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      in Movies

      The New ‘Captain America’ Movie Isn’t Great. But Don’t Call Him a D.E.I. Hire.

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      Anthony Mackie picks up the shield at a potentially awkward time. But there’s one way Disney can do right by him and the next generation of Marvel stars.“Captain America: Brave New World” is a mediocre-at-best movie, a roughly cobbled together film that pales in comparison to the early days of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It’s still better than the franchise’s most recent run of disasters, and its strong opening weekend at the box office seems to have restored some momentum to the M.C.U. But the most remarkable part of this film is the irony of how it lands in the political moment: “Brave New World” features a Black iteration of the quintessential American superhero a month into an administration that has made eliminating diversity, equity and inclusion one of its first priorities.In a way, Disney’s timing regarding diversity was always going to be off. For most of the run of one of the highest-grossing media franchises of all time, diversity was an afterthought. For the first decade of the M.C.U., over the course of more than a dozen films, the heroes carrying the franchise — the central protagonists — were exclusively white men, until Chadwick Boseman led “Black Panther” in 2018.So, yeah, Disney started out a little behind.But when it came down to the handoff of the star-spangled shield from the blond-haired and blue-eyed Steve Rogers (played by Chris Evans) to Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie), Disney actually built a steady platform for the M.C.U.’s first Black Captain America to lead his own film.The 2021 Marvel TV series “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier” provided the space for Sam to develop into Captain America in earnest, not just as a kind of M.C.U. diversity hire.Sam’s transformation into the Captain could have easily been the M.C.U.’s version of “The Blind Side,” a tale of a Black man’s triumph under the tutelage of the true, original white hero. He also could have been the Uncle Tom Captain, a servile Black man unquestioningly putting his life on the line.But “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier” explored Sam’s reticence in taking on the mantle of Captain America, given how his Blackness so often marginalized him, made him a target or turned him into a stereotype in the eyes of some of his fellow citizens. The show also introduced a Black super soldier named Isaiah Bradley, who received the super serum like Steve Rogers. But Isaiah never became the lauded hero Steve did; he was made a prisoner and a science project, jailed and experimented on for 30 years. He’s a reminder to Sam of what can happen as a Black man in American, no matter his standing, his strength or his title.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 138 Shares189 Views

      in Television

      The Comedian Looking for Something All of America Can Laugh At

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      Partway through his latest special, “Lonely Flowers,” the comedian Roy Wood Jr. tells the story of the time he accidentally hired a white photographer. Or, as he corrects himself, he hired a photographer who he did not think would be white until he showed up. Whenever he travels to a city for a gig, he explains, artists who live there reach out to him to offer their services. He respects their hustle and sometimes accepts those offers, like the one he got from a guy who wanted to take some pictures of him. “Come on take the pictures,” Wood wrote back. “I’ll see you next week, Deon!”Wood drops Deon’s name casually, letting the audience pick up on the joke before he has to explain it. As they start to lose it, Wood joins them in astonishment. Pitching his body forward, throwing his arms out and bugging his eyes, he yells: “You see what I’m saying? I don’t know no white Deons either! Never met one!”Deon ends up being a bald, unimaginably chiseled military veteran with menacing tattoos consisting of “an animal, a death threat then a Bible verse” decorating his arms, the kind of white man that a Black person might not want to be left alone with. Wood is terrified of him — he makes sure to pay him up front — but he finds him unexpectedly sympathetic. It turns out that after returning from service abroad, Deon feels intensely isolated, and photography gives him a sense of purpose.Onstage, Wood is unhurried, an amiable man who, despite being 46, has the countenance of a churchgoing grandfather who still starches his Sunday suit. He is a master of the leisurely, even comforting, story that plays to his audience’s expectations of what is good, kind and virtuous, only to foil those expectations with a well-timed word or mischievous glance.When I first watched “Lonely Flowers,” I could feel this story about Deon teetering toward the saccharine: Maybe we can all get along, or at least get along better, if we just listen to one another. But then Wood lets us in on a disturbing detail: “I like the camera,” Deon told him, “ ’cause, you know, I get to look down the crosshair and still shoot people.” Wood’s look of earnest sympathy dissolves, and we’re left wondering how to feel about Deon after all.Then the joke rounds yet another corner: Wood turns serious again, recalling how sincerely Deon thanked him in the greenroom, shaking his hand firmly and looking him right in the eye. “I was like, Wooowww,” Wood says, his voice dropping to a stage whisper, seemingly humbled by the interaction. But then we reach the other side of his pause: “He was about to kill some people.” Wood imagines Deon at home, cleaning his rifle right up to the moment Wood contacts him. “We’ll never know how many lives I saved,” Wood says triumphantly, “because I took a chance on a white man!”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 150 Shares119 Views

      in Theater

      Ken Wydro, Who Helped Create an Off Broadway Phenomenon, Dies at 81

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      He and his wife, Vy Higginsen, poured all they had into “Mama, I Want to Sing,” a long-shot musical that became an enduring staple of Black theater.Ken Wydro, a playwright, director and producer who with his wife, Vy Higginsen, poured their life savings into the Off Broadway gospel musical “Mama, I Want to Sing,” an enduring work of Black theater that ran for more than 2,800 performances, died on Jan. 21 at his home in Harlem. He was 81.The cause was heart failure, his daughter, Ahmaya Knoelle Higginson, said.“Mama, I Want to Sing” tells the tale of a minister’s daughter who rises to international fame as a soul singer. The show is loosely based on the life of Ms. Higginsen’s older sister, Doris Troy, who honed her singing chops at her father’s Pentecostal church in Harlem and later tasted the big time by co-writing and recording “Just One Look,” which was a Top 10 single for her in 1963 and later became a hit for both the Hollies and Linda Ronstadt.Ms. Troy also made her mark as a backup singer on rock anthems like the Rolling Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” and in 1970 she released a solo album on the Beatles’ label, Apple Records, with a supporting cast that included George Harrison, Eric Clapton and Billy Preston.“Mama, I Want to Sing” is “a Black Cinderella story,” Mr. Wydro said in a 2013 interview with Call Me Adam, an entertainment website. “Coming from behind, finding oneself through loss, pain and family love.”A 1988 performance of “Mama, I Want to Sing” at the Heckscher Theater in East Harlem. Nearly every major theatrical producer in New York rejected the show before it found a home there.Martha SwopeAlthough “Mama” ultimately had a marathon run, success was anything but guaranteed. Nearly every major theatrical producer in New York rejected the show, fearing that a gospel-heavy musical would attract a limited audience.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 163 Shares199 Views

      in Music

      The War and Treaty Are Writing Their Love Story Into Country Music History

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      There’s a dressing room backstage at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville called “It Takes Two” that’s filled with photos of some of country music’s most famous duos. It’s Michael Trotter Jr. and Tanya Trotter’s favorite spot to get ready before they perform there as the War and Treaty, which is so often, they’ve lost count. They hope to become members someday. (It’s on Tanya’s vision board.) And they don’t want to just be inducted. They want to be the first Black artists on that wall.“How about right over there, by Marty Stuart and Connie Smith?” Michael, 42, said last month while laying across his wife’s lap in a pair of leather trousers, their bodies forming a plus sign.Tanya, 52, shook her head while patting the top of her husband’s, the pair’s offstage chemistry mirroring their onstage warmth. “I like that big blank wall,” she replied, indicating a bare corner where they could pioneer their own space.This has long been the War and Treaty’s approach in Nashville: working within the genre’s traditions while building something new for people who have rarely seen themselves in country music. Blending blues, gospel, soul, bluegrass and R&B while rooting their sound in passionate harmonies, they’ve managed to straddle both Music Row and Americana. They’ve earned a best new artist nod at the 2024 Grammys, toured alongside Chris Stapleton, Orville Peck and John Legend, and collaborated on a platinum single with Zach Bryan. Their fourth album, “Plus One,” is due Friday.It hasn’t been easy. Together, they’ve fought through canceled record deals, homelessness, post-traumatic stress disorder and countless barriers to bring listeners a heartfelt message: that love, and forgiveness, is a salve for all.The War and Treaty’s relationship has made a mark on their friends and collaborators. “Michael and Tanya’s love, their story, and their music are all so inspiring and moving,” John Legend wrote in an email.Eric Ryan Anderson for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 150 Shares149 Views

      in Movies

      A Sly Stone Primer: 15 Songs (and More) From a Musical Visionary

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      The Sly & the Family Stone leader is the subject of a new documentary directed by Questlove. Here’s what to know about his brilliant career and crushing addiction.In Sly & the Family Stone’s prime, from 1968 to 1973, the band was one of music’s greatest live acts as well as a fount of remarkable singles including “Everyday People” and “Hot Fun in the Summertime.” There was a shining optimism to its sound, which mixed funk with the ecstasy of gospel, a little rock and a touch of psychedelia — as well as a vision of community and brotherhood that stood out in a period of political separatism.The visionary behind it all was Sly Stone, who wrote, produced and arranged the music, winning acclaim as the author of invigorating anthems and an inventor of new, more complex recording sounds. But by the early 1970s, he was ravaged by drug addiction, kicking off a cycle of spirals and comebacks and sporadic, desultory live appearances. Now Stone, 81, is the subject of “Sly Lives! (aka The Burden of Black Genius),” a documentary directed by Ahmir Thompson, better known as the Roots drummer Questlove, that debuts on Hulu on Thursday.Stone, who was born Sylvester Stewart and grew up in Vallejo, Calif., had gospel in his blood. His father, K.C., was a deacon in a Pentecostal church, and Sly began performing with his younger brother Freddie and younger sisters Rose and Vet in the Stewart Four, which released a single, “On the Battlefield,” in 1956 on the Church of God in Christ label.In 1967, “Dance to the Music” became the first of Sly & the Family Stone’s five Top 10 singles.Stephen Paley/Sony, via Onyx CollectiveAs he learned to play guitar, bass, keyboards, drums and harmonica, Stone’s ambition swelled. In 1964, he produced and co-wrote Bobby Freeman’s No. 5 hit “C’mon and Swim,” and soon talked himself into an on-air gig at KSOL, the Bay Area’s AM soul music powerhouse, where he read dedications in his nimble baritone and mixed in Bob Dylan and Beatles songs to the format. “I think there shouldn’t be ‘Black radio.’ Just radio,” he later told Rolling Stone. “Everybody be a part of everything.”After having a small local hit in the Viscaynes, one of the few integrated groups in doo wop, he assembled Sly & the Family Stone with a lineup of men and women, Black and white. In 1967, “Dance to the Music” became their first of five Top 10 singles. Two years later, they performed at Woodstock, providing one of the weekend’s high points. The days of playing nightclubs were over. “After Woodstock, everything glowed,” Stone wrote in his 2023 memoir.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares179 Views

      in Television

      ‘Beyond the Gates’ Brings Soap Operas Back to Daytime TV

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      As a student at Yale, Sheila Ducksworth often rushed home to indulge in two favorite guilty pleasures. She’d stop for dessert at Durfee’s Sweet Shoppe before catching up on her soap operas with a friend.She had grown up watching her stories. “Generations,” the NBC soap opera that debuted in 1989 and the first to highlight a Black family from its inception, became must-watch television while she was in college. She saw herself in the characters, and she yearned for the 30-minute show, ultimately short-lived, to be stretched into a daily hour like most other soaps.Ducksworth started a career in television production with the idea of one day producing a soap opera even as they began to disappear from the airwaves. In 2020, with her treasured daytime serials still front of mind, she agreed to lead a new partnership between CBS and the N.A.A.C.P., and immediately set out to resuscitate the faltering genre. That doggedness will result in something that has not occurred this century: a daytime soap debuting on a major television network. “Beyond the Gates,” premiering on Feb. 24, will be the first since NBC introduced “Passions” in 1999. And it will be the first ever that’s completely centered on a Black family.From left: Clifton Davis, Maurice Johnson, Tamara Tunie (with her back to the camera), Karla Mosley and Daphnée Duplaix.Eric Hart for The New York Times“This is really almost a 30-year passion, the point of getting this made,” Ducksworth said from Assembly Atlanta, the studio complex where the show is filmed, as cast and crew careened from scene to scene filming the story that centers on the Dupree family in suburban Maryland.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 175 Shares199 Views

      in Music

      The Curious Case of Nora Holt, a Pioneer of Black Classical Music and Jazz

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      “Fabulous is the word for Mrs. Nora Douglas Holt,” read the 1974 obituary in The Amsterdam News.And fabulous she was: A pioneer of the Black classical music scene in Chicago, Holt also became an important figure in the Harlem Renaissance and the Jazz Age in Paris. Born into the middle-class, she moved back and forth between worlds: concert artist and blues singer, newspaper columnist and club hostess, erudite scholar and scandalous socialite.This fluidity led to friendships with two women who represented distinct versions of fame for Black women in the early 20th century: Josephine Baker, the working-class dancer from St. Louis, who became the toast of Paris; and the composer Florence Price, who transformed Chicago’s classical music scene, rising to national fame with her symphonies.Holt’s life didn’t follow familiar narratives. Hers was not a rags-to-riches story, like Baker’s; nor was it, like Price’s, a cathartic breakthrough for Black musicians in the white world of classical music. Instead, she had a kind of mutability, frequently changing her name and her place in culture, collapsing ideas about respectability and sexual liberation.Music was the through line in Holt’s life. She first made her name in classical music. For young, middle-class Black women in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, classical music could open doors to salon culture, church leadership, jobs teaching music and civic engagement.In 1918, Holt, a pianist, became the first Black person in the United States, female or male, to earn a master’s degree in music, from Chicago Musical College. She also worked in the male-dominated fields of music criticism, scholarship and composition. Her music journalism, public lectures, recitals and community organizing became a blueprint for other Black women seeking to become leaders in Chicago’s classical musical scene.“Of course, men are supposed to have better business minds than women,” she wrote to a male colleague after founding a magazine, Music and Poetry, in 1921. “But I have made this thing go and the opportunities are yet unlimited.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Movies

      Tony Todd, Prolific Actor Best Known for ‘Candyman,’ Dies at 69

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      Mr. Todd’s decades-long career spanned across mediums and genres, but he was largely associated with a scary figure summoned in front of a mirror.Tony Todd, a prolific actor whose more than 100 film and television credits included “Candyman” and “Final Destination,” died on Wednesday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 69.Jeffrey Goldberg, Mr. Todd’s manager, announced the death in a statement on Saturday morning. He did not specify the cause.Mr. Todd’s decades-long acting career spanned genres and mediums. He starred or had prominent roles in several films, including the 1990 remake of “Night of the Living Dead,” “The Crow,” “The Rock” and Oliver Stone’s Oscar-winning Vietnam War movie, “Platoon.” His television credits include “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” “24,” “The X-Files,” and many other shows. He also lent his rich voice to animation and video games.He was perhaps best known for his role as the titular demon in the 1992 movie “Candyman,” He told The New York Times in 2020 that he was proud of playing the terrifying figure with a hook for a hand, a Black man who had been wronged in life and is summoned from the beyond by people who call his name five times while looking in a mirror — unleashing vicious attacks in which the Candyman slices to death those who dared to disturb him. “If I had never done another horror film,” he said, “I could live with that, and I’d carry this character.”Mr. Todd reprised the role in the film’s 1995 and 1999 sequels and returned to it for the 2021 reboot, directed by Nia DaCosta and written by Jordan Peele.In the “Final Destination” franchise, Mr. Todd played the role of the mysterious funeral-home owner William Bludworth — the rare recurring character in a film series that famously killed off all of its new characters by the time the end credits rolled.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More