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      in Movies

      Kris Kristofferson’s Stories Were Wonderfully Larger Than Life

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      The singer, songwriter and actor, who died on Saturday at 88, found his way into situations and tales that underscored his role as a conscience for country music.Kris Kristofferson was a man to whom myth attached easily.Did he once take control of a National Guard helicopter so he could land it at Johnny Cash’s house to present him with some songs to consider recording? (He sure did, though Johnny apparently wasn’t home.) Did he not know that Janis Joplin, whom he’d been dating, had recorded his song “Me and Bobby McGee” just a few days before her death? (He didn’t; the track, released posthumously, became her lone No. 1 hit.) Did he once confront Toby Keith, country music’s jingoist in chief, about his performative bluster and ask him, “Have you ever taken another man’s life and then cashed the check your country gave you for doing it? No, you have not.” (Depends whose account you believe.)Beginning in the mid-1960s, when he arrived in Nashville as an aspiring songwriter, Kristofferson, who died Saturday at 88, evolved into something of a communal conscience for the town, and the country music business, while also helping to usher it into conversation with the rest of popular music.He was best known as a songwriter, with compositions that bridged folky earthiness with a jolt of literary flair. When sung by some of the biggest country stars of the era — Cash, Ray Price, Roger Miller, Ray Stevens, Bobby Bare — they inexorably moved the genre away from polished and poised singers in sports coats toward thornier territory closer to the folk revival of the 1960s.The protagonists of Kristofferson’s best songs were downtrodden victims of their own poor decisions — “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down,” the best-known version of which was sung by Cash, finds the singer struggling to find “my cleanest dirty shirt” the morning after a Saturday night bender. “Once More With Feeling,” written with Shel Silverstein and sung by Jerry Lee Lewis, tells the story of a relationship that’s run out of gas through the pleas of a man desperate to be deceived, even for a moment: “Darling, make believe you’re making me/Believe each word you say.”“Me and Bobby McGee” — initially recorded by Miller, but rendered indelible by Joplin — was the tale of two drifters who drift away from each other, anchored in the oft-repeated secular proverb, “Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in Music

      Kris Kristofferson, Country Singer, Songwriter and Actor, Dies at 88

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      Kris Kristofferson, the singer and songwriter whose literary yet plain-spoken compositions infused country music with rarely heard candor and depth, and who later had a successful second career in movies, died at his home on Maui, Hawaii, on Saturday. He was 88.His death was announced by Ebie McFarland, a spokeswoman, who did not give a cause.Hundreds of artists have recorded Mr. Kristofferson’s songs — among them, Al Green, the Grateful Dead, Michael Bublé and Gladys Knight and the Pips.Mr. Kristofferson’s breakthrough as a songwriter came with “For the Good Times,” a bittersweet ballad that topped the country chart and reached the Top 40 on the pop chart for Ray Price in 1970. His “Sunday Morning Coming Down” became a No. 1 country hit for his friend and mentor Johnny Cash later that year.Mr. Cash memorably intoned the song’s indelible opening couplet:Well, I woke up Sunday morningWith no way to hold my head that didn’t hurtAnd the beer I had for breakfast wasn’t badSo I had one more for dessert.Expressing more than just the malaise of someone suffering from a hangover, “Sunday Morning Coming Down” gives voice to feelings of spiritual abandonment that border on the absolute. “Nothing short of dying” is the way the chorus describes the desolation that the song’s protagonist is experiencing.Steeped in a neo-Romantic sensibility that owed as much to John Keats as to the Beat Generation and Bob Dylan, Mr. Kristofferson’s work explored themes of freedom and commitment, alienation and desire, darkness and light.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 138 Shares159 Views

      in Television

      What’s on TV This Week: ‘Real Housewives’ and the Vice-Presidential Debate

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      The Bravo franchise will air two different premieres. And on Tuesday is the first debate between JD Vance and Tim Walz.For those who still enjoy a cable subscription, here is a selection of cable and network TV shows, movies and specials that broadcast this week, Sept. 30-Oct. 6. Details and times are subject to change.MondayALL AMERICAN: HOMECOMING 8 p.m. on The CW. This college-focused series is wrapping up its third season. The show follows a group of athletes as they juggle training, socializing and interpersonal relationships. This finale will hopefully tie up lose ends because the show, now canceled, won’t be coming back for a fourth season.TuesdayVICE-PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE 9 p.m. on various networks. For anyone counting, or bracing themselves, the election is under 40 days away. This will be the first debate between Senator JD Vance of Ohio and Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota. So far, the rules are pretty similar to those implemented at the presidential debate last month, but the candidates will likely be standing, a departure from the past couple of V.P. debates.REAL HOUSEWIVES OF NEW YORK CITY 9 p.m. on Bravo. The New York City gals are back on small screens, this time with the addition of the fashion designer Rebecca Minkoff and the art curator Racquel Chevremont. Lots of fights, glamour shots and not-so-subtle sharing are on the docket.WednesdayChad Michael Murray and Morgan Kohan in “Sullivan’s Crossing.”Chris Reardon/Freemantle, via CWSULLIVAN’S CROSSING 8 p.m. on the CW. It is officially fall a.k.a. “Gilmore Girls” rewatch season. But if you have already memorized all seven seasons of that show, then this series, coming back for its second season, is a great way to have Scott Patterson (Luke Danes in “Gilmore”) back on your screen. Patterson plays the father to Morgan Kohan’s Maggie Sullivan, who moves back home to get her life back together. Chad Michael Murray (“One Tree Hill”) is also there because what’s small-town charm without a mysterious and emotionally distant hunk?We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in Movies

      Aubrey Plaza Goes for Broke in ‘Megalopolis’ and ‘Agatha All Along’

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      “I bleed for movies,” Aubrey Plaza told me on an August morning, just seconds before the ground began to tremble.We had met for brunch at Little Dom’s, a hip Italian restaurant in Los Angeles that was unusually quiet until that low rumble began. Frozen, we stared at each other as the windows rattled — bum-bum-BAM — and then quieted. It was quick and violent, as though someone had seized the place and given it a brisk, get-yourself-together shake.Plaza’s eyes, already open and avid, got even wider. “I think that was an earthquake,” she said. A Google search revealed it to have been a 4.7 temblor out of nearby Pasadena, which prompted us to wonder: If something more severe were to occur, would we know what to do instead of just sitting there blankly?“What if it’s the small one before the big one?” she asked.These days, only a natural disaster could force Plaza to pause. She has spent the last decade working at a nearly nonstop pace, determined to show there’s more to her than April Ludgate, the disaffected intern she played on six seasons of the NBC sitcom “Parks and Recreation.” Though Plaza’s point has by now been proved — in particular, the 2022 double-header of “The White Lotus” and “Emily the Criminal” amply demonstrated her range — that drive has not yet abated.In fact, Plaza has stayed so prolific that her three newest projects have all come out within days of each other. The first was the charming time-travel comedy “My Old Ass” on Sept. 13, followed by the Marvel series “Agatha All Along,” in which she plays the romantic antagonist to Kathryn Hahn’s “WandaVision” witch. Friday saw the long-awaited release of “Megalopolis,” from the 85-year-old director Francis Ford Coppola (“The Godfather”), which features Plaza in a grabby role unlike anything she’s played before.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 138 Shares99 Views

      in Theater

      Maggie Smith, Grande Dame of Stage and Screen, Dies at 89

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      She earned an extraordinary array of awards, from Oscars to Emmys to a Tony, but she could still go almost everywhere unrecognized. Then came “Downton Abbey.”Maggie Smith, one of the finest British stage and screen actors of her generation, whose award-winning roles ranged from a freethinking Scottish schoolteacher in “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie” to the acid-tongued dowager countess on “Downton Abbey,” died on Friday in London. She was 89.Her death, in a hospital, was announced by her family in a statement issued by a publicist. It did not specify the cause of death.American moviegoers barely knew Ms. Smith (now Dame Maggie to her countrymen) when she starred in “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie” (1969), about a teacher at a girls’ school in the 1930s who dared to have provocative views — and a love life. Vincent Canby’s review in The New York Times described her performance as “a staggering amalgam of counterpointed moods, switches in voice levels and obliquely stated emotions, all of which are precisely right.” It brought her the Academy Award for best actress.She won a second Oscar, for best supporting actress, for “California Suite” (1978), based on Neil Simon’s stage comedy. Her character, a British actress attending the Oscars with her bisexual husband (Michael Caine), has a disappointing evening at the ceremony and a bittersweet night in bed.In real life, prizes had begun coming Ms. Smith’s way in 1962, when she won her first Evening Standard Theater Award. By the turn of the millennium, she had the two Oscars, a Tony, two Golden Globes, half a dozen BAFTAs (British Academy of Film and Television Awards) and scores of nominations. Yet she could go almost anywhere unrecognized.Until “Downton Abbey.”Ms. Smith on the set of the 1969 film “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.” She won an Academy Award for best actress for the performance.Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group, via Getty Images

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    • 113 Shares149 Views

      in Theater

      Maggie Smith Was Imperious in the Most Delightful Way

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      Throughout her career and on “Downton Abbey,” she perfected the role of the commanding Englishwoman with an arrow-sharp wit.“Oh for heaven’s sake!” Maggie Smith said in a 2015 interview, waving her hands vigorously in front of her face at the suggestion that she was a “national treasure.”But Smith, who died on Friday at 89, was that very thing, an actor who embodied a quintessentially British character: the imperious, commanding woman, be it an aristocrat or a schoolteacher, who smites the less certain or socially secure with her arrow-sharp wit and finely honed disdain, though delivered in suitably plummy tones.While she worked steadily in theater from the start of her acting career in the 1950s, Smith didn’t become famous until she won an Oscar for her performance in the 1969 film “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.” Early on, she later recalled, she had signed a contract with a film company and received a message from the studio publicity department: “Your fan mail total for this month is nil.”Smith didn’t become famous until she won an Oscar for her performance in the 1969 film “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.” 20th Century Fox/Getty ImagesEven after her breakout performance, her fame was mostly among theater and film cognoscenti, who adored her expressive physicality, brilliant comic timing and subtly moving revelations of character. In 1990, Smith was made a dame of the British Empire. But it wasn’t until Smith was in her 60s, cast as Minerva McGonagall in the “Harry Potter” movies, then in 2010 as Violet Crawley, dowager countess of Grantham, in the “Downton Abbey” television series, that she achieved global fame.“What is a … weekend?” the countess asked in a tone that exquisitely mixed contempt with a soupçon of interest, in one of the first episodes of the show. The line (all credit to the show’s creator, Julian Fellowes) and her delivery summed up her appeal to the enormous “Downton” audience, who couldn’t get enough of Smith’s witty, acerbic character.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Theater

      Maggie Smith: A Life in Pictures

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      Maggie Smith, who died on Friday at 89, was among the most venerable British actors of her era, embarking in the 1950s on a decades-long career and a run of memorable, award-winning performances. She won two Oscars, a Tony, three Golden Globes, four Emmys and several British Academy of Film and Television Awards.But incredibly, she did not reach mainstream stardom until later in her career, first as Minerva McGonagall, the Hogwarts School’s stern and fearless transfiguration teacher, in seven of the eight “Harry Potter” films, and then as Violet Crawley, the acid-tongued dowager countess on the British historical drama “Downton Abbey.”“It’s not even that you particularly want to be an actor,” Smith once said. “You have to be. There’s nothing you can do to stop it.”Here are some snapshots from her life and career.Evening Standard/Hulton Archive, via Getty ImagesMaggie Smith in 1957, the year she made her London stage debut in the musical revue “Share My Lettuce.”Evening Standard/Hulton Archive, via Getty ImagesSmith in 1963, when she appeared in “The V.I.P.s,” a melodrama whose all-star cast also included Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.Bob Dear/Associated PressSmith behind the scenes of the 1968 MGM British comedy caper “Hot Millions.” Vincent Canby, in his review for The New York Times, described her performance as “marvelously funny.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Music

      Lady Gaga’s ‘Joker,’ and a Tour of Musical Clowning

      by

      Clowns, harlequins, jokers and Pierrots have served as the main characters in countless songs over the years, but they’re rarely there to conjure cheap laughs.Dear listeners,Today — after announcing it just a few days ago — Lady Gaga released “Harlequin,” a companion album to the forthcoming film “Joker: Folie à Deux,” in which she stars as the troubled Harleen Quinzel. Fans clamoring for the next “Bad Romance” will have to wait a little longer: She’s promised that her next album, slated for release in February 2025, will be her return to pop. In the meantime, “Harlequin” is a satisfying showcase for the jazzier and more traditional side of Gaga — and another example of music’s continued obsession with clowns.Clowns, harlequins, jokers and Pierrots have served as the main characters in countless songs over the years, but they’re rarely there to conjure cheap laughs. More often, the musical clown is a tragic figure, whether he’s shedding tears like Smokey Robinson or hanging his head like the titular fool in an Everly Brothers classic. Gaga’s “Harlequin” fits into this lineage in its own way: There’s a manic brightness to many of her performances (which include standards like “Smile” and “Get Happy”) that barely conceals an underlying darkness and despair.Today’s playlist is a brief tour through the musical history of clowning, sans the abrasive sounds of Insane Clown Posse. (My apologies; I’m just not a Juggalo.) It contains one of my favorite tracks from Lady Gaga’s new album, along with material from Jenny Lewis, Emeli Sandé and a certain timeless ballad written by Stephen Sondheim. On the off chance you’re one of those people who is afraid of clowns, I sincerely hope it does not inspire any nightmares.Just like Pagliacci did,LindsayListen along while you read.1. Lady Gaga: “The Joker”One of the most striking tracks on “Harlequin” is this rendition of “The Joker” — no, not the Steve Miller Band song, but a showstopping number from the 1964 musical “The Roar of the Greasepaint — The Smell of the Crowd.” (It’s been covered by quite a few artists over the years, perhaps most memorably the great Shirley Bassey.) Gaga can of course nail a theatrical tune like this in her sleep, but she brings a fresh energy to “The Joker” by giving it a kind of rock operatic arrangement, complete with electric guitar and a punkish growl in her voice. “Perfect Illusion” apologists, our moment has once again arrived.▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTubeWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More