Movies

Lucia Bosé, an Italian actress in neorealist films of the 1950s who walked away from her career to marry the Spanish bullfighter Luis Miguel Dominguín, only to return to acting after they separated, died on Monday in Segovia, Spain. She was 89.Her death was announced on social media by her son, the singer and actor Miguel Bosé. Roberto Liberatori, who wrote a 2019 autobiography of Ms. Bosé, said the cause was pneumonia.After she won the Miss Italy beauty pageant in 1947, Ms. Bosé traveled to Rome and drew the attention of the directors Michelangelo Antonioni and Giuseppe De Santis. In 1950 she appeared in De Santis’s “Under the Olive Tree” and Antonioni’s first feature film, “Story of a Love Affair,”One of her most prominent parts was as Clara, a would-be actress who marries a film producer played by Gino Cervi in Antonioni’s “The Lady Without Camelias” (1953). The producer’s jealousy drives Clara into a film that ultimately bombs.Clara’s “vacuity is so intense and so destructive that it drives her to marry a man she doesn’t love, have an affair with a shameless celebrity-collector and to believe that she is a serious actress,” Vincent Canby wrote in a review in The New York Times in 1981, when the film played at the Public Theater. “Ms. Bosé is as appealing as the essential emptiness of Clara allows,” he added.Ms. Bosé traveled to Spain to film Juan Antonio Bardem’s “Death of a Cyclist” (1955), where she met Mr. Dominguín, Spain’s foremost bullfighter and a celebrity who was profiled by Ernest Hemingway in a series of articles in Life magazine in 1960 that eventually became the posthumously published book “The Dangerous Summer.”They married quietly in Nevada that year, and Ms. Bosé played important characters in two more films, Luis Buñuel’s “That Is the Dawn” and Glauco Pellegrini’s “Symphony of Love” (both 1956), before she stopped acting to raise their family. Ms. Bosé interrupted her retirement for a cameo in Jean Cocteau’s “The Testament of Orpheus” (1960) with Mr. Dominguín and Pablo Picasso, a family friend.Ms. Bosé and Mr. Dominguín separated in the late 1960s, causing a scandal in the conservative Spain of Francisco Franco. She soon returned to acting, appearing in modest roles in films like Federico Fellini’s “Fellini Satyricon” (1969), Jeanne Moreau’s directorial debut, “Lumière” (1976), and Francesco Rosi’s adaptation of Gabriel García Márquez’s “Chronicle of a Death Foretold” (1987).Ms. Bosé was born on Jan. 28, 1931, in Milan to Domenico Bosé, who worked on an industrial farm, and Francesca Borlani, a homemaker. She grew up in the city, sheltering in a small town in Lombardy when it was bombed during World War II.After returning to Milan she studied at a vocational school and worked at a bakery before winning the Miss Italy pageant — the future actress Gina Lollobrigida was a contestant — and moving to Rome.In addition to her son, her survivors include two daughters, Paola and Lucia González Bosé; and several grandchildren and great-grandchildren.Raphael Minder and Elisabetta Povoledo contributed reporting. More

Stuart Gordon, a director best known for lavishly lurid horror films with a piercing sense of humor, notably the cult favorite “Re-Animator,” died on Tuesday in Van Nuys, Calif. He was 72.His wife, Carolyn Purdy-Gordon, an actress who appeared in many of his films and with whom he founded the Chicago-based Organic Theater Company, said the cause was multiple organ failure brought on by kidney disease.Mr. Gordon’s generally low-budget films often combined the body horror of John Carpenter or David Cronenberg’s films with the titillation found in Roger Corman’s. He said that surprising moviegoers was an important part of his work, and he did his best to exceed the everyday terrors of many slasher movies.“There is a side of me that likes to break through clichés and wake people up,” Mr. Gordon told Rolling Stone in 1986.Before turning to film, he directed experimental plays at the Organic Theater Company in the late 1960s. The company produced original works, like the comic-book-themed trilogy “Warp,” one-third of which briefly made it to Broadway in 1973; it also staged the first production of David Mamet’s breakout play, “Sexual Perversity in Chicago,” in 1974.“Re-Animator” (1985), Mr. Gordon’s first feature film, was based on a serialized story about human revivification by H.P. Lovecraft. He wrote the adaptation with Dennis Paoli and William Norris.The movie centers on Herbert West, a medical student played by Jeffrey Combs (he would become a stock player of sorts for Mr. Gordon) who discovers a chemical reagent that returns dead bodies to life. His experiments with it yield ever more grotesque results, culminating in a gang of marauding undead. One unforgettable scene involves the severed head of a reanimated corpse and a captive young woman.“Re-Animator” was released without a rating, so the more gruesome and graphic bits were not censored, resulting in a limited run in theaters. But it reached a much broader audience on video, and many critics loved it.“‘Re-Animator’ has as much originality as it has gore, and that’s really saying something,” Janet Maslin wrote in her review in The New York Times when the movie opened in New York theaters. The film, she added, “has a fast pace and a good deal of grisly vitality” and even “a sense of humor, albeit one that would be lost on 99.9 percent of any ordinary moviegoing crowd.”Mr. Paoli, who also worked with Mr. Gordon on later Lovecraft adaptations, said in a telephone interview that the humor-horror hybrid in “Re-Animator” and other Gordon films was similar to that in his theater work, which often straddled the line between the serious and the hilarious.“If you watch someone laughing and you don’t hear them, it looks like they’re screaming,” Mr. Paoli said. “The fact is they’re both releases of tension, and Stuart was a genius at storing up that tension and then releasing it over the line in one direction or another.”That same combination of mordant comedy, graphic violence and cosmic horror turned up in Lovecraft derivations like “From Beyond” (1986), about a doctor who uses a device to see into alien dimensions and whose pineal gland bursts through his forehead; and “Dagon” (2001), about a village of human-fish hybrids who enjoy procreating with people and sometimes skinning them.Not all Mr. Gordon’s films were creature features. He, Brian Yuzna and Ed Naha came up with the story for the hit Disney film “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids” (1989), and he was an executive producer of the sequel, “Honey, I Blew Up the Kid” (1992).He also made science fiction films, like “Fortress” (1992), about a high-tech prison in a dystopian future; and nightmarish dramas, like “Stuck” (2007), about a woman who crashes into a homeless man with her car while intoxicated, then drives home with him trapped in her windshield and barely alive.Mr. Gordon adapted the work of other authors, like Edgar Allan Poe (“The Pit and the Pendulum,” 1991) and Ray Bradbury (“The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit,” 1998). He returned to the work of Mr. Mamet with the film version of his one-act play “Edmond” (2005), about a man, played by William H. Macy, who renounces his strait-laced life and goes on a wild tear that ends with murder and a long prison sentence.To Mr. Gordon, the goal of supposedly highbrow theater was not much different from that of a blood-soaked horror film. “I have never separated art from having a good time,” he said in 1986.Stuart Alan Gordon was born in Chicago on Aug. 11, 1947, to Bernard and Rosalie (Sabath) Gordon. His father was a supervisor at a cosmetics factory, his mother a high school English teacher. He graduated from high school in Chicago before studying theater at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.At the university Mr. Gordon formed Screw Theater, an experimental troupe that incensed the college authorities with a 1968 production of “Peter Pan” that featured a nude dance sequence.Mr. Gordon and Ms. Purdy, who was in the show, were arrested after the second performance, and the university demanded that Mr. Gordon submit future scripts in advance and allow faculty members into every rehearsal. Mr. Gordon declined and left the university.He and Ms. Purdy married later that year, then founded the Organic Theater Company in Wisconsin. In 1969 they moved to Chicago, where the company first staged shows in a church.“Re-Animator” has lived on, spawning several comic book adaptations, film sequels (with which Mr. Gordon was not involved) and a stage musical, which he directed and for which he co-wrote the book.Mr. Gordon lived in Valley Glen, Calif. In addition to his wife, he is survived by three daughters, Suzanna, Jillian and Margaret Gordon; a brother, David; and four grandchildren.Mr. Gordon maintained that his creative brand of violence was less detrimental to viewers than the comparatively sanitized killings in many action movies.“Violence should horrify,” he said in 1986. “If it doesn’t, there’s something wrong with it. It should not be seductive.” More

Mark Blum, an Obie Award-winning New York stage and screen actor whose roles ranged from highly flawed husbands to overconfident blowhards, died on Wednesday in Manhattan. He was 69.The actor Lee Wilkof, a close family friend, said the cause was complications of the coronavirus. Mr. Blum also had asthma.Mr. Blum was an omnipresent figure in the Off Broadway world for decades, but his biggest moment in the spotlight came in 1989 after he played a time-traveling 20th-century playwright who befriends Gustav Mahler, in the Playwrights Horizons production of Albert Innaurato’s “Gus and Al.”Frank Rich, in his review in The New York Times, referred to Mr. Blum’s “appealing, weary-eyed portrayal” and saw Al’s self-martyrdom as a form of “rueful hypersensitivity to the modern world.”At the Obie ceremony, Mr. Blum was given one of 13 uncategorized Off Broadway performance awards for that season. His fellow winners included Nancy Marchand and Fyvush Finkel.He had a notable Broadway career as well, appearing in nine productions over three and a half decades. He made his Broadway debut as a particularly versatile theater professional — playing an unnamed Venetian (one of four), understudying two roles and acting as assistant stage manager in “The Merchant” (1977), set in 16th-century Venice and inspired by a certain Shakespearean classic.Other Broadway roles included Eddie, the young main character’s recently widowed and debt-ridden father, in Neil Simon’s “Lost in Yonkers” (1991), with Irene Worth; Spalding Gray’s campaign manager in “Gore Vidal’s The Best Man” (2000), a role he reprised as a replacement in the 2012 revival; Leo Herman, a.k.a. Chuckles the Chipmunk, the detestable host of a children’s television show, in “A Thousand Clowns” (2001); and Juror No. 1, the reasonable foreman, in “Twelve Angry Men” (2004). More

In “Uncorked,” now streaming on Netflix, the father-son drama gets a refreshing upgrade. Elijah (Mamoudou Athie), a scattered but well-meaning young adult, has finally figured out his dream: to become a master sommelier, a designation reserved for the best wine stewards in the world. The only problem is that his father, Louis (Courtney B. Vance), wants him to focus on learning how to run their family’s barbecue joint in Memphis.At first Elijah tries to do both. He prepares for the master exam, which is administered once a year, by enrolling in sommelier school while attending to his shifts at the barbecue spot. But that becomes increasingly challenging as his course — which he spent his entire savings on — demands more of his time, and his money. Eljah’s efforts are supported and encouraged by everyone except his father, who struggles to accept that his son can and wants to do his own thing. “I just hope … that you follow through,” Louis says at dinner when Elijah announces his intentions. “You get an idea about something but when it comes time to do it … ” The implications of the unfinished sentiment hang in the air and haunt Elijah for the rest of the film.[embedded content]“Uncorked,” which is the feature directorial debut of the “Insecure” showrunner Prentice Penny, succeeds when it focuses on Elijah’s relationship with his family. In moments where they gather, the writing and cast shine in equal measure. “I went to a mixer about trying to become a sommelier,” Elijah says during one scene at the dinner table. “You trying to become an African?” his cousin, JT (Bernard David Jones) responds, confused. The characters tenderly volley for a bit before Elijah’s mother, Sylvia (Niecy Nash), calls for order. Away from the family unit, however, the film struggles a bit more. Elijah’s girlfriend, Tanya (Sasha Compere), remains so two-dimensional that her existence is more of a distraction; and a trip Elijah takes to Paris halfway through the film feels like little more than an obvious plot device.Nonetheless, “Uncorked” joins a growing body of work — cinematic and otherwise — that upends stereotypes about black people around the world. Elijah and his father’s lives are not plagued by dramatic circumstances. Their problems with each other have to do with their opposing dreams, differing communication styles and the projecting that can happen between parent and child. And while the characters interact against the backdrop of varying degrees of racism and socioeconomic stressors, they are not defined by them. In other words, they are ordinary but no less noteworthy.UncorkedNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 44 minutes. More

CLASSICAL MUSICExperimental and LuminousThe saxophonist and composer Roscoe Mitchell is best known as a founding member of the Art Ensemble of Chicago. But even when operating outside that pan-stylistic group, his approach contains multitudes. When I reviewed Mitchell’s concerts at the Park Avenue Armory in 2019, I marveled at his solo-saxophone heroics and meditative chamber music designs.The composer’s latest record, released this week on the Wide Hive label, affords us an even broader view. Most jaw-dropping is the 20-minute title track, “Distant Radio Transmission,” performed here by Mitchell and a 33-piece orchestra conducted by Petr Kotik. Like many of Mitchell’s recent orchestral opuses, this one has its roots in earlier, improvised trio recordings. (After the improvised version of this track was transcribed and partially orchestrated by associates of the composer, Mitchell completed the full orchestration in 2017.)“Distant Radio Transmission”Audio recordingWhat was once sparely avant-garde is now luminously experimental. Electronics join with tart wind harmonies and resonant pitched percussion during the opening. The baritone Thomas Buckner — a veteran of Robert Ashley’s operas — brings abstract, ghostly exhalations to the mix, later on. Around the halfway point, when a stretch of Mitchell’s striated soprano-saxophone ornamentations gives way to jaunty patterns in the wider orchestra, there is a sense of a singular intelligence at work.It never sounds like easy listening. Though when focusing on the finer details in this “Distant Radio Transmission,” it’s easy to be transported by the intensity of this broadcaster’s imagination.SETH COLTER WALLSTHEATER/TELEVISIONBreak a LegThe world of theater can be moving, soul-stirring and thought-provoking.Also vain, backbiting and downright ludicrous.“Slings & Arrows” captures all of these facets in all their glory. And the cult Canadian series has recently become available for streaming on Acorn TV, which just extended its free-trial offer from seven to 30 days (enter the code FREE30).“Slings & Arrows,” which ran in 2003-2006, is not just the best show ever made about the stage: The insightful, bitingly observed and very funny series belongs in the television canon, period.Each of the three seasons focuses on a different Shakespeare play produced at the New Burbage Theater Festival (loosely inspired by the real-life Stratford Festival, in Ontario). Created and scripted by Susan Coyne, Bob Martin (the co-book writer and star of the musical “The Drowsy Chaperone”) and former Kids in the Hall member Mark McKinney, the series brilliantly weaves backstage shenanigans — never underestimate the self-importance of actors and directors — with astute insights into the perils and joys of art-making. At heart, “Slings & Arrows” is a workplace comedy: A community tries to get through another op’nin’, another show while battling commercialism and egos run amok.Bonus: Watch a pre-fame Rachel McAdams find her footing as an actress in the first season.ELISABETH VINCENTELLIDANCECelebrate ItalyTourist trips to Italy. Evenings at the ballet. Those could be random selections from the long list of unavailable pleasures right now. But I can recommend a way of virtually combining both, and it goes through Denmark. As a gift to the housebound, the Royal Danish Ballet is streaming “Napoli” on its website for free.“Napoli” is a three-act ballet from 1842 by the great Danish choreographer August Bournonville. On the Royal Danish Ballet’s website, the company’s artistic director, Nikolaj Hübbe, explains the choice to stream “Napoli” now by calling it the “most life-affirming work” in the Royal Danish’s repertory. That’s an understatement: It’s one of the most life-affirming, joy-giving ballets in any company’s repertory.Set in Naples, the tale is a standard one of poor young lovers overcoming obstacles — not just a mama after money but also a possessive sea god in the underwater second act. (There was a tradition, among Danish ballet regulars, of sitting out that second act in the theater restaurant; online, you can just fast-forward.)This production, filmed in the 2013-14 season, is Hübbe’s 2009 update. He’s advanced the time to just after World War II, so there are cigarettes and mafia allusions and a Vespa. Essentially, he’s swapped one cartoon idea of southern Italy for another, and it’s vivid fun either way.What’s preserved, in any case, is the really good stuff, the dancing in Bournonville style. With arms held low, the dancers shoot up like geysers, their legs crossing quickly underneath them. The combination of modesty and effervescence is the special tonic, and this cast delivers it neatly, especially the gorgeous, buoyant Alban Lendorf as the fisherman hero.BRIAN SEIBERTTHEATERUrban TraveloguesNew York City is in the midst of a forced slumber — even the subways are scaling back. Lucky for you, three of its lines, the N, L and 7, are the settings of the wondrous “Subway Plays,” a trilogy of site-specific audio plays by This Is Not a Theatre Company. The entire trilogy is available as a mobile phone app for less than $5.Each play is split into two parts, depending on where you decide to begin your journey, and tells stories connected to the subway line where they take place. But they also invite the listener to engage with the world beyond the ride using their imagination and senses. Quite appropriate given the current need to social distance.Part history lessons, part urban travelogues, the plays written by Jenny Lyn Bader, Jessie Bear and Colin Waitt, are populated with New York archetypes, including lost tourists, annoyed locals and idiosyncratic passengers.Besides being technical marvels (the director Erin B. Mee’s precise timing is impeccable, the city seems to be working with her at all times) the plays now feel like bittersweet phantasmagoria. Snapshots preserved in sounds and feelings, of a city that may never be the same.JOSE SOLÍSKIDSLaughter Without LewdnessIn stressful times, children especially need a good laugh. But if you’re a parent who has already forbidden Comedy Central, you know that most adult stand-up is too coarse for kids.Let me introduce Billy Kelly. A comic, singer-songwriter and dad, he specializes in humor that the generations can enjoy together. (No dumb knock-knock jokes.) Embracing a wry worldview that will be incomprehensible to preschoolers but delightful to audiences 8 to 12, Kelly has just released “This Is a Family Show,” a 90-minute special from Audible Stories, a new digital library of audiobooks and entertainment for young people that Audible is offering free during the public-health crisis. (The selections also comprise not-so-uproarious titles like “Jane Eyre.”)Kelly’s comedy, which incorporates both stand-up and song — you can catch a Facebook Live set on Friday at 7 p.m. — evokes understated provocateurs like Steven Wright. A recurring riff, “Random Things I’ve Noticed in My Life,” includes observations on the honesty of the name Milk Duds and the absurdity of the term meteorologist. (Ever hear a forecast for meteors?) I laughed out loud at his bit about how Nature seemingly assembled bats from other animals’ leftover parts.Never using profanity, Kelly is not above bathroom humor. Reflecting on restroom as a euphemism (“I don’t know who we’re trying to trick”), he mentions entering a public toilet. “There’s a sign out, says ‘wet floor,’” he recalls. “So I did.”LAUREL GRAEBERMoviesIndie CreepsThe horror genre is enamored of escaped lunatics and haunted sanitariums, so it’s rarely the place to turn for empathetic depictions of mental illness. That’s why “They Look Like People,” a 2016 low-budget indie feature on Tubi, written and directed by Perry Blackshear, is such a pleasant departure — it’s as tender as it is terrifying in its depiction of paranoia and its consequences.The film begins as two old friends, Christian (Evan Dumouchel) and Wyatt (MacLeod Andrews), randomly reconnect in New York. Christian invites Wyatt to live with him, but soon Wyatt’s emotional state unravels as strange visions and unnerving voices turn his reality into a hellscape, and he begins making preparations for war with perceived alien antagonists. Blackshear depicts Christian’s response to his friend’s deeply unsettling emotional state with creeping alarm but also with a touching sensitivity that puts compassion on par with fear. The film culminates in a shocking — and shockingly affectionate — final scene that may have you covering your eyes with one hand and wiping a tear away with the other.ERIK PIEPENBURGComedyHelpful HumorInstagram users undoubtedly have noticed a spike in live videos from their friends and accounts they follow, broadcasting into the void to keep connected during our collective coronavirus quarantine. The trend is particularly rampant among stand-up comedians, who need an audience to thrive.Mike Birbiglia, with four stand-up specials to his credit — most recently filming his 2019 Drama Desk winning solo Broadway show, “The New One,” for Netflix — turned his IG account last week into a mouthpiece for his funny friends to riff on new material while raising money for those laid off from comedy clubs shuttered across America.Tip Your Waitstaff began March 19 with Roy Wood Jr., a correspondent for “The Daily Show With Trevor Noah,” starting a GoFundMe for his hometown club, the StarDome near Birmingham, Ala., while Birbiglia supported the Comedy Attic in Bloomington, Ind., where he had been slated to headline. Each weekday afternoon he welcomes a new comedian and adds two new clubs, with IG Live shows available for viewing for 24 hours. “We started this up on a whim and thought, well, waitstaffs don’t have any cash coming in right now and the economy has, I think, stopped. Is that the technical term?” Birbiglia said during his broadcast Tuesday with Maria Bamford. “It’s been bungled,” Bamford replied.By Wednesday morning, the GoFundMe campaigns had raised almost $52,000 for the staffs at 12 clubs, from Carolines on Broadway near Times Square to the Lyric Hyperion in Los Angeles, and, in between, clubs and theaters in Alabama, Indiana, Iowa, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri, New York, Ohio and Washington, D.C.SEAN L. McCARTHY More