Movies

In the new drama “Windows on the World,” Edward James Olmos plays an undocumented busboy working at the restaurant that was destroyed on 9/11. The moving immigration story, which debuted for free this week on the Latino-focused streaming site Vix, is just the latest turn in a storied career that includes an Oscar nomination for Olmos’s work in “Stand and Deliver” (1988), making him one of the few American-born Latino actors ever to be nominated for an Academy Award.Outspoken on the issue of representation in Hollywood, Olmos believes the industry doesn’t understand the distinct worldviews of Latinos born and raised in the United States vs. those from Latin America. Quarantining alone in Los Angeles, Olmos has been binge-watching, reading screenplays and promoting the virtual version of the Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival. In two recent conversations, he spoke about Hollywood’s treatment of Latino actors, telling the stories of undocumented immigrants and why his most fulfilling enterprise at the moment involves teaching. Here are edited excerpts from our discussions.In the history of the Academy Awards, only a handful of U.S.-born Latino actors have been nominated or have won. However, Latin American performers have been recognized more frequently. Why do you believe that’s been the case?For American-born Latinos it’s been an opportunity thing. They don’t put us in the stories. They don’t use us to play those roles. I thought Jennifer Lopez should’ve been nominated for [the 1997 biopic] “Selena.” It’s one of her most stellar pieces of work. There haven’t been many opportunities for us to really garner that kind of accolade. I was very fortunate. I didn’t think I’d get nominated for “Stand and Deliver,” but I did. I understand today more than ever, 32 years later, what the power of that piece of work was. It’s one of the most seen films ever in the United States because of the usage in schools throughout America for the last 30 years.Do you feel like the industry understands the difference between American-born Latinos and people from Latin America?Not at all — they should know, because a lot of them are culturally from another place, too. They know damn well that if they’re Italians and they were born here, they’re different than the Italians born in Italy. And if they’re Jews living here, they’re different than the Jews living in Israel. If you’re born here, you’re a completely unique individual. You’ll speak with the rhythms of the dialect of your family, wherever they’re from, but it’s different. Your thought process is different.Of all the labels used to refer to people in our community, which one do you identify yourself with?I’m Latino 100 percent. I’m Chicano 100 percent. I’m not afraid of those words. A lot of my friends who are Latinos — Cubans, Venezuelans, Mexicans, Puerto Ricans — they don’t want the word Latino used to refer to them. They just want to be actors. We want to be known as American actors. That’d be the correct way, but it isn’t. And I knew it would never be in my lifetime. I knew that we had to first be known as American Latinos, and carry that very strongly and proudly, for us to then be able to not have to use it anymore.In “Selena,” where you played her father, Abraham Quintanilla, you deliver a poignant speech about this bicultural condition that really connects with many Mexican-Americans and Latinos. Growing up, did you feel like you existed in between two cultures?That was one the greatest scenes I’ve ever gotten to do. People really appreciate it because it’s a very strong truth. I’ll never forget when I started to use the word Chicano, my father got angry. He’s from Mexico and he came here in 1945 legally and he married my mother, who was a Chicana. I was the first one of his family born in the United States of America. We weren’t Mexican to the Mexicans. We were Americans. We were from here, and yet when we would come back across the border, the guards would say, “You guys are Mexicans.”Why did your father get upset with you for calling yourself a Chicano?The word is interesting because it’s a term that for him was not conducive to understanding what we were. For him we were Mexican-American. We weren’t Chicano. “What the hell does that mean?” he’d said. “You are not a Chicano, you are Mexican-American.” I said, “Well, when we go to Mexico they don’t like us. When we come back they don’t want us. Neither one of them want us. So we are not Mexican-American, we are Chicano.” That was about 1964 or 1965 when we started to use it. Chicanismo hit hard. I love being Chicano. It’s a very empowering word.In “Windows on the World,” directed by your son Michael D. Olmos, you play an undocumented father who survived 9/11 but gets caught up in the immigration system.It’s a story that has never been told. It gives a voice to people who died that day and whom nobody really took into consideration. It hasn’t been told because nobody has cared enough about the undocumented workers who were working up in the Twin Towers. The movie allowed us to take a look at what a family would do to survive, and how love makes them withstand incredible turmoil. One of the co-writers, Robert Anderson, read an article that didn’t mention anything about anybody who worked at the Windows on the World restaurant. Curiosity took hold of him and he thought, “Wait a minute, Latinos were probably in that restaurant.” Then the investigation started. To this day, the names of the undocumented people who died on 9/11 don’t appear on the scrolls commemorating the deceased.One way that you and your team at the Latino Film Institute are changing the narrative around Latinos in entertainment is the Youth Cinema Project, giving children from marginalized communities access to the industry in an educational setting.It makes a difference when you provide this opportunity to young minds of color, not only Latinos. This is how we’re really going to be able to expand change. During this quarantine, I’ve been working a lot with the Youth Cinema Project. Because of the situation, our students weren’t able to finish their projects, so we get the scripts they wrote and have great young Latino actors from multiple television shows do a live read of them online [available on YouTube]. Our young writers, who are between the ages of 8 and 12, get to introduce the actors and then their stories come to life. More

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 each Friday. You can also watch our collection of more than 150 videos on YouTube and subscribe to our YouTube channel.When a Hollywood stunt coordinator sets out to direct his first feature, he knows that the stunts had better be great. Sam Hargrave aimed to make it so by bringing the camera along for the wild ride in his Netflix thriller “Extraction,” starring Chris Hemsworth as a mercenary tasked with rescuing the kidnapped son of a crime lord.This scene has Hemsworth, as Tyler Rake, trying to protect the boy, Ovi (Rudhraksh Jaiswal), from one of the movie’s many baddies, Saju (Randeep Hooda). It ain’t easy. The characters hop across rooftops, weave through narrow apartment hallways and conduct a knife fight in street traffic. The sequence, with some clever stitches, is meant to play out as one continuous shot, “1917”-style.In his narration, Hargrave discusses not just directing, but also serving as the camera operator for these kinetic bits. He was attached to a wire as he leapt across buildings with his stunt doubles, then jumped from a balcony with them as well, all while trying not to miss the shot.Read the “Extraction” review.Sign up for the Movies Update newsletter and get a roundup of reviews, news, Critics’ Picks and more. More

“Hi. My name is Sam Hargrave, director of ‘Extraction.’ So at this point, we’re in the middle of what we would term a oner. It’s a long continuous shot that we came up with, a way to do that kind of a unique chase scene. And we’re escaping with Chris Hemsworth, who plays Tyler Rake, and Rudhraksh Jaiswal who plays that Ovi.” “Alright, kid, you trust me?” “No.” “Good.” “This jump— and at that moment, we had a stitch. So we could infuse our actors into the action and then use the doubles for the dangerous part. And for that jump, I was actually on a wire leaping behind our stunt doubles. And coming down those stairs, that’s me running backwards with a camera, trying to keep our actors in frame, keep up with their speed, not fall on my butt. We work our way through this whole series of hallways. And when we enter this room, we actually, on that door kick, we moved to another location. So that’s a different day of shooting, different time.” “Stay on my shoulder, all right?” “And this fight here, we’ve got Randeep Hooda and Chris Hemsworth going at it. They spent weeks rehearsing together. Because the beauty of this is it looks sloppy. It looks like they’re struggling for their lives. And it looks messy. But that comes from hours of rehearsal so they could put the acting into this. So again, here, we build in a hidden cut where we can put the doubles in. And as you see, the camera goes down with them. Again, that’s me on a wire, jumping over a balcony, and gliding down with them. And for that, we kind of set that all up. We built the balcony. It didn’t exist. We parked the truck in the right place. And the stunt team rehearsed and rehearsed and rehearsed to get the timing of that right and the distancing. And it was really challenging to kind of keep both actors in frame for that fall just because the nature of the jump. I mean, I’m on a wire, trying to jump with a camera, keep them in frame. And then when we land in the streets, what we thought would be really fun was to have the actors interacting with the environment, the vehicles passing by. This is just a day in the life of for these people. But these guys are locked in a life and death struggle with knives. And yet, life goes on. You know, this is busy street. People are watching like they’ve gone to the cinema. And you know, again, this hours of rehearsal with these two actors so that we could have the intensity that we needed. And then a little shock value here.” [GRUNTING] [CAR SCREECHES] “The thing that was interesting about this moment is, and what we tried to do to make kind of a unique perspective, was do what people aren’t expecting, which you take out your hero. Just take him out of the fight. And then focus on the bad guy. And we just thought it was fun, a different way to kind of follow action was to leave your hero out of it. So you’re thinking, wait, what happened to Rake? Is he going to come back? And you know, leave people wanting more.” More

An action thriller powered by brute force rather than ideas or style, “Extraction” stars Chris Hemsworth as Tyler Rake, a mercenary dispatched to Dhaka, Bangladesh, to retrieve the kidnapped son of a crime lord (the Bollywood stalwart Pankaj Tripathi) from a competing gang. After a perfunctory setup — the criminals are all in cahoots with the cops, and the kingpin is up to his own manipulative tricks — the film gets right down to business, serving up a relentless barrage of blood, bullets and blown-up cars.“Extraction” (streaming on Netflix) is the debut feature by Sam Hargrave, who’s worked as a stunt coordinator on several Marvel movies. Although not a superhero film, it shares the genre’s familiar muddled morality: Tyler is painted as a stereotypical good bad guy, tortured by personal tragedy and redeemed by his mission, even as he kills and maims some teenage minions in the process. Randeep Hooda plays his foil, a kingpin deputy whose ruthlessly efficient violence is inflected by its own, corny undercurrent of paternal pathos. David Harbour also appears briefly, adding to the film’s lineup of tortured machos.[embedded content]The fight scenes are plastic and glossy. Hargrave mistakes gore for cool and technical prowess for choreography, deploying overlong one-take shots that look like “Call of Duty” outtakes. He does commit to the location, though, creating a properly global thriller with a fine ensemble cast. Much of the dialogue is in Hindi and Bengali, and the Bollywood actors — particularly Hooda, as well as Priyanshu Painyuli as a swaggering mob boss — lift the dull proceedings, delivering their lines with a hint of melodrama. They’re a tease for how fun this movie could have been if it weren’t so somber.ExtractionRated R for gratuitous gore and violence. In English, Hindi and Bengali, with English subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 56 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

LOS ANGELES — In recent weeks, a tentative timeline for reopening America’s movie theaters began to take shape. It involved pushing to get 75 percent of the country’s 5,548 cinemas selling tickets again this summer, enough to justify the wide release of two potential blockbusters: Christopher Nolan’s mind-bending “Tenet,” scheduled for July 17, and Disney’s mega-budget “Mulan,” set for July 24.That one-two punch would be enough to draw moviegoers back into theaters that had been closed because of the coronavirus pandemic, multiplex operators believed, allowing Hollywood to salvage part of the blockbuster season and, perhaps, revive a pastime that has taken on symbolic importance for the American economy.But some politicians want their popcorn now.Some Republican governors are urging cinemas to reopen sooner rather than later, despite business and public health realities that make an abrupt relighting of marquees impractical, if not impossible. To help restart Georgia’s economy, Gov. Brian Kemp wants theaters to reopen starting Monday. Tennessee, where Regal Cinemas is based, plans to allow most businesses to reopen at the end of next week. South Carolina and Ohio are also restarting their economies. Texas and Florida are itching to do the same.But movie theaters are worried about opening up too early. They don’t want to be lumped in with meatpacking plants and senior centers as hot spots for the virus. Already struggling financially, theaters fear that a too-soon return could stigmatize them as dangerous places to congregate. And with new movies from Hollywood not set to debut until the middle of July — at the earliest — opening too soon would only make operators spend money before they could truly recoup costs from patrons.“Hell no, we’re not opening on Monday,” Chris Escobar, who owns the 485-seat Plaza Theater in Atlanta, said by phone. “When we do, it will not be because of political pressure. It will be because leading public health experts say our lives are no longer at risk.”He added: “I want to be back in business right this second. But we’ve got to be smart about it. What happens if we open too soon and contribute to an outbreak? Traced to the Plaza Theater! You know what that would do to my business? I wouldn’t have one.”Aubrey Stone, the chief executive of the Georgia Theater Company, which operates more than 200 screens in Georgia, South Carolina, Florida and Virginia, also said he will not open on Monday. More realistic would be a July start, should the virus comply.“We are not going to reopen until our partners in distribution will be supplying us with a consistent supply of new films,” Mr. Stone wrote in an email. More

He was accused of having been a central figure in one of the largest art world scandals of recent times, but little has been heard from José Carlos Bergantiños Diaz, who the authorities say helped orchestrate the sale of $80 million in phony works.Now in his first in-depth interview, Mr. Bergantiños Diaz, a fugitive living in Spain, has acknowledged to a documentary filmmaker that he discovered Pei-Shen Qian, the painter from Queens whose ability to mimic the work of Modernist masters fooled much of the art world.But he denied assigning him that task or of being involved in the scheme to sell dozens of the counterfeit paintings, made by Mr. Qian in his Queens garage, as the work of artists like Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock.He laid blame instead on his former girlfriend, the Long Island art dealer Glafira Rosales, who sold many of the phony works through the auspices of Knoedler & Company, then one of the city’s oldest sellers of fine art, and a respected one.“I was never ambitious; Glafira was the ambitious one,” Mr. Bergantiños Diaz, 64, told the filmmaker Barry Avrich, whose documentary, “Made You Look,” just aired on Canadian TV. “She loved fancy clothes and fancy parties.”Ms. Rosales, 63, who pleaded guilty to nine counts of conspiracy, fraud and other crimes in 2013, told the authorities that Mr. Bergantiños Diaz used threats and abuse to coerce her into continuing with the scheme.They arrested and charged him with wire fraud and money laundering as well as conspiring to defraud the Internal Revenue Service and other crimes in 2014, but have been unable to extradite him from Spain.As the film depicts, the scandal rocked the art world, called into question the ability of experts to determine what works are authentic and led to Knoedler’s closure after 165 years in business.Speaking from Spain, Mr. Bergantiños Diaz said he had made a mistake in trusting Ms. Rosales and that she had lied when she accused him of mistreating her.“I forgive her and she is the mother of my daughter and I wish her the best,” he told the filmmaker.Mr. Avrich, who said he has plans for a limited theatrical release of the documentary in New York and Britain in the fall, said he interviewed Mr. Bergantiños Diaz in Lugo, the art dealer’s hometown in the northwest part of the country. Mr. Bergantiños Diaz told the filmmaker that he met Ms. Rosales in Mexico and they moved to New York where, impressed by the high prices that art could fetch, they established a gallery in Chelsea.At one point, he describes placing colleagues in an auction room to help bid up the price of a work he was selling.But it was Ms. Rosales, he said, who had ambitions to be a big player in the art world.The marketing of the fake paintings beginning in the mid-1990s led not only to the criminal case, but also to lawsuits by several collectors who had bought the phony works.Among the most astonishing elements of the scheme was that the painter, Mr. Qian, was able to master the styles of a diverse array of famous painters to the point that acknowledged experts and sophisticated collectors did not notice they were frauds.The federal authorities said it was Mr. Bergantiños Diaz who recruited Mr. Qian to produce the scores of paintings and drawings that were presented as newly discovered works by major artists. They said in court papers that he treated the canvases to make them look old and that some of the proceeds from the sales were wired to bank accounts in Spain controlled by him.In his conversation with the filmmakers, Mr. Bergantiños Diaz described how he met Mr. Qian at the Art Students League, an arts school in New York. “We knew from the school that he was very talented at doing copies of famous artists,” he told the filmmakers.Mr. Bergantiños Diaz bought some of his works. While he insisted Ms. Rosales had the most contact with Mr. Qian, he said that sometimes they made suggestions together about what he should paint.He said Ms. Rosales’s work with the Knoedler Gallery was independent of him, that he never met its director, Ann Freedman, and that he was not aware that Ms. Rosales was selling work made by Mr. Qian as the real thing.“I didn’t know everything she was selling or buying because we were distanced from each other and I have my own networks,” he said, speaking sometimes through a translator.Mr. Avrich, who has made documentaries about the entertainment kingpin Lew R. Wasserman and the Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, tracked Mr. Qian down in Shanghai, where Mr. Qian insisted he didn’t know the paintings were being sold to other people. Ms. Freedman said that she, too, was fooled by the paintings she sold at Knoedler and believed they were real until Ms. Rosales confessed.“I was convinced,” she says in the film.According to the documentary, Ms. Rosales was working for a time as a waitress in Brooklyn. Her lawyer, Bryan C. Skarlatos, declined to comment on her behalf.“However,” the lawyer said, “I believe that she may be willing to speak in the coming months and, if so, what she says will be very different from Mr. Diaz’s story.”As for Mr. Bergantiños Diaz, Mr. Avrich said he had no doubt that, as the federal authorities have charged, the art dealer and his former girlfriend worked closely together in the scam.“They were the Bonnie and Clyde of the art world,” Mr. Avrich said.Alain Delaquérière contributed research. More