Awards, Decorations and Honors

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      At the Kennedy Center, an Ode to the Arts, and a Gentle Jab at Biden’s Age

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      Billy Crystal, Renée Fleming, Queen Latifah, Barry Gibb and Dionne Warwick are honored; Robert De Niro joked that Crystal is just a few years younger than the president.Rarely is the president of the United States, nestled in his box, the center of attention at the Kennedy Center Honors, the annual awards ceremony that brings a carousel of celebrities, musicians and actors to the stage to pay tribute to lifetime achievements in the arts.But such was the case on Sunday night, when Robert De Niro, celebrating Billy Crystal’s career, marveled at all the honoree had packed into his career.“You’re only 75,” Mr. De Niro said. “That means you’re just about six years away from being the perfect age to be president.”As President Biden grinned, waved and ruefully shook his finger at Mr. De Niro from the presidential box, members of the audience leaped to their feet with applause — some to gawk at Mr. Biden’s reaction from the front row of the balcony.Billy Crystal attending the Kennedy Center Honors. Robert De Niro noted that Mr. Crystal is nearing the age of the president.Paul Morigi/Getty ImagesIt was the only suggestion of politics in an apolitical, if quintessentially Washington event that sees throngs of dignitaries and politicians gather each year to pay tribute to the arts.On Sunday, the Kennedy Center honored artists who not only revolutionized their genres but transcended them: Billy Crystal, the actor and comedian; Barry Gibb, the musician and songwriter who rose to fame as the eldest member of the Bee Gees; Renée Fleming, the opera singer; Queen Latifah, the rapper, singer and actress; and Dionne Warwick, the singer.Ms. Warwick, who has performed five times at the Kennedy Center and previously appeared at the honors gala to perform tributes to two separate honorees, said her reaction to learning that she would be honored was: “Finally, it’s here!”“It’s a privilege to wear this,” she said, gesturing to the signature rainbow medallion given to each honoree.Missy Elliott, performing at the Kennedy Center. She spoke of Queen Latifah, recalling that for her, Ms. Latifah’s “Ladies First” anthem “was saying, ‘You will respect me.’”Gail Schulman/CBSOne of the quirks of these Honors is that the cast of musicians, actors and singers paying tribute to the honorees are kept secret from the attendees, and even the honorees themselves. On Sunday, a nonstop series of bold-lettered names descended on the stage, including Missy Elliott, Jay Leno, Meg Ryan and Lin-Manuel Miranda.The evening blazed through a Broadway-style medley toasting to Mr. Crystal by Mr. Miranda; a showstopping rendition of “Alfie” by Cynthia Erivo, the Tony and Grammy-award winning singer and actress; tributes to Queen Latifah by Kerry Washington and Rev. Stef and Jubilation, the choir Queen Latifah’s mother had belonged to. It was capped by a stirring rendition of “You’ll Never Walk Alone” by Tituss Burgess, Christine Baranski and Susan Graham, and a medley of Bee Gees songs by Ariana DeBose.The honorees Dionne Warwick and Renée Fleming.Paul Morigi/Getty ImagesFor Mr. Crystal, the Kennedy Center conjured the Lower East Side onstage, projecting a likeness of Katz’s Delicatessen as a backdrop for Ms. Ryan, Mr. Crystal’s most famous co-star, in their famous scene together.“This scene really came naturally to me,” Ms. Ryan said, to laughter. “I’ve actually never been around anyone who made faking an orgasm easier.”For Mr. Gibb, musicians including Barbra Streisand, Dolly Parton and Paul McCartney on Sunday reflected on his extensive list of songs — more than 1,000, with tracks in different genres, like “Islands in the Stream” and “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart,” and the Bee Gees hits that made him and his brothers famous.“He taught us how to walk,” Lionel Richie said in a prerecorded video interview, as the famous guitar hook in “Stayin’ Alive” pulsed through the theater.“Kindness and understanding — we seem to be losing that,” Mr. Gibb said. “And we need to grab it back as quickly as possible.”Ms. Fleming, the soprano known as “the people’s diva,” said that she was grateful for the opportunity to highlight the arts.Barry Gibb and Queen Latifah, who were also honored.Manuel Balce Ceneta/Associated Press“Artists really can change hearts and minds and we’re allowed to wrestle with difficult problems and life and death,” Ms. Fleming said. “Because I’m in the opera world, we all die in opera.”But she allowed ahead of the show that she was experiencing a strange reverse form of stage fright. Performing on the world’s biggest stages may be second nature to her, but, she said, “The thing that scares me is sitting in the box!”Queen Latifah, for her part, appeared prepared to soak up the experience. At the State Department dinner on Saturday night, she told attendees how she would “never forget” the moment. And she appeared visibly moved when Ms. Elliott regaled members of the audience on Sunday with the memory of Queen Latifah on television declaring “Ladies first” in her feminist anthem of the same name, at a time when “we kept hearing, ‘It’s a man’s world.’”“She was saying, ‘You will respect me,’” Ms. Elliott said. “‘I will be a leader. I will be a provider. I will be an inspiration to many.’”The show will be broadcast on CBS on Dec. 27. More

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      Alexandre Kantorow Wins Surprise, Prestigious Piano Award

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      Alexandre Kantorow, 26, joins an esteemed group of pianists who have won the Gilmore Artist Award, which is given every four years.The 26-year-old French pianist Alexandre Kantorow was not exactly sure what the man from Kalamazoo, Mich., wanted when he invited him to lunch last spring in Italy.So when that man, Pierre van der Westhuizen, the executive and artistic director of the Irving S. Gilmore International Piano Festival, began to tell Kantorow that he had won the $300,000 Gilmore Artist Award, one of the most prestigious prizes in classical music, he was stunned.“I was absolutely just on my knees,” he said. “It was a bit like a ‘You’re a wizard, Harry,’ kind of moment, from ‘Harry Potter.’”The Gilmore announced on Wednesday that Kantorow would join the elite and eclectic group of pianists who have won the award, which is given every four years. (The pandemic caused a yearlong delay; the last winner, Igor Levit, was announced in 2018.)The Gilmore is not awarded as part of a competition, so contestants do not even know that they are being considered for it. Instead, a small, anonymous jury of cultural leaders travels incognito to concerts around the world, searching for the winning artist with the potential to, according to the prize, “make a real impact on music.”The award is often thought of as the music world’s version of the MacArthur Foundation’s “genius” grants: a prize that cannot be applied for or sought. The long, confidential selection process aims to judge pianists over a sustained period of time, in contrast to the high-pressure atmosphere of competitions.Jury members had been attending Kantorow’s concerts without his knowledge for years, trailing him in Germany, Switzerland, Minnesota, Florida and elsewhere. They also listened to his recordings and watched videos of his performances. They were impressed by his charisma, curiosity and “inquisitive nature,” van der Westhuizen said.“Nothing is ever the same twice,” he added. “It’s always fresh and always interesting. He has so much to say. There’s nothing that holds him back in what he wants to say and how he wants to say it.”In 2019, Kantorow won the gold medal at the International Tchaikovsky Competition, one of the world’s most important music contests. He also received the prestigious Grand Prix award there.He will receive $50,000 outright to spend as he wishes and can apply the rest to anything that furthers his career or artistry over a four-year period, subject to the Gilmore’s approval. Kantorow said that he was not yet sure how he would spend the money but that he hoped to create something “that lasts, that is concrete.” He is thinking about a film project, or possibly creating a space where musicians could practice and gather.Other winners of the award include Rafal Blechacz, Kirill Gerstein, Ingrid Fliter, Piotr Anderszewski and Leif Ove Andsnes.Kantorow was born in Clermont-Ferrand, France, to musicians, and began playing piano at age 5. He has recorded several albums, including Saint-Saëns piano concertos and works by Brahms.“His movements are free and loose yet precise, like a well-coordinated rag doll,” the magazine Gramophone wrote last year. “He is one of the most relaxed pianists you could imagine.”Kantorow will perform and speak in Kalamazoo on Sunday. In October, he will come to Carnegie Hall, playing a recital of works by Liszt, Brahms, Schubert and Bach.“This is the best kind of gift a young artist can receive,” he said. “I really feel I have wings for the future.” More

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      ‘Poor Things’ Takes Top Prize at Venice Film Festival

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      The film, directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, stars Emma Stone as a woman who goes on a sexual and philosophical journey. The announcement of its win was met with a roar of applause.“Poor Things,” directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, was awarded the Golden Lion for best film at the 80th Venice International Film Festival on Saturday by a competition jury led by Damien Chazelle. The film stars Emma Stone in a virtuoso performance as a woman with an initially childlike understanding of the world who comes into her own through a sexual and philosophical journey.Bella Baxter, the main character in the film, “wouldn’t exist without Emma Stone,” Lanthimos said. “This film is her, in front of and behind the camera.” Stone previously collaborated with Lanthimos on “The Favourite,” which won the Grand Jury Prize at the festival in 2018.Like many other actors in films screened at the festival, Stone was not in attendance, as the strike by SAG-AFTRA, the union that represents television and movie actors, continued.Set in a partly fantastical 19th-century Europe, “Poor Things” follows Bella (Stone) on her eye-opening adventures in Tony McNamara’s adaptation of the 1992 Alasdair Gray novel. The film also stars Willem Dafoe as Bella’s father who is a doctor, Ramy Youssef as his assistant and her suitor, and Mark Ruffalo as a lascivious lawyer.Lanthimos said that the film took “quite a few years” to bring into being, before “the world, or our industry,” was ready for its story. The award announcement was met with a roar of applause.The 80th edition of the festival opened with “Comandante,” a historical drama about an Italian submarine that rescued Belgian sailors during World War II. Other prominent films included “Maestro,” “Priscilla,” “The Killer,” “Ferrari,” “Hit Man,” “Origin,” “El Conde,” “Aggro Dr1ft,” “Coup de Chance,” “Dogman” and William Friedkin’s final film, “The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial.”The latest edition received wide acclaim despite advance speculation that the SAG-AFTRA and Writers Guild of America strikes in Hollywood might affect the festival’s impact. Stars were largely absent. However, there were exceptions, including Adam Driver and Jessica Chastain, thanks to interim agreements secured with SAG-AFTRA; both actors expressed support for the strikes. But the filmmakers did not disappoint: Before the awards ceremony, crowds chanted “Yorgos! Yorgos!” when the director walked onto the red carpet.The Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize went to “Evil Does Not Exist,” the new film from Ryusuke Hamaguchi, whose film “Drive My Car” won an Academy Award. His latest feature centers on a small town in Japan trying to fend off a planned glamping site.Immigration was a recurring theme among the prizewinners. The Silver Lion for best director went to Matteo Garrone for the immigration drama “Me Captain.” The Special Jury Prize went to Agnieszka Holland for “Green Border,” her multifaceted look at immigration to Poland.The Volpi Cup for best actress was awarded to Cailee Spaeny, who played the titular role in Sofia Coppola’s “Priscilla,” the story of Priscilla Presley’s relationship with Elvis Presley. The best actor award went to Peter Sarsgaard for his role as a man with dementia who is accused of past abuse in Michel Franco’s “Memory.” In his acceptance speech, Sarsgaard spoke movingly against the threat of artificial intelligence. Seydou Sarr won the Marcello Mastroianni Award, given to an outstanding emerging actor, for “Me Captain.”The best screenplay honor was given to “El Conde,” a vampiric reimagining of Gen. Augusto Pinochet, the Chilean dictator, written by Guillermo Calderón and Pablo Larraín, who also directed. “Love Is a Gun,” directed by Lee Hong-Chi, received the Lion of the Future award for best debut feature. “Thank You Very Much,” a playful look at Andy Kaufman, won the Venice Classics award for best documentary on cinema.For the Orizzonti section, another competition slate in the festival, the top prize went to “Explanation for Everything,” an expansive work from the Hungarian director Gabor Reisz. “El Paraiso,” a mother-daughter drama, also won two awards in this section: Margarita Rosa de Francisco won for best actress, and Enrico Maria Artale won for best screenplay. Notably, a Mongolian film, “City of Wind,” was honored for best actor (Tergel Bold-Erdene).This year’s Golden Lions for lifetime achievement went to Tony Leung Chiu-wai, a star of Hong Kong cinema, and to the director Liliana Cavani, whose film “The Order of Time” played out of competition. The Glory to the Filmmaker Award went to Wes Anderson, whose short film “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar” played out of competition. More

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      Terence Blanchard, Pushing Jazz Forward From a New Perch

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      The trumpeter and composer follows the premiere of two Met operas with an appointment as executive artistic director of SFJazz in San Francisco and a Jazz Masters honor.Two big announcements came down recently about the trumpeter and composer Terence Blanchard — both monumental, neither one a surprise.In June, the National Endowment for the Arts announced that Blanchard, 61, would receive a 2024 Jazz Masters fellowship, the highest lifetime-achievement honor available to a United States-based improviser.Then a month later, as if a reminder that this lifetime still has a few major chapters ahead, the nonprofit organization and performance center SFJazz named Blanchard its executive artistic director. Hardly any other musician has so solid a grasp on the scope of what’s going on in jazz today — and no institution is as committed to reflecting, even goading, its growth.A six-time Grammy winner, Blanchard possesses one of the most commanding and slippery trumpet styles in jazz, and for almost a decade he has led one of its most reliable ensembles, the E-Collective, full of musicians a couple of decades his junior. He has written and recorded over 40 film scores, including for most of Spike Lee’s movies. Despite being a conservatory dropout himself, he has become a leading educator, helping shape programs at U.C.L.A., the University of Miami and the Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz. And in recent years, he has made headlines for the back-to-back Met premieres of his two operas, “Fire Shut Up in My Bones” and “Champion.”All of which makes for relevant job training for the new role. “The thing that I’ve always loved about SFJazz is that they don’t treat the music like it’s a fossil,” Blanchard said in a phone interview. “It’s a living, breathing, ongoing thing. And they respect young artists who are bringing something different to the table.”Blanchard is taking the reins directly from SFJazz’s founder, Randall Kline, who has run the organization since it started in 1982, always with a passion for what’s next. “I remember thinking how much I love that dude,” Blanchard said. “He was just a serious music lover who happened to be a promoter.”Blanchard onstage at the SFJazz Gala in June 2022.Drew Altizer PhotographySFJazz began as a jazz festival and traveling presenter around San Francisco. It convened a house ensemble of all-star musicians, the SFJazz Collective, in 2004, and opened the $64 million, state-of-the-art SFJazz Center in 2013. This week, Blanchard and Kline will both be at the kickoff for the center’s 2023-24 season, the last booked by Kline.SFJazz’s board chair, Denise Young, who led the search for Kline’s replacement, said Blanchard stood out because he “had a vision that matched what we believed was important to this music in these times.”Blanchard will relish the chance to pick up on one of Kline’s pet obsessions: bringing new technologies to the SFJazz stage. And as a musician who consistently uses his platform to speak about social issues — recording music with Cornel West, dedicating an album to the memory of Eric Garner, putting narratives of Black queer life into song — he’s also eager to confront questions of unequal access in a city where inequality continues to balloon.He’d like to keep SFJazz high-tech, but low-barrier when it comes to entry. To promote “outreach into the community,” he said, he envisions a matinee concert program directed at students in local high schools, and a series of traveling shows that might bring SFJazz-level talent into some of the Bay Area’s more neglected neighborhoods.Last week Blanchard stole an hour for an interview from his new office there. The building buzzed around him as the team prepared for the season launch, and by the end of the call an assistant was hovering, waiting to whisk him away to a donor meeting.Born and raised in New Orleans, Blanchard broke out on the New York scene in the early 1980s — the so-called Young Lions era, when many were longing for a return to the halcyon sounds of midcentury jazz. In 1982, he joined Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, taking over the trumpet chair from Wynton Marsalis, his childhood friend. Then he followed Marsalis onto the roster of Columbia Records, where he recorded a series of straight-ahead albums with a quintet he and Donald Harrison led.While Marsalis doubled down on Neo-Classicism, founding and directing Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York as a beacon of tradition, Blanchard has veered toward the cutting edge. With his E-Collective, he has emulated Blakey in one crucial way: His side-musicians are all significantly younger. On other fronts, Blakey wouldn’t recognize much of that quintet’s tool kit: the electronic effects, the hip-hop backbeats, the swatches of distorted guitar and electric bass.So there’s something poetic about seeing Blanchard — the Young Lion-turned-innovator — land at SFJazz, which has long been positioned as a kind of left-coast alternative to Marsalis’s JALC. “The idea was eclecticism: Don’t fly the flag of one thing,” Kline said in an interview. “San Francisco at the time had all these amazing scenes going: There was an Asian American jazz scene, there was this kind of trad-jazz scene, there was this hard-core avant-garde thing going, there was Brazilian music and Afro Cuban music.”To the extent that SFJazz has developed a winning formula, Kline said, “it’s been a formula around being open.”That conviction came in handy when Blanchard was invited to SFJazz in the mid-2010s for a series of artist residencies. He had recently composed “Champion,” which tells the tragic story of the world champion boxer Emile Griffith, and an opera company in San Francisco was hoping to stage it. The center had never done an opera before, and sure, this wasn’t exactly “jazz,” but it was just the kind of ambitious project that the center was built to handle.“The thing that I’ve always loved about SFJazz is that they don’t treat the music like it’s a fossil,” Blanchard said. “It’s a living, breathing, ongoing thing. And they respect young artists who are bringing something different to the table.”Ike Edeani for The New York Times“It fit so perfectly with our programming aesthetic, and also getting creative around the space,” Kline said. “It was just as good as it gets.”When Blanchard had first been approached about an opera commission in the early 2010s, he was thrilled. His father had sung opera, and he had grown up hearing Puccini and Verdi in the house, along with the sounds of jazz and Black popular music. But he wasn’t sure where to begin.So he did what he’d done at so many inflection points throughout his career: He went to his teacher, Roger Dickerson, a now 89-year-old composer and pianist and a New Orleans music giant in his own right, who had helped Blanchard write his first large-scale compositions.“He told me, ‘Stop thinking about writing an opera, just tell a story,’” Blanchard remembered. “That was extremely helpful for me, because then I wasn’t trying to live up to something.”“Tell your story” is, of course, a catchphrase among jazz musicians. But partly thanks to his work with Dickerson, Blanchard has developed a special aptitude for using music to narrate ideas and convictions — which swiftly moves listeners past any fixation on genre. Dickerson also thinks of it as a reminder that complexity, nuance and misdirection don’t have to dilute narrative drive — or even relatability — but can in fact enhance a story line.“He could pick up on little things that I would show him, and very quickly discover the inside meaning of it. That is, make it his own,” Dickerson said in an interview, remembering Blanchard’s interpretive skills even at age 16. That ideal — learn the fundamentals, and then make something undeniably yours — is something that Blanchard has passed on to his own students.Ambrose Akinmusire, who studied with Blanchard in the 2000s, remembered him stopping class whenever he heard students making direct references to old jazz tropes. “We don’t do that here,” he recalled him saying.On the flip side, Blanchard remembers having to convince the cast of “Fire” that they should draw upon their whole musical lexicon. “I’m listening to them warm up, and I’m realizing a lot of those singers grew up in the church, sang gospel, some of them were jazz singers — but they were all taught to throw that away when you sing opera,” he said.“I said, ‘Listen man, bring all of that back to your performance. This is a current story, so hearing gospel in the middle of this is no problem. Hearing you sing a blues phrase, because you’re a jazz musician, is no problem. And, man, I can’t tell you the type of performances we got out of people.” More

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      Ruben Ostlund Doesn’t Want You to Get Too Comfortable

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      The Swedish director, this year’s jury president for the Cannes Film Festival, talks about his approach to making films.For a filmmaker whose most recent movie was nominated for three Academy Awards and who has twice won the Palme d’Or, the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival, it might sound strange to hear Ruben Ostlund say he doesn’t focus on success.“I’m much more interested in when we fail as human beings than when we succeed,” said the Swedish director, who will lead the jury at this year’s festival, which runs from Tuesday to May 27.Mr. Ostlund, 49, won the Palme d’Or, last year for “Triangle of Sadness,” a class satire set aboard a doomed luxury yacht, and for his previous feature, “The Square,” an unsparing sendup of the art world, in 2017. Mr. Ostlund is one of only nine filmmakers who have multiple Palmes d’Or to his credit — and one of three to win the award for consecutive films.After its success at Cannes, “Triangle of Sadness,” which was Mr. Ostlund’s first film entirely in English, went on to become an art-house hit in both Europe and America, and was nominated for three Oscars — for best picture, best director and best original screenplay — but didn’t win any.In his three most recent features, starting with 2014’s “Force Majeure,” Mr. Ostlund has consciously tried to get away from a certain type of European art-house film that is often cerebral, challenging and severe.“I wanted to create a wild, entertaining ride at the same time that I was trying to talk about the content that I thought was important or that I was curious about, and not making a contradiction between those things,” he said in late April during a video interview, speaking from his house in Campos, Majorca.He pointed to the political comedies of Lina Wertmüller, the Italian director whose 1974 film “Swept Away” was a clear touchstone for “Triangle of Sadness,” and the surreal provocations of the Spanish filmmaker Luis Buñuel as examples of serious-minded films that are also great fun to watch.Arvin Kananian, left, and Woody Harrelson in a scene from “Triangle of Sadness,” which Mr. Ostlund won the Palme d’Or for last year.Neon, via Associated PressIn a statement announcing Mr. Ostlund as jury president in February, festival organizers called the decision a “tribute to films that are uncompromising and forthright and which constantly demand that viewers challenge themselves and that art continue to invent itself.”“Contrary to popular belief, thought-provoking cinema can also be popular,” Philippe Bober, one of the producers on “Triangle of Sadness,” wrote in an email.“We want to make uncompromising auteur films but also to embrace the audience,” Mr. Bober continued. He has worked with Mr. Ostlund since 2005.“The bad news for producers,” Mr. Bober added, referring to himself and the film’s other Oscar-nominated producer, Erik Hemmendorff, “is that if you want to make good films, you have to support your directors’ radicalism when they are experimenting with form and content for a long period of time before you make money.”The critical and popular acclaim for “Triangle of Sadness” seems a vindication of Mr. Bober’s faith in Mr. Ostlund.The humor, often acid-laced, that makes the Swedish director’s films so entertaining is often deeply discomfiting — and sometimes downright squirmworthy. This has proved divisive, with some viewers regarding his work as manipulative or downright cruel (“Triangle of Sadness” includes an audaciously long vomiting scene), and others hailing him as an uncommonly perceptive social commentator.“I think all my approaches in my films are looking at human behavior, creating dilemmas,” Mr. Ostlund said, “in order to try to tell something about us human beings.” He added that he tried to create “scenes where I believe that, yeah, this is an accurate and a true picture of our behavior” without pointing fingers.“I’m happy,” he added, “if I can reach the level of a really good sociological experiment.”According to Owen Gleiberman, chief film critic for Variety magazine, “Triangle of Sadness” is “very much a movie of its moment.”“It’s about the 1 percent, and it’s about the 1 percent getting their comeuppance. And that’s a good theme and it’s a gratifying theme,” said Mr. Gleiberman, who attended his first Cannes Film Festival in 1996. At the same time, he said he felt that the film was “too in love with its own satirical excess.” While he was delighted by the unexpected Palme d’Or win for “The Square,” he felt “Triangle of Sadness” was less deserving of the prize.“There’s no rule that says that a director shouldn’t take the Palme d’Or twice in five years,” Mr. Gleiberman said. “But when that happens, it’s usually an indication not that he has made two masterpieces, but that he’s become a Cannes darling.” As such, the fact that Mr. Ostlund was tapped to head the Cannes jury, Mr. Gleiberman added, “makes perfect sense.”“I think all my approaches in my films are looking at human behavior, creating dilemmas,” Mr. Ostlund said, “in order to try to tell something about us human beings.”Ana Cuba for The New York Times“I hesitated a little bit because of the burden of the position actually,” Mr. Ostlund said about being asked to chair the jury. His eight co-jurors include the American actors Paul Dano and Brie Larson, the Argentine director Damián Szifron, and the French filmmaker Julia Ducournau, who won the Palme d’Or in 2021 for “Titane,” a controversial body-horror film.Even though no one person gets to decide the winners, the awards at Cannes often become identified with that year’s jury president. Historically speaking, the films that have taken the Palme d’Or, Mr. Gleiberman suggested, are “not some list of masterpieces.”“It’s more like the good, the bad and the ugly,” he said.Mr. Ostlund seemed all too aware of this when he suggested that the Palme d’Or awarded by a jury president is “something that can follow you then through your career,” for good or for ill.But Mr. Ostlund said it was important, above all, for him to endorse what Cannes stands for. “For me, it is the festival in the world that is on the barricades fighting for cinema” and a “provocative approach to cinema as an art form,” he said.“The last year when I had been traveling around with ‘Triangle of Sadness,’ I have tried to really promote cinema, talked about the advantage of cinema, talked about what are the qualities of watching things together instead of sitting in front of an individual screen,” he added.The Hungarian filmmaker Kornel Mundruczo, another Cannes favorite, said that the festival connected him to an “ethical, fundamental state of what does that mean to be a filmmaker and a true believer in film as the seventh art.”Films by Mr. Mundruczo, 48, and Mr. Ostlund have shared lineups at Cannes several times. In 2014, they both headlined the festival’s Un Certain Regard sidebar: Mr. Mundruczo’s “White God” won top prize and Mr. Ostlund’s “Force Majeure” took the jury prize. Three of Mr. Mundruczo’s other films have screened in the main competition at Cannes; he was invited to be a juror at Cannes twice but declined because of prior commitments.While expressing reservations about running films like horses in a race, Mr. Mundruczo, who has chaired juries at other festivals, said he enjoyed the experience — and not only because it forced him to take in multiple films a day.“As a jury member, you feel like you can give your taste, your honesty and your vision of the future of cinema and all your love of cinema,” Mr. Mundruczo said in an interview in Berlin, where he lives.Mr. Ostlund, who has also served on film festival juries before, said it was important to take care of the group dynamics and make sure everyone “feels that they are seen.”“I think I will have a very Swedish approach when it comes to running the jury,” he said.“It will be a democracy.” More

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      What Is an EGOT? A Detailed History of Its Origins and Winners.

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      Many people were introduced to the idea of an EGOT — winning an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony — through “30 Rock.” But it’s an actor from the 1980s who deserves the credit.Common would be the first to admit that he has an EGO — that is, an Emmy Award, a Grammy Award and an Oscar — making him just a Tony Award shy from securing the coveted EGOT, the achievement of winning all four major entertainment awards.Eighteen other people have done so, and the “Frozen” songwriter Robert Lopez is the only person to do it twice. The most recent addition was the actress Viola Davis, who earned a Grammy in February for the audiobook of her memoir, making her one of six women to have an EGOT.Now Common has a shot at joining this rather uncommon club. The Tony nominations will be announced on Tuesday, and he is eligible in the featured actor in a play category after making his Broadway debut in “Between Riverside and Crazy.”But where did the EGOT acronym come from, and what does it really take to earn the accolade?Why did we start talking about EGOTs?Many people who first heard of an EGOT assume it originated on the hit NBC sitcom “30 Rock,” which began airing in 2006. But it turns out the term dates back to 1984, when only three people had achieved EGOT-hood: the composer Richard Rodgers and the actresses Helen Hayes and Rita Moreno.It’s actually Philip Michael Thomas, Don Johnson’s partner on the police drama “Miami Vice,” who deserves the naming credit. The accomplishment was previously known as a “grand slam,” a term used for similar achievements in golf and tennis.Thomas has told reporters that his dream was to win an Emmy for his work on “Miami Vice,” a Grammy for his record albums, an Oscar for a play he wanted to adapt as a film, and a Tony for some musicals he had written.Thomas, who later claimed the acronym also stood for his career mantra — “Energy, Growth, Opportunity and Talent” — even wore a medallion with “EGOT” engraved on it. But he was never nominated for any of the awards he dreamed of winning.How did EGOT enter the popular lexicon?Despite Thomas’s efforts, it took a couple of decades before “EGOT” became a thing. Then Kay Cannon, a writer and producer on “30 Rock,” decided to incorporate the rare feat into a satirical story line that began in 2009. “You’d hear this red carpet commentary,” Cannon told The New York Times recently, “that they were one award away from EGOT-ing.”At the time, even some luminaries didn’t know about the distinction. The comedian Whoopi Goldberg first learned she had achieved EGOT status when she guest-starred on one of the four “30 Rock” episodes in which the character Tracy Jordan, played by Tracy Morgan, bought Thomas’s necklace and started strategizing to achieve his own EGOT. (“A good goal for a talented crazy person,” he says in the show.)“I watched ‘30 Rock’ and loved the concept,” Lopez said. “One doesn’t really ever think of themselves as a candidate for achieving something so ridiculous, but I realized that maybe I could do it one day.” Lopez got his wish in 2014, winning an Oscar for the song “Let It Go” from the Disney animated hit “Frozen.”The composer Andrew Lloyd Webber was more old school. “I wasn’t thinking, ‘If I get this Emmy, I’d be an EGOT,’” Lloyd Webber said about achieving the feat in 2018 for “Jesus Christ Superstar Live in Concert.” The lyricist Tim Rice and the singer John Legend, who played the title role, reached EGOT status at the same time.“It hadn’t really crossed my mind,” Lloyd Webber said. “I’m much more conscious of it now.”So, what is the best strategy for winning an EGOT?The not-so-quiet secret is that when you’re close to an EGOT, it is possible to game the system.Lloyd Webber said he was recently asked by a fellow artist — someone famous, he won’t say who — how to add a Tony to an awards collection that already included a Grammy and an Emmy. “I said, ‘Well, one way you could do that is become a producer, put some money into a few shows,’” he said. “Every show seems to have 20 producers these days.”That strategy worked for the singer and actress Jennifer Hudson, who achieved an EGOT in 2022 with her Tony win as a producer of “A Strange Loop.”Lloyd Webber thinks getting an Oscar is the most difficult. A Grammy is the easiest, he said, simply because there are more available categories: “You could be the best banjo player in Latin America.”And if Davis’s clinching Grammy win — in the best audio book, narration and storytelling category — revealed anything, it’s that nonmusical methods can be just as effective. “Do a comedy album or narrate your own audio book,” Cannon said. “Write a book, narrate that and then adapt it to the stage.”After considering her own track record (“I’m 0-for-4 right now”), Cannon said she thought her best bet could be a Broadway adaptation of “Pitch Perfect,” the 2012 musical comedy film that she co-wrote.Does it help to have an EGOT as your goal?Probably not. The renowned composer Alan Menken had already won 11 Grammys, eight Oscars and one Tony when his representatives realized he just needed an Emmy to complete the EGOT. “To be honest, it wasn’t something that was really on my wish list until it was brought up, and brought up, and brought up,” he said. “But you can’t will something like that into existence.”So about six years ago, Menken wrote a song about wanting to achieve an EGOT, soliciting assistance from comedy writers like Judd Apatow. The idea was that it would start off sounding sincere, and then would get more and more desperate with each section. Ultimately, he discarded the song (“It wasn’t any good, I can promise you”) and instead secured an Emmy for the animated series “Rapunzel’s Tangled Adventure.”What is the value of an EGOT?An EGOT is a flattering distinction that ultimately means nothing, said Menken, who described it as a “random assortment of honors.”“Just do what you do, as well as you can, and don’t think about it,” he added. “If you get awards, great.”There is no organizing body that awards EGOTs, and no ceremony at which a trophy is handed out. But there are hazy areas of eligibility, such as lifetime achievement awards. There are also EGOT enhancements, like the PEGOT, for either a Peabody Award or a Pulitzer Prize. Some say the G should instead represent a Golden Globe, or that the EGOT should become an EGGOT.Menken is proud of the fact that he also has a REGOT — the four traditional awards, plus a Razzie, also known as a Golden Raspberry Award. The ignoble prize was for worst original song from the film “Newsies,” the same project for which he won a Tony. “The Razzie puts everything in perspective, frankly,” he said.At least with the Razzies, there is a ceremony and a physical award. Cannon thinks there should be a similar ceremony for EGOTs, if only a mock version. After all, even “Saturday Night Live” commemorates the occasion when someone hosts the show for a fifth time. “You become a member of the Five-Timers Club, they give you a jacket.”Who’s not throwing away their shot?Over the years, artists have become more comfortable expressing their EGOT dreams. In a segment for the 2015 BET Hip Hop Awards, the composer and actor Lin-Manuel Miranda rattled off his scorecard: “Got a Grammy, got a Tony, got an Emmy,” he rapped, adding, “Somebody show me the way to the Oscars.”Miranda’s dream could come true next awards season: He has written new songs for the live-action “The Little Mermaid” movie, which will be released in late May.Menken, Miranda’s collaborator on the three new “Little Mermaid” songs, mused about whether he should take his name off them to give Miranda a better shot. “I have eight Oscars,” he said. “They’re probably going to go, ‘Alan, man, no.’ So I feel guilty.”Lopez agreed that Manuel deserves it, but he’s also rooting for someone else: Kristen Anderson-Lopez, his collaborator and wife. She just needs a Tony to secure the EGOT. An added benefit, he said, is that it would bring “more peace to my household.”Wait, so who exactly is in the EGOT club?These are the 18 people who have won EGOTs, along with the year and award that secured the achievement:Mel Brooks (2001, Tony)Viola Davis (2023, Grammy)John Gielgud (1991, Emmy)Whoopi Goldberg (2002, Tony)Marvin Hamlisch (1995, Emmy)Helen Hayes (1977, Grammy)Audrey Hepburn (1994, Grammy)Jennifer Hudson (2022, Tony)John Legend (2018, Emmy)Andrew Lloyd Webber (2018, Emmy)Robert Lopez (2014, Oscar)Alan Menken (2020, Emmy)Rita Moreno (1977, Emmy)Mike Nichols (2001, Emmy)Tim Rice (2018, Emmy)Richard Rodgers (1962, Emmy)Scott Rudin (2012, Grammy)Jonathan Tunick (1997, Tony) More

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      in Music

      Super Mario Bros. and Daddy Yankee Added to Recording Registry

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      The Library of Congress has designated 25 recordings, including Madonna’s “Like a Virgin,” as “audio treasures worthy of preservation for all time.”Super Mario Bros. are currently ruling the box office. Now, they have also been designated an unlikely national treasure by no less than the Library of Congress.The composer Koji Kondo’s 1985 theme for the video game is among the 25 recordings just added to the National Recording Registry, joining Madonna’s 1984 album “Like a Virgin,” Daddy Yankee’s 2004 hit “Gasolina” and some of the earliest known mariachi recordings as “audio treasures worthy of preservation for all time.”The registry, created in 2000, designates recordings that are “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant,” and are at least 10 years old. This year’s entries were selected from more than 1,100 nominees submitted by the public. They bring the total number of titles on the registry to 625 — a tiny but elite slice of the nearly 4 million songs, speeches, radio broadcasts, podcasts and other recorded sounds in the library’s collection.This is the first time a video game soundtrack has been selected, according to the library. In the decades since the game’s release, Kondo’s “jaunty, Latin-influenced melody” (as the library describes it, calling it “the perfect accompaniment to Mario and Luigi’s side scrolling hijinks”) may have been driven permanently, or perhaps annoyingly, into the collective brain.But its creator remains relatively unknown. Kondo, who was born and raised in Japan, wrote the ditty — officially known as “Ground Theme” — in the 1980s, after seeing a recruiting flyer from Nintendo on a university bulletin board in Osaka.In a statement, Kondo, 61, who still works for Nintendo, said he was delighted by the designation. “Having this music preserved alongside so many other classic songs is such a great honor,” he said. “It’s actually a little difficult to believe.”And its significance, according to the library, goes far beyond the song itself, which was inspired in part by the music of the Japanese jazz fusion band T-Square. According to the library, Kondo’s soundtrack “helped establish the game’s legendary status and proved that the five-channel Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) sound chip was capable of a vast musical complexity and creativity.”This year’s list is heavy on familiar pop hits, including Madonna’s 1984 album, “Like a Virgin.”Library of CongressThis year’s list is heavy on familiar pop hits, including Led Zeppelin’s single “Stairway to Heaven,” Queen Latifah’s album “All Hail the Queen,” Mariah Carey’s single “All I Want for Christmas is You,” Jimmy Buffett’s “Margaritaville,” and John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads.”Many are deemed significant not just for their musical contribution, but for the broader cultural shifts they exemplify. With “Gasolina,” the first reggaeton recording on the registry, the library notes that its “aural dominance” ushered in “a full reggaeton explosion and even saw various radio stations switching their formats,” including some from English to Spanish.The earliest item added to the registry is “The Very First Mariachi Recordings,” a compilation of recordings (including “The Parakeet”) made in 1907-9 by a group from the rural state of Jalisco, Mexico. The four musicians, led by the vihuela player Justo Villa, are credited with having introduced the style of music to the capital city — and eventually the world — a few years earlier.The most recent is the Northwest Chamber Orchestra’s recording, released in 2012, of Ellen Taaffe Zwilich’s “Concerto for Clarinet and Chamber Orchestra,” which was inspired by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.The registry also includes some spoken-word recordings. The journalist Dorothy Thompson’s radio commentaries on “the European situation,” made between Aug. 23 and Sept. 6, 1939, are cited as a “unique broadcast record” of the period right before the outbreak of World War II.The library’s list also recognizes Carl Sagan’s “Pale Blue Dot,” a short 1994 recording of him explaining the ideas behind his book of the same title. It was inspired by a famous photograph of the Earth taken by the space probe Voyager 1 during its final mission, which Sagan describes as revealing how the Earth was “a mere point in a vast, encompassing cosmos.” More

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      At the Oscars, the Red Carpet Goes Champagne

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      The 2023 Academy Awards carpet’s champagne hue — a break with a 62-year tradition of the bright red rug — is the latest arrival rug to opt for a colorful palette.There are some fundamental truths in the world: The sky is blue. The grass is green. The Oscars red carpet is re —— champagne-colored.Jimmy Kimmel, this year’s host, joked at the unveiling on Thursday that the color change — the first time in more than six decades that the academy’s arrival rug will not be red — had been prompted by Will Smith slapping the comedian Chris Rock across the face onstage at last year’s ceremony.“I think the decision to go with a champagne carpet rather than a red carpet shows just how confident we are that no blood will be shed,” he said.Oscars organizers said they wanted the rug to be mellow, like a beach at sunset.The 50,000-square-foot rug, which was created in a color chosen by the academy, is the latest in a trend of colorful carpets sweeping premieres, galas and award ceremonies across the country, from the Emmys (gold) to the Golden Globes (gray) to the purple-carpeted world premiere of “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” in Los Angeles in November.“Every year, a new color will be a hot color,” said Steve Olive, the president of Event Carpet Pros, the company that has manufactured the carpet for the Oscars for more than 20 years, as well as events on both coasts like the Golden Globes, the Emmy Awards, the Grammy Awards and thousands of movie premieres. “This year seems to be a lot of lavender,” he said. (Red, he notes, is still the most popular color, though black, white and gray are gaining on it.)Clockwise from top left: The Emmys carpet in 2022; the “Avatar: The Way of Water” premiere in 2022; the premiere of ”Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” in 2022; and the Golden Globe Awards in 2023. Clockwise from top left; Lisa O’Connor/Invision, via Associated Press, Allison Dinner/EPA, via Shutterstock, Valerie Macon/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images, Jon Kopaloff/Getty ImagesFor the Oscars production team, which chose the champagne color, the priority was a light, “soothing” color that would not clash with the orange tent that will be erected over the carpet to shield attendees from the sun and potential rain.The Run-Up to the 2023 OscarsThe 95th Academy Awards will be presented on March 12 in Los Angeles.Nell Mescal: The 19-year-old singer-songwriter says she doesn’t want to go viral, but her reaction to her brother’s Oscar nomination made her an internet microcelebrity just the same.Trying to Fix the Oscars: Acceptance speeches on TikTok? They’re part of an urgent effort to win back viewers to the Academy Awards.Inside the Oscars Campaigns: Despite the big show of sealed envelopes, Oscars voting is a result of a highly contingent, political process. This is how the quest for awards-season glory got so cutthroat.Asian Actors: A record number of actors of Asian ancestry were recognized with Oscar nominations this year. But historically, Asian stars have rarely been part of the awards.(They also considered chocolate brown, said Lisa Love, who was a red carpet creative consultant for the Oscars for the first time this year and is also a creative contributor for the Met Gala, which has been known for its eye-catching floor wear.)“The sienna-color tent and champagne-colored carpet was inspired by watching the sunset on a white-sand beach at the ‘golden hour’ with a glass of champagne in hand, evoking calm and peacefulness,” she said in an interview on Thursday.The red carpet traces its origins back to 458 B.C., when it appeared in the Aeschylus play “Agamemnon.” When the Greek king Agamemnon returns home victorious from the Trojan War, his vengeful wife, Clytemnestra, tries to trick him into arrogance by laying out a red carpet for him to walk on, an action that, undertaken by a mere mortal, would court the wrath of the gods. (He takes the bait and, shortly afterward, she murders him in a bathtub.)Red carpets have been a staple at premieres and galas since 1922, when the showman Sid Grauman rolled one out for the 1922 premiere of “Robin Hood,” which starred Douglas Fairbanks, at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood. The Oscars adopted it beginning with the 1961 ceremony, and, ever since, the special shade — known as Academy Red — has been instantly recognizable in photos.But beginning about 15 years ago, at events across the country, producers began opting for more vibrant and varied fare, Mr. Olive said. There are the Met Gala’s pink and red, white and blue carpets, and Disney’s blue (“Moana” and “Avatar: The Way of Water”), white with black thorns (“Maleficent: Mistress of Evil”) and green (“Pete’s Dragon”) carpets for its premieres.“It’s important for us as creatives and producers to create visuals that stand out from each other,” said Keith Baptista, a partner at the creative agency Prodject, which handles design and management for events like the LACMA Art + Film Gala and the MoMA Film Benefit, and works with companies including Chanel, Gucci and Ralph Lauren. “You want to be able to look at something at a quick glance and go, ‘That was the Met Gala’ or ‘That was Vanity Fair.’”Lady Gaga arriving at the Met Gala in 2019, which featured a light pink carpet.Karsten Moran for The New York TimesMindi Weiss, an event planner who has worked with the Kardashians, Justin Bieber and Ellen DeGeneres, pointed to another consideration: How the carpet will photograph. Red, she said, tradition aside, is simply not flattering.“The color of red carpets has changed because of fashion,” she said. “It has to match the dresses, and the red clashed.”In fact, event planners say trends in carpet colors now correlate with trends on the runways.“It all goes back to fashion and style and trendsetting,” Ms. Weiss said. “The carpet should reflect the fashion that’s going to walk down it and not fight with it.”But a striking color does not always complement what celebrities are wearing, Mr. Baptista said — or photograph well. The wrong tone of gold, for instance, can wash out a photo, said Stephanie Goodell, who has led what the Television Academy refers to as its “SWATCH” team for the Emmys for the past seven years. To head off any issues, production companies do extensive lighting, color and even footprint testing beforehand, and warn stylists.“We’re in constant communication with publicists before the show,” Ms. Goodell said. “We always want to make sure they know exactly what we’re dealing with because they do select fashion based on the color of the carpet.”Planning teams for big-ticket events generally begin considering the carpet — the color, material, length, width and pile type — six months to a year before the event. They also look for other ways to stand out, like inscribing a logo or lettering on the carpet, Mr. Baptista said.“Sometimes we’ll see people use grass, especially for summertime events,” he said. Then, for the background, “a lot of people use hedgerows, so it’s just greenery and it becomes neutral. Sometimes, there’s no logo,” he said.Organizers of the 2023 Oscars said they wanted a carpet color that would evoke calm and peacefulness. Todd Heisler/The New York TimesFor the Oscars, Mr. Olive got the call that carpet would be champagne about 45 days before the show. He rushed to get the three-week manufacturing process underway, which takes place at a mill in Dalton, Ga., before the carpet is trucked across the country to Los Angeles, which takes about a week.So what happens to the carpet after Cate Blanchett and Austin Butler have strolled it?Its future, Mr. Olive said, does not lie in an industrial-size dumpster. The polyester-based, sisal-style rug is made from recycled materials and is recycled after the event, possibly beginning life anew as wall insulation or carpet padding, Mr. Olive said.But first, it has to look sharp on the big night. So, was this year’s Oscars squad worried that the champagne carpet — the kind of flooring that screams “Shoes-off house!” — would get dirty?“It will probably get dirty — maybe it wasn’t the best choice,” Ms. Love said. “We’ll see!”Katie Van Syckle More