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      ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas’: A Hit That Initially Unnerved Disney

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      The filmmakers look back on its 30th anniversary and recall how uncomfortable it made executives. They didn’t expect the celebrations around it today.“What’s this?” Jack Skellington sings excitedly when he first comes across Santa Claus’s snowy, colorful village in “The Nightmare Before Christmas.” That’s also what Disney executives asked with concern about the idiosyncratic stop-motion animation musical when they saw a rough cut.“Anytime you’re doing something like that, which was unknown: stop motion, the main character doesn’t have any eyeballs and it’s all music, what’s to feel comfortable about?” Burton said during a video call from London. “Of course they would be nervous about it.”Burton’s “Nightmare,” currently back in theaters to commemorate its 30th anniversary, is now more popular than ever: This weekend the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles is holding a series of live concerts around the film, Disney theme parks feature seasonal attractions inspired by its characters, and merchandise, from board games to housewares, abounds.But the eccentric and endearing movie wasn’t always a ubiquitous part of our holiday watch list. Back in October 1993, “Nightmare” was released not as a Disney title but under the studio’s more adult-oriented label Touchstone Pictures.“They were afraid it might hurt their brand,” the director Henry Selick said in a video call from his home in Los Angeles. “If they had put the Disney name on it right then, it would’ve been much more successful, but I understand it just didn’t feel anything like their other animated films.”Based on Burton’s original story and characters, the unusual picture was directed by Selick, by then a seasoned stop-motion artist with spots for MTV and a variety of commercials to his name. Burton’s frequent collaborators Michael McDowell and Caroline Thompson wrote the screenplay.Sally (Catherine O’Hara) and Jack Skellington. She was the subject of a sequel novel last year. Touchstone PicturesOver the course of its original run, “Nightmare” grossed $50 million at the domestic box office. And while that number is by no means dismal, it’s a far cry from Disney animated hits like “Aladdin,” which just a year earlier brought in $217 million from U.S. screens alone.At the time, Disney couldn’t figure out how to market the operatic saga of Jack, a lanky, sharply dressed skeleton, infatuated with bringing the wonder of Christmas to his monstrous friends in uncanny Halloween Town.Selick initially worried that the number of songs Danny Elfman had composed for the movie, a total of 10 tracks for the brisk 76-minute run time, would alienate viewers. In retrospect, he said, the memorable tunes were crucial to the film’s eventual success, once audiences connected with its unconventional rules of storytelling and design.These days Selick can’t go a week without running into a fan wearing a sweater, hat or other apparel emblazoned with “Nightmare” imagery.“This year there’s a 13-foot-tall Jack Skellington you can buy at Home Depot, and people have them on their lawns,” Selick said. “I like that because it’s pretty bizarre and extreme. That’s not just a T-shirt, that’s a real commitment.”For Burton, the character of Jack Skellington embodies a preoccupation common in his work over the years: the terrifying notion of being misunderstood. “The conception of it was based on those feelings growing up of people perceiving you as something dark or weird when actually you’re not,” he recalled.Selick compared the skeletal antihero’s amusingly manic behavior to Mr. Toad from the animated classic “The Wind in the Willows,” one of his favorite Disney protagonists. “I’ve always been drawn to characters like Jack Skellington,” Selick said. “He gets carried away with something new and goes way overboard with his enthusiasm.”Burton, who grew up in the Los Angeles area, where Latino culture has a strong presence, also holds a special affinity for Día de los Muertos, the Mexican holiday that embraces mortality as a natural part of life’s cycle. That was among his many inspirations for “Nightmare. ”The film was initially a modest hit that Disney released under its adult label, Touchstone.Touchstone Pictures“I always felt a connection to that celebration. People think of it as a dark sort of thing, but it’s quite light,” Burton said. “That’s where the juxtaposition of those feelings of dark imagery with more spiritual positive feelings connected with me very early in life.”For stop motion as a technique, “Nightmare” represented a watershed right before the advent of computer-generated animation. Selick credited the director of photography, Pete Kozachik, for introducing the tools that set the production apart, namely designing and building the rigs that allowed the heavy Mitchell film cameras to move a frame at a time.“That made the film so cinematic,” Selick said. “All the stop motion before had been done in lock shots or really simple little pans,” the mostly static visual language that limited other stories told in the same medium. But, Selick continued, “what Pete brought was this freedom of camera movement, which really turned it into a bigger movie.”While there was talk of turning his concept for “Nightmare” into a TV special or realizing it in hand-drawn animation, Burton — who as a child adored Ray Harryhausen’s creations and Rankin/Bass tales like “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” — held out until there was a team to do it in stop motion.“If you’ve ever been on a stop motion set and you see its tactile beauty, it is like going back to the beginning of making movies in the sense that it’s all about artists making puppets, sets, there’s a feeling that’s unlike any kind of thing,” Burton said.Decades before he directed the stop-motion features “Corpse Bride” (2005) and “Frankenweenie” (2012), both of which earned him Oscar nominations for best animated feature, Burton dove into the painstaking technique with a 1982 short film, “Vincent.”“Other mediums are great, but for me that’s the most pure and beautiful one,” Burton added.Selick admitted that for a while the general public’s lack of awareness that he had directed “Nightmare” upset him. He’s now made peace with the lack of credit because this milestone in his career wouldn’t have happened without “Tim’s brilliance and ideas.”“I could still certainly win bar bets for the rest of my life,” he said with a cheeky smile. “‘For $20, who directed “The Nightmare Before Christmas”?’”The movie has inspired Disney theme park celebrations, concerts and merchandise.Touchstone PicturesFor Selick, one of the indicators that the movie had become a classic came a few years after the lukewarm reception to the theatrical release, but before Disney had fully embraced it. The director recalls children coming to his house trick-or-treating on Halloween night in homemade costumes of “Nightmare” characters before officially licensed versions existed.“I’d sometimes bring them in with their parents and show them the original figure of Jack as Santa in his sled with the reindeer that I kept, and they would just scream with joy,” Selick recalled while pointing his camera to the fragile figure in a glass display case.“It’s not really mine or Tim’s or Danny’s anymore,” Selick said. “It’s the world’s movie, and I kind of like that.”Since 2001, the Haunted Mansion ride at Disneyland has been transformed every fall into a “Nightmare”-inspired attraction known as Haunted Mansion Holiday. And each year, from early September through October, Disneyland holds the Oogie Boogie Bash, a Halloween party three nights a week featuring and named after the movie’s rambunctious villain.Burton believes these displays epitomize the film’s evolution from unclassifiable oddity to a uniquely beloved property. “When I see that, I go back to the early days when the film was first being done, and thinking of the journey that it’s taken, this symbolizes it in a very strange way,” said Burton.Selick added that he was invited the first year of the Haunted Mansion Holiday. “They didn’t try to turn it into one of their other characters,” he said. “They really got the aesthetic of the designs just right.”A sequel novel, “Long Live the Pumpkin Queen,” focused on Jack’s romantic partner, Sally, and a prequel comic, “The Battle for Pumpkin King,” were published in the last year. Yet three decades on, Burton maintained that the original animated film was a one-of-a-kind feat.“In a certain way that’s the beautiful thing about it as it is. It’s one movie. It’s stop motion and it tells its story. And that helps make it special for me,” Burton explained. “It’s its own thing, there aren’t five sequels and there’s not a live-action reboot.” More

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      Richard Roundtree, Star of ‘Shaft,’ Dies at 81

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      Richard Roundtree, the actor who redefined African American masculinity in the movies when he played the title role in “Shaft,” one of the first Black action heroes, died on Tuesday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 81.His manager, Patrick McMinn, said the cause was pancreatic cancer, which had been diagnosed two months ago.“Shaft,” which was released in 1971, was among the first of the so-called blaxploitation movies, and it made Mr. Roundtree a movie star at 29.The character John Shaft is his own man, a private detective who jaywalks confidently through moving Times Square traffic in a handsome brown leather coat with the collar turned up; sports a robust, dark mustache somewhere between walrus-style and a downturned handlebar; and keeps a pearl-handled revolver in the fridge in his Greenwich Village duplex apartment. As Mr. Roundtree observed in a 1972 article in The New York Times, he is “a Black man who is for once a winner.”In addition to catapulting Mr. Roundtree to fame, the movie drew attention to its theme song, written and performed by Isaac Hayes, which won the 1972 Academy Award for best original song. It described Shaft as “a sex machine to all the chicks,” “a bad mother” and “the cat who won’t cop out when there’s danger all about.” Can you dig it? The director Gordon Parks’s gritty urban cinematography served as punctuation.A fictional product of his unenlightened pre-feminist era, Shaft was living the Playboy magazine reader’s dream, with beautiful women available to him as willing, downright grateful, sex partners. And he did not always treat them with respect. Some called him, for better or worse, the Black James Bond.He played the role again in “Shaft’s Big Score!” (1972), which bumped up the chase scenes to include speedboats and helicopters and the sexy women to include exotic dancers and other men’s mistresses. In that movie, Shaft investigated the murder of a numbers runner, using bigger guns and ignoring one crook’s friendly advice to “keep the hell out of Queens.”In “Shaft in Africa” (1973), filmed largely in Ethiopia, the character posed as an Indigenous man to expose a crime ring that exploited immigrants being smuggled into Europe. The second sequel lost money and led to a CBS series that lasted only seven weeks.But the films had made their impact. As the film critic Maurice Peterson observed in Essence magazine, “Shaft” was “the first picture to show a Black man who leads a life free from racial torment.”Mr. Roundtree in a scene from the 1972 movie “Shaft’s Big Score,” the first of two sequels.Stanley Bielecki Movie Collection/Getty ImageRichard Arnold Roundtree was born on July 9, 1942 (some sources say 1937), in New Rochelle, N.Y., the son of John and Kathryn (Watkins) Roundtree, who were identified in the 1940 census as a butler and a cook in the same household.Richard played on New Rochelle High School’s undefeated football team and, after graduating in 1961, attended Southern Illinois University on a football scholarship. But he dropped out of college in 1963 after he spent a summer as a model with the Ebony Fashion Fair, a traveling presentation sponsored by a leading news and culture magazine for Black readers.He moved back to New York, worked a number of jobs and soon began his theater career, joining the Negro Ensemble Company. His first role was in a 1967 production of “The Great White Hope,” starring as a fictionalized version of Jack Johnson, the early 20th century’s first Black heavyweight boxing champion. A Broadway production starring James Earl Jones opened the next year and won three major Tony Awards and the Pulitzer Prize for drama.After “Shaft,” Mr. Roundtree made varied choices in movie roles. He was in the all-star ensemble cast, which also included Charlton Heston and Ava Gardner, of the 1974 disaster movie “Earthquake.” He played the title role in “Man Friday” (1975), a vibrant, generous, ultimately more civilized partner to Peter O’Toole’s 17th-century explorer Robinson Crusoe.In “Inchon” (1981), which Vincent Canby of The Times described as looking like “the most expensive B movie ever made,” he was an Army officer on the staff of Gen. Douglas MacArthur (Laurence Olivier) in Korea. He starred with Clint Eastwood and Burt Reynolds in “City Heat” (1984) and with a giant flying lizard in “Q” (1982).On the small screen he played Sam Bennett, the raffish carriage driver who courted Kizzie (Leslie Uggams), in the acclaimed mini-series “Roots” (1977). That show was transformational, Mr. Roundtree said in an ABC special celebrating its 25th anniversary: “You got a sense of white Americans saying, ‘Damn, that really happened.’”Richard Roundtree in 2019. He remained busy as an actor for more than four decades after his first big role.Celeste Sloman for The New York TimesMr. Roundtree’s name remained associated with the 1970s, but he was just as busy during the next four decades.He was an amoral private detective in a five-episode story arc of “Desperate Housewives” (2004); appeared in 60 episodes of the soap opera “Generations” (1990); and played Booker T. Washington in the 1999 television movie “Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters’ First 100 Years.” He was a big-city district attorney in the film “Seven” (1995) and a strong-willed Mississippi iceman in “Once Upon a Time … When We Were Colored” (1996).After the year 2000, when he was pushing 60, he made appearances in more than 25 small-screen series (he was a cast member of or had recurring roles in nine of them — including “Heroes,” “Being Mary Jane” and “Family Reunion”) and was seen in half a dozen television movies and more than 20 feature films.In 2020, he starred as a fishing boat’s gray-bearded captain in “Haunting of the Mary Celeste,” a supernatural maritime movie mystery. In 2022, he acted in an episode of “Cherish the Day,” Ava DuVernay’s romantic drama series.Mr. Roundtree married Mary Jane Grant in 1963. They had two children before divorcing in 1973. In 1980, he married Karen M. Cierna. They had three children and divorced in 1998.Mr. Roundtree is survived by four daughters, Kelli, Nicole, Taylor and Morgan; a son, John; and at least one grandchild.The Shaft character, created by Ernest Tidyman in a series of 1970s novels, endured — with Hollywood alterations. Samuel L. Jackson starred as a character with the same name, supposedly the first John Shaft’s nephew, in a 2000 sequel titled “Shaft.”In 2019, another “Shaft” was released, also starring Mr. Jackson (now said to be the original character’s son) and Jessie T. Usher as his son, J.J. Shaft, an M.I.T.-educated cybersecurity expert. The film felt something like a buddy-cops comedy, but the smartest thing it did, Owen Gleiberman of Variety noted in a review, was to take Mr. Roundtree, “bald, with a snowy-white beard,” and “turn him into a character who’s hotter, and cooler, than anyone around him” and whose “spirit is spry, and tougher than leather.”Orlando Mayorquin More

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      ‘Miss Juneteenth,’ ‘Dredd’ and More Streaming Gems

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      Women in competitions, chaos in high places and documentary portraits of Covid life are among the running themes of this month’s off-the-radar selections on your subscription streaming services.‘Miss Juneteenth’ (2020)Stream it on Netflix.Of all the films that would have been sleeper hits, had they not been released in 2020 when a theatrical push was off the table, it’s hard to top this, the debut feature from the writer and director Channing Godfrey Peoples. Nicole Beharie stars as Turquoise Jones, a Texas single mother whose 15-year-old daughter (Alexis Chikaeze) is about to compete in the local Miss Juneteenth pageant Turquoise won, once upon a time. Peoples’s screenplay sensitively explores poignant questions of opportunities lost and gained, and the mother/daughter dynamics are convincing and compelling. But the real takeaway here is Beharie, whose marvelous, lived-in performance is both inspiring and shattering.‘Teen Spirit’ (2017)Stream it on Max.The actor Max Minghella (whose father Anthony directed the likes of “Truly, Madly, Deeply” and “The Talented Mr. Ripley”) makes an impressive feature directing debut with this story of a girl from the sticks (Elle Fanning) whose golden voice catches the attention of a fallen opera star (Zlatko Buric), who mentors her onto a national singing championship. The story beats are dusty but the approach is fresh, as Minghella focuses on the small details of character and setting that make his telling unique. Fanning does her own singing, and does so convincingly (ditto on her British accent), while investing her 17-year-old character with an appropriately tormented inner life.‘Nobody Walks’ (2012)Stream it on Hulu.The director Ry Russo-Young co-wrote this indie drama with Lena Dunham (who was just launching “Girls” on HBO), and it is an ace fusion of their sensibilities, and their mutual interest in the mind games attractive young men and women can play. Olivia Thirlby is Martine, a New York visual artist visiting Los Angeles — the title is a reference to the comparative absence of pedestrians — to finish an experimental film with the help of a sound engineer, Peter (John Krasinski), whose therapist wife Julie (Rosemarie DeWitt) puts Martine up in their pool house. And that’s when the trouble begins, as Russo-Young and Dunham’s smart script dramatizes how proximity, boredom and hormones can wreak havoc on a seemingly blissful existence.‘Dredd’ (2012)Stream it on Netflix.Thirlby’s other 2012 release could not have been a more startling contrast, a rough-and-tumble adaptation of the ultraviolent British comic book series (previously attempted, to universal pans, by Sylvester Stallone in the mid-1990s). Karl Urban is a square-jawed cop in a futuristic dystopia where police are allowed to not only enforce the law, but carry out its consequences. Thirlby is his partner and Lena Headey is their target, an underworld queen-pin who traps them in a sketchy apartment complex and offers up a healthy reward for their heads. The director Pete Travis executes the nearly nonstop action with bruising intensity, while the better-than-expected script (by the gifted “Ex Machina” and “Annihilation” screenwriter Alex Garland) fills the occasional silences with fastballs of social commentary.‘High-Rise’ (2016)Stream it on Amazon Prime Video.Ben Wheatley’s adaptation of the J.G. Ballard novel occasionally feels like it’s lapping itself — Ballard’s 1975 notions of futuristic class warfare and societal breakdown feel almost quaint compared to what we face today. But Wheatley’s film is wildly entertaining anyway, a boisterous, nose-tweaking portrait of well-bred people turning into feral animals at the slightest provocation. Tom Hiddleston is appropriately cynical in the leading role; Luke Evans, Jeremy Irons, Sienna Miller and Elisabeth Moss turn in memorable supporting work.‘Gloria Bell’ (2019)Stream it on Max.With her new film “May December” (and her performance in it) earning rave reviews ahead of its upcoming Netflix debut, here’s another recent Julianne Moore film worth celebrating. She stars as the title character, a middle-aged woman who is still figuring out how to get the most out of her life, and herself, after divorce. An aid to that could come in the form of Arnold (John Turturro), who offers up love — or, at the very least, comfort — but “Gloria Bell” is not about finding yourself through someone else’s eyes. The Chilean writer-director Sebastián Lelio first told this story in his native tongue, in his 2013 movie “Gloria,” but this is no retread; his American take is lighter and funnier, and a resplendent showcase for the charms of Ms. Moore.‘Bad Axe’ (2022)Stream it on Hulu.When the pandemic hit the U.S. in spring of 2020, the filmmaker David Siev was among the many Americans who went home, huddling up with his family in Bad Axe, Mich., to help keep their venerable local restaurant afloat. He brought along his video camera, and captured an indelible real-time snapshot of a country quickly banding together, and then splintering apart with even greater speed and velocity. The resultant documentary works on two levels simultaneously: as a social document of a country in free-fall (with particular focus on how much of the MAGA-infused community turned on the Asian American Sievs), and as an intimate portrait of the family’s own complicated relationships, and how they were tested by forces beyond their control.‘Back to the Drive-In’ (2023)Stream it on Amazon Prime Video.Restaurants, as you may recall, weren’t the only venues to take a big hit during lockdown, and with movie theaters out of commission, drive-in theaters became a safe alternative, and saw a big uptick in their long-struggling attendance. So the documentary filmmaker April Wright, who previously made the 2013 film “Going Attractions: The Definitive Story of the American Drive-In Movie,” went back to the drive-in to see how these (often family-owned) establishments had done during the unexpected boost, and how they were adjusting to life going “back to normal.” Once the topical matters are addressed, it becomes a fascinating character study, as these entrepreneurs — ranging from grizzled veterans to gee-whiz newbies — react quite differently to the regular difficulties of their throwback business. More

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      What’s on TV This Week: ‘Fellow Travelers’ and ‘Winter House’

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      Showtime premieres a new show about a romance in the 1950s. The Bravo reality show is back with a new cast.With 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, Oct. 23 – 29. Details and times are subject to change.MondayTHE NOTEBOOK (2004) 8 p.m. on E! If the line “I wrote 365 letters, I wrote you every day for a year,” delivered by Noah (Ryan Gosling) to Allie (Rachel McAdams) as they stand in the pouring rain, doesn’t bring tears to your eyes I don’t know what will. This film, based on the Nicholas Sparks novel, follows them as they meet, fall in love, are separated by Allie’s family and reunited, there is a simultaneous story playing out of an older man reading their story to his wife, who has Alzheimer’s. Come for Gosling’s charm and McAdams’s cute southern accent and stay for the heartbreaking (but also kind of happy) ending.Eduard Fernández in “30 Coins.”Manolo Pavón/HBO30 COINS 10 p.m. on HBO. This Spanish language show, which is back for a second season, is all things spooky, supernatural and gory. The story of this season follows Father Vergara (Eduard Fernández), an exorcist, as he is exiled to the remote Spanish town of Pedraza. The problem? He is in possession of one of the 30 pieces of silver that Judas was paid to betray Jesus and is part of a dark conspiracy that wreaks havoc on the town.TuesdayHELP! I’M IN A SECRET RELATIONSHIP 9 p.m. on MTV. I like to think of this show as a sequel to another of MTV’s reality shows. On “Catfish: The TV Show,” the hosts try to figure out if people in online relationships are really who they say they are. On this show, the hosts, Travis Mills and Rahne Jones, investigate whether people are keeping their relationships secret and trying to do some sneaky stuff on the side.WINTER HOUSE 9 p.m. on Bravo. I’m in luck. I have another reason to talk about my favorite Bravo show again, because what would happen if I didn’t mention “Below Deck” every couple weeks? “Winter House” is a reality show that sends stars from different Bravo franchises, a.k.a. Bravolebrities, to a house in Steamboat Springs, CO to hang out. The new season features five previous “Below Deck” yachties as well as alums from “Vanderpump Rules,” “Summer House” and “Family Karma.”WednesdayREPAIRING THE WORLD: STORIES FROM THE TREE OF LIFE 7 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). Just over five years ago, 11 people were slain at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh after a gunman entered shouting antisemitic slurs. This documentary covers the days and months that followed as the filmmaker Patricia O’Neill spoke to survivors, their family and members of the community.ThursdayFrom left, Kate O’Flynn, Ali Khan and Simon Bird in “Everyone Else Burns.”James Stack/Channel 4EVERYONE ELSE BURNS 9:30 p.m. on The CW. Before airing here, this show originally came out in the U.K. and is chock-full of that deadpan British humor. The story follows a puritanical Christian family focused on preparing for Armageddon and trying to avoid the eternal damnation that comes from falling prey to modern-day temptations.FridayFRANKENSTEIN (1931) & THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1935) starting at 8 p.m. on TCM. This pair of movies might be among the quintessential stories in the horror landscape. The first film, “Frankenstein,” follows Dr. Henry Frankenstein as he tries to give life to patched-together parts of dead bodies. His creepy science experiment works and everything is fine and dandy until the monster escapes the lab and creates chaos. The follow-up film, “The Bride of Frankenstein,” takes place immediately after the close of the first film, with the monster on the run from the angry mob. He runs into Dr. Pretorius (Ernest Thesiger), Frankenstein’s former mentor, who wants to create a mate for the monster. Things don’t end well for Pretorius.SaturdayFrom left: Avis-Marie Barnes, Jon Beshara, Gina Phillips and Justin Long in “Jeepers Creepers.”Gene Page/United Artist FilmsJEEPERS CREEPERS (2001) 8 p.m. on AMC. This film follows the brother and sister Trish and Darry Jenner (Gina Philips and Justin Long) as their road trip home from college turns into a sinister and supernatural fight for their lives. This “cannier-than-average teen horror movie makes you shudder in its early scenes, then turns into a noisy carnival attraction once its designated monster finally materializes,” Stephen Holden wrote in his review for The New York Times.SundayBILLIONS 8 p.m. on Showtime. This series about hedge funds and attorneys and high-stakes games (oh my!) is wrapping up this week after seven seasons. For the final season, Damian Lewis reprised his role as Bobby Axelrod to properly tie up all the loose ends of the series. This probably won’t be the last you hear about some of these characters, though — apparently there are spinoffs (aptly named “Millions” and “Trillions”) in the works.FELLOW TRAVELERS 9 p.m. on Showtime. Thankfully, 2023 has given us lots of heartfelt queer media, including “Heartstopper” and “Red, White & Royal Blue”— and now we can add this new series to the roster of shows and movies that portray a diversity of experience beyond heterosexual relationships. The love story here begins between Hawkins Fuller (Matt Bomer) and Timothy Laughlin (Jonathan Bailey) in the 1950s at the peak of McCarthyism in Washington and spans decades, with political and cultural events like Vietnam War protests, disco hedonism and the AIDS crisis, as the backdrop. More

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      From ‘Goodfellas’ to ‘Flower Moon’: How Scorsese Has Rethought Violence

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      The director was long identified with ornately edited set pieces. In “The Irishman” and his latest film, the flourishes have given way to blunt truths.Of all the haunting images and disturbing sounds that permeate Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon,” none is more upsetting than the guttural cry from Mollie Burkhart (Lily Gladstone), a tortured wail of rage and grief that escapes her reserved visage when tragedy strikes. And it often does: “Killers” tells the true story, adapted from the book by David Grann, of how Mollie’s Osage community was decimated by murderous white men, who killed dozens of her tribe members for rights to their oil-rich land.Mollie’s howl of pain is not quite like any sound heard before in a Scorsese film. But in many ways, Scorsese is emulating her jarring cry in the ominous aesthetics of “Killers of the Flower Moon” itself, and of his 2019 feature, “The Irishman.”The movies have much in common: their creative teams, expansive running times, period settings, narrative density and epic scope. But what most keenly sets them apart from the rest of Scorsese’s work is the element by which the filmmaker is arguably most easily identified: their violence. In these films, the deaths, which are frequent, are hard and fast and blunt, a marked departure from the intricately stylized and ornately edited set pieces of his earlier work.“The violence is different now, in these later movies,” Thelma Schoonmaker, his editor since 1980, noted recently. “And often it’s in a wide shot. It’s hardly ever a tight shot, which is very different from his earlier movies, right?”It certainly is. Wide shots, for those unfamiliar with the lingo of cinematography, are spacious, open compositions, often full-body views of characters and their surroundings (frequently used for broad-scale action or establishing shots). Medium-wides are slightly closer, but still allow us to observe multiple characters and their surroundings. The “tight shots” that Schoonmaker references as more typical of Scorsese’s earlier work are the medium shots, close-ups and extreme close-ups that place the camera (and thus the viewer) right in the middle of the melee.Take, as an example, one of Scorsese’s most effective sequences, the murder of Billy Batts (Frank Vincent) in his 1990 crime drama, “Goodfellas.” When Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci) and Jimmy Conway (Robert De Niro) kill Batts, it’s dramatized in a flurry of setups and rapid-fire edits: from a three-shot of Tommy’s initial punch, to an overhead shot of Batts hitting the floor, a low-angle composition (from Batts’s point of view) of Tommy pummeling him with his fists, then an already-dollying camera that tracks Henry (Ray Liotta) as he goes to lock the bar’s front door. Scorsese cuts back to Tommy landing more punches, then cuts to Jimmy contributing a series of kicks, with a quick insert of a particularly nasty one landing on Batts’s brutalized face. We then see, briefly, Tommy holding a gun, Henry reacting to all of this in shock, more kicks from Jimmy and more punches from Tommy, as blood spurts from Batts’s face.It’s a signature Scorsese scene, combining unflinching brutality, dark humor and incongruent music (the jukebox is blasting Donovan’s midtempo ballad “Atlantis”). It’s a tough, ugly bit of business — and it’s also pleasurable. There is, in this sequence and much of Scorsese’s crime filmography, a thrill to his staging and cutting that is often infectious.He’s such an electrifying filmmaker that even when dramatizing upsetting and difficult events, we find ourselves swept into the visceral virtuosity of his mise-en-scène. It’s this duality, the discomfort of enjoying the actions of criminals or killers or vigilantes, that makes his pictures so potent: Jake LaMotta’s beatings in “Raging Bull,” the high-speed execution of Johnny Boy in “Mean Streets” and particularly the gun-toting rampage of Travis Bickle at the end of “Taxi Driver” are all the more disturbing because of the spell Scorsese casts.That’s not how the violence works in “The Irishman” and “Killers of the Flower Moon.” When people die in these films, it’s grim, nasty, divergent in every way from the dirty kicks of “Goodfellas” or “Casino” (1995). In “The Irishman,” Sally Bugs (Louis Cancelmi) is dispatched in two setups, one wide and one medium, bang bang bang; the deaths of Whispers DiTullio (Paul Herman) and Crazy Joe Gallo (Sebastian Maniscalco) are likewise framed wide, hard and fast — simple, bloody, done. One of the film’s most upsetting scenes, when Frank (De Niro) drags his young daughter to the corner grocery store so she can watch him beat up a shopkeeper, is staged with similar simplicity: Scorsese keeps the scene to a single wide shot as Frank goes in, drags the man over his counter, smashes him through the door, kicks him, beats him and stomps on his hand. Scorsese cuts away only once — to the little girl’s horrified reaction.Scorsese carries this sparseness into “Killers of the Flower Moon.” An early montage of Osage people on their deathbeds concludes with the murder of Charlie Whitehorn (Anthony J. Harvey), who is killed in two cold, complementary medium-wides. Another character is hooded on the street, dragged into an alley and stabbed to death, with all of the action in two wide shots; a third is knocked down in one wide shot, then thrashed to death in a low-angle medium. The mayhem is over before it even starts.“When I was growing up, I was in situations where everything was fine — and then, suddenly, violence broke out,” Scorsese told the film critic Richard Schickel in 2011. “You didn’t get a sense of where it was coming from, what was going to happen. You just knew that the atmosphere was charged, and, bang, it happened.”That feeling — that “bang, it happened” — is what makes the violence in “Killers” so upsetting. The most jarring and scary death comes early, with the murder of Sara Butler (Jennifer Rader) as she attends to her baby in a carriage; it’s all done in one medium wide shot, a pop and a burst of blood. A late-film courtroom flashback to an inciting murder is even more gutting, because we know it’s coming, so as the characters walk into the wide shot and arrange themselves, it’s more tense than any of Scorsese’s breathless montages could ever be.In contrast to the constant needle drops of “Goodfellas” or “Casino,” the murders in “Killers” and “The Irishman” often occur without musical accompaniment, nothing to soften or smother the cold crack of a single gunshot. This is most haunting in the closing stretch of “The Irishman,” as Frank makes the long, sad trip to kill his friend Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino). It’s an order from on high, and Frank is merely a foot soldier, so he can’t do a thing about his pal’s fate but dwell. Scorsese makes us dwell with him, lingering on every detail, filling the soundtrack with the thick, heavy silence of surrender. And when the time comes, Scorsese stages one of the most famous unsolved murders of our time with a glum, doomed inevitability, as Frank stands behind Hoffa, puts two into him, drags him to the middle of the freshly laid carpet, and leaves.In these films, Scorsese has stripped his violence of its flourishes and curlicues, boiling it down to its essence. Of the comparatively restrained violence of his “Gangs of New York” (2002), Scorsese told Schickel, “I don’t really want to do it anymore — after doing the killing of Joe Pesci and his brother in ‘Casino,’ in the cornfield. If you look at it, it isn’t shot in any special way. It doesn’t have any choreography to it. It doesn’t have any style to it, it’s just flat. It’s not pretty. There was nothing more to do than to show what that way of life leads to.”Perhaps Scorsese was ready to dramatize violence as he remembered it, rather than how he’d seen it in the movies. Or perhaps, at age 80, he is acutely aware of his own mortality, and that awareness is affecting how he sees and presents death in his own work. Scorsese ends “The Irishman” with Frank literally picking out his own coffin and crypt; side characters are all introduced with onscreen text detailing their eventual deaths (“Frank Sindone — shot three times in an alley, 1980”). It’s coming for everyone, the director seems to insist, not in a razzle-dazzle set piece, but in a sudden moment of brutality, shrouded in a cold, endless silence. More

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      ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ Cameos Guide

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      Musicians, comedians and even a filmmaker make appearances in the epic drama.Throughout his acclaimed filmography, Martin Scorsese has been known for left-of-center casting choices. His longtime collaborator and casting director Ellen Lewis said in an interview that they always “try to go outside the box in interesting ways.” For evidence, consider memorable appearances by Scorsese’s mother, Catherine, in “Goodfellas” and the writer Fran Lebowitz as a judge in “The Wolf of Wall Street.”The director’s epic new drama, “Killers of the Flower Moon,” is no exception. The film tells the story of a 1920s plot by white Oklahoma men, notably an uncle and nephew played by Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio, to murder members of the Osage Nation, including Mollie Burkhart and her three sisters. Alongside those recognizable Scorsese regulars, a variety of musicians, comedians and other nonactors (some recruited by the Indigenous casting director Rene Haynes) blend in seamlessly.Here’s a spoiler-heavy guide to some of the film’s most interesting cameos.Jason IsbellJason Isbell as the husband of an Osage woman in “Killers of the Flower Moon.”AppleTV+The country singer-songwriter Jason Isbell appears as Bill Smith, husband of Mollie’s ill-fated sister Rita (played by JaNae Collins). For such a sizable part, “Killers” is the first major onscreen acting gig for the four-time Grammy winner. (He had a recurring voice role as a pastor on the Adult Swim series “Squidbillies.”) How did Isbell end up in the film? Chalk it up to downtime. The movie was shot during the pandemic when musicians would have otherwise been touring around the country. As for his main gig, Isbell’s most recent album, “Weathervanes,” with the group the 400 Unit was released earlier this year.Pete YornThis indie-rock singer-songwriter (whose most recent album was “Hawaii,” a 2022 collaboration with Day Wave) eventually shows up as the much-talked-about and elusive Acie Kirby, whom DiCaprio’s hapless Ernest is tasked with finding throughout the film. While “Killers” is Pete Yorn’s first big-screen acting role, he is no stranger to the Scorsese sphere. His brother is Rick Yorn, an executive producer of “Killers” and other Scorsese projects, including “The Wolf of Wall Street” and “Gangs of New York.” Rick Yorn also happens to be Scorsese and DiCaprio’s manager.Sturgill SimpsonSturgill Simpson as a bootlegger in the drama.AppleTV+Another noteworthy country singer-songwriter, Sturgill Simpson plays the bootlegger Henry Grammer. Though he won the 2017 best country album Grammy for “A Sailor’s Guide to Earth,” the guitarist has turned Hollywood roles into a bustling side hustle. In addition to a recurring part on the HBO comedy series “The Righteous Gemstones,” he appeared in the 2019 drama “Queen & Slim” and was on the big screen last month in the sci-fi opus “The Creator.”Tatanka MeansThis busy comedian and actor plays John Wren, a Native American investigator. Means boasts an eclectic filmography ranging from the 2014 comedy “A Million Ways to Die in the West” to a recent appearance on the series “Reservation Dogs.” The son of the Oglala Sioux activist Russell Means (a Scorsese friend who died in 2012), the younger Means is perhaps best known for stand-up routines that reflect the Native experience.Jack WhiteThe former White Stripes musician has a thriving career as a guitarist on his own and in groups like the Raconteurs and the Dead Weather, but he can be seen at the end of “Killers” providing multiple voices for a radio play that explains the eventual fates of the real-life figures dramatized in the film. This isn’t Jack White’s first acting gig. When he’s not at the helm of his indie label Third Man Records, he has found time to portray Elvis Presley in the 2007 music biopic spoof “Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story,” and to appear in “Portlandia” and “The Simpsons.”Charlie MusselwhiteThis harmonica ace plays the gruff Alvin Reynolds. Charlie Musselwhite is a Chicago blues legend who is said to have inspired Dan Aykroyd’s Blues Brothers character Elwood. Lewis, the casting director, is a music fan who said she sought out Musselwhite after being taken by his weathered look while researching the Chicago label Delmark Records. “Killers” is the 79-year-old’s most sizable acting role after parts in movies like “Blues Brothers 2000” and “Windows on the World.”Everett WallerThe film features several prominent members of the Osage Nation including Waller, who serves as the tribe’s Minerals Council chairman. In the movie, Waller gives an impassioned speech about the plight of his people. Haynes, the casting director, said that much like the other Indigenous performers, Waller was discovered during an open casting call to fill the movie’s 62 Native roles. “His daughter actually came through and she knew I was looking for a gentleman with long hair,” Haynes recalled, adding, “I told her that if she could get him to come in, I’ll let him skip the line because I’d love to meet him.”Brendan FraserBrendan Fraser as a lawyer for Robert De Niro’s character. AppleTV+Though not strictly a cameo, the actor doesn’t appear till late in the film. Chosen by Scorsese and Lewis well before “The Whale” led to a career renaissance and a best actor Oscar win earlier this year, Fraser plays W.S. Hamilton, the defense attorney for De Niro’s William Hale. Lewis said Fraser was an 11th-hour choice after another actor she didn’t name dropped out.John LithgowThis is also not quite a cameo, but John Lithgow doesn’t appear until late in the film. The two-time Oscar nominee has enjoyed a long and eclectic career in roles that span genres, onstage and on the big and small screens. But this is the first time he’s worked with Scorsese. Here he plays the prosecutor Peter Leaward in a series of courtroom scenes.Martin ScorseseOne of the three-and-a-half-hour film’s most surprising moments occurs during the radio-play coda. It’s Scorsese himself who reads from the obituary of Mollie Burkhart (Lily Gladstone). Scorsese is no stranger to appearing in his own work, from his 1973 breakout “Mean Streets” (he can be seen firing a gun during the car-crash finale) to “Silence” (a brief and bearded cameo in that 2016 drama). His turn in “Killers” serves as a fitting tribute to both the forgotten subjects of the story and the director who helped remind us of them. More

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      ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ Debuts Apple’s New Film Strategy

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      Martin Scorsese’s three-and-a-half-hour epic is the first of three high-profile movies the tech company will give wide theatrical releases in the coming months.The box office results for Martin Scorsese’s new film, “Killers of the Flower Moon,” will be revealed on Sunday and analyzed by reporters and industry insiders. Did the movie perform well? Did it fall short? Did Leonardo DiCaprio’s inability to promote the film because of the actors’ strike ultimately mean fewer people went to see it?This is a normal opening weekend practice for any major theatrical release, but it will be a first for Apple Studios, the producer and financier of the $200 million movie. It is teaming up with Paramount Pictures to release the three-and-a-half-hour R-rated film in more than 3,600 theaters.Until now, Apple’s films were streaming-first. But “Killers of the Flower Moon” won’t reach its streaming service, Apple TV+, for at least 45 days. It is Apple’s clearest embrace of movie theaters since the start of Apple TV+ four years ago, and the first of three major theatrical releases from the company scheduled for the next six months.During Thanksgiving weekend, Sony Pictures will work with Apple to release Ridley Scott’s “Napoleon,” starring Joaquin Phoenix. In February, Apple is joining forces with Universal Pictures to release the spy caper “Argylle” in theaters around the country.Bradley Thomas, a producer of “Killers of the Flower Moon,” called Apple’s partnerships “comforting,” because traditional studios have decades of experience with theatrical releases.“So Apple is dipping its toe into it,” he said. “They aren’t taking the whole thing on by themselves.”The producer Kevin Walsh, who began developing “Napoleon” with Apple in 2020, has watched its approach to theatrical release evolve. The turning point, he said, came after the top Apple TV+ executives Jamie Erlicht and Zack Van Amberg saw the success that Paramount had with “Top Gun,” which brought in $1.5 billion at the global box office last year.“What ‘Top Gun’ did to the box office they are trying to emulate with movies like ‘Napoleon,’ and ‘Formula 1,’” Mr. Walsh said in an interview, referring to the upcoming Brad Pitt movie that Apple is making with the “Top Gun” director Joseph Kosinski. “I think there is money to be made, of course, for spectacle movies in the theater. But they also serve as a massive billboard for the Apple TV service when they are successful and rolled out well.”Apple’s recent embrace of movie theaters is welcome news for a movie theater business that has been upended by streaming companies’ penchant for making films largely for their at-home services. Netflix first disrupted the long-held tradition of the theatrical release by putting films in a limited number of theaters for a limited time — usually the minimum required to appease filmmakers and qualify for Oscar consideration.Amazon Studios recently reversed its approach, giving commercial films like Ben Affleck’s “Air” significant time in theaters before releasing them to streaming subscribers.Ridley Scott’s “Napoleon” will open in theaters on Thanksgiving weekend.Sony Pictures and Apple Original FilmsBut Apple, with its deep pockets, reputation for secrecy (it doesn’t share streaming subscriber numbers and declined to comment for this article) and interest in controlling all components of its ecosystem, has surprised some with its willingness to team up with others to market its films to moviegoers. It’s a situation that leaves the company open to the vagaries of the theatrical marketplace.And “Killers,” with its high price tag, has to do big business to become a success. Analysts are predicting that the film could fetch anywhere from $18 million to $30 million in its opening weekend. That would be a tough beginning even for a film by Mr. Scorsese, whose movies traditionally have staying power in theaters and often eventually gross close to five times what they brought in on opening weekend. The film’s long run time and dark subject matter — the plot revolves around the murders of Native Americans — could also be commercial hurdles.“We are a little more bullish than the industry expectations floating around,” said Shawn Robbins, an independent box office analyst, who predicts the film will open in the $30 million range. “The film certainly has its hills to climb with a long run time and DiCaprio’s absence from the press circuit.”But “strong reviews and Mr. DiCaprio’s own box office history — especially with Mr. Scorsese — provide ample amounts of good will for audiences,” he added, and work in the film’s favor. “The market hasn’t had a high-profile film targeted toward adults for a while.” (“Oppenheimer,” with a similar run time and equally serious subject matter, defied odds this year and earned $942 million worldwide.)While Apple has said very little about its shift in strategy, theater owners are ecstatic.Apple is “a major company that has the ability to do a lot of high-quality work, and I think that the recognition on their part that movies belong in theaters is a strong signal,” Michael O’Leary, chairman of the National Association of Theater Owners, a trade association, said in an interview. “Prioritizing theatrical will help them get major filmmakers to come into their tents, and to create even more dynamic, entertaining fare in the years ahead.”Mr. Scorsese and his co-writer, Eric Roth, began adapting David Grann’s nonfiction book “Killers of the Flower Moon” in 2017. Paramount agreed to finance and distribute the film, but when the production costs soared, the studio brought in Apple in 2020 to finance the project.Others wanted it, said Mr. Thomas, who initially purchased the adaptation rights to “Killers” with his partner, Dan Friedkin. It was Apple, however, that guaranteed a full theatrical release — a must for Mr. Scorsese, whose last film, “The Irishman” for Netflix, had a truncated run in theaters.Paramount stayed on in a deal that saw Apple reimburse the studio for its development costs on the movie and a portion of Mr. Scorsese’s overall deal, according to two people with knowledge of the agreement, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the details were not public. Paramount controls all theater bookings and media buys for the film’s trailers and commercials, while Apple controls its publicity and marketing materials.Apple made similar, though less expensive, deals with Sony Pictures for “Napoleon” and Universal Pictures for “Argyle,” with Sony and Universal sharing the marketing costs with Apple and handling each film’s distribution.And while all three studios would like the opportunity to enter into long-term partnerships with Apple, the tech giant has not committed to any one partner.“I’d be surprised if they take a single-studio approach for distribution,” said Tim Bajarin, chief executive of Creative Strategies, a high-tech research firm based in Silicon Valley. “Apple is willing to work, and they have shown that they can work well, with multiple studios. I think that track is more likely to be what they’ll use in the future. They are extremely calculating.” More

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      As Movie Theaters Embrace Swift, One Showcases Her Exes

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      In addition to “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour,” a Milwaukee theater is programming films that feature some of her starry boyfriends.Like movie theaters across the country that are facing the fallout of an actors’ strike and the shift to streaming, the Oriental Theater in Milwaukee was quite pleased to have Taylor Swift’s concert film coming to its screens.But “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour,” which has been a box office rainmaker, comes with an unconventional stipulation: Theaters may only show it Thursdays through Sundays, said Cara Ogburn, the artistic director of Milwaukee Film, which runs the Oriental Theater.So what to do, she wondered, on the other three days of the week?“What if we show all Jake Gyllenhaal movies,” Ogburn suggested offhandedly, initially as a joke. “True counterprogramming.”The idea quickly expanded. The team’s resident Swiftie assured leadership that the theater would not be canceled for a lineup based on the pop star’s famous exes. Then staff members selected qualifying films that also had Halloween-adjacent themes.Starting next week, the three-screen art-house theater will show the original “Twilight” (Taylor Lautner, a.k.a. the werewolf Jacob Black), “Dunkirk” (Harry Styles, a.k.a. One Direction heartthrob turned nondescript World War II soldier), “Crimson Peak” (Tom Hiddleston, a.k.a. a pre-Loki baronet) and, yes, a lot of Gyllenhaal.There’s “Zodiac” on Tuesday.“Enemy” plays on Oct. 29, followed the next night by “Nocturnal Animals.”Then, on Halloween, comes “Donnie Darko.”It may be true that Swift’s songbook is only “minimally about romantic love,” as Taffy Brodesser-Akner recently observed in The New York Times Magazine. But Swift is well aware of the way she has been caricatured for having, as she puts it in “Blank Space,” a long list of ex-lovers who will say she is insane.“We were surprised to discover how many boyfriends she has had who have been in movies,” Ogburn said of Swift, who was connected to Lautner in 2009, Gyllenhaal in 2010, Styles in 2012 and Hiddleston in 2016. (Recently, she has been seen with the N.F.L. player Travis Kelce.)“Then we whittled it down to — what is a good movie?” Ogburn said. Finally, she said, the team had to consider what films it could actually get the rights to show.Independent movie theaters that show more than blockbusters often target specific fan bases. In the same month that the Oriental Theater has organized and branded “The Exes Tour,” it is hosting the Milwaukee Muslim Film Festival and showing older horror favorites and current Oscar contenders like Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon.”But the most vocal crowds are expected for Swift’s concert film, which in many places has become a glitter-filled, Eras-inspired mega event. She has encouraged viewers to treat the outings like the many concerts that captivated fans this year, urging the exchange of friendship bracelets and dancing to the songs that Swifties know by heart.The desire for packed theaters and a concertlike atmosphere might help explain the unique scheduling requirements for “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour,” which collected nearly $93 million domestically in its first weekend. It also has standardized symbolic ticket prices: $19.89 for general admission and $13.13 for everyone else.Ogburn, whose team created a special drink menu for the movie’s run (red wine, for instance, became simply “Red”), said she had not fielded complaints about movie theater etiquette. “We’re kind of into enthusiastic moviegoing,” she said. “A little applauding like you’re at a concert is nothing we can’t handle.”She did wonder whether there would be a less kind reaction to “Donnie Darko,” a 2001 cult classic in which Gyllenhaal’s disturbed character encounters a life-size rabbit.“Will we get Swifties booing?” she asked. More