Movies

Subterms

    More stories

    • 100 Shares179 Views

      in Movies

      ‘V/H/S/99’ Review: Death on the Way to DVD

      by

      The long-running horror anthology has a new installment.The problem with being buried alive, dramatically speaking, is that it’s hard for things to get worse. When screaming in a coffin, the sound of rain and dirt pitter-patting above, how do you raise the stakes?In “Suicide Bid,” one of the gooey, squirmy shorts in “V/H/S/99,” the solid fifth installment of the found footage anthology series, Johannes Roberts, its writer and director, finds a way. While not wildly original, his jack-in-the-box surprises are skillfully, tautly executed. If you have a taste for schlock with shocks, this works.When “The Blair Witch Project” popularized the found footage genre, the most maddening question in horror shifted from “Why did those fools go into that dark room?” to “Why don’t those idiots turn off the camera?” Rarely was there a great answer, but terror-addicts will overlook a lot of contrivances if you can scare or gross them out enough. While the “V/H/S” franchise has always been uneven, last year’s “V/H/S/94” was its best, featuring a cleverly shot entry in a funeral home by Simon Barrett and a giddily unnerving movie in the sewer movie by then-newcomer Chloe Okuno, whose latest feature “Watcher” has gotten raves.Building on that success, “V/H/S/99” smartly dispenses with the wraparound plot that was always the worst part of all its predecessors, but finds a creative if unnecessary connective tissue. The shorts are better tied together by how they subvert current 1990s nostalgia, digging into the darkest side of Y2K and Woodstock 99 and other cultural artifacts from the final decade of the last millennium.The director Maggie Levin sharply captures, skewers and celebrates the atmosphere of the Generation X indie music scene in “Shredding,” about a band that revisits the site of a concert disaster. In an idea so perfect it makes you wonder why you haven’t seen it before, “Ozzy’s Dungeon,” directed by Steven Ellison, a.k.a. Flying Lotus, explores the ugly undercurrents of the popular kids game show “Double Dare” where contestants were regularly humiliated by being splashed with colorful liquids (Steven Ogg is an ominously oily host). “Gawkers” performs a similar unpacking, but with “American Pie”-like comedies, but the creepy voyeurism of teenage boys receives a slithery comeuppance.These revenge stories move methodically from the familiar to the monstrous. They lean into gore, excess and, critically, smirking humor. A commitment to its staticky, period-appropriate aesthetic is the only thing its artists take deadly seriously. Sometimes, the playfulness tips over into goofy camp as in the final short “To Hell and Back,” whose title tells you the plot but whose vibe is amateurish haunted house. Still, in the right mood, even that can be dopey fun.V/H/S/99Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 49 minutes. Watch on Shudder. More

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Ticket to Paradise’ Review: Yes, They Like Piña Coladas

      by

      George Clooney and Julia Roberts take another dip into romantic comedy with this Bali-set film.“Ticket to Paradise,” the latest vacation romp from the filmmaker Ol Parker (who penned “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel,” and wrote and directed “Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again”), is a screwball adventure that forgets to pack the laughs. Having made a mint off his picturesque travelogues of Jaipur and Greece, Parker — who never met a mosquito that wasn’t edited out in post — now concocts a fantasyland Bali where an American law school graduate named Lily (Kaitlyn Dever) falls in love with a dimpled kelp farmer (Maxime Bouttier) and agrees to marry him one month after he quite literally fishes her from the sea.The script by Parker and Daniel Pipski has scrubbed away any apprehensions concerning economics, education or class. (Lily’s intended, Gede, lives in a well-appointed beach hut filled with leather-bound books.) Nevertheless, Lily’s engagement proves to be the one thing able to unite her estranged parents David and Georgia (George Clooney and Julia Roberts), who hop on a plane to prevent the wedding. Any apprehensions the audience might have concerning the plot are confirmed during this flight sequence where the spiteful exes discover that not only are they stuck in the same seat row, but Georgia’s current boyfriend, a puppyish Frenchman (Lucas Bravo), is — surprise! — the pilot.Such contrivances (and the even more ludicrous ones to follow) could work if the comedy vibrated on the edge of mania, if Roberts had a jolt of Katharine Hepburn’s wackadoo electricity or if Clooney’s Clark Gable-esque grin allowed him to convincingly grab a spear and hunt a wild pig when he hasn’t eaten since lunch. But these stars are too aware that the film’s draw is simply seeing the two of them together. Roberts and Clooney wear their stature like sweatpants, rousing themselves to do little more than spit insults like competitive siblings. They’re selling their own comfortable rapport, not their characters’ romantic tension.When Parker needs to project that Roberts is steaming mad, he puts a clothes steamer in her hand so she can deliver her gripes between gusts of hot air. Dever, a major talent who will likely win her own Oscar someday, is too earnest to commit to inanity, while the marvelous Billie Lourd — the one cast member who can execute the tone — is squandered in a bit part where her sole personality trait is being drunk.Eventually, the film succumbs to the actors’ delusion that they’re in a sincere dramedy where people also conveniently get bitten by poisonous snakes. The score shifts from playful flutes to somber piano chords; the lighting remains golden, bathing the actors in an apricot glow at the expense of forcing half the movie to take place at sunrise or sunset.Locals know best whether Parker’s depiction of Balinese nuptials is accurate. (This critic is so far unable to confirm the rite where a bride taps her bare foot three times on a coconut.) The more authentic custom may be when David and Georgia resurrect their old college ritual: beer pong. It’s the film’s best scene as the soundtrack blasts House of Pain’s “Jump Around” at such a volume that there’s no emphasis on dialogue, only the visual delight of Julia Roberts and George Clooney goofing around.Ticket to ParadiseRated PG-13 for strong language and a mild suggestion of sexuality. Running time: 1 hour 44 minutes. In theaters. More

    • 100 Shares179 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Triangle of Sadness’ | Anatomy of a Scene

      by

      Film directors walk viewers through one scene of their movies, showing the magic, motives and the mistakes from behind the camera.Film directors walk viewers through one scene of their movies, showing the magic, motives and the mistakes from behind the camera. More

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in Movies

      Luke Parker Bowles, the Queen Consort’s Nephew, on Life in New Jersey

      by

      The film and television producer, who works with the British Consulate, is also committed to saving small-town movie theaters in the United States.Last month in New York City, the outpouring of grief over Queen Elizabeth II’s death mostly happened in a handful of English specialty shops and inside many, many apartments. But there was at least one public memorial service, which took place at the Queen Elizabeth II Garden in Lower Manhattan.“Long live the king,” proclaimed Luke Parker Bowles, a film and television producer and one of a few individuals who helped create the garden in 2005 to honor members of Commonwealth nations who died on Sept. 11.As a New Jersey resident and the nephew of Camilla Parker Bowles, Mr. Parker Bowles suddenly finds himself a diplomat, of sorts, for the crown in the metropolitan area. “I do like being an ambassador for her and His Majesty in New York,” he said. “I am the Parker Bowles who is here.”Besides his day job — he works with the British Consulate to promote British talent and owns a film-production company, Odd Sausage — he and Patrick Wilson, the actor, started and now help to run Cinema Lab, an initiative that rescues struggling small-town movie theaters and turns them into sophisticated venues for eating, drinking and taking in the latest blockbuster. The group currently owns five theaters, including several in New Jersey and one in New Canaan, Conn. “These theaters are metaphorically and literally the heart beats of certain towns,” Mr. Parker Bowles said.Mr. Parker Bowles, 44, lives with his wife Daniela Parker Bowles, 47, and their three children in Montclair, where he helps oversee the town’s film festival, scheduled this year for Oct. 21-30.Ahead of the Montclair Film Festival, Mr. Parker Bowles spoke with The New York Times about his work and mission. The following interview has been edited and condensed.What inspired you to move to New York?I was visiting New York City from London for a long weekend with two friends. We went to this club named Spa that was located right next to Union Square. That night P. Diddy jumped onstage and started playing this impromptu performance. I thought this is just how New York is and this happens every night.Some Key Moments in Queen Elizabeth’s ReignCard 1 of 9Becoming queen. More

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in Movies

      ‘The Ring’ at 20: Millennial Horror That’s Still Infecting Movies Today

      by

      The film that kicked off the West’s J-horror fascination was made in the shadow of 9/11. Its influence can be seen in “Smile,” “It Follows” and more.If you remember anything about Gore Verbinski’s cursed-videotape chiller, “The Ring,” released 20 years ago Tuesday, it’s probably the whispered threat: seven days.Or maybe it’s the eyes of a creepy little girl, peering out from behind a curtain of stringy black hair; or the uncanny images — a flaming-red tree, dead horses scattered along a seashore, a finger pushed through a rusty nail — that made up the film-within-the-film. In “The Ring,” any unlucky soul who watches this bizarre videotape receives a menacing phone call as soon as it cuts to static, and in a week they’re kaput at the hands of a soggy ghoul who crawls out of a TV.“The Ring,” based on the wildly successful Japanese novel by Koji Suzuki as well as the 1998 film adaptation by Hideo Nakata, doesn’t rely on a high body count, or much in the form of blood and guts, for scares. Yet for a generation of horror-lovers, it taps into a familiar feeling of ambient anxiety and inexplicable unease that remains omnipresent to this day.In fact, it’s surprisingly restrained, unfolding like a waking dream shot through with dread. Set in Seattle and doused in eerie teals and grays, the movie follows Rachel (Naomi Watts), a journalist and single mother tasked with uncovering the truth behind the sudden death of her teenage niece, Katie (Amber Tamblyn), who is found with her face terrifyingly warped, frozen in anguish like “The Scream.” When Katie’s classmates suggest a haunted video is to blame, Rachel tracks it down and watches it, beginning the countdown to her own demise. Through Rachel’s detective work, the story of Samara, that creepy girl, a kind of vengeful spirit, comes to light, but these revelations do nothing to break the curse; only showing the tape to another person can liberate the condemned.Audiences at the time proved eager to see the tape for themselves. “The Ring” went on to become a sleeper hit, ultimately taking in nearly $130 million domestically and kicking off a string of American remakes of Japanese horror movies, a trend that is among the most distinct and representative of Hollywood in the aughts. Along with the 1999 hits “The Sixth Sense” and “The Blair Witch Project,” the popularity of “The Ring” represented a shift from the fascination with teen-slasher fare that had dominated the previous three decades.Naomi Watts played a journalist who tracks down the deadly video. At the time, she was a relative unknown.Merrick Morton/DreamWorks PicturesWhen Verbinski was approached by DreamWorks with the idea of remaking the Japanese film, he was in the middle of reading “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle,” the surreal epic novel by Haruki Murakami. By the end of the ’90s, Japanese pop culture had made major inroads in the United States — think of the rise of Nintendo and the Pokémon craze. No wonder Hollywood executives pounced on the opportunity to rework “Ring,” then the highest-grossing horror film ever released in Japan, for an American audience. “Ring” was one of the key properties credited with unleashing J-horror, the Western term for the ensuing cycle of Japanese horror films characterized, in part, by a connection between the demons and spirits of traditional folklore and the technologies of the new millennium.“The original is beautifully abstract and moody, but American audiences demand some sort of resolution or straight path,” Verbinski said in an interview. “They’re motivated to follow bread crumbs, so we created a more linear story. The advantage is, we’re able to mess with those expectations.”Other remakes of J-horror sensations, like “The Grudge” (2004) and “Dark Waters” (2005), followed, but none achieved comparable success or the same level of cultural impact.“The Ring” might even be considered a classic of millennial horror. Elder millennials born in the ’80s were teenagers then, while younger ones turned to video stores or hung on the words of older siblings who had lived to tell the tale. Not that kids at the time would have been prohibited from entering the theater. “The Ring” was rated PG-13, though its portentous atmosphere, abrupt sonic shifts from loud to quiet, and sinister Hans Zimmer score make it perhaps more effectively spooky than other films that abound in spectacular violence.The enthusiasm around J-horror remakes may have been short-lived, but the core of what made “The Ring” so frightening in 2002 — and what made the novel and original film such disturbing portraits of societal collapse in ’90s Japan — is the transferable nature of the death sentence, which makes even the victims complicit. Several American horror movies since “The Ring” have employed a similar formula to critical acclaim and commercially fruitful results. In David Robert Mitchell’s 2015 “It Follows,” a teenager maneuvers to offload her supernatural STD on a sexual partner, who, upon consummation, takes on the spell and is relentlessly followed by a murderous undead entity. “Smile,” the current box-office heavyweight, tracks even closer to “The Ring” by taking the perspective of a cursed woman desperate to find a solution before time — she’s told at most a week — runs out and a spirit that feeds off trauma manipulates her into committing an extravagantly bloody suicide. There’s only one way out for this curse, too: Kill someone else.As in “The Ring,” “Smile” featured a woman (Sosie Bacon) hunting down a curse. Paramount PicturesLast October, Cristina Cacioppo, the director of programming for the Nitehawk Cinema in Brooklyn, screened “The Ring” as part of a series dedicated to horror remakes of the 2000s. “There can sometimes be a stigma around remakes,” she said. With “The Ring,” she recalled, “I was very dismissive of it when it came out and thought it’d be this Hollywood version that stripped away everything that made the original interesting. When I finally watched it, I realized it’s very much its own thing — it’s good!”She also credits the performance by Naomi Watts with elevating the film. At the time, she was a relative unknown who had just broken out in David Lynch’s “Mulholland Drive.”And, of course, there’s the videotape, which almost resembles an experimental short. Early in the film, we watch it in its entirety through Rachel’s eyes, and, depending on your mood, it might play like a silly student-film provocation: Initially, the killer tape is treated like a high school urban legend. Not being able to tell if the threat is legitimate or not is part of what makes the videotape so indelible.“We wanted it to be haunting but also slightly dismissible,” Verbinski told me. “We degraded the images until it felt like it was shot on a Super 8 camera by an amateur. At the same time, things from the film start appearing as Rachel moves through the real world. Kind of like having a dream where you go to a bar and get a pack of matches, but then you wake up and see the matches on your table.”For Verbinski, the film’s appeal is closely tied to the zeitgeist. Though it was released in 2002, the director and his crew were in preproduction when the events of 9/11 took place, forcing them to move the shoot from the East Coast to the Pacific Northwest.“There’s a random element to the film, a loss of control and disruption of balance that makes it work,” he said. “There’s no moral explanation or sense of one person deserving it over another. It’s scary when a belief system collapses, it leaves you in this existential free-fall.” The film is obviously not a direct result of 9/11, but it makes “palpable a similar crisis,” he added, “that whatever meaning you create from the videotape, whatever progress or discovery you think you’re making, none of that will make you whole.”Maybe that’s why “The Ring” — even if its legacy includes some truly horrendous sequels and the deflating, if affectionate, parody “Scary Movie 3” — lingers in the mind, especially for those of us who remember its now distant-seeming world of landlines and cassette players.“2002 was the beginning of that feeling of loss and meaning slipping away,” Verbinski said. “There was a real sense of before and after, but now everything is blurred and we’re swimming in that crisis daily, alone, but still looking for something to share.” More

    • 163 Shares129 Views

      in Television

      Ralph Macchio Will Always Be ‘The Karate Kid.’ He’s Finally Fine With That.

      by

      His new memoir, “Waxing On,” sees the ’80s star making peace with the role that has brought him back into circulation thanks to “Cobra Kai.”Playing Daniel LaRusso in “The Karate Kid” made Ralph Macchio famous for life. For decades, people have been telling him where they were when they saw the 1984 popcorn flick or how its underdog story affected them.Such all-encompassing fame, however, came with a downside.As he tried to move on in his acting career, he couldn’t quite leave the role behind. Sometimes, he said, he even felt stifled by it, no longer the freewheeling but vulnerable 22-year-old whose character in the movie learned the importance of balance, in life and in martial arts.Nearly four decades later, he has written a memoir, “Waxing On: The Karate Kid and Me,” about the making of the movie, and how it has shaped — and continues to shape — his life.The book is reassuringly free of scandal or self-destructive behavior, but there’s a palpable ambivalence that runs through its 241 pages, though ultimately the tone bends toward optimism.Macchio as Daniel LaRusso in the first film, a hit that spawned two sequels.Columbia Pictures, via Everett CollectionHaving wrapped his fifth season reprising the role in “Cobra Kai,” Netflix’s surprisingly popular sequel series, Macchio seems to have made peace with, and even embraced, what he calls “the wonderful gift.”Looking back, he writes, the original film is “a prime example of when Hollywood gets it all right. It teaches and inspires through pure entertainment.”On a sunny rooftop terrace in Lower Manhattan one recent morning, Macchio — a not at all 60-looking 60, even with his sunglasses off — displayed the natural relatability that has been a hallmark of his career. It’s something he shares with Daniel LaRusso, “the every-kid next door,” he explained, who “had no business winning anything.”Growing up on Long Island, Macchio would watch MGM movie musicals with his mom. Soon enough, he was taking tap-dancing lessons in between Little League games and working Saturdays with his dad. (His brother took more to the family laundromat and pump-truck businesses.)Along with roles in school plays and dance recitals, Macchio started auditioning for commercials, leading to two Bubble Yum spots. After his first movie, “Up the Academy,” and a one-season stint on ABC’s “Eight Is Enough,” he landed the career-changing role of the “lost puppy” Johnny Cade, opposite his fellow teen idols C. Thomas Howell and Matt Dillon, in Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Outsiders.”Back home, Macchio, then 21, got called for another audition. The screenplay was based on an article about a bullied kid who learned martial arts for self-defense. It was set to be directed by John G. Avildsen, who had made the underdog classic “Rocky.”“I recall connecting to the father-and-son elements and heart in the story right off the bat,” Macchio writes of his first reading of the screenplay. But he “found some of the high school story line characters a bit corny and stereotyped.”One other thing bothered him: the title. He thought it sounded ridiculous. “I mean, can you imagine?” he writes. “If I ever did get this part and the movie hit, I would have to carry this label for the rest of my life!”Macchio, right, with C. Thomas Howell in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1983 film “The Outsiders.”Warner Home VideoTo Robert Mark Kamen, who wrote the movie’s screenplay, Macchio was the natural choice: He mixed a “pugnacious attitude” with emotional vulnerability.“He was sharp. He was smart,” Kamen said in a phone interview. “And if he got in a fight, he had nothing to back it up but being a wise guy. It was exactly who the character was.”Then the ’80s started tilting toward the ’90s. Macchio felt he was aging out of the character, but the character wasn’t aging out of him — at least as far as the entertainment industry was concerned.In 1986, with “The Karate Kid Part II” in theaters and a third movie on the horizon, Macchio got a chance to stretch, as the struggling son of the drug dealer played by Robert De Niro in the Broadway drama “Cuba and His Teddy Bear.”“It was all moving pretty fast,” he recalled in the interview. “I just wish I soaked it in a little more. Here I am, toe to toe with De Niro every night.”In a phone interview, De Niro said he admired Macchio’s levelheadedness and work ethic. It was “easy to like him personally, and then also relate to him in what we were doing,” he said. “We had something already to work off.”Macchio with Burt Young, left, and Robert DeNiro in a scene from the play “Cuba and His Teddy Bear.”Martha Swope/The New York Public Library for the Performing ArtsBut behind the scenes, Macchio’s personal frustrations were mounting — moments that are among the book’s most revealing.One night the famed film director Sidney Lumet was in the audience. Backstage after the performance, Lumet said he was planning a film to be called “Running on Empty,” and was interested in him playing “a significant role” in it, Macchio recalls in the book.The problem was that the time Lumet was slated to shoot “Running on Empty” for one studio directly conflicted with the production schedule for “The Karate Kid Part III” at another.“The ‘Running on Empty’ ship was set to sail,” Macchio writes, “and I was consigned back to my original port of call.” (River Phoenix was nominated for an Oscar in the part.)On another night, Warren Beatty was the surprise visitor to Macchio’s dressing room. The young actor shared his frustrations; Beatty counseled him, suggesting he find balance between his commercial successes and his other ambitions. “Don’t look down on those movies,” Macchio writes, recalling what Beatty said. “You need that as much as you want this (meaning the De Niro play).”One bright spot was his being cast in 1992’s “My Cousin Vinny,” alongside Joe Pesci and Marisa Tomei. Macchio’s daughter was born that same year, and his son would arrive three years later.In “Cobra Kai,” Macchio plays a grown Daniel LaRusso, who meets up again with a former nemesis, portrayed by Yuji Okumoto.NetflixStill, he writes of the ’90s, when “planning the growth of our family on Long Island … my career had little to no growth of its own. The future was looming and unknown, and the unknown was daunting to me.”His agents floated the idea of doing a television series, but the development deal only led to a few episodes, never to be aired. Macchio then turned to making short films and writing screenplays.“I would draw from the lessons that I had learned from the Avildsens and Coppolas of the world,” he writes. “I kept myself creatively fulfilled and thriving during those leaner acting years. I was finding the balance in work and family.”Then, in 2018, came “Cobra Kai,” the vision of the creators Jon Hurwitz, Josh Heald and Hayden Schlossberg.Macchio would play Daniel LaRusso once again, except this time he’d be a middle-aged family man, though still open to a rivalry with Johnny Lawrence and the Cobra Kai dojo, albeit one with a bit more complexity this time.Signing Macchio on took some persuading.“I understood where I fit in the construct of ‘Cobra Kai’ and the storytelling,” he said. “If the show bombed and tanked, I’d probably say, you know, I was right. I was worried about that. … But everything happened right.”“The future was looming and unknown, and the unknown was daunting to me,” Macchio writes of his post- “Karate Kid” fortunes. Nearly three decades later came “Cobra Kai.”Tonje Thilesen for The New York TimesThe new series, he said, understands what made “The Karate Kid” such a favorite: “Fathers and sons, bullying, redemption, overcoming the obstacles, finding your way, falling forward, skinning your knees, scraping your hands, getting up, figuring it out.”In the book, Macchio acknowledges that in “Cobra Kai” “the tone at times is different,” but “a common ground it shares with the movie is in its heart.” It’s that kind of emotional openness the screenwriter, Kamen, saw in the actor decades ago. After the interview was over, Macchio stepped into the elevator, heading to the building’s lobby. Others got in as well. One recognized him, and asked for a picture.“I’m just the elevator guy,” he said, with a grin. More

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in Television

      What’s on TV This Week: ‘The Vow’ and ‘American Horror Story’

      by

      HBO airs a second season of the documentary on the Nxivm cult and Ryan Murphy’s show begins its 11th season, set in New York City.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, Oct. 17-23. Details and times are subject to change.MondayTHE VOW 9 p.m. on HBO. This docuseries, about Keith Raniere and his “sex cult” Nxivm, is beginning its second season. In 2020 Raniere was sentenced to 120 years in prison for sex trafficking and other crimes. The first installment of the series explored the stories of the members who joined the group. This set of episodes will more focus Raniere and his inner circle as his trial took place.TuesdayBEETLEJUICE (1988) 9 p.m. on Freeform. Tim Burton’s comedy staring Michael Keaton and Wynona Rider is essential viewing for spooky season. Keaton plays the title character who is hired by a recently deceased couple (Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis) to scare away the new (alive) residents of their house. The film was adapted into a Broadway musical of the same name, which will close in January after almost 700 performances.WednesdayA still from “Year One: Political Odyssey.”Courtesy of HBOYEAR ONE: POLITICAL ODYSSEY 9 p.m. on HBO. Spanning from inauguration day in 2021 to the State of the Union in 2022, this documentary outlines President Biden’s first year in office, including the fallout from the Jan. 6 attack, efforts to encourage vaccination against Covid-19, the withdrawal from Afghanistan and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, to name just a few events. It also features interviews with the secretary of state, Antony J. Blinken; the national security adviser, Jake Sullivan; the secretary of defense, Lloyd Austin; and The New York Times’s very own David E. Sanger.AMERICAN HORROR STORY 10 p.m. on FX. Though murders are down 3 percent in the U.S., mysterious deaths around New York City continue to arise in the 11th installment of Ryan Murphy’s anthology series. Zachary Quinto, Patti LuPone and Billie Lourd — all “A.H.S.” veterans — star. Murphy has recently received some backlash from families of the victims of Jeffrey Dahmer for his show “Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story,” in which Evan Peters (another “A.H.S.” regular) portrays the serial killer.DOCUMENTARY NOW! 10 p.m. on IFC. Each episode of this faux documentary series takes inspiration from an actual documentary, with the writers and actors making it outrageous and goofy. Created by “Saturday Night Live” alums Seth Meyers, Fred Armisen and Bill Hader, the show begins its fourth season with two episodes inspired by the 1982 documentary “Burden of Dreams” about the director Werner Herzog. In this version, written by John Mulaney, Cate Blanchett stars as an eccentric filmmaker and Nicholas Braun plays a moviegoer who mistakes an art-house cinema for a porno theater.ThursdayVinny Guadagnino in “Jersey Shore Family Vacation.”Courtesy of MTVJERSEY SHORE FAMILY VACATION 8 p.m. on MTV. It is hard to believe that in 2022 we are still fist pumping with our favorite group of party animals. The “Family Vacation” spinoff, which follows Snooki, her crew and their brood as they travel around the country, has been filming for longer than the original “Jersey Shore” series. The whole squad is gathering together for a reunion to wrap up the fifth season and bank more hours of delectable reality TV.MIKA: LIVE AT THE PARIS PHILHARMONIC 10 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). The Lebanese British pop singer Mika, known for songs like “Lollipop,” “Grace Kelly” and “Happy Endings/Over My Shoulder,” takes his talents to the Paris Philharmonic, where he performs with the orchestra and a choir.FridayTHE AWFUL TRUTH (1937) 8 p.m. on TCM. Cary Grant and Irene Dunne play the divorcing couple Jerry and Lucy who mess with each other’s new potential love lives when they realize they’re still in love with each other. The movie is based on a 1922 play of the same name.Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper in “Silver Linings Playbook.”JoJo Whilden/Weinstein CompanySILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK (2012) 10:49 p.m. on Starz. This film by David O. Russell, filled with laughter, tears and lots of mentions of Philadelphia Eagles, stars Bradley Cooper as Pat, who, after ending up in a mental institution, moved back in with his parents. Jennifer Lawrence plays Tiffany, a young widow who promises to help Pat get back his estranged wife if he enters into a dance competition with her. Russell’s “movies embrace different problems and character types,” Manohla Dargis wrote in her review of the film for The Times. “A strung-out drug addict rather than an alcohol-soaked swell — but like the classics of the form, they have zippy, at times breakneck pacing, rapidly fired zingers and physical comedy that, taken together, reflect the wild unpredictability of the greater world.”SaturdayCRISS ANGEL’S MAGIC WITH THE STARS 8 p.m. on The CW. Like “Dancing with the Stars” but with magic? Each week celebrity contestants learn tricks and illusions created by Criss Angel and then perform them in front of a panel of judges. This week Corbin Bleu and Miles Brown will be showing off their sleight of hand — next week Maksim Chmerkovskiy and Omarion are up. At the end, the celebrities with the highest scores will be invited back to compete for the golden wand.SundayBMF: THE RISE AND FALL OF A HIP-HOP DRUG EMPIRE 10:05 p.m. on Starz. This eight-part series examines the true story of Black Mafia Family’s drug trafficking and money laundering operation based in Detroit. It is set to feature interviews with Demetrius “Big Meech” Flenory as well and other ring leaders. This documentary series is a companion to the network’s scripted series “Black Mafia Family,” returning this fall for a second season. More

    • 88 Shares129 Views

      in Movies

      Robert De Niro’s Career in Five Artifacts

      by

      The actor recently donated hundreds of boxes of scripts, props, notes and other objects from his work on “Raging Bull,” “Taxi Driver” and more. We dived in.AUSTIN, Texas — When Robert De Niro heard that Marlon Brando’s personal, annotated “Godfather” script was for sale on eBay, he was not too happy. How could such an important cultural artifact, created by an acting icon, a true artist, be as easy to bid on as an old pinball machine, or a Las Vegas coffee mug?This was around 2006, and De Niro had been looking for a place to donate the extensive collection of props, costumes, scripts, letters and mementos he had accumulated throughout his six-decade career. He did not want his “Taxi Driver” script notes to wind up deteriorating in a stranger’s closet in Des Moines, so he sought out a place where the archivists and staff would care for and preserve each piece, including the red boxing gloves and leopard-print robe he wore as Jake LaMotta in “Raging Bull” and the pages of letters he and his “Last Tycoon” director Elia Kazan wrote each other. “I wanted to keep it for my kids and I wanted to keep it all together,” De Niro told me just after he viewed an exhibition at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas in Austin showcasing part of his archives. He was in town last month for the show, and for a gala celebrating the Ransom Center’s 65th anniversary. Leonard Maltin served as the master of ceremonies, and Meryl Streep hopped over to Texas to honor her longtime friend and colleague with a speech.“I don’t know, if you’re spelunking around in there, if you’re going to be able to find the secret of his power and what he does,” Streep said in her speech. “His strength comes from what he doesn’t say.”Texas might seem like an odd home for De Niro’s two Academy Awards and personal photos, but he wanted an institution that would provide easy access to students, researchers and cinephiles from around the world. As he said in his own speech that night: “I had accumulated an appalling amount of stuff. It was going to be either the Ransom Center or an episode of ‘Hoarders.’”The center houses the papers of the acting teacher Stella Adler, Samuel Beckett, T.S. Eliot, Tom Stoppard, Tennessee Williams and Frida Kahlo, to name a few. In his speech, De Niro said he chose the center because of the company his archive would be in. “I imagine my papers talking to their papers, or trying to anyway, and their papers asking my papers, ‘What the hell are you doing here?’”The “Robert De Niro Papers” show runs through January and features a portion of the 537 boxes, 601 bound volumes and 147 folders of items De Niro donated. Here are a few treasures on display, with insights from De Niro and the curator of film, Steve Wilson.Early Headshot and Résumévia Harry Ransom Centervia Harry Ransom CenterThe black-and-white photo of a very clean-cut-looking young De Niro is accompanied by one of his early acting résumés, back when his film roles had names like Friend of Lead. De Niro said he remembered typing those résumés, and when I asked him if he maybe, possibly exaggerated anything, he said, “I think I may have. Maybe I said I was in a play or had a role in a play, and I’d just done a scene.” Wilson said the résumés helped the archivists date some of the items from early in his career, like his old makeup kit, which holds used brushes, tubes and cosmetic sticks that helped De Niro get into character during his early years as a student, before he went to work onstage and in dinner theater. “The existence of these résumés was really interesting to me,” Wilson said. “It does look like he was probably padding résumés. For example, he might say he was in a touring play, but we know he performed a scene at Stella Adler or something.”Fedora From ‘Mean Streets’via Harry Ransom CenterWarner Bros.The hat, and the role, marked the start of one of cinema’s most enduring and powerful collaborations, between De Niro and the director Martin Scorsese. When the actor wore this brown fedora to read for the role of Johnny Boy, the neighborhood punk, Scorsese knew De Niro was his guy, he told New York magazine a few years later. In Vincent Canby’s 1973 review of the film for The Times, he wrote, “The look, language and performances are so accurate, so unselfconscious, so directly evocative.” De Niro’s performance (opposite Harvey Keitel, above left, and David Proval) and that now iconic hat helped create the visceral realism that still manages to feel in-your-face and raw, almost five decades later. “I wore that hat as a kid,” De Niro told me when I asked where it came from. “I just liked it.” When it came time to audition for Johnny Boy, he said, he felt that it fit the character. “He had been keeping wardrobe items that he would use for auditions, like hats and glasses, for a long time,” Wilson said. “It was kind of an arsenal.”License From ‘Taxi Driver’via Harry Ransom CenterTo prepare for his 1976 role as Travis Bickle, a haunted, lonely Vietnam veteran turned New York cabby, De Niro spent a little over a week actually driving a taxi. This was just after he had won an Academy Award for “The Godfather Part II,” and one passenger recognized him and commented that things must be especially tough for actors if an Oscar winner was trying to earn money driving a cab. The license is another piece of the collection that illuminates his dedication to character and the lengths he goes to fully inhabit another life.The exhibition also includes one of De Niro’s annotated “Taxi Driver” scripts, opened to a page where Bickle stares into the mirror. The action simply reads: “His eyes are glazed with introspection. He sees nothing but himself.” Just below that, in blue ink, De Niro wrote, “Mirror thing here?” That “mirror thing,” of course, became “You talking to me?” It’s an improvised moment that has become a hallmark of his career. College-age kids still yell that line to De Niro sometimes when he’s out in public. As for the license, as soon as Wilson saw it for the first time, he “knew immediately that it was the image of the archive. It speaks to his process and says it all. It’s a great piece.”Military Dog Tags From ‘The Deer Hunter’via Harry Ransom Center“I can’t remember if I wore those through the whole production; it was a long time ago,” De Niro said of the ID his character, Mike, wore in Michael Cimino’s 1978 film about a group of friends from a Pennsylvania steel town whose lives are forever scarred by their experiences in Vietnam. Besides the dog tags, the archive displays De Niro’s prep work, including medical records from actual Vietnam veterans, articles about “returning vet syndrome” (now known as PTSD), and detailed notes he took on the dialect of the specific area of Pennsylvania his character hailed from. (Sample: “these ones” and “those ones” can be used interchangeably.)“I think this is where the archive really starts,” Wilson said. “There is a giant uptick in the amount of research material that we have for any particular film once we get to ‘Deer Hunter’ and beyond. Sometime around 1979 or 1980 is when he really got serious about keeping things.” When the dog tags arrived, Wilson noticed they were covered in plastic, as they would have been in real life to keep the metal from making noise and alerting the enemy. By the time the dog tags reached Austin, the plastic was yellowed and leaching liquid, so the archivists removed the decaying material and had them encased again, to stay true to the object’s original form.‘Raging Bull’ Annotated Scriptvia Harry Ransom CenterLike most of the screenplays in the collection, De Niro’s “Raging Bull” draft, dated “2-1-79” and revised by “M.S. and R.D.N.” (the director and actor), is covered in handwritten notes. The hefty version is enclosed in a brown leather folder. Wilson said several of the scripts “seemed to have a personality of their own,” and that there were notes in the pockets of the folder, including one to De Niro from Vikki LaMotta, the real-life wife of De Niro’s character.The script is displayed in a glass case next to the writer Paul Schrader’s handwritten scene outline, scribbled on a yellow legal pad. Several writers were credited in the film, but De Niro and Scorsese went away for a few days together to work on a final draft before production began. De Niro said they headed to the Caribbean because “it just seemed like a nice place to go. We worked on the script and on getting it to a good place. We worked on the character.”The notes across the script pages are tough to decipher. When De Niro stepped away for a moment, I overheard his young daughter telling Wilson that her father had horrible handwriting, so bad that she didn’t even think he used the same alphabet as everyone else. That hard-to-decipher handwriting will probably not stop film lovers and researchers from traveling to the Ransom Center in their quest to decode De Niro’s career, his technique and the mystery of his process, one script note, costume choice and scribbled-on napkin at a time. More