea Heick Gadeberg), the stoic Markus must punish those who carried out the attack and grapple with his repressed anguish. Jansen explores how grief leads to a search for answers to the unanswerable. It’s that quest that makes Markus susceptible to a theory by two earnest scientists (Nikolaj Lie Kaas and Lars Brygmann) and a computer whiz (Nicolas Bro) that the bombing was perpetrated by a gang to silence a witness.Mikkelsen gives a well-shaped performance by adding exterior emotional textures to a character whose inner turmoil makes him prone to raging outbursts. His agile acting makes “Riders of Justice” a singularly humanist action film. More

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

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

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