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      In ‘Clipped,’ Cleopatra Coleman Spreads Her Wings

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      The actor’s versatility has allowed her to stay relatively anonymous, but that may change with her new docudrama about an N.B.A. scandal.Cleopatra Coleman began with red, swirling it toward pink with a fine-tipped brush. An oval appeared on the paper, and then smaller marks joined it — ears, eyebrows, a line for a nose. “I always draw this woman,” Coleman said. “I don’t know why.”This was on a bright May morning and Coleman, a star of the FX limited series “Clipped,” premiering Tuesday on Hulu, was at Happy Medium, an art cafe around the corner from her temporary apartment in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. She had passed it on walks with her dog, George, a rescue Yorkiepoo, and had often felt jealous of the customers there at night, on dates. So this morning, on a day off from filming a new series, “Black Rabbit,” she had taken herself on a date. She had even dressed for the occasion, in a thrift-store T-shirt with a New York State Summer School for the Arts logo. Charcoal and pottery tempted her, but she settled on watercolor.To the picture, Coleman, 36, added a long neck, small breasts, two teeth. More colors came — purple, sunset orange, hints of green — all representing different emotions. Then she took a fresh sheet and began again, painting the same figure in different shades. Since the early days of the pandemic, she has drawn and painted this woman hundreds of times.“It’s always the same woman,” she said.In her professional life, Coleman is almost never the same woman. An actress since her teens, she has bounded among genres and forms. Though her look is distinct — high forehead, full lips, limpid brown eyes — she is often nearly unrecognizable from one role (“The Last Man on Earth,” say, or “Dopesick”) to the next (“Infinity Pool,” “Rebel Moon”). It’s a versatility that has allowed her to stay relatively anonymous. But given her audacious performance in “Clipped,” as V. Stiviano, the personal assistant to Donald Sterling, the disgraced former owner of the N.B.A.’s Los Angeles Clippers, and the promise of “Black Rabbit,” a starry drama set in the world of Manhattan nightlife due out next year, Coleman’s name and face are about to become much better known.That’s what her colleagues want for her. “I hope she breaks the [expletive] out,” Gina Welch, who created “Clipped,” said in an interview. “She’s such a star.”In “Clipped,” Coleman plays the woman who triggered a scandal that led to Donald Sterling (Ed O’Neill), the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers, being banned from the N.B.A. (With Jacki Weaver.)Kelsey McNeal/FXWe 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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      ‘Past Lies’ on Hulu Is a Swirly Spanish Mystery

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      The drama is the latest mystery about a group of now-grown women haunted by their teenage pasts.Elena Anaya, left, and Itziar Atienza star in the Spanish drama “Past Lies.”HuluGather ’round, old friends, for it is time to recall the big, terrible event of that night long ago — that night when we swore a solemn oath to bury this secret, and yet now, somehow, perhaps 20 full years later, the horror of it still affects us all! Why must every group have a prodigal troublemaker whose return dredges up these old memories? Can we not leave the past in the past? Maybe our recollections differ — we can confront this in flashback, or maybe just in the pounding rain. The first person who cries and says “But she was our friend!” loses.“Past Lies,” a six-part Spanish drama (in Spanish, with subtitles, under its original title, “Las Sambras Largas,” or dubbed) on Hulu, is the latest swirly mystery about a group of now-grown women haunted by their teenage pasts. “Lies,” though, is more frank than much of its brethren, more streamlined and grounded.Rita (Elena Anaya) is a well-known film director who reluctantly returns to her hometown, Alicante, Spain, to settle her mother’s estate. Despite initial dodges and awkwardness, she winds up folded back into her high school clique, starting with a brittle dinner party. The different kinds of hugs Rita exchanges with each of these former friends is one of the juiciest, most detailed scenes I’ve seen in ages — decades of longing and disappointment depicted in the twist of one shoulder blade.The reunion becomes even more strained when the police identify the remains of Mati, a classmate who vanished during a senior trip to Mallorca. Mati’s younger sister, Paula (Irene Escolar), is one of the investigators, though it’s hard to imagine how she finds time for police work when she is so busy scowling and chewing gum. Paula is convinced these women know more than they’re telling her, and she’ll comb through home videos the girls shot as teens to prove it.Part of what makes “Past Lies” intriguing, beyond its appealing chicness and gorgeous setting, is that the central mystery is not one agreed-upon lie. The women each have different suspicions, different secrets they wanted to keep back in the day or maintain now. The show is a saga not about simmering teenage blood lust or the freaky, warped horrors of girldom, but rather about the natural contours of regrets, the bittersweetness of regarding one’s youthful passions. More

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      ‘Black Twitter’: Movements, Memes and Crying Jordan

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      This new Hulu docuseries explores how a social media subculture influenced American culture at large.When Prentice Penny first began work on the forthcoming docuseries “Black Twitter: A People’s History,” the last thing the director wanted to do was explain to anybody just what Black Twitter was. How could he?“Everybody has a different opinion what it is, and a different entry point and path to how they feel about it,” he said.“Black Twitter” is a kind of shorthand descriptor referring loosely to commentary, jokes and other kinds of cultural conversation and activism driven largely by Black users of the social media platform now named X. What Penny wanted to do was capture the pivotal moments that have come to define this organic online community, including the movements (Black Lives Matter; OscarsSoWhite) and defining hashtags (#uknowurblackwhen, #BlackGirlMagic) it has propelled and championed.And he wanted to do all of this while Black Twitter was still around.“So much of Black culture in this country isn’t documented,” Penny said. “When you see books about culture and race being banned, when you see narratives saying, oh, there were good sides to slavery, you realize that Black Twitter could be here today and gone tomorrow.”Prentice Penny, left, Joie Jacoby and Jason Parham at the film’s debut at the South by Southwest film festival in March.Andrew Walker/DisneyIndeed, since Penny started the project, Twitter itself has disappeared — or the name officially has, anyway. “I don’t trust anybody who stopped calling it Twitter,” said Jason Parham, a producer on the show whose 2021 Wired story “A People’s History of Black Twitter” inspired the series.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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      ‘Black Twitter’ Review: Hulu’s Docuseries Doubles as a Snapshot of Recent History

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      Hulu’s docuseries on a social-media subculture doubles as a serious snapshot of recent history.Who created Twitter?On one level, the business level, the Wikipedia level, the answer is simple: Twitter, a social-media service allowing users to post brief messages, was founded in 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone and Evan Williams.But on the level of culture, the people who “create” a social platform — that is, who decide what it’s for, what it can do, how it feels — are the people who use it. “Black Twitter: A People’s History,” which arrives on Hulu on Thursday, argues that it was Black users who, as much or more than anyone, gave Twitter its voice.A couple of caveats are useful here. Though Twitter, now called X, is a global infosystem with worldwide effects, the three-part documentary, based on a Wired oral history by Jason Parham, focuses mainly on Twitter as an American phenomenon. And Black Twitter, the series is careful to point out, isn’t a monolith or formal group but the more general phenomenon of Blackness and Black culture manifesting online.“Black Twitter” treats the network not mainly as technology or business but as a cultural artifact — a platform, even an art form, for commentary, community and comedy. Twitter, it argues, is another part of American culture, like music and food, that Black Americans defined by coming to it from the margins.“In the same way that we took our lamentations and made gospel music, we took a site like Twitter and we made it a storytelling forum,” Meredith Clark, a journalism professor undertaking an archive of Black Twitter, says in the documentary. Or as the comedian Baratunde Thurston pithily puts it: “We repurposed Twitter the way we repurposed chitlins.”This scaffolding of ideas elevates “Black Twitter” above the kind of remember-this-remember-that pop-history documentary that it can resemble on the surface. Appropriate to its subject, it tells its story in a series of small bites. It stitches together interviews with academics, journalists, entertainers, viral stars and figures from business and politics with a nimble narration by the director, Prentice Penny.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 Shares149 Views

      in Movies

      Disney, Hulu and Max Streaming Bundle Will Soon Become Available

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      The offering from Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery shows how rival companies are willing to work together to navigate an uncertain entertainment landscape.In a rare moment of solidarity, two entertainment giants are teaming up to try to get consumers to stop canceling their streaming services so frequently.Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery announced on Wednesday that they would start offering a bundle of their Disney+, Hulu and Max streaming services this summer, a sign of how rivals have become more willing to join forces in order to confront an ever-changing media landscape.The companies said that the bundle would be available to buy on any of the three streaming platform’s websites (Disney owns Disney+ and Hulu; Warner Bros. Discovery owns Max), and that there would be a commercial-free version as well as one featuring ads. The companies did not announce prices or a date when the offering would become available.The monthly retail price for subscribing to commercial-free versions of all three services is currently $48; the plans with ads cost a combined $25. A bundled offering is likely to cost less.Media executives have been vexed in recent years as the extremely profitable cable bundle has come undone by cord cutting, and as viewers have rapidly turned to on-demand streaming entertainment. The transition to streaming has been difficult for the companies, which have been bleeding cash.Disney, for instance, announced this week that Disney+ was profitable last quarter for the first time, though its overall streaming division lost money.Adding to the uncertainty, consumers have shown a much greater willingness to cull and cut streaming services over the last year or so, further confounding executives who have slashed costs and reduced the number of television shows to get closer to making meaningful profits.Disney has introduced a bundle for Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+. The company has said it has seen good results from that offering.Executives have been flirting with the idea of cobbling together a streaming offering across media companies to give consumers less incentive to cancel. The Disney+, Hulu and Max offering is a significant step in that direction.Joe Earley, the president of Disney Entertainment’s direct-to-consumer division, said in a statement that the “new partnership puts subscribers first.” JB Perrette, the chief executive of Warner Bros. Discovery’s global streaming unit, called it “a powerful new road map for the future of the industry.”In February, Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery and Fox said they were forming a joint venture to create a streaming service dedicated to their sports offerings. It is expected to debut in the fall. More

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      ‘The Contestant’ on Hulu Offers a Glimpse of Reality TV Ethics

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      The documentary tells the strange story of a groundbreaking 1998 Japanese TV show but doesn’t go far enough in its examination.So imagine this. It’s 1998. You want to be a comedian, and you’re desperate for work. You strike out for the big city and start going to auditions. Then, to your utter joy, you’re cast on a reality show.When you show up to set, though, things get weird. You’re ordered to remove all your clothing and you’re handed a stack of blank postcards and a pen. The goal is to use them to enter magazine contests — lots of them — and win prizes. Once the prize value totals a certain amount, you’ve won. What have you won? Well … you’ll see.This is a real thing that happened to Tomoaki Hamatsu, known as Nasubi: He was selected by Toshio Tsuchiya, a Japanese reality TV producer, to do just that on a nationally broadcast TV show. (If the story sounds familiar, it’s because it was the basis for a popular “This American Life” episode.) If you can believe it, Nasubi’s story gets weirder from there, and is now the subject of Clair Titley’s new documentary, “The Contestant” (available on Hulu).The film was made with the participation of a number of figures involved in the original production, including Tsuchiya and Nasubi. It retells the story using interviews and a great deal of footage from the actual show, which underlines how innovative it was. Nasubi’s life inside the room was broadcast before voyeuristic webcams were common, and it began running the same year that “The Truman Show,” with its oddly similar plot, was released.“The Contestant” is worth watching for the strangeness of the story. I found it curiously underdeveloped as a documentary, though. It’s been more than 25 years since Nasubi’s ordeal, years in which questions of exploitation and ethics in reality TV — surrounding everything from Bravo’s “Real Housewives” empire to “The Jinx” and a whole lot more — have been, if not at all solved, at least explored at length, relitigated every time news surfaces about the manipulation of subjects or the truth behind the scenes. (“UnReal,” a scripted drama based on the machinations on a “Bachelor”-like show, is a revealing way to dig into those questions. It’s available on most major platforms.)The big question isn’t why arguably unscrupulous reality TV keeps getting made, because we know the answer. The bigger question is why we keep watching it, and what kind of human qualms and compunctions we have to push aside to indulge. “The Contestant” has at its fingertips a rich text for exploring our current reality landscape, not to mention our fascination with social media meltdowns. But it doesn’t really go there, preferring instead to reassure us that Nasubi is OK.But the film’s failure to dig into its story further doesn’t mean we can’t — and “The Contestant” is a great starting point for conversations like these. That’s why it’s worth watching and thinking about. Because it’s not just a crazy story: It’s an important one in our media-saturated, always-on, can’t-look-away age. More

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      The Comfortable Problem of Mid TV

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      A few years ago, “Atlanta” and “PEN15” were teaching TV new tricks.In “Atlanta,” Donald Glover sketched a funhouse-mirror image of Black experience in America (and outside it), telling stories set in and around the hip-hop business with an unsettling, comic-surreal language. In “PEN15,” Maya Erskine and Anna Konkle created a minutely observed, universal-yet-specific picture of adolescent awkwardness.In February, Glover and Erskine returned in the action thriller “Mr. & Mrs. Smith” on Amazon Prime Video. It’s … fine? A takeoff on the 2005 film, it updates the story of a married duo of spies by imagining the espionage business as gig work. The stars have chemistry and charisma; the series avails itself of an impressive cast of guest stars and delectable Italian shooting locations. It’s breezy and goes down easy. I watched several episodes on a recent long-haul flight and they helped the hours pass.But I would never have wasted an episode of “Atlanta” or “PEN15” on in-flight entertainment. The work was too good, the nuances too fine, to lose a line of dialogue to engine noise.I do not mean to single out Glover and Erskine here. They are not alone — far from it. Keri Russell, a ruthless and complicated Russian spy in “The Americans,” is now in “The Diplomat,” a forgettably fun dramedy. Natasha Lyonne, of the provocative “Orange Is the New Black” and the psychotropic “Russian Doll,” now plays a retro-revamped Columbo figure in “Poker Face.” Idris Elba, once the macroeconomics-student gangster Stringer Bell in “The Wire,” more recently starred in “Hijack,” a by-the-numbers airplane thriller.I’ve watched all of these shows. They’re not bad. They’re simply … mid. Which is what makes them, frustratingly, as emblematic of the current moment in TV as their stars’ previous shows were of the ambitions of the past.What we have now is a profusion of well-cast, sleekly produced competence. We have tasteful remakes of familiar titles. We have the evidence of healthy budgets spent on impressive locations. We have good-enough new shows that resemble great old ones.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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      Riley Keough and Lily Gladstone Discuss ‘Under the Bridge’

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      In a joint interview, the actors discuss “Under the Bridge,” their new true-crime series based on a teenager’s brutal killing in British Columbia.“We’ve been teenage girls,” Lily Gladstone said. Which means that Gladstone and her co-star, Riley Keough, know what teenage girls can do.In “Under the Bridge,” a limited series now streaming on Hulu, Keough and Gladstone play a writer and a cop investigating the 1997 beating and murder of Reena Virk, a 14-year-old Indo-Canadian girl. Six teenage girls and one teenage boy, many of them Virk’s classmates, were eventually convicted.The case has inspired plays, poems, documentaries and several books, including Rebecca Godfrey’s 2005 literary nonfiction work “Under the Bridge,” which gives the series its shape and name. (The show also relies on a memoir by Virk’s father, Manjit Virk.) Though Godfrey died in 2022, before filming began, she worked closely with the show’s creator, Quinn Shephard, on its development. Keough, who also produced the series, plays a version of Godfrey. Gladstone plays Cam, an invented character, a Native law enforcement officer who was adopted as a child by a white family.While “Under the Bridge” centers these women as adults, it includes scenes of the same characters as teenagers, drawing lines between the girls they were and the women they are.Earlier this month, Keough, who was filming in London, and Gladstone, who was in Seattle, met for a video call. In an hourlong chat, they discussed girlhood, violence and making a true-crime series that sidesteps sensationalism. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.What were you like as teenagers?LILY GLADSTONE Whenever I meet anybody from high school, “Oh my God, you’re the same person” is pretty much what I hear. That version of Lily really built the foundation for who I am now. She had this sense of where she wanted to go. She cracks me up a little bit. Riley, I get the sense that you had a lot of energy, though I don’t want to say you were ever too much to handle because you don’t really have that vibe.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