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      in Television

      Ewen MacIntosh, Comedian on British Sitcom ‘The Office,’ Dies at 50

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      Mr. MacIntosh was known for his role as Keith Bishop, a dry, blunt accountant on the original version of “The Office.”Ewen MacIntosh, a British actor and comedian known for his dry portrayal of Keith Bishop, a lackluster accountant in the acclaimed British sitcom, “The Office,” has died. He was 50.He died on Monday, his management company, Just Right Management, said, but it did not give a cause of death. The company said in a social media post that Mr. MacIntosh received support from a care home before he died.Mr. MacIntosh had parts in several comedic series, including the British sitcom “Miranda” and the sketch series “Little Britain.” But it was “The Office” that would be his most famous role, as a socially inept accountant working at a boring branch of a paper company.Created by the comedians Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, the mockumentary series began airing in 2001 and focused on the horrors and trivial lives of office workers. It included two series and a Christmas special, and its comedic approach was praised by critics and audiences alike.The show later inspired an Emmy-winning American counterpart that ran for nine seasons and also attracted an avid audience.Referring to Mr. MacIntosh as “Big Keith,” one of his nicknames on “The Office,” Mr. Gervais called him “an absolute original” in a social media post Wednesday.This is a developing story. More

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      in Movies

      Jack Jennings, P.OW. Who Helped Build Burma Railway, Dies at 104

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      He was captured by the Japanese in Singapore and was one of thousands of prisoners whose hardships were the basis for the film “The Bridge on the River Kwai.”Jack Jennings, a British prisoner of war during World War II who worked as a slave laborer on the Burma Railway, the roughly 250-mile Japanese military construction project that inspired a novel and the Oscar-winning film “The Bridge on the River Kwai,” died this month in St. Marychurch, England. He was 104.His daughters Carol Barrett and Hazel Heath told the BBC on Jan. 22 that he had died in a nursing facility, though the exact date of death was unclear.They said they believed their father was the last survivor of the estimated 85,000 British, Australian and Indian solders who were captured when the British colony of Singapore fell to Japanese forces in February 1942.A private in the 1st Battalion Cambridgeshire Regiment, Mr. Jennings spent the next three-and-half years as a prisoner of war, first in Changi prison in Singapore and then in primitive camps along the route of the railway between Thailand and Burma (now Myanmar).To build bridges, Mr. Jennings and at least 60,000 P.O.W.s — and thousands more local prisoners — were forced to cut down and debark trees, saw them into half-meter lengths, dig and carry earth to build embankments, and drive piles into the ground.In his 2011 memoir, “Prisoner Without a Crime,” Mr. Jennings described the dangerous process of driving the piles, using a heavy weight raised by the men to the top of a timber frame.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

      Sophie Turner’s Custody Lawsuit Against Joe Jonas is Dismissed

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      The English actress sued the American musician weeks after they announced their split, saying he had prevented their two children from returning to Britain.A judge in New York on Wednesday dismissed a lawsuit that the English actress Sophie Turner filed last year against her husband, Joe Jonas, in which she requested that their two young children be returned to England from the United States.The lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York was dismissed with both parties’ consent, according to a court filing.Turner, a star on the television show “Game of Thrones,” sued Jonas, an American musician who plays in a boy band with his brothers, in September, weeks after the couple said publicly that they planned to divorce.That summer, the children had traveled to the U.S. with Jonas because he was on tour there and Turner had a busy filming schedule in Britain, according to the lawsuit. The couple agreed that Turner would pick up the children in September and return with them to England, it said.Instead, the lawsuit said, Jonas filed for divorce in September and later refused to give Turner the children’s passports, preventing them from returning to England, their “habitual residence.”A representative for Jonas said at the time that giving Turner the children’s passports would have violated a court order in Florida — where the couple’s divorce proceedings had been initiated — that restricted both parents from relocating the children.In the court filing on Wednesday, known as a consent order, Judge Katherine Polk Failla noted that Turner and Jonas had signed a memorandum of understanding and a “parenting plan” related to their children in October. They also filed a consent order with a court in Britain that was approved on Jan. 11, she wrote.Attorneys and publicists for Turner and Jonas did not immediately respond to requests for comment late Wednesday.The couple’s children, who were born in the United States in 2020 and 2022, have American and British citizenship. They have been identified in court documents by only their initials.Turner and Jonas began dating in 2016, when he was touring in Britain, and married in Las Vegas three years later.After living a “very peripatetic lifestyle” for a few years, Turner’s lawsuit said, they relocated to England in April 2023 and had planned to buy a home there later in the year.But in early September, after a succession of negative news stories about Turner, they said in a joint statement on Instagram that they had “mutually decided to amicably end our marriage.”Seamus Hughes More

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      in Television

      How a Show Forced Britain’s Devastating Post Office Scandal Into the Light

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      After years of delays, victims of one of the U.K.’s worst miscarriages of justice are finally being exonerated — thanks to a TV drama.More than 700 people convicted of a crime they didn’t commit. At least four suicides. A woman sent to jail while pregnant. Bankruptcies. Marriages broken, lives ruined.The shocking details of one of the worst miscarriages of justice in British history have been reported for years yet somehow stayed below the radar for most of the public, despite intense efforts by campaigners and investigative journalists.Until last week. A gripping ITV drama series, “Mr. Bates vs. the Post Office,” which began airing on Jan. 1, achieved something that eluded politicians for a decade, cutting through a morass of bureaucratic and legal delays and forcing government action.The show dramatizes the fate of hundreds of people who ran branches of the Post Office across Britain, and who were wrongly accused of theft after a faulty IT system called Horizon created false shortfalls in their accounting.Between 1999 and 2015, they were pursued relentlessly in the courts by the Post Office for financial losses that never occurred. Some were jailed, most were driven into financial hardship, many suffered mental health issues and some took their lives.Under pressure, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Wednesday promised a new law to exonerate and compensate all known victims, a sweeping intervention that aims to finally bring justice after years of glacial progress.And the police suddenly said last week that they would investigate whether Post Office officials — who refused for years to admit that the IT they forced managers to use was at fault — should face charges. Meanwhile one of its former bosses, Paula Vennells, has handed back an honor bestowed by the queen in 2019, after more than a million people signed a petition demanding she be stripped of it.All this has left an intriguing question: how has a TV show achieved in one week more than investigative journalists and politicians in more than a decade?“However brilliant the journalism is, it maybe appeals to your intellect, to your head,” said Gwyneth Hughes, the writer of “Mr. Bates vs. the Post Office.” “Whereas drama is designed to appeal to your heart — that’s what it has been doing for thousands of years.”Paula Vennells, the former chief executive of the Post Office, in 2012. She said she would hand back an honor bestowed by the queen in 2019 after a public outcry this week.Anthony Devlin/PA Images, via Getty ImagesMattias Frey, a media professor at City, University of London, argued that the drama shows the continuing power of terrestrial TV to change public perceptions and generate “one of those old fashioned water cooler moments” that fuels broader public debate.Even the show’s executive producer, Patrick Spence, was surprised by the scale of the reaction. Before the show was broadcast, he told his team that they shouldn’t be downhearted if ratings were modest, given the competition for eyeballs.The day after the series began he was informed by a colleague that more than 3.5 million people had watched the first episode. “I thought I had misheard her,” Mr. Spence said. Nine million people have now seen the series, according to ITV.He believes the show has inadvertently become a state-of-the-nation drama, articulating “a bigger truth, which is that we don’t feel heard, and we don’t trust the people who are supposed to have our backs.”The case is all the more shocking because the Post Office is an institution woven into the fabric of British life, more used to being portrayed in a benign role as in the popular TV show for children, “Postman Pat.”An official inquiry into the scandal was established in 2020, and more than £148 million, or more than $188 million, has already been distributed to victims from compensation programs. In 2019, 555 branch managers successfully challenged the Post Office in the High Court.Despite that, of the 700 criminal convictions, only 93 have so far been overturned, a sluggish pace that fueled campaigners’ anger.Former post office branch managers celebrating outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London in 2021, after a court ruling cleared them of theft and false accounting.Tolga Akmen/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesSince ITV’s drama aired, more victims have come forward, but dozens of other people died before they could receive compensation. When Horizon declared branch accounts were in deficit, managers were contractually obliged to make up shortfalls.Some paid from their own savings to avoid prosecution, even though they were sure they had done nothing wrong. Others pleaded guilty to lesser crimes to avoid jail although they were innocent.One victim, Lee Castleton, whose plight was featured in the drama, told the BBC that his Horizon account would swing abruptly from profit to loss and that more than 90 calls to a help line proved useless. The Post Office, he said, was “absolutely hellbent” on not assisting him.As news of his supposed wrongdoing filtered into the community, Mr. Castleton and his family were accused of theft in the street, his daughter was bullied at school and she developed an eating disorder. Forced to travel far afield to seek work, he slept in his car.Such stories provide the beating heart of “Mr. Bates vs. the Post Office,” which is the result of three years of work. The truth of what happened was “unbelievable,” said Ms. Hughes, the show’s writer. “If I wrote those things fictionally, nobody would believe me, people would switch off.”The heroic Mr. Bates, played by Toby Jones, is portrayed as an even tempered and indefatigable character who — like other victims — was told by the Post Office that he was the only person to report problems with Horizon.The actor Toby Jones in character as Alan Bates, a man who is “a terrier; he’s wise, he’s clever, he’s very good at forward planning,” said Gwyneth Hughes, the writer of “Mr. Bates vs. the Post Office.”ITVHe found others, formed a group of victims, and pursued their cases with meager resources, battling a succession of setbacks to achieve an extraordinary victory in the courts.“Everyone likes an underdog, and we had underdogs in spades,” said Ms. Hughes, adding that Mr. Bates might look like a mild-mannered bearded fan of real ale but is also “a terrier; he’s wise, he’s clever, he’s very good at forward planning.”“He is, in a way, a gift as a character, he has a complexity: cometh the hour, cometh the man,” she said. “He’s led this long march of the misunderstood and unheard, and kept his sense of humor.”A few politicians were allies in the victims’ cause, notably James Arbuthnot, a Conservative lawmaker (now in the House of Lords) who fought on behalf of a constituent wrongly accused of stealing £36,000.There is also a cameo role for another Conservative lawmaker, Nadhim Zahawi, who played himself in the drama, questioning Ms. Vennells, the former Post Office boss, during a parliamentary committee hearing.To viewers Ms. Vennells emerges as the obdurate face of the Post Office, someone determined to defend its reputation rather than engage with its victims, a stance all the more surprising because she is an ordained Anglican priest (although she stepped back from any major role in the church in 2021).Fujitsu, the Japanese company that developed the Horizon system, is also under increasing pressure, with politicians hoping to recover some of the costs of compensating victims from the firm, which still has billions of pounds’ worth of contracts with the British government.Professor Frey worries viewers may have seen a “simple David and Goliath story” whereas lawyers and politicians must grapple with something more complicated. He sees a risk that “the pressure that should be brought to bear on politicians in order to clean this mess up maybe comes in a way that is undifferentiated.”Ms. Hughes has concerns about that too. “I hope they do right by all our lovely sub postmasters, but I also hope they find a way to do so that isn’t going to cause further problems down the line,” she said. “Thank God that’s not my job.” More

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      in Television

      ‘The Crown’ and What the U.K. Royal Family Would Like Us to Forget

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      Netflix’s sprawling drama has never been about revealing anything new, but instead speaks to several furtive truths about the British monarchy.Over the last seven years, “The Crown” has been criticized by numerous prominent Britons on behalf of their royal family.After former Prime Minister John Major described the show as a “barrel-load of nonsense,” and the actress Judi Dench — who is friends with Queen Camilla — accused it of “crude sensationalism” in 2022, Netflix labeled the show a “fictional dramatization.” But these complaints misunderstood the sprawling drama’s appeal for many British fans and, for the real royal family, its usefulness.The show has never been about revealing anything new. Instead, it has resurfaced what the royal family would most like us to forget. “The Crown” has, over six seasons, spoken to several furtive British truths: the public perception of the monarchy, the self-preservation strategies of a family preoccupied with becoming irrelevant and the family’s rigorous quashing of internal dissent.In Seasons 1 and 2, Matt Smith played Prince Philip and Claire Foy was Queen Elizabeth II. Des Willie/NetflixThe glossy dramatization of these truths is partly why the popularity of “The Crown” has endured, finding an audience in Britain even among people who want to end the monarchy or are indifferent to it. I am one of the former.On the show’s premiere in 2016, I was captivated by Claire Foy’s depiction of a young Elizabeth thrust onto the throne prematurely following tragedy, entertained by Olivia Colman’s more confident queen who had more challenging relationships with her prime ministers, and have stayed loyal to her story as Imelda Staunton closes off “The Crown” as a pious matriarch and meddling parent.Much of the show has been devoted to the royals’ romantic woes, but over the years I have been more interested in its depiction of the extent the crown will go to protect its power and traditions.In Season 4, Diana Spencer (Emma Corrin) begins her unhappy marriage to Prince Charles. Des Willie/NetflixThis was clear in episodes in which Elizabeth, as a princess, traveled to Kenya to try to counter the country’s independence movement (Season 1); the family hid the queen’s disabled cousins, Nerissa and Katherine Bowes-Lyon, in an institution (Season 4); and a 20-year-old Diana becomes trapped in a loveless marriage so that the future king can have a chaste-seeming bride (Season 4).Still, the show has often neglected to explore the monarchy’s true wealth and political influence. The crown’s real estate portfolio is valued at 16.5 billion pounds ($21 billion), and the monarch enjoys a broad exemption from most taxes, as well as many other laws. Under official rules, members of the royal family must not be criticized in Parliament, even as, according to a report from The Guardian, Charles has written directly to the country’s top politicians to ask for changes to national policy.In June 1981, members of Britain’s royal family gathered on the balcony of Buckingham Palace in London after attending an annual parade to celebrate the monarch’s birthday. Bob Dear/Associated PressIn Britain, what the public sees of the royal family is carefully stage-managed: We are presented with recorded Christmas broadcasts and gentle waves from chariots and balconies to fawn over as we wave our little Union Jacks. The “Palace,” as the royal institution is known, would like us to know the family through their carefully curated charity work, patronage, garden parties, weddings and jubilees.So there is something thrilling about the depiction of such a powerful family onscreen without their control. It’s the same pleasure that many of us will have gotten from watching Oprah’s interview by Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan, or reading Harry’s memoir, “Spare.”Britons eager for an unvarnished view of the royal family have, in previous decades, pored over the intrusive paparazzi shots of Princess Diana on a yacht or Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, having her toes sucked on vacation. But because “The Crown” is a “fictional dramatization,” it can be enjoyed guilt-free, without having to engage with the sleaze of Britain’s tabloid newspapers.Prince Charles (Dominic West) and Camilla Parker Bowles (Olivia Williams) in Season 5.Keith Bernstein/NetflixPerhaps it is no surprise that anonymous sources have relayed accounts of the royal family being upset by a show that dramatizes moments they would rather forget. But this doesn’t take into account the degree to which “The Crown” has humanized the people sitting at the top of Britain’s rigid class system.Louis Staples, a Harper’s Bazaar columnist and frequent commenter on “The Crown,” points out that, these days, “intimacy is one of the most valuable currencies in our culture. When people share with us deeply enough — their flaws, their failures, their ups and downs — we form a connection with them.”Queen Elizabeth was famous for not sharing the messy, human and emotional parts of herself with her public, and for encouraging the rest of her family to do the same. The public relations strategy “never complain, never explain,” considered a core principle of her reign, holds that silence is dignified and public expression damaging.In the final season, the queen asks Prince William (Ed McVey), left, and Prince Harry (Luther Ford) for their thoughts on whether Prince Charles should be able to marry again. NetflixBut story lines on “The Crown” — like the suggestion of infidelity between Prince Philip and Penelope Knatchbull or young William and Harry’s heartache after losing their mother — may have served to humanize people generally kept at a distance from the public.Given that the real existential threat to the royal family is not public hatred, but total irrelevance — especially since the queen’s death — “The Crown” has given the Windsors an invaluable kind of outreach, even if they have had to swallow it like bitter medicine.Once the show has ended and viewers are no longer gripped by discovering the (yes, fictionalized) stories of the real people behind the onscreen characters, the royal family might find themselves wishing for one more season. More

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      in Theater

      Britain’s Friendliest Bear to Hit the Stage in ‘Paddington: The Musical’

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      The star of a long-running book series and two films will hit the stage in a show currently being developed in Britain, producers said.Paddington, the well-traveled bear known for his floppy red hat and love for orange marmalade sandwiches, is taking on yet another venture in 2025: the theater.A stage musical about the friendly bear is in development and is set to open in Britain in 2025, the show’s producers announced on Tuesday. It will be adapted from the book series that made him famous, as well as the two live-action films, “Paddington” and “Paddington 2.”The working title is “Paddington: The Musical,” and it “is currently undergoing a period of development and workshops,” according to a news release.Paddington was first introduced in a book series by Michael Bond that follows the good-natured bear who emigrates from Peru to England and is taken in by the Brown family. Paddington is sweet, curious and prone to mishaps.The first book in the series, “A Bear Called Paddington,” was published in October 1958. More than 35 million copies of Paddington books have been sold worldwide.The live-action feature films, with Ben Whishaw as the voice of Paddington, premiered in Britain in 2014 and 2017. The first film depicts Paddington’s arrival in London and the early stages of his relationship with the Brown family. In the second film, Paddington attempts to get his Aunt Lucy a gift and ends up in prison, where, eventually, there is music, cake and dancing.A third film, “Paddington in Peru,” is set to be released in Britain on Nov. 8, 2024. Its U.S. release date is Jan. 17, 2025.The stage show’s music and lyrics will be written by Tom Fletcher, a founding member of the popular British band McFly and a well-known children’s author. The musical’s book will be by Jessica Swale, whose play “Nell Gwynn” won an Olivier Award for best new comedy in 2016.The musical’s director will be Luke Sheppard, who has worked on “Just for One Day,” “What’s New Pussycat?” and “Rent.”The musical is being produced by Sonia Friedman Productions, Studiocanal and Eliza Lumley Productions on behalf of Universal Music UK. The producers did not provide details on the plot and said the cast would be announced later.“The magic of Paddington is that, through his wide-eyed innocence, he sees the very best in humanity,” Ms. Friedman and Ms. Lumley said in a joint statement, “reminding us that love and kindness can triumph if we open our hearts and minds to one another.” More

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      in Movies

      ‘How to Have Sex’ Considers Assault Survivors

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      In new films, including “How to Have Sex,” female British directors emphasize the impact of sexual trauma, rather than portraying the act itself.When Molly Manning-Walker was a teenager, her favorite film was Gaspar Noé’s “Irreversible.” In a recent interview, she remembered being impressed by the film’s infamously brutal, nine-minute rape scene, and how “immersive” it was.But now 30, and a director herself, she questions Noé’s approach to that scene. With such graphic — and prolonged — violence onscreen, she said, “you’re almost abusing the audience.” When it came to depicting sexual assault in her debut feature, “How to Have Sex,” which won the Un Certain Regard prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, Manning-Walker resolved to do things differently.“How to Have Sex,” which opens in theaters in Britain and Ireland on Nov. 3 and in the United States in February, follows three British teenagers on a party vacation in Greece. Manning-Walker said that, like Tara, the film’s protagonist, she was sexually assaulted when she was 16 (though in a different scenario), and that she wanted the audience to understand what was happening “through Tara’s face and her reaction,” rather than putting the act onscreen.Manning-Walker’s debut is one of several new films directed by British women that offer fresh perspectives on sexual assault by focusing on its varied impacts. Adura Onashile’s “Girl,” which opens in theaters in Britain later this month, asks what happens when women don’t talk about their experiences. And in the documentary “The Taste of Mango,” which recently played at the London Film Festival, Chloe Abrahams discovers her family’s buried history of sexual abuse and domestic violence, which triggers a revelation about herself.These movies arrive as violence toward women and girls continues making headlines in Britain. Recently, the comedian Russell Brand denied accusations of sexual assault from four women. In January, a London police officer admitted to 49 charges of sexual abuse. Around a quarter of women in England and Wales have experienced sexual assault since the age of 16, according to the Office for National Statistics.Déborah Lukumuena as Grace, and Le’Shantey Bonsu as her daughter, Ama, in “Girl.”via Studio SohoIn an interview, Onashile described this climate of violence against women as “an epidemic.” Her film, “Girl,” centers on a young immigrant mother, Grace (Déborah Lukumuena), and her 11 year-old daughter, who live in a Glasgow tower block. Grace’s erratic behavior implies a traumatic past, but Onashile doesn’t make this explicit. As part of her research for the film, Onashile said she learned from social workers that you can spot sexual assault survivors by their body language, which gives the “sense that something is held, and tight, and wound up.” In the film, Lukumuena plays Grace with stooped shoulders and a downcast gaze.Abrahams said that the act of recording her family members gave her the courage to ask difficult questions about long-hidden abuse. With “The Taste of Mango,” she was seeking to heal divisions between her mother, Rozana, in England, and her maternal grandmother, Jean, in Sri Lanka, but along the way she learned that Rozana is suspected to have suffered at the hands of her stepfather.The movie pairs audio of her mother’s testimony with poetic images, including the moon and a road rushing by, glimpsed from a car window. Its meditative pacing was designed to allow the audience “to breathe, and not get sucked down by the heaviness of it,” Abrahams said.But equally, she added, she wanted to show how her mother “finds joy in life” — including in country music and manicures — so Rozana isn’t defined by the things that were done to her.In the documentary “The Taste of Mango,” Chloe Abrahams, right, discovers her own family’s history of sexual abuse and domestic violence.Chloe AbrahamsAll three filmmakers considered the impact of the subject matter on the people making their movies and had support on hand from therapists during production. Manning-Walker, who also works as a cinematographer, recalled filming an assault scene for someone else’s film, in which there was no acknowledgment of the toll it might take on the person behind the camera. On her film, she said, her team could stop filming if they felt uncomfortable, which they did several times.Manning-Walker said she didn’t want the character of Tara, who goes on vacation intending to lose her virginity and flirts her way into an unwanted scenario, to be a helpless victim. At the end of “How to Have Sex,” she picks herself up and carries on. But that doesn’t mean she’s not affected by what happened, Manning-Walker added.Sexual assault “happens everywhere, and in all situations,” she said. By making a film that confronted it, she said she hoped to challenge a culture of shame and silence around a common experience. All three filmmakers described tearful, post-screening encounters with male and female audience members who saw elements of their lives reflected onscreen.After one screening, Manning-Walker recalled, a woman in her 70s had told her that watching “How to Have Sex” had made her reconsider a teenage sexual encounter: “‘I just realized that I’ve been assaulted, from watching your film,’” Manning-Walker remembered the woman saying.There was “a lack of conversation around female pleasure and what sex is for women,” Manning-Walker said, which also meant a lack of education about consent. If people aren’t taught that sex is an act of negotiation, she said, “of course it’s going to go horribly wrong.” More

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      in Movies

      ‘In the Court of the Crimson King’ Review: 50 Years of Off-Kilter Rock

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      Toby Amies’s documentary dives into the history of the British progressive rock band King Crimson and its chief disciplinarian, Robert Fripp.The director Toby Amies’s documentary “In the Court of the Crimson King” is part road chronicle and part retrospective, and captures King Crimson, the adventurous British rock ensemble, at what may be the end of its existence. Robert Fripp, for years the band’s sole original member, has strongly suggested that its 2021 tour would be its last. (It hasn’t toured since.)One of the originators of the subgenre called progressive rock or art rock, King Crimson is, depending on whom you ask, either impossibly pretentious or startlingly adventurous. Fripp, an endlessly thoughtful and meticulously articulate guitarist, is the group’s most tireless and paradoxical explainer in the film. He’s fond of pronouncements like, “For silence to become audible, it requires a vehicle. And that vehicle is music.”At one point Fripp describes his experience in the band from 1969 to 2016 as “wretched.” What changed in 2016? He put together a group of stellar musicians who did as he requested. The film features their thoughts along with interviews with past members who had strong differences with Fripp.While the YouTube videos Fripp and his wife, the singer Toyah Willcox, began making during the pandemic reveal the guitarist as a mild-mannered, eccentric, uxorious madcap, he can come off like an egghead martinet in the context of the band he has helmed for half a century. But he is as hard on himself as he is on anyone else, practicing the guitar four to five hours a day and subjecting himself to other forms of discipline such as taking a cold shower in the morning: “Your body doesn’t want to go under a cold shower,” he says in the film. “So you’re saying to your body, ‘Do as you’re told.’”Bill Rieflin offers another perspective on the band, as a musician who chose to spend his last years alive touring with Crimson. He died of cancer in 2020. His devotion renders Fripp’s adages about the sacred nature of music-making palpable.In the Court of the Crimson King: King Crimson at 50Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 26 minutes. In theaters. More