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      in Music

      Apple’s New App Aims to Make Classical Music More Accessible

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      The company says it has a fix for the unwieldy world of classical streaming. But it’s unclear how much traction a stand-alone app can get.In the streaming era, fans of classical music have had reason to grumble.It can be hard for veteran listeners to find what they want on platforms like Spotify, Tidal, Amazon and YouTube, which are optimized for pop music fans searching for the latest by Taylor Swift or Beyoncé. And for curious newcomers, it can be difficult to get beyond algorithmic loops of Pachelbel’s “Canon in D Major” and Mozart’s “Rondo Alla Turca.”Apple last week released a stand-alone app meant to address these problems. The app, known as Apple Music Classical, features a refined search engine, a sleek interface and a host of features aimed at making classical music more accessible, including beginners’ guides to different musical eras and commentary from marquee artists like the violinist Hilary Hahn and the cellist Yo-Yo Ma.Apple hopes that the app, which has been in development since 2021, when the company acquired Primephonic, a classical streaming start-up in Amsterdam, will attract die-hard classical fans and new listeners alike. But it remains unclear how much traction the app can get in a crowded streaming market, in which Apple competes with behemoths like Spotify as well as dedicated classical services like Idagio.“This is just the beginning,” Oliver Schusser, a vice president at Apple, said in an interview, adding that Apple would continue to improve and build the app’s database. “We’re really serious about this.”I spent a few days putting Apple Music Classical to the test, trying out its search, playlists and guides to classical music. (The app is currently available only on iPhone, though an Android version is in the works; at the moment, there is no desktop version.) Here are my impressions.Cutting Through the MetadataFor pop music, a listing of artist, track and album is generally sufficient. But in classical, there are more nuances in the metadata: composer, work, soloist, ensemble, instrument, conductor, movement and nickname (like Beethoven’s “Emperor” concerto or Mahler’s “Resurrection” symphony).Apple has amassed 50 million such data points, the company says, in the app — encompassing some 20,000 composers, 117,000 works, 350,000 movements and five million tracks — and its search function generally feels more intuitive than its rivals.On many streaming platforms, I have struggled to find Rachmaninoff’s recordings of his compositions. A search for his name on Spotify, for example, returns a disorderly display of his most popular works, such as “Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini,” performed by a wide variety of artists.But on Apple Music Classical, it is easier to quickly locate his recordings because the app can distinguish between Rachmaninoff the composer and Rachmaninoff the pianist or conductor. The search function is not perfect; a Rachmaninoff track by the Chinese pianist Niu Niu also shows up in the mix of recordings by Rachmaninoff. But the app makes it much easier to hunt down specific pieces of music.A Sprawling CollectionApple Music Classical has a clean and inviting interface that mimics the main Apple Music app. But it still struggles with a problem that has long vexed classical streaming: the sheer volume of the catalog.A search for Verdi’s “Aida,” for example, turns up an eye-popping 1,330 recordings. Apple has tried to make it easier to navigate a sprawling list like that. A page for “Aida,” for example, has a brief description of the opera, an “editor’s choice” recording (Antonio Pappano and the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia) and five of the most frequently played versions.But it can still feel overwhelming. It helps to know exactly what you’re looking for: the list can be searched, scrolled or sorted by popularity, name, release date or duration. If you’re interested in recordings of “Aida” featuring Leontyne Price in the title role, for example, you can type in “Leontyne” and find her performances under the baton of Erich Leinsdorf, Georg Solti, Thomas Schippers and others.
      Opera can be especially difficult to navigate on streaming platforms because of long lists of cast members. While Apple comprehensively lists singers on each track, it can be hard to figure out quickly who the stars are when perusing albums. This could be fixed through more consistent album descriptions, or an option to enlarge album covers to make the words more legible. And while Apple has introduced the ability to search by lyrics for pop songs, no such feature exists in classical yet.Apple makes the vastness of the classical repertoire more manageable through inventive playlists, which help resurface celebrated recordings. These playlists cover a variety of genres, including opera, Renaissance music, art song and minimalism. There are also lists for composers, including the usual suspects — Bach, Mozart, Beethoven — as well as contemporary artists like Kaija Saariaho and Steve Reich. “Hidden Gems” highlights overlooked albums (“Breaking Waves,” a compilation of flute music by Swedish women, for instance, or “Consolation: Forgotten Treasures of the Ukrainian Soul”). “Composers Undiscovered” showcases lesser-known works by prominent composers, like Beethoven’s Scottish songs.Attracting NewcomersApple hopes the app will help draw new listeners to classical music, and many features are aimed at shedding its elitist image.On the home screen, the app offers a nine-part introduction called “The Story of Classical,” described as a guide to the “weird and wonderful world of classical music.” The series takes listeners from the Baroque to the 21st century, with forays further back, into medieval and Renaissance music.
      A series called “Track by Track” features commentary by renowned artists, including Hahn and Ma. The cellist Abel Selaocoe, introducing an album of pieces by Bach and South African and Tanzanian folk songs, describes how hymnal music from England and the Netherlands mixed with African culture. The pianist Víkingur Olafsson talks about feeling naked onstage when he plays Mozart’s Piano Sonata No. 16, “a piece we all have to face as pianists.”Part of Apple’s mission appears to be to help elevate overlooked artists, particularly women and people of color. For example, a tab of composers begins with Beethoven, Bach and Mozart but then expands to Clara Schumann, Caroline Shaw and Errollyn Wallen, as well as William Grant Still.The pianist Alice Sara Ott and the conductor Karina Canellakis are featured on an exclusive recording of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic.
      While using the app on a recent morning, I encountered the music of Hildegard von Bingen, a 12th-century Benedictine nun and composer of Gregorian chants. Hildegard, I soon discovered, is something of a star on the app, where she is described as a scientist, mystic, writer and philosopher and sits adjacent to Tchaikovsky on a composer roster. (Many of the great composers have been given enhanced digital portraits as part of Apple’s efforts to make them more realistic; Hildegard is shown in a habit, with a piercing stare.)Hildegard’s music could easily be lost in the chaos of streaming. But in the Apple universe, it gets fresh life. More

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      in Television

      ‘The Consultant’ Review: When Your Start-Up Goes to Hell

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      Christoph Waltz plays a very, very bad boss in a dark tech-industry satire from Amazon Prime Video.“The Consultant,” an amusing trifle on Amazon Prime Video that burns through most of its dark-comic capital before its eight episodes are up, is set during a critical moment at a tech company: when new, “competent” management takes over for the brilliant but callow founder.It’s a Tim Cook-Steve Jobs scenario — there’s even a scene involving a sledgehammer, to reinforce the Apple connection — with a twist that both gives the show its satirical energy and limits the reach of its dark humor. The evil new boss, a silver-haired suit named Regus (Christoph Waltz), is actually evil: He arrives, like Old Scratch, with a contract and finagles the leader of a struggling video-game company into signing it, thereby bartering away the business. (The young technocrat doesn’t appear to have a soul to give up.)“The Consultant” was created and written by the British screenwriter Tony Basgallop, based on a novel by Bentley Little, and it is in the vein of his previous American series, “Servant” on Apple TV+. Basgallop dresses up basic horror premises with curlicues of mordant, deadpan humor, and creates an ambient pea soup of unease that, for his well-employed but economically insecure young characters, constitutes a reign of terror. Key to the formula is the coy refusal to specify whether what we’re seeing is supernatural malevolence or simply really bad behavior.“Servant,” a creepy-babysitter drama that counts M. Night Shyamalan among its executive producers, succeeded in its early going largely on the basis of Lauren Ambrose’s antic, fearless performance as a frantic tiger mom. “The Consultant” doesn’t have that kind of energy at its center — Waltz, recycling his oddball cultivated-creepy persona for the umpteenth time, is amusing but not much more as the coldblooded, possibly diabolical capitalist.You can’t really blame Waltz, though, because there’s not much to the character beyond the idea of boss as devil. Basgallop and his collaborators, who include the director Matt Shakman (“WandaVision”), seem to have started with that notion and then worked, with diminishing results, to stretch it out in a way that didn’t answer any questions and left open the possibility of a second season.The satire of the tech industry is microchip thin, though often clever in its specifics. The almost entirely faceless staff of CompWare are uniformly indolent and feckless; Regus, who knows nothing about the product or the business, treats the office as a jungle and sets the workers against one another like players in one of the company’s games. In an industry that prides itself on its unconventionality, he’s the real chaos agent. But he’s also an unrepentant Luddite, or maybe just an ancient soul — he refers to a phone as “your hand device” and lovingly, manually sharpens a long row of pencils. (The pencils, like the stairs leading to Regus’s office, are a suggestive blood red.)Just a handful of performers, besides Waltz, have roles of any significance. His primary co-stars are Brittany O’Grady (“White Lotus”) and Nat Wolff (“The Stand”) as Elaine, an executive assistant, and Craig, a coder. They are the only employees who bother to act on their suspicions of Regus, whose plans appear to extend beyond CompWare in lurid and possibly apocalyptic ways.Their investigation of him provides most of the show’s plot as well as a semblance of thematic complexity. Elaine is a loyal corporate soldier who tries to temper Regus’s crueler impulses while angling for a better title; Craig is a smart but lazy man-child opposed to any exercise of authority that threatens his good times. (Wolff gives the show’s liveliest performance.) The ability of the two to work together for a larger good is a test of Regus’s beliefs about human nature.Some of Basgallop’s ideas pay dividends — Regus’s tone-deaf commitment to keeping his bargain with the CompWare founder has droll results — and there’s pleasure in the arch, offhand way Waltz puts across his character’s old-world weirdness. (When Regus discovers that one of his employees is lesbian, he tells the assembled work force, “Ursula lies with a woman.”) But Basgallop’s cross of “Silicon Valley” and “The Devil’s Advocate” doesn’t come together because he hasn’t invested sufficiently in the dramatic infrastructure. We’re left waiting for Regus’s mask to come off and wondering if there will be anything there when it does. More

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      in Movies

      ‘Black Bear,’ ‘Sharp Stick’ and More Streaming Gems

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      Looking for something different to stream? We have options for you.This month’s suggestions for the hidden gems of your subscription streaming services cut a wide swath of genres and styles, including a piercing psychological thriller, a moody marital drama and a buck-wild sex comedy, with a handful of first-rate documentaries to keep you anchored in reality.‘Black Bear’ (2020)Stream it on Amazon Prime Video.When Aubrey Plaza arrived on the scene over a decade ago, her bone-dry wit, acerbic delivery and M.V.P. supporting turns in comic films and television suggested the second coming of Janeane Garofalo. But her electrifying dramatic work over the past few years — on “The White Lotus,” in “Emily the Criminal” and in this scorching portrait of psychosexual one-upmanship from the writer and director Lawrence Michael Levine — suggests something closer to Gena Rowlands. The wildly unpredictable psychological drama begins as a love triangle, with Plaza as an actor-turned-filmmaker on a remote retreat with a married couple (Christopher Abbott and Sarah Gadon, both excellent). Over the course of a long night, the trio flirt, hint and accuse, rearranging and regrouping their allegiances, until … well, then it goes somewhere else entirely, grippingly blurring the lines between life, art and their respective commentaries.‘Take This Waltz’ (2012)Stream it on HBO Max.The director Sarah Polley has been running the awards gauntlet for her latest film “Women Talking.” On Twitter, she took a moment to winkingly, winningly note the debt owed her by one of her competitors, requesting “that Steven Spielberg return my cast from ‘Take This Waltz.’” And “The Fabelmans” co-stars Michelle Williams and Seth Rogen are marvelous in Polley’s sophomore outing, as Margot and Lou, an easy-breezy couple whose comfortable marriage is drawn into doubt when Margot is suddenly thunderstruck by her attraction to a new neighbor (understandably, as he’s played by Luke Kirby). Polley masterfully takes what could have been a weepy melodrama or a scolding screed and turns it into a nuanced and probing meditation on what it truly means to be faithful.‘Sharp Stick’ (2022)Stream it on Hulu.Lena Dunham’s 2022 was a study in contrasts, with two night-and-day feature films to contemplate: her Amazon original “Catherine Called Birdy,” which seemed to challenge the very notion of who Dunham is and what she does, and the indie comedy-drama “Sharp Stick,” which took those notions into new and provocative territory. Her focus is Sarah Jo (Kristine Froseth), a 26-year-old nanny who, rather ill-advisedly, discards her virginity with the scuzzy burnout father (Jon Bernthal) who employs her. Dunham’s knack for writing amusingly self-destructive women and dopey men remains intact, and her own turn as the mother caught in the middle is as thorny and complicated as the movie surrounding it.‘Cosmopolis’ (2012)Stream it on Amazon Prime Video.The mixed reception that greeted Noah Baumbach’s recent film adaptation of Don DeLillo’s “White Noise” served as another reminder that there seems something uniquely tricky about turning the author’s thematically and historically dense works into quicksilver cinema. But in 2012 the director David Cronenberg was up to the challenge with “Cosmopolis,” turning DeLillo’s chronicle of a day in the life of a young billionaire into a snapshot of self-destruction in the Occupy era, while Robert Pattinson makes a particularly effective DeLillo protagonist, all cold surfaces and questionable motives.‘The Monster’ (2016)Stream it on HBO Max.Bryan Bertino’s tight, compact thriller finds a fiercely independent tween girl (Ella Ballentine) and her alcoholic mother (Zoe Kazan) on a long, tough drive through the lonely night — and then stranded in their car, wrecked while swerving to avoid a wolf on the road. But that wolf was trying to escape from another animal, and the women soon supplant the wolf as its prey. That sounds simple enough, but that’s also not all Bertino is up to; the picture’s intricate and ingenious flashback structure makes it increasingly clear that these two are perfectly capable of being just as monstrous to each other.‘The Pez Outlaw’ (2022)Stream it on Netflix.Amy Bandlien Storkel and Bryan Storkel’s documentary tells the story of Steve Glew, a collector, seller and smuggler of Pez candy dispensers — or, more accurately, Glew tells the story himself, not only narrating his tale with cheerful comic vigor, but starring in the documentary’s energetically stylized dramatizations of his various heists and high jinks. That irreverent approach is the right one for this low-stakes story, which takes the tools of the increasingly ubiquitous Netflix true crime documentary and exposes them as ridiculous. ‘Leave No Trace’ (2022)Stream it on Hulu.When the Boy Scouts filed for bankruptcy in February 2020, it was one of many national stories that quickly receded to the background in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. Thousands of claims of sexual abuse finally came to light, ultimately surpassing 82,000 accusers. Irene Taylor’s documentary details the history of the organization, and its pattern of protecting accused pedophiles in its midst (all the while ostracizing gay Scouts and Scoutmasters as dangers to children). Taylor assembles an anatomy of a conspiracy, detailing exactly how these secrets were kept so safe for so long, all while tracking down survivors from around the country to hear their stories. It’s a troubling, infuriating piece of work, assembled with a delicate mixture of righteous indignation and necessary sensitivity.‘Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, A Journey, A Song’ (2021)Stream it on Netflix.Daniel Geller and Dayna Goldfine’s documentary is not, it should be noted, a traditional biographical portrait of the singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen, and thank goodness, as there have been plenty of those. Instead, the filmmakers examine the long, strange, fascinating history of the title song — now easily his most recognizable composition, deployed in media of all kinds, covered by every artist worth their stripe, but initially a forgotten track on a poorly selling album. That odyssey, from ignored to iconic, is an inherently dramatic one, and Gellar and Goldfine bring it to life with panache, all while acknowledging that Cohen’s particular passion made its very inception something akin to musical magic. More

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      in Music

      ‘Daisy Jones & the Six’ and the Ballad of Making Rock ’n’ Roll TV

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      It was the 36th day of what was supposed to be a 30-day shoot in New Orleans, but the cast and crew of the rock drama “Daisy Jones & the Six” were still at it.They were filming a scene, set in 1977, in which the actors Riley Keough and Sam Claflin, as the lead singers of the band Daisy Jones & the Six, unwind backstage after performing on “Saturday Night Live” for the first time. Half-empty liquor bottles, wood paneling, smoke-machine haze and framed photos of the Coneheads and Gilda Radner surround them.Claflin, who plays Billy Dunne, asks Keough, in the title role of Daisy Jones: “How’d it feel?”“It felt good, yeah,” she says, “I mean, not as good as cocaine.”Before New Orleans, the cast and crew had filmed for 69 days in the Los Angeles area, and afterward some of them headed to Athens and the Greek island of Hydra for a key episode. Production on “Daisy Jones & the Six” was initially scheduled to begin in April 2020, and even after it was postponed because of Covid for about 18 months, it had to be suspended a few more times. Despite daily testing protocols and mask mandates, the reality of filming concerts with hundreds of extras, hookup scenes and booze-and-Quaalude-fueled bacchanals had taken a toll.“Sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll is hard to do in a pandemic,” said Lauren Neustadter, who with Reese Witherspoon executive-produced the series.“Daisy Jones & the Six” tells the story of a band’s rise to sold-out-stadium-level fame thanks to a hit album, “Aurora.” The musicians make and promote “Aurora” as Daisy, Billy and his wife, Camila Dunne (Camila Morrone), try to navigate the sharp edges of a love triangle.It’s based on a 2019 novel of the same name by Taylor Jenkins Reid that has sold more than 1 million e-book and print copies, according to NPD BookScan, and has been translated into more than 30 languages. Part of its appeal is the storytelling approach: Reid creates an oral history that reads like nonfiction, populating it with musicians and record producers who reminisce against the backdrop of beater vans, tour buses and Sunset Strip stages.“Daisy Jones & the Six” begins streaming on Amazon Prime Video on March 3.Amazon StudiosTo answer many Google searches: The Six is not a real band, though it’s inspired by Fleetwood Mac and others. Still, that uncertainty — as well as the will-they-or-won’t-they tension between Keough’s and Claflin’s characters — is something Witherspoon’s production company, Hello Sunshine, and Amazon Studios hope will grip viewers when “Daisy Jones & the Six” begins streaming its 10 episodes on Amazon Prime Video, starting March 3.For Hello Sunshine, “Daisy Jones” could affirm its book-to-screen dominance after its successes with the film “Where the Crawdads Sing” and the Netflix series “From Scratch.” For Reid, whose books have become coveted source material in Hollywood, this will be the first adaptation to reach audiences, so its popularity is likely to influence the market for her material. For the up-and-coming actors in the cast, many of whom sidelined other projects to stick with “Daisy Jones” amid its realigned shooting schedule, it’s a chance to break out.The built-in fan base that the book provides will be a boon for the series but also brings its own anxieties. “There is for me a desire to make the fans happy and bring to life this book that has lived in their hearts and in all of our hearts for so long,” Morrone said. “I don’t think I’ve ever done a project that has this many eyes on it.”It is one of the first projects that the head of Amazon Studios, Jennifer Salke, ordered after Jeff Bezos hired her in 2018. “You have to make noise,” she said, discussing her early days at the company and her reaction to the “Daisy Jones” pitch. “You have to be able to do something that is different. It can’t feel like a show that you could just get everywhere.”“Daisy Jones” promised to deliver that, she said, and Amazon stood by the production as it waited out the restrictions of the pandemic.Covid delays provided a significant benefit: more than a year for the actors to take music lessons. Before then, the most noteworthy musical credential any of them had was that Keough is Elvis Presley’s granddaughter.‘I need you to bring your iPad to the beach tomorrow’If streaming-television economics are under pressure, as layoffs at Disney, Netflix and other companies indicate, you would not know it from Amazon’s investment in “Daisy Jones & the Six.”The 1970s-era sets are designed to shag-carpeted verisimilitude. For a week, the production took over the Sunset Strip in Hollywood, using vintage pornography as a visual reference when they transformed the Viper Room into the seedy Filthy McNasty’s. The principal characters alone required 1,500 wardrobe changes in the first half of production. With other characters and extras, the production sometimes needed 250 outfits a night.About 25 original songs have been written by Blake Mills, who wrote some in collaboration with others, including Phoebe Bridgers, Marcus Mumford and Chris Weisman. Eleven of those songs make up “Aurora,” which Atlantic Records will release when the series begins streaming. The first track, “Regret Me,” dropped earlier this month and by mid-February had garnered about 2 million streams on Spotify.Even the show’s P.R. efforts hark back to the era of big-studio budgets: More than 30 publicists were involved (or hoped to be involved) in the reporting, photographing and fact-checking of this article. The photo shoot drew multiple entourages.But the TV version of “Daisy Jones” started small, with a wife and husband in Los Angeles.The husband is Scott Neustadter, a screenwriter whose credits include the 2009 movie “500 Days of Summer,” which he wrote with Michael H. Weber.From left, Scott Neustadter, Taylor Jenkins Reid and Lauren Neustadter.Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesOne day in 2017, Neustadter’s representatives got a call from Brad Mendelsohn, Reid’s manager, asking if the screenwriter might want to take a look at a manuscript about a fictional 1970s rock band whose trajectory and interpersonal drama resembled Fleetwood Mac’s. Neustadter, a fan of that era’s music, started reading it that morning.He got in touch later that day with his wife, Lauren Neustadter, who had just been hired by Witherspoon to lead Hello Sunshine’s film and TV division. He reminded her that he and Witherspoon had once talked about being captivated by Stevie Nicks. “I knew this was a passion of Reese’s,” he said.Lauren spent a few hours reading Reid’s manuscript. Then she interrupted her boss’s vacation. “I need you to bring your iPad to the beach tomorrow morning,” she remembered emailing Witherspoon, “because this book is so good, and it’s going to be so competitive.”The next morning, she said, Witherspoon replied: “I’m obsessed.”‘I have prepared my whole life to write this’Days later, the Neustadters hatched a plan.Lauren took Reid to breakfast at Hugo’s, in the San Fernando Valley. As she was praising the book, her phone rang.“I think this is for you,” Neustadter said, handing it to Reid, who by then had achieved modest success as an author. She maintained her chill, at least on the outside, as she listened to Witherspoon tell her how much she loved her book.That afternoon, Scott took Reid to lunch at a coffee shop on Larchmont Avenue. “I told her I have prepared my whole life to write this,” meaning a film or TV version of “Daisy Jones,” he said.Reid decided she wanted Hello Sunshine to spearhead the screen version, with Scott and his writing partner Weber attached as creators. She ultimately sold the “Daisy Jones” manuscript to Penguin Random House.In May 2018, Lauren Neustadter and Witherspoon met Salke for lunch at Tavern, a restaurant in Brentwood. Salke, a former NBC executive, told them she was looking for big, ambitious projects that could benefit from the breadth of Amazon, including its ability to market and sell books, audiobooks, music and merchandise.“They teased me with something, but they wouldn’t tell me what it was,” Salke said. “They were like, ‘We might have something right up your alley.’”On a Friday in July, Neustadter sent her the “Daisy Jones” manuscript, a series overview and a script for the pilot episode, written by her husband and Weber, and said Salke had the weekend to consider it before Hello Sunshine would shop the series to others. Salke ordered it to series on Monday. “We just were really invested from the get-go,” she said.The following March, the novel came out and was named the pick for Witherspoon’s book club. It sailed onto the New York Times best-seller list, as did one of Reid’s earlier books, “The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo.” That novel’s paperback version has now spent more than 100 weeks on the list, and Netflix said last year that it is planning a screen adaptation.‘I was put on this earth to be Daisy’A few months later, the producers began to think about casting. Lauren Neustadter received a call from Alexandra Trustman, one of Hello Sunshine’s agents at C.A.A., who suggested one of her other clients, Riley Keough, for the role of Daisy.Keough had recently finished filming Janicza Bravo’s film “Zola,” in which she played a stripper, when she met in May 2019 with the Neustadters, along with Will Graham, who shared the job of being the showrunner of “Daisy Jones” with Scott Neustadter; and Mendelsohn, an executive producer of the series.“I was put on this earth to be Daisy,” Keough told them.Riley Keough, Elvis Presley’s granddaughter, plays the title character in “Daisy Jones & the Six.”Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesKeough declined an interview request in the weeks after the death of her mother, Lisa Marie Presley, but in an email, she said that it was the character’s combination of strength and vulnerability that moved her. “Daisy is complicated,” she wrote. “I didn’t identify with Daisy’s desire to sing and write songs, because that’s something I had never done. What I connected with was Daisy’s artistry and how she felt, not being taken seriously as a young woman.”She was one of several actors playing musicians who first came to the roles without much musical training. Suki Waterhouse, a novice pianist when she was cast, plays the keyboardist Karen Sirko. Will Harrison, who was in a band in college, plays the lead guitarist Graham Dunne. Sebastian Chacon, who had drummed a bit, plays the drummer Warren Rojas (in the book, his last name is Rhodes). Josh Whitehouse, who actually knows how to play guitar, was cast as Eddie Roundtree, the bassist.Claflin, as Billy Dunne, was the final band member cast. He had never played guitar. As part of an audition, he began to sing Elton John’s “Your Song,” before the musical supervisor urged him to stop. When Tony Berg — the veteran producer who has worked with artists including Bob Dylan, Aimee Mann and Phoebe Bridgers, and who is the show’s music consultant — asked Claflin to sing a Beatles song, the actor couldn’t think of one.“Out of everyone involved in this project, my knowledge of ’70s music, ’70s L.A., ’70s anything — especially in America and especially in the music sphere — was very, very, very lackluster,” Claflin said in an interview.The producers were determined to make it work. “We were going to lean on movie magic,” Lauren Neustadter said.After the pandemic upended the 2020 production schedule, the actors threw themselves into music. “I was incredibly into the idea of having three hours of piano lessons every single day,” Waterhouse said. “This is something that nobody gets a chance to do.”‘They sounded like a real band’The work of transforming actors pretending to be in a band into a band became the professional preoccupation of the music supervisor Frankie Pine. She oversaw a monthslong “band camp” consisting of one-on-one instruction and group rehearsal, in addition to taking and reviewing video footage of practice sessions so they could listen to their pitch and timing and watch their comportment.“I wanted to really try to create a sense that this is a real band,” Pine said. “When you’re a real band, you hang out together, you eat together, you drink together, you bitch to each other. You go through the normal motions of a group of people that are constantly together. So I was really trying to create this camaraderie that a true rock ’n’ roll band has.”“I don’t think I’ve ever done a project that has this many eyes on it,” said Morrone, bottom, with her co-stars Claflin and Keough.Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesAs the production prepared to start shooting in Los Angeles in September 2021, Lauren Neustadter felt it was important for the band to put on a live concert, performing songs from the show. They rented a Hollywood studio with a stage and, still limited by Covid, invited about 40 people who were working on the series.In attendance was Tom Wright, a veteran actor (“Tales From the Hood,” “Sunshine State”) who plays Teddy Price, the Berry Gordy-Quincy Jones-esque record producer. He was prepared to be underwhelmed.As a young actor, Wright lived in New York in the 1970s and had a roommate in the music business. “I got to know and hang out with people like Ornette Coleman and Chet Baker and Jim Hall — you know, some great jazz musicians. And I got to see them perform live, so I kind of have a high bar,” he said.At the friends-and-family concert, “I was shocked,” Wright said. “They sounded like a real band. It was incredible.”If this was the band’s smallest-scale concert, the largest was in New Orleans, where the production design team refitted the 26,500-seat Tad Gormley Stadium to appear, on camera at least, as if it were Soldier Field in Chicago, where the story’s biggest concert occurs.This was the accomplishment of the show’s production designer Jessica Kender, who said that because the look of the 1970s is so recognizable, details mattered. A scene at a gas station, for example, required them to remove ethanol warnings on the pumps that wouldn’t have been there decades ago.When Nzingha Stewart, who directed four episodes, envisioned a montage in which Billy and Daisy visited dozens of radio stations, the production design crew built one radio broadcasting booth that Kender remade over and over again with decals and details summoning Tulsa, Dallas and Fort Worth. In a concert scene, merch stands are piled with band T-shirts, like one with a sepia photo of Keough that reads, “Daisy Jones and the Six: Amsterdam, the Netherlands 5 Jun 1976.”Denise Wingate, the costume designer, once traveled with the 1980s band the Bangles. When she read “Daisy Jones,” she said, “I was like, ‘I have to do it.’” During the pandemic delay, she spent hours every day searching eBay and vintage sites. Once lockdowns eased, she said, “I went to flea markets every weekend for a year.”And she fielded requests. When Keough asked for “Stevie Nicks vibes” for the Soldier Field performance, Wingate found a Halston caftan in gold lamé that she cut up the front to turn it into a cape and paired with a vintage metallic crochet dress. (“Daisy’s wardrobe was a true highlight of my life,” Keough wrote.)To find inspiration for the “Aurora” album cover, Wingate made a mood board featuring Nicks in a billowing white dress. In the cover that resulted, Billy is in a denim shirt and Daisy wears a dress similar to the one Nicks wore, which Wingate had made. Just as it is described in the book, the rock stars are staring into each other’s eyes, but a space exists between them.For Reid, who imagined this story and took it from her head to paper starting in 2016, it’s hard to believe it’s all happening. “If your book is like your baby,” she said, “then the adaptation is like my grandchild. I don’t really get to take credit, but boy am I so proud of them.”She is thrilled by the show, she said. “When I think of Daisy now, I see Riley’s face. When I think of Billy, I think of Sam.” More

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      ‘The Seven Faces of Jane’ Review: One Movie, Eight Directors

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      Gillian Jacobs’s blank slate protagonist floats through a series of encounters in this feature-length movie made up of short films.A director’s career is often measured by the quality and quantity of their feature films. But short films can offer a chance to experiment with styles and subjects that might not be suited for a wider commercial release. “The Seven Faces of Jane” combines these two modes of production to create an omnibus film; it’s a feature-length movie comprising short films made by emerging directors.At the center of each short story is Jane (played by Gillian Jacobs, who also directs the first of the movie’s shorts), a single mother who opens the movie by dropping off her daughter at summer camp in Malibu. The film’s episodic story follows Jane as she floats through a series of encounters during her week of solitude in Southern California. She begins with a surreal trip to a roadside diner, but her journeys take her to the desert, the beach and the mountains. She connects with strangers, as well as lovers, including a former flame played by Joel McHale, who starred on the TV series “Community” with Jacobs.Jane is a bit of a blank slate as a protagonist, and her flatness feels jarring when she encounters other characters with more depth. One episode introduces Tayo (Chido Nwokocha), an ex of Jane’s who describes feeling alienated from his Blackness and sense of self during their relationship. Another sequence finds Jane teaching the steps of a waltz to a teenager dreading the dances at her quinceañera. Jane acts as a sounding board when these characters describe their feelings about their specific cultures. Yet in her responses, she remains as two-dimensional as a sketch on white paper.The directors — Jacobs, Gia Coppola, Boma Iluma, Ryan Heffington, Xan Cassavetes, Julian J. Acosta, Ken Jeong (another of Jacobs’s “Community” castmates) and Alex Takacs — come from a wide range of creative and personal backgrounds. But the shorts blend together without significant variation. The transitions eschew title cards, subtly eliding shifts by returning to images of Jane in her car.There is continuity in this makeshift road picture‌ — Jane’s costumes and makeup remain cohesive across the shorts, and the film’s segments keep the same cool color palette. But the consistency limits the ability of the directors to lean into their own style, leading to a movie that feels narratively scattered and stylistically inhibited.The Seven Faces of JaneNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 33 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Amazon, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      ‘Modern Love’ Goes Global in New Television Series

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      The latest iteration of the “Modern Love” franchise, “Modern Love Tokyo,” begins streaming on Oct. 21.Times Insider explains who we are and what we do and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.Daniel Jones, the senior editor of The New York Times’s Modern Love column, remembers when, a dozen years ago, it was just him selecting stories from a stack of nearly a thousand monthly submissions and editing each one for the essay series. “It was kind of lonely,” he said.This week, he has plenty of company. He is in Japan to attend the premiere of the television series “Modern Love Tokyo,” the latest installment in Amazon’s global “Modern Love” franchise. The seven-episode show will begin streaming on Amazon Prime Video on Oct. 21. The episodes are set in Tokyo, feature the work of actors, of directors and of a creative team from Japan, and are based on essays published in the column that were reimagined to make them more familiar to Japanese audiences. (In a “Modern Love” first, one of the episodes will be animated.)“I love that the process includes all these other talented people who are interpreting stories and amplifying emotions, putting in music,” Mr. Jones said in an interview last week. “It’s just exploded the job into a whole new realm.”Since the original “Modern Love” show was released on Amazon in October 2019, three international spinoffs have debuted in three languages: “Modern Love Mumbai,” in Hindi; “Modern Love Hyderabad,” in Telugu; and the Tokyo series, in Japanese. A fourth series, “Modern Love Chennai,” in Tamil, is forthcoming, and a fifth, “Modern Love Amsterdam,” offered in Dutch, is set to be released in mid-December.Mr. Jones reflected on the television franchise’s expansion abroad, on the process of adapting American stories for each series and on the longevity of the Modern Love column. Read the edited interview below.When did the idea to create international versions of the show come about?The original series, set in New York City, came out in 2019, and pretty soon after that, we started talking about other cities around the world where we might be able to do versions of it. Of course, then the pandemic hit, which made everything harder and a little delayed. And so the international versions we began talking about several years ago are just now coming out.What is your role on the series?I’m a co-producer on all the international versions. I see the episodes as they’re being edited; I read the scripts. I try to maintain a sense of what Modern Love is and has been for more than 18 years now, meaning realistic love stories, not sweeping romances. No overt sex or Bollywood plots or anything that would push the boundaries and make it seem outside what the column does. But the people working on this at Amazon Studios know this and get it. In fact, that’s what they value most about these series and what makes the work distinctive in these markets. We’re all on the same page.Also, the Modern Love archive is enormous — it’s 900-some essays at this point. While the teams in different countries who are picking content completely reimagine the stories for their audiences, the shows’ creators often stick close to the plot, so I’m helpful to them if they want a certain kind of story; I know the archive better than anyone. But I’ve been so impressed with the local teams’ approach and research and passion for this project.Daniel Jones attending the “Modern Love Tokyo” premiere. Phoebe JonesHow does the process of adapting an American story for an audience in another country work?For one of the Mumbai episodes, the creative team in Mumbai took an essay about a woman in Brooklyn who had separated from her husband and who was feeling down in every way — she was in bad physical shape, emotionally wrung out. And she now needed to get herself to work by bicycle.She started riding across the Manhattan Bridge, but she didn’t have the stamina to go all the way up, so the story was about the empowerment — both physical and emotional — of building herself back up. It was a very New York story, but when they took it to Mumbai, they made her character a domestic servant in a wealthy family, highlighting the class divide there. There’s a bridge in Mumbai, called the Flyway, that goes from a gritty area to the gleaming city center, and it was the same basic process of her building herself back up. It speaks to the universality of these conflicts — you can get a divorce in Mumbai, and you can get a divorce in Brooklyn. The emotions and struggle and all that can be so similar.All of the versions of the show are available to stream on Amazon Prime in the United States, right?Yes. Now, with the success of series like “Squid Game,” it’s become clear that subtitles are not a barrier. I hope people check out the versions set in the other cities, too.What’s been the most exciting part of working on the international versions?When these teams discover stories that I’d long forgotten about in the archive, and then reintroduce me to them in a new way. It’s great to have other people look at the archive with fresh eyes, find such gems and see how to reimagine them for the screen.What’s next for the “Modern Love” television franchise?Our fifth international series, “Modern Love Amsterdam,” premieres in mid-December. Beyond that, stay tuned, because we have ambitions for all over the world. More

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      ‘The Rings of Power’: Charlie Vickers on That Monster Revelation

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      The actor spoke about the big news regarding his character in Friday’s Season 1 finale. Major spoilers ahead.This interview includes spoilers for the Season 1 finale of “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power”When he auditioned for the Amazon prequel series “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power,” Charlie Vickers did not know he would be playing two roles: the conflicted human Halbrand and the ultimate deceiver, Sauron. But he began to have suspicions early on.During his audition, he was asked to read pieces from William Shakespeare’s “Richard III” and John Milton’s “Paradise Lost” — “literally auditioning as Satan,” he recalled by phone on Thursday, just hours before the Season 1 finale dropped overnight, on Friday. “That was a bit of a clue.”But it wasn’t until filming was about to resume for the third episode (after a Covid production hiatus) that the series’s showrunners, Patrick McKay and J.D. Payne, took Vickers to the set for an evil fortress, turned to him and said, “Hail, Lord Sauron.”“That was a seminal moment for me,” Vickers said.While he missed out on playing the spiky armored version of the dark lord in the show’s prologue in Episode 1 (“I wish that was me!” he said), Vickers went all-in on his Sauron studies, reading “The Silmarillion” in its entirety and combing through obscure passages in Tolkien’s Legendarium as part of his “subconscious work.”Taking a break from Season 2 production outside London, Vickers discussed the big revelation about his character and what it means for Halbrand’s relationship with Galadriel (Morfydd Clark). These are edited excerpts from the conversation.How does it feel to be the answer to the question tormenting the internet? Or if you’re Sauron, maybe you enjoy tormenting the internet.Explore the World of the ‘Lord of the Rings’The literary universe built by J.R.R. Tolkien, now adapted into a new series for Amazon Prime Video, has inspired generations of readers and viewers.Artist and Scholar: Tolkien did more than write books. He invented an alternate reality, complete with its own geography, languages and history.Being Frodo: The actor Elijah Wood explains why he’ll never be upset at being associated with the “Lord of the Rings” movie series.A Soviet Take: A 1991 production based on Tolkien’s novels, recently digitized by a Russian broadcaster, is a time capsule of a bygone era.From the Archives: Read what W.H. Auden wrote about “The Fellowship of the Ring,” the first volume of Tolkien’s trilogy, in 1954.[Laughs.] Exactly. Maybe there has been some kind of sick enjoyment that I’ve been getting. Luckily, I’ve managed to stay off the internet, but it’s been hard to avoid. I’ve had friends guessing and telling me I’m Sauron ever since the second episode, which I’ve not been able to confirm or deny. So it’s a relief.What’s been so interesting about the show is that it doesn’t shy away from the lore. For the people who know, there are little Easter eggs or hints here and there. When you look back to the second episode, you’re like, “OK, that makes sense in the grand scheme of things.” So I think it’s great that there’s been so much debate.You once mentioned that you found useful things in Tolkien’s letters, although you didn’t specify which ones. I took that as a possible reference to the period in which Sauron sought redemption. But then the showrunners talked recently about another way to read Sauron-as-Halbrand: as a power addict. What was it that you found in Tolkien that helped shape your portrayal?I think the repentant Sauron is a really interesting thing. But I like to leave it ambiguous because it was ambiguous in Tolkien’s writing, such as in Letter 131, and in “Morgoth’s Ring,” in the History of Middle-earth series. He spoke of Sauron repenting “if only out of fear.” I think his repentance is fascinating — and this is why I don’t want to say necessarily how I interpreted it as an actor — because it creates two different [possibilities] for Halbrand.If you look at him as if he’s genuinely repentant, and he wants to escape this dark path and live as someone who’s been humbled, then Galadriel inadvertently draws him back to this power. She says to him in the smithery, “There’s no peace here,” and that scene illuminates this whole idea for him of: “Well, you’re right, there is no peace for me as a regular person. My peace is in power. I need to rule. I need to lead.” And she literally gives him the keys to the kingdom and sends him back down the rabbit hole. That is, if you view him as repenting genuinely.But, if you view his repentance as an act, then it leans more into his deception, and his deception of her, in that she’s a tool for him to get back to where he wants to be. You rarely see Halbrand alone before the finale, save for this moment when he’s in the smithery, staring at his pouch, making his decision. Otherwise, you mostly see him through the eyes of other characters.And yet he’s about to cry in that moment by himself.I always like to think that in shape-shifting, the best way to deceive is to fully take on the form of what you’re trying to portray: thinking, feeling, living, breathing as a human man. Only through a wholehearted embodiment of his form could he deceive these massively influential figures. This is even when he’s by himself, because the gods are always watching. And we know that he fears the gods; we know that he’s scared. Because Tolkien says that explicitly.He can use Galadriel as a tool. She knows the right people. She gets into the right rooms. If he’s by her side, it can only lead to good things, as long as he remains undiscovered. So I made a decision as the best way for me to approach it, to make it real for me. And let people interpret it as they will.Did you decide for yourself about a lot of little details? Like, what’s in his pouch? Why was he at sea? Was his injury was self-inflicted so that Galadriel would take him to the elves?I have a belief about what’s in the pouch, but I won’t share that. Him being at sea may or may not be explored farther down the line. The injury, yes, I think he wounds himself, because he was very aware of what was coming. He thought he had stopped it, but he knows there’s only one way to get out of this mess. He risks this Halbrand form to get to the elves because he understands that the only way he can be healed is through their power and magic.So much for any fan hopes that Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) and Halbrand had a romantic future.Amazon Prime VideoDo you think he wanted Galadriel to figure it out?Yes. He’s ready for her to see him for who he is, and he thinks she’s ready to know it. He makes this pitch to her, and it’s so closely linked to the mirror of Galadriel in “The Fellowship of the Ring.” It gives it an interesting context, I think.He offers to make her his queen. Is that a marriage proposal?That’s something I thought about a lot, but I don’t think so. W.H. Auden wrote an essay on Tolkien, and he said something along the lines of, “Evil loves only itself.” [“Evil, defiantly chosen, can no longer imagine anything but itself.”] So I think in his pitch to Galadriel, it cannot mean that he loves her or that there’s any kind of romantic relationship. There should be no ambiguity around the fact that Sauron is evil — he’s terrible, and he’s using Galadriel to enhance his power.Throughout the season, she shows him a different way of ruling and maybe illuminates some things for him. So in making that pitch, I think he’s saying, “Join me and we can rule, and I can coordinate everything and rehabilitate Middle-earth.” But having said that, I also think he would have gotten there anyway without her. He would have descended back into evil. It was inevitable.Haladriel shippers will despair.[Laughs.] Shipping, by the way, is actually a word that Morfydd taught me! Hopefully people will see that any kind of romantic feeling, which couldn’t exist, vanishes into thin air.What’s the plan going forward, given that Sauron is a shape-shifter?There are a lot of twists and turns coming with the character of Sauron. We know that [his disguise as] Annatar is such a massive part of this world, and the prospect of that is really exciting to me. I can’t say much more than that.Annatar is the lord of gifts. Did you get or give any gifts on set? Maybe that wonderful hooded cloak you wear to Mordor?I love that cloak so much! I didn’t get to keep it, unfortunately. I have one gift that was given to me by one of the stunt guys, Daniel Andrews, which is a T-shirt printed with an artist’s image of Halbrand doing the sword flip on the back. That’s Danny’s trick; he’s had it in his stunt arsenal for 30 years, and he’s been trying to get it into a show for 30 years. There’s been nothing released with Halbrand, so I haven’t dared to wear it, even around the house. But that’s the coolest souvenir. More