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      ‘I Am: Celine Dion’ Director Talks About Capturing the Star’s Seizure

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      Irene Taylor, director of the new documentary “I Am: Celine Dion,” talks about the decision to include a grueling scene of the pop star in crisis.This article contains spoilers.Celine Dion welcomed the cameras. For the new documentary “I Am: Celine Dion” (streaming on Amazon Prime Video), the singer set no restrictions on what to film.What follows is a painfully intimate portrait of a pop star’s body fighting itself. Dion announced in 2022 that she had stiff person syndrome, an autoimmune neurological condition that causes progressive stiffness and severe muscle spasms. During a session with her physical therapist that was being filmed for the documentary, Dion has a seizure. The camera continued to roll throughout the medical crisis.In an interview via video call on Monday, the director, Irene Taylor, discussed shooting the documentary and why Dion’s emergency was included in the final cut. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.How far into preproduction did you learn about Dion’s illness?I spoke with her at length, and I did not know she was ill. We were in the middle of the pandemic and I didn’t think twice about her being at home. Most of us were, and performers around the world were sort of out of commission temporarily.We got to a place where we agreed to make the film. It was several weeks after that mutual decision that her manager asked me for a call. I figured it must be something serious because we got on the phone that day, and he told me that Celine was sick and that they didn’t know what it was. We were filming several months before there was a definitive diagnosis.After getting the diagnosis, was the conversation on the table to stop filming?Definitely not. When I realized that a) she had a problem with no name and b) when I actually started filming I could see how her body looked different, her face looked different, I was able to focus. The iris of my perspective got much smaller.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Jonathan Majors Is Cast in First Movie Role Since Assault Conviction

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      Mr. Majors, who was sentenced to a year of domestic violence programming and was dropped by Marvel, is set to star in the independent thriller “Merciless.”Jonathan Majors will lead a feature film for the first time since he was found guilty of assaulting and harassing his girlfriend, a conviction that doomed a lucrative contract with Marvel Studios and imperiled his status as one of the fastest-rising stars in Hollywood.Mr. Majors, who starred in “Creed III” and “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” last year, has been cast in “Merciless,” a supernatural thriller about a C.I.A. interrogator out for revenge. The movie will be directed by Martin Villeneuve and produced by Christopher Tuffin, an executive producer of the films “Sound of Freedom” and “Peppermint.”Mr. Tuffin said he believed in second chances and had decided to work with Mr. Majors because he was a “generational talent.”“We live in a culture that treats people as disposable, on both sides,” he said. “I believe that this matter has been adjudicated in the courts and he has a right to go back to his career.”A representative for Mr. Majors declined to comment.Mr. Majors was convicted of a reckless assault misdemeanor and a harassment violation in December, months after an altercation inside an S.U.V. that his girlfriend Grace Jabbari said turned violent. He was acquitted of two other charges that required prosecutors to prove he had acted with intent.A judge sentenced Mr. Majors to 52 weeks of domestic violence programming.In court testimony, Ms. Jabbari said she and Mr. Majors had gotten into an argument in Manhattan while they were dating. She said that he had twisted her arm and that she subsequently felt “a really hard blow across my head.” Mr. Majors did not testify but through his lawyer and in an interview on “Good Morning America,” he disputed Ms. Jabbari’s account and denied assaulting her.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘White Chicks’ at 20: Comedy Beyond the Pale

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      The Wayans brothers’ subversive comedy is smarter than you remember.When the oversexed basketball player Latrell Spencer (Terry Crews) turns to his date to sing Vanessa Carlton’s “A Thousand Miles,” he does so to prove his total love of all things white. Spencer is the stereotypical embodiment of the lascivious muscular Black man intent on procuring a white woman to prove his own masculinity. “Once you go Black, you’re gonna need a wheelchair,” he says. And yet, despite the broadness of his carnal desires, his performativity is the comedic soul to the director Keenen Ivory Wayans’s astute racial passing satire “White Chicks.”A gender-bending film (streaming on Hulu) that wields whiteface to interrogate the appropriation of Black culture into affluent, gendered white spaces, the film, upon initial release, was critically reviled. Roger Ebert named it the seventh worst movie of 2004. “Who was it made for? Who will it play to,” he asked. In the two decades since, however, its spiky critique of white privilege has revealed itself to be far more incisive than its lowbrow humor would indicate.Best summarized as “Some Like It Hot” meets “The Simple Life,” “White Chicks” follows Kevin Copeland (Shawn Wayans) and Marcus Copeland (Marlon Wayans), two bumbling F.B.I. agents nearing termination. Tasked with protecting two wealthy white women — the shallow Brittany Wilson (Maitland Ward) and her sister, the idiotic Tiffany (Anne Dudek) — from kidnappers, the detectives find trouble when a car crash injures the two women, leaving them unwilling to attend a fashion event in the Hamptons. To save their jobs, Kevin and Marcus pose as the sisters by dressing in skirts and heels, wigs, makeup, prosthetics. And the “white” voices they adopt become their tools.While blackface has minstrel roots, whiteface arises from a different impulse. Often employed in comedies, the practice enables Black people to pass as white, putting them in proximity to the believed benefits and privileges the skin tone provides. In works like the Whoopi Goldberg corporate satire film “The Associate” or the Eddie Murphy “White Like Me” sketch on “Saturday Night Live,” the practice not only gives the infiltrator a financial and social advantage, it allows the racial passer to upset the perceived stability of racial identity.In “White Chicks,” the identity switch works in similar fashion with the added twist of a gender swap. When Kevin and Marcus become Brittany and Tiffany, they’re given the privileges of white femininity. In an early scene, set in the Hamptons, a concierge asks for a credit card to hold the room. Kevin and Marcus, stuck with their own debit cards, threaten to throw a “bitch fit” if the hotel doesn’t allow them to check-in. After a tantrum, they’re allowed in their rooms.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘I Am: Celine Dion’ Review: You Saw the Best in Me

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      Dion’s voice made her a star. A new documentary on Amazon Prime Video brings her back to Earth, showing her intimate struggles with stiff person syndrome.Illness shows no regard for even the most revered figures in pop music.In “I Am: Celine Dion,” a documentary about the global songstress on Amazon Prime Video, it quickly becomes clear that Dion can’t even move her body, let alone deliver a soaring ballad with the full force that, from her teenage years on, roused millions. The film, by the director Irene Taylor, records the singer’s agonizing reality as she battles the rare neurological condition called stiff person syndrome.In an Instagram post in December 2022, Dion tearfully revealed her diagnosis to her fans, but the documentary had already been in production by then. Taylor opens the film with relaxed scenes of Dion at her home in Las Vegas with her children and staff. Then the part that’s painful to watch: The singer is heard moaning as she has a seizure on the floor. Learning early on that she had always wanted to sing “all my life” intensifies the tragedy of watching Dion, now 56, struggle to continue to live that dream. Dion’s voice made her a star; this film is keen on making her a person.But there is nothing subtle in Taylor’s montages, such as a high-energy past performance cut with the subdued domestic energy on display while Dion is vacuuming her couch. One shot pans to her eerily empty living room, a severe departure from playing packed stadiums. Even the score aches. All this palpable sadness is, perhaps, why Taylor interjects clips of Dion in better times.I understand the inclination to not define Dion by her diagnosis. But Dion’s spontaneously expressive personality already shines through her pain in raw footage that feels more connected to her healing journey, like when her physical therapist nags her about a cream she hasn’t been applying to her feet. “Give me a break,” she says with playful exasperation.She then sings “Gimme a Break,” the Kit Kat commercial jingle. While that welcome touch of humor pulls you into this intimately told story — what’s more Celine than an impromptu vocal? — inconsequential clips take you out of it: her impersonation of Sia on a late-night talk show; a part of her “Ashes” video that lets the Deadpool cameo go on for too long; her career-defining ballad “My Heart Will Go On” but, mystifyingly, the “Carpool Karaoke” version with James Corden.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Kevin Costner’s ‘Horizon’ Is Debuting Friday. Will Audiences Follow?

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      To make “Horizon,” he put his own money on the line and left “Yellowstone,” the series that revived his career — all with little Hollywood support.Oh, to have the self-confidence of Kevin Costner.There are few actors in the final chapter of their career who would turn down a consistent $1 million-an-episode payday to pursue the vagaries of the Wild West. Yet there are few actors who are as single-minded as Costner.For the 69-year old star and director, who has made a career of taking the road less traveled, has embarked on what many would call a foolhardy quest to turn his long-percolating story of the settling of the West post-Civil War into four theatrical films. It’s an endeavor he’s undertaking without the true support of Hollywood: No legacy studio wanted to finance his sprawling epic. And it’s one that comes at great personal cost, both financially, with Costner investing $38 million of his own money, and professionally, with his commitment to the films causing a schism with the producers of “Yellowstone,” the television franchise that revitalized his career.There is no guarantee his grand experiment will succeed. “Horizon: An American Saga — Chapter 1” is set to debut Friday. And in an unprecedented move, “Chapter 2” will hit theaters less than two months later, on Aug. 16. Both features cost in the $100 million range. Warner Bros. is releasing the films in the United States, Canada and some international territories in a service deal calling for Costner to pay for the marketing costs while collaborating with the studio on the creation of the marketing materials. (Warner Bros., according to a representative who was not permitted to speak on the record, has a small financial stake in the production of the first two films.) The deal’s structure means that should the movies backfire, there will be little financial downside for the studio but much risk for Costner himself.Abbey Lee, left, with Costner, in the first of four films envisioned by the star-director.Richard Foreman/Warner Bros.But as he has put it, letting go was never an option. He first commissioned the script back in 1988. He almost made it with Disney, but the two parties couldn’t agree on a budget and the movie didn’t go forward. Then, instead of retooling one movie to fit the parameters of potential buyers, he and the screenwriter Jon Baird turned it into four. To partly finance the films, he mortgaged a 10-acre piece of undeveloped coastline in Santa Barbara that he’s owned since 2006.“It’s hard to fall out of love for me. I don’t do that,” he told journalists during the online debut of his teaser trailer in February, and added, “There’s a lot of people out there that know I’m a little bit of a hard-head or something. When no one wanted to make the first one, I got the bright idea to make four. So I don’t know what’s wrong with me.” (Costner declined to be interviewed for this story.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘The Lion King’ at 30: Jason Weaver Sang for Simba but Few Knew It

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      The actor was playing a young Michael Jackson when Elton John spotted him. Three decades later, the new attention to his legacy is “gratifying.”When Jason Weaver arrived at his middle school in Chicago wearing a sweatshirt emblazoned with “The Lion King” logo in 1993, his classmates sneered. The apparel had been a gift from Disney when Weaver recorded the singing voice of young Simba, but the blockbuster animated film had yet to be released.“They were like, ‘What the hell is ‘The Lion King’?” Weaver, 44, recalled in a recent video interview. “They didn’t believe in any way shape or form I would be involved with a Disney film — not a kid from the South Side.”Until then, Weaver had mostly done print and commercial work in Chicago. He’d landed a small role in the civil rights drama “The Long Walk Home” and played a young Michael Jackson in the ABC mini-series “The Jacksons: An American Dream.” But for kids, a Disney theatrical movie was on another level.During an hour-and-a-half “Lion King” recording session in 1992, Weaver, who was turning 13, had sung the lead vocals for “I Just Can’t Wait to Be King,” the braggadocious anthem belted by the lion cub Simba as he fantasizes about inheriting the pridelands from his father, Mufasa.Opening in June 1994, “The Lion King” would go on to become the highest grossing traditionally animated film of all time. Its soundtrack eventually sold more than 7 million copies, and “I Just Can’t Wait to Be King” was certified double platinum.According to Weaver, his mother, Marilyn “Kitty” Haywood — a former jingle singer and recording artist who worked with Aretha Franklin and Curtis Mayfield — turned down Disney’s initial offer and negotiated a fee of $100,000 plus lucrative royalties for her son.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Film Academy Chief Gets a Sequel: Bill Kramer’s Contract Is Renewed

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      Amid challenges in Hollywood, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences renewed its chief executive’s contract a year early.In a time of flux in Hollywood, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the organization that oversees the Oscars, placed a bet on continuity, announcing Monday that it would extend Bill Kramer’s tenure as chief executive through July 2028.Kramer’s contract, which was up for renewal in 2025, was approved one year early “due to his exceptional leadership and significant contributions,” the academy said.“He is the ideal person to continue to broaden the Academy’s reach and impact on our international film community and successfully guide the organization into our next 100 years,” Janet Yang, the academy’s president, said in a statement.The academy has faced a number of challenges in recent years: It has worked to diversify the Oscars after nominating only white actors in 2015, faced the steep drop-off in television ratings facing award shows, struggled with the fallout after Will Smith slapped Chris Rock at the 2022 Academy Awards and opened a museum.This year’s Academy Awards drew 19.5 million viewers, a four-year high, according to Nielsen. It was the third consecutive year that Oscar viewership had grown, but it was still far below previous levels: Before 2018, the telecast never had fewer than 32 million viewers. This year’s telecast started an hour earlier than usual.Before becoming chief executive of the Academy in June 2022, Kramer served for two years as the director of its new museum, the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, and he was credited with helping get it open after years of delays. Kramer’s total compensation was $865,568 from the academy and related organizations in 2022, the year he started as chief executive, according to the academy’s most recent tax filing.Kramer’s contract extension comes as the Academy Museum is working to recover from criticism over how it tells the story of the Jewish immigrants who started movie studios and helped create the U.S. film industry. When the museum first opened, it was faulted for saying relatively little about them, even as it celebrated diversity in film. The museum responded by opening a permanent new exhibition highlighting the contributions of Hollywood’s Jewish founders, but when that installation was criticized by some Jewish film professionals, the museum announced that it would makes changes.Kramer now oversees all aspects of the academy, which has more than 700 employees in Los Angeles, New York and London.The academy has an annual operating budget of about $170 million, 70 percent of which comes from its Oscars broadcast deal with Disney and ABC, which runs through 2028. Last month, the Academy announced a global $500 million campaign to shore up its financial future.“Like any healthy organization or company,” Kramer said in an interview as he announced the international fund-raising effort, “the academy needs a sustainable and diverse base of support to allow for solid long-term planning and fiscal certainty.” More

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      How Netflix’s Corporate Culture Has Changed

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      The company’s latest internal memo about its corporate culture is more about how it expects employees to behave than what it wants to become.Netflix has long been a company known for its secrets: no Nielsen ratings, little feedback on why shows are canceled, no box office numbers for the rare movies that are actually released in theaters.Yet for a place defined by its opaque approach to the outside world, the streaming giant has long been aggressively transparent internally. The company’s philosophy was immortalized in 2009 when Reed Hastings, the company’s co-founder and chief executive, first laid out the corporate ethos in a 125-slide presentation that introduced new buzzy phrases like “stunning colleagues,” “the keeper test” and “honesty always.”The presentation, with its insistence on constant and unfiltered candor, felt both brutal and refreshingly antithetical to Hollywood’s normal way of doing business. To the frustration of former employees and current competitors, it may just be the blueprint that has enabled Netflix to have so much success while its rivals have stumbled.Three more culture memos have followed over the years. Before being released, they are pored over and analyzed for months by top executives. At the same time, any employee can pop into the Google Doc where the memo is being assembled to leave a thought or a comment.The latest iteration of the document, which was released internally on May 8 and will soon be made public, underwent eight months of vetting and received 1,500 comments from employees, according to Sergio Ezama, Netflix’s chief talent officer. It is five pages long (half the length of Mr. Hastings’s final memo in 2022), and some core tenets have changed, however slightly.When Mr. Hastings titled his 2009 presentation “Netflix Culture,” he gave it the subhead “Freedom and Responsibility.” The idea was that Netflix trusted its employees to act in the best interest of the company. If you want a vacation, take a vacation. If you have a baby and need to go on leave, go on leave. Documents were shared widely throughout the company without any fear of leaks.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More