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Title Search: Can You Find the 21 Fantasy Books Hidden in This Story? – The New York Times
Books Update|Title Search: Can You Find the 21 Fantasy Books Hidden in This Story?https://nyti.ms/3XwcL6q More
Late night hosts lamented that more classified documents were found, this time in President Biden’s Delaware garage.Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.‘Car-a-Lago’Late night hosts ribbed President Biden on Thursday after additional classified documents were uncovered in his care, this time in the garage of his Delaware home.“No!” Stephen Colbert cried at the top of his monologue. “Say it ain’t so, Joe!”“I know you’re retirement age — are you starting a collection? They’re classified documents, not spoons from the Delaware Train Museum!” — STEPHEN COLBERT“The White House announced today that President Biden’s aides found classified documents at several locations inside his Delaware home. And he’s had them for a while, because a lot of them have to do with the Louisiana Purchase.” — SETH MEYERS“You’ve heard of Mar-a-Lago — this is Car-a-Lago.” — JAMES CORDEN“Good Lord, apparently presidents lose classified documents the way we lose AirPods.” — JIMMY FALLON“Which is more dangerous: Joe Biden having classified documents in his garage, or Joe Biden having the keys to a Corvette?” — JIMMY KIMMEL“He calls it ‘Stud Force One.’” — JIMMY KIMMEL[imitating Biden] “It’s in a locked garage. You think I might leave my sweet cherry Vette out on the main drag where some street thugs could scuff it with their switchblades? No sirree. I keep that baby locked up tight in my garage. Sunday afternoons, I go in there and buff it with a handful of missile maps.” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Punchiest Punchlines (No Shame in His Blame Edition)“Back in 2017, Trump floated the idea of nuking North Korea and blaming the attack on another country. The old ‘Canada did it’ routine.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“According to a new book, then-President Trump discussed in 2017 the possibility of striking North Korea with a nuclear weapon and then blaming it on another country. Even weirder, he wanted to blame it on Belgium.” — SETH MEYERS“That’s right, Trump discussed the possibility of striking North Korea with a nuclear weapon and then blaming it on another country. Oh, my God. Seriously? It’s nuclear war, not a fart.” — SETH MEYERSThe Bits Worth WatchingThe Property Brothers performed a cover of The Righteous Brothers’ hit “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling” on Thursday’s “Tonight Show.”Also, Check This OutJoni Mitchell, in 2022.Frazer Harrison/Getty ImagesJoni Mitchell has been named this year’s recipient of the Gershwin Prize for Popular Song and will be honored with a tribute concert on March 1 in Washington. PBS will air the special on March 31. More
After the discovery of a new batch of documents tied to President Biden, Kimmel joked that America is “one episode of ‘Storage Wars’ away from finding out who killed J.F.K.”Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.What’s Up, Docs?After finding a stash of classified documents earlier this week, aides for President Biden discovered another batch of them at a second undisclosed location on Wednesday.Jimmy Kimmel joked that America is “one episode of ‘Storage Wars’ away from finding out who killed J.F.K.”“So staffers for Joe Biden are now searching everywhere he could’ve possibly left documents — his knapsack, his pill organizer, under the arch at the 1904 World’s Fair.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“They could be in a birthday card he sent to his grandkids next to a crisp two-dollar bill. No one knows.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“And, of course, any time documents are mishandled, top-secret documents, it needs to be taken seriously. That’s something Republicans and Democrats believe, although Republicans have only believed it since Monday.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Punchiest Punchlines (Major F.A.A.-il Edition)“Early this morning, all flights across the U.S. were grounded due to a failure with the F.A.A.’s computer system. Yeah. Zero flights took off, but somehow everyone’s luggage still ended up in Pittsburgh.” — JIMMY FALLON“Their system went down, resulting in an awful morning for travelers, and a great morning for Southwest Airlines. They were like, ‘Wasn’t our fault this time!’” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Well, this is what happens when you run your entire aviation system off a Boingo hotspot.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Yeah, no one could fix the computer glitch. One guy at the F.A.A. said, ‘I don’t know, maybe unplug it, plug it back in?’” — JIMMY FALLON“Meanwhile, the outage happened while some planes were in the air. If there’s one thing you don’t want to hear from your pilot, it’s ‘Attention, passengers: Do yourselves a favor and stay off Twitter for a little bit.’” — JIMMY FALLONThe Bits Worth WatchingThe filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan came by to direct Stephen Colbert on Wednesday’s “Late Show.”What We’re Excited About on Thursday NightSigourney Weaver, star of “Avatar: The Way of Water,” will sit down with James Corden on Thursday’s “Late Late Show.”Also, Check This OutValeria Golino, left, and Giordana Marengo in a scene from “The Lying Life of Adults,” a six-episode adaptation of Elena Ferrante’s 2019 novel.Eduardo Castaldo/Netflix Netflix’s new adaptation of Elena Ferrante’s novel “The Lying Life of Adults” follows two young women coming of age in Naples. More
“The Banshees of Inisherin” and “Everything Everywhere All at Once” pick up important nods. Michelle Williams is shut out.The dark Irish comedy “The Banshees of Inisherin” and the sci-fi hit “Everything Everywhere All at Once” led this year’s nominations for the Screen Actors Guild Awards, which were announced on Wednesday morning. What’s more, both films tied a SAG record: Each scored four individual acting nominations plus an ensemble nod, a five-nomination tally that has only been managed in the past by “Shakespeare in Love,” “Chicago” and “Doubt.”Coming one day after a Golden Globes ceremony that also saw “Banshees” and “Everything Everywhere” reap significant rewards, both films can be considered top contenders as we enter the homestretch of Oscar season. Steven Spielberg’s autobiographical “The Fabelmans,” which took the Globes for best director and best drama, was dealt the most significant SAG snub when its star, Michelle Williams, failed to make the powerhouse best actress lineup.All three movies were nominated for SAG’s top ensemble award, though the category was filled out by the surprise appearances of “Babylon” and “Women Talking,” two films that could not muster a single individual acting nomination between them.As a predictor of eventual Oscar success, the SAG Awards can be hit or miss. Last year, even though all four of the actors who won SAGs went on to triumph at the Oscars, the two shows had very different lists of nominees: In the supporting actor and actress races, for example, just two of the SAG nominees in each category went on to receive an Oscar nomination.That means some of Wednesday’s snubbed actors could still break through with Oscar voters, just as SAG snubs like Kristen Stewart (“Spencer”) and Judi Dench (“Belfast”) managed last year. But it also means that your eventual Oscar winners will probably come from these SAG shortlists.The SAG Awards will be handed out on Feb. 26. Here is the complete list of nominees:FilmOutstanding Cast“Babylon”“The Banshees of Inisherin”“Everything Everywhere All at Once”“The Fabelmans”“Women Talking”Actor in a Leading RoleAustin Butler, “Elvis”Colin Farrell, “The Banshees of Inisherin”The Projectionist Chronicles a New Awards SeasonThe Oscars aren’t until March, but the campaigns have begun. Kyle Buchanan is covering the films, personalities and events along the way.Meet the Newer, Bolder Michelle Williams: Why she made the surprising choice to skip the supporting actress category and run for best actress.Best-Actress Battle Royal: A banner crop of leading ladies like Michelle Yeoh and Cate Blanchett rule the Oscars’ deepest and most dynamic race.‘Glass Onion’ and Rian Johnson: The director explains why he sold the “Knives Out” franchise to Netflix, and how he feels about its theatrical test.Jostling for Best Picture: Weighing voter buzz, box office results and more, here’s an educated guess about the likely nominees for best picture.Brendan Fraser, “The Whale”Bill Nighy, “Living”Adam Sandler, “Hustle”Actress in a Leading RoleCate Blanchett, “Tár”Viola Davis, “The Woman King”Ana de Armas, “Blonde”Danielle Deadwyler, “Till”Michelle Yeoh, “Everything Everywhere All at Once”Actor in a Supporting RolePaul Dano, “The Fabelmans”Brendan Gleeson, “The Banshees of Inisherin”Barry Keoghan, “The Banshees of Inisherin”Ke Huy Quan, “Everything Everywhere All at Once”Eddie Redmayne, “The Good Nurse”Actress in a Supporting RoleAngela Bassett, “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever”Hong Chau, “The Whale”Kerry Condon, “The Banshees of Inisherin”Jamie Lee Curtis, “Everything Everywhere All at Once”Stephanie Hsu, “Everything Everywhere All at Once”Stunt Ensemble in a Movie“Avatar: The Way of Water”“The Batman”“Black Panther: Wakanda Forever”“Top Gun: Maverick”“The Woman King”TelevisionEnsemble in a Comedy Series“Abbott Elementary”“Barry”“The Bear”“Hacks”“Only Murders in the Building”Ensemble in a Drama Series“Better Call Saul”“The Crown”“Ozark”“Severance”“The White Lotus”Actor in a Comedy SeriesAnthony Carrigan, “Barry”Bill Hader, “Barry”Steve Martin, “Only Murders in the Building”Martin Short, “Only Murders in the Building”Jeremy Allen White, “The Bear”Actress in a Comedy SeriesChristina Applegate, “Dead to Me”Rachel Brosnahan, “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”Quinta Brunson, “Abbott Elementary”Jenna Ortega, “Wednesday”Jean Smart, “Hacks”Actor in a Drama SeriesJonathan Banks, “Better Call Saul”Jason Bateman, “Ozark”Jeff Bridges, “The Old Man”Bob Odenkirk, “Better Call Saul”Adam Scott, “Severance”Actress in a Drama SeriesJennifer Coolidge, “The White Lotus”Elizabeth Debicki, “The Crown”Julia Garner, “Ozark”Laura Linney, “Ozark”Zendaya, “Euphoria”Actor in a TV Movie or Limited SeriesSteve Carell, “The Patient”Taron Egerton, “Black Bird”Sam Elliott, “1883”Paul Walter Hauser, “Black Bird”Evan Peters, “Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story”Actress in a TV Movie or Limited SeriesEmily Blunt, “The English”Jessica Chastain, “George & Tammy”Julia Garner, “Inventing Anna”Niecy Nash-Betts, “Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story”Amanda Seyfried, “The Dropout”Stunt Ensemble in a TV Series“Andor“The Boys”“House of the Dragon”“Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power”“Stranger Things” More
Hollywood has mostly failed to adapt successful video games into satisfying series and films. In an interview, the creators of this new zombie thriller explain why it can be the exception.When “The Last of Us” came out in 2013, the hit video game’s premise — a fungus turns people into zombies, leaving society in shambles, and what government remains is controlled by fascists — seemed squarely in the realm of fiction. A decade later, an HBO series based on the game is set to be released, on Sunday, to a public that has grown all too familiar with the possibility of a germ apocalypse.The reality of what the world has been through over the past three years is alluded to in a chilling opening scene in which a pair of scientists describe the risk of various pathogens to a talk show audience. After one of them describes something like Covid-19, the other silences both the fictional crowd and us when he expounds upon the ways in which a warmed-up planet could lead to something much, much worse.“Part of writing for an audience is just feeling in your bones what is cultural knowledge,” said Craig Mazin, one of the showrunners. “On the other hand, it’s not a show about the pandemic — it’s about what it means to survive and what’s the purpose of survival. So we get that out of the way pretty quickly.”Over the past decade, as video games have become more vivid and complex, developers have used the medium to spin rich, character-based stories that rival film and TV in quality. “The Last of Us,” for instance, is less about the actual outbreak than the father-daughter relationship between a smuggler named Joel (played by Pedro Pascal in the series) and a 14-year-old girl named Ellie (Bella Ramsey). Their journey across the United States, past zombies and cannibals, raises questions about the limits of love and the atrocities a parent will commit in the name of protecting a child.Acclaimed for its narrative depth, “The Last of Us,” the game, follows a smuggler named Joel and a girl named Ellie across a post-apocalyptic America.Sony Interactive EntertainmentBut while a handful of game-to-screen adaptations like the “Tomb Raider,” “Resident Evil” and “Sonic the Hedgehog” franchises have made enough money to warrant sequels, there is a sense that unlike, say, comic books, the stories in video games have never been properly translated.“A lot of them have been embarrassing,” said Neil Druckmann, who led the creation of “The Last of Us” and its 2020 sequel, “The Last of Us Part II,” and created the HBO show with Mazin. (Druckmann is also a showrunner.)For Hollywood that means a gold mine of intellectual property with a built-in audience of gamers has gone mostly unexploited. Given the pedigree of the creators — Mazin created “Chernobyl,” the Emmy-award winning mini-series, while Druckmann and his studio, Naughty Dog, are considered the benchmarks for narrative storytelling in games — fans are hoping “The Last of Us” will be different. Either way, viewers should prepare to see more games onscreen soon: Other popular video game franchises with film and TV adaptations in the works include “Twisted Metal,” “Ghost of Tsushima” and “Assassin’s Creed.”In a joint video interview late last month, Mazin and Druckmann discussed “The Last of Us,” what they changed from the game and what they didn’t, and why their philosophy for adaptation was to cut away much of the action in order to make the post-apocalyptic world feel more real. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.Inside the Dystopian World of ‘The Last of Us’The post-apocalyptic video game that inspired the TV series “The Last of Us” won over players with its photorealistic animation and a morally complex story.Game Review: “I found it hard to get past what it embraces with a depressing sameness, particularly its handling of its female characters,” our critic wrote of “The Last of Us” in 2013.‘Left Behind’: “The Last of Us: Left Behind,” a prologue designed to be played in a single sitting, was an unexpected hit in 2014.2020 Sequel: “The Last of Us Part II,” a tale of entrenched tribalism in a world undone by a pandemic, took a darker and unpredictable tone that left critics in awe.Playing the Game: Two Times reporters spent weeks playing the sequel in the run-up to its release. These were their first impressions.The “Last of Us” games are about a global pandemic in which the cordyceps fungus, a real-life fungus that can take over the bodies and minds of insects, jumps to humans and turns people into zombies. Suddenly that premise feels a lot less fantastical.CRAIG MAZIN Neil made the smart decision all these years ago to say, you know what, instead of some invented no-name zombie virus, or rage serum, or some supernatural hell-has-fallen-and-the-dead-will-walk-the-earth —NEIL DRUCKMANN Radiation!MAZIN Yeah, radiation, which is just an outrage. Instead of all that, why don’t we go find something that’s real? And he did. I mean, that’s what cordyceps does to ants. I love the science of it.“I believe that most fans are going to react positively to it, because we made it with love,” said Craig Mazin, right, on set with Lamar Johnson. “But if people don’t, I get that too.”Liane Hentscher/HBODRUCKMANN Part of the game’s success was that we try to treat it as grounded as possible. And with the show we’re able to take that philosophy even further. So I think why the pandemic [in the games] feels so real, even though it was written before our current pandemic, is we were looking at things like Katrina. Like here’s where government fails, here’s where people can get really selfish, and here’s where we can see these great acts of love.In the games, the outbreak takes place in 2013, whereas in the show it’s 2003. Given that most of the story takes place 20 years later, after the world falls apart, I’m guessing the idea was to place the show in the present day?MAZIN I have this thing about watching shows where a graphic comes up and says, “2053: London.” And I’m like, “I don’t know what 2053 is.” The notion that there’s this twist of fate, and 2023, instead of looking like this, it looks like this — there’s an immediacy to that. I probably inflated its importance in my mind, but it helped me.Gamers are generally of the opinion that game adaptations are pretty horrible. You both seem to agree, and I’m wondering why you think they’ve been such a failure.MAZIN There’s a lot of cringe out there.DRUCKMANN Sometimes the source material is just not strong enough for a direct adaptation. So all you’re left with is a name that has some value to it, but really you’re starting from scratch. Other times it’s that the people in charge are not gamers. They don’t understand what made this thing special. They hang on to really superficial things and they think, for example, plenty of players want to see that one gameplay moment or this one gun from the game.MAZIN Terrific video games are terrific because of their gameplay, but conceptually they may already be copies of something. A copy of “Aliens.” A copy of “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” You adapt that and you have a copy of a copy and can just feel a lack of freshness to it.Bella Ramsey, left and Anna Torv in “The Last of Us.”Liane Hentscher/HBOSo what did you try to do differently?DRUCKMANN The most important thing was to keep the soul of it, what it’s about: these relationships. What makes the show are the characters, the philosophical arguments of, “Do the ends justify the means?” And, “How big is your tribe that you’re going to care for?”The least important part was the gameplay. In the game we have long action sequences to get you into a flow state, which gets you to better connect with the character — you see yourself as that character. But if you just try to throw that on the screen in the passive medium, it’s not going to work. And that’s the thing that people often get wrong. The conversation with Craig and with HBO, the encouragement, which I loved, was, “Don’t focus on the action.”Given how many failures there have been, at least creatively, why do you think the appetite for game to TV or movie adaptations is suddenly so large?MAZIN There’s two possible reasons, one good and one not so good. The video game industry has been putting out some remarkable work. It seems natural that once these games achieve this impressive narrative space, you can start to think about porting them over. That’s the good reason.Here’s the bad reason: Somebody in a room who doesn’t know anything about playing video games looks at a PDF of how many copies are sold, and they go, “Well, let’s just do that. We need the title and the character, and the character should look like the guy in the game, and then, whatever, we’ll hire some people.”What are some of the differences in how you build a character for an interactive medium versus a passive one?DRUCKMANN With a game, there are certain constraints. Joel [the game’s main playable character] needs to be capable enough to mirror what you’re doing in the game. So, for example, he’s crouching and he’s killing. If all of a sudden we had a scene where he’s complaining about his knees, then there’s this disconnect. The Joel in the show, because you don’t have to support him crouch-walking or having to fight all these people, there was this idea of, “What if we explore his age and how broken down he is over the years?” Physically, he becomes a different person that’s more realistic than what we could have done in the game.When translating the game into a TV narrative, “the least important part was the gameplay,” Druckmann said.Sony Interactive EntertainmentMAZIN There are parts of games that, because of their design, have to violate reality. In “The Last of Us” — or really any game where you’re playing somebody that has guns, and you’re fighting against other people that have guns — you’re going to get shot. And then you’re going to heal yourself with a bandage, some pills, power-ups, whatever. So exploring the fragility of the body is part of how we honor this different medium. A single gunshot, if it’s not fatal, can permanently damage you as a human being. There is no bandage for this.Are you anxious about how fans of the game will react to changes?MAZIN My job was to be connected with my own fandom and to think about myself as representative of a lot of people, and to ask what would be important to me, what would hurt if it weren’t in the show. I believe that most fans are going to react positively to it, because we made it with love. But if people don’t, I get that too. It’s part of being deeply connected to something.DRUCKMANN My fear, and this just gets into a general conversation around fandom, is that our cast or anybody from our crew will get attacked or insulted as we make certain changes. After “The Last of Us II,” nothing anybody says online can get to me anymore. But I hate when anybody else gets it.You’re referring to the online harassment, including death threats, surrounding, among other things, the gender and sexuality of certain characters in the “Last of Us” games, which is also explored in the show.DRUCKMANN I’ve learned to just accept it and not to give it too much weight. I tend to not be driven by fear. If anything, I lean the opposite. When there’s a certain backlash to an idea, I’m like, then it’s an idea worth exploring.As a fan of the games, I found myself having a kind of reverse uncanny valley type reaction to Ellie in the show, where I was like, “But that’s not Ellie.” It made me realize how deeply I’ve connected to the game version of Ellie, who is voiced by Ashley Johnson but is a digital character. Unlike a live actress, who you realize is a person and might see in other things, you don’t see Ellie anywhere else, so she almost seems to belong to the story.MAZIN What I said to Bella is, people are going to probably have a reaction to you, not unlike Joel’s reaction, which is: “Who is this? This isn’t my daughter. This isn’t the person I love. The person I love looks like this and acts like this, and you’re not it … but I guess I’m stuck with you for a bit.”And then: “Well, you’re kind of growing on me … Actually, I think you’re pretty great … You know what? I would kill anyone to protect you.”That’s kind of how it works with Joel and Ellie, and that’s kind of how I think it’s going to work with the part of the audience that, like you and like me, has such an attachment to the Ellie that Neil and Ashley created in the game. That’s what Bella does magically. Bella does not beg for your approval — I’m talking about her Ellie — she just is that character and you, like Joel, are falling in love with her. More
A new adaptation of the novel “The Lying Life of Adults” features formidable female protagonists and an Italy with distinct social classes.Like the novel by Elena Ferrante on which it is based, the opening line of Netflix’s “The Lying Life of Adults” is spoken by the precocious teenage protagonist, Giovanna, who is listening at the door while her parents talk about her.“Before leaving home, my father told my mother that I was ugly,” Giovanna says, adding forlornly that he had compared her to his estranged sister Vittoria, an insult so vile that it prompted Giovanna’s mother to counter: “Don’t say that. She is a monster.”Thus the viewer is introduced to Giovanna (Giordana Marengo) and Vittoria (Valeria Golino), fitting new entries in the pseudonymous Italian author’s rich stable of formidable female protagonists. Brought to life onscreen in a recent six-episode adaptation of Ferrante’s 2019 novel, they are as complex and contradictory as Lila and Lenù, the protagonists of Ferrante’s four best-selling novels chronicling their friendship, a version of which appeared in HBO’s “My Brilliant Friend.”In “The Lying Life of Adults,” too, Naples provides a socially textured setting for this coming-of-age story, which propels Giovanna from the innocence of childhood into the world of adults’ complex and contradictory compromises. Set in the mid-1990s, the series underscores the slippery social standing of Italian girls, and women, seeking to find a footing in a world where men call the shots.The show is “rightly” Ferrante’s world, according to Domenico Procacci, the chief executive of Fandango, an Italian entertainment company that produced “Lying Life” for Netflix, who spoke at a news conference presenting the series in Rome last month. Fandango also co-produced “My Brilliant Friend” with HBO, RAI, the Italian national broadcaster, and others.From left, Giovanna (Marengo), Angela (Rossella Gamba) and Beniamino (Antonio Corvino) in the series. The girls begin experimenting with the freedoms offered by Naples.Eduardo Castaldo/NetflixIn “Lying Life,” Giovanna navigates two distinct Neapolitan neighborhoods so drastically diverse that it is hard to believe they belong to the same city. She lives in the Rione Alto, an upper-middle-class neighborhood mostly developed in the 1960s and ’70s capping the Vomero hill with breathtaking views of the Gulf of Naples. “Outside of the Vomero, the city scarcely belonged to me,” Giovanna says in the novel.Inside the World of Elena FerranteThe mysterious Italian writer has won international attention with her intimate representations of Neapolitan life, womanhood and friendship. Beginner’s Guide: New to Elena Ferrante’s work? Here’s a breakdown of her most important writing.English-Language Translator: The work of Ann Goldstein has helped catapult Ferrante to global fame. Humility is a hallmark of her approach.‘My Brilliant Friend’: The HBO series based on Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels is a testament to the elusive writer’s ability to create inscrutable characters.‘The Lying Life of Adults’: The novel, which was published in English in 2020 and is now being adapted into a TV series by Netflix, is “a more vulnerable performance, less tightly woven and deliberately plotted,” our critic writes.But in her determination to meet her aunt, Giovanna opens her world to the lower city neighborhood that her father, Andrea (Alessandro Preziosi) escaped, but that Vittoria still inhabits: a run-down district called Pascone in the novel, which was shot in the formerly industrial rough-and-tumble Poggioreale neighborhood.“I don’t think there is any city in Italy where the differences between social classes are as evident as Naples, and at times where this difference counts so little,” Francesco Piccolo, one of the show’s four screenwriters, said at the news conference. In the series, viewers who do not speak Italian might miss the fact that the contrast is underscored by the difference in the Neapolitan dialect spoken between the two neighborhoods. In the wealthy Vomero, the dialect is spoken “for pleasure, for fun,” Piccolo said, while in the other, it is “a totally emotional dialect.”Getting Vittoria right, her movements as well as her dialect, weighed on Golino, who may be best remembered by American audiences for her star turn in the films “Rain Man” and “Hot Shots!” She, too, grew up in the Vomero neighborhood, on “the good side of the tracks,” she said in a telephone interview, and confessed to never having seen the “Naples of Vittoria,” to the point that she “had to go find it, understand it.”A voice coach taught what was to her essentially a new language. “Even though I am Neapolitan, I had never spoken in that way,” Golino said. “It was a sound that I had heard in the city, but it was never part of my world.” To embody the earthy bawdiness of Vittoria “was difficult,” the actress said. “I had to study the words, a way of moving, a way of inhabiting space,” which was foreign to her. “So I spent a lot of time in Naples, which is my city, but Naples is made of many layers,” she said.Golino, center, was nervous about getting the character of Vittoria right. “I had to study the words, a way of moving, a way of inhabiting space,” the actor said.Eduardo Castaldo/NetflixIn turn, Marengo, 19, who made her screen debut as Giovanna after being selected from among 3,000 girls auditioning for the role, said Golino had nurtured her throughout the series. “She gave me a lot of advice,” Marengo said, and the two created a strong bond that Marengo thought was apparent on screen, she said in a telephone interview.“We really helped each other,” Golino said. “We were both in the same state of mind. She because it was her first time, I because I was constantly afraid of making a mistake.”Marengo said she had felt the responsibility of portraying the protagonist of a story that evolves entirely from Giovanna’s perspective. “At first, I was anxious that I wouldn’t be able to make it,” she said. But the director and the crew made sure she did not feel that responsibility, “and that really calmed me down,” she said.In the novel, Giovanna’s inward gaze is even more pronounced. But Edoardo De Angelis, the show’s director, said transposing that inner rumination into visual form was a natural extension of Ferrante’s writing.“Every single word contains an evocation that suggests and invokes a multitude of images,” De Angelis said in a telephone interview. “The words always suggested the path to take because Ferrante’s evocations are always very concrete, even if they begin with an interior thought.”De Angelis’s Naples involves a cacophony of colors and sounds, the underground music scene in the city’s avant-garde community centers and the nostalgia of summer festivals hosted by Italy’s once-powerful Communist Party.Ferrante, the famously elusive author who has never officially made her identity public, has a screenwriting credit, and De Angelis, who is also credited with writing the script with Piccolo and Laura Paolucci, said that correspondence with Ferrante had involved “many letters to find a common language.”In transposing the novel to television, the story also took an unexpected turn, a plot twist that is not in the novel but that Ferrante signed off on, De Angelis said: She was well aware that moving from the pages to the screen “was an occasion to express elements that were only suggested and left to the imagination in the novel,” while on the screen, “the imagination becomes image,” offering the possibility of “more radical choices.”These radical choices open new avenues, and the episodes end with a series of unresolved questions to be answered, perhaps, in a possible sequel. (To this reader, the ending of the novel also suggested that a second book could follow.)Just as Golino worried about doing the character of Vittoria justice, “our series aims to show the authenticity of Italy, even outside of stereotypes,” Eleonora Andreatta, affectionately known as “Tinny,” the vice president of Italian originals at Netflix, said at the news conference. She also worked on the “My Brilliant Friend” series in her previous job at RAI.“Portraying a character that is not edifying, in which you draw out the human, the real human that makes mistakes,” and who was “disobedient” was one of the reasons that she had accepted the role, “even though it frightened me,” Golino said in the telephone interview.“A good actor doesn’t have to be a good liar, but usually they are,” she said at the news conference, eliciting laughs. “If they have to tell a lie, a good actor tells it very well.” More
“This is the other side of the story,” the prince said of his new memoir, “Spare,” while chatting with Stephen Colbert on Tuesday.Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.‘The Other Side of the Story’Prince Harry discussed his new memoir, “Spare,” on “The Late Show” on Tuesday, with Stephen Colbert offering Harry a cocktail at the start.“I hear you like tequila,” Colbert said, pouring each of them a glass.Keeping a comfortable and friendly rapport, Prince Harry answered Colbert’s probing but respectful questions about his life and family.“This feels a little bit like group therapy,” Harry said at one point with a laugh.Colbert asked Harry about early leaks of the memoir that were published in the British tabloids. The prince cautioned people to be wary of the stories, stressing the importance of context.“Context is everything, and unfortunately, due to those leaks, the British press, which are central to so much of my story in my 38 years up until this point, and after spending two years focused on context, what I am going to share, how I am going to share it and being able to piece it all together, they intentionally chose to strip away all the context and take out individual segments of my life, my story and every experience that I’ve had and turn it into a salacious headline.” — PRINCE HARRY“This is the other side of the story. There’s a lot in here that perhaps makes people feel uncomfortable and scared.” — PRINCE HARRY“Look, I’m not going to lie — the last few days have been hurtful and challenging and not being able to do anything about those leaks that you refer to. Perhaps — well, not perhaps, without doubt — the most dangerous lie that they have told is that I somehow boasted about the number of people that I killed in Afghanistan.” — PRINCE HARRY“My words are not dangerous, but the spin of my words are very dangerous.” — PRINCE HARRYPrince Harry also spoke about leaving the royal family and Britain with his wife, Meghan Markle, and his assumption that they would be left alone.“That was a real eye-opener for me. I never thought that they would be away from it completely, but I did think that we would get some form of peace. But that is when I realized that actually our mere existence outside of that institutional control was more of a threat. And you know, there’s a similar thing that happened to my mom as well. And, look, they always knew that my wife was going to leave because of the way they were abusing her, but I think the most embarrassing thing was that I decided to leave with her.” — PRINCE HARRY“I have never seen the level of abuse and harassment that I witnessed over my wife. Other members of the family, they have experienced different forms of that, but to see it happen the way it happened, I was naïve going into it and I didn’t realize that the British press would be so bigoted. But even if I had, I wouldn’t have accepted or understood that they could get away with it. But here we are, and I’ve created — or we have created — a fantastic life here in California.” — PRINCE HARRYColbert asked Harry what his mother, Princess Diana, would have thought about the current family dynamic, especially between Harry and his brother, Prince William.“It is impossible to say where we would be now, where those relationships would be now, but there is no way that the distance between my brother and I would be the same.” — PRINCE HARRY“I’ve really felt the presence of my mom, especially the last couple of years. I detail in the book my brother and I talking at her grave and how he felt as though she had been with him for a long period of time and helped set him up with life and that he felt she was moving over to me. And I have felt her more in the last two years than I have the last 30.” — PRINCE HARRYHarry admitted that he has watched “The Crown.” Colbert asked if he fact-checks the series while he watches.“Yes, I do, actually. Which by the way, by the way — another reason why it is so important that history has it right.” — PRINCE HARRYThe Punchiest Punchlines (What’s Up, Docs? Edition)“Today, Obama was like, ‘Nothing to worry about. If Joe had access, it wasn’t important.’” — JIMMY FALLON“Biden was shocked and said he had no idea how the documents got there. Then Hunter Biden was like, ‘OK, so don’t get mad.’” — JIMMY FALLON“There are said to be just under a dozen documents related to Ukraine, Iran and the U.K., and for the MAGA crowd, this was like Christmas and the McRib coming back at the same time.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Is this just what every president does now, just scatter a trail of intelligence like Johnny Document-seed?” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Wow, it’s alarming when you realize how much of our national security relies on old men keeping track of loose pages.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Bits Worth WatchingLeslie Jones teased her upcoming gig as a “Daily Show” guest host on Tuesday’s “Tonight Show.”What We’re Excited About on Wednesday NightThe rapper and actor Common will visit Seth Meyers on Wednesday’s “Late Night.”Also, Check This OutSimona Tabasco broke through to American audiences in the second season of “The White Lotus.” Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty ImagesThe “White Lotus” star Simona Tabasco shares her love of “Titane,” the Tate Modern and other cultural touchstones in this week’s My Ten. 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The winning films, TV shows, actors and production teams at the 2023 Golden Globe Awards.Going into a typical awards show, the big question is, of course, who and what will win the top honors. This year’s Golden Globes ceremony is not a typical awards show.The 80th Golden Globe Awards will be the first edition of the annual spectacle to be on TV since an ethics, finance and diversity scandal involving the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the group behind the awards, led NBC to decide not to air the 2022 ceremony. So the biggest question is really whether the show’s organizers can win back the trust of viewers, the network and the Hollywood figures whose presence it relies on.Still, there will be formal winners. As in years past, the show will hand out honors in both film and TV categories. Nominees in the top film categories include “The Fabelmans,” “Tár,” “Elvis,” “Everything Everywhere All at Once” and “The Banshees of Inisherin.” TV shows up for multiple awards include “Abbott Elementary,” “House of the Dragon,” “Better Call Saul” and “The Crown.”The ceremony is set to air on Tuesday at 8 p.m. Eastern time (5 p.m. Pacific time) on NBC, and to be streamed on NBCUniversal’s streaming service, Peacock. Follow below for updates as winners are announced. More
