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    Charlize Theron and Uma Thurman on Injuries, Action and ‘The Old Guard 2’

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    In the Netflix film “The Old Guard 2,” Charlize Theron and Uma Thurman play immortal warriors blessed — or cursed, depending on your outlook — with incredible recuperative powers. Stab them in the back, shoot them in the face, and wham-o, they heal in seconds. Theron’s character, Andromache of Scythia (Andy for short), has been fighting the good fight, and several bad ones, for over 6000 years; her archnemesis Discord, played by Thurman, is even older.The action epic marks Theron’s return to the franchise five years after the critically acclaimed first film (the Times’s A.O. Scott praised the movie’s action sequences and “tone of hard-boiled melancholy.”) It also marks Thurman’s high-profile return to the action movie genre, 21 years after she starred in Quentin Tarantino’s “Kill Bill: Volume 2.”The actors created two of the most celebrated action heroines of all time: Thurman’s The Bride, the vengeful, katana-wielding assassin of the “Kill Bill” films, and Theron’s Imperator Furiosa, the buzzcut-sporting, big rig-driving heroine of “Mad Max: Fury Road.” “Fury Road” was one action film among many for Theron (others include “Atomic Blonde,” “The Italian Job,” and the “Fast and the Furious” franchise). After the “Kill Bill” films, however, Thurman eschewed the action film genre for rom-coms, TV and a run on Broadway, among other things.The two recently got together at the Netflix offices in Hollywood to discuss women in action films, on-set injuries and what they won’t do in a picture. Below are edited excerpts from the conversation.Uma Thurman, left, with Charlize Theron in New York.Uma, it’s been a while since you’ve done an action movie. Why now, and why this one?UMA THURMAN Well, I find Charlize to be very mysterious. I feel like she keeps a tight circle around her. But she’s revered and admired, and her work speaks for itself, so this was a special opportunity. Getting to work with a great actress is a precious thing, and projects are usually not designed to bring multiple heavyweight women together, as Charlize has done with this franchise. Every once in a while you see these great ensembles with, like, seven great actresses, and you always feel bad that you weren’t included! You look at them with, like, hunger.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 Music

      Metallica, Smashing Pumpkins, Judas Priest Members on Ozzy Osbourne

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      As the Prince of Darkness prepares for his final concert with Black Sabbath, admirers including Lars Ulrich, Lita Ford and Billy Corgan extol his virtues.Ozzy Osbourne has persisted for so long in pop culture, and re-emerged in so many different guises — including fiendish hard-rock ringleader and bewildered Beverly Hills dad — that it’s easy to lose sight of the core of his fame. His bone-chilling work with Black Sabbath in the ’70s up through his surprisingly nuanced solo material in the ’80s and beyond have helped define the sound and persona of the heavy-metal frontman.Despite a pair of well-received recent albums, Osbourne performances have been scarce in recent years, as he has battled health issues including Parkinson’s disease and emphysema. On Saturday, at a daylong event in his Birmingham, England hometown, the 76-year-old musician will appear both solo and with his original Black Sabbath bandmates — the guitarist Tony Iommi; the bassist Terence Butler, known as Geezer; and the drummer Bill Ward — at what’s being billed as his last-ever concert.The lineup for the event — dreamed up by Sharon Osbourne, his wife and manager — reads like a roll call of some of the biggest names in metal and hard rock, including Metallica, Guns N’ Roses, Slayer and Tool. Its musical director is Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello.Ashley Landis/Associated Press“I can tell you that if we weren’t invited to play, I would find a way to be there anyway, even if I had to sneak in under the fence line,” the Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich said. “I think it’s pretty safe to say that if there was no Black Sabbath, there would be no Metallica.”Ulrich’s sense of debt to Osbourne is widely shared, both in the worlds of heavy guitar-based music and far beyond. “Ozzy is one of the most remarkable singers and performers of our time,” Elton John, who was a guest on Osbourne’s 2020 album, “Ordinary Man,” wrote in an email. “He has an amazing voice and has done so much for metal.”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

    • 88 Shares49 Views

      in Television

      Somebody Explain Why Everybody Loves Phil Rosenthal

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      When Phil Rosenthal, host of the Netflix food and travel show “Somebody Feed Phil” and creator of the enduring sitcom “Everybody Loves Raymond,” began selling out live shows last year, no one was more surprised than Ray Romano.Mr. Romano, the sitcom’s star, showed up at the Paramount concert hall on Long Island, expecting to stir up excitement among fans and help out during the Q&A. No one had a question for him, he said; they just wanted to tell Phil about their favorite places to eat in Lisbon or Nashville.“How did this happen?” the actor asked me over the phone last week. “I’ve been doing stand-up for 30 years. He goes to Poland and eats meatloaf and sells out theaters around the world?”There is no shortage of armchair-travel television: It pours from Hulu, Amazon Prime, National Geographic and Food Network, not to mention the fire hose that is social media. But somehow, Mr. Rosenthal has broken through and become a global star.Ray Romano, left, the star of “Everybody Loves Raymond,” said Mr. Rosenthal forced him to travel overseas for the first time by writing episodes set in Italy. (Brad Garrett, right, played Mr. Romano’s brother.) NetflixSeason 8 of his show dropped on June 18, making it the longest-running unscripted show on Netflix. In August he’ll start a North American tour, and a second cookbook, “Phil’s Favorites” — the first was a New York Times best seller — will come out in November.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 Shares39 Views

      in Movies

      From No Home to a Perch in Hollywood, a Filmmaker Finally Breaks Through

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      Fresh from a year of attending the prestigious Sundance labs and armed with a script that would become her first feature, the director Victoria Mahoney thought her life as a filmmaker was about to begin. It was 2006 and she was attending a party at the Sundance Film Festival for industry professionals to meet the new crop of lab graduates. Agents, producers and others were there to mine new talent for future collaborations.Mahoney and her pal, the documentary filmmaker Kirsten Johnson, stood in that room and waited to be approached. Crickets. Finally, an agent came over and asked about their involvement in the labs. They responded effusively. But instead of inquiring about their work, he asked if they could introduce him to one of their male colleagues. That agent signed that colleague in the room. Mahoney? Nothing. Not on the mountain. Not after the festival ended.It would take Mahoney 11 years to land an agent and 20 more to make her first studio film. That movie, “The Old Guard 2,” debuted this week on Netflix.Charlize Theron in “The Old Guard 2,” directed by Mahoney. (Theron reteams with Chiwetel Ejiofor, KiKi Layne, Matthias Schoenaerts and others for this sequel.)Eli Joshua Ade/Netflix“We all believe the fables of what happens when you’re at Sundance and you’ve come through the labs; we’ve seen it,” Mahoney said in a recent interview. “We weren’t viable. We weren’t anything. It’s indicative of a thousand things.”Mahoney’s story is not unfamiliar. So many toil in the film industry and are not rewarded with sustainable careers even when they receive accolades early on. What makes Victoria Mahoney distinct is that there never was a Plan B. She lived without a safety net for a decade, couch surfing at friends’ homes, even experiencing true moments of homelessness — nights when she didn’t know where she would be resting her head. But her belief in herself that she was destined to be a filmmaker? That never ebbed, regardless of her setbacks.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 Shares42 Views

      in Television

      Will Sharpe, Star of Lena Dunham’s ‘Too Much,’ Is a Renaissance Man

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      When Will Sharpe arrived at Cambridge University in the mid-aughts, he was one of many undergraduates wanting to join Footlights, the storied sketch comedy troupe that had launched the careers of Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie and Emma Thompson. His friends thought it best to spend a few months figuring out what kind of comedy Footlights might favor before applying, but Sharpe wanted to jump right in.At a first-semester showcase open to nonmembers, Sharpe and his friends performed a wacky sketch that involved pretending to eat a tub of Vaseline by the handful. He was made a member and was later elected president of the troupe.Sharpe’s biweekly Footlights performances — which also included playing a white crayon that was sad it was never taken out of the box — “definitely encouraged a risk-taking attitude, because you could fail and try again, and fail and try again,” Sharpe recalled in an interview at a woodland cafe near his North London home.In the two decades since college, Sharpe, now 38, has tried — and often succeeded at — a variety of creative projects, including writing, directing, acting, playing music and performing comedy. Claire Foy, whom Sharpe directed in the 2021 biopic “The Electrical Life of Louis Wain,” described him in an interview with The New York Times as “a Renaissance man” — “a kind one.”American audiences, though, know Sharpe best from his chameleonic run of recent acting gigs: the stoic tech hunk in Season 2 of HBO’s “The White Lotus”; the earnest tour guide in Jesse Eisenberg’s Oscar-winning movie “A Real Pain”; and now, as Felix, the enigmatic indie musician in the rom-com “Too Much,” Lena Dunham’s new Netflix series arriving on July 10.Will Sharpe and Megan Stalter in “Too Much,” a new show by Lena Dunham for Netflix.NetflixWe 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

    • 75 Shares62 Views

      in Music

      He’s Ringo. And Nobody Else Is.

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      In the summer of 1985, Ringo Starr’s friend and fellow drummer Max Weinberg flew to England for the former Beatle’s 45th birthday.Though the pair had become chummy since meeting five years earlier in Los Angeles, backstage at a concert Weinberg was playing with Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, Weinberg remained somewhat intimidated by his boyhood hero in the early stages of their friendship. (The ever-amicable Starr offered advice: “Sometimes it helps if you call me Richie.”)While celebrating at Tittenhurst Park — the sprawling estate outside London that had previously belonged to John Lennon and Yoko Ono — Starr turned to his younger friend, then 34, and said something that remains an inside joke between them: “Well, Max, I’m going to be 45. Doesn’t that make you feel old?”That line is classic Ringo — a dryly clever, double-take koan from rock ’n’ roll’s Yogi Berra, the man whose tossed off “Ringo-isms” became immortalized in Beatles song titles like “A Hard Day’s Night” and “Tomorrow Never Knows.”Each year, Starr would update the line for Weinberg, until its recitation became something of an annual tradition. “I imagine if I was speaking to him on July 7,” Weinberg said in a phone interview, “him saying to me, ‘I’m 85.’ And it doesn’t sound so old anymore.”Ringo Starr will be the first Beatle to turn 85, and like his surviving bandmate Paul McCartney, he never retired. 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 Shares56 Views

      in Theater

      André Bishop Takes a Bow After Hundreds of Shows at Lincoln Center Theater

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      He is moving on from 33 years at Lincoln Center Theater and will head to Rome to focus on his memoirs.André Bishop, the longtime producing artistic director of Lincoln Center Theater, could have chosen almost anything for the final Broadway production of his tenure. He’s known for Golden Age musicals, and has a long history with new plays. But he opted to exit with “Floyd Collins,” a dark and tragic 1996 musical about a trapped cave explorer.Why would anyone select that as their swan song?“I just thought it’s the kind of serious musical that I want to go out on, because everything in it is something that I believe, in terms of the musical theater,” he told me in an interview last week at his nearly empty office — nearly empty because he’s been giving away his theater memorabilia after deciding he didn’t want his home to turn into a museum. He donated his archives — 174 cartons of papers, photos and notebooks — to the Houghton Library at Harvard University, his alma mater.“Now there would be some people who say, ‘Why do you have to do all these sad shows? Why can’t you do something toe-tapping?’ Well, that’s just not my nature,” he said. “I felt that Floyd’s looking for a perfect cave was very close to mine looking for a perfect theater — that somehow these theaters that I’ve worked in for 50 years were these perfect caves that I happened to stumble on.”Jason Gotay, in the background, and Jeremy Jordan in “Floyd Collins” at Lincoln Center Theater. “It’s the kind of serious musical that I want to go out on, because everything in it is something that I believe, in terms of the musical theater,” Bishop said.Richard Termine for The New York TimesBishop, 76, has spent the last 33 years running Lincoln Center Theater, which has a $50 million annual budget, 22,000 members, 65 full-time employees, two Off Broadway stages, and one Broadway house (the Vivian Beaumont). He programmed over 150 plays and musicals, 15 of which won Tony Awards, and then announced in 2023 that he would retire this summer; Monday was his last day on the job, and he is being succeeded by Lear deBessonet, the artistic director of the Encores! program at City Center.His departure is part of a wave of change at Broadway’s nonprofits; all four of the nonprofits with Broadway houses are naming successors for artistic leaders with decades-long tenures.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 Shares44 Views

      in Music

      Neil Sedaka Executed One of Pop’s Great Comebacks. Now, He Just Plays.

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      After the man in a dark cashmere sweater and tortoise shell glasses sat down at a piano and leaned into the microphone, his first words were a declaration: “Sedaka’s back … again!”It was late March and the lounge at Vitello’s — an old-school Italian restaurant in the heart of Studio City, Calif. — was packed for a show by the irrepressible 86-year-old singer and songwriter Neil Sedaka. He had booked a series of semiregular Sunday night appearances here to mark the golden anniversary of his professional resurrection.Fifty years ago, Sedaka completed one of the most remarkable comebacks in pop music. A smiling star of the teen idol era, he’d made his name with run of hummable hits — “Oh Carol,” “Calendar Girl,” “Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen,” “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do” — but his bubbly tunes, sung in a high tenor, were soon swept away, first by the arrival of the Beatles and then by the turmoil of the 1960s.In the difficult years that followed, Sedaka lost his fortune, his record deal and his sense of self. At his lowest, he would walk down the street and people would ask: “Didn’t you used to be Neil Sedaka?”Neil Sedaka gave up his classical pursuits after hearing the Penguins’ 1954 hit “Earth Angel,” and instead learned his trade as a pop songwriter at the Brill Building.Philip Cheung for The New York TimesIn the early ’70s, Sedaka exiled himself to England, where he gradually rebuilt his career, playing small clubs as he rediscovered his muse and a new group of collaborators. A fellow piano man and avowed fan, Elton John, eventually midwifed his return to the American charts in 1975, helping release the hit LP “Sedaka’s Back,” which has just been reissued in a deluxe vinyl package.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 Shares63 Views

      in Theater

      How Lisa Laurén’s Artsy Childhood Inspires Her Sought-After Animal Heads

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      When Lisa Laurén gets a request for an animal costume head, she said, “it’s kind of like I’m going on a play date.”Using her imagination, resources and hands, Laurén crafts animal heads that are vivid, colorful and eye-catching.“I’m trying to condense somebody else’s dream and make it into something,” Laurén said from the kitchen of her high-ceilinged apartment on a leafy street near the Spree River in Berlin. A clay fox head covered tightly with foil stood on a large tray, awaiting its next phase of creation.The animal heads are an offshoot of Laurén’s main job as a freelance textile artist, a role that includes painting backdrops for staged productions and helping develop costumes for television, film and theater. She has worked for an array of clients including Netflix, Apple TV+, the Metropolitan Opera in New York, the Tate Museum in London, and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid.Lisa Laurén, a textile designer, creates imaginative animal heads for performers. “I’m trying to condense somebody else’s dream and make it into something.” Laurén has been making animal costume heads for theater, opera and artistic performances since 2011, when the Komische Oper Berlin commissioned her and a close collaborator, Benjamin Tyrrell, to make a set for a staging of Leos Janacek’s 1923 opera, “The Cunning Little Vixen,” in which many characters are forest animals.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