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      In ‘Mr. Corman,’ Joseph Gordon-Levitt Looks Inward and Asks, ‘What If?’

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      For his new Apple TV+ comedy series, Gordon-Levitt imagined what his life might have been like if he hadn’t been so lucky. “It’s probably the most me-ish thing I’ve ever made.”Joseph Gordon-Levitt is the first to admit he’s had it pretty good. He has had a wildly successful acting career on stages and screens spanning over three decades. He sings, dances, writes and directs, and he does a decent Nirvana cover. He has a wife and two kids and he hardly seems to age. More

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      Review: ‘Schmigadoon!’ Has a Song in Its Heart, and Everywhere Else

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      The Apple TV+ series both mocks and embraces the glories of classic musicals like “Brigadoon,” “Oklahoma!” and “Carousel.”Welcome to Schmigadoon, “where the men are men, and the cows are cows,” a magical musical land where Melissa and Josh (Cecily Strong and Keegan-Michael Key) find themselves stranded during a trip meant to rehabilitate their romance. At first they think it’s like Colonial Williamsburg, or a warped Disney experience, but they quickly buy into their new reality: They’re trapped in this wholesome, old-timey parallel universe until they learn the lessons about true love it is meant to impart. More

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      'Schmigadoon!' Is an Ode to Broadway Musicals, and Pokes Fun At Them Too

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      One would think that everyone involved in the parody series “Schmigadoon!” was in love with the sometimes hokey, sometimes magical musical genre. Not quite.The director Barry Sonnenfeld has never been a theater guy.“I am not a fan of Broadway musicals,” he grumped affably over the phone. “I’m not a fan of filmed musicals. I don’t understand why people would stop talking and start singing.”So Sonnenfeld, who is best known for the “Men in Black” movies, was a curious choice to direct the new Apple TV+ comedy “Schmigadoon!,” a series whose very title screams musical theater spoof.The showrunner, Cinco Paul, a fan of Sonnenfeld’s work on the highly stylized and intermittently musical cult series “Pushing Daisies,” was unaware of the director’s aversion until they were shooting last fall, mid-pandemic, in Vancouver, British Columbia, with a blockbuster cast filled with Broadway stars.“Here we are on the set,” Paul recalled, “and he’s half jokingly saying, ‘Why are there so many songs?’”If you count reprises, they number nearly two dozen — composed by Paul, who created the show with Ken Daurio — spread over six half-hour episodes that air starting July 16.An affectionate, knowing sendup of classic American musicals, “Schmigadoon!” stars Cecily Strong of “Saturday Night Live” and Keegan-Michael Key, lately of Netflix’s “The Prom,” as a contemporary couple in a stagnating relationship. On a backpacking trip, they stumble into a frozen-in-time, trapped-in-a-musical town called Schmigadoon, which they can’t escape until they find true love.Paul, who grew up on his mother’s Broadway cast recordings and played piano for musicals as an undergraduate at Yale, said he came up with the kernel of “Schmigadoon!” almost 25 years ago. Not knowing what to do with the idea, he put it away until Andrew Singer at Lorne Michaels’s production company, Broadway Video, mentioned their interest in musicals a few years ago. A match was made.According to Strong, Michaels is — like her — “a musical dork.” And the show brought on stage-savvy writers, including Julie Klausner (“Difficult People”) and Strong’s fellow “S.N.L.” star Bowen Yang.In Schmigadoon, the locals include the sweet, melancholy Mayor Aloysius Menlove, played by the Tony Award winner Alan Cumming; the moral scourge, Mildred Layton, played by the Tony winner Kristin Chenoweth; and the handsome carny Danny Bailey, played by Aaron Tveit, who got news of his Tony nomination for “Moulin Rouge!” during the series shoot. Other boldface names from Broadway include Jane Krakowski, Ann Harada and Ariana DeBose.Recently, Paul, Sonnenfeld and members of the cast spoke separately by phone about “Schmigadoon!” and their affinity, or lack thereof, for musicals. These are edited excerpts from those interviews.“Musicals are charming, and they’re so entertaining, but they’re also sometimes dumb, and sometimes they’re problematic,” said the series co-creator Cinco Paul.Adam Amengual for The New York TimesCINCO PAUL I wanted real musical theater people. I wanted people who did eight shows a week and had those chops, because I wanted everybody to do their own singing, and I wanted to capture that singing live on set to the extent it was possible. The amount of talent we were able to get was phenomenal and was unfortunately because they weren’t able to work anywhere — because theaters were shut down. In many cases, the parts were written for these actors.BARRY SONNENFELD When I interviewed for the job, I said: “Look, here’s the thing. I want to shoot this entirely onstage and I want to shoot it in Vancouver because Vancouver has really great stages and really good crews, and it’s also cheaper.” What was surreal and wonderful was that Vancouver was the only film center that was open when we shot. L.A. was shut down. New York was shut down.CECILY STRONG We had to go shoot our “S.N.L.” intros right before I left for Vancouver. It’s like, you’re around New York and you’re seeing all these theaters shuttered. It’s a little devastating. More

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      The Best Movies and TV Shows Coming to Amazon, HBO Max, Hulu and More in April

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      Every month, streaming services add movies and TV shows to its library. Here are our picks for some of April’s most promising new titles.(Note: Streaming services occasionally change schedules without giving notice. For more recommendations on what to stream, sign up for our twice-weekly Watching newsletter here.)Ann Skelly in “The Nevers.”Keith Bernstein/HBONew to HBO Max‘Exterminate All the Brutes’Starts streaming: Apr. 7The filmmaker Raoul Peck, perhaps best-known for his Oscar-nominated 2016 documentary “I Am Not Your Negro,” tackles his most ambitious project yet with the four-part cinematic essay “Exterminate All the Brutes,” based in part on Sven Lindqvist’s book of the same name about Europe’s domination of Africa and in part on the scholarly work of the historian and Indigenous rights activist Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and the Haitian anthropologist Michel-Rolph Trouillot. Relying on a mix of clips from old movies and new dramatizations of historical incidents — all overlaid with the director’s discursive narration — Peck considers how pop culture and the literary canon have shaped the narratives around Indigenous people and their colonial invaders. Equal parts informative and provocative, this project is aimed at changing the way viewers think about who history’s heroes and villains are.‘The Nevers’Starts streaming: Apr. 11There’s a bit of steampunk and a lot of X-Men-like energy in “The Nevers,” a semi-comic action-adventure series created by Joss Whedon, the man behind “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Firefly.” Whedon’s contributions have been downplayed by HBO’s promotional departments, in part because he left the production in the middle of its first season — and perhaps because of recent accusations of mental abuse from his past employees. Nevertheless, “The Nevers,” set in Victorian Britain, very much feels like one of his shows, with its alternately angsty and witty characters. Laura Donnelly plays Amalia True, a superhero who leads a team of strange and powerful women referred to by London aristocrats as “the touched.” As the ladies tackle supernatural phenomena, they also clash with an establishment that wants to keep them marginalized, because of what they can do and because of who they are.‘Mare of Easttown’Starts streaming: Apr. 18Kate Winslet plays a dogged small-town Pennsylvania police detective with a messy home life in “Mare of Easttown,” a crime drama created by Brad Ingelsby, a screenwriter of the films “Out of the Furnace” and “The Way Back.” As with Ingelsby’s movies, this mini-series uses a pulpy premise — a murder mystery — as an entry point to a complex and absorbing study of a place at once familiar and unique. The director Craig Zobel and a top-shelf cast (including Jean Smart as the heroine’s opinionated mother and Julianne Nicholson as her former high school basketball teammate) capture the limitations and comforts of a community where everyone knows each other’s painful secrets. The gray tones and the procedural plot resemble those of a grim European cop show, but the performances and dialogue exhibit a lot of vitality.Also arriving:Apr. 1“Made for Love”Apr. 13“Our Towns”Apr. 15“Infinity Train” Season 4Apr. 16“Mortal Kombat”Supposed Sasquatch footprints, as seen in “Sasquatch.”HuluNew to Hulu‘WeWork: Or the Making and Breaking of a $47 Billion Unicorn’Starts streaming: Apr. 2Like many stories about cutting-edge business ideas, the saga of the real-estate-sharing company WeWork ultimately comes down to the disconnect between its bosses’ public ideals and the ugly practical realities of making money. Directed by Jed Rothstein, “WeWork: Or the Making and Breaking of a $47 Billion Unicorn” features a wealth of insider interviews and behind-the-scenes footage, all describing a start-up that began by touting a clever solution to the modern urban problem of overpriced office space but then tried to evolve into an entire unwieldy lifestyle brand. Rothstein’s film focuses mainly on the charismatic co-founder Adam Neumann, and how Neumann and his fellow execs were spending like billionaires while misrepresenting — even to their faithful employees — what was really happening.‘Sasquatch’Starts streaming: Apr. 20The journalist David Holthouse has spent much of his career investigating odd American subcultures, spending time with people whose lives have revolved around drugs, violence or the arcane. In the three-part docu-series “Sasquatch,” Holthouse heads into Northern California’s so-called Emerald Triangle — one of the most storied cannabis-growing regions of the world — to look into a legend he heard decades ago, about a trio of farmers who were dismembered by the infamous cryptid known as Bigfoot. The director Joshua Rofé follows Holthouse into the wild as he interviews locals who are enthusiastic about both marijuana and the paranormal. The stories they unearth are partly about eerie phenomena and partly about the very real dangers of a community teeming with crime.Also arriving:Apr. 3“Hysterical”Apr. 8“Glaad Media Awards”Apr. 9“The Standard”Apr. 12“Spontaneous”Apr. 15“Younger” Season 7Apr. 16“Fly Like a Girl”“Songbird”Apr. 21“Cruel Summer”Apr. 22“Greta Thunberg: A Year to Change the World”Apr. 25“Wild Mountain Thyme”Apr. 28“The Handmaid’s Tale” Season 4From left, Deborah Ayorinde, Melody Hurd, Shahadi Wright and Ashley Thomas in “Them.”Amazon StudiosNew to Amazon‘Them’Starts streaming: Apr. 9The first season of the new horror anthology series “Them” has the subtitle “Covenant,” referring to the rules for residents of a middle-class suburban subdivision in the early 1950s. Deborah Ayorinde and Ashley Thomas play a married couple with two young daughters, who move from North Carolina to an all-white neighborhood in Los Angeles looking for their piece of the American dream. They meet open hostility from their new neighbors (including the local housewives’ cruel ringleader, played by Alison Pill), while also being haunted by strange supernatural forces. Created by Little Marvin and produced by Lena Waithe, “Them” uses the discomfiting facts of racial discrimination to unsettle the audience, even before the nonhuman monsters arrive.Also arriving:Apr. 2“Moment of Truth”Apr. 16“Frank of Ireland”Apr. 30“Without Remorse”Justin Theroux and Melissa George in “The Mosquito Coast.”Apple TV+.New to Apple TV+‘The Mosquito Coast’Starts streaming: Apr. 30Justin Theroux is both a producer and the star of the mini-series “The Mosquito Coast,” an adaptation of an acclaimed 1981 novel by his uncle Paul Theroux. The show’s co-writers Neil Cross and Tom Bissell, with the director Rupert Wyatt, have updated the story to the 21st century, but its still about the idealistic and eccentric inventor Allie Fox, who hates modern technology as much as he detests American materialism. Chasing his dreams — and dodging the federal authorities — Allie packs his family onto a rickety boat and floats them down to Latin America, where he plans to live off the land. The TV version deviates sometimes significantly from the book, but its heart is the same: a rich portrait of a brilliant madman, and of the people he’s dragged into his delusions.Also arriving:Apr. 2“Doug Unplugs” More

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      How the Pandemic Stalled Peak TV

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }At HomeWatch: ‘WandaVision’Travel: More SustainablyFreeze: Homemade TreatsCheck Out: Podcasters’ Favorite PodcastsCredit…Yoshi SodeokaHow the Pandemic Stalled Peak TVWhere’s “Succession”? “Atlanta”? After the number of scripted shows fell for the first time in a decade, Hollywood hopes to satisfy a restless audience with less costly fare.Credit…Yoshi SodeokaSupported byContinue reading the main storyFeb. 28, 2021, 5:00 p.m. ETWhat would we be watching in an alternate, pandemic-free universe?One choice would be the third season of “Atlanta,” the critically adored show created by Donald Glover, which would have made its debut a few weeks ago. Viewers would have also learned the latest in the saga of the Roy family on “Succession,” or could have tuned in to see the portrait of Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton in the new installment of “American Crime Story.”The new seasons of those shows were postponed, and they won’t be available any time soon. The pandemic created a break in the boom time known as Peak TV, a gilded entertainment age of limitless home-viewing options ushered in by deep-pocketed tech companies and the cable networks desperate to keep up.Nearly a year ago, when the full force of the coronavirus pandemic hit the United States, home viewing became the main leisure activity for those who found themselves working remotely and unable to go out in their off hours.Cable news scored record ratings. Unscripted series like “Tiger King” and “Too Hot to Handle” became some of Netflix’s most-watched shows. Vintage escapist favorites like “The Golden Girls” had a resurgence.As the virus continued to ravage the country, viewers found relief in new seasons of “The Mandalorian” and “The Crown,” as well as newcomers like “Bridgerton” and “The Queen’s Gambit.”But pandemic-related production delays, which all but shut down the filming of scripted shows and films for much of 2020, have started to have an effect. The number of premieres of American scripted shows nose-dived in the second half of last year, a trend that is likely to continue for several months. And in 2020, for the first time in a decade, there were fewer new scripted shows to watch than in the previous year.“The disruption of the pipeline is being manifested now,” said Matt Roush, a senior critic at TV Guide Magazine. “Now there are only a couple things a month to get excited about, versus getting excited a couple times a week before.”A Sudden DropThe rise of cable put a dent in the traditional broadcast TV schedule, one of fall premieres and springtime finales, that had dictated viewing habits for decades. And the entry of Netflix and other streaming services smashed what was left of the old model. Audiences got used to new shows popping up all the time.From 2009 to 2019, the number of scripted shows in the United States went up each year, according to the research department of the cable network FX, one of the few organizations that kept track of the boom. In 2009, there were 210 scripted shows, according to FX. By 2019, there were 532, a 153 percent jump.Before the pandemic, 2020 looked as if it would be the biggest year ever, thanks, in part, to the arrival of the streamers Disney+, Apple TV+, Quibi, HBO Max and Peacock.From January to May, 214 adult-oriented American scripted shows had their premieres, according to Ampere, a research firm that tracks television distribution and production activity. That number was more than all the scripted shows in 2009. And it was a 32 percent jump over the number of scripted programs that made their debuts in the equivalent period of 2019.In June, the industry hit a wall. In the second half of the year, premieres of scripted shows dropped 28 percent from the same period in 2019. The effect was most apparent in September, a big month for debuts. In September 2019, 86 shows had their premieres in the United States. A year later, that number fell to 35.“Last year saw a stalling of what seemed like unstoppable growth for scripted content,” said Fred Black, a senior analyst at Ampere.Nearly every platform, broadcast network and cable channel has taken a hit, according to Ampere. Even the prolific Netflix had fewer American scripted shows in the second half of last year. And the industrywide decline continued into January, Mr. Black said.For some people in Hollywood, not to mention many viewers, the pause is not unwelcome.“The more and more and more thing — who was that good for?” said Willa Paskin, a TV critic at Slate and a host of its “Decoder Ring” podcast. “We are ravenous content monsters, but isn’t it nice to have it be chiller and have some time to get to catch up on something?”Naomi Fry, a staff writer at The New Yorker who covers pop culture and television, said: “For the last year, it feels as if we’ve been watching TV on a plane. We’re kind of locked in a vortex, flipping between various options. You’re waiting for time to pass. Some of it is very good, but there’s also a sense of glut and not a sense of excitement and specialness about it.”One reason for the drop is obvious: With productions shut down, new seasons could not be completed in time. But there was another reason, executives and agents said. When filming resumed, extensive safety protocols for actors and crews added roughly 30 percent to most production budgets, said Chris Silbermann, the chief executive of ICM Partners, a major Hollywood talent agency.“Everyone saw these costs pulling through the system and realized, ‘Oh, no, we’re going to have to do less,’” Mr. Silbermann said. “Stuff that was on the bubble, a lot of that stuff just went away.”The slowdown also meant a change in Hollywood negotiations.“I am now having tough production budget conversations with the streamers that I used to have with NBC, CBS, ABC and Fox,” Mr. Silbermann said. “These are like old-school budget conversations.”Several outlets fed the maw in another way, by turning to international programming. Netflix’s “Lupin,” a French thriller series, and “Call My Agent!” a French workplace dramedy, have connected with American audiences. Their success was part of a larger lockdown trend: The viewing of non-English-language titles by U.S. Netflix subscribers shot up more than 50 percent in 2020, a Netflix spokesman said.“Every show in another language is immediately better for us, because you can’t be on your phone,” Ms. Paskin, the Slate critic, said. “It just makes you pay attention.”How About a Nice Game Show?To fill the void left by the lack of scripted fare, nearly all outlets have also turned to reality programs, documentary series and even game shows, all of which are cheaper to make. Broadcast networks have given prime-time hours to shows like “Celebrity Wheel of Fortune” and “The Price Is Right at Night.” The number of unscripted shows making their debuts in 2020 increased 19 percent over the previous year, Ampere said.“Everywhere you look, there’s a game show,” said Mr. Roush, the TV Guide critic. He added that his readers had pestered him about the lack of new episodes of network standbys like “NCIS” and “Grey’s Anatomy.”With movie theaters either closed or selling limited tickets, streaming platforms have also filled in the blanks with new films that would have played on big screens for weeks or months before reaching home viewers. “Wonder Woman 1984” was the first of many WarnerMedia movies to stream on HBO Max the same day as its theatrical premiere date, and the much-anticipated Eddie Murphy sequel, “Coming 2 America,” arrives to Amazon on Friday.Some TV franchises found ways to work around pandemic shutdowns. AMC’s biggest hit, “The Walking Dead,” was scheduled to go into production in April and start rolling out its 11th and final season in October. With 22 series regulars and hundreds of extras and crew members, it is not a simple production. Then the virus struck.“We were sitting around asking ourselves, ‘What are we going to do?’” said Dan McDermott, president of original programming for AMC Networks.They decided on a scaled-down add-on to the 10th season, with six new episodes focused on individual characters that could be shot sans dozens of zombies. Those episodes went into production in October, and the first is scheduled for AMC on Sunday. The 11th season of “The Walking Dead” started filming weeks ago, with the premiere scheduled for later this year, roughly two years after the debut of the previous season.Several other AMC series fell a year behind schedule. Mr. McDermott said he had filled the holes with international acquisitions, including the British crime dramas “Gangs of London” and “The Salisbury Poisonings.”“We’re discovering like, wow, there’s a lot of great content being made out there,” he said. “And it would not necessarily have enjoyed the same profile, if it were a regular year.”There is still plenty to watch. The broadcast networks are offering new episodes of “This Is Us” and “Young Sheldon,” and Disney+ is streaming new episodes of the Marvel series “WandaVision.”But with the spigot slowing as the stay-at-home period continues for millions of people, many viewers are turning to old favorites or trying shows they may have missed the first time around, like the cult NBC comedy series “Freaks and Geeks,” which became available on Hulu in January, or “The Sopranos,” a perennial HBO favorite.“People have a lot more time to watch TV,” Ms. Paskin said. “People who say, ‘Oh, I’m going to watch “The Sopranos,”’ they are looking for a project. Doesn’t that just seem very quarantine mind-set? People are home every night. It’s fun to have a project that’s painless — rewatching ‘The Sopranos.’ Are you kidding!”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Golden Globes 2021: What to Watch For

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Awards SeasonHow to Watch the GlobesWhat to ExpectOur Movie PredictionsGolden Globe NomineesGolden Globes SuitAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyGolden Globes 2021: What to Watch ForThe Hollywood awards season starts in earnest with a socially distanced show that begins on Sunday at 8 p.m. Eastern. Streaming services are expected to dominate.Amanda Seyfried and Gary Oldman in “Mank,” about the making of “Citizen Kane.”Credit…NetflixFeb. 27, 2021, 5:00 p.m. ET More