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    ‘S.N.L.’ Spoofs Merrick Garland’s Hunt for Classified Documents

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    Michael B. Jordan hosted an episode that was saved by a couple of commercial parodies.Classified documents are all the rage these days: They’re turning up in the homes of President Joe Biden, former President Donald Trump and former Vice President Mike Pence, and on “Saturday Night Live,” which used these recent discoveries as grist for its opening sketch.This weekend’s “S.N.L.” broadcast, hosted by Michael B. Jordan and featuring the musical guest Lil Baby, began with a dramatic voice-over intoning, “Criminals beware. There’s a new sheriff in town, and he means business.” This person had already put away the Jan. 6 insurrectionists and, the voice-over added, “Now he’s searching for classified documents and he’s coming for whoever has them — Democrat, Republican or whatever Trump is now.”That person turned out to be Attorney General Merrick Garland, played by Mikey Day in an especially nebbishy manner. “I may look like I was born in a library,” Day said as Garland, “but there’s something you should know: Merrick Garland don’t play.” Though his voice was hardly intimidating, his bold assertions were often punctuated with head shakes and whip-crack sound effects.Day noted that “some have said the federal government classifies too many documents.” He added, “This has led people to ask, ‘Does recovering these documents even matter?’ To which I say: I don’t know. But it’s the law. And I am the law.” A pair of pixelated sunglasses then descended upon his face, accompanied by a caption that read “Deal With It.”He introduced three special agents that he had dispatched to the residences of elected officials, starting with Kenan Thompson playing an agent who said he had conducted a search of Pence’s home.“I knew right away this man needed a friend,” Thompson recounted. “When he opened the door, he said, ‘You came!’ with a big smile, and he offered to make us pancakes.”His search turned up no documents, but, Thompson said, “In an envelope marked ‘tax stuff,’ we discovered photographs of the country pop-singer Shania Twain, cut out from several magazines. When confronted with this, Mr. Pence said, ‘I’m sorry; I’m disgusting.’ ”Ego Nwodim played an agent who had searched the home of Vice President Kamala Harris. “Come on now — Joe Biden won’t even give this woman a pen,” Nwodim said. “You think she has classified documents?”Finally, Bowen Yang appeared as an agent who was still star-struck by a recent visit to the home of former President Barack Obama. “No big deal, but it was really fun,” Yang said, adding that Obama had possessed “175 letters from Lin-Manuel Miranda begging the president to attend a performance of ‘Hamilton.’ ”Day shared a final message for anyone still potentially holding onto classified documents: “Do you think this is a game?” he said. “Who do you think you’re playing with?”Thompson said to him, “Hey boss, when we done playing with these little papers, we gonna head down to Memphis and make sure justice is served down there, too, right?”“I sincerely hope so,” Day replied.Commercial Parody No. 1 of the WeekA pair of pretaped commercial parodies really rescued this week’s broadcast, beginning with this segment poking fun at the recent difficulties faced by Southwest Airlines. The carrier canceled thousands of flights around the holiday season, costing the company more than $1 billion.As the airline’s employees (played by Jordan, Heidi Gardner, Devon Walker and others) explain, Southwest has since taken steps to provide customers with a better, more modern experience: The company has upgraded its entire communications system — to 2008 Dell computers, replacing their old 2002 IBM ThinkPad laptops. And the airline has ditched its old pen-and-paper method of air-traffic control in favor of computers: that’s right, 2002 IBM ThinkPad laptops.Commercial Parody No. 2 of the WeekThis weekend’s second noteworthy commercial parody is also an effective little suspense thriller.It begins innocuously by lampooning a line of State Farm insurance ads, with Day and Gardner playing a married couple seeking the consultation of the company’s red-shirted spokesman, Jake From State Farm (Jordan). But as the story progresses, Jordan — who never fully exits the family’s house — begins to displace Day in all of his household roles, taking his wife and children out for pizza and to church and even supplanting Day in his marital bed.Day’s efforts to change insurance providers don’t go so well either: You’ll never hear anyone make a basic sales pitch sound as sinister as Jordan does when he says, “Even if you do find cheaper coverage, we’ll just match it.”Weekend Update Jokes of the WeekOver at the Weekend Update desk, the anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che continued to riff on the discovery of classified documents in the homes of Trump, Biden and Pence. Other jokes targeted Facebook’s decision to reinstate Trump’s account and a Senate hearing investigating the concert promoter Live Nation.Jost began:Facebook announced that it will reinstate former President Donald Trump’s account, but this time they’ll put guard rails in place to keep him under control. Which I think is the same thing they said every time they tried to reopen Jurassic Park. Also, what even are guard rails on Facebook? And can they apply to my uncle? Because he’s posted some very disturbing fan fiction about the green M&M.In the wake of the classified document scandal, representatives for Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama issued statements saying they all turned over all classified records before leaving office. While Jimmy Carter issued a statement saying, “Come and get ’em, you bastards” [his screen showed a photo of President Carter wielding heavy firepower].Che continued:A lawyer for Mike Pence says that after they discovered classified documents in his home, Pence stands ready and willing to fully cooperate. Incidentally, “I stand ready and willing to cooperate” is also what Pence says before sex. During the Senate hearings investigating Live Nation and their monopoly on concert ticket sales, fans of Taylor Swift protested outside the Capitol. Aw, that’s sweet. And only two years after their dads were there [his screen showed a photo of Jan. 6 rioters at the Capitol building]. More

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      ‘A Journal for Jordan’ Review: Reflections on Love Built and Lost

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      The actors Michael B. Jordan and Chanté Adams bring a compelling chemistry to the screen as opposites who fall for each other.Jordan Canedy is a wide-eyed baby with excellent lungs at the start of “A Journal for Jordan.” At the movie’s end, he’s becoming a young man, one with traits that his soldier father, Charles Monroe King, had hoped for when he began writing a yet-to-be-born Jordan advice in a notebook while stationed in Iraq.In 2006, while on patrol in Baghdad, First Sgt. King was killed by a roadside bomb. Dana Canedy, King’s fiancé and the mother of their infant son, was then a senior editor at The New York Times. Her 2007 article “From Father to Son, Last Words to Live By,” led to her to write the elegant book about love, loss and legacy upon which this movie is based, and with which it shares its title.So don’t be fooled by that touching title: The journal, in which Canedy added her own stories to King’s writing, is as much the work of a grieving mother driven to make sure her son knows the love story that brought him into the world as it is a devoted father’s guide to decency and manhood.Denzel Washington directs this adaptation (the screenplay is by Virgil Williams) with care, respect and a deep-seated knowledge of the Black love stories that don’t make it to the big screen nearly enough. The actors Michael B. Jordan and Chanté Adams are similarly attuned, bringing a compelling chemistry as opposites who fall for each other.In the movie, Dana meets Charles on a visit to her parents’ home near Fort Knox, Ky. Charles is chiseled, polite and oh-so good looking. He sends a gentle helping of “ma’ams” her way. She appraises him. He’s a 10-and-2 kind of driver. She reaches from the passenger side to blare the horn. Though different, their attraction is palpable. It also helps that they are both single (sort of). He’s going through a divorce, and she recently ended a relationship.Michael B. Jordan embraces Charles’s rigorous ethos as well as his tenderness. Charles might drop for morning push-ups, but he’ll also bow his head for grace at a restaurant. He travels with push-up bars but also a sketch pad. If Dana sees a flaw, it may be Charles’s single-minded devotion to his soldiers. She has her own doubts about being a military wife.Canedy acknowledged her edges (and curves) in her book, and Adams embodies them in her portrayal. When she begins writing her son, Jordan, her anecdotes can be frank, or frisky. She even shares a doozy of an argument, the kind that either breaks up a couple or makes them stronger.While the movie makes it clear that Dana and Charles are successful, it doesn’t always get at the labor necessary to get them there, both as a couple and as individuals. While it’s easy to rely on the shorthand of countless wartime movies to signal Charles’s ascendancy, Dana’s own story deserves a few more beats.A Journal for JordanRated PG-13 for a loving and passionate congress, salty language and brief marijuana use. Running time: 2 hours 11 minutes. In theaters. More

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      Watch Michael B. Jordan Survive a Plane Crash in ‘Without Remorse’

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      Stefano Sollima, the director of “Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse,” narrates a sequence from his action thriller.In “Anatomy of a Scene,” we ask directors to reveal the secrets that go into making key scenes in their movies. See new episodes in the series on Fridays. You can also watch our collection of more than 150 videos on YouTube and subscribe to our YouTube channel.A crashed plane is the setting for a centerpiece action sequence in the thriller “Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse,” which tells the origin story of the novelist’s popular character John Clark.In the film (streaming on Amazon), the character is initially known as John Kelly and played by Michael B. Jordan. A Navy SEAL whose wife was killed by Russian assassins, Kelly is on a mission to track down the killer.While that mission is moving forward, a plane carrying Kelly and his team is shot down by the Russian Air Force and crashes into the sea. The plane breaks in half and the section carrying supplies that Kelly needs for his mission sinks deeper into the water. Narrating this scene, the director Stefano Sollima explains the many moving parts that had to come together to pull this off this elaborate set piece, following Kelly all the while through the ordeal.The filmmaker and his crew used an actual plane that could be cut into pieces and filled with water. Part of the set was built inside a rotating mechanism that would turn to keep the action unmoored.And for the part of the scene where the plane is fully submerged, Jordan trained for months to be able to hold his breath for longer intervals and carry off the underwater action.Read the “Without Remorse” review.Sign up for the Movies Update newsletter and get a roundup of reviews, news, Critics’ Picks and more. More

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      ‘Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse’ Review: A Routine Mission

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      Aside from a few set pieces, this action film, starring Michael B. Jordan, is a surprisingly dull adaptation of Clancy’s 1993 novel.Situating the bulk of its action in 2019, “Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse” updates Clancy’s 1993 novel by opening with a prologue in Aleppo, Syria, and making reference to the Russian military presence in the country. But the geopolitics and relative lack of cyber-anything otherwise date the movie to a barely post-Cold War period, while the plot mechanics grind along like holdovers from Charles Bronson’s heyday.Michael B. Jordan plays John Kelly, a Navy SEAL whose pregnant wife (Lauren London) is killed when Russian operatives invade their home, intending to terminate him. A sympathetic colleague from the SEALs (Jodie Turner-Smith) and the defense secretary (Guy Pearce) relax protocol to help Kelly get revenge, but a C.I.A. official (Jamie Bell) gets peeved, signaling to viewers that he’s secretly working for the other side — or at least that the screenwriters, Taylor Sheridan and Will Staples, need them to think that. (Either way, Bell could dial down the superciliousness.)The director, Stefano Sollima (“Sicario: Day of the Soldado”), manages the proceedings with a minimum of zest, relying on a score by Jonsi (of Sigur Ros) for ambient energy. Even the visuals are gray and indifferent, and the briefer-than-expected running time does not correspond to a brisk pace.Three set pieces — an ambush outside Dulles airport; a creatively executed hostage-taking at a prison; a plane crash — elevate the movie’s pulse, but most of “Without Remorse” is surprisingly dull, more concerned with laying franchise groundwork than with being exciting on its own terms. Jordan makes a sturdy enough action hero, but the character as portrayed doesn’t give him any contours to play.Tom Clancy’s Without RemorseRated R. The human toll of espionage. Running time: 1 hour 50 minutes. Watch on Amazon Prime Video. More

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      Amazon Moves From Film Industry’s Margins to the Mainstream

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }At HomeWatch: ‘WandaVision’Travel: More SustainablyFreeze: Homemade TreatsCheck Out: Podcasters’ Favorite PodcastsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyAmazon Moves From Film Industry’s Margins to the MainstreamWith several films competing for Golden Globes on Sunday and a number of high-priced movies coming this year, the streaming service has altered its reputation in Hollywood.“Borat Subsequent Moviefilm,” nominated for three Golden Globes, is one of several Amazon films competing on Sunday night. Credit…Amazon StudiosFeb. 26, 2021Updated 3:02 p.m. ETSacha Baron Cohen may have been going a little mad. It was August, the pandemic was raging, and his secret production had shut down. He was determined to reprise his role as Borat in a feature film designed to satirize the Trump administration ahead of the November election.But how?First he persuaded Universal Studios to allow him to shop his incomplete movie. Then he cobbled together an hour of footage. (The infamous scene with Rudolph W. Giuliani had yet to be filmed.) Hulu was interested. So was Netflix. But Amazon Studios was the one most committed to getting the movie out in time, no matter the cost.Amazon spent $80 million to acquire “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm,” a decision that incurred extra expenses because of Covid-19 protocols, test screenings in New Zealand — one of the few places in the world at the time where the company could gather a group of people in a dark movie theater — and a last-minute dash to incorporate all the gonzo footage before the film’s release on Oct. 23. (Mr. Cohen was cutting it close, still shooting three weeks before he had to deliver the movie.)“They broke every rule for us,” Mr. Cohen said in a phone interview. “There was a certain delivery schedule that they felt was necessary, and they halved that time. They realized the imperative of getting this out before the election. And they changed their procedures completely to help us do this. I’m really, really grateful.”Jennifer Salke, the head of Amazon Studios, is committed to spending upward of $100 million on a production if necessary.Credit…Rozette Rago for The New York TimesJennifer Salke, the head of Amazon Studios, is also grateful. When the Golden Globes air on Sunday, “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm” will be competing for three awards: best comedy or musical, best actor and best supporting actress (Maria Bakalova). Other Amazon acquisitions, including Regina King’s directorial debut, “One Night in Miami,” and “Sound of Metal,” starring Riz Ahmed, are also contending for prizes.Those accolades, coupled with the cultural impact “Borat” has enjoyed across the globe, have significantly altered the perception of Amazon Studios’ film division in Hollywood and among Amazon’s more than 150 million Prime subscribers. (The studio, which does not disclose viewer numbers, will say only that tens of millions of subscribers watched “Borat.”)Once a home for indie darlings such as “Manchester by the Sea” and “The Big Sick,” Amazon Prime Video is transforming itself into a place for commercial films with broad appeal that can travel internationally. It’s all part of Ms. Salke’s plan to turn Prime into a service people subscribe to for more than free shipping for their paper towels.“We had seen firsthand, when Amazon gets behind a piece of content, just how big the muscle is that they are capable of flexing,” said David Ellison, chief executive of Skydance Media and the producer of Amazon’s “Jack Ryan” series. He recently sold the films “Without Remorse” and “The Tomorrow War” to Amazon. “With ‘Borat,’ they showed they could do that with films, too.”Amazon has thrived in the last year, with profits increasing some 200 percent since the pandemic began. That success has extended to its film business. Like other streaming services, it has been able to snatch up big-budget, star-driven films that studios have been forced to shelve in response to the closing of movie theaters.Netflix, Apple, Disney+ and Hulu have all benefited from the studios’ woes, but Amazon has been one of the most aggressive in acquiring new movies.Michael B. Jordan has an overall content deal with Amazon that will allow him to explore areas like fashion, music and podcasts. Credit…Nadja Klier/Paramount PicturesIn September, Ms. Salke acquired “Without Remorse” — starring Michael B. Jordan and based on a Tom Clancy series — for $105 million. It will debut at the end of April. The next month, it paid $125 million for the rights to “Coming 2 America,” which will premiere next Friday. Eddie Murphy was initially hesitant about taking the sequel to his much-beloved film to Amazon, but Ms. Salke and others say he was reassured by the performance of “Borat.”In January, the company made its biggest bet yet, paying $200 million to acquire the Chris Pratt-led action film “The Tomorrow War,” which Paramount was set to release. It stands as Amazon’s largest financial commitment in acquiring a feature film. The company hopes to debut it on Prime Video this summer.“We don’t have a huge bench of big blockbuster movies in the works,” Ms. Salke said with a laugh. “So for us it was opportunistic to be able to lean into that.”With more players than ever joining the streaming fray (Paramount+, anyone?), the pace of delivering new content is an issue that every service worries about. Netflix threw down the gauntlet in January when it announced its 2021 strategy of delivering one new movie per week, which followed WarnerMedia’s announcement that all of Warner Bros.’s 2021 theatrical films will debut in theaters and on its HBO Max streaming service at the same time.With so much volume being offered by those two companies, along with Disney’s recent announcement that at least 80 percent of its 100 new projects will be earmarked for Disney+, the only way to compete is to go big.“It’s going to be really interesting over the next three years,” said Roeg Sutherland, one of the heads of media finance for Creative Artists Agency. “With platforms programming one new movie a week, this is fueling a competitive marketplace for high-end, independently financed films.”At the Sundance Film Festival last month, Apple paid a record $25 million for rights to the independent film “Coda.”Ms. Salke pushes back on the idea that her plans to broaden her offerings are a reaction to her competitors. Rather, she said, it’s the culmination of a strategy that began at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival, when as a newcomer to the film world she spent $46 million to acquire four films, including “Late Night” with Emma Thompson and Mindy Kaling, and the feel-good movie “Brittany Runs a Marathon.”Before joining Amazon, Ms. Salke spent her career in television, shepherding hits like “Modern Family” and “Glee” at 20th Century Fox and “This Is Us” at NBCUniversal. After her Sundance shopping spree, she was mocked by some film insiders as an out-of-touch television executive overspending to acquire niche movies.She was criticized for paying $13 million for “Late Night,” when it grossed $15.4 million at the box office. “Brittany Runs a Marathon” earned just $7 million. That commentary still seems to sting Ms. Salke, though she argues that she released the films theatrically only to appease the filmmakers. The movies’ real metric of success, she said, was how they played on the streaming service.Regina King on the set of “One Night in Miami” with Kingsley Ben-Adir. The actress turned director says she was amazed at how often she saw ads for her film while shopping on Amazon.Credit…Patti Perret/Amazon Studios, via Associated Press“Those movies all kept coming out as No. 1,” said Ms. Salke, referring to the films’ performances on Amazon Prime. “Every time we launched one, the next one would eclipse the next one. We were training our audience to know that we would have big original films that were more commercial on Prime Video. It’s a little bit of an ‘If you build it, they will come’ strategy.”But what happens to that plan once the pandemic is over and studios are no longer willing to sell their movies to streaming platforms?Amazon has some 34 films in various stages of production around the world, and Ms. Salke said the company was committed to spending upward of $100 million on a production if merited. (Amazon’s founder, Jeff Bezos, is stepping down as the company’s chief executive this year, but the studio isn’t expecting any big changes when Andy Jassy takes the reins.)The Culver City, Calif., complex is still being built, and, if anything, investment has increased. Ms. Salke points to Aaron Sorkin’s upcoming film about Lucy and Desi Arnaz, starring Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem, as a potential hit. There’s also George Clooney’s film “The Tender Bar,” starring Ben Affleck, and an L.G.B.T.Q. romantic drama, “My Policeman,” featuring Harry Styles and Emma Corrin (“The Crown”).“The new news is that you will see us embrace some bigger projects going forward that are self-generated,” she said.In Ms. Salke’s mind, this was always the place where Amazon Film was going to land. And there is a newfound confidence to her outlook as she celebrates her third anniversary as the head of the studio. In addition to her recent acquisition spree, she has made overall content deals with Mr. Jordan and the actor and musician Donald Glover, which she says will reinforce her mission to burnish Amazon’s reputation as a talent-friendly place.With its healthy subscription base, Amazon is attracting those in Hollywood who are interested in the company’s global reach but also curious about the company’s other businesses that have the potential to expand a star’s brand beyond film and television.Mr. Jordan, for one, said his overall content deal would allow him to explore areas other studios couldn’t offer: specifically fashion, music and podcasts. His portrayal of the physical incarnation of Amazon’s Alexa during a Super Bowl ad was an example.And Ms. King got a kick out of just how pervasive Amazon’s marketing of her film was whenever she logged into the company’s e-commerce site.“When I’m on Amazon, buying doggy bags, and my film pops up at the top, that’s pretty amazing,” she said. “That’s like, wow! Every single day I am getting a text from someone who saw the movie that probably wouldn’t have seen it if it didn’t pop up in their shopping queue.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More