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    ‘Hinterland’ Review: Murderers Among Us

    Stefan Ruzowitzky’s film sets a serial-killer mystery in Vienna after the ravages of World War I and employs some dazzling blue-screen backdrops.The backdrops are the star attraction in “Hinterland,” a post-World War I serial-killer mystery directed by Stefan Ruzowitzky. Stretched across panoramic wide-screen, the eye-popping film portrays 1920 Vienna as a pullulating Old World metropolis, its buildings reeling at canted angles, its streets hosting grotesque violence.Perg (Murathan Muslu) is a returning P.O.W. who yearns for the wife he left behind and gets drawn into investigating some baroque murders. This chiseled ex-cop feels forgotten, as we are repeatedly reminded; everyone around him is scrambling to survive or in thrall to an “ism” (communism, anarchism, opportunism). Ruzowitzky, who directed the Academy Award-winning World War II drama “The Counterfeiters,” has a taste for the dark bargains of war and its aftermath, though here he mostly musters a neo-noir mood of regret.Perg figures out that the killings have something to do with grisly decisions made by soldiers during the war. The screenplay for “Hinterland” then clicks a little too abruptly into its grooves to sit with all the story’s implications, as we follow the cat-and-mouse machinations of the investigation and Perg’s missed-connection romance with a forensics doctor, Theresa (Liv Lisa Fries, a “Babylon” star).But the hypervivid visuals remain a feat, shot almost exclusively on blue screens (with much credit due to the digital art director, Oleg Prodeus). Expressionist painters like Ludwig Meidner spring to mind, as does Lars Von Trier’s post-World War II journey into the abyss, “Europa,” with its own looming back-projections and moral swamps. If only the story of “Hinterland” felt as engrossing and alive as its setting.HinterlandNot rated. In German, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 38 minutes. Rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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    Review: In ‘To Leslie,’ an Unflinching Working-Class Elegy

    The small-budget indie is a complex portrait of the ways that trauma and addiction haunt an alcoholic mother, and her family, in the South.In gritty detail, “To Leslie” traces the fall of a one-time lottery winner who, years later, has lost everything she holds dear. The British actress Andrea Riseborough (“Nancy”) gives a deft performance as Leslie, an alcoholic mother in West Texas barreling toward rock bottom in this deceptively simple yet heart-wrenching character study.Allison Janney, Marc Maron, Owen Teague and Andre Royo fill out the solid ensemble cast in this small-budget indie, which accomplishes what its bigger-budget peer “Hillbilly Elegy” wanted to, but couldn’t pull off: a complex portrait of the ways in which trauma and addiction haunt a working-class white family in the South.The director, Michael Morris, knows from the start what movie he’s making: one that robs us of our easy assumptions about who Leslie is. She’s unbearably flawed, and the screenwriter Ryan Binaco explains why without forcing long beats of exposition upon the viewer. And he does so while still leaving room for surprise. Leslie doesn’t tank her sobriety when we think she will, yet her recovery is free of narrative subterfuge.The cinematography by Larkin Seiple (“Everything Everywhere All At Once”) is a real feat of visual character development: The camera movement is both protective of Leslie and unflinching in its raw portrayal of her vulnerability. Some of the most affecting shots take place at the bar, like one close-up where Leslie spars with the guy who wants to bed her — “Tell me I’m good.” It’s shot with a depth of field that keeps Leslie’s face in focus, while the rest of the frame is blurred.“To Leslie” probably could have left 15 more minutes on the cutting room floor. But its intermittent lags don’t diminish the overall satisfaction one feels in the film’s final act, when Leslie’s rocky road settles into something believably triumphant.To LeslieRated R for explicit language and violence. Running time: 1 hour 59 minutes. Rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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    ‘Mr. Harrigan’s Phone’ Review: Are You Still There?

    In this thriller based on a Stephen King story, a lonely student and a lonelier old man make a connection that persists, even after death.With its curmudgeonly swipes at digital technology, there’s something mildly “get off my lawn!” about “Mr. Harrigan’s Phone.” Based on a Stephen King story, the John Lee Hancock movie tells the story of a teenager who appears to receive calls and texts from his mysterious former employer, Mr. Harrigan, who has recently died.Donald Sutherland portrays the reclusive billionaire who hires Craig (Jaeden Martell) to come to his mansion on the outskirts of their Maine town and read to him after school. Craig’s father (Joe Tippett), although not a fan of Harrigan, trusts his son’s moral compass. Whether it will maintain its true north is one of the movie’s intriguing tensions.There’s a bittersweetness to Craig and Harrigan’s friendship and good chemistry between the leads. It’s as if Mr. Potter from “It’s a Wonderful Life” found some nice local kid who had no idea about his mentor’s Bedford Falls history. The analog world, with its hard-bound literature and daily papers, is fundamental in this parable about the lure of digital technology.When Craig enters high school, he becomes the target of a bully, makes friends and finds a champion. The actor Kirby Howell-Baptiste provides a beam of light and the voice of caution as Craig’s science teacher, Ms. Hart. At the same time, the iPhone is making its debut as a must-have status object. With an unexpected windfall, Craig buys one for his old friend.When Harrigan suddenly dies, Craig is shaken. What happens next makes the movie less a chiller than a diverting drama about technology with things that go bump in the night, along with some nicely apt ethical quandaries for Craig — and for us.Mr. Harrigan’s PhoneRated PG-13 for thematic material, some strong language, violence and brief drug exchanges. Running time: 1 hour 44 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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    ‘Hellraiser’ Review: Hurt Me, Please

    A mystical puzzle box unleashes indescribable agony and knockout special effects in this reimagined horror movie.With its potent blend of sadomasochism, blasphemy and body horror, Clive Barker’s “Hellraiser” (1987) was a genuinely disturbing dip into deviance that multiple sequels failed to replicate. Taking another shot, the suits behind this reimagined “Hellraiser” smartly handed directing duties to David Bruckner, whose résumé might be brief, but whose gift for injecting dread — even into otherwise inert projects — is apparent.Here, Bruckner reveals a new talent: holding his own against practical effects (by a team led by Josh and Sierra Russell) so spectacular that the movie’s lack of a theatrical release is almost criminal. A visual and ideological upgrade on the original, “Hellraiser” centers on Riley (Odessa A’zion), a frazzled addict in her 20s who gains possession of a mysterious puzzle box belonging to Voight (Goran Visnjic), a degenerate millionaire. Configured correctly, the box opens a portal to another dimension, releasing ghoulish creatures called Cenobites who delight in taking the human desire for extreme sensation to its logical conclusion.More intricate and more numerous than their forbears, the Cenobites threaten to steal the show. In particular, Jamie Clayton’s performance as their leader (a role memorably originated by Doug Bradley) has a menacing eroticism that underscores the movie’s thematic focus. Less notable are Riley’s sidekicks, a ho-hum bunch that quickly squanders our patience. And a slack, overlong middle section inside Voight’s mansion — itself an intricately designed puzzle — cries out for a more ruthless editor.As an ambitious allegory for the chaos and torment of addiction, “Hellraiser” works mainly because of A’zion, who gives her scattered character a deeply human desperation. For Riley, demons from hell are hardly scarier than the ones she fights every day.HellraiserRated R for sex, substances and sickening stuff with needles. Running time: 2 hours 1 minute. Watch on Hulu. More

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    Kitten Natividad, Movie Star in Russ Meyer’s Bawdy World, Dies at 74

    She was top-billed in his final feature, “Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens.” She was also his paramour and, he said, his favorite leading lady.Kitten Natividad, who brought audacity and ample physical attributes to some of the final films of Russ Meyer, whose over-the-top sexploitation movies acquired a certain cachet in some quarters and influenced John Waters, Quentin Tarantino and other directors, died on Sept. 24 in Los Angeles. She was 74.Eva Natividad Garcia, her sister, said the cause was complications of kidney failure.Ms. Natividad had little film experience and was working as a go-go dancer and stripper when, in the mid-1970s, she met Mr. Meyer, who was by then near the end of his notorious filmmaking career.In the 1960s Mr. Meyer, who died in 2004, became known for outlandish films like “Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!” and “Vixen,” most of which featured absurd plots and insatiable naked women with large breasts.According to Jimmy McDonough’s “Big Bosoms and Square Jaws: The Biography of Russ Meyer, King of the Sex Film” (2005), Mr. Meyer was already editing his 1976 feature, “Up!,” when he decided to add a part for a dancer who had been suggested to him by an actress from one of his earlier films. He asked Roger Ebert, the film critic, who was one of the writers of “Up!,” to throw together some dialogue for a character he named the Greek Chorus.“It doesn’t matter what she says,” Mr. Ebert recalled Mr. Meyer saying. “She just has to say something. And it should sound kinda poetic.”The newcomer was Ms. Natividad, and what Mr. Ebert wrote for her paraphrased the Imagist poet Hilda Doolittle.“Armed with Ebert’s lofty gobbledygook,” Mr. McDonough wrote, “Meyer took the New Girl out in the woods, stripped her down, and made her recite all this complex, arcane narration while she hung from trees and hid in bushes.”Mr. Meyer also fell for Ms. Natividad, who was married at the time, and they began a relationship that lasted for the rest of the 1970s. And he made her the star of his next movie, which would be his final feature film: “Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens” (1979).The movie is often described as Mr. Meyer’s riff on “Our Town” — for instance, it employed an onscreen narrator named “The Man From Small Town U.S.A.” Ms. Natividad plays a woman whose husband’s preoccupation with anal sex leaves her sexually frustrated.Ms. Natividad had little film experience when she met Mr. Meyer. It didn’t matter.via Siouxzan PerryCritics didn’t have much good to say about the movie, which Mr. Meyer wrote with Mr. Ebert.Gene Siskel of The Chicago Tribune, Mr. Ebert’s television partner on the film review show then known as “Sneak Previews,” wrote that Mr. Meyer’s “Vixen,” released in 1968, had been “an enjoyable nudie film because it featured the first joyfully aggressive woman we’d seen in a skin flick.” But he added, “Meyer hasn’t grown up in 10 years; if anything, he’s deteriorated.”“Beneath the Valley” would be Meyer’s last hurrah, but it held a special place in his heart. In a 1999 interview with Pop Cult magazine, he called Ms. Natividad his favorite leading lady.“She could just go and go and go,” he said. “It was just marvelous. You really had to measure up to this girl, or you caught hell.”Mr. McDonough said that Mr. Meyer had “met his match in Kitten Natividad.”“Meyer’s productions were mercenary boot camps, with the woman inevitably in an adversarial role,” Mr. McDonough said by email. “And in 1979’s ‘Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens,’ Meyer puts Kitten through the usual insane challenges, perching her buck naked atop mountains, in rivers at the bottom of canyons, and shot from below a metal bed frame (sans mattress) while she bounced vigorously atop metal bedsprings.“She blew through Meyer’s challenges like a marathon runner, always a wide, gung-ho smile across her face, and try as he might, Meyer could not vanquish her. That movie is a dazzling, obsessive tribute to Natividad.”Ms. Natividad in 2011. In her later years, she had small parts in mainstream movies like “Airplane!”Brian Cahn/Zuma Press, via AlamyFrancisca Isabel Natividad (she later used the first name Francesca) was born on Feb. 13, 1948, in the Mexican state of Chihuahua to Juan and Delia Davalos Natividad. In 2018, when she received the Legend of the Year award from the Burlesque Hall of Fame in Las Vegas, she told an audience that when she was growing up along the U.S. border, she would gather other children and make clandestine trips to a disreputable stretch of road where they would peek in on strip shows.“When I looked in there and I saw these beautiful women with the big breasts, the red lipstick, the big hairdos,” she said, “I wanted to grow up to be just like them.”Her mother later moved the family to the United States, and at 14 Ms. Natividad worked as a house cleaner for the actress Stella Stevens, getting a taste of the Hollywood crowd.She got a job as a key punch operator, but when she learned that a neighbor who worked as a stripper was making twice as much as she was, she changed careers, taking her first job as a go-go dancer in 1969 and soon moving to stripping. When an agency urged her to adopt a stage name, she chose “Kitten,” she said, because she was considered the shyest among the dancers she worked with.In 1973 she won the Miss Nude Universe title in San Bernardino, Calif.She was dancing at the Classic Cat, a club in Hollywood, when a fellow dancer, Shari Eubank, who had starred in the 1975 Meyer film “Supervixens,” suggested she introduce herself to the director. She is said to have done so by poking him in the back with her bare breasts.That got her into “Up!,” which she once described this way: “I’ll skip over the plot, which had something to do with Hitler’s daughter and sadomasochism. The film starts with me perched in a tree, nude.”Mr. Meyer paid for her to have breast augmentation, replacing an earlier enhancement. He also paid for a voice coach to help her lose her Mexican accent. (Her dialogue in “Up!” was dubbed.)When she and Mr. Meyer were together, he would revel in the attention her body and her bubbly personality brought. In 2004 Ms. Natividad joined three other Meyer favorites in a round-table discussion for The New York Times; one of them, Erica Gavin, the star of “Vixen,” recalled the couple’s entrance at her birthday party.“Kitten walked in first,” she said. “Russ loved to walk behind Kitten, because then he could see all the reactions after she passed people. She was wearing a nude-colored chiffon sheer outfit with no underwear at all.”After Mr. Meyer’s career died out, Ms. Natividad appeared in numerous other movies, including some hard-core pornography, and had small parts in “Airplane!” (1980), “My Tutor” (1983) and a few other mainstream films. She had a double mastectomy in 1999 as part of treatment for breast cancer.In the 2004 round table, Ms. Natividad reflected on her career.“I’m proud to be a Russ Meyer girl,” she said. “There are lots of beautiful women with great bodies and even bigger boobs than ours, but they didn’t get to be Russ Meyer girls. We are very, very special.”Ms. Natividad was married and divorced three times. In addition to her sister and her mother, she is survived by six half siblings, Teresa Natividad, Amelia Natividad, Diana Ramirez, Victor Ramirez, John Natividad and Estella Ramirez.Mr. McDonough, in his email, said he first saw Ms. Natividad at Show World in Manhattan, where her act consisted of splashing around naked in a baby pool while the song “Rubber Ducky” blared from the loudspeaker. Then, for a few dollars more, she’d pose for Polaroids.“Somehow Kitten made it all seem innocent,” he said. “She possessed a ferociously positive spirit, and that light always blasted through, no matter how tawdry the circumstances.” More

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    After Decades of Hints, Scooby-Doo’s Velma Is Depicted as a Lesbian

    The character has long been seen as a lesbian icon. Some fans were thrilled that her sexuality was at last officially acknowledged.A new movie has put to rest decades of fan speculation and suggestions from previous stewards of the “Scooby-Doo” franchise by confirming that Velma Dinkley, the cerebral mystery solver with the ever-present orange turtleneck, is canonically a lesbian.To many fans who had long presumed as much and treated her as a lesbian icon, it was not a shocking revelation. But her appearance in “Trick or Treat Scooby-Doo!,” which was released on Tuesday on several digital services, was the first time the long-running franchise openly acknowledged her sexuality, thrilling some fans who were disappointed that it took so long.“Scooby-Doo,” created by Hanna-Barbera Productions, first appeared as a Saturday morning cartoon in 1969, and has been frequently reinvented in TV shows, films and comics. It generally follows a group of teenage sleuths, consisting of Velma, Daphne Blake, Fred Jones and Norville “Shaggy” Rogers, along with their mischievous Great Dane, Scooby-Doo.Previous “Scooby-Doo” writers and producers have said that Velma was a lesbian, but said pushback by studios would not allow them to depict her as one on screen. The new movie, which was directed by Audie Harrison, leaves no doubt as to her sexuality.In one scene of the newest iteration, a blushing Velma, voiced by Kate Micucci, is smitten at the sight of a new character, Coco Diablo, who mirrored Velma’s fashion sense with her own turtleneck and oversize glasses. In a later scene, she denies Coco is her type before admitting: “I’m crushing big time, Daphne. What do I do? What do I say?”It was the kind of overt reference to her sexuality that had failed to make it into final cuts before.Responding to a fan on Twitter, James Gunn, who wrote the screenplay for “Scooby-Doo,” a 2002 live-action film, wrote in 2020 that “Velma was explicitly gay in my initial script.”“But the studio just kept watering it down & watering it down, becoming ambiguous (the version shot), then nothing (the released version) & finally having a boyfriend (the sequel),” he wrote in the tweet, which was reported widely at the time and has since been deleted.That same year, Tony Cervone, the co-creator of “Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated,” a 2010 series on Cartoon Network, posted an image on Instagram of Velma standing in front of a Pride flag.“We made our intentions as clear as we could ten years ago,” Mr. Cervone wrote. “Most of our fans got it. To those that didn’t, I suggest you look closer.”In response to a fan, he said specifically that “Velma in Mystery Incorporated is not bi. She’s gay,” according to a screenshot saved by Out Magazine.While most of the gang has had many romantic interests, notably between Fred and Daphne, Velma “has never really had a main love interest,” said Matthew Lippe, a 22-year-old marketing student who runs the Scooby Doo History account on Twitter.She had occasional flirtations and brief relationships, notably with Johnny Bravo in a ’90s cartoon crossover, but her romantic feelings were rarely as central to the story as other characters, Mr. Lippe said. When she dated Shaggy in “Scooby Doo! Mystery Incorporated,” he said, “it’s something that doesn’t feel natural for both of them.”More recently, the shows and movies have increasingly hinted at her interest in women, so “it’s not something that’s coming out of the blue,” he said. He said Velma is a fan favorite because she speaks to a common struggle: She’s the smart, awkward one who often leads the gang in the right direction but doesn’t get as much credit as the others.“A lot of young women, and a lot of people in general, could just look to her as a great example and role model to look up toward,” he said.Another change to Velma’s character is coming soon. In 2021, HBO Max ordered a spinoff adult animation series called “Velma.” Mindy Kaling will voice the character, who will be South Asian in the show.“Nobody ever complained about a talking dog solving mysteries,” Ms. Kaling told a crowd in May at a Warner Bros. Discovery Upfront presentation, which offered a first look at the show, expected later this year. “So I don’t think they’ll be upset over a brown Velma.”Warner Bros., which owns the “Scooby-Doo” franchise, declined to comment.The rise of lesbian characters on television was a slow process, marked often by gimmicks and blatant plays for ratings. It often came in the form of “lesbian kiss episodes,” written largely to titillate rather than to explore genuine relationships.In recent decades, lesbian relationships on television have become more complex, even if the tropes aren’t entirely gone. More

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    Da’Vine Joy Randolph Doesn’t Want Anyone Finishing Her Sentences

    Whether in comedies like “Only Murders in the Building” or dramas like “On the Come Up,” the ubiquitous actor refuses to be pigeonholed.Please forgive Da’Vine Joy Randolph if she needs to stifle the occasional yawn. When she hopped on a video interview in late September, the omnipresent, extremely busy and still slightly jet-lagged actress had only just returned from Colombia, where she was filming “Shadow Force,” an action movie for the director Joe Carnahan.Despite the exotic locale and a fulfilling work experience, the otherwise upbeat Randolph emphasized that she was happy to be back on her home turf in Los Angeles. “Even on a vacation,” she said, “after the two-week mark, no matter how amazing the vacation is, you’re like, I’m ready.”Randolph, 36, has been on a relentless professional pace for more than a decade now, playing a range of memorable roles in theater, film and television. She recently co-starred in the drama “On the Come Up,” the directorial debut of Sanaa Lathan, playing Pooh, the supportive but no-nonsense aunt of an aspiring teenage rapper (Jamila C. Gray).Yet Randolph is probably better known for her work in several comedies, including the Hulu series “Only Murders in the Building” and films like “Dolemite Is My Name.”Why Randolph keeps turning up alongside the likes of Steve Martin, Eddie Murphy and Martin Short, she said, is anyone’s guess. “It’s actually quite a conundrum,” she said. “I think I have a good sense of humor, but I don’t consider myself funny.”Whatever type of story she is telling, Randolph said, she often takes a similar approach to her roles: “I really just focus on their dedication — everyone wants something.”She explained, “When people get into extreme situations or they want something bad enough, hilarity can ensue because the stakes are just that high. To the viewer, it can be comical. To me, I’m like in a Greek tragedy over here.”Rather than be remembered as a comedic or a dramatic performer, Randolph said she wants to be called “a transformational actor”: “I never want to get pigeonholed or known for one thing. I don’t want people to be able to finish my sentences.”Randolph shared the stories behind a few of her most memorable roles. These are edited excerpts from that conversation.Randolph as Oda Mae Brown in “Ghost the Musical.”Sara Krulwich/The New York Times‘Ghost the Musical’In the stage adaptation of the 1990 movie, which ran on Broadway in 2012, Randolph was cast as Oda Mae Brown, the psychic played in the film by Whoopi Goldberg.That was my first job ever, and it started very quickly. Like, roller coaster plunging down — there was no windup. You booked it [whooshing sound]. Now my life is fortunately and unfortunately like that — that can be the nature of what it is. But to be thrown in, in that way, was a lot of getting used to. When we found out that “Ghost” was closing, I remember saying to my agents, “I want to do a movie and a TV show and a straight play.” And I booked one of Robin Williams’s last movies [“The Angriest Man in Brooklyn”], an episode of “The Good Wife” and an original play at Atlantic Theater Company [“What Rhymes With America”]. I was like, whoa. Good manifesting.‘Selfie’Randolph played Charmonique, a co-worker of the pharmaceutical firm staffers played by Karen Gillan and John Cho, on this short-lived ABC cult sitcom from 2014.I got to learn all the ins and outs of network television. After an episode was released, I remember the producers being like: “The numbers, the numbers, what are the numbers? What are the ratings?” I was like, whoa, that’s a whole thing. You did the pilot, then after you get 13 [episodes], then you find out if you get the back nine. Which we didn’t on that show. And — because people ask me all the time — I genuinely don’t know why. Our co-workers don’t know why. I have spent time with Karen Gillan. We don’t know why. I promise you there’s no secret I’m withholding.‘Empire’On the Fox hip-hop soap opera that ended in 2020, Randolph played Poundcake, a onetime fellow prison inmate of Cookie Lyon (Taraji P. Henson).They built a whole soundstage and turned it into a prison, and it was just a two-hander with Taraji and me. It felt like getting back to the fundamentals, where I really got to dig in and play a different type of character. We were almost a whole other show within that show. Even the other actors were like, “How come you get to do all this stuff?” Craig [Brewer], the director of “Dolemite,” was directing me in one of the episodes for “Empire.” I was like, “You’re really cool to work with. Do you have any interesting stuff down the pike?” He said nothing. And then I go to the [“Dolemite”] audition, and I’m like, “Craig!” He was like, [sheepishly] “Oh, I didn’t know.”Randolph with, from left, Craig Robinson, Mike Epps, Tituss Burgess and Eddie Murphy in “Dolemite Is My Name,” a game-changer for her career.François Duhamel/Netflix‘Dolemite Is My Name’This 2019 comedic biopic starred Eddie Murphy as the stand-up and Blaxploitation actor Rudy Ray Moore and Randolph as Moore’s “Dolemite” screen partner Lady Reed.“Dolemite” changed the trajectory of my career. On my end, the work is never changing. My process, my way in — I don’t save myself for the big roles and phone it in for everything else. But the collaborative energy allowed my character to have a space to be seen and heard. Eddie is very meticulous with his work and this was a passion project for him, but he was so generous. Interestingly enough, I had booked it — deal signed and everything — and then they were like, uh, we don’t know. They made me re-audition, which was intense. But the gift in it was, if that didn’t happen, I wouldn’t have felt as confident and forthright. I was able to come to work being like, This is what I have to offer. Before I would have been like, [mousy voice] “What do you think, Mr. Murphy?” Now I was like, I know who she is and what they want from her.‘The Lost City’In this year’s hit comedy, Sandra Bullock starred as a romance novelist caught up in an unexpected jungle adventure and Randolph as her intrepid publisher.That was like my first true work-cation. It was wild. The last scene of the movie, where we were all on the beach, that’s where we lived. If the camera turned back, you would see the hotel we were staying at. The travel bans were just starting to come up from Covid, so for a lot of us, we were also very excited to be working. When you’re literally on the beach, it’s pretty hard to be a jerk. A lot of it had to do with Sandra Bullock and how she just took care of the actors.Sandra never got diva-ish or distanced herself, like, I’m over here and you’re down here. We were all in it together. I was having fun with the hair department. The moment I go into the jungle, I knew my hair was going to get more and more frizzy. It became like a game — each scene would be like, OK, so how frizzy is it?As Detective Williams in “Only Murders in the Building.”Patrick Harbron/Hulu‘Only Murders in the Building’As the resourceful Detective Williams on this Hulu comedy series, Randolph often crosses paths with the amateur sleuths played by Steve Martin, Martin Short and Selena Gomez.That job, one thousand percent, was because of “Dolemite.” Steve Martin told me he saw “Dolemite,” was very impressed — “You held your own,” that whole thing — and that was a straight offer from him and the showrunner. It’s such a wonderful working environment. Lovely hours. You’re out by like 6, 7 o’clock. You go have dinner, a life. And just to be around Steve Martin and Martin Short — they still have this childlike anticipation and excitement, like it was their first project. That blows me away, every single time.Williams is damn good at her job and has a crazy case that she’s trying to crack. She’s aggressive and that has made her successful. Then these three civilians get in the middle of things, trying to solve it for her, alongside her, in spite of her. That makes her job more difficult. But in the process, she learns maybe it is OK to not work by yourself all the time. She’s coming to terms with it and it’s awkward and uncomfortable. That’s where the comedy comes in.‘On the Come Up’Randolph’s character, Aunt Pooh, is the streetwise sister to Jay, an absentee mother played by Lathan, the film’s director, and the mentor to her niece, an aspiring rapper played by Gray.When I found out about that job, I was filming Netflix’s “Rustin,” playing Mahalia Jackson, so I’m giving full Christian, Southern Baptist auntie. To then go to that kind of auntie really intrigued me. But especially in telling Black-specific narratives from Black voices, there always has to be a message. Even with “Empire,” I don’t care if I’m an inmate, but there has to be a positive message that we grow and learn from. You see throughout the movie all the roles that Aunt Pooh was to her: I was her parent, and she was my niece and my best friend, if not a little sister. Which I think keeps their relationship very complex. As tough as Aunt Pooh is, she has this gushing heart for her family and for her niece, which was really quite special.The physical transformation was quite significant, and in a short amount of time. When I got to set, the costume just wasn’t quite hitting it. But the costume designer was really cool — I was like, “Do you trust me? I know who this person is and I can show you better than I can explain it to you.” She was like, “Sure, no problem.” And so, for two days, I went shopping here in L.A. and got all the costumes. Literally everything that I wear, that is what we pulled and bought. The moment I put it on, I was like, oh, OK. When you’re going from movie to movie, a lot of times, actors are wigged. But Sanaa Lathan, who had done a movie all about hair [“Nappily Ever After”], was like, “I think you really should rock your own hair.” I was like, no, no, I don’t want to do it. But the moment that we did the look, I was like, damn it, that’s it. Being that it was my own hair, I had to rock my hair like that on and off the set. The attention you get from that — I couldn’t be more different from it. I’m not method and I don’t usually subscribe to that. But it allowed me to stay in it and understand her. More

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    ‘Beavis and Butt-Head’ Was the ’90s Cartoon That Mattered

    It doesn’t make best-of lists, but the series, then and now, was always much smarter than its characters, and it didn’t try too hard. Sorry, Bart Simpson.When “Beavis and Butt-Head” premiered in spring 1993, “The Simpsons” was finishing up what many now consider not just its greatest season, but perhaps the greatest ever. Beloved by critics and comedy nerds, it was producing classic episodes like “Marge vs. the Monorail” (written by Conan O’Brien), building a reputation that earned it second place on a recent Rolling Stone list of the 100 greatest shows in history. “Beavis and Butt-Head” didn’t make the cut.Yet if you talked to me back then, I would have told you with sniggering teenage confidence that the critically ignored “Beavis and Butt-Head,” a crudely drawn cartoon about two idiots chuckling over music videos, was clearly better. This was no provocation but a considered take — one I don’t regret. Can I explain why Beavis pulling his T-shirt over his blond bouffant and declaring himself the Great Cornholio made me laugh louder than anything Bart Simpson has ever done? No, but it’s true. Sometimes life (and thus comedy) is stupid.Mike Judge, who created the cartoon along with directing cult movies like “Idiocracy” and “Office Space,” is a master of the moronic. It’s why Paramount+ made a major investment in his dormant animated creation, putting old seasons online while rolling out a solid new movie, “Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe,” and an even better rebooted series that captures just enough of the original delirious spirit to make you want to imitate the old catchphrases. (“Are you threatening me?” “Fire! Fire!”)This is part of a broader corporate strategy playing on the nostalgic impulses of those of us raised on a steady diet of MTV and VH1. There’s a reunion of the original two casts of “The Real World” (takeaway: time heals few wounds) and a revival of “Behind the Music.” While the reality and music-documentary genres have grown plentiful enough to make those shows seem unnecessary, “Beavis and Butt-Head” remains singular. Its new version includes the title characters as teenagers, but also a few episodes depicting them in middle age, and they all hit comic notes ‌with moseying cadences you can’t find elsewhere.The film “Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe” is among the new Paramount+ offerings.Paramount+“Beavis and Butt-Head” was always much smarter than its characters, but it resonated with young people because it pulled this off without trying to appeal to their parents. Most ambitious animation, including Pixar movies, tries this trick of telling jokes for one generation layered with references for another. It can be done well, but there’s a price, because kids can tell when you’re talking over their heads. Mike Judge would never smuggle in a satire of Gilbert and Sullivan, as “The Simpsons” did, and his plotting was pointedly indifferent. What mattered to him was capturing the language and attitude of a specific kind of bored, nihilistic boy. As it happens, he also created one of the most memorable acerbic girls of the era, Daria, who started on “Beavis and Butt-Head” before getting her own show.When Butt-Head tittered at a vaguely sexual-sounding word (“He said ‘hanging’”), it was juvenile but familiar. So was the perspective that identified some things that were cool (explosions, lizards, breaking stuff), others that sucked (college, words, alt rock) and nothing in between. When television children were still speaking in zingers, these guys were defiantly inarticulate. In the rare moments that Beavis made a point eloquently, Butt-Head slapped him. But there was a catchy music to their stammering (the way Butt-Head said “hey baby” sticks in the mind), betraying an unmistakable love of the sound of words.Judge’s dialogue was most famous for its steady bass line of grunting laughter. This only seemed stylized. There’s much more laughing in the real world than in our entertainment, most of it not a response to a joke. “Beavis and Butt-Head” was the only show that reflected this.The series belonged to the last decade when sneering at television, and those who watch it, was a respectable prejudice. It’s tempting to say the show came about before the culture war politicized everything, but “Beavis and Butt-Head” was actually a magnet for criticism and moralizing. Controversies about viewers imitating the cartoon were of great interest to journalists but seemed ridiculous to fans. Who would want to be like Beavis, the sycophant forever trying and failing to “score” with girls? Or his alpha pal in braces?Judge satirized liberal teachers and hypocritical authority figures, but his primary source of mockery were the title characters, who spent entire episodes trying and failing to pull off the prank of ringing someone’s doorbell and running way. The heart of the show was them watching and commenting on music videos, a form no serious critic spent much time on. And while it was not the first pop culture product to regularly portray characters analyzing other pop culture products (“Mystery Science Theater 3000” premiered earlier), a big part of the humor of “Beavis and Butt-Head,” particularly for a budding critic like myself, was essentially watching the performance of criticism.The original series satirized authority figures and its own stars alike.MTV, via Everett CollectionThe boys could be withering, as when Butt-Head asked of an Amy Grant video, “Is this a Clearasil commercial?” And they could surprise you, as when they were won over by the Bee Gees. Judge realized years before Jon Stewart did on “The Daily Show” that showing something absurd, then making a face, is all you need for television comedy. Music videos matter less today, but certain themes from the show are only more relevant. In a running joke from the beginning of the series, nothing seemed real or important to these guys unless it was on a screen — even moments you would expect them to find hilarious, like walking in on the principal getting spanked.The reboot, now called “Mike Judge’s Beavis and Butt-Head,” drills down on this point and updates the content they critique to include TikTok videos, YouTube how-tos and A.S.M.R. footage.The new show’s look is a mite slicker and the comic situations are set up and executed better, including Episode 1 in which Beavis and Butt-Head mistake an escape room’s bathroom for the place they need to escape. When Butt-Head stares into a toilet, sticks a finger in the air and says: “Now why would someone put a turd in a toilet?” you know the rightful stupidity has been preserved. It’s also a nice surprise to see the new show understand that there are more laughs to be had from Beavis repeating the word “manslaughter” than from any clever joke.But the writers can’t help but jack up the ambition. Butt-Head takes antidepressants (his new gentle laugh is disconcerting) and imagines an alternative universe where Beavis and Butt-Head are smart. In a religion-themed episode, Beavis sees Jesus Christ in a nacho. Seeing what happens to these delinquents in middle age is perhaps inevitably dark, with Beavis, in pants (the horror), sounding like a MAGA fan, albeit one too clueless to vote. Shoehorning Beavis and Butt-Head into a “12 Angry Men” satire is an amusing premise but feels like something “The Simpsons” would do. There are signs of strain.One of the most telling moments in the original show came when Butt-Head spotted a guy in a video and asked, “Is that that Christian Slater dude?” Beavis tried a pun: “It’s like, uh, Christians? Later, dude.” Butt-Head responded with disdain: “Beavis, quit trying to be funny. It never works.”To Butt-Head, nothing sucks more than trying. On this point, teenage affectation and a certain philosophy of wit overlap. Mike Judge understood that while comedy is hard work, hard work isn’t funny. Butt-Head would probably agree, chuckle, then add, “You said ‘hard.’” More