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      Library of Congress Acquires Neil Simon Papers

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      The collection of approximately 7,700 items, donated by Simon’s widow, includes dozens of unfinished shows, including a screenplay written for Bette Midler and Whoopi Goldberg.As Mark Eden Horowitz, a senior music specialist at the Library of Congress, was digging through the playwright Neil Simon’s manuscripts and papers earlier this year, he made a surprising discovery.Simon, the most commercially successful American playwright of the 20th century, could also draw. Like, really draw.“They’re almost professional,” Horowitz said in a recent phone conversation of some of the pen-and-ink drawings and paintings he found tucked among the scripts. “There are two watercolors in particular that are quite beautiful landscapes.”More than a dozen notepads filled with drawings, cartoons and caricatures by Simon, who died in 2018, was just one of the surprising discoveries Horowitz made in the trove of approximately 7,700 of the playwright’s manuscripts and papers (and even eyeglasses), a collection that the library on Monday announced had been donated by Simon’s widow, the actress Elaine Joyce.An event on Monday at the library in Washington, which will stream live on its YouTube channel at 7 p.m., will include a conversation with the actors Matthew Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker, who are starring in the Broadway revival of Simon’s 1968 comedy “Plaza Suite,” as well as remarks by Joyce.The collection includes hundreds of scripts, notes and outlines for Simon’s plays, including handwritten first drafts and multiple drafts of typescripts — often annotated — as well as handwritten letters to luminaries like August Wilson. There are more than a dozen scripts (sometimes many more) for some of his most celebrated shows, including “Brighton Beach Memoirs,” “The Odd Couple” and “Lost in Yonkers,” Simon’s dysfunctional-family comedy that won a Tony Award as well as the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1991.Sometimes, Horowitz said, it took some detective work to identify a famous play, which existed in an early version under an alternate title. (An early script for “Lost in Yonkers” has the title “Louie the Gangster,” and “Brighton Beach Memoirs” was once “The War of the Rosens.”)“Sometimes you’re not sure when you open the title and then you realize, ‘Oh, this became that,’” he said.The collection includes materials from the 25 screenplays Simon wrote, including “The Prisoner of Second Avenue,” “The Heartbreak Kid” and “The Goodbye Girl,” for which he won a Golden Globe in 1978. There are also several scripts for shows never completed or produced, such as one titled “The Merry Widows,” written for Bette Midler and Whoopi Goldberg, and a musical that uses the songs of George and Ira Gershwin, called “A Foggy Day.”“Every time you open a carton, it’s like, ‘Oh my God, what’s going to be in here?’” Horowitz said.Beyond dozens of unknown works in progress — some comprise just a few scenes, while others have multiple drafts — the archive also includes Simon’s Pulitzer Prize, his special Tony Award and at least two Golden Globes, as well as photographs, programs, original posters and even baseballs signed by several Hall of Famers, among them Tommy Lasorda, Eddie Murray and Tony Gwynn. (Simon was a noted baseball fan.)Dozens of spiral notebooks are also packed not just with revisions and “miscellaneous attempts at plays,” as Simon wrote in one, but drafts of speeches and tributes Simon delivered. In one case, a script for a show called “202 and 204” is interrupted by handwritten letters to cast members of “Lost in Yonkers” for opening night — plus the set designer, lighting designer, even the casting director, Horowitz said.Horowitz said that, once the library finishes combing through the items and putting scripts in alphabetical order, it plans to develop a digital tool similar to the ones they have to search other collections of work by theater professionals like Simon’s close friends Bob Fosse and Gwen Verdon, with whom he collaborated on the musical “Sweet Charity.”He also hopes that not just researchers, but also producers, might dive into the archives — and that some of the unproduced works might be staged, and the unfinished ones perhaps completed.“It’s so frustrating,” he said, laughing. “I desperately want to know how they end.” More

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      What’s on TV This Week: ‘We Own This City’ and the N.F.L. Draft

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      “We Own This City,” from an executive producer of “The Wire,” premieres on HBO, and N.F.L. teams select new players in a multiday draft.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, April 25-May 1. Details and times are subject to change.Monday100 DAY DREAM HOME 8 p.m. on HGTV. This reality design show hosted by the husband-and-wife team of Brian Kleinschmidt, a developer, and Mika Kleinschmidt, a real estate agent, where they help clients create their dream homes in 100 days or less, airs its Season 3 finale.WE OWN THIS CITY 9 p.m. on HBO. Executive produced by George Pelecanos (“The Deuce”) and David Simon (“The Wire”), this limited series based on a book by the Baltimore Sun reporter Justin Fenton has its premiere. The series focuses on the Baltimore Police Department’s Gun Trace Task Force and the corruption within the department. Simon, who created “The Wire,” suggested in a recent interview that “We Own This City” serves as a sort of coda to that beloved series, which aired on HBO from 2002 to 2008.TuesdayRISE OF THE NAZIS 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). This documentary examining Hitler and the Nazis’ rise to power in Germany during the 1930s closes its second season. Historians and experts attempt to get into the minds of those who plotted with and helped Hitler as he gained control.Sterling K. Brown in a scene from “This Is Us.”NBC, via Associated PressTHIS IS US 9 p.m. on NBC. This series follows the lives of the siblings Kevin, Kate and Randall (known as the Big Three), as well as their parents, Jack and Rebecca Pearson. This episode focuses on the night before Kate’s wedding, and Kevin’s love life takes an unexpected turn.WednesdaySharon Tate, center, with Barbara Parkins, left, and Patty Duke in “Valley of the Dolls.”20th Century Fox, via Getty ImagesVALLEY OF THE DOLLS (1967) 9:45 p.m. on TCM. Based on the novel by Jacqueline Susann, this movie follows three women who attempt to make their way in the entertainment business. When the film was released, Bosley Crowther wrote in his review for the The New York Times that it was “an unbelievably hackneyed and mawkish mish-mash of backstage plots.” However, the film later proved to have staying power. In 2016, as the book had its 50th anniversary, the film was described as a cult favorite, noting that the stars’ “big-haired, Pucci-swathed looks and melodramatic lines are frequently invoked by entertainment and design professionals to this day.”MOONSHINERS: MASTER DISTILLER 9 p.m. on Discovery. Past winners of the title of “master distiller” return for a champions tournament, competing to make the best spirits out of unusual raw ingredients.ThursdayOCEAN’S TWELVE (2004) 8 p.m. on AMC. After pulling off a major Las Vegas casino heist in “Ocean’s Eleven,” Daniel Ocean (George Clooney) recruits one more team member so he can pull off a series of European heists. The scheme is an effort to pay off the debt owed to Terry Benedict (Andy Garcia), the man the original team of 11 stole from.2022 N.F.L. DRAFT, ROUND 1: 8 p.m. ABC, ESPN, NFL Network (check local listings). Teams from the National Football League make their selections for the upcoming season from Las Vegas, starting with the Jacksonville Jaguars. Rounds 2 and 3 air Friday at 7 p.m. and Rounds 4 through 7 are on Saturday at noon.FridayDINERS, DRIVE-INS & DIVES 9 p.m. on Food Network. Guy Fieri revisits some of the most memorable restaurants and eateries from previous shows. He checks in to see what new recipes they are cooking up, as well as any other changes they’ve made since they were first featured on the show.GREAT PERFORMANCES: NOW HEAR THIS: 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). This edition of “Great Performances,” one of the longest-running performing-arts anthologies on television, features the show’s host, the violinist and conductor Scott Yoo, visiting Chicago and San Francisco. Yoo examines how American composers are inspired by their cultural heritage through two composers: the Brazilian-born Sérgio Assad and the Indian American Reena Esmail.SaturdayHENRY V (1944) 3 p.m. on TCM. This Shakespeare play is set during the Hundred Years’ War, around the Battle of Agincourt in 1415. After he becomes king, Henry V considers making a claim to rule France as well as England. The play is partially presented on a stage as it would have appeared at the Globe Theater in 1603.PAWN STARS: 9 p.m. on History. Multiple generations of the Harrison family run a pawnshop on the outskirts of Las Vegas. In this episode, customers bring in items to be assessed including 1912 Yale baseball uniforms and a ukulele from 1919.SundayMichael V. Gazzo as Frank Pentangeli in “The Godfather Part II.”Paramount PicturesTHE GODFATHER: PART II (1974) 7:45 p.m. on Paramount Network. The sequel to “The Godfather” follows the rise of Vito Corleone (Robert De Niro) to the top of his Mafia family and the fall from grace of his son Michael (Al Pacino) after taking over for his father. Vincent Canby wrote in his New York Times review when the movie was first released that it was a “Frankenstein’s monster stitched together from leftover parts.” When reflecting on the trilogy 50 years after the release of the first film, Michael Wilson wrote about how art imitated Mafia life and vice versa: “Generations of mobsters have looked to ‘The Godfather’ for inspiration, validation and as a playbook for how to speak and act and dress.”AMERICAN IDOL (DISNEY NIGHT) 8 p.m. on ABC. The music competition series features songs from Disney movie soundtracks.STANLEY TUCCI: SEARCHING FOR ITALY 9 p.m. on CNN. In this series’ Season 2 premiere, Stanley Tucci starts off in Venice to continue his exploration of Italy’s culture and history through its food. More

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      In ‘The Duke,’ Jim Broadbent Puts an Eccentric at the Center

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      The British actor has spent six decades seeking out carefully observed, often quirky characters. In his latest film, he’s also the lead.LONDON — In Room 45 of the National Gallery here, Jim Broadbent surveyed Francisco de Goya’s portrait of the Duke of Wellington. It was not his first encounter with the painting. But, “I haven’t seen him next to Napoleon before,” he said, nodding toward Vernet’s study of the French emperor hanging nearby.Broadbent’s latest film, “The Duke,” is based on the real-life theft of the portrait in 1961, and comes to theaters on Friday. The actor, 72, plays Kempton Bunton, who held the painting ransom in protest against what he saw as unfair taxes on ordinary people.If any of the hordes of tourists visiting the museum over the Easter holiday knew they were standing a few feet away from one of Britain’s great character actors, they didn’t let on. To many young people, Broadbent is Professor Slughorn, the affable Hogwarts potions master in the Harry Potter films. Their parents may have seen him portray Harold Zidler, the mustachioed owner of the Moulin Rouge, or Bridget Jones’s father.Broadbent, center, as Harold Zidler in “Moulin Rouge!”20th Century Fox, via Everett CollectionProfessor Slughorn (Broadbent) and Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) in “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.”Jaap Buitendijk/Warner Bros.The story of Bunton, a mischievous taxi driver, failed playwright and possible cat burglar from Newcastle-upon-Tyne, has given Broadbent another eccentric character. “You couldn’t sell it as a piece of fiction,” Broadbent said earlier, in the gallery’s restaurant. “Stealing a picture from the National Gallery? It’s too far-fetched.”On the 50th anniversary of the heist, Bunton’s grandson, Christopher, 45, had the idea to tell his family’s story. Inspired after reading his grandfather’s plays, he drafted a script, he said in a recent video interview, and emailed 20 British production companies. He received six replies, including one from the producer Nicky Bentham. Richard Bean and Clive Coleman reshaped the script and Roger Michell (“Notting Hill”) signed on to direct, followed by Broadbent as the lead.“I don’t remember reading a script quite like it,” said Broadbent, remarking on its old-fashioned quality. With a whimsical sense of humor softening its satirical bite, it reminded him of the films produced by London’s Ealing Studios in the 1950s, like “The Lavender Hill Mob” or “The Ladykillers.” When Bunton is tried in court, he addresses the jury as though they were the audience at a stand-up show.Broadbent has been honing his own comic instincts since childhood. He grew up in Lincolnshire to artist parents, and attended a Quaker school, where he would impersonate his teachers with studied accuracy, realizing that if he got it right, people would really laugh. “I think that’s what drew me into character acting,” he said. The impressions weren’t just about mimicry, “It was actually observing and nailing essential characteristics.”His alert blue eyes and gawky 6-foot-1 frame lend themselves well to physical comedy, though his looks, he said, have facilitated a versatile career. “I was never going to be the regular sort of good-looking, handsome chap,” he said. “From the word go, since I wasn’t easily castable in any particular thing, I knew I had to cast my net very wide.”When he graduated from drama school at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art in 1972, he wrote to 100 theater companies looking for work. He soon became a fixture on London’s repertory scene.When the filmmaker and theater director Mike Leigh met Broadbent over drinks in 1974, he found the actor “very, very cautious,” Leigh said in a recent phone interview. Leigh is known for his improvisational style of working, which Broadbent “wasn’t sure whether he could do,” Leigh said.Broadbent describes himself as “resistant to authority” but said he “never wanted, particularly, that resistance to define who I am.” Alex Ingram for The New York TimesBut the director saw an emotional intelligence, and cast Broadbent as a “very gentle, Northern, working-class guy” in “Ecstasy,” at the Hampstead Theater. Impressed by Broadbent’s rare sensitivity, and anticipating his range, Leigh cast him again in his next production, “Goose-Pimples,” where the actor “played the exact opposite, a really nasty fascist character.” In total, the pair have worked together seven times.In the 1980s, Broadbent was rarely offstage — except when he was on TV. Helen Mirren, who plays Dorothy, Bunton’s wife in “The Duke,” said in an email that it was impossible to remember when she first encountered her co-star’s work, “as he has been a part of our theater and screen landscape for so long, but it was probably in ‘Not The Nine O’Clock News’ and ‘Blackadder,’ two iconic comedy TV programs in Britain.”Soon, Broadbent was craving new challenges, and a change of pace. “I felt very easy onstage, and hadn’t felt that on the bits of filming I’d been doing, and was so self-conscious in front of a lens being put up your nose,” he said, and so moved more toward films.Another collaboration with Leigh, the feature “Topsy-Turvy,” won him a prize at the 1999 Venice Film Festival, and was a hit in the United States. “That was the beginning of that: You become awardable,” Broadbent said. The awards led to work with Hollywood directors like Baz Luhrmann and Martin Scorsese.“There’s a whole bunch around that time, like ‘Moulin Rouge!’ — it’s completely out of my comfort zone, I certainly wouldn’t have cast myself in that role at all,” Broadbent said, “you know, singing and dancing.” But he won a BAFTA for his performance. And then in 2002 he won an Oscar for playing the literary critic John Bayley in “Iris,” a role “I tried to persuade Richard Eyre that I wasn’t right for,” Broadbent said. Bayley, he thought, was “a sort of cerebral academic, which is not me at all.”This Hollywood period gave Broadbent the freedom to be more selective when choosing his later projects. He described himself as “quite famously picky” and in 2002 politely declined to be named an officer of the Order of the British Empire, an honor awarded by the Queen. In person, he is modest and self-effacing — not one to draw attention to himself.When he isn’t acting in work that appeals to him, Broadbent turns to carving life-size puppets from wood to “find my creative outlet,” he said. “It’s another way of just inventing characters,” and the sculptures have a gnarled quality with haunted expressions.In “The Duke,” Broadbent (center) plays the mischievous taxi driver, failed playwright and possible cat burglar Kempton Bunton.Nick Wall/Sony Pictures ClassicsThe appeal of “The Duke” came partly from being directed by Michell again (the pair worked together on the 2013 film “Le Week-End”). Bunton’s story turned out to be Michell’s final project, and he died in September last year. “Roger had it all,” Broadbent said. “He was very sensitive to people, and their vulnerabilities and strengths.”Broadbent was also drawn to Bunton’s complexity. “He was a failed playwright, an activist, fairly unemployable for any extended period,” Broadbent said. According to Christopher Bunton, the actor made his grandfather “slightly more lovable” than he was in real life.Though Broadbent’s parents were conscientious objectors to World War II, the actor said he personally prefers to “keep a low profile.” He described himself as “resistant to authority” but said he “never wanted, particularly, that resistance to define who I am.” Bunton, by contrast, campaigned for what he believed in, like an exemption for retirees from Britain’s annual TV license fee. “He was prepared to stand up, and make his presence felt, and complain in a way that I have never done,” the actor said.Broadbent, Leigh said, “is a consummate character actor. He doesn’t play himself.” More

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      For Panah Panahi, Being the Son of an Iranian Auteur Wasn’t Entirely Helpful

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      He was long paralyzed by the prospect of being compared with Jafar Panahi. But it was his sister who spurred the young director to make his acclaimed new film.The Iranian director Panah Panahi is the son of the embattled auteur Jafar Panahi, who since 2010 has been banned by the Islamic theocracy from making films. But for the younger filmmaker, it was the heartache of being away from his only sibling — along with the collective disillusionment of his compatriots — that informed his debut film.The wondrously bittersweet “Hit the Road” tracks a family’s ordeal helping their elder son clandestinely leave Iran. Amid the underlying sorrow of the impending separation, as well as the country’s economic and social hardships, humor offers comfort, often thanks to the adorably impish younger son, played by an extraordinary child actor, Rayan Sarlak.Speaking via an interpreter on a video call from his home in Tehran, Panahi, 38, discussed his initial apprehension about following his acclaimed father, the change in their communication since the project, and the influence of the master filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami. Here are edited experts from the conversation.Hassan Madjooni, left, and Amin Simiar as father and son in Panahi’s “Hit the Road.”Kino LorberLike the young man in “Hit the Road,” have you considered leaving Iran?This is the general situation of all Iranians, and especially Iranian youth. We are stuck in complete despair. No matter how hard you try to be positive and go on fighting, we feel completely trapped. The only possible option is this dream, sometimes reality, of fleeing. Many of my friends have come to this conclusion. I have considered it, of course. The problem is that since cinema is my passion and only way of expression, I cannot make films elsewhere. I can only make films about people that I know intimately, people whose relationships I know.Being the son of Jafar Panahi, did you have any hesitation about becoming a filmmaker?This was my greatest preoccupation. It completely paralyzed me for years. I was worried about being compared to my father. It took a long time for me to overcome this block. But when you have struggles like this, you reach a point when either you withdraw, or you just decide to finally take the plunge. It was really thanks to my girlfriend that I was finally able to be more lighthearted about it, to see that the stakes were not that tragic. That’s how this film was born, finally.Did you ask your father for any feedback when writing the screenplay?For years I thought that becoming a filmmaker would be entering his world, and I wanted to resist mixing our identities as filmmakers, so I would never even share any film ideas with him. We don’t have the kind of relationship in which we talk about our views on things. We only talk about films. But once the script was completed and I was showing it to people and asking for advice, I realized: “Why don’t I meet with my father, if all these young filmmakers are coming to him for advice and he’s always very generous? Why am I depriving myself of his help?” A whole new side of our relationship opened thanks to this film.Rayan Sarlak as the younger son in “Hit the Road.”Kino LorberSounds like he’s a bit like the father in “Hit the Road,” who is darkly funny but has trouble expressing affection.Exactly. He recognized our relationship and the way we finally connected to each other.For years, the Iranian government has persecuted your father. How has this situation impacted your work?Once he was arrested, we became different people. Even if it was just the four of us at home, if we wanted to say something that was a bit critical about the regime, we would start whispering, thinking they might be listening to us. This paranoia really became part of our lives. The process of writing the script acted as a therapy session for me. For instance, the sequence in which they are driving and suddenly the mother thinks they are being followed was something I had written spontaneously without knowing why. But when I was revising my script, I realized this was because we live with this fear of being under surveillance.I understand that because of this, your sister, Solmaz Panahi, had to leave Iran. How did her departure shape the creation of “Hit the Road”?It was the emotional inspiration for the film. My father decided to let my sister [who had acted in a film of his and was arrested at one point] leave the country because they would use her to threaten him. We invited our friends to share the moment before she left. I remember very vividly we were all trying to put on happy faces and listen to music so that we didn’t bring her down, but occasionally I would see somebody going in a corner to cry. The very mixed feelings of this evening stayed with me and probably nourished the project.Pantea Panahiha and Simiar in the film. Cars figure into Iranian films because they’re relatively private spaces in the country, Panahi said.Kino LorberSome reviews note that you served as an assistant to the celebrated director Abbas Kiarostami. How influential was he in your artistic development?I wasn’t an assistant on Kiarostami’s films. I was more of an assistant on my father’s films. But Kiarostami was a great figure in my life because when I was a kid, my father was his assistant, and they would travel a lot together scouting locations for films. During all these travels, I was always the kid sitting in the back listening to them, observing them. I learned a lot from Kiarostami because of this privileged relationship, but also because he is one of the major artists of our country. Many of Kiarostami’s films are among my favorite films. He’s a mentor for anyone in Iran who’s interested in filmmaking.Characters traveling by car is a trope in Kiarostami’s films, in your father’s work and in your debut. Why do you think this is so present in Iranian cinema?There are some restrictions that are very specific to our cinema. For instance, women in our films cannot be shown with their heads uncovered. But at home, women don’t have their head covered because they are with their family. As soon as you show a scene at home with a woman covered, it’s artificial. The intermediate space between the indoor scenes and the streets where you are repressed and watched is the car, in our lives but also in our films. When you’re in your car, you have a relatively private space in which you can listen to the music you want to, in which even if your scarf falls off, they won’t arrest you. This space has become like a second home for all of us Iranians, and so this reflects quite naturally in our films, too. More

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      How Nicolas Cage Parodies Himself in ‘Massive Talent’

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      Tom Gormican, the director of “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent,” narrates a sequence featuring the star and Pedro Pascal.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.Nicolas Cage gets his acting mojo back in this scene from the meta action comedy “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.”Here, Cage, who plays the fictionalized version of himself named Nick Cage, is spending time with a superfan, Javi (Pedro Pascal). Javi has paid Nick to be his guest for his birthday. Reduced to taking such gigs instead of parts in major Hollywood movies, Nick has reached a low point in his career and has decided to give up acting. But Javi won’t allow that, creating a performance exercise with Nick that forces him to showcase his craft.Discussing the sequence, Gormican said that Pascal had a lot of weight on his shoulders. “He had to act like a bad actor as the character,” he said, “but not bad enough that it would yank you out of the scene.” For his part, Cage delved into his screen history to deliver dual levels of self-parody, including a tongue-in-cheek line from “Con Air.”At the scene’s end, the two characters leap from an 85-foot cliff, a moment that Gormican accomplished with two stunt performers who did the leap twice while five cameras were rolling to capture it.Read the “Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent” review.Sign up for the Movies Update newsletter and get a roundup of reviews, news, Critics’ Picks and more. More

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      Jimmy Wang Yu, Seminal Figure in Kung Fu Films, Dies at 79

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      He changed the nature of Asian martial arts movies, which had been relying on sword fighting and fantasy, by bringing hand-to-hand combat to the fore.Jimmy Wang Yu, who in the 1960s, in movies like “The One-Armed Swordsman,” became the biggest star of Asian martial arts cinema until the emergence of Bruce Lee, died on April 5 in Taipei, Taiwan. He was 79.His daughter Linda Wong announced the death, in a hospital, but did not give the cause. Mr. Yu had reportedly had strokes in 2011 and 2016.As a seminal figure in martial arts, known for bringing hand-to-hand combat into the forefront, Mr. Yu paved the way for stars like Mr. Lee and Jackie Chan who found great success outside Asia. After Mr. Yu’s death, Mr. Chan said on Facebook, “The contributions you’ve made to kung fu movies, and the support and wisdom you’ve given to the younger generations, will always be remembered in the industry.”Mr. Yu worked in the 1960s for the major Hong Kong studio owned by the Shaw brothers, starring in their films “The One-Armed Swordsman” in 1967 and “Golden Swallow” and “The Sword of Swords” in 1968.In that period, Mr. Yu said in a 2014 interview with Easternkicks, a website devoted to Asian cinema, he was frequently in the news for getting into fights, often with police officers.“How did I get popular in Hong Kong?” he said. “I think one reason — it’s because I’m a street fighter.” He added, “I think maybe a lot of people say, ‘I see you fight in the movie, is he really a good fighter or not?’”Mr. Yu, left, played the title role in the hit 1967 Hong Kong movie “The One-Armed Swordsman.” Qiao Qiao played his master’s daughter.Film Society of Lincoln Center“The Chinese Boxer” (1970) — which Mr. Yu directed, and in which he starred as a man who takes revenge on Japanese thugs who have destroyed a Chinese kung fu school — was probably his most influential film. With its focus on hand-to-hand combat rather than the sword fighting and fantasy elements that were then commonplace in Hong Kong action movies, it helped transform the genre.In a 2020 essay on the website of the New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles, Quentin Tarantino, who directed the martial arts films “Kill Bill: Vol. 1” (2003) and “Kill Bill: Vol. 2” (2004), wrote that “The Chinese Boxer” was groundbreaking because it meant that “the hero taking on an entire room full of ruffians, whether it be in a teahouse, casino or dojo, would become as much a staple of the genre as the western barroom brawl or the fast-draw showdown.”“The Chinese Boxer” became a challenge to Mr. Lee, who had been working in Hollywood on “The Green Hornet” and other television series before moving back to Hong Kong, where he had been raised.“Jimmy Wang Yu was the biggest action star in Hong Kong, and Bruce had his sights on him,” Matthew Polly, the author of “Bruce Lee: A Life” (2018), said in a phone interview. “They didn’t like each other and had to be kept out of the same room.”He added, “In a way, Jimmy Wang Yu was responsible for Bruce Lee’s success, because ‘The Chinese Boxer’ established the template for the kung fu movie and Bruce used that as his model for ‘Fist of Fury,’ which is more or less a rip-off of ‘The Chinese Boxer.’” “Fist of Fury,” released in 1972, made Mr. Lee a major star in Hong Kong.Mr. Lee came out with only two more films before he died in 1973. His final movie, “Enter the Dragon” (1973), established him as an international star and secured his popularity to this day.Mr. Yu in the 1975 film “Master of the Flying Guillotine.”Pathfinder PicturesMr. Yu was born Wang Zhengquan on March 28, 1943, in Shanghai and moved with his family to Hong Kong when he was young. Before his movie career began, he was a swimming champion and served in the Chinese Army.After “The Chinese Boxer,” Mr. Yu tried to break his exclusive contract with the Shaw Brothers to make films elsewhere, but they sued him successfully, which effectively got him blacklisted in Hong Kong. He moved to Taiwan, where he resumed his career with Golden Harvest and other studios.In 1975, Mr. Yu starred in “The Man From Hong Kong,” also released in the United States as “The Dragon Flies,” in which he played a respected detective sent to Australia to extradite a dope smuggler.Reviewing “The Dragon Flies” in The Boston Globe, George McKinnon wrote that Chinese studio chiefs’ frantic search to find a successor to Mr. Lee might have ended with Mr. Yu, then 32. “Underneath that impeccable Hong Kong tailoring,” he wrote, “lies a ferocious dragon.” But unlike Mr. Lee and Mr. Chan, Mr. Wu did not become a star in the United States.George Lazenby, who co-starred with Mr. Yu in both “The Dragon Flies” and “International Assassin” (1976), had trained in martial arts for four months in anticipation of making a movie with Mr. Lee. After Mr. Lee died, Mr. Lazenby pivoted to working with Mr. Yu and performed his own stunts.“It was really more stunts than dialogue,” Mr. Lazenby, who is best known for playing James Bond in “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” (1969), said in a phone interview. “Jimmy was a genuine fighter — if he hit you, you’d feel it. You just had to trust that he wouldn’t hit you.”Mr. Yu continued to work regularly until the early 1990s and, after a long hiatus, appeared in four films between 2011 and 2013.Mr. Yu in “Dragon” (2011). After a long hiatus, he appeared in four films between 2011 and 2013.RADiUS-TWCComplete information on survivors was not immediately available.Mr. Yu received lifetime achievement awards from the New York Asian Film Festival in 2014 and the Golden Horse Film Festival in Taiwan in 2019.After Mr. Yu’s death, the Academy Award-winning Taiwanese director Ang Lee told the China News Agency: “For many fans like me, he represents the vibe of a certain era. His films and his heroic spirit will be deeply missed.” More

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      ‘The Northman’ Review: Danish Premodern

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      Alexander Skarsgard, Anya Taylor-Joy and Nicole Kidman star in Robert Eggers’s bloody Viking revenge saga.“The Northman” tells a very old story — maybe the same old story. A young prince seeks to avenge the murder of his father, the king, whose killer has usurped the throne and married the prince’s mother. That’s “Hamlet,” of course, but Robert Eggers’s new film isn’t another Shakespeare screen adaptation, bristling with Elizabethan eloquence, high-toned acting and complex, uncannily modern psychology.Eggers, who wrote the screenplay with the Icelandic novelist and playwright Sjon, has conjured this bloody saga out of the ancient Scandinavian narratives that supplied Shakespeare’s source material. His raw material, you might say, since “The Northman” insists on the primal, brutal, atavistic dimensions of the tale. Amleth, as he is called, is no student philosopher, temporizing over the nuances of being and nonbeing. He is a berserker, a howling warrior with ripped abs, superhero combat skills and a righteous cause for his endless blood lust.This is what I mean by the same old story. In modern movies, even more than in 17th-century English plays, revenge can seem like the most — maybe the only — credible motive for heroic action. Just ask the Batman. Truth and justice are divisive abstractions, too easily deconstructed or dressed up in gaudy ideological colors. Love is problematic. Payback, in contrast, is clean and inarguable, even if it leaves a mess in its wake.“Avenge father. Save mother. Kill uncle,” young Amleth repeats to himself as he flees the scene of his father’s death. These words propel him into manhood, as he grows from a wide-eyed boy played by Oscar Novak into a cold-eyed marauder played by Alexander Skarsgard.Amleth inhabits a world whose operating principle is cruelty, and Eggers’s accomplishment lies in his fastidious, fanatical rendering of that world, down to its bed linens and cooking utensils. If you’ve ever played Dungeons and Dragons, you may have encountered a dungeon master who took the game very, very seriously, attacking the task of fantasy world-building with excessive scholarly rigor and over-the-top imaginative zeal. That kind of player can be intimidating, but also a lot more fun than the average weekend geek.Eggers is like that. His two previous features — “The Witch” and “The Lighthouse” — unfold in versions of the past that split the difference between authenticity and hallucination. “The Witch” (2016) turns Puritan New England into a feverish, poisoned pastoral landscape of religious mania, unacknowledged lust and literal bedevilment. “The Lighthouse” (2019), set on a windswept island off the North Atlantic coast of America, is a clammy sea chantey about men going mad in close quarters.Driven less by plot than by a succession of intensifying moods, these films dig into historical moments when the boundary between the human and the supernatural felt especially thin. Archaic forms of belief are treated not as quaint superstitions, but as ways of understanding scary or inexplicable facets of experience. The witches and mermaids are as real as anything else.And so it is in “The Northman,” which, like “The Witch,” mines a shadow-shrouded pagan past for images and effects. In the 1600s of the earlier film, older customs and beliefs had been pushed into the margins by Christianity, but in this version of early medieval Northern Europe, that relationship is reversed. Christianity is mentioned in passing as a weird form of worship — “their God is a corpse nailed to a tree,” one character says — in a polytheistic, polyglot society made and unmade by endless conquest, migration and war.As a boy, Amleth lives in a benevolent corner of this world. His father, Aurvandil War-Raven (Ethan Hawke), is a pretty fun dad for a warrior chieftain, turning Amleth’s initiation ceremony into a night of silly, flatulent horseplay. Spiritual guidance is provided by a shamanistic fool (Willem Dafoe) and a spooky seeress (Björk). But nothing can protect Aurvandil from his bastard half brother, Fjolnir (Claes Bang), who kills the king and takes up with his wife, Gudrun (Nicole Kidman).Later, Amleth’s child’s-eye view of what happened will be complicated when he hears Gudrun’s side of things. (Kidman’s sly performance is the most Shakespearean thing about “The Northman.”) First, though, he will join a band of Viking raiders, whose plunder of a town somewhere around Russia provides Amleth — and Eggers — a chance to show off their chops. Literally, in Amleth’s case, as he hacks, stabs and cudgels his way over ramparts and through muddy dooryards and alleyways.Eggers, aided by Jarin Blaschke’s smooth, immersive cinematography, turns the scene into a Hieronymus Bosch painting in motion, a tableau of terror and chaos composed with remorseless clarity. There is something coldblooded in this matter-of-fact depiction of violence. Villagers are herded into a barn, which is sealed up and set ablaze. Rapes, beatings and disembowelments happen in the background or on the edges of the frame, barely noticed by our hero.Skarsgard and Anya Taylor-Joy, whose character, Olga of the Birch Forest, has magical powers that make her a formidable ally.Aidan Monaghan/Focus FeaturesThe purpose of the attack is to capture slaves who will be sorted and shipped off to various customers — including, Amleth learns, to Fjolnir, who has set up a new kingdom in Iceland with Gudrun and their sons. In the company of a captive named Olga of the Birch Forest (Anya Taylor-Joy, who also did some forestry in “The Witch”), Amleth joins the enslaved, smuggling himself across the sea to confront his nemesis at last.We can leave the plot there. It moves in a straight, relentless line, but matters in the Fjolnir-Gudrun household get a little intricate once Amleth and Olga arrive on this scene. Her earth-goddess magical powers make her a formidable ally, though she isn’t only that. The hokeyness of the romance between Skarsgard and Taylor-Joy, from an old-school movie-lover’s point of view, is one of the best parts of “The Northman” — a touch of ultra-blond Hollywood glamour amid the Nordic mumbo-jumbo.Which I totally respect. A recent profile in The New Yorker posited that “The Northman,” which lists several historical consultants in its credits, “might be the most accurate Viking movie ever made.” The evidence for this is in the production design (by Craig Lathrop) and the costumes (by Linda Muir), in the runic chapter titles and in the careful pronunciation of words like “Odin” and “Valhalla.” But fidelity to the past, however obsessive, is ultimately a minor, technical achievement, and “The Northman” is a movie with big — if somewhat obscure — ambitions.Eggers’s brutal, beautiful vision of history compensates, as such visions often do, for the deficiencies of the present. It isn’t that anyone would be happier living Amleth’s life, or those of the nameless slaves and soldiers whose slaughter decorates his adventure. But his reality is built on clear and emphatic moral lines, on coherent (albeit harsh) ideas about honor, power and what gives meaning to life and death.The point is not that you or any other modern person believes in these ideas — though I suppose there are some people who might pretend to — but that the characters are governed by them. Their fates make sense to them, and therefore to us as well. What’s perhaps most impressive about “The Northman” is that it hurtles through 136 minutes of musclebound, shaggy-maned mayhem without a whisper of camp or a wink of irony. Nobody is doing this for fun. Even if, in the end — thank goodness — that’s mostly what it amounts to.The NorthmanRated R. Endless blood lust, and some of the other kind, too. Running time: 2 hours 16 minutes. In theaters. More