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      Nicole Kidman Bares Everything in the Sexy Drama ‘Babygirl’

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      The star is taking chances again in this look at a woman reconciling her sexual fantasies. The movie was the talk of the Venice Film Festival.Though Nicole Kidman used to be one of cinema’s greatest risk-takers, in recent years, she’s become streaming TV’s safest bet. The 57-year-old star is now a fixture of beach-read limited series like “Big Little Lies” and “Nine Perfect Strangers,” “The Undoing” and “The Perfect Couple.” They’re widely watched and keep Kidman bankable, even if you might miss the actress who used to give her all to the auteurist likes of Jonathan Glazer, Yorgos Lanthimos and Lars von Trier.That’s what makes “Babygirl” so bracing. This A24 film, which premiered Friday at the Venice Film Festival, is exactly what Kidman has shied away from in recent years, a daring indie that re-establishes her as one of our most fearless actresses. Everyone who’s watched this spiky, sexy film in Venice wants to talk about it, and it should start no end of delicious debate when A24 releases it in theaters this Christmas.Written and directed by Halina Reijn, “Babygirl” opens on Kidman faking an orgasm. She’s playing Romy, a hard-charging chief executive who seems to have it all: success, two spirited daughters, and a handsome husband (Antonio Banderas) who dotes on her by day and makes tender love to her at night. But is that the kind of sex she really wants? As soon as her husband finishes and falls asleep, Romy darts into another room, pulls up some S&M porn on her laptop and brings herself to a real climax.Though her tech company innovates in the field of automation, Romy yearns to break free of her own smoothly running routine. That’s why she’s so intrigued by the office intern Samuel (Harris Dickinson), who often makes demands of her — some vaguely flirtatious — when their power differential is supposed to be the other way around. They first meet outside their office building when a rapt Romy watches him soothe a wild dog just by talking to it, though he’ll later claim that he simply fed the mutt a cookie.“Do you always have cookies on you?” she asks him.They lock eyes and he teases her: “Yeah, you want one?”It isn’t long before Romy is stuffing Samuel’s tie in her mouth and lapping milk off a saucer when he orders her to, though the abandon that ought to distinguish their S&M affair is only offered in fits and starts. Romy is too wracked with guilt to fully commit to their wild acts, not simply because she’s stepping out on her husband but because she can’t reconcile the power dynamic of her fantasies with the bows-to-no-one role model she’s publicly considered to be.Though Kidman has made sexually explicit films like “Eyes Wide Shut,” she still considered the intimate scenes in “Babygirl” a step further than what she’s used to, telling Vanity Fair, “This is something you do and hide in your home videos.” At the Venice news conference for the film on Friday afternoon, she said the thought of presenting it to audiences terrified 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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      in Television

      With New FX Sitcom ‘English Teacher,’ Brian Jordan Alvarez Takes Another Leap

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      For over a decade, Brian Jordan Alvarez has been bootstrapping his way across platforms and screens big and small, collecting fans and followers.In the early days, he starred with friends in short comedic sketches he posted on YouTube. Then in 2016, on a paltry budget of around $10,000, he created “The Gay and Wondrous Life of Caleb Gallo,” a five-part comedy web series about a misfit group of queer friends in Los Angeles. Alvarez wrote and directed it, and starred as the title character.“Caleb Gallo” quickly found an audience. It was shown at the Tribeca Film Festival that year, earned a Gotham Award nomination and topped IndieWire’s list of best web series of 2016, edging out Jerry Seinfeld’s “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.” The next year, Alvarez landed a recurring role in the three-season revival of “Will & Grace,” as the fiancé, then husband, of Jack McFarland (Sean Hayes).In 2023 he leveled up again, starring alongside Allison Williams in the horror comedy box office smash “M3gan” and reaching new heights of virality with a stable of absurdist face-filtered characters. The most famous of them, the bug-eyed, duck-lipped pop star TJ Mack, delighted millions on TikTok and Instagram with the earworm “Sitting” (pronounced “Sittim”).Alvarez plays an English teacher at a high school in Austin, Texas, who is navigating relationships and discussions of hot-button topics.Richard Ducree/FXNow Alvarez is taking another major leap: “English Teacher,” a feel-good sitcom with an edge that he created and stars in, debuts on FX on Sept. 2.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 Highly Deceptive, Deeply Loved, Down-to-Earth Carol Kane

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      Do you hear Carol Kane before you see her? The voice that can go pipsqueak high or deep rasp, wavering at just the right moment? Or do you imagine first the mass of golden curls, which telegraph unruliness while actually framing exactly what she wants you to experience?She modulates that distinctive quaver to match the character, too — “whether it should be lower, or denser, or higher, or an accent,” she said. “I work a lot on that. I get it as specific as I can.”It’s nearly absent in her “Annie Hall” grad student, and filtered through quiet Yiddish in “Hester Street,” the 1975 immigrant drama that earned her an Oscar nomination at 22. It swings from the pinched cadences of Simka, with her invented language on the sitcom “Taxi,” to the brash Lillian, the batty, mouthy New York landlord on “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.”And in her newest film, the Sundance favorite “Between the Temples,” in which Kane stars opposite Jason Schwartzman, she runs the gamut from vulnerable to sharp — a vocal confidence scale that’s not far from how her own real-life lilt changes. “It depends on the second, the moment, the day,” she said, laughing.More than an eccentric character study, Kane, 72, who has been acting professionally for nearly 60 years, is actually a deceptively versatile performer who, through friendship and dedication to craft, is connected to Hollywood’s golden age — but also appeared at a sci-fi convention this month. (She joined the second season of “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds” on Paramount+ as an alien engineer with an unplaceable accent — her twist.)There were long stretches when the phone didn’t ring, then periods like now, a late renaissance (Kanaissance) when the superlative parts stack up. What she has learned, Kane said in a recent interview, is that in her career, “one thing does not necessarily lead to another — no matter how well-received or successful. It’s kind of a life lesson in a way.”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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      With ‘Maria’ Biopic, Angelina Jolie Could Make Her Oscar Comeback

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      “Maria,” about the opera diva Maria Callas, plays to the star’s strengths. Its Venice Film Festival debut was timed so the actress could avoid Brad Pitt.She’s one of the most famous actresses to have ever lived, but how formidable is Angelina Jolie’s filmography?After winning the supporting-actress Oscar for “Girl, Interrupted” (1999), Jolie made a few big hits like “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider” and “Mr. & Mrs. Smith,” as well as a string of movies that remained steadfastly so-so. (Who remembers “Taking Lives,” “Come Away” or “Life or Something Like It”?) Jolie’s most recent movies, the mildly received “Those Who Wish Me Dead” and “Eternals,” were released back in 2021, and her only other Oscar nomination happened ages ago, for Clint Eastwood’s 2008 film “Changeling.”Jolie has said that she takes frequent breaks from acting to spending time with her family, but it’s still been awhile since a movie really leveraged all she has to offer. Perhaps that’s why journalists at the Venice Film Festival on Thursday were quick to herald a career comeback in “Maria,” which stars Jolie as the opera singer Maria Callas: Here, at last, is a project that knows how to take full advantage of her star persona.Directed by Pablo Larraín, “Maria” follows the soprano near the end of her life as she reflects on the pressures of fame, her tortured romance with the wealthy shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis (Haluk Bilginer), and a singing career that began to falter as Callas lost confidence in her voice. It’s a meaty role that lets Jolie switch between strength and tremulous vulnerability with a couple of operatic set pieces that have her singing directly to the camera, all but asking the viewer to marvel at that movie-star face.Musical biopics tend to be catnip for Oscar voters, and at Thursday’s news conference for “Maria,” the first question was whether Jolie suspected she might have a shot at gold when taking on this role. The actress demurred, saying the people she was most eager to please were the opera fans familiar with Callas.“My fear would be to disappoint them,” Jolie said. “Of course, if in my own business there’s response to the work, I’m grateful.”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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      Asian American Actors Are Finally Getting Romantic Lead Roles

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      It was not long ago that the actor and writer Joel Kim Booster first began going to auditions only to quickly realize that the roles available to him as an Asian American man were severely limited.“It does not get better from here, no matter how many Chinese-food delivery boys you play,” he recalled being told by other Asian American actors.But Booster kept at it. And eventually, in 2022, he got to portray a gay Asian American man in “Fire Island,” a groundbreaking rom-com that he also wrote. “So much of that movie,” Booster said, “is just a literal transcript from my life.”As it turned out, things did get a little better for Asian American men in Hollywood during the decade that Booster spent toiling. And he senses that the momentum has continued in the two years since “Fire Island” debuted.Many of the newest Asian and Asian American stories seem unconcerned with “the white gaze,” he said. And so “the conversation has sort of moved on for a lot of people,” he said, adding that his movie “almost feels a little retrograde now.”Indeed, since the 2018 blockbuster “Crazy Rich Asians” became a box office hit, Asian and Asian American stories and characters have proliferated in American pop culture. And after decades of degrading, often emasculating portrayals, Asian and Asian American men like Booster have been at the center of the new work, often playing the sort of hunky hero parts that Hollywood long kept out of reach.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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      Karla Sofía Gascón of ‘Emilia Pérez’ Could Make Oscar History

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      There has never been a movie quite like “Emilia Pérez,” so it’s fitting that its star Karla Sofía Gascón is one of a kind, too.In the film from the director Jacques Audiard, Gascón plays a Mexico City cartel kingpin who fakes death in order to transition abroad in secret. Years after her gender-affirming surgery, the newly rechristened Emilia contacts the lawyer who helped arrange it (Zoe Saldaña) and has one more request: a reunion with the unsuspecting wife (Selena Gomez) and children she left behind, even though returning to the scene of her old crimes could have dire consequences.The multitude of genres suggested by this synopsis — a gritty drug-world exposé, a family melodrama, a trans-empowerment narrative — are further complicated by the fact that “Emilia Pérez” is a musical, meaning the characters are liable to break into song whether they’re in a love scene or clashing in a heated gunfight. In a film full of big swings, it’s hard to imagine any of the wild ideas holding together if it weren’t for Gascón, who can contain all of those multitudes in a single freighted look. Many pundits believe that after Netflix releases “Emilia Pérez” in November, Gascón will make history as the first openly trans actress nominated for an Oscar.In May, the 52-year-old Gascón was the breakout star of the Cannes Film Festival, where “Emilia Pérez” won a best actress award that was shared among all of the movie’s leading women. Since her castmates had returned home before the awards ceremony, an overcome Gascón took the stage on their behalf, and her emotional speech was the night’s highlight. At the microphone for nearly six minutes, Gascón flitted between Spanish and English as she tearfully asserted the humanity of trans people, joked about bribing the jurors, paid romantic tribute to her co-star Gomez, then apologized to Gomez’s boyfriend for her ardor.Afterward, Gascón tried to explain her speech’s breathless sprawl. “I’ve never been given a prize,” she told reporters. “I’ve mostly been given blows and kicks.”Spanish-speaking audiences may already be familiar with Gascón, a veteran of Mexican telenovelas who starred in the hit 2013 film “Nosotros los Nobles” and transitioned six years ago while in the public eye. “It was very difficult,” she told me recently over lunch in Los Angeles. “People knew me a certain way and then I changed, so I constantly felt that I had to justify myself. I was always fighting with everyone.”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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      ‘Beetlejuice’ Sequel With Jenna Ortega Premieres at Venice Film Festival

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      After the actors’ strike muted the 2023 edition, this year’s event is being powered by stars like the “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” actress and her castmates.On Wednesday morning, several hours before Tim Burton’s “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” opened the Venice Film Festival, dozens of young people were already camped out by the Palazzo del Cinema in the hopes of seeing one of the film’s stars.As I surveyed the scene, a teenage boy pulled up on a bicycle, accompanied by his parents. All three craned their necks to check out the still-empty red carpet. “Jenna Ortega is going to be here?” asked his father.The boy nodded shyly and his parents exchanged grins. “That’s his great love, you know,” the father said.Just as casting Ortega, the popular star of “Wednesday,” helped juice interest in Burton’s sequel, so too do glamorous movie stars turbocharge a film festival. Last year, Venice had to make do with precious few A-listers since the actors’ strike barred anyone who had appeared in a big-studio film from doing press for it.That meant the Zendaya tennis romance “Challengers,” planned as the glamorous opening salvo for last year’s festival, was yanked from the lineup and replaced by the Italian war drama “Comandante.” While that movie had its scattered highlights, it didn’t exactly have teenagers lining up for it at 11 in the morning.At a news conference Wednesday afternoon, the festival’s artistic director Alberto Barbera recalled experiencing “this terrible feeling — this bereavement, if you like” when the strike sapped his event of its opening film and most of its stars.“It was a great blow we were dealt,” he said. “There was a lot of concern, of course, that the lack of the talent may somehow undermine the efficacy of the machinery of this festival, which is also associated with strong promotion.”In other words, while cinema is the lifeblood of any film festival, celebrity is what really sells it. Barbera asserted that this year’s starry schedule will be the exact opposite of the previous edition: “We have the longest list of talent attending, who will actually walk along our red carpet, in years.”The “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” news conference provided a fitting sneak preview of what’s to come: When Ortega, 21, took the dais alongside Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder and the rest of the cast, she said it was she who felt intimidated by the others’ combined star power.“I just kind of tried to mind my business in the corner,” Ortega said, “making sure I didn’t rip off the lovely Winona’s work from back in the day.”The sequel needed more than 35 years to mount in part because of the busy schedules of Burton and his big stars. Knowing that, would the director ever consider a third installment?“Let’s do the math,” he said wryly. “It took 35 years to do this one, so I’ll be 100. I guess it’s possible, with medical science these days, but I don’t think so.” More

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      Revisiting Tom Cruise’s ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ and ‘Magnolia’ Performances From 1999

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      Twenty-five years ago, the superstar starred in “Eyes Wide Shut” and “Magnolia,” and opened himself up for the camera in ways he rarely has since.“Eyes Wide Shut” had a blunt sales pitch: Cruise. Kidman. Kubrick.The poster didn’t need much more. Audiences already knew plenty. At the peak of his clout, having just earned his second Oscar nomination, for “Jerry Maguire,” and publicly launched his production company with “Mission: Impossible,” Tom Cruise and his wife at the time, Nicole Kidman, ditched Hollywood to quietly make a dirty movie in England with the legendary director Stanley Kubrick. The shoot was supposed to last six to eight months. It took 15.‘’People say: ‘You’ve lost 40, 60, 80 million dollars. You’ve lost all this money. You’ve lost all this time,” Cruise told The New York Times a year before its anticipated release. “To have a chance to work with Stanley Kubrick,” he added, “that’s worth it for me.”Talk about risky business. The second half of 1999 would prove to be the diciest period of Cruise’s career with the release of two back-to-back films that dared him to expose his private vulnerabilities. The first, “Eyes Wide Shut,” released 25 years ago this summer, was a cerebral and slippery tale about a husband named Dr. Bill Harford who wanders Manhattan for two nights as vague vengeance upon his wife for fantasizing about another man. It was hawked as Cruise after dark — the movie star and his spouse, the ascendant Kidman, inviting people into their bedroom to see how they slept, smooched and argued.Cruise sacrificed a year and a half of his life for what he hoped would be his major contender, the film that might finally earn him an Academy Award. But ironically, it was the other role that got him an invite to the ceremony: an outrageous supporting bit as the seduction guru Frank T.J. Mackey in Paul Thomas Anderson’s ensemble drama “Magnolia” that Cruise had shot in just three weeks. Of the two performances, it’s by far the most personally revealing.Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise, married at the time, playing a couple in “Eyes Wide Shut.”Warner Bros.At that time, Cruise was a promiscuous director-gatherer, rarely working with the same filmmaker twice. He aimed for heavyweights: Martin Scorsese, Oliver Stone, Rob Reiner, Ron Howard, Brian De Palma, breaking his ronin inclinations only to make “Top Gun” and “Days of Thunder” with Tony Scott. On “Thunder,” he had fallen in love with Kidman and made another film with her, too — “Far and Away” — and neither had been critically acclaimed.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