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      in Television

      The Menendez Brothers’ Case Under Review: What to Know.

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      Prosecutors are revisiting the brothers’ convictions in the killings of their parents. It could lead to their release from prison.Over 35 years ago, Lyle and Erik Menendez — then 21 and 18 years old — walked into the den of their Beverly Hills mansion and fired more than a dozen shotgun rounds at their parents.Now, after serving decades behind bars as part of a life sentence without the possibility of parole, the Menendez brothers may be getting a chance at freedom.In early October, the Los Angeles County district attorney, George Gascón, announced that his office was reviewing the case after lawyers representing the Menendez brothers asked prosecutors to recommend a resentencing, a move that could lead to their release.The reconsideration of their life sentences comes at a time when the Menendez brothers have been thrust back into the media spotlight thanks to the revelation of new evidence, an army of social media defenders and a recent television series and documentary examining their crime and trials.Here’s what to know about the Menendez brothers’ case:What were they convicted of?In 1996, the Menendez brothers were found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without parole for killing their parents, Jose, a music executive, and Mary Louise, a former beauty queen who went by the name Kitty.It was their second trial. Two years prior, a mistrial was declared after two separate juries (one for each brother) deadlocked over a verdict.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in Movies

      In ‘Smile 2’ and ‘Trap,’ Pop Stardom Looks Pretty Terrifying

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      At a time when the business of being Taylor Swift or Beyoncé is booming, these films examine toxic fandom and what can seem like mass hysteria.This article contains spoilers.Last year around this time, audiences were heading to movie theaters to experience the joy of being in the presence of a pop star.“Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” had just been released, prompting Swifties and the Swift-curious to descend on multiplexes, friendship bracelets adorning their wrists. Weeks later, the Beyhive would don silver cowboy hats for the release of “Renaissance: A Film By Beyoncé.” Attending one of these concert films meant having a great time and reveling in the glory of the women onstage who seemed to be doing the same.Now being a pop star at the movies looks a lot more terrifying.Horror centered on pop stars is all the rage these days. In M. Night Shyamalan’s “Trap,” released in August, the concert by the fictional Lady Raven (Saleka) is an elaborate setup to nab a serial killer (Josh Hartnett). This weekend, “Smile 2,” directed by Parker Finn, follows Skye Riley (Naomi Scott), a troubled Grammy winner with a history of addiction who comes to be possessed by a demon that drives her mad with violent hallucinations. To her fans and her team, it looks like she’s on another, possibly drug-induced spiral, but really a monster is goading her into killing herself.Both these movies are a product of a time when the business of being a pop star is bigger than ever. Events like the Eras and Renaissance tours became zeitgeist-defining moments as well as fodder that filmmakers could mine for inspiration. Shyamalan was even direct about it in an Empire interview. His premise for “Trap”? “What if ‘The Silence of the Lambs’ happened at a Taylor Swift concert?”Saleka as a pop star whose concert is a setup to nab a serial killer in “Trap.” Warner Bros. PicturesBut both “Trap” and “Smile 2” prove that beyond the fun of the setup, the life of a pop star is actually thematically ripe for horror. It’s a high-pressure job in which you never know whether you’re meeting a fan or a predator.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 163 Shares199 Views

      in Television

      What’s on TV This Week: ‘Seth Meyers: Dad Man Walking’ and Spooky Movies

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      The comedian’s standup special airs on HBO. Various networks show horror films.For those who still enjoy a cable subscription, here is a selection of cable and network TV shows, movies and specials that broadcast this week, Oct. 21-27 Details and times are subject to change.MondayPOPPA’S HOUSE 8:30 p.m. on CBS. The father-son duo Damon Wayans and Damon Wayans Jr. (who have previously played father and son on the show “Happy Endings”) are back together for a new comedy about a divorced radio host, Poppa (Wayans). He has his views challenged when he starts working with a new female co-host, and is also trying to communicate effectively with his adult son (Wayans Jr.).WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS 10 p.m. on FX. The streets are lined with spooky décor, Spirit Halloween is popping up at every corner and there is a crisp in the air. That can only mean one thing — it’s time to welcome back everyone’s favorite Staten Island-dwelling vampires for the sixth and final season of this faux-documentary show.TuesdayHeather O’Rourke in “Poltergeist.”MGMPOLTERGEIST (1982) 8 p.m. on AMC. First vampires, now paranormal activity. Everything is peachy keen with this California family until ghosts start communicating with them through the television screen. When their daughter Carol Ann (Heather O’Rourke) goes missing, her family seeks out a parapsychologist and exorcist to help find her.THE EXORCIST (1973) 10:30 p.m. on AMC. Speaking of exorcism — this movie teaches us that if you find your child possessed by the devil, it’s going to be a real hassle to undo. “It establishes a new low for grotesque special effects, all of which, I assume, have some sort of religious approval since two Jesuit priests, who are listed as among the film’s technical advisers, also appear in the film as actors,” Vincent Canby wrote in his review for The New York Times.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Theater

      The Holocaust’s Grandchildren Are Speaking Now

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      Toward the end of “A Real Pain,” a movie written and directed by Jesse Eisenberg coming to theaters on Nov. 1, two first cousins played by Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin approach the house in a Polish town where their recently deceased grandmother had lived before the Holocaust.Eisenberg’s character, David, the more reserved of the pair, proposes the two leave stones on the doorstep, riffing on the Jewish tradition of placing stones on graves.“She’s not buried here,” says Culkin’s cousin, Benji.“Yeah, I know, but it’s the last place she was in Poland,” says David. “It’s the last place any of us were.”The improvised remembrance, the interruption of self-awareness, the confused sense of duty — all are characteristic of how American descendants of the Holocaust’s victims two generations removed today commemorate an event that, nearly 80 years after it ended, can feel like something that still governs their lives, not to mention the lives of Jews and everyone else.This cohort is known as the third generation of Holocaust survivors, and “A Real Pain” is representative of their output. Which is to say: It is often not about the Holocaust at all. The cousins go together on an organized tour of Holocaust sites and memorials in Poland, but much of it — excepting a visit to the Majdanek concentration camp — is lighthearted. David and Benji grieve mainly not for the Holocaust but for their grandmother, who survived it. They struggle with their own problems, including the dissipation of their relationship. They question why they are even there.Jesse Eisenberg on the set of his new movie, “A Real Pain,” about the grandsons of a Holocaust survivor visiting Poland.Agata Grzybowska/Searchlight PicturesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 163 Shares189 Views

      in Movies

      Hollywood Can Be Hell for a Writer, as Two New Books Remind Us

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      Dorothy Parker worked on the script for “A Star Is Born,” but the tragic ending was all hers, while Bruce Eric Kaplan manages to find the mordant laughs in today’s industry foibles.This week the former magazine queen Tina Brown started a Substack called Fresh Hell, after an expression oft-attributed to Dorothy Parker. Of course I subscribed immediately, considering Brown’s book “The Vanity Fair Diaries” one of her crowning achievements. Chattiness is her idiom. But also because of the Parkerly promise.This archetype of archness, whose death in 1967 at 73 was front-page news, persists into the 21st century partly because of her pith, eerily well suited to the slicing and dicing of contemporary online culture. Long before X she was dishing out quotes of 280 characters or fewer: “Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses” and other tablespoons of hot honey diluted into shampoo commercials and beyond.Less known is her work for the movie industry, Gail Crowther’s focus in DOROTHY PARKER IN HOLLYWOOD (Gallery Books, 291 pp., $29.99). Parker’s copious if frequently forgotten credits include Oscar nominations a decade apart for the original “A Star Is Born” (1937) and “Smash-Up: The Story of a Woman” (1947), both with alcoholic protagonists.She was writing what she knew. Booze pickled her career and second and third marriages, both to the actor and screenwriter Alan Campbell, who died swathed in a dry-cleaning bag and surrounded by Seconal capsules. In a late, sad photograph enlisted as caution by at least one recovery organization, alcohol almost seems to be dissolving her, as water did the Wicked Witch of the West.Parker wasn’t wicked but she could be very, very cruel, Crowther reminds readers (there have been several previous, fuller biographies, from which she draws, along with archival material). To the 11-years-younger Campbell, whom she called “pansy,” “fairy” and worse; to acquaintances she’d butter up in person, then roast at scorching temperature the minute they left the room; and to a literary community that kept coming back for more abuse. Esquire kept the older Parker on retainer as a book reviewer for years, though her copy rarely materialized. (Click forthwith on Wyatt Cooper’s unpaywalled homage to her there, “Whatever You Think Dorothy Parker Was Like, She Wasn’t.”) She agreed to judge a University of Michigan poetry competition, but “upon receiving the shortlisted poems,” Crowther writes, “she replied that none were worthy of any award or indeed of any consideration whatsoever.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Movies

      Toni Vaz, Stuntwoman and Founder of N.A.A.C.P. Image Awards, Dies at 101

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      She created a program to honor Black artistic success in the 1960s. But she spent decades trying to get its organizers to recognize her role.Toni Vaz, who cut a path as one of the first Black stuntwomen in Hollywood, with appearances in more than 50 movies, and then created the N.A.A.C.P. Image Awards to recognize the often unsung work of Black writers and performers, died on Oct. 4 in Los Angeles. She was 101.Cheryl Abbott, her great-niece, said her death, at a retirement home for actors in the Woodland Hills neighborhood, was caused by congestive heart failure.The notion of a Black stunt performer did not really exist when Ms. Vaz began her career in the 1950s — she and others were officially cast as extras, received no training, and often did not know what dangers they might face on a set until the cameras began to roll.During the filming of “Porgy and Bess” (1959), Ms. Vaz was instructed to lean out a window to catch a glimpse of two of the film’s stars, Sammy Davis Jr. and Sidney Poitier. Unbeknown to her, a carpenter had purposely weakened the railing; it broke as soon as she leaned on it, sending her falling several feet onto a mattress.Shaken, she was handed a shot of brandy to recover.Throughout her career, Ms. Vaz played a critical part in support of Black actresses like Eartha Kitt, Cicely Tyson and Juanita Moore as they began to break out of the racially stereotyped roles that had long been their only options in Hollywood.But she and other Black stunt performers were typically paid less than their white counterparts for the same work. Standing in for Ms. Moore in a scene for “The Singing Nun” (1966), she and a white stuntwoman were directed to crash a jeep; Ms. Vaz got $40, she told the interviewer Amie Jo Greer in 2010, while the white performer got $350.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Movies

      Bob Yerkes, Bruised but Durable Hollywood Stuntman, Dies at 92

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      A body double to the stars, he performed sometimes bone-breaking feats in movies like “Return of the Jedi” and “Back to the Future.” And he was still at it in his 80s.Bob Yerkes, who was set on fire, thrown down stairs and hurled from skyscrapers, bridges and trains during a nearly 70-year career in Hollywood as a stunt double for Arnold Schwarzenegger, Charles Bronson and other big-screen stars, died on Oct. 1 in Northridge, Calif. He was 92.His death, in a hospital, was confirmed by Tree O’Toole, a stuntwoman who had been his caretaker. He had recently been ill with pneumonia.Though he was virtually unknown to audiences, Mr. Yerkes was a Tinseltown legend.In the 1980s alone, he flew through the air as Boba Fett in “Return of the Jedi,” hung from a clock tower as Christopher Lloyd’s character in “Back to the Future” and clung to scaffolding atop the Statue of Liberty in “Remo Williams.”“He is one of the few stuntmen I would say have celebrity status in the stunt business,” Jeff Wolfe, the president of the Stuntmen’s Association of Motion Pictures, said in an interview. “His lack of fear was kind of renowned.”Mr. Yerkes (rhymes with “circus”) performed stunts in the films “The Towering Inferno” (1974), “Poltergeist” (1982), “Ghostbusters” (1984) and “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” (1988), as well as on television in “Gilligan’s Island,” “Wonder Woman,” “Starsky and Hutch” and “Dukes of Hazzard.”He was concussed more times than he could remember.“I’m better now, though,” he said in a 2016 video produced by My Gathering Place International, a religious organization. “It used to be that when I’d talk, I wouldn’t finish a sentence.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Movies

      Mitzi Gaynor, Leading Lady of Movie Musicals, Is Dead at 93

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      She was best known for starring in the 1958 screen version of “South Pacific.” But her Hollywood career was brief, and she soon shifted her focus to Las Vegas and TV.Mitzi Gaynor, the bubbly actress, singer and dancer who landed one of the most coveted movie roles of the mid-20th century, the female lead in “South Pacific,” but who abandoned film as the era of movie musicals came to an end, died on Thursday at her home in Los Angeles. She was 93. Her managers, Rene Reyes and Shane Rosamonda, confirmed the death.The role of Nellie Forbush, a World War II Navy nurse and (in the words of a song lyric) a “cockeyed optimist” in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s hit 1949 Broadway musical, had been originated and defined by Mary Martin. But when it came time to cast the 1958 movie of “South Pacific,” some considered Ms. Martin too old (she was in her 40s) and perhaps too strong-voiced for any actor who might be cast opposite her. (Ezio Pinza, her Broadway co-star, had died.)Doris Day was considered. Mike Todd wanted his wife, Elizabeth Taylor, to play the role. Ms. Gaynor was the only candidate to agree to do a screen test, she recalled decades later, although she was an established actress, with a dozen films, seven of them musicals, to her credit.In fact, she was shooting “The Joker Is Wild” (1957), a musical drama with Frank Sinatra, when Oscar Hammerstein II came to town and asked to hear her sing. (Ms. Gaynor always credited Sinatra with making her best-known role possible, because he asked for a change in the shooting schedule that would give her a day off to audition.)Ms. Gaynor in 1962. A year later, she would make her last movie, but she became a star in Las Vegas.Don Brinn/Associated Press“South Pacific” was a box-office smash, and Ms. Gaynor’s performance, opposite Rossano Brazzi, was well received. (She turned out to be the only one of the film’s stars to do her own singing.) But she made only three more films, all comedies without music; the last of them, “For Love or Money” with Kirk Douglas, was released in 1963. She turned instead to Las Vegas, where she headlined shows at major resorts for more than a decade, and to television.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More