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      What’s on TV This Week: ‘Grown-ish’ and ‘The Old Man’

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      One show, on Freeform, begins its fifth season while the other, on FX, wraps up its first.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, July 18-24. Details and times are subject to change.Monday2022 MLB HOME RUN DERBY 8 p.m. on ESPN. As part of Major League Baseball’s All-Star Week, which includes its All-Star Game and the M.L.B. draft, it will be hosting its annual Home Run Derby. For the past two years Pete Alonso has been the winner of this event and the $1 million cash prize that goes along with it. With Alonso competing again this year, he is the one to beat.SID AND NANCY (1986) 10 p.m. on TCM. This movie, which centers on the Sex Pistols, Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen, tells a fictionalized tale of the breakdown of the relationship between Sid (Gary Oldman) and Nancy (Chloe Webb). Though the film is somewhat of a love story, the couple’s actual relationship ended in 1978 when Spungen died at age 20 and Vicious died months later of an overdose while awaiting trial for her murder. The New York Times critic Janet Maslin wrote in her 1986 review of the film that “what it does best is to generate odd, unexpected images that epitomize the characters’ affectlessness and rage.”TuesdayFrom left: Nick Jonas, Shakira and Liza Koshy in “Dancing With Myself.”Fernando Decillis/NBCDANCING WITH MYSELF 10 p.m. on NBC. This show featuring viral dancing challenges, a live studio audience and the celebrity judges Nick Jonas, Shakira and Liza Koshy is wrapping up its first season this week. Each episode features 12 contestants who learn short dances, often similar to TikTok dances, and then the live audience members vote for their favorites. “This is a show that is for everyone,” Shakira told The Times for an article in June. “It’s about celebrating the love of dance and personal stories among all people, not just professionals.”Wednesday2022 ESPY AWARDS 8 p.m. on ABC. The ESPY awards are going to be held on Wednesday night in Los Angeles. Steph Curry is stepping into the host role and he is up for three awards. (He has previously won two: Best Male Athlete in 2015 and Best N.B.A. Player in 2021.) The ESPYs announced the nominees in late June and the public voting period ended on Sunday. Other nominees include Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers and Katie Ledecky.GROWN-ISH 10 p.m. on Freeform. “Grown-ish” is coming back for a fifth season this week, with familiar faces, new faces and minus some characters. Season 4 of the show ended with a high school graduation which was a farewell to six characters: Ana, Nomi, Jazz, Luca, Sky and Vivek. Yara Shahidi (Zoey), Trevor Jackson (Aaron) and Diggy Simmons (Doug) are all returning to the show as their characters move from high school to college. Six new cast members — Matthew Sato, Tara Raani, Justine Skye, Amelie Zilber, Ceyair Wright and Slick Woods — are joining the show. This season will have an eight-episode run.ThursdayPrince during his Purple Rain Tour.Nancy Bundt/PBSPRINCE AND THE REVOLUTION: THE PURPLE RAIN TOUR 8:30 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). On March 30, 1985, at the Carrier Dome in Syracuse, N.Y., Prince took the stage. Though it was previously available in 2017, the video recording of the concert has been remastered. The PBS broadcast of the show features performances of “Delirious,” “1999,” “Little Red Corvette,” and an 18-minute version of “Purple Rain.”THE OLD MAN 10 p.m. on FX. “The Old Man,” based on the novel by Thomas Perry of the same name, is wrapping up its first season this week. The show, which stars Jeff Bridges (Dan Chase), John Lithgow (Harold Harper) and Amy Brenneman (Zoe), follows a man who left the C.I.A. and has since been living off the grid. “The seriousness of the show’s approach to Chase, and Bridges’s excellence in the role, are what set ‘The Old Man’ apart,” Mike Hale wrote in his review for the Times, “but it’s also (through Week 4) a well-above-average if unusually pensive and introspective spy thriller.” The completion of this season has been a long time coming — the show first paused production at the start of the pandemic and then again when Bridges began chemotherapy for lymphoma and contracted the coronavirus while undergoing treatment.FridayKILLER’S KISS (1955) 8 p.m. on TCM. After his feature film debut “Fear and Desire” in 1953, Stanley Kubrick followed it up with this film noir. After a budding romance begins to form between Davey Gordon (Jamie Smith) and Gloria Price (Irene Kane), Gordon must search the city for Price after her evil boss kidnaps her. “Using Times Square and even the subway as his backdrop, Mr. Kubrick worked in an uncharacteristically naturalistic style despite the genre material, with mixed but still fascinating results,” the New York Times critic Janet Maslin wrote in her 1994 review of the film.SaturdaySUPERSTAR RACING EXPERIENCE 8 p.m. on CBS. This show, which aired its first season last summer, is finishing up a second season this Saturday. Every Saturday since mid-June, CBS has aired one race of the six-race, short-track racing series. The season began this year at the Five Flags Speedway in Pensacola, Fla., and finishes up Saturday at the Sharon Speedway in Hartford, Ohio. For the season finale, Dave Blaney, alongside his son Ryan Blaney, will represent Sharon Speedway.SundayJACKASS SHARK WEEK 2.0 9 p.m. on Discovery. Shark Week is back this Sunday and it will kick off with a collaboration with the cast of “Jackass,” for a second year in a row. Last year, the cast members performed stunts with the sharks that led to the guest star Sean McInerney, a.k.a. Poopies, getting bitten by a shark and rushed to the hospital. This year, McInerney is heading back into the shark-infested waters, alongside Chris Pontius, Wee Man, Jasper Dolphin, Dark Shark and Zach Holmes to overcome his fear of sharks. More

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      Netflix, Still Reeling, Bets Big on ‘The Gray Man’

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      Anthony and Joe Russo like to go big.In 2018’s “Avengers: Infinity War,” the directing brothers shocked fans when they erased half the global population and allowed their Marvel superheroes to fail. The next year, they raised the stakes with the three-hour “Avengers: Endgame,” a film that made $2.79 billion at the global box office, the second-highest figure ever to that point.And now there is “The Gray Man,” a Netflix film that they wrote, directed and produced. The streaming service gave them close to $200 million to trot around the world and have Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans portray shadow employees of the C.I.A. who are trying to kill each other.“It almost killed us,” Joe Russo said of filming.One action sequence took a month to produce. It involved large guns, a tram car barreling through Prague’s Old Town quarter and Mr. Gosling fighting off an army of assassins while handcuffed to a stone bench. It’s one of those showstoppers that get audiences cheering. The moment cost roughly $40 million to make.“It’s a movie within a movie,” Anthony Russo said.“The Gray Man,” which opened in select theaters this weekend and will be available on Netflix on Friday, is the streaming service’s most expensive film and perhaps its biggest gamble as it tries to create a spy franchise in the mold of James Bond or “Mission Impossible.” Should it work, the Russos have plans for expanding the “Gray Man” universe with additional films and television series, as Disney has done with its Marvel and Star Wars franchises.Ryan Gosling stars in “The Gray Man,” which Netflix will start streaming on Friday.NetflixBut those franchises, while turbocharged by streaming and integral to the ambitions of Disney+, are first and foremost theatrical enterprises. “The Gray Man” is coming out in 450 theaters. That’s a far cry from the 2,000 or so that a typical big-budget release would appear in on its opening weekend. And the film’s nearly simultaneous availability on Netflix ensures that most viewers will watch it on the service. Films that Netflix releases in theaters typically leave them much faster than movies from traditional studios.“If you’re trying to build a franchise, why would you start it on a streaming service?” asked Anthony Palomba, a professor at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business who studies media and entertainment trends, specifically how consumers’ habits change.The film comes at a critical time for Netflix, which will announce its second-quarter earnings on Tuesday. Many in the industry expect the results to be even grimmer than the loss of two million subscribers that the company forecast in April. The company’s first-quarter earnings led to a precipitous drop in its stock price, and it has since laid off hundreds of employees, announced that it will create a less expensive subscription tier featuring commercials and said it plans to crack down on password sharing between friends and family.Despite the current rough patch, Netflix’s deep pockets and hands-off approach to creative decisions made it the only studio that was able to match the Russos’ ambitions and their quest for autonomy.“It would have been a dramatically different film,” Joe Russo said, referring to the possibility of making “The Gray Man” at another studio, like Sony, where it was originally set to be produced. The brothers said going elsewhere would have required them to shave off a third of their budget and downgrade the action of the film.One person with knowledge of the Sony deal said the studio had been willing to pay $70 million to make the movie. Instead, the Russos sold it to Netflix in an agreement that allowed Sony to recoup its development costs and receive a fee for its time producing it. Sony declined to comment.The movie includes nine significant action sequences, including a midair fight involving emergency flares, fire extinguishers and Mr. Gosling’s grappling with a parachuted enemy as both tumble out of a bombed-out plane, Anthony Russo said.“Ambition is expensive,” Joe Russo said. “And it’s risky.”Netflix, even in this humbling moment, can pay more upfront when it isn’t saddled with the costs that accompany much bigger theatrical releases. And for Scott Stuber, Netflix’s head of global film, who greenlighted the “Bourne Identity” franchise when he was at Universal Pictures, movies like “The Gray Man” are what he has been striving to make since he joined the company five years ago.“We haven’t really been in this genre yet,” Mr. Stuber said in an interview. “If you’re going to do it, you want to deal with filmmakers who over the last decade have created some of the biggest franchises and the biggest action movies in our business.”“We’re not crazily reducing our spend, but we’re reducing volume,” Scott Stuber, the head of global film for Netflix, said.Philip Cheung for The New York TimesThe Russos are also producing the sequel to “Extraction” with Chris Hemsworth for Netflix and just announced that Netflix would finance and release their next directing venture, a $200 million sci-fi action film, “The Electric State,” with Millie Bobby Brown and Chris Pratt.Mr. Stuber pointed to the “Extraction” sequel and a spy film starring Gal Gadot, “Heart of Stone,” both set for release next year, as proof that the company is still taking big swings despite its struggles. He did acknowledge, however, that the recent business realities have forced the company to think harder about the projects it selects.“We’re not crazily reducing our spend, but we’re reducing volume,” he said. “We’re trying to be more thoughtful.”He added: “We were a business that was, for a long time, a volume business. And now we’re being very specific about targeting.”Niija Kuykendall was hired from Warner Bros. late last year to oversee a new division that will focus on making midbudget movies, in the range of $40 million to $50 million, which the traditional studios have all but abandoned because their box office potential is less certain. And Mr. Stuber pointed to two upcoming films — “Pain Hustlers,” a $50 million thriller starring Emily Blunt, and an untitled romantic comedy with Nicole Kidman and Zac Efron — as examples of the company’s commitment to films of that size.In recent months, Netflix has also been criticized by some in the industry for how much — or how little — it spends to market individual films. Its marketing budget has essentially stayed the same for three years, despite a significant rise in competition from services like Disney+ and HBO Max. Creators often wonder whether they are going to get the full Netflix marketing muscle or simply a couple of billboards on Sunset Boulevard.For “The Gray Man,” Netflix has sent the Russos and their cast to Berlin, London and Mumbai, India. Other promotional efforts have included national television ads during National Basketball Association games and the Indianapolis 500 and 3-D billboards in disparate locations like Las Vegas and Krakow, Poland.“It’s very large scale,” Joe Russo said of Netflix’s promotion of “The Gray Man.” “We’re doing a world tour to promote it. The actors are going with us. It feels a lot like the work we did to promote the Marvel films.”Netflix released “The Gray Man,” which also stars Chris Evans, in theaters the week before it becomes available for streaming.NetflixFor the smaller-scale theatrical release, Netflix will put “The Gray Man” at some of the handful of theaters it owns — like the Paris Theater in New York and the Bay Theater in Los Angeles — and with chains like Cinemark and Marcus Theaters. And even though Joe Russo calls “The Gray Man” “a forget-to-eat-your-popcorn kind of film,” Netflix will not disclose its box office numbers.The theatrical side of the movie business is a conundrum for Netflix. The studio’s appetite for risk is often greater than that of traditional studios because it doesn’t spend as much money putting films in theaters and doesn’t have to worry about box office numbers. On the flip side, the lack of large-scale theatrical releases has long been a sticking point with filmmakers looking to display their creativity on as big a screen as possible and hoping to build buzz with audiences.And the strength of the box office in recent months for films as different as “Top Gun: Maverick,” “Minions: The Rise of Gru” and “Everything Everywhere All at Once” (which the Russos produced) has prompted many to rethink the influence of movie theaters, which the pandemic severely hobbled.Mr. Stuber acknowledged that a greater theatrical presence was a goal, but one that requires a consistent supply of movies that can connect with a global audience.“That’s what we’re trying to get to: Do we have enough of those films across the board consistently where we can be in that market?” he said.It would also require Netflix to reckon with how long to let its movies play exclusively in theaters before appearing on its service. While the theatrical window for the “The Gray Man” is very short, the Russos hope the film will show that Netflix can be a home for the type of big-budget crowd pleasers the brothers are known for.“Knowing that you have, ultimately, a distribution platform which can pull in 100 million viewers like it did on ‘Extraction,’ but also the potential for a large theatrical window with a commensurate promotional campaign behind it,” Joe Russo said, “you have a very powerful studio.” More

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      L.Q. Jones, Who Played Heavies With a Light Touch, Dies at 94

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      His face was familiar, mostly in westerns, during a career that spanned five decades. He also directed the cult film “A Boy and His Dog.”L.Q. Jones, a hirsute, craggy-faced, swaggering Texan who guilelessly played the antihero in some 60 films and dozens of television series, died on Saturday at his home in the Hollywood Hills area of Los Angeles. He was 94.His death was confirmed by his grandson Erté deGarces.A former stand-up comic, Mr. Jones also tried his hand as a bean, corn and dairy rancher in Nicaragua and once described himself as “but several hours away from three degrees — one in law, one in business, one in journalism” at the University of Texas.But he was lured to the Warner Bros. studios when a college roommate, Fess Parker, the actor who later played both Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett, persuaded him to audition for a minor role in the 1955 film “Battle Cry,” directed by Raoul Walsh and adapted from Leon Uris’s novel.Mr. Parker sent him a copy of the book and a map with directions to the Warner lot. Mr. Jones was cast in two days.Billed as Justus E. McQueen (his birth name), he made his first appearance onscreen as the movie’s narrator introduced a group of all-American Army recruits being shipped by train to boot camp. The camera then panned to a character named L.Q. Jones.“Then, abruptly, the narrator’s voice drops to the scornful tone of a 10th-grade math teacher doling out detention,” Justin Humphreys wrote in “Names You Never Remember, With Faces You Never Forget” (2006).“‘There’s one in every group,’ he tells us, as we see L.Q. mischievously giving one of the other soldiers-to-be a hotfoot,” Mr. Humphrey added. “There could have been no more perfect beginning to L.Q. Jones’s career in the movies. The word that best sums up his overriding screen persona is hellion.”The actor pirated the character’s name for his own subsequent screen credits. From then on, Justus McQueen was L.Q. Jones.Mr. Jones joined the director Sam Peckinpah’s stable of actors, appearing in “Ride the High Country” (1962), “Major Dundee” (1965) and “The Wild Bunch” (1969), in which he and his fellow character actor Strother Martin play rival bounty hunters and, as the studio described their manic competition for the highest body count, “bring their depraved characters to life with a childish energy.”Mr. Jones was also frequently seen in the stampede of westerns that arrived on TV in the 1950s and ’60s, including “Cheyenne,” “Gunsmoke,” “Wagon Train” and “Rawhide.” His films included the 1968 westerns “Hang ’em High,” in which he slipped a noose around Clint Eastwood’s neck, and “Stay Away, Joe,” with Elvis Presley. Among his other screen credits were Martin Scorsese’s “Casino” (1995) and Robert Altman’s “A Prairie Home Companion” (2006), his last film.Don Johnson and friend in “A Boy and His Dog” (1975), which Mr. Jones directed. “I hope he goes on directing,” one reviewer wrote. But he didn’t.LQ/JAFMr. Jones directed, produced and helped write “A Boy and His Dog” (1975), a dark post-apocalyptic comedy starring Don Johnson and Jason Robards, based on the book of the same name by Harlan Ellison.“‘A Boy and His Dog,’ a fantasy about the world after a future holocaust, is, more or less, a beginner’s movie. It has some good ideas and some terrible ones,” Richard Eder wrote in his New York Times review.“This is the second film directed by L.Q. Jones, better known as an actor,” Mr. Eder continued. “It is not really a success, but I hope he goes on directing.”He didn’t. “A Boy and His Dog” acquired a cult following, but Mr. Jones returned to what he did best. He preferred the independence of choosing the villainous roles that appealed to him, and that measured his success, to the prospect of directing someone else’s script and wrangling larger-than-life egos.“Different parts call for different heavies,” Mr. Jones told William R. Horner for his book “Bad at the Bijou” (1982).“I have a certain presence,” he explained. “I play against that presence a lot of times, and that’s of a heavy that is not crazy or deranged — although we play those, of course — but rather someone who is a heavy because he enjoys being a heavy.”“It’s really hard to say what they’re looking for when they pick me,” Mr. Jones said. “A lot of times your heavy is not that well presented in the script. Most times he’s too one-sided. So we look for things to bring to being a heavy: a certain softness; a vulnerability that makes him human; a quiet moment when he’s a screamer most of the time; a look; the way he dresses; the way he walks into a room.”Mr. Jones was born Justus Ellis McQueen Jr. on Aug. 19, 1927, in Beaumont, Texas. His father was a railroad worker; his mother, Jessie Paralee (Stephens) McQueen, died in a car accident when he was a child. He learned to ride a horse when he was 8.After graduating from high school, he served in the Navy, attended Lamar Junior College and Lon Morris College in Texas, and briefly attended the University of Texas at Austin. His marriage to Sue Lewis ended in divorce. In addition to his grandson, his survivors include his sons, Randy McQueen and Steve Marshall, and his daughter, Mindy McQueen.Mr. Jones seemed to measure success less by his bank account (he once described himself as “independently poor”) than by professional gratification. But he had a sense of humor about it.“I’m around somewhere, probably just counting my money,” the message on his telephone answering machine said. “When I get through, if I’m not too tired, I’ll return your call.” More

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      ‘Thor: Love and Thunder’ | Anatomy of a Scene

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      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

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      Watch Chris Hemsworth and Natalie Portman Reunite in ‘Thor: Love and Thunder’

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      The director Taika Waititi narrates a battle sequence that has the two connecting onscreen again.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.A battleground becomes the site of a bittersweet reunion in this scene from “Thor: Love and Thunder.”Thor (Chris Hemsworth) is facing an attack on New Asgard by Gorr the God Butcher (Christian Bale). He has help from Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson), but also from powerful projectiles scattering through the air and taking out Gorr’s creatures. Those projectiles turn out to be pieces of Thor’s hammer, Mjolnir, which he last saw when it was destroyed by Hela (Cate Blanchett) in “Thor: Ragnarok.” The pieces reassemble into a whole, but now Mjolnir is being wielded by a new figure whose costume looks a lot like Thor’s.It turns out to be the Mighty Thor, or Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), and the scene becomes a passionate reunion on multiple fronts.The director Taika Waititi discussed how he sought to play up both the action and the comedy of the moment, while highlighting Thor’s self-doubts.At the beginning of the film, Thor is “going through a lot of insecurity, trying to find himself,” Waititi said.So when the Mighty Thor appears, Waititi said, the moment is challenging for Thor because “he doesn’t know who he is and he’s seeing someone else dressed just like him.”The scene is also a reunion for the stars Hemsworth and Portman, who haven’t been in the franchise together since “Thor: The Dark World” (2013).The final shot of the sequence shows that they get along, quite literally, like a house on fire.Read the “Thor: Love and Thunder” review.Sign up for the Movies Update newsletter and get a roundup of reviews, news, Critics’ Picks and more. More

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      Daisy Edgar-Jones Would Like the Ingénue Phase of Her Career to End Now

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      Daisy Edgar-Jones bravely walked onstage, her face a ghastly white. Under her arm, a human head.“How could you do this to me!” she bellowed at Henry VIII.As the ghost of Anne Boleyn, Edgar-Jones, the hitherto quiet child, now slathered in face paint and clutching a homemade severed body part, found herself suddenly enamored with the spotlight.“That was the first time I remember being aware of the joy of departing from yourself,” Edgar-Jones said.She recounted this pivotal school-play memory on a breezy June afternoon, perched on a cream-colored couch in a cream-colored luxury hotel suite in West Hollywood. The cream-colored dress she’d been wearing for a series of engagements earlier that day had begun to unravel, prompting a change into an oversize black blazer, T-shirt, shorts and chunky G.H. Bass loafers, all of which now stood in cool contrast to the generic palette around her.At 24, the British actress is proving a reliable standout. In a string of major roles over the past two years, she’s morphed from brooding lover (“Normal People”) to cannibal-horror heroine (“Fresh”) to defiant Mormon (“Under the Banner of Heaven”). Her latest venture, the lead in the movie adaptation of “Where the Crawdads Sing,” arrives in theaters on July 15.In the romantic drama based on the best-selling novel by Delia Owens, Edgar-Jones play Kya, an abandoned girl who raised herself in the marshes of North Carolina and eventually lands in court, accused of murder.Clockwise from top left: “Where the Crawdads Sing,” “Normal People,” “Under the Banner of Heaven” and “Fresh.”Clockwise from top left: Michele K. Short/Sony Pictures, via Associated Press; Enda Bowe/Hulu; Michelle Faye/FX; Searchlight PicturesDuring her audition for the part via video, in 2020, Edgar-Jones brought the director Olivia Newman to tears and hooked one of the producers, Reese Witherspoon.“From her first screen test, she felt every moment of abandonment and loneliness that was written on the page,” Witherspoon wrote in an email. “Her work is so honest, it breaks my heart every time I watch it.”The film, shot in Louisiana, required Edgar-Jones to take boating and drawing lessons, and work with a dialect coach to hone a Carolina drawl. Her own accent is a soft-spoken mash-up of vernaculars, thanks to her Northern Irish mother and Scottish father.She was raised in the north London suburb of Muswell Hill, the only child of Wendy, a film and TV editor, and Philip, the head of entertainment at Sky, the British TV broadcaster. A few years after her Boleyn awakening, Edgar-Jones auditioned at age 15 for the National Youth Theater with a monologue from “Romeo and Juliet” — a loving tribute to Claire Danes’s performance in the Baz Luhrmann iteration.A perk of the prestigious program, which counts Helen Mirren and Daniel Day-Lewis among its alumni, was the members-only open casting calls, including one for Sofia Coppola’s planned adaptation of “The Little Mermaid.” While the project fizzled before Edgar-Jones got very far, the casting director introduced her to the talent agent Christopher Farrar, thus giving her representation and the confidence to continue. She considered college but ultimately turned down several universities, instead taking odd jobs as a barista and a waiter while she soldiered on with auditions.“I give Daisy a hell of a lot more credit than I’d give myself at 24,” said her “Fresh” co-star Sebastian Stan. “There’s an awareness to her that I think, at that age, is hard to find.”Chantal Anderson for The New York Times“I had some income and some semblance of hope,” she said. “It was, at first, a gap year, and then it became a gap life.”After a string of smaller roles in British productions, her big break came playing Marianne opposite Paul Mescal’s Connell in “Normal People.” When the series premiered in April 2020, it was the early days of the pandemic, and the Sally Rooney adaptation provided an intimate escape for viewers muddling their way through a shutdown world. Mescal’s chain necklace and Edgar-Jones’s bangs — an impulsive salon decision after a string of failed auditions — became overnight sensations.“I watched Daisy in ‘Normal People’ and was blown away by the subtlety of her performance and the impact of her choices,” Witherspoon wrote, praising “the most utterly honest performance that made me lean in and say, ‘Who is that?’”But as enthralled as viewers were with the actors playing the show’s laconic lovers, the fanfare was kept at a literal distance from Edgar-Jones, locked down in London.“I was being told that things were significant or changing, but I was just in my bedroom,” she said. “I was having this odd experience of being on Zoom the whole time having interviews, and then I’d go on my once-daily walk and someone would stare at me, but I didn’t know if it was just because they hadn’t seen another human being or if they had seen me in a show. It was really strange.”She garnered Critics Choice and Golden Globe nominations while spending the next year and a half isolated on sets in Calgary, Vancouver and New Orleans. Then, this past spring, she went through what she terms a “baptism of fire,” bouncing from her first red-carpet premiere (for “Fresh”) to her first Vanity Fair Oscar party and her first Met Gala in quick succession.“You know how a swan, when they’re on the river, they’re floating along really gracefully but underneath their legs are ——” she mimicked paddling furiously. Her crescendo on the Met steps wearing Oscar de la Renta “was like that,” she said. “Perhaps I looked calm, but I was terrified.”Her de facto societal debut coincided with the release of “Under the Banner of Heaven,” a true-crime drama series in which she played Brenda Lafferty, a Mormon woman who, along with her 15-month-old baby, was brutally murdered by religious extremists in 1984.In flashbacks, we see Brenda perform “The Rose,” pursue a broadcast journalism career and embolden other Mormon wives. But despite the heinous crimes at the show’s center, we never see Brenda’s actual killing or her lifeless visage onscreen. Compare that with, say, “The Staircase,” which took every opportunity to show Toni Collette meeting a graphic end.“That was something I felt was really important,” Edgar-Jones said of the omission. “Why would you want to capture the worst thing that could happen to somebody? Instead, you let their life be what’s defining.”Edgar-Jones is aiming for the career of a Jamie Lee Curtis, a Tilda Swinton or a Frances McDormand, women with an “unconventional idea of what a lead female should be.”Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesShe took the responsibility of playing a real person “incredibly seriously,” her co-star Andrew Garfield said, noting a certain “brilliance and joy” that he sees emanating from Edgar-Jones, onscreen and off.“There’s something unnameable that certain people have,” he said. “And, yeah, it’s talent. But it’s also a charisma and the kind of instant identification that you feel as an audience member where you go, Oh, I know this person, and I love this person. Even without them saying anything, you can feel their soul moving in a certain way and you want to follow whatever journey they’re on.”The two actors became fast friends while shooting in Canada. Off the clock, Edgar-Jones took a particular liking to electric bike and scooter rentals. “She would ride those scooters into the bitter winter months in Calgary until her hair started to freeze,” Garfield said. “She’s all about fun.”That includes routinely importing her own DJ equipment to spin house and disco tracks for her co-stars after work. Edgar-Jones is blissfully passionate about music in general: She often makes playlists for her characters (Kya’s involved a lot of Bat for Lashes and Blood Orange’s “Coastal Grooves” album) and plays guitar. She’s also developed a bond with the singer Phoebe Bridgers, who is in a relationship with Mescal of “Normal People.” Despite having, as Bridgers put it, “every opportunity to have the world’s craziest ego,” Edgar-Jones exudes wide-eyed enthusiasm. She is exceedingly polite — and perhaps a gentle liar — cheerfully telling the waiter who brought her a Pepsi instead of her requested Coke during our talk, “That’s fine. They taste the same.” And although she describes herself as shy, those who know her say she can also be uproariously off-color.In the past, her fair skin and brunette bangs have led some to describe her as the love child of Anne Hathaway and Dakota Johnson. More recently, “Stranger Things” fans have delighted in her perceived resemblance to Eddie Munson, the beloved Season 4 character played by Joseph Quinn. “I do see it,” she said, adding that she and Quinn once met by chance at a “Soul Train”-themed club night in London. “I think I now know what I’m wearing for Halloween.”During off-hours on the “Heaven” shoot, Edgar-Jones rode electric scooters and bonded with her co-star Andrew Garfield, who said: “She would ride those scooters into the bitter winter months in Calgary until her hair started to freeze. She’s all about fun.”Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesBut career-wise, she hopes to emulate Jamie Lee Curtis, Tilda Swinton or Frances McDormand: women who have forged careers in Hollywood built on longevity and who found some of their greatest successes once they’d shed any trace of the ingénue.“These women are able to really transform,” she said, “and also play characters that are funny and complicated and, at times, the unconventional idea of what a lead female should be.”Sebastian Stan, who co-starred with Edgar-Jones in the twisty comedy-thriller “Fresh,” sees echoes of another screen legend in her work.“I give Daisy a hell of a lot more credit than I’d give myself at 24. There’s an awareness to her that, I think at that age, is hard to find,” he said and compared her to a young Meryl Streep. “I’d like to think that as she gets older, her performances are only going to get more and more rich.”Edgar-Jones has a plan to make that happen. Her bucket list includes working with Wes Anderson, Barry Jenkins, the Coen brothers, the Daniels and Greta Gerwig. And she hopes to stretch herself into the unexpected, perhaps by playing “someone really evil,” doing more comedy or directing.“I really want to just learn and learn and learn and make mistakes and learn from them,” she said, “and be free to play and ride the journey wherever it goes.” More

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      ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ Enters the Pantheon of Conservative Fan Fiction

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      The American right has embraced Tom Cruise’s latest blockbuster, hailing the movie as a patriotic gesture produced in defiance of “woke” liberal elites and the Chinese Communist Party.Today’s newsletter is a guest dispatch from the Culture desk of The New York Times. Marc Tracy, who regularly covers the intersection of culture and politics, writes about Tom Cruise’s latest blockbuster — and the conservatives who are singing its praises.“Top Gun: Maverick,” the inescapable Tom Cruise blockbuster sequel, has been hailed as a cinematic throwback.Many critics have interpreted its story of an increasingly obsolete pilot being called back to teach today’s young people a thing or two for one last mission as a not-so-subtle allegory for the film itself. The movie uses relatively few computer-generated effects, stars the now-60-year-old Cruise and still managed to rake in more than $1 billion globally.But amid praise from filmgoers who enjoyed the realistic dogfights, filmed with real planes that the real actors rode in, another community has embraced the movie for representing its values and vindicating its outlook: conservatives.A sampling:Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida: “Any movie that’s not, like, overwhelmingly woke can actually appeal to normal people.” (DeSantis had not seen the movie at the time; he later saw it with his wife for her birthday, he said.)The Fox News host Jesse Watters: “We’ve been longing to see a movie that’s unapologetically American, and we finally got it.”Tomi Lahren, of the conservative sports outlet OutKick and Fox: “The undeniable success of Top Gun is proof Americans are sick of WOKE and just want to watch good movies without a grandstanding social justice message!!”The right vs. HollywoodWhat’s going on here?There is a long tradition in which conservatives seize upon a cultural artifact produced by the entertainment industry, which is generally seen as left-leaning, and claim it for themselves.“This goes back years,” said Doug Heye, a Republican consultant, “and included when we had a Hollywood actor or a reality TV star for president. They feel besieged by the culture. That feeling has only increased, and it’s increased because there’s even more substance behind it today.”In a recent essay that discussed movies including “Top Gun: Maverick,” A.O. Scott, The Times’s co-chief film critic, argued that one notable aspect of the conservative movement is its antagonism toward the entertainment industry.“The modern right,” Scott wrote, “defines itself against the cultural elites who supposedly cluster on the coasts and conspire to impose their values on an unsuspecting public. In this account, Hollywood acts in functional cahoots with academia and the news media.”And conservative activists’ enmity toward Hollywood and other cultural tastemakers has perhaps never been more conspicuous.DeSantis, whose ability to channel the movement might outstrip any other politician’s (including, arguably, Donald Trump’s), made waves this spring by revoking special tax and self-governing privileges that Disney had enjoyed for its enormous theme park in his state. The governor and the company had clashed over a newly passed state law that bars instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity in some grades.‘Top Gun’: The Return of MaverickTom Cruise takes to the air once more in “Top Gun: Maverick,” the long-awaited sequel to a much-loved ’80s action blockbuster.A Triumphant Return: At a time when superheroes dominate the box office, the film industry betis betting on the daredevil actor to bring grown-ups back to theaters. It paid off.The Secret Ingredient: Cruise’s potent mix of athleticism and charisma goes a long way to explain why “Top Gun: Maverick” is a hit.Review: The central question posed by the movie has less to do with the need for combat pilots in the age of drones than with the relevance of movie stars, our critic writes.Your Burning Questions: How similar is it to the original? Who’s back? Who’s absent? We have answers.So when “Top Gun: Maverick” entered this culture war with its uncomplicated, feel-good patriotism — it is, among other things, a movie about how awesome U.S. Navy pilots can be, particularly when fighting America’s enemies — conservatives’ sense of alignment arrived naturally.“When something comes out,” Heye said, “and it’s another version of ‘Rocky IV’” — the 1985 movie in which Sylvester Stallone’s working-class boxer enters the ring with a Soviet fighter named Ivan Drago — “that becomes something that, for the activist part of the base that is looking for something that isn’t critical of their values, they’re going to grab onto.”This is not to say that Maverick, Hangman and the other pilots in the new “Top Gun” film face off against today’s equivalent of the Soviet Union, whatever country that might be. As in the first “Top Gun,” which came out in 1986, the enemy is not explicitly identified.Nor are conservative politicians and media personalities claiming that the movie makes a compelling case for policies like tax cuts or gun rights. Their argument has less to do with what the film is than what it is not; less to do with its specific plot or characters than with its vibe.“It’s political in being apolitical,” said Christian Toto, a conservative film critic and the proprietor of the website Hollywood in Toto.He contrasted “Top Gun: Maverick” with some films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the gender-swapped “Ghostbusters” reboot. Their efforts at inclusivity — diverse casting, same-sex relationships — could come across, he said, as ham-handed, particularly to conservative audiences whose antennae are already on alert for filmmakers they see as trying to sneak some spinach in with the cinematic candy.The conservative allergy to such moviemaking decisions flares up, Toto said, “when the audience gets a sense it’s being put in there awkwardly or there’s a message being sent as opposed to organically woven into the story.”That the pilots training for the daring raid in “Top Gun: Maverick” appear to come from a variety of backgrounds seems not like liberal messaging but realistic detail, Toto said.“The cast is moderately diverse; there are women as pilots,” he said. “But they don’t comment on it; they don’t base the script around it. It’s assumed these are just very talented people willing to risk their lives for the mission.”Cruise at the new movie’s global premiere in San Diego. The film has made more money in the United States and Canada than in the rest of the world.Vivien Killilea/Getty Images Paramount PicturesAn All-American hitBox-office information does not contradict conservatives’ case. About 55 percent of the opening weekend sales, an unusually high proportion, came from ticket-buyers over 35, according to Paramount.And — atypically for big box-office hits in this era — “Top Gun: Maverick” has made more money in the United States and Canada than in the rest of the world, according to Box Office Mojo.Which is itself a point of pride for some of the film’s conservative backers: “‘Top Gun: Maverick’ Reaches $1 Billion Worldwide — Without China,” read a Breitbart headline last month. (The film was not released in China; earlier, a Chinese company withdrew its share of financing for the film because of its pro-American message, according to a Wall Street Journal report.)Ben Shapiro, a popular conservative pundit who co-founded the website The Daily Wire, had predicted in his rave review that the movie would do better domestically than abroad. “The film itself is pretty red, white and blue,” he said. “That’s just assumed as the backdrop. Which is the way movies used to be.”Stanley Rosen, a professor of political science at the University of Southern California who studies China’s film industry, said in an interview that “Top Gun: Maverick” represented an emerging idea that “Hollywood doesn’t need China the way it used to.”The film’s success could signal that the days of Hollywood studios altering story lines to make their releases more palatable to Chinese censors and audiences — a trend documented in a recent book, “Red Carpet” by Erich Schwartzel — might slowly be on their way out.And, Rosen added, whatever the film’s actual political message, the argument that it has one at all might have its own uses.“The controversy over wokeness or whether this is Reagan-era nostalgia,” he said, is “very good for the box office.”What to readDepartment of Never Tweet: The Securities and Exchange Commission is broadening its inquiry into Elon Musk’s disclosures about Twitter, Kate Conger reports. The agency questioned whether a tweet Musk sent in May about the acquisition of Twitter should have been disclosed to the agency and investors.Natalia Winkelman reviews “Gabby Giffords Won’t Back Down,” a new documentary about the former Democratic congresswoman from Arizona who was shot in the head at a political event in 2011.Follow the latest news from President Biden’s trip to Israel and Saudi Arabia.HOW THEY RUNVice President Kamala Harris and Gov. Gavin Newsom of California are longtime allies and possible future in-state rivals.Lucy Nicholson/ReutersTable for twoGavin Newsom, the governor of California, is sitting down for lunch on Friday in Washington with Vice President Kamala Harris, two of his aides have confirmed.For Newsom, the trip, officially made so he could accept an award and discuss policy issues with lawmakers and Biden administration officials, has doubled as something of a cleanup tour.On Thursday, Newsom said clearly that he supported President Biden to be the Democratic Party’s nominee in 2024, amid a swirl of reporting by my Times colleagues and others suggesting that liberal voters are not especially enthused about another term for the 79-year-old commander in chief.News reports, including in this humble newsletter, have noted that Newsom’s rise as a leader in the Democratic Party could put him in competition with Harris, a longtime ally and possible future in-state opponent, in a hypothetical Biden-free presidential primary.Those stories have gotten the attention of the vice president’s office, while amusing the governor’s staff back home in California. Both camps insist there’s no rivalry between the two leaders.Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Newsom volunteered that Harris had been “wonderful” as vice president and said they were just going to “check in, as we do constantly.” He alluded, however, to unspecified “constraints” Harris had faced in office and said it was “a difficult time for all of us in public life.”Asked what was on the lunch menu, a Newsom aide joked in a text: “Arsenic and arm wrestling. The usual.”Thanks for reading. — BlakeIs there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More

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      Monty Norman, Who Wrote 007’s Memorable Theme, Dies at 94

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      He composed the instantly recognizable melody for the first James Bond film, “Dr. No.” It has accompanied the agent on his adventures ever since.Monty Norman, who in the early 1960s reached into his back catalog, pulled out a song about a sneeze and transformed it into one of the most recognizable bits of music in movie history, the “James Bond Theme,” died on Monday in Slough, near London. He was 94.His death, in a hospital, was announced by his family on his website.Mr. Norman began his career as a singer, but by the late 1950s he was making a name for himself writing for the musical theater, contributing to “Expresso Bongo,” “Irma la Douce” and other stage shows. A 1961 show for which he wrote the music, “Belle, or the Ballad of Dr. Crippen,” had among its producers Albert Broccoli, who had a long list of film producing credits.As Mr. Norman told the story, Mr. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman had acquired the film rights to Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels at about the same time. Mr. Broccoli asked if he’d like to write the score for the first of the films, “Dr. No.” He wasn’t particularly familiar with the books, he said, and was lukewarm about the idea — until Mr. Saltzman threw in an incentive: a free trip to Jamaica, where the movie was being shot, for him and his family.“That was the clincher for me,” Mr. Norman told the BBC’s “The One Show” in 2012. “I don’t know whether the James Bond film is going to be a flop or anything, but at least we’d have a sun, sea and sand holiday.”He was struggling to come up with the theme, he said, until he remembered a song called “Bad Sign, Good Sign,” from an unproduced musical version of the V.S. Naipaul novel “A House for Mr. Biswas” on which he and a frequent collaborator, Julian More, had worked.“I went to my bottom drawer, found this number that I’d always liked, and played it to myself,” he said. The original (which opened with the line “I was born with this unlucky sneeze”) had an Asian inflection and relied heavily on a sitar, but Mr. Norman “split the notes,” as he put it, to provide a more staccato feel for what became the theme song’s famous guitar riff.“And the moment I did ‘dum diddy dum dum dum,’ I thought, ‘My God, that’s it,’” he said. “His sexiness, his mystery, his ruthlessness — it’s all there in a few notes.”“Dr. No” premiered on Oct. 5, 1962, in London. Another piece of music was vying for public attention then — that same day the Beatles released their first single, “Love Me Do” — but the Bond theme caught the public imagination too. Luke Jones, a music producer and host of the podcast “Where is MY Hit Single?,” said the theme, which regularly turned up in various ways in subsequent Bond movies, was just right for “Dr. No” and for the franchise.“The Bond theme encapsulates many key aspects of the 007 brand in a very short space of time,” Mr. Jones said by email. “That iconic guitar riff perfectly accompanies footage of Bond doing just about anything.”“It’s such a simple melody,” he added, “that children can and have been singing it to each other in the playground for decades. Then, finally, an outrageously jazzy swing-era brass section that offers all the glamour of a Las Vegas casino.”A version of the theme recorded by the John Barry Seven was released as a single and made the pop charts in England. But there was controversy ahead.Mr. Barry, then early in what would be a long career of creating music for the movies, had orchestrated Mr. Norman’s theme, but in later years he was sometimes credited with writing it, and he didn’t discourage that notion.Mr. Norman in 2001. “His sexiness, his mystery, his ruthlessness — it’s all there in a few notes,” Mr. Norman said of his 007 theme.Kirsty Wigglesworth/Press Association, via Associated PressMr. Norman sued The Sunday Times of London over a 1997 article that gave Mr. Barry credit and played down his own contributions. The article, he told a jury when the case went to trial in 2001, “rubbished my whole career.” The jury found in his favor and awarded him 30,000 pounds. Mr. Barry died in 2011.Monty Noserovitch was born on April 4, 1928, in London to Abraham and Ann (Berlyn) Noserovitch. His father was a cabinet maker, and his mother sewed girls’ dresses.When he was 16 his mother bought him a guitar, and he once studied the instrument with Bert Weedon, whose manual “Play in a Day” would influence a later generation of rock guitarists. According to a biography on Mr. Norman’s website, Mr. Weedon once gave him a backhanded compliment by telling him, “As a guitarist, you’ll make a great singer.”By the early 1950s, Mr. Norman was singing with the big bands of Stanley Black and others, as well as appearing on radio and onstage in variety shows. Later in the decade he started writing songs, and that led to his work in musical theater. He was one of the collaborators on “Expresso Bongo,” a satirical look at the music business, staged in 1958 in England with Paul Scofield leading the cast.He, Mr. More and David Heneker collaborated on an English-language version of a long-running French stage show, “Irma la Douce,” which made Broadway in 1960 under the direction of Peter Brook, who died this month. The show was nominated for seven Tony Awards, including best musical.Mr. Norman’s lone other Broadway venture was less successful. It was a musical parody he wrote with Mr. More called “The Moony Shapiro Songbook,” and the Broadway cast included Jeff Goldblum and Judy Kaye. It opened on May 3, 1981, and closed the same day.Mr. Norman’s marriage to the actress Diana Coupland ended in divorce. He is survived by his wife, Rina (Caesari) Norman, whom he married in 2000; a daughter from his first marriage, Shoshana Kitchen; two stepdaughters, Clea Griffin and Livia Griffiths; and seven grandchildren. More