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      Emma Stone and Yorgos Lanthimos on ‘Poor Things’

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      It’s one thing to cry while performing. Emma Stone can do that. What she doesn’t want to do, and what she found herself doing anyway, is to cry in the middle of an interview.“I’m such an actor, what is wrong with me?” she said, her eyes welling up with tears.It was mid-November in Los Angeles and we were out to lunch with Yorgos Lanthimos, the Greek director with whom Stone has made the cockeyed comedies “The Favourite” and now “Poor Things,” which won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in September and is tipped to be a major Oscar contender when it’s released Dec. 8. Based on the novel by Alasdair Gray, “Poor Things” casts Stone as Bella Baxter, who may have the cinematic year’s most outrageous origin story: Trapped in an unhappy marriage, she throws herself off a bridge and is resurrected by a mad scientist (Willem Dafoe) who swaps her brain for that of her unborn baby.Stone gets plenty of comic mileage out of playing this full-grown woman with the mind of a child, but Bella’s eventual arc is breathtaking: As she gains sentience, embarks on a sexual and political awakening, and strives toward independence, Bella must navigate the hapless suitors (played by the likes of Mark Ruffalo and Ramy Youssef) who are drawn to her maverick spirit but also seek to possess her. This is a character who has meant more to Stone than most — “I just love her so much,” she told me — though she tried to laugh off how talking about “Poor Things” sometimes moved her to tears.“I’m tired, that’s all it is,” Stone said.In addition to “The Favourite” and “Poor Things,” Lanthimos, 50, and Stone, 35, have collaborated on the short film “Bleat” as well as “And,” a comic anthology due next year. “I obviously have full-blown, very intense trust in him,” she said, “and as an actor, it’s the best feeling ever, because it’s so rare that you feel like whatever you do, you’re protected by your director.”Scenes from a collaboration: Stone in Lanthimos’s “Poor Things,” left, “The Favourite” and “Bleat.”Searchlight Pictures; Lanthimos facilitates that trust with a long rehearsal process that has more in common with improv comedy than you might expect: The actors recite their lines while doing log rolls, walking backward or closing their eyes. “We never rehearse as in, ‘OK, how are you going to do the scene and let’s just act it out,’” Lanthimos said. “It’s more about creating this atmosphere of camaraderie and having fun, getting to know each other so we can be comfortable with ridiculing ourselves.”Some actors forge long-term relationships with auteurs that require sacrificing what has made them into movie stars: To ascend to a more prestigious plane, comedians furrow their brows, beauties cake themselves in dirt and teen idols talk of torturing themselves in the name of their craft. But with Lanthimos, Stone has not had to give up the comic timing and innate empathy that are her greatest gifts as an actor. She instead puts those talents to use in new and daring ways under her director’s unique eye.Still, this fruitful partnership makes for an unusual duo in person: Where Lanthimos is impassive and a man of few words, his leading lady is wide-eyed, warm and eager to connect. Or, as Stone put it, “I’m a girl from Arizona and he’s a guy from Athens. I don’t know how this worked, because our personalities could not be more different, but it’s amazing.”Here are edited excerpts from our conversation.When did the two of you first meet?EMMA STONE It was June of 2015, in a cafe. I was in rehearsals for “La La Land,” and I met him to talk about “The Favourite.” I thought he was going to be really scary and twisted, and he isn’t. It was a very comfortable and easy conversation and we got along right away.You thought he might be a more intimidating presence?STONE Having seen the films that he had made up until that point, yeah.YORGOS LANTHIMOS What a cliché.STONE I was 26! I was but a child. But from then on, we kept in touch and got to know each other a little bit. By the time we were making “The Favourite,” we had a rapport and the beginning of our friendship, and then by the end of shooting it, we started talking about “Poor Things.”Stone says of her “Poor Things” role: “My God, she’s the greatest character I’ll probably ever get to play.”Thea Traff for The New York TimesYorgos, what was going on in your life when you first read “Poor Things”?LANTHIMOS I had just moved to London and started meeting people about English-language projects. It was after “Dogtooth” [2010] was nominated for an Oscar, and people started taking interest.STONE [teasing] Nominated for an Oscar. Everybody was like, “Whoa, this guy’s so great!”LANTHIMOS But when I started showing “Poor Things” to people, it was rejected many times for development.What reason did they give?LANTHIMOS “It’s too weird, too strange.” Back then, there was a notion of, “Oh, we’ll get a European or non-American filmmaker to do something conventional, they’ll just bring their own twist to it.”STONE That still happens.LANTHIMOS So that was quite a disappointment because I was very naïve in meeting people and them saying, “Oh my God, ‘Dogtooth’ is amazing, we want to do things with you.” And then I would produce “The Lobster” [2016] and they would go, “Oh, no, no, we’re not talking about something like this. Don’t you want to do something more normal?”Emma, how did Yorgos pitch this project to you?STONE He gave me sort of the brass-tacks overview of Bella, what she goes through and what the men in her life experience as a response to how she’s evolving. And I was just like, “Sign me up.” My God, she’s the greatest character I’ll probably ever get to play.What is it about this character that’s so beguiling?LANTHIMOS She’s unlike anyone.STONE She’s drinking up the world around her in such a unique and beautiful way that I just dream I could. I find her so inspiring, and living in that every day throughout that whole process was just the greatest gift — it’s the most joy I’ve ever gotten to have as a character. Every person that exists has so much that built them up to what they are in adulthood, and it was interesting to discover that if you strip all that away, all that’s left is joy and curiosity.We meet Bella when she’s not far into her brain swap: Formerly an adult woman named Victoria Blessington, she’s now like a full-grown baby, impulsive and childlike. What was it like to embody that phase?STONE Tough. That was the hardest stage for me, just because that’s where she’s at her most primitive. Acting is inherently embarrassing — this, as a job, is just silly and you can feel really stupid. Thankfully, with Yorgos, it’s much more freeing and I feel confident because we can quickly get to, “I guess this one’s not working, let’s go somewhere else.” Also, I can cry to him if I’m freaking out about something, which I have many times.We’d been working on this for so many years, and to actually commit it to film is always terrifying. I find the first two weeks of filming anything really difficult because you’re still finding your footing and the tone of what it actually is in practice, not just the idea of it. So the first week was really challenging to just give myself over to it and trust the process of it, and I think you felt the same way.LANTHIMOS Yeah.STONE We were talking about it every day, and I was like, “What am I doing?” You were like, “I don’t know.” We were both figuring out who she was.A scene from “Poor Things.” Stone and Lanthimos have been discussing the film since shooting “The Favourite” (2018).Yorgos Lanthimos/Searchlight PicturesHow does your trust in one another extend to how you filmed Bella’s sexual awakening?STONE It simplifies everything. Whenever there was a scene like that, it was only four people in the room, other than whatever actor might be in there. There was Yorgos and our [director of photography] Robbie Ryan, who looks at me like I am a lamp — he’s seen me naked so many times, it’s so beyond nothing — and then Hayley [Williams, the first assistant director], and Olga [Abramson], our focus puller. That was the room.LANTHIMOS Sometimes not even sound. We would rig mics when we could and we wouldn’t even have a boom operator there. So it’s just very intimate.STONE And also, an amazing intimacy coordinator [Elle McAlpine]. Stupidly, at the beginning, I was like, “It’s fine [without one], I’ve known you for so many years.” And then once it came to actually doing all those scenes, having her there was so wonderful — she really made the energy so calm and professional. But it was weird ultimately to see the movie because doing those scenes was such an intimate experience and then I was like, “Right, that’s in the movie!”But I mean, that’s Bella. She has no shame about her body and her sexuality and who she is, and I am so proud of that aspect of the film.Does it embolden you to stay in that space?STONE Just to stay naked all the time? Yeah. I’m going to be a nudist now, I’m emboldened!I meant Bella’s head space. Do you feel emboldened when you spend so much time in a character free from shame?STONE I wish I could say yes. It has stuck with me in some capacities, and if I could live as Bella, I would love to. It’s really hard when you have your own history to deal with, which seemingly everybody has except for her. But I find her so inspirational in general that I’m always trying to think if I could be a little bit more like her.Yorgos, you acted in the Greek film “Attenberg” earlier in your career, which required you to take part in some sex scenes. Did that give you a unique perspective on directing them?LANTHIMOS For me, that aspect was never an issue. Sex in movies, or nudity — I just never understood the prudishness around it. It always drives me mad how liberal people are about violence and how they allow minors to experience it in any way, and then we’re so prudish about sexuality. To me, what was difficult about being an actor was that there was a lot of waiting around, and that’s why, when I make films, I try to have the least amount of business possible: No lights, no gear, no nothing. Nobody goes anywhere, nobody leaves. There’s no time to smoke a cigarette, because we just keep on going.STONE That’s why you have to switch to vaping.Lanthimos has appeared as an actor in film with sex scenes. “Sex in movies, or nudity — I just never understood the prudishness around it,” he said.Thea Traff for The New York TimesEmma, do you want something different out of your projects now than you did in your 20s?STONE I hope that when it comes to projects or characters that it’ll always be a surprise and slightly scary. But also, how scary can it be? It’s acting, I’m not saving any lives. It’s such a lucky thing to be able to do, so to sit here as an actor and be like, “This was so hard,” is crazy.LANTHIMOS I think about that as well. “Oh, I’m making films, what’s so incredibly difficult about that?” But I do have a horrible time. The stress.STONE He’s really miserable while we’re filming.LANTHIMOS Yeah, it’s insane. It’s immense.And it hasn’t gone away over time?STONE It’s gotten worse.LANTHIMOS You try to rationalize it: “Why are you so upset? This is a movie.” Of course, when you compare it with other things that are happening in the world, it’s ridiculous. But for you, in that moment, it’s everything.STONE Also, a lot of times you’re on location. You’re away from your quote-unquote real life, you’re working so many hours a day, and it’s so consuming.So how did it feel to near the end of an all-consuming project like “Poor Things”?STONE I was a mess. Oh my God, I was devastated. I couldn’t even get through the scenes we were shooting on the last day because I was crying so much.You didn’t want to let go?STONE I wanted to be done because we were exhausted, but I really didn’t want to be done. It was such an important experience to me that it makes me sad now thinking about it.LANTHIMOS The last day was in the studio, and we did her jumping off the bridge.STONE I’m getting teary. I’m sorry, this is so stupid. Bizarre. That last day, I did the jump that Victoria does off the bridge when she’s pregnant, and I was so emotional. You can imagine, if I’m sitting here years later like this!I said to Hayley, our A.D., “Oh my God, this is so sad. I’m shooting a suicide, and it’s the end of the movie after this whole joyful experience.” And she said, “No, this is the birth of Bella.” I was like, “It is the birth of Bella! Because Victoria being gone is the birth of Bella.” It’s so nice to end on that.[Wiping her eyes.] Yeah. Anyway, it was cool. No big deal. Fun movie, we had a good time, it was just a paycheck. More

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      Stream These 16 Movies Before They Leave Netflix in December

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      We rounded up the best titles leaving the streaming service for U.S. subscribers. That includes Oscar winners, comedies, horror and four ‘Jaws’ films.The end of the year means plenty of expiring licenses on Netflix, so December’s list of movies exiting the service is bulkier than usual — and more prestigious, including two Oscar winners for best picture, two massively popular franchises and recent favorites of horror, comedy and family entertainment. (Dates indicate the final day a title is available.)‘Us’ (Dec. 30)Stream it here.Jordan Peele followed up the massive critical and commercial success of “Get Out,” his Oscar-winning feature debut from 2017, with this similarly potent brew of horror, social commentary and bleak comedy. Lupita Nyong’o and Winston Duke star as upper-class parents whose family vacation is disrupted by the appearance of silent but terrifying visitors in the night. Are they home invaders? Common criminals? Supernatural doppelgängers? Or something even more sinister? As with “Get Out” before it and “Nope” after, Peele has as much fun building dread and atmosphere as he does delivering shock thrills, slyly threading in pop-culture shout-outs and obscure historical references to keep audiences equally puzzled and frightened.‘American Beauty’ (Dec. 31)Stream it here.The Oscar winner for best picture of 1999 has fallen rather out of favor these days, thanks to some of its more controversial themes and the divisive presence of its leading man, Kevin Spacey (who took home his second trophy for best actor). But there’s still a great deal to admire in this story of rebellious teens, midlife crisis and suburban ennui: Annette Bening’s thrillingly unhinged work as an impatient mother and driven real estate agent, Conrad L. Hall’s luminous cinematography (another Oscar winner), and a supporting cast that boasts the likes of Wes Bentley, Thora Birch, Chris Cooper, Peter Gallagher, Allison Janney and Mena Suvari.‘Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy’ / ‘Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues’ (Dec. 31)Stream them here and here.The writer and director Adam McKay’s recent shift from broad comedies (frequently starring his “Saturday Night Live” collaborator Will Ferrell) to serious-minded social commentaries (including “The Big Short,” “Vice” and “Don’t Look Up”) took some moviegoers by surprise. But there are big ideas floating through even his goofiest farces, including his 2004 feature directorial debut “Anchorman” and its 2013 follow-up. The original “Anchorman” seems a broad goof on ’70s culture, focusing on the egomaniacal idiot Ron Burgundy (Ferrell) who fears his spot fronting the news on a San Diego station is endangered by the arrival of a new co-anchor (Christina Applegate); look closer, and it’s pointed satire of male insecurity and toxic masculinity in the workplace. “Anchorman 2” could have been more of the same, with Burgundy and his team going national in the then-burgeoning cable news scene; instead, McKay incisively sends up the unsavory practices of ratings-chasing in media. Both are far smarter than they needed to be — and uproariously funny to boot.‘Gladiator’ (Dec. 31)Stream it here.Winner of Academy Awards for best picture and best actor (Russell Crowe), Ridley Scott’s action extravaganza from 2000 brought back the sword-and-sandal epic, one of the standbys of late ’50s and early ’60s cinema (particularly out of Italy), but with a modern sensibility and a comparatively gargantuan budget. Crowe stars as Maximus, a Roman general betrayed and enslaved by the evil Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix), who returns to prominence as an unstoppable gladiator to exact his revenge. This is Crowe at his best, combining brute physicality and intense internalized emotion, and Phoenix is an appropriately vile villain; it’s a short walk from his work as a petty tyrant here to his current, entertaining reunion with Scott as a tantrum-throwing “Napoleon.”‘Jaws’ 1-4 (Dec. 31)Stream them here, here, here and here.It seems like a gross oversimplification to note that “Jaws” changed movies forever in 1975, but that’s less analysis than common wisdom: It created the template for making and marketing the summer blockbuster, and it sent the career of the director Steven Spielberg (only helming his second theatrical feature) into the stratosphere. It’s so easy to view “Jaws” through its historical and economic lens that it’s easy to forget what a genuinely, indisputably great movie it is — scary, funny, elegantly crafted, beautifully acted and populated with rich and memorable characters. As for its sequels … well, “Jaws 2” is pretty good, a welcome return for Roy Scheider’s no-nonsense Chief Brody, featuring some effective scares and well-executed set pieces. (The less said about “Jaws 3” and “Jaws: The Revenge,” the better.)‘Kung Fu Panda’ (Dec. 31)Stream it here.In retrospect, it’s sort of shocking that it took so long to build a family franchise around Jack Black, since he’s so wildly animated and kid-friendly even in live-action movies; creating a cartoon for a living cartoon seems a relatively simple proposition. The inaugural entry of the series (2008), spawning two sequels and a Netflix series, introduces Black as Po, the titular karate-chopping, slapstick-prone giant panda, who must learn the ways of kung fu to fulfill his destiny as the Dragon Warrior. The supporting voice cast is impressive — Jackie Chan, David Cross, Dustin Hoffman, James Hong, Angelina Jolie, Randall Duk Kim, Lucy Liu, Ian McShane and Seth Rogen all turn up, and all seem to be having a ball — the animation is delightful and Black is as hysterically funny and warmly likable as ever.‘Mission: Impossible’ 1- 4 (Dec. 31)Stream them here, here, here and here.In its current iteration, the “Mission: Impossible” franchise is a well-oiled machine, with the recurring writer and director Christopher McQuarrie (who has been with the series since its fifth entry, “Rogue Nation”) orchestrating a cast of repeating characters and running story arcs. But this wasn’t initially the case at all; the first four films in the series were each helmed by a different, distinctive filmmaker, comporting each picture to their own style, with the general story and the star Tom Cruise among the few common elements. The approach was unsurprisingly hit and miss; the John Woo-directed “M: I-2” crosses the line from cool to goofy with more frequency than was presumably intended, and J.J. Abrams’s third picture suffers from a generic style that betrays the director’s television background. But Brian De Palma’s inaugural installment, from 1996, is wildly entertaining, and filled with the kind of Hitchcockian set pieces on which that auteur made his name, while the Brad Bird-helmed fourth film is filled with breathtaking action sequences, memorable supporting players and the beginning of a house style that McQuarrie would refine and perfect.‘Role Models’ (Dec. 31)Stream it here.The raw edge yet soft heart of this wildly funny bad-boy comedy from 2008, and the presence of the frequent leading man Paul Rudd, might lead you to assume it’s the work of Judd Apatow. But the roots of “Role Models” go back farther than that — the director is David Wain, one of the minds behind the comedy troupe The State — and several of its members (including Kerri Kenney-Silver, Joe Lo Truglio and Ken Marino) turn up in supporting roles. Rudd and Seann William Scott star as a pair of irresponsible energy drink salesmen who are ordered to perform community service, and wind up in a Big Brother-type program, mentoring a foul-mouthed kid (the uproarious Bobb’e J. Thompson) and a cosplaying nerd (the “Superbad” favorite Christopher Mintz-Plasse).‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ (Dec. 31)Stream it here.Martin Scorsese kicked off his loose trilogy of outsized critiques of the American capitalist system (continuing with “The Irishman” and “Killers of the Flower Moon”) in 2013 with this savagely funny and narratively ruthless adaptation of the memoir by Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio), a corrupt penny-stock broker who parlayed his limitless greed and limited ethics into (briefly, at least) an unimaginable fortune. As with his earlier “Goodfellas,” Scorsese makes Belfort’s indulgences of sex, drugs and good times into virtuoso scenes of visceral and vicarious thrills; he similarly makes his protagonist’s fall from grace into an ugly indictment of both the individual and the system that made him possible.ALSO LEAVING: “8 Mile,” “Catch Me if You Can,” “Field of Dreams,” “Lost in Translation,” “Saving Private Ryan,” “Scarface” (all Dec. 31). More

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      Martin Scorsese’s Unwise Guys

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      From Travis Bickle to the protagonist of “Killers of the Flower Moon,” the director has excelled at depicting a certain kind of male antihero.If “Men Without Women” seems painfully apt as a title for Ernest Hemingway’s fiction, the equivalent for Martin Scorsese’s work might be “Men Failing Women.” From “Who’s That Knocking at My Door” to “Killers of the Flower Moon,” for more than 50 years, his movies have been a dismal and heartbreaking primer on what not to do when you love someone. His male protagonists continue to fail their significant others even when given multiple chances to reverse that pattern: a paradigm even more fraught if the protagonist is a white dimwit and his wife a long-suffering Osage. In his welcome to the audience before “Killers” begins, Scorsese confides that his film is deeply personal, and it is, not just because he has always had a keen sense of social injustice but also because of its obsession with the jaw-dropping gap between the man his protagonist wants to be and the man he is. Which helps explain an aspect of the movie that has most puzzled some reviewers: If it is about what happened to the Osage, then why are we spending so much time with a white schnook?Maybe because the self-deluded sinner who wants to repent but refuses to change has been Scorsese’s most persistent and agonized subject. At their most dysfunctional, those figures are so terrifying that they’ve become cultural totems of toxic masculinity — Travis Bickle! Jake La Motta! — as their rage at their inadequacies lacerates everything, including, of course, the women closest to them.Even at their best, Scorsese’s protagonists never want to face certain hard facts, and in their pursuit of a good time, they’re masters of what “Animal House” memorialized as a “really futile and stupid gesture.” It figures that they’re often hoods or hustlers, either with a pool cue or hedge fund. And happily for us, Scorsese has never been able to resist the energy they bring to a movie. “Goodfellas” is peerless at viscerally rendering the appeal of the gangster’s freewheeling heartlessness, and when “Killers” comes closest to that energy — when the two male leads frantically argue over the pea-brained implementation of a murder they’ve arranged — the result is the movie’s most high-spirited comic moment. What we’re confronting in these movies is self-absorption without understanding: the self as an incomprehensible spectacle. Leonardo DiCaprio’s Ernest Burkhart seems flummoxed by his actions every step of the way, given how much he is sure he loves Lily Gladstone’s Mollie. He tells his uncle that he loves money and women, and Mollie’s a dream combination of both, given her oil wealth. At first his courting goes nowhere, but eventually she is won over — DiCaprio is DiCaprio, after all, even if he does spend the movie in a permanent frown, and she’s also drawn to his honesty when he wryly confesses his own laziness and greed — and the question for the audience becomes why she isn’t acting on his transparent duplicity. One reason might involve the sheer scale of his treachery — he’s betraying her as a part of a conspiracy to murder her entire family, including her, as well as any number of others — but another might be how much when in love we work to deny what we know in the name of faith or hope. After her sister is murdered, Mollie’s voice-over reveals that she keeps her fears at bay by closing her heart and keeping what’s good there. She knows not to trust corrupt doctors with her insulin, but she can’t bring herself to acknowledge Ernest’s role in what is happening. She confides to her priest that she’s afraid to eat in her own house, but when he asks who might want to harm her, she remains silent. When she is discovered at death’s door by F.B.I. agents, even in her extremity she asks, “Where’s my husband?” And if Mollie is the angel on Ernest’s shoulder, his uncle William Hale (Robert De Niro) is the devil: playing on Ernest’s humiliation by reminding him that she’s making things harder on him and informing him that she had another husband she has kept secret (as if Hale is aware that a reliable trigger of abusiveness in a Scorsese movie is the murderousness of male jealousy) and finally appearing at Mollie’s bedside so much like the Angel of Death that in her delirium, she asks if he’s real.But this passion play is Ernest’s. Because he insists that he loves Mollie, he therefore would never want to hurt her, and therefore can’t be doing so. As Rob Corddry of “The Daily Show” put it on the subject of Abu Ghraib: “Just because torturing prisoners is something we did, doesn’t mean it’s something we would do.” Which is where the movie’s race politics becomes so brutal as well: Mollie is, after all, not white, and as such even easier to disregard. As his uncle’s plotting gets ever more destructive, Ernest begins to grope his way toward opting out — he hesitates, at least, about contacting the thug tasked with blowing up his sister-in-law’s house with her in it — and the subsequent long shot of the devastation he confronts afterward works nicely as a figure for his inner life. By administering the insulin he has poisoned, he can simultaneously enact his love and eradicate the problem she poses to his sense of himself as not an awful man. In the same way, he caves to his uncle’s demand that he sign the insurance policy on his own life; he knows what it implies but resolves to act as though he doesn’t. Like so many of Scorsese’s sinners, he wants to do penance, and so drinks the drug he has been adding to Mollie’s insulin, while the fires of hell apparently burn outside (fields set afire, also the work of Uncle Hale).Jesse Plemons’s F.B.I. agent Tom White, the main figure of rectitude, finally says to Ernest, “You’re a good man, Ernest, and you love your wife and children.” He continues, “I don’t think this is how your life was meant to turn out,” and reminds him that his uncle has done nothing except make him do bad things and take advantage of him because of his disposition, that last noun reminding us of both his flaws and his agency. After he finally testifies, in Mollie’s presence, to most of what he has done, in the movie’s most excruciating scene, the couple are given time in a room, and DiCaprio and Gladstone are spectacularly good at what direness can pass between a married couple even if they love each other. She waits for him to come clean, and he won’t. She asks if he has told her the whole truth. He answers he has. She has to keep pressing — What did he give her, in her insulin? What was in the shots? — and though he is demolished by her pain and his guilt, he won’t confess. Her face hardens, and she leaves. Scorsese’s movies have persistently left their protagonists in this semi-disingenuous state of sitting clueless amid the rubble. From Jimmy Doyle to Ace Rothstein to Howard Hughes, however much they intermittently adore their women, they find themselves gaping at the pain they’ve caused as if through the wrong end of a telescope. Their regard, when they feel it, is intense, but in the male-dominated world of striving they inhabit, that regard evaporates periodically, and they’re baffled if not enraged to be called on that. They’re indemnified by their knowledge of who they meant to be, and that ideal self becomes the version they stridently defend. Just because torturing prisoners is something we did … The last time we see Ernest, he’s still pitching between self-pity and self-awareness. He is in that same maddening state in which “Raging Bull” left Jake La Motta, who at one point manages to figure it out: “I’ve done a lot of bad things, Joey. Maybe it’s comin’ back to me.” Source photographs for illustration above: Apple TV+; Getty Images.Jim Shepard has written eight novels, including most recently “Phase Six” and “The Book of Aron,” which won the PEN/New England Award for fiction and the Clark Fiction Prize. He teaches at Williams College. More

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      The Artist Who Photoshops Paddington Into Everything

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      For nearly 1,000 straight days, Jason Chou has inserted Paddington, the anthropomorphized bear, into absurd situations. He has no plans to stop.Paddington is the busiest bear in Hollywood.While fans wait another year for the third installment of his film franchise, Paddington has found time for roles opposite Anthony Hopkins, Tom Hanks and Robert De Niro. He celebrated a goal with Ted Lasso, slipped on a spacesuit for “Interstellar” and appeared onstage with David Byrne. He devoured spicy wings on “Hot Ones,” cracked open a children’s book with LeVar Burton on “Reading Rainbow” and recently joined Thanksgiving feasts with characters from “Peanuts,” “The Sopranos” and “The Simpsons.”It is a daunting schedule made possible by the hard work and creativity of Jason Chou, a self-described Paddington enthusiast, who has spent nearly three years harnessing the magic of Photoshop to teleport the marmalade-loving, escapade-seeking, hard-staring bear into scenes from popular films and television shows.“At this point, I feel like some people anticipate it every day,” said Mr. Chou, 27, a student at Gnomon, a visual effects school in Los Angeles, “and it’s hard to let them down.”Mr. Chou, who has created a Paddington-related post every day since March 2021, is nearing a milestone: his 1,000th post, which, barring a Paddington-esque misadventure, will go live on Sunday. (The posts often appear after midnight on the East Coast.) Mr. Chou’s work lives on X, formerly known as Twitter, where he has more than 340,000 followers under his handle, @jaythechou, and where he has pledged to “Photoshop Paddington into a movie, game, or TV show until I forget.”Thanks to the work of Mr. Chou, Paddington has appeared in “Scream,” “28 Days Later,” “Halloween” and “Home Alone.”Jason ChouThe milestone is, if nothing else, one of the internet’s more unusual feats of endurance. (He has yet to forget.) In a telephone interview, Mr. Chou described his creative process.“I basically just try to fit him into a scene,” he said.Few people have Mr. Chou’s persistence, but Geoffrey Palmer, another internet artist, is one of them. Inspired by Mr. Chou’s work, Mr. Palmer has, for the past couple of years, spent a few minutes each weekday morning photoshopping Paddington into various tableaus from Magic: The Gathering, the fantasy card game.Yes, Mr. Chou has spawned a Paddington Photoshop coaching tree.“Anyone who loves Paddington is probably a good person,” Mr. Chou said.Mr. Palmer, 38, who makes television commercials for a mattress company, described Paddington as “a purely good thing that exists,” which helps explain why any of this works.As a beloved character from children’s books, animated television shows and now a film franchise — “Paddington in Peru,” the third film of the series, will be released in the United States in January 2025 — Paddington is known for his innate curiosity, which often lands him in sticky situations.Paddington hasn’t been seen on the big screen since 2017, but Mr. Chou, a visual effects student in Los Angeles, has kept the beloved character on the move.Elizabeth Lippman for The New York Times“He sort of steps through all these different scenes in wonderment,” said Mr. Palmer, who lives in Prior Lake, Minn. “So it feels natural that Paddington would suddenly be in ‘The Godfather’ or in the Magic: The Gathering multiverse. I think it’s the whimsy of it that people appreciate and connect with so much.”Mr. Chou has always sought to stay true to Paddington’s principles.“Even in some of the action scenes, I kind of find myself saying: ‘Oh, Paddington! Don’t do this!’” he said. “I’m scared that one of these days I’m going to accidentally turn Paddington into a bad guy or something.”Mr. Chou’s winding path to Paddington traces back to a childhood love of the original “Star Wars” trilogy. His mother fed his obsession by presenting him with a boxed set of the movies, which included a DVD devoted to special effects.“I watched that all day,” Mr. Chou said.Soon enough, Mr. Chou was making his own animations with clay, and he continued to pursue his artistic interests in high school and at the University of California, Irvine, where he studied film and video production. It was while Mr. Chou was a student there that the seeds of his Paddington opus were sown.Inspired by Mr. Chou, Geoffrey Palmer began inserting Paddington into images from the Magic: The Gathering universe. His version of Progenitus came after a request from Mr. Chou.Geoffrey PalmerHe recalled being stuck on a freeway in Southern California one winter afternoon in 2018. He was feeling anxious about school and about finding a job, and the traffic — well, the traffic was brutal.“I thought: You know what? I’ll just go watch a movie,” he said.Mr. Chou pulled off the freeway and found a cinema, which happened to be showing “Paddington 2.” The woman at the concessions stand told him that he would love it. Mr. Chou had no idea that Paddington’s escapades would affect him so profoundly.The consistency of Paddington’s character resonated with him. Throughout the film, Paddington remains his bighearted, accident-prone self even as those around him change — and change for the better, often because of their interactions with him. Consider the unlikely friendships he makes in a prison full of hardened criminals. (Spoiler: Paddington goes to prison.)“But he just keeps doing his thing,” Mr. Chou said. “And no matter how many obstacles you throw at him, the power of being polite and being kind gets him through everything. I just felt so happy at the end.”A few years later, with free time during the pandemic, Mr. Chou was a regular visitor to Reddit. Social media challenges were in vogue, and Mr. Chou acknowledged that he “needed something to do.” So he photoshopped a giant Paddington into a scene from “Godzilla vs. Kong” and posted it to a film-related subreddit, pledging to do something similar every day.“Paddington 2” was critically acclaimed and grossed more than $200 million worldwide. The third installment of the film franchise, “Paddington in Peru,” will be released in the United States in January 2025.Getty Images“It was sort of light and fun content, to cheer people up,” Mr. Chou said. “And it kept growing.”The subreddit quickly turned into a forum for “film nerds to just kind of geek out about a photoshopped bear in their favorite movies,” said Jarick Simbol, one of Mr. Chou’s avid followers.Mr. Simbol, 28, used the platform Letterboxd to catalog the films and television shows that Mr. Chou used in his ever-expanding Paddington portfolio, which gained an even broader audience once Mr. Chou made the move to Twitter about six months into the experiment.Mr. Simbol tracked Mr. Chou’s posts for 665 straight days, before life got in the way.“I got a new job, ended up having to work long hours and just couldn’t keep up,” said Mr. Simbol, who lives in Long Beach, Calif., where he works in the video game and e-sports industry. “I mean, I was just writing things down. He’s actually doing the work. I think it’s genuinely impressive.”Since the start, Mr. Chou has prioritized consistency.“I do one a day,” said Mr. Chou, who hopes to work in the film industry. “And it doesn’t bother me if it doesn’t get a lot of views, because that might affect the way I do things.”Mr. Chou has had to get creative to come up with new images every day for nearly three years. His dedication has attracted a large following on social media.Elizabeth Lippman for The New York TimesAnd while he dabbled in Patreon, the monetization service for artists, he quickly abandoned that effort. He didn’t get into the Paddington Photoshop business for the money — or for fame, though he did sound bummed that Paddington doesn’t follow him on X.“There must be a reason,” Mr. Chou said.Neither Paddington nor his representatives at StudioCanal, the French production house that oversees the “Paddington” franchise, responded to requests for comment.At this august stage of the series, Mr. Chou is facing challenges. Atop the list: He initially wanted to avoid using the same television show or film more than once, but that pool becomes shallower by the day.“I kind of boxed myself in,” Mr. Chou said.So he has made exceptions, while expanding his oeuvre to include video games and the occasional album cover. For example, there was a recent homage to Taylor Swift: “1989 (Paddington’s Version).”“In terms of an end goal, I don’t think there is one,” Mr. Chou said. “I would just feel bad if I stopped.” More

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      Gotham Awards 2023: ‘Past Lives’ and Lily Gladstone Win Big

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      The movie prize season kicks off with honors for the A24 drama and for the star of “The Unknown Country” (who’s better known for “Killers of the Flower Moon”).“Past Lives,” the elegiac drama about a young Korean immigrant and the romantic path not taken, won best feature at the 33rd annual Gotham Awards, which were handed out Monday night at Cipriani Wall Street in New York.The A24 film from the writer-director Celine Song stars Greta Lee as a married writer in New York who reconnects with her childhood sweetheart from South Korea, a meeting that has her contemplating the Korean concept of inyeon, about fated connections between different people.“Thank you for believing in me when all I had was a script written in two languages,” Song said to the cast and crew members lined up behind her during her acceptance speech. “Everybody on this stage is my inyeon.”Considered the first notable awards ceremony of Oscar season, the Gotham Awards have the advantage of corralling contenders while they’re still fresh, before the thank-you lists in their acceptance speeches become rote and the golden dreams of some nominees have been ground into dust.This year’s show was particularly well-positioned since the actors’ strike had, until recently, thwarted many contenders from full-scale campaigning. At the Gothams, A-list attendees like Margot Robbie, Leonardo DiCaprio and Adam Driver were finally permitted to partake in an unabashed, shoulder-rubbing schmoozefest.As a harbinger of future Oscar success, the Gothams can be a mixed bag. Two of their last three best-feature winners, “Everything Everywhere All at Once” and “Nomadland,” went on to win top honors at the Academy Awards, but the Gothams are chosen by small juries that consist of a handful of film insiders, while the Oscars are voted on by around 10,000 people.The Gothams also tend to lean indie: Though the $35 million budget cap for eligibility was waived this year, jurors only found blockbuster representation for “Barbie” star Ryan Gosling, nominated for outstanding supporting performance. The Gothams’ adoption of gender-neutral categories have reduced the acting races from four to two — here, there are only categories for lead and supporting performance — while also expanding the list of nominees in each acting category from five to a somewhat unruly 10.Still, it never hurts to be seen winning, and the Gothams offer contenders a high-profile place to break out of the pack and deliver a memorable speech.One unique example of that was the Gothams win for Lily Gladstone, who triumphed in the lead-performance category not for Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon,” her big-budget breakthrough, but for her role in the indie “The Unknown Country,” about a woman who embarks on a road trip after the grandmother she was caring for passes away.“At the heart of it, we have Native voices, because Morrisa shot reality,” said Gladstone, praising writer-director Morrisa Maltz. “You listened, like Marty did.”The supporting-performance award went to an overcome Charles Melton, the former “Riverdale” star at the burning heart of the Todd Haynes drama “May December.” The Korean American actor was one of many Asian winners at the Gothams, which also handed out TV awards to the Netflix limited series “Beef” and one of its lead performers, Ali Wong.“Anatomy of a Fall,” the Justine Triet courtroom drama that won the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival, took home best international feature and best screenplay for its examination of a marriage after a man dies in a family’s remote home in the French Alps. The award for breakthrough director went to A.V. Rockwell, the filmmaker behind the mother-son drama “A Thousand and One.”“I really did not see this coming,” Rockwell said, tearing up as she talked about the fight to make her first film as a Black woman. “Just to be frank, it is very hard to tell a culturally specific story when you look like this.”Though most of the show ran smoothly, presenter Robert De Niro was visibly irritated when a portion of his speech during a tribute to “Killers of the Flower Moon” was “cut out, and I didn’t know about it,” the actor said. Peeved not to find it in full on the Telepromptr, he doubled back and read it on his own.“In Florida, young students are taught that slaves developed skills that could be applied for their personal benefit,” De Niro said. “The entertainment industry isn’t immune to this festering disease: The Duke, John Wayne, famously said of Native Americans, ‘I don’t feel we did wrong in taking this great country away from them. There were great numbers of people who needed new land and the Indians were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves.’”De Niro also used his speech to criticize Donald Trump, a frequent bête noire of the actor: “Lying has become just another tool in the charlatan’s arsenal,” he said. “But with all his lies, he can’t hide his soul. He attacks the weak, destroys the gifts of nature and shows disrespect, for example, by using ‘Pocahontas’ as a slur.”De Niro noted that he had planned to wrap his speech by thanking the Gothams and Apple, the studio behind “Killers of the Flower Moon,” but had now changed his mind: “I don’t feel like thanking them at all for what they did. How dare they do that, actually.”In addition to the competitive honors, the Gothams paid tribute to Ben Affleck, Bradley Cooper, Greta Gerwig, Michael Mann and George C. Wolfe.Here is a complete list of winners:Best feature: “Past Lives”Outstanding lead performance: Lily Gladstone, “The Unknown Country”Outstanding supporting performance: Charles Melton, “May December”Best documentary feature: “Four Daughters”Best international feature: “Anatomy of a Fall”Best screenplay: “Anatomy of a Fall”Breakthrough director: A.V. RockwellBreakthrough series (over 40 minutes): “A Small Light”Breakthrough series (under 40 minutes): “Beef”Outstanding performance in a new series: Ali Wong, “Beef” More

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      Rob Reiner Teases Details of ‘Spinal Tap’ Sequel

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      Speaking on a podcast this week, the director said Paul McCartney and Elton John will appear in the film, among other real musical stars.The director Rob Reiner has said that an upcoming sequel to his 1984 documentary parody “This Is Spinal Tap” is scheduled to begin shooting in late February and will feature Paul McCartney, Elton John and Garth Brooks, among other stars.“Spinal Tap” satirized a bungled tour by a fictitious British heavy-metal band of that name, as well as the process of documenting it. The film, which was mostly improvised, was inspired by “The Last Waltz,” a Martin Scorsese documentary about the rock group the Band.Plans for “Spinal Tap II” were first announced last year. The entertainment news outlet Deadline reported at the time that the members of the fictitious band — the actors Christopher Guest, Michael McKean and Harry Shearer — would all return for the sequel. Over the years, the three have played real-life concerts as their Spinal Tap characters.Reiner announced new details about the “Spinal Tap” sequel during an episode of a podcast hosted by the comedian Richard Herring that was released on Monday. The film had initially been scheduled for release in 2024, but that was before strikes that disrupted filming schedules in Hollywood. No updated release date has been announced, according to Variety.Without elaborating, Reiner said that there would also be a few other surprise appearances in the film.For most of the podcast episode on Monday, Herring and Reiner mostly talked about Reiner’s new podcast, “Who Killed JFK?” But they also discussed the original “Spinal Tap” movie, his directorial debut, which Herring said was his favorite film of all time.Asked if he regretted anything about what was and wasn’t in the 1984 film, Reiner said no. And did he anticipate how influential it would prove to be? Also no.“When we first previewed it, we previewed it in a theater in Dallas, Texas, and people … they didn’t know what the heck they were looking at,” Reiner said.“They came up to me afterward and said, ‘I don’t understand. Why would you make a movie about a band that nobody’s ever heard of? And they’re so bad! Why would you do that?’” Reiner recalled. “They said, ‘You should make a movie about the Beatles or the Rolling Stones.’”“I said, ‘Well, it’s a satire,’” Reiner said on the podcast. “I tried to explain, you know. But over the years, people got it, and they started to like it.”Reiner’s comments on Herring’s podcast were reported earlier by the music magazine NME and other outlets. More

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      ‘Past Lives’ and Lily Gladstone Win Big at the Gotham Awards

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      The movie prize season kicks off with honors for the A24 drama and for the star of “The Unknown Country” (who’s better known for “Killers of the Flower Moon”).“Past Lives,” the elegiac drama about a young Korean immigrant and the path not taken, won best feature as the 33rd annual Gotham Awards were handed out Monday night in New York.The ceremony was not without controversy. As Robert De Niro was paying tribute to “Killers of the Flower Moon,” in which he co-starred, the actor said his anti-Trump comments had been removed from his speech without his knowledge when it was added to the Telepromptr. “The beginning of my speech was edited, cut out, I didn’t know about it,” he told the audience at Cipriani Wall Street. “And I want to read it.” He went on to note that “history isn’t history anymore, truth is not truth, even facts are being replaced by alternative facts.”But the evening largely stayed focused on the films themselves, like “Past Lives,” from Celine Song. It stars Greta Lee as a married writer in New York who reconnects with her childhood sweetheart from South Korea.Outstanding lead performance went to Lily Gladstone but not for “Killers of the Flower Moon,” her big-budget breakthrough. She was honored for her turn in “The Unknown Country,” about a woman who embarks on a road trip after the grandmother she was caring for passes away.Other winners included Charles Melton, the former “Riverdale” star at the burning heart of the Todd Haynes drama “May December.”“Anatomy of a Fall,” the Justine Triet courtroom drama that won the top prize at Cannes, took home best international feature and best screenplay for its examination of a marriage after a man dies in a family’s remote home in the French Alps.The prizes, sponsored by the Gotham Film & Media Institute, serve as the kickoff to the film awards season, which culminates in the Oscars next year. In addition to the competitive honors, the Gothams paid tribute to Ben Affleck, Bradley Cooper, Greta Gerwig, Michael Mann and George C. Wolfe.Here is a complete list of winners:Best feature: “Past Lives”Outstanding lead performance: Lily Gladstone, “The Unknown Country”Outstanding supporting performance: Charles Melton, “May December”Best documentary feature: “Four Daughters”Best international feature: “Anatomy of a Fall”Best screenplay: “Anatomy of a Fall”Breakthrough director: A.V. RockwellBreakthrough series (over 40 minutes): “A Small Light”Breakthrough series (under 40 minutes): “Beef”Outstanding performance in a new series: Ali Wong, “Beef” More

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      What’s on TV This Week: ‘Special Forces’ and ‘Selena + Chef’

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      The endurance reality show wraps up its second season. Selena Gomez’s cooking show returns with a holiday special.Between network, cable and streaming, the modern television landscape is a vast one. Here are some of the shows, specials and movies coming to TV this week, Nov. 27-Dec. 3. Details and times are subject to change.MondaySPECIAL FORCES 9 p.m. on Fox. This show takes a bunch of celebrities and puts them through a modified version of Special Forces selection training, led by former operatives — and this season (and training camp) is wrapping up this week. Challenges are both physical and mental: plunging into freezing water, or writing “death letters” to family members back home. There are no winners or losers, per se; everyone is just working to finish the training, and the only way people go home is through voluntary withdrawal. The season started with 14 recruits, but only Tyler Cameron, Erin Jackson, Tom Sandoval, JoJo Siwa and Nick Viall remain.THE WEAKEST LINK: HOW JANE LYNCH STOLE CHRISTMAS 10 p.m. on NBC. This trivia game show is getting a little Grinch-y on this holiday special. Like other episodes, contestants will play rounds of trivia games and each round “the weakest link” will be eliminated — but this time the contestants are a Santa, an elf, a caroler and more.TuesdayFreddie Mae Blow and Charles Blow on “South to Black Power.”HBOSOUTH TO BLACK POWER (2023) 10 p.m. on HBO. Charles Blow, the New York Times opinion columnist and author, has shared both his political and personal insights through his books “The Devil You Know: A Black Power Manifesto” and “Fire Shut Up in My Bones.” This documentary combines both aspects of Blow’s work by exploring his “reverse Great Migration” philosophy and his background.Wednesday91ST ANNUAL CHRISTMAS IN ROCKEFELLER CENTER 8 p.m. on NBC. An 80-foot-tall Norway spruce was transported from Vestal, N.Y., to the center of Manhattan, and the time has come to light it. Shortly before 10 p.m., the 50,000 multicolored lights will turn on for the first time of the season, and Kelly Clarkson, Savannah Guthrie, Hoda Kotb and others will be there to host to the festivities.ThursdayTHE GOLDEN BACHELOR 8 p.m. on ABC. It’s no secret that viewership for “Bachelor” franchise shows has steadily been decreasing — but if you have continued to power through some real flops, this season was like a sweet, emotional and heartfelt reward. The 72-year-old Bachelor, Gerry Turner, has handled this season and his relationships with such love and grace that I have my fingers crossed that he is going to get his second chance at a happy ending.Selena Gomez on a previous season of “Selena + Chef.”HBO MaxSELENA + CHEF: HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS 8 p.m. on Food. This is the first of four Selena Gomez cooking specials this holiday season. The show brings Gomez together with chefs so that she can brush up on her cooking skills, and for these specials she has invited Eric Adjepong, Alex Guarnaschelli, Michael Symon and Claudette Zepeda to her kitchen to make holiday recipes.FridayTHE WORLD ACCORDING TO FOOTBALL 8 p.m. on Showtime. This series isn’t about the sport they play on Thanksgiving or at the Super Bowl: it’s about soccer. This five-part documentary, narrated and produced by Trevor Noah, focuses each episode on a country (Brazil, the United States, Britain, France and Qatar) and discusses the issues of women’s rights, income inequality, racism and more in the microcosm of the sport as well as on a larger level.SaturdayMeg Ryan and Billy Crystal in “When Harry Met Sally.”MGMWHEN HARRY MET SALLY (1989) 5 p.m. on Bravo. Because this movie takes place over a couple of years in all different seasons, I would happily make the argument that this is a Thanksgiving and Christmas film as much as it is anything else. The story follows Harry (Billy Crystal) and Sally (Meg Ryan) in a enemies-to-friends-to-lovers arc. Though “I’ll have what she’s having” is probably the most famous line of the movie, for me I’ll take “when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.” Swoon.A STAR IS BORN (2018) 5 p.m. on Paramount. If you aren’t in the mood to swoon or see a happy rom-com type ending, you can tune into this remake of the 1937, 1954 and 1976 movies of the same name. This version stars Lady Gaga as Ally and Bradley Cooper as Jackson. Though the acting and the storytelling is beautiful, Cooper and Gaga’s performance of “Shallow” is reason enough to watch.SundayAGATHA CHRISTIE: LUCY WORSLEY ON THE MYSTERY QUEEN 8 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). Before there was “Verity” by Colleen Hoover or “The Paris Apartment” by Lucy Foley, there were Agatha Christie novels. It’s been over 100 years since her first book was released, and the historian Lucy Worsley is exploring what circumstances in Christie’s life allowed her to write so vividly about murder and mystery.CHOWCHILLA 9 p.m. on CNN. On July 15, 1976, two masked gunmen boarded a school bus and kidnapped the driver and 26 children on board. They drove them more than 100 miles away before hiding them underground in a buried trailer; after 16 hours, they escaped. This documentary tells the strange story of one of the biggest mass kidnappings in the United States and the emotional turmoil that ensued for the survivors. More