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    How George Clooney and Julia Roberts Quietly Became the Tracy-Hepburn of Our Time

    “Ticket to Paradise” and other team-ups take advantage of their onscreen glamour and stellar chemistry and their offscreen affection for one another.Listen to This ArticleTo hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.They don’t share the screen until 49 minutes into their first film together, and it’s not an amicable conversation. She’s expecting her boyfriend, but the hand on her shoulder belongs to her ex-husband, and her first words to him (“What are you doing here?”) are loaded with a mixture of shock and residual anger. The irritation quickly takes over; there’s fire in her eyes, enough to dampen the twinkle in his. “You’re not wearing your ring,” he notes.“I sold it,” she fires back. “I don’t have a husband, or didn’t you get the papers?”“My last day inside,” he replies.“I told you I’d write.”Julia Roberts and George Clooney’s first scene together, in Steven Soderbergh’s 2001 remake of “Ocean’s Eleven,” runs less than five minutes total, but they’re packed with barbs and pronouncements, insults and callbacks, relitigations of ancient arguments and (for him at least) flashes of longing. Tess (Roberts) is the reason Danny Ocean (Clooney) has assembled the titular crew to rob three high-profile Las Vegas casinos — all of which happen to be owned by Terry Benedict (Andy Garcia), Tess’s current beau. (When Danny meets Terry, he fidgets with his wedding ring absent-mindedly. Or perhaps deliberately.) The payday is huge, but it’s incidental to Danny; as he tells her during that strained first conversation, “I came here for you.” So Danny and Tess, and thus Clooney and Roberts, have to generate enough heat and chemistry underneath the snippy surface to justify everything else in the movie. It’s a tall order. They pull it off without breaking a sweat.“Our scenes are really fun,” Clooney explained at the time, “because they’re like an old Howard Hawks film where they’re both going at each other and nobody wins. Which is the way it should be.” Roberts concurred: “The dialogue is so sharp and exacting, it’s like a 1940s movie.”Danny Ocean (Clooney) fiddling with his ring during a run-in with his ex (Roberts) and her new love (Andy Garcia).Warner Bros., via AlamySuch callbacks to old Hollywood were no accident. For years now, Clooney has been described as one of the last movie stars of the old-school mold. As GQ’s Tom Carson put it in 2007, “He’s shrewd, he’s virile, he’s merry, and the camera loves him with the devotion of a headwaiter rushing over to light a billionaire’s cigar.”5 Movies Featuring the Clooney-Roberts DuoCard 1 of 5‘Ocean’s Eleven’ (2001). More

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    Remembering Loretta Lynn

    Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherThe country music titan Loretta Lynn died this month at 90. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, she was a chart regular, singing — and often writing — songs about the circumstances of women’s lives, even as she resisted being claimed by the emergent feminist movement.She performed crucial duets about collapsing relationships, underscored the challenges faced by divorced women and sang about the arrival of the birth control pill. She was a vivid chronicler of growing up hardscrabble in Butcher Holler, Ky. And she was one of the genre’s great vocal stylists, delivering heartbreak and sternness with equal aplomb.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about Lynn’s sly radicalism and the way she was initially received by the country music industry, the many readings and misreadings of her work, and the manner in which legends age in public.Guest:Jewly Hight, a contributor to NPR MusicConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica. More

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    The Young Women Who Make TikTok Weep

    Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherWhen the Scottish singer-songwriter Katie Gregson-MacLeod recorded a verse of an unfinished song called “Complex” and posted it to TikTok in August, she was tapping into the app’s penchant for confessional storytelling, and demonstrating its ease of distribution and repurposing.Overnight, the snippet propelled her into viral success, leading to a recording contract and placing her in a lineage of young women who have found success on the app via emotional catharsis — sad, mad or both. That includes Olivia Rodrigo, whose “Drivers License” first gained traction there, and also Lauren Spencer-Smith, Sadie Jean, Gracie Abrams, Lizzy McAlpine, Gayle and many more.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about the evolution of TikTok’s musical ambitions and the expansion of its emotional range, how the music business has tried to capitalize on the app’s intimacy, and the speed with which a bedroom-recording confessional can become a universal story line.Guest:Rachel Brodsky, who writes about pop music for StereogumConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica. More

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    The Sudden Rise of Zach Bryan

    Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherOne of the year’s biggest pop breakouts is Zach Bryan, a Navy veteran who makes calm and detailed country-folk. His major label debut album, “American Heartbreak,” has steadily held in the Top 20 of the Billboard album chart since its release in May.Bryan is not a radio fixture, and mostly has found success on streaming, translating into live crowds of several thousand per night. He is also a reluctant star, offering very little to the public outside of his music and Twitter feed.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about Bryan’s old-fashioned artistry and 1990s attitude, the shifts in mainstream country music that have in part set the table for his rise and how genre boundaries serve as guideposts, even for artists who assiduously try to skirt them.Guest:Grady Smith, who hosts a YouTube channel about country musicConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica. More

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    Popcast Live! The New Faces of 2022

    Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherFor the first live taping of Popcast, held at Gertie in Brooklyn, members of The New York Times pop music team explored the ways music is evolving today by highlighting some of this year’s breakout stars. The conversation touched on the British rapper Central Cee, the Bronx drill rapper Ice Spice, the country-folk singer Zach Bryan, the alt-rock revivalist Blondshell, the haunted pop crooner Ethel Cain and more.The conversation included debate about what makes for innovation in the crowded and confusing pop music marketplace in 2022, and an audience Q. and A. session touching on Taylor Swift, the persistence of physical media and much more.Guests:Joe Coscarelli, The New York Times’s pop music reporterCaryn Ganz, The New York Times’s pop music editorConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica. More