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      ‘The Little Things’ Review: Good Old-Fashioned Police Work

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story‘The Little Things’ Review: Good Old-Fashioned Police WorkDenzel Washington and Rami Malek play detectives on the trail of a serial killer in John Lee Hancock’s vintage thriller.Denzel Washington and Jared Leto in “The Little Things.”Credit…Nicola Goode/Warner BrosJan. 28, 2021, 7:00 a.m. ETThe Little ThingsDirected by John Lee HancockCrime, Drama, ThrillerR2h 7mFind TicketsWhen you purchase a ticket for an independently reviewed film through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.A note during the first scene in “The Little Things” — an effective cold opening, full of danger and suspense — indicates that it’s 1990. At first, I thought this meant that the action would quickly vault forward into the present day, but instead the movie, which takes place mainly in Los Angeles, settles into a fairly generic version of the semi-recent past, occasionally flashing back to a few years earlier.There aren’t many historical details or period flourishes that would justify this choice. It seems mostly like a pretext for removing cellphones, internet searches, GPS tracking and other modern conveniences that might ruin the analog ambience needed for an old-fashioned serial-killer thriller. Which is fair enough. When it comes to spooky neo-noir resonance, it’s hard to beat a ringing pay phone on an empty nighttime street or an envelope full of Polaroids.Written and directed by John Lee Hancock and starring Denzel Washington as a weary professional with keen instincts and a battered conscience, “The Little Things” is an unapologetic throwback. It broods over the psychologically and spiritually damaging effects of police work as its two main detectives (Rami Malek alongside Washington) pursue an elusive, malignant murderer of women. You might think of “Se7en” or “Zodiac” or a lost season of “True Detective,” though this movie is less self-consciously stylized than any of those.And that’s partly because “The Little Things” is both a latecomer and a forerunner. (Time is a flat circle, doncha know.) Hancock wrote the screenplay almost 30 years ago, and in the ’90s possible directors included Steven Spielberg and Clint Eastwood. Hancock wrote the scripts for two Eastwood films in that decade, “A Perfect World” and “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.” More recently, he has directed “The Blind Side,” “Saving Mr. Banks” and “The Highwaymen.”At their best, those movies are competent rather than groundbreaking — admirable in their sturdy commitment to filmmaking craft even as their stories stubbornly cling to convention. This one rises to a slightly higher level, though it doesn’t entirely avoid the clichés of its genre: “You know, you and I have a lot in common,” a suspect says to one of the detectives. That the apparent bad guy is played by Jared Leto doesn’t necessarily help matters.But Leto, as a self-confessed “crime buff” with a creepily calm demeanor, isn’t bad. Malek as Jim Baxter, a zealous and ambitious Los Angeles detective flirting with career and personal catastrophe, is pretty good too. Who are we kidding, though? This movie is a coat that has been hanging in the closet for decades waiting for Washington to slip it on.Not that the man’s actual clothes fit. That’s part of the texture of the performance. Joe Deacon, usually addressed as Deke, starts the movie as a sheriff’s deputy in a dusty stretch of California’s Central Valley. The khaki uniform does him no favors, and Deke carries himself like a man buckling under a long-carried burden — round in the shoulders, thick in the middle, slow and heavy in his stride.You get the sense that it wasn’t always that way. You get that sense partly because you have seen Denzel Washington in this kind of role before, but the great ones can play endless variations on the same theme. When Deke drives down to Los Angeles on some irrelevant police business, we learn that he was once an L.A.P.D. homicide hotshot. He receives a mixed welcome. The captain (Terry Kinney) can barely stand to look at him. Deke’s former partner (Chris Bauer) and the medical examiner (Michael Hyatt) greet him warmly, but their kindness is edged with pity and disappointment.Deke partners up with Baxter to hunt down a killer preying on young women, who may have been active back when Deke was on the force. (The cop who seems to be Jim’s actual partner, played by Natalie Morales, doesn’t have much to do). The case takes some expected turns, and some that are less so, but as the clues and leads accumulate the film’s interest is less in who done it than in what it does to the detectives. There is something Eastwoodian not only in Hancock’s clean, unpretentious directing, but also in the ethical universe he sketches. The line between good and evil is clear, but that doesn’t banish moral ambiguity or save the righteous from guilt. Nor does it guarantee justice.That’s a heavy idea, and “The Little Things” doesn’t quite earn its weight. Thanks to Hancock’s craft and the discipline of the actors, it’s more than watchable, but you are unlikely to be haunted, disturbed or even surprised. You haven’t exactly seen this before. It just feels that way.The Little ThingsRated R. Tortured souls and tortured bodies. Running time: 2 hours 7 minutes. In theaters and on HBO Max. Please consult the guidelines outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before watching movies inside theaters.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Phil Spector, Famed Music Producer and Convicted Murderer, Dies at 81

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesVaccine InformationF.A.Q.TimelineAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyPhil Spector, Famed Music Producer and Convicted Murderer, Dies at 81Known for creating the ‘Wall of Sound,’ he scored hits with the Crystals, the Ronettes and the Righteous Brothers and was one of the most influential figures in popular music.Since 2009, Phil Spector had been serving a prison sentence for the murder of Lana Clarkson, a nightclub hostess he took home after a night of drinking in 2003.Credit…Pool Photo Al Seib/Getty ImagesPublished More

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      Sincere, Outdoorsy, Trippy, a Music Festival Breathes Los Angeles

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      @media (pointer: coarse) { .at-home-nav__outerContainer { overflow-x: scroll; -webkit-overflow-scrolling: touch; } } .at-home-nav__outerContainer { position: relative; display: flex; align-items: center; /* Fixes IE */ overflow-x: auto; box-shadow: -6px 0 white, 6px 0 white, 1px 3px 6px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.15); padding: 10px 1.25em 10px; transition: all 250ms; margin-bottom: 20px; -ms-overflow-style: none; /* IE 10+ */ […] More

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      Grammy Awards Postponed as Covid-19 Rages in Los Angeles

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyGrammy Awards Postponed as Covid-19 Rages in Los AngelesThe delay comes less than four weeks before the ceremony was to be held, on Jan. 31. The event will now be held on March 14.Beyoncé is the most-nominated artist for the 63rd annual Grammy Awards, which will no longer take place in January.Credit…Robyn Beck/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesBen Sisario and Jan. 5, 2021The 63rd annual Grammy Awards, set to be presented this month, have been delayed over concerns about Covid-19, which has been spreading rapidly in the Los Angeles area.The show will now be held on March 14, according to a statement from Grammy organizers, although few other details were available about where, and how, the event would go on.“The deteriorating Covid situation in Los Angeles, with hospital services being overwhelmed, I.C.U.s having reached capacity, and new guidance from state and local governments have all led us to conclude that postponing our show was the right thing to do,” said the statement, which was signed by executives at the Recording Academy, which presents the Grammys, and CBS, its longtime broadcast partner.“Nothing is more important,” it added, “than the health and safety of those in our music community and the hundreds of people who work tirelessly on producing the show.”The delay comes less than four weeks before the ceremony was to be held, on Jan. 31, and as unions and entertainment industry groups have called to suspend in-person television and film production in Los Angeles, citing the surging virus and overwhelmed hospitals. Several late-night shows have moved back to remote formats.The pandemic has kept this year’s Grammys under a cloud of uncertainty for months. In an interview in November, when nominations were announced, Harvey Mason Jr., the chairman and interim chief executive of the academy, said that an event was planned for a small audience in Los Angeles, but that many other details were still being worked out. Trevor Noah, from “The Daily Show,” was to be the host.Even the news of the postponement on Tuesday left the music industry confused. After Rolling Stone reported that the ceremony had been postponed, neither the academy nor CBS made any official public statement for hours. An email to academy members — and the Grammys’ official website — both said that the new date was March 21. That was quickly rescinded, although the incorrect date continued to bounce around social media and was picked up by some news outlets.Beyoncé has the most nominations for the ceremony, with nine in eight categories. Taylor Swift, Dua Lipa and the rapper Roddy Ricch are among the other major contenders for awards. In classic Grammys fashion, controversy — or at least loud complaints — have swarmed around this year’s nominations, as stars like the Weeknd and the country singer Luke Combs, who had some of the biggest hits of the period, were left off the ballot.Despite offstage griping, the Grammys remain one of the most high-profile moments in the year in pop music, with stars relishing the TV exposure and record executives schmoozing during glittery industry gatherings. Even if muted by the pandemic, the Grammys had been expected to represent a major media moment for the music world.This year was set to mark a new era for the Grammys. Ken Ehrlich, its producer for four decades, stepped down after last year’s ceremony. The new show is to be produced by Ben Winston, who has worked with James Corden. In an interview with Variety last month, Winston said he was “looking to do something quite exciting with independent venues” around this year’s Grammys.The telecast is also a major tent-pole event for CBS, though the show’s ratings have been sagging. Last year 18.7 million people watched the Grammys live on television, a 12-year low.Other major awards shows have attempted a variety of approaches during various stages of the pandemic, with mixed results. The BET Awards, held in June; the MTV Video Music Awards, in August; the Billboard Music Awards, in October; and the Latin Grammys, in November, were televised without audiences, and artists appeared remotely from soundstages to perform and accept awards.The Country Music Association Awards held an in-person ceremony in Nashville in November, with a live audience consisting mostly of the show’s performers, who were socially distanced but largely unmasked. A month after the awards, the singer Charley Pride, 86, died of complications from Covid-19, although where he was exposed remains unknown.In other industries, the pandemic forced the Emmy Awards to stage a largely virtual event in September. The Tony Awards announced in August that the show would go ahead, online, at an unspecified date, after initially postponing its June date.The Oscars were postponed two months from their original Feb. 28 date to April 25, with the format of the ceremony not yet determined. A week after that delay was announced, the Golden Globes then said that it would hold its ceremony, typically scheduled for January, in-person — as usual, at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, Calif. — on Feb. 28 instead.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Surging Virus Prompts Call to Halt In-Person TV and Film Production

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storySurging Virus Prompts Call to Halt In-Person TV and Film ProductionSAG-AFTRA, the union representing 160,000 people who work in the industry, seeks a “temporary hold” in Los Angeles.A film crew in Los Angeles on Nov. 6. Credit…Etienne Laurent/EPA, via ShutterstockJan. 4, 2021Seven people working on “The Kelly Clarkson Show,” which was being shot at an NBC Universal stage in Studio City, Calif., tested positive for the coronavirus this fall. So did nine people working on the Netflix series “Colin in Black & White” in Gardena. And the Los Angeles County Public Health Department reported that a dozen people working on the sitcom “Young Sheldon” in Burbank got the virus, too.The entertainment industry is so vital to Los Angeles that film and television production were both allowed to continue even after outdoor dining was banned. But now, with the coronavirus surging across California and overwhelming hospitals, unions and industry groups are calling for in-person production to be suspended.“Southern California hospitals are facing a crisis the likes of which we have never seen before,” Gabrielle Carteris, the president of SAG-AFTRA, the union representing 160,000 people who work in film, television and radio, said in a statement. “Patients are dying in ambulances waiting for treatment because hospital emergency rooms are overwhelmed. This is not a safe environment for in-person production right now.”The union was joined in its call for a “temporary hold on in-person production in Southern California” by groups representing producers and advertisers.The recommendation, which was announced on Sunday, came as officials said that major studios in the area had already extended a standard holiday-related pause in production until at least mid-January in the hope that the number of new cases would subside by then, freeing up space in hospitals and intensive care units.By Monday night, “The Late Late Show” announced in a tweet that it had moved its production back into James Corden’s garage until it was “safe to return to our studio.” And a spokeswoman for “Jimmy Kimmel Live” confirmed a Deadline report that the Los Angeles-based late show would film remotely for the next two weeks. Officials from the groups calling for a pause — which also included a committee representing commercial advertisers and advertising agencies — said that they were encouraging their members to stay at home and not accept any on-set employment for several weeks. They noted that even workers who do not contract the virus put themselves at risk of becoming injured by stunts, falls or other mishaps, and that they could find it difficult to get treatment at hospitals.“It is too hard to say right now when the situation may improve,” said David White, national executive director of SAG-AFTRA.The Producers Guild of America said in its own statement that it was encouraging everyone “to delay production until the county health officials indicate it’s safe to resume.”Like sports, theater and much of the entertainment industry, film and television production has been forced to endure a turbulent year of stops and starts. The pandemic caused what was essentially a global shutdown in March, followed by a gradual phased reopening over the summer with a laundry list of new safety protocols in place that forced executives to reimagine how to make blockbuster movies safely, or how to finish uncompleted television seasons.The measures they have taken could not entirely stop the spread of the virus, however, and throughout the summer and fall, stars including Robert Pattinson and Dwayne Johnson tested positive. Mr. Pattinson’s positive test forced filming of “The Batman” at studios outside London to shut down. And last month, an audio recording of Tom Cruise emerged in which the actor could be heard scolding crew members on the set of “Mission: Impossible 7” for not following Covid-19 protocols.The restart, uneven and incomplete, has also forced the industry to slash budgets and lay off employees. FilmLA, the official film office for the city and county of Los Angeles, reported that filming in the area fell by more than 54 percent from July to September compared with the same period the previous year. (In New York City, only 35 of the nearly 80 series that were filming or planning to film were back at work by early November.)Then came the wave of infections that have staggered California since Thanksgiving. More than 35,000 new cases were reported in the state on Sunday, and the weekly average of new cases per day in Los Angeles County exceeded 16,000 last week — roughly 12 times higher than it was averaging on Nov. 1.The crisis has stretched the health care system so thin that at one Los Angeles hospital, incoming patients were recently being instructed to wait in an outdoor tent because the lobby was being used to treat patients, and gurneys filled the gift shop.The lack of hospital capacity prompted public health officials in Los Angeles to reach out to some members of the production industry on Dec. 24 to ask them to “strongly consider pausing work for a few weeks during this catastrophic surge in Covid cases,” FilmLA said. (An official at the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health said only that it had “recommended a voluntary pause on production activities” during a phone call with industry officials, but did not specify a time frame.)A database maintained by the county health department lists locations tied to CBS, NBC, Netflix and Warner Bros. as among the more than 500 workplaces, restaurants and stores that have reported three or more positive coronavirus cases. Officials for the studios declined to comment on the record.With the standard holiday break now expanded until mid-January because of the surge in cases and concerns about hospital capacity in Los Angeles, several shows that had been slated to resume production this week will not return until next week at the earliest, officials said.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Film Academy Museum Delays Its Opening Again

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesThe Latest Vaccine InformationU.S. Deaths Surpass 300,000F.A.Q.AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyFilm Academy Museum Delays Its Opening AgainThe Academy Museum of Motion Pictures pushed back its opening to Sept. 30, 2021, from April 30, citing the difficulty of forecasting when public life may begin to normalize.The museum recently installed a 1,208-pound model of the shark featured in “Jaws” above an escalator.Credit…Chris Pizzello/Invision, via Associated PressDec. 18, 2020, 1:00 p.m. ETLOS ANGELES — The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures is starting to feel a little cursed. Since the project was announced in 2012 — with an opening expected in 2017 — setbacks have included sparring architects, the discovery of mastodon fossils by excavation crews, a budget that ballooned by roughly 90 percent, the ouster of its founding director and now, for the second time, the coronavirus pandemic.On Friday, the museum pushed back its opening to Sept. 30, 2021, from April 30, citing the virus and difficulty forecasting when public life may begin to normalize. The pandemic already scuppered a planned opening this week. “With the current surge of Covid-19, it would be irresponsible to maintain an April opening,” Bill Kramer, the museum’s director and president, said by phone. “It’s not because we aren’t ready. Work has been moving forward. We’re completely on track.”Ted Sarandos, chairman of the museum’s board of trustees and Netflix’s co-chief executive, added in a statement: “It’s just a matter of patience, for all of us, as we look ahead to opening our doors on Sept. 30.” A private gala was set for Sept. 25.How did the museum select those dates? This month, for instance, Warner Bros. said it would still be too difficult to release movies normally by next December because of the pandemic.Mr. Kramer said summer was not an ideal time to inaugurate a cultural institution (too many people scattered here and there). An early September opening would collide with the Telluride and Toronto film festivals.Had the $482 million museum stuck to its April plan, a marketing campaign would have started next month. Hiring was also set to begin for gallery guards and ticket takers.For all of its stops and starts, the museum has gotten its act together under Mr. Kramer, who was hired last year. (He previously served as vice president of development for the Brooklyn Academy of Music.) In recent months, the museum has hired the film scholar and Turner Classic Movies host Jacqueline Stewart as its chief artistic and programming officer; repaired relationships with Hollywood collectors; attained LEED eco-friendly certification; and reached its pre-opening fund-raising goal of $388 million. Despite difficult working conditions because of the coronavirus, crews have installed exhibits, including a 25-foot-long, 45-year-old fiberglass model of the mechanical shark that Steven Spielberg used to film “Jaws.”Mr. Kramer called the shark, nicknamed Bruce, “shockingly cool.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Actors Sue SAG-AFTRA Health Plan Over Changes in Insurance

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best TV ShowsBest DanceBest TheatreBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyActors Sue SAG-AFTRA Health Plan Over Changes in InsuranceEd Asner, a seven-time Emmy winner, is the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit filed in Los Angeles on Tuesday; it includes nine other participants.Ed Asner, who is 91, would  lose coverage when SAG-AFTRA Health Plan changes take effect in 2021 because he will not reach a new earnings threshold, the lawsuit says.Credit…Rachel Luna/Getty ImagesBy More