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      Democrats Cheer Hollywood Tax Breaks They Once Called ‘Corporate Welfare’

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      California politicians once derided a $50 million proposal by Arnold Schwarzenegger. With the support of unions, they’re now strongly backing a $750 million subsidy.Time was running out to pass new California bills in 2005 when a power broker in the State Capitol got a request from the action movie star in the governor’s office. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wanted lawmakers to give Hollywood studios $50 million in tax breaks to help prevent the movie industry from leaving.But Democrats preferred to restore funding that had been cut from schools and support for disabled people. Republicans in the governor’s own party objected to the notion of assisting one industry over others. The effort fell flat, as did similar proposals over the next few years.Among many Democrats, said Fabian Núñez, who was the speaker of the California Assembly at the time, the thinking about Mr. Schwarzenegger’s plan went: “Why does he want to give corporate welfare to rich people? That doesn’t make any sense.”Times have certainly changed.California lawmakers, most of them Democrats, approved a budget on Friday that includes $750 million to subsidize movie and television production, doubling the size of the state’s incentive program while making cuts elsewhere to help close its $12 billion deficit. A bill to make the tax credits available to more types of productions is expected to be approved in the coming days.Some economists object to film subsidies, saying they are a poor financial investment for states, while proponents say they are necessary to slow an exodus of productions. Over the past 10 years, production in Los Angeles has decreased by more than one-third, according to FilmLA data. One Hollywood studio is flying Americans to Ireland to film a game show, and “The Substance,” a best picture nominee, was filmed in France even though it is set in Los Angeles.“Expanding this program will help keep production here at home, generate thousands of good paying jobs and strengthen the vital link between our communities and the state’s iconic film and TV industry,” Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, said in October when he announced his plan to increase the tax breaks.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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      Help Us Rank the Best 21st-Century Rom-Coms, Superhero Movies, Horror Films and More

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      <!–> [–><!–>Making a list of the Top 10 movies of the 21st century is hard, for those who work in movies and those who love watching them. It requires pitting very different films against each other — comedies against dramas, period pieces against fantasy films — in ways that don’t always seem fair.–><!–> –><!–> [–><!–> […] More

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      Watch Brad Pitt Burn Rubber in ‘F1’

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      The director Joseph Kosinski narrates a sequence in which Pitt’s character hatches a plan different from his team during a race.In “Anatomy of a Scene,” we ask directors to reveal the secrets that go into making key scenes in their movies. See new episodes in the series on Fridays. You can also watch our collection of more than 150 videos on YouTube and subscribe to our YouTube channel.While the racing is as swift as the camerawork in “F1,” this particular scene is built on a pause. That moment of stasis takes place during the Hungarian Grand Prix in 2023. Sonny Hayes (Brad Pitt), a veteran driver, has been recruited by the owner of a floundering Formula One team. And Sonny’s style is at odds with that of his team principal, Kaspar Smolinski, (Kim Bodnia). Here, Sonny loses a tire and needs to go into the pit.“So much of the strategy is built around tire compounds,” the film’s director, Joseph Kosinski, said during an interview in New York. “And at this particular race in Hungary, which tends to be a very hot race, you want a harder tire compound that’s going to last more laps.”“But Sonny has a different plan in mind,” Kosinski continued, “which is to try to create a safety car situation. And in order to have as much control and grip as possible, he’s asking for a soft tire because he knows he’s going to only need it for a lap or two anyway.”Sonny asks for the soft tires as he pulls into the pit, but Kaspar insists on hard ones. When the soft tires are put on, Sonny won’t move, creating the scene’s most tense moment of conflict.“You get to see the two forces coming together: the team principal, who wants to stick with the plan they all discussed, and Sonny Hayes coming in with a plan of his own that he hasn’t shared with anyone, and it makes for this great scene between Brad Pitt and Kim Bodnia.”Read the “F1” review.Sign up for the Movies Update newsletter and get a roundup of reviews, news, Critics’ Picks and more. More

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      ‘Parasite’ and the Genre-Defying Movies of the 21st Century

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      It’s mostly the internet’s fault, but in the past 25 years, the lines we drew in the 20th century got blurry. Time and space have collapsed. Now you can attend a meeting across the country, text your long-distance boyfriend halfway around the world, and watch a decades-old movie from another hemisphere on TV at home, all in one day. We’ve learned to make friends with people we’ve never met and develop obsessions with things we’d never have known about had we lived at any other point in human history. The story of the 21st century, among other things, is a tale of crumbling contexts and newly porous boundaries.Small wonder, then, that our 100 Best Movies of the 21st Century list, created by polling hundreds of directors, stars and other film professionals, shows the same trend. Every list tells a story about its maker or, in this case, makers. It’s clear, for instance, that the movies they remember were mostly not reboots, remakes or franchise fare, which have become Hollywood’s bread and butter. Star vehicles are fading. And while streaming has elbowed in and upended how we watch movies, there’s only one film on the list produced by a streamer — No. 46, Alfonso Cuarón’s “Roma,” which Netflix gave a respectable theatrical release.All interesting trends, some encouraging and some troubling. But what strikes me most about the list is this: Long-held categories in the movie business are fading, just like they are in the broader culture.When Christopher Nolan made “The Dark Knight” (No. 28), a superhero film contending for awards seemed like an outlier. But more genre films have been entering the conversation.Warner Bros./Library of CongressUntil pretty recently, for instance, common wisdom held that commercially successful genre fare and self-serious awards films didn’t overlap, and that auteurs would pick a lane and stay there. Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight” (No. 28) seemed like an outlier in this respect, a Batman movie so good that when it failed to be nominated for best picture in 2009, the academy changed the number of nominee slots from five to 10. But since then, other horror, superhero and action flicks have increasingly sneaked into awards conversations, including “Get Out” (No. 8), “Mad Max: Fury Road” (No. 11), “Black Swan” (No. 81) and “Black Panther” (No. 96).That may explain the triumph of 2022’s best picture winner, “Everything Everywhere All at Once” (No. 77), a whimsical and occasionally deranged pastiche comedy blended with a sincere-hearted family story that pays obvious, sometimes ironic homage to a number of genres: martial arts, melodrama, science fiction, surrealism, even video games. In fact, some of its references also appear on the list, like Wong Kar-wai’s “In the Mood for Love” (No. 4) and Ang Lee’s “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” (No. 16).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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      Amie Donald Has the Moves as the Killer Robot in ‘M3gan 2.0’

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      The sunny 15-year-old dancer-turned-actress is about as far as you can get from the role she’s best known for: a deadly A.I. doll.Onscreen, Amie Donald is best known for her role as the killer robot M3gan in the sci-fi horror franchise.But, in real life, Donald, 15, spends a majority of her days in the idyllic, sun-soaked setting of lushly forested New Zealand, where kiwi roam and she’s apt to take a bush walk outside her parents’ home in Papakura, a suburb in South Auckland.“I really enjoy all the nature here,” she said on a video call from the house on a recent morning. Her long red hair fell in beachy waves as sunlight danced on her white sweater. Framed photos of her and her parents and older brother filled the walls behind her.Donald is about the furthest you could get from the cutthroat killer robot returning in the new sequel, “M3gan 2.0.” For one thing, she smiles far too much. Other people, she said, would describe her as “very caring.” She wasn’t a fan of horror films until landing “M3gan” — though she’s since started watching them with her father, and now counts “It” and “The Purge” among her favorites. “I love them so much,” she said.M3gan, the robot that becomes frighteningly protective of a young girl named Cady, was Donald’s first role in a film, following her TV debut as Maya Monkey, an acrobatic girl with simian features, in Netflix’s postapocalyptic series “Sweet Tooth.”Amie Donald embodies the killer doll in the original and “M3gan 2.0,” although a synthetic mask covers her face.Geoffrey Short/Universal PicturesWe 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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      Prioritizing Diversity, Film Academy Will Widen Membership

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      The group invited more than 500 actors, directors and others to join. Left off the list was Karla Sofía Gascón, the first Oscar-nominated openly trans actor.The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences said Thursday that it would increase the Oscar voting pool to 10,143 people, a nearly 40 percent rise from a decade ago, when #OscarsSoWhite protests first put intense pressure on the group to diversify.The problem: Despite greatly expanding the membership of women and people of color, the overall makeup of the academy remains overwhelmingly male and white — a reflection of the film industry itself.If all of the 534 artists, technologists and other film workers invited to become members this year accept, the academy ranks will be 65 percent male and 78 percent white, according to data disclosed by the organization. In 2015, when the academy gave all 20 acting nominations to white actors for the first of two consecutive years, inspiring the #OscarsSoWhite movement, the group was 75 percent male and 92 percent white.By the academy’s count, 41 percent of this year’s invitees are women and 45 percent are people of color. About 55 percent are from overseas, which would lift the academy’s overall international contingent to 21 percent.Before the academy began to diversify its membership by race, gender and nationality, it limited annual invitations to as few as 115, contending that small classes kept the professional caliber of members high. In 2018, the academy invited 928 people. Last year, the number was 487.Invitees this year include past Oscar winners and nominees like Mikey Madison, Ariana Grande, Fernanda Torres, Monica Barbaro and Kieran Culkin. The list also has stars like Danielle Deadwyler, Aubrey Plaza, Naomi Ackie, Gillian Anderson and Jason Momoa.Left off the list was Karla Sofía Gascón, the first openly trans actor to be nominated for an Academy Award. She was among the best actress nominees at the most recent ceremony for her performance in “Emilia Pérez.” But she became a lightning rod after a journalist resurfaced a series of derogatory, years-old posts on X. In them, she denigrated an array of people, from Muslims to George Floyd, and even the Oscars ceremony itself. Gascón apologized but was largely shunned by the Hollywood establishment in the lead-up to the Oscars.The academy typically invites every nominee to become a member. (Others must be sponsored by two members for consideration.) But an invitation is not guaranteed; the rules state that academy committees must review candidates and make recommendations to the organization’s board, which has final say on invites.“Membership selection is based on professional qualifications, with an ongoing commitment to representation, inclusion and equity remaining a priority,” the academy said in a news release listing the invitees.The academy declined to comment on Gascón’s exclusion. More