Movies

Subterms

    More stories

    • 175 Shares129 Views

      in Movies

      A Guide to “Saturday Night” and the Real Players at the Start of ‘S.N.L.’

      by

      With so many players involved in Jason Reitman’s new movie about “S.N.L.,” here’s a guide to the real-life personalities.It’s easy to get lost watching “Saturday Night”: Jason Reitman’s new film drops us backstage at a moment of maximum confusion — 90 minutes before the 1975 debut of a new NBC show called “Saturday Night.” At the center of all the hubbub is creator-producer Lorne Michaels (played by Gabriel LaBelle), who’s been the one constant at “S.N.L.” over most of the show’s 50 seasons. But what about all the other characters rushing about, wringing their hands over whether this show will actually make it to air? Here’s a guide:The Original CastCHEVY CHASE AND GARRETT MORRIS These members of the original cast, known as the Not Ready for Prime Time Players, were hired as writers, not actors. Chase (played by Cory Michael Smith) had written for Alan King and the Smothers Brothers. As the anchor for “Weekend Update,” Chase, a master of mugging and pratfalls, became the show’s first breakout star and left in 1976 to embark on a film career. (He would return to guest host in 1978, when he reportedly got into fisticuffs with Bill Murray, the cast member who replaced him.)Morris (Lamorne Morris, no relation) was a Broadway performer and a playwright with no improv or sketch comedy background. He was underused but became known for his impersonations of Sammy Davis Jr. and Tina Turner, as well as for yelling on “Weekend Update” (as the News for the Hard of Hearing interpreter). After the show, he stuck with TV comedy, appearing on sitcoms like “Martin,” “The Jamie Foxx Show” and “2 Broke Girls.”Garrett Morris (played by Lamorne Morris, no relation, right) didn’t have a sketch comedy background when he started on “Saturday Night Live.”GILDA RADNER, JANE CURTAIN AND LARAINE NEWMAN The movie doesn’t try very hard to differentiate among the show’s female cast members — Gilda Radner, who died in 1989, Jane Curtin and Laraine Newman. But the three women had very distinct styles. Radner (Ella Hunt), a former member of Second City in Toronto, was the first performer Michaels signed and soon became a star beloved for her fragile, goofy style and characters like Roseanne Roseannadanna. It was her advocacy for fellow Second City veteran and ex-boyfriend Dan Aykroyd that persuaded Michaels to hire him.Newman (Emily Fairn), a founding member of the Los Angeles improv troupe the Groundlings, knew Michaels from working together on a Lily Tomlin special. Her character Sherry the Valley Girl helped kick off a national fad mocking Southern California mall-speak. Newman’s expertise with accents and dialects paved the way for a post-“S.N.L.” career as a voice artist.Curtin (Kim Matula), a member of the Boston improv group the Proposition, was one of the last cast members hired. She was often presented as the foil to more outrageous characters and helped ground many a sketch. As the first female anchor of “Weekend Update,” she was called upon to weather Aykroyd’s contemptuous catchphrase, “Jane, you ignorant slut.” After “S.N.L.,” Curtin became a sitcom star (“Kate & Allie,” “3rd Rock From the Sun”).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

    • 113 Shares199 Views

      in Television

      What’s on TV This Week: ‘The Wranglers’ and ‘Elsbeth’

      by

      A CW documentary, inspired by the series “Yellowstone,” shows what real life in ranch country looks like. And “The Good Wife” spinoff is back for a second season.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. 14-20 Details and times are subject to change.MondayTHE WRANGLERS 9 p.m. on the CW. This new documentary is like the reality show “Below Deck,” if it were on a dude ranch instead of a yacht. This show follows a group of cowboys and cowgirls who, by day, work at the Circle Bar Dude Ranch in Montana and then, of course, party by night. Inspired by the drama “Yellowstone,” this series aims to show what real life in ranch country looks like. You know what they say: Save a horse …TuesdayI’M NOT A MONSTER 9 p.m. on HBO. In 2018, Lois Riess started a journey that would leave her with the nickname “fugitive grandma.” Riess shot and killed her husband of 26 years in Minnesota, then fled to Florida, committing identity theft, robbery and murder again. This two-part documentary series is her first time speaking out from prison.WednesdaySCAMANDA 10 p.m. on ABC. The blogger Amanda Riley had been writing about her fight against Stage 3 blood cancer when an investigative reporter, Nancy Moscatiello, got a tip that Riley wasn’t telling the truth. Eventually Moscatiello uncovered that Riley had lied about her cancer diagnosis and accepted donations to cover medical expenses that didn’t exist. This new documentary series about Riley, who’s currently serving five years in prison, dives deeper in to the case, which was also covered in the podcast “Scamanda.”ThursdayNathan Lane and Carrie Preston in “Elsbeth.”Michael Parmelee/CBSELSBETH 10 p.m. on CBS. This spinoff of “The Good Wife,” revolving around the quirky attorney Elsbeth Tascioni, played by Carrie Preston, is back for a second season. This year, she continues to work with the N.Y.P.D. to help solve the crimes happening around the city. The season starts off with a murder in a theater, a ringing cellphone and an opera lover played by Nathan Lane — need I say more?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 Shares179 Views

      in Movies

      The Painter Titus Kaphar Wanted a Bigger Canvas, So He Made a Film

      by

      We often scrutinize an artist’s work, searching for autobiographical clues. But in Titus Kaphar’s recent paintings, and in his new film, “Exhibiting Forgiveness,” such close reading is unnecessary. His life experience is laid bare, in all its poignant and — sometimes agonizing — pain.The paintings, now on view at Gagosian in Beverly Hills, Calif., through Nov. 2, figure prominently in the film, which premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival and will have its theatrical release nationally on Oct. 18. The movie, Kaphar’s first feature, tells the story of a young painter reuniting with his estranged father — a recovering addict — even as he also deals with the final days of his ailing mother.This foray into Hollywood — Oprah Winfrey and Serena Williams were among those who attended the Sept. 12 Los Angeles premiere — only cements celebrity status for Kaphar, 48, who, in the last decade, has won a MacArthur “genius award,” helped found the New Haven art incubator and fellowship program NXTHVN, created Time magazine covers about Ferguson protesters and the killing of George Floyd and seen his work collected by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney. His paintings of sorrowful mothers evoke classical pietas.Kaphar’s painting, “Analogous Colors,” 2020, on the cover of Time Magazine in June 2020. Kaphar cut a shape out of the canvas.Painting by Titus Kaphar for TIMEThe two-hour film — which Kaphar wrote and directed — gave him a way to experiment with another art form, one that can reach well beyond the number of people likely to see his paintings. It also represents a significant filmmaking step from Kaphar’s documentary shorts “Shut Up and Paint” (2022), which was shortlisted for an Oscar and addressed the art market’s stifling of social activism, and “The Jerome Project” (2016), which began to explore the artist’s relationship with his father.But perhaps most importantly, the movie is Kaphar’s message to his two teenage boys. “I was trying to figure out how to help my sons understand how different my life is from their lives and why I’m so protective of them — why I adore them the way that I do, why I insist that I give them a hug and a kiss in the morning,” said Kaphar, wearing a cap and sweatshirt in a recent interview at his New Haven studio. “I still put them into bed, kiss them on their foreheads.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

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Movies

      Why ‘Saturday Night’ Omits the Influence of Carol Burnett

      by

      A new film about the show doesn’t mention her. But in many ways her hit sketch series helped define the early vision of Lorne Michaels.What makes Lorne Michaels laugh?That’s no small question. Half a century of aspiring stars have thought hard on it. The answer has launched and stymied many careers while going a long way to defining modern comedy. The hagiographic new movie “Saturday Night” focuses on Michaels as he puts together the 1975 premiere episode of “Saturday Night Live,” but the comedic vision of the man who has gone on to oversee the show for decades remains maddeningly, pointedly remote.Played with a determined calm by Gabriel Labelle, the young Lorne Michaels comes off as a blandly generic maverick, struggling repeatedly to explain his idea for the show. In an early scene, he compares himself to Thomas Edison, and while one can detect some mocking of the hubris of that statement, there’s not enough. To the extent that his sensibility is illuminated in the screenplay by Jason Reitman and Gil Kenan, it’s through opposition. In scene after scene, Michaels is the counterculture hero confronted by a procession of squares, suits and old-school naysayers. They’re not just skeptical executives or scolding censors, either. Actors playing Jim Henson, Johnny Carson and Milton Berle make appearances, in roles designed, thematically at least, to show us everything this hip new show is not.What stands out about this parade of aesthetic antagonists is that perhaps the most important one to the formation of the identity of “Saturday Night Live” goes unmentioned: Carol Burnett.Despite the sense you get from this cinematic love letter, “Saturday Night Live” did not invent must-see television sketch comedy. It wasn’t even the first important live one on Saturday nights on NBC. (That would be “Your Show of Shows” in the 1950s, with a writers room that included Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner and Neil Simon.) The dominant sketch comedy when “S.N.L.” got started was “The Carol Burnett Show,” a CBS staple since the late 1960s that also featured topical satire, flamboyant performances and star cameos.Lorne Michaels in 1976. What he finds funny remains an enigma even as his influence has grown.NBCU Photo Bank, via Getty ImagesIn books about the creation of “Saturday Night Live,” the ones the new film’s screenwriters certainly leaned on, Burnett represented a lodestar of sorts for the artists on the show.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

    • 113 Shares129 Views

      in Movies

      Inside the Birthing Scene in ‘We Live in Time’

      by

      The stars and director of “We Live in Time” explain how a delivery became an action sequence, complete with a real baby and a few unwelcome surprises.You wouldn’t expect the romantic drama “We Live in Time” to have an action scene, but it does — at least that’s how Andrew Garfield sees it.In the middle of the time-hopping story of a young couple battling a cancer diagnosis, there’s a hilarious yet touching sequence when Almut, played by Florence Pugh, gives birth on all fours in a gas station bathroom as her partner, Tobias (Garfield), nervously coaches her through the delivery with the aid of two shockingly helpful employees.“It’s the big action event,” Garfield said. “It’s the Indiana Jones sequence.’”The birth scene is a showcase for both the acting skills of Pugh and Garfield and the unique tone of the film, which mashes up humor and tragedy. It was also a logistical challenge for the director John Crowley and the actors who had to deal with the intensity of the material as well as an actual weeks-old baby who arrived for the grand finale.For Crowley the birth was the reason he wanted to make the movie in the first place. A number of elements potentially swirling around each other meant “we could create a scene that was thrilling and refusing to be one thing at one time,” he said in a video interview, noting that the “absurdity of the situation” lives alongside the “genuine sort of jeopardy of it.”The idea for Almut’s chaotic labor was inspired, in part, by the screenwriter Nick Payne’s own experience when his wife was giving birth to their first child. The hospital where she was supposed to deliver was extremely busy at the time, and the couple was told they might have to go to another facility in a different part of London.“I just spent a long time very nervously worrying about that,” he said in an interview. The trip to a Croydon hospital would take him by a gas station, and “I would drive past that thing and think, ‘This is where we’re going to end up.’ It was basically my own anxiety.”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

    • 113 Shares159 Views

      in Movies

      Filmed in New York, Hold the Taxis and Radiators

      by

      When independent movies like “Rosemead” travel to a state for tax incentives, they save money but add creative challenges.On a rainy morning this past January, Roosevelt Avenue in the Flushing neighborhood of Queens was a stream of yellow cabs, honking buses and weaving cyclists. Nearby, a film crew peering out the windows of a Chinese pharmacy discussed how to make all of that invisible.The film it was making, “Rosemead,” starring Lucy Liu as an immigrant mother with a mentally unwell teenage son, was based on a real-life story and set in the San Gabriel Valley of sunny Southern California. Any signs of the East Coast would need to be hidden. No cabs, no buses, no bare trees and overcast sky.“That’s a very New York-looking trash can,” said Liz Power, an assistant director, ruefully eyeing the green receptacle just outside the pharmacy’s glass door.Filming “Rosemead” in Rosemead, Calif., would certainly have been easier. But the producers had decided on New York over California because of tax credits.According to a survey by The New York Times, states have spent $25 billion on tax incentives over the past two decades to lure Hollywood, often competing against one another. New York State, which writes checks to studios of up to 40 percent of their costs producing a movie or TV show, has handed out more than $7 billion to entice productions from California, which has dedicated more than $3 billion to try to retain them.The movie industry says the incentives help create jobs and spending in the communities where they film, but economists have long been skeptical of whether they create enough value to justify the taxpayer cost. More

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Movies

      Christopher Reeve and 6 Takeaways From the Documentary ‘Super/Man’

      by

      The new film chronicles the life of the paralyzed star, covering his friendship with Robin Williams and gut-wrenching details about his care and family.The documentary “Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story” traces the life of the Juilliard-trained actor who found megastardom in the 1970s and ’80s playing Superman, and in 1995 as a different kind of hero, after an accident left him paralyzed from the neck down. It features never-before-seen footage of Reeve, who died in 2004 at 52, chronicling his early days; his pivotal friendship with his Juilliard roommate, Robin Williams; and his transformation, in a wheelchair and on a ventilator, into a leading disability and research advocate. Friends like Glenn Close, Susan Sarandon, Whoopi Goldberg and John Kerry offer their observations; disability rights activists do, too. It’s a thought-provoking tear-jerker.It also doubles as a family movie, showing Reeve in his role as a father to his three children — Matthew Reeve and Alexandra Reeve Givens from an early relationship that he fled at the height of his fame, and Will Reeve, his son with his wife, Dana Reeve. With unwavering support, she largely gave up her career as a singer and actress to care for her husband. She died of cancer in 2006, just 18 months after him, leaving behind their son, then 13.The compounded tragedy is leavened by the hope that Reeve embodied, especially with the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation, which has invested $140 million in the search for a cure for spinal cord paralysis. The film — which arrived in theaters 20 years after Christopher Reeve’s death, almost to the day — chronicles their determination, and doesn’t flinch from the darkest moments, including money worries and the relentlessness of day-to-day caregiving.Reeve, left, and his wife, Dana, with the comedian and actor Robin Williams after Reeve’s appearance at the Academy Awards ceremony in March 1996.Vince Bucci/AFP, via Getty ImagesThe unvarnished approach — and the timing, with Reeve’s children having reached solid footing as adults — led the siblings to agree to the project after years of turning down other offers, said Will Reeve, 32, a correspondent for ABC News and a look-alike to his father. They hoped their home movies and archival material “would provide a deeper meaning and greater texture to his story,” he said, “and remind folks of the fullness of life that one can have, despite whatever catastrophic injury they may suffer, whatever disability they may have.”In a video interview from London, where they’re based, the filmmakers Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui discussed their rationale for not putting Reeve “on a pedestal,” as Ettedgui described it. “It was really important to show how someone who you might think of as being somehow perfect — the ideal hero — how they experience the same insecurities, the same family issues that the rest of us might,” he said.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 Shares159 Views

      in Movies

      Lego’s First Documentary, ‘Piece by Piece,’ Tells Pharrell Williams’ Story

      by

      The toymaker has found success in fictional films. But with “Piece by Piece,” about the life of Mr. Williams, it has gotten into a new genre.In Lego, anything is possible — within limits. Just ask the documentary filmmaker Morgan Neville.Mr. Neville, an Oscar winner, spent the past five years turning the life story of Pharrell Williams into an animated documentary created entirely from Legos. And those Danish-designed building blocks allowed him to create things that would typically fall outside the genre’s constraints.He illustrated Mr. Williams’s experience of synesthesia, which allows him to see color when he hears sounds, through translucent Lego pieces. They gave Mr. Neville the tools to turn the signature beats of the multi-hyphenate — rapper, producer and fashion designer are among Mr. Williams’s titles — into colorful bricks that he could take out of storage and transform into a hit song. And it ushered in some fantastical scenes that show Mr. Williams lost in outer space or trapped inside a whirlpool.“One thing I realized right away was that it wasn’t just about translating a documentary into animation,” said Mr. Neville, who on Friday will debut “Piece by Piece,” a $16 million musical documentary via Focus Features. “It was about using what animation could do that documentary couldn’t do, which is take you into the fantasy world. I found it so liberating, all the things you can communicate visually that you don’t have to say.”The film is also a stretch for Lego, which defied odds back in 2014 when it released “The Lego Movie” to both commercial and critical acclaim. (That movie grossed $471 million worldwide, and its signature song, “Everything Is Awesome,” landed an Oscar nomination.) The toy company made three more films in partnership with Warner Bros. before moving to Universal Pictures in 2020. That arrangement, while four years old, has yet to produce a movie. “Piece by Piece” is not part of that deal, though it was made by a subsidiary of Universal.Mr. Williams’s experience of synesthesia, which allows him to see color when he hears music, is illustrated in the film through translucent Lego pieces.NBC Universal“We really always want to be doing something that is inspiring people, that’s fitting with the brand and what we stand for, but that is also unexpected,” Jill Wilfert, a senior vice president of global entertainment at the Lego Group, said in an interview. “We were looking to come back onto the big screen, and this felt like a nice way to do something that was definitely going to defy people’s expectations.”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