Goldblum, Jeff

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    Jeff Goldblum Says Jeff Goldblum Is ‘Not a Performance’

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    Listen to and Follow PopcastApple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | YouTubeAt 72, Jeff Goldblum has not lost a step. He may, in fact, be picking up the pace.An unmistakable screen presence since the mid-1970s, when he stole scenes in “Death Wish,” “Nashville” and “Annie Hall,” Goldblum has recently hammed it up as the Wizard of Oz, in last year’s “Wicked” (and this year’s sequel), and Zeus himself, in Netflix’s “Kaos.”Beyond film and television — where he’s also popped up in recent years on “RuPaul’s Drag Race” and the millennial-skewering “Search Party” — Goldblum has become a fixture in the worlds of fashion (attending two consecutive Met Galas), music (having recently released “Still Blooming,” his fourth jazz album) and the internet variety show circuit (gamely eating hot wings and shopping for sneakers).To each role, fiction and non-, Goldblum brings a contagious enthusiasm and plenty of Jeff Goldblum, working his amiably offbeat public persona, born from defining roles in “The Big Chill,” “Jurassic Park” and “Independence Day,” into everything he does. To watch him move through the world is to witness that immutable movie-star magic incarnate as he kisses hands, asks questions and makes the days of strangers with solicitous eye contact and effusive approachability, seemingly without ever flagging. (Goldblum is also the father of two children under 10, who are being raised by Goldblum and his wife, Emilie, a former Olympic rhythmic gymnast, in Florence, Italy.)Jeff Goldblum at The New York Times’s office in Manhattan. “It’s not a performance, and I don’t feel like it’s inauthentic,” he said of his public persona. “I feel like my interest in people is real.”It can all seem exhausting — and that’s before learning that Goldblum found the time to personally sign thousands of copies of his new album, which features appearances by his “Wicked” co-stars Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande. Yet in a recent interview on Popcast, the actor and musician insisted that the perpetual Goldblum experience — influenced by his study of the Meisner technique — is not an act, but his lifeblood.“It’s not a performance, and I don’t feel like it’s inauthentic,” he said. “I feel like my interest in people is real and I’m thrilled to be here, when I have an opportunity to let that run free and express itself. That feels wholesome to me, and nourishing.”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

      Lorde Returns With a Nostalgic Breakup Anthem, and 9 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Haim, Young Thug, Cazzu and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new tracks. Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes) and at Apple Music here, and sign up for The Amplifier, a twice-weekly guide to new and old songs.Lorde, ‘What Was That’In her first solo song in four years, after her boffo duet with Charli XCX, Lorde skips back past the guitar-picking, Laurel Canyon sound of her 2021 album, “Solar Power,” to the keyboards and pumping electronics of her 2017 “Melodrama.” She sings about coming to terms with a breakup and missing past pleasures with someone — kisses, MDMA, a perfect cigarette — but she might also be speaking to her pop audience: “Since I was 17, I gave you everything.” She brings tremulous drama to the vocals, but despite the synthetic firepower available to Lorde and her fellow producers — Daniel Nigro (Olivia Rodrigo) and Jim-E Stack (Bon Iver) — the track is oddly muted and rounded-off, even where it could explode. Maybe that choice will make more sense within a full album.Haim, ‘Down to Be Wrong’Keys left behind, door locked, plane boarded — Danielle Haim sings about a decisive breakup in “Down to Be Wrong” from Haim’s next album, “I Quit,” due June 20. As the song begins, with a chunky beat and a few guitar notes at a time, perhaps there’s a hint of hesitancy in her voice. But as more instruments kick in and the miles of distance increase, her voice gets rougher and her certainty only grows. “I didn’t think it would be so easy till I left it behind,” she realizes, and her sisters’ vocal harmonies fully agree.Jeff Goldblum and the Mildred Snitzer Orchestra featuring Ariana Grande, ‘I Don’t Know Why (I Just Do)’Of course Ariana Grande can sing an old jazz standard. She glides through a song from 1931 (by Fred Ahlert and Russ Turk) that has been recorded by the Andrews Sisters, Frank Sinatra and Kate Smith. Grande is one of the guest singers on Jeff Goldblum’s album with the vintage-style Mildred Snitzer Orchestra; Goldblum, her “Wicked” co-star, is on piano, playing a modest, leisurely solo. But the track is hers — a poised, guileless, gently escalating complaint about unrequited affection: “You never seem to want more romancing / The only time you hold me is when we’re dancing.”Ashley Monroe featuring Marty Stuart, ‘The Touch’Understatement, so rare in current country production, burnishes “The Touch,” a song that promises lasting love. “As long as we’re together, it’s more than enough,” Ashley Monroe sings over Marty Stuart’s lone acoustic guitar, which is virtually the only accompaniment for the first half of the track. Harmonies blossom and more guitars (and Shelby Lynne on bass) eventually join, but the mood stays pristine.Wisin and Kapo, ‘Luna’“Luna” hits a very sweet spot between Afrobeats and reggaeton as Wisin, from Puerto Rico, and Kapo, from Colombia, harmonize on a friendly flirtation: “Just you and me in this room on a trip to the moon.” The production (by Daramola, a Nigerian musician based in Miami, and Los Legendarios, from Puerto Rico) is an ever-changing matrix of percussion sounds, electronics and vocal harmonies arriving from all directions. It’s pure ear candy.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

      ‘Barbenheimer’ Ruled the Box Office. Can ‘Glicked’ Recapture the Magic?

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      “Wicked” and “Gladiator II” both open Friday, and some fans hope to rekindle the excitement that greeted last year’s simultaneous openings of “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer.”The summer of 2023 was all about “Barbenheimer” — when “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” opened the same day, capturing the public imagination and bringing crowds back to movie theaters that had struggled since the pandemic.This fall, some fans are hoping to recapture a little of that excitement with a buzzy new movie face-off with its own catchy portmanteau: “Glicked.” (Sorry, “Wickiator.”)“Wicked,” the first installment of the onscreen adaptation of the beloved Broadway musical, and “Gladiator II,” a swords-and-sandals epic directed by Ridley Scott that picks up more than two decades after the first installment, will both be widely released in theaters on Friday. Seeing the potential for another odd pairing at multiplexes, select corners of the internet have dubbed it “Glicked Day” (pronounced glick-id).Can they make “Glicked” happen? Will Elphaba green replace Barbie pink? Here are four questions to get you up to speed.Are the stars of ‘Wicked’ and ‘Gladiator II’ rooting for ‘Glicked’?Yes. Two movies that open on the same day are typically viewed as competitors, but some hope that, like “Barbenheimer,” this unlikely pairing will pique the interest of moviegoers, which could help both succeed at the box office.“If it has a similar effect to what it did for ‘Barbie’ and ‘Oppenheimer,’ it would be amazing,” Paul Mescal, who stars as Lucius in “Gladiator II,” told Entertainment Tonight. He added that “the films couldn’t be more polar opposite, and it worked in that context previously, so fingers crossed people come out.”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

      ‘They Shot the Piano Player’ Review: Taking on a Bossa Nova Mystery

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      The pianist Francisco Tenório Júnior, on tour in Argentina during the right-wing dictatorship of the 1970s, vanished. This animated feature picks up the trail.Javier Mariscal and Fernando Trueba’s “They Shot the Piano Player” is an astoundingly vibrant animated project, fitting for its subject matter: the history and legacy of Brazilian bossa nova told through the story of the disappearance and presumed death of Francisco Tenório Júnior, one of the genre’s most celebrated pianists and composers.The film, actually a documentary set in a fictional context, begins in 2010, with Jeff Goldblum voicing the made-up music journalist Jeff Harris, whose article on bossa nova in The New Yorker lands him a book deal and a trip to Rio de Janeiro to investigate the fate one of the genre’s most celebrated pianists.Unlike the last Mariscal-Trueba collaboration, the Academy Award-nominated Cuban drama “Chico and Rita,” the story at the center of “They Shot the Piano Player” is all too real. Tenório Júnior vanished in Argentina during the height of a military dictatorship known for erasing people who didn’t embrace its politics. Equally real, and vivid are the over 150 interviews that Trueba conducted for the film, with friends, family and colleagues of the pianist, some of whom are the best-known names in bossa nova history: João Gilberto, Caetano Veloso, Milton Nascimento and more.The interviews appear, largely unaltered, in animated form, and getting to hear these musicians remember Tenório Júnior in their own words against the backdrop of the film’s gorgeous art direction brings them more to life better than a standard live-action talking head interview ever could. Even something as simple as the painted Arizona sunset descending behind Bud Shank as he recalls seeing Tenório Júnior play adds extra depth to his words.Goldblum’s character works as a surrogate for Trueba, jetting across the world to get to the bottom of his story and enthusiastically asking questions. But his character is never as interesting as the tale he’s trying to tell, and his vocal interjections — when Jeff Harris becomes, unmistakably, Jeff Goldblum — can be distracting. The film’s most memorable moments, by far, are when it just lets the music play on.They Shot the Piano PlayerRated PG-13 for language and suggested violence. Running time: 1 hour 43 minutes. In theaters. More

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      in Television

      Jeff Goldblum Goes Wild With Wes Anderson and Thelonious Monk

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      The actor talks about the second season of “The World According to Jeff Goldblum” and why weeping over “Can’t Find My Way Home” is a beautiful thing.Jeff Goldblum has seemingly never met a subject he couldn’t wax rhapsodic about. Pick a question out of a hat and chances are he’ll have an opinion, expressed in a curlicue of language and anecdotes that charmingly meanders its way toward the point.Which makes “The World According to Jeff Goldblum” pretty much tailor-made for its host.Produced for National Geographic and streaming on Disney+, “The World According” follows Goldblum as he excavates little-known facts about everyday topics with wide-eyed wonder.“I like to let loose,” he said. “I really was interested in this show, because I thought, ‘There’s a vein that I’ve mined a little bit that I think I could go further with.’ I’m my so-called self, and I’m spontaneous, and I’m playful, and I’m genuinely curious about these things, so I had a blast.”And who wouldn’t while moonwalking with a sea lion or wooing a tiny dog like Goldblum does in Season 2, as he elaborates on fireworks, magic, monsters and dance? New episodes will stream early next year.In January, Goldblum will debut as the tech billionaire Tunnel Quinn in the final season of HBO Max’s “Search Party.” In April, Goldblum, an accomplished jazz pianist, is slated to appear with his Mildred Snitzer Orchestra at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. And in June he’ll return as the fan-favorite Dr. Ian Malcolm in “Jurassic World: Dominion.”Calling from the Hollywood Hills home that he shares with his wife, Emilie, and their young sons, Charlie Ocean and River Joe, Goldblum discussed why the director Wes Anderson, the jazz legend Thelonious Monk and his own backyard are essential to his life.These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1. Wes Anderson He gathers the most interesting bunch of actors and cream-of-the-crop crew members and artisans and costume people. Even before Covid and the bubble idea, he did that. In “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” we were in Görlitz, Germany, a dollhouse candy box of a town near the border of Poland, and we were all together exclusively in this wonderful little hotel. He’s stylish and has a taste for interesting things and people and events, and he makes parties and group endeavors that are just out of this world. He had a chef come, and we would have candlelight dinners — Ralph Fiennes and all these people — and it was just great. The conversation that you always have with him is spectacular.2. Taika Waititi Taika is loose as a goose and fun in another way. You do the script a little bit, you use that as a blueprint, even in these big giant movies where the narrative has to keep moving, and he and you are obliged to not go too far off the track — even in those you go wild. At least, he and I do. He’s a comic force of nature with, just like Wes, a highly refined exemplary human soul.3. “The Demon-Haunted World” by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan I’ve played some scientists in movies, and so my conscientious ways led me to actually talk to scientists and get together with a chaotician or two on the “Jurassic Park” movies. Carl Sagan, I never met him, but this book was his last book, written with Ann Druyan. It’s him advocating for the scientific way of thinking and the scientific method, and it’s both imaginative and disciplined, but it’s a way to be critical and skeptical and watch out for pseudoscience. It offers science as a candle in the dark, as he says.4. “Death of a Salesman” Arthur Miller is so fascinating to me, and many times when I was experimenting with, and I think misapplying, what Sandy Meisner taught me — I had the idea that I couldn’t act without really breaking myself down and getting weepy and doing the deepest work that I knew how — I used it to sometimes over-prepare with. It always just grabbed me in the worst and best and most terrible way.5. The Burns Brothers Ken Burns, I met him at an airport once, not that I know him at all, but I have come to know a little bit and may even do a little work with, believe it or not. Ric Burns, his brother, directed “New York,” a documentary series, and any time I go back to New York, I love to revisit it, because it makes you appreciate the American experiment which is exemplified by New York in ways for me that are emotional and wonderful.6. My Backyard The house where I am, I’ve been here for 35 years. In this backyard that I’ve now gotten roots into, it’s perfect for the kids and Emilie and our current experience. And I often say to myself: “Gee, this is why I made this. This is why I put this pool in and made it kind of a jungle paradise in a modest way.” I see it through their eyes and every corner of it is explored, and when I’m away and then I come back, I have a physical sense of relief and nourishment.7. Pinewood Studios That’s the place where we just shot [“Jurassic World: Dominion”], and of course it’s got a history. I love James Bond and I think they’ve shot a lot of Bond movies there. We had a challenge to do it and bubble ourselves up in the Langley hotel very near there. We took it over and were all getting tested often and having many, many protocols. Then I would spend time at Pinewood, and we made this movie with Laura Dern and Sam Neill and of course Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard. I just had a great time.8. Thelonious Monk I play piano. I’m still a humble student trying to get better. Thelonious Monk, I don’t try to copy him — not that I could. As you know when you read about him and see the documentary about him, “Straight, No Chaser,” what a unique and unconventional and deep artist he was. When you hear any recording from any note that you happen to dip into, you go, “Oh, that’s Thelonious Monk.”9. Emilie’s Eggs I started making these rustic scrambled eggs where I drag some cheese around the skillet. But she’s taken over the egg-making, and it’s just so perfect. She gets this French butter that is particularly special, and then she has some French cheese that she grates over it, and there’s salt and pepper. It’s a little runny, but not very runny, and I get a knife and I cut it into several particular pieces and then I have it with some Greek yogurt and a sip of orange juice.10 “Can’t Find My Way Home” by Blind Faith I think my brother was into Blind Faith and Cream, and Steve Winwood did the original version, which struck me when I was a kid when I first heard it through him — he was an older brother, who died when he was 23. It seemed very romantic at the time: [Sings] “Come down off your throne and leave your body alone.” Then Haley Reinhart gave me a CD on which she does that song, and I was listening to it with Charlie a couple of years ago now. We were both sitting in this little easy chair, and I got very emotional and I started to cry. It was one of the first times I think that I was openly and conspicuously and freely weeping. He said, “Dada, what, what, what?” I said: “This is such a sad song. But it’s beautiful. It’s a sadness that makes you feel it’s nice to be sad sometimes like this.” More