Movies

Subterms

    More stories

    • 138 Shares189 Views

      in Music

      Marilyn Bergman, Half of an Oscar-Winning Songwriting Duo, Dies at 93

      by

      With her husband, Alan, she wrote the lyrics to “The Way We Were” and “The Windmills of Your Mind,” as well as a number of memorable TV themes.Marilyn Bergman, who with her husband, Alan Bergman, gave the world memorable lyrics about “misty watercolor memories” and “the windmills of your mind” and won three Academy Awards, died on Saturday at her home in Los Angeles. She was 93. A spokesman, Ken Sunshine, said the cause was respiratory failure.The Bergmans’ lyrics, set to melodies by composers like Marvin Hamlisch and Michel Legrand, were not everywhere, but it sometimes seemed that way. For many years their words were also heard every week over the opening credits to hit television shows like “Maude,” “Good Times” and “Alice.”The Bergmans and Mr. Hamlisch won the 1974 best-song Academy Award for “The Way We Were,” from the Robert Redford-Barbra Streisand romance of the same name. (The album of that movie’s score also won the Bergmans their only Grammy Award.) Their other best-song winner, “The Windmills of Your Mind” (“Round, like a circle in a spiral/Like a wheel within a wheel”), was written with Mr. Legrand for the 1968 film “The Thomas Crown Affair.” Their third Oscar was for the score of Ms. Streisand’s 1983 film “Yentl,” also written with Mr. Legrand.The Bergmans with Barbra Streisand at the premiere of “Yentl” in New York in 1983. They shared an Oscar with Michel Legrand for that film’s score.Ron Galella/Barbra Streisand, via ReutersAside from the Oscar winners, their other popular songs included the title track of Frank Sinatra’s album “Nice ’n’ Easy,” written with the songwriter Lew Spence; the poignant ballad “What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life,” from the 1969 movie “The Happy Ending,” with music by Mr. Legrand; and “Where Do You Start?,” written with Johnny Mandel and covered by artists like Tony Bennett, Michael Feinstein and Ms. Streisand.Ms. Streisand released an album of the Bergmans’ songs, “What Matters Most,” in 2011. The compilation “Sinatra Sings Alan & Marilyn Bergman” was released in 2019.Television was a significant part of the Bergmans’ careers as well. They won three Emmy Awards: for the score of the 1976 TV movie “Sybil,” written with Leonard Rosenman; the song “Ordinary Miracles,” written with Mr. Hamlisch and performed by Ms. Streisand in a 1995 concert special; and “A Ticket to Dream,” another Hamlisch collaboration, written for the American Film Institute’s 1998 special “100 Years … 100 Movies.”But their lyrics were probably heard far more often by viewers of popular late-20th-century television series. They wrote the words to the bouncy theme songs for the hit sitcoms “Maude,” “Alice” and “Good Times,” as well as the themes for the nostalgic comedy series “Brooklyn Bridge” and the drama series “In the Heat of the Night.” Their hit “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers,” best known as a duet by Neil Diamond (who wrote the music) and Ms. Streisand, was originally written for Norman Lear’s short-lived series “All That Glitters.” Early in her career, Ms. Bergman was one of relatively few women in the songwriting business. In a 2007 interview with NPR, she recalled attending meetings of the performance rights organization ASCAP (the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers) at which the only women “would be me and a lot of the widows of songwriters who were representing their husbands’ estates.” She was the first woman to serve as president of ASCAP, a position she held from 1994 to 2009.The Bergmans in 1980. “Our experiences in the theater and film have shown us that the two require entirely different kinds of writing,” Ms. Bergman once said, and movies were always the couple’s first love.Associated PressMarilyn Katz was born on Nov. 10, 1928, in the same Brooklyn hospital where Alan Bergman had been born four years earlier. The daughter of Edith (Arkin) and Albert Katz, she attended the High School of Music and Art in Manhattan, now LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts.A school friend introduced her to an uncle, Bob Russell, who wrote the lyrics to the Duke Ellington hit “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore” and would later write the lyrics to “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother.” Marilyn regularly went to his home after school to play piano for him as he wrote.By the time she had earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology and English from New York University, she had set aside ideas of a music career and planned to become a psychologist. But a fateful accident sent her back to the arts.In 1956 she fell down a flight of stairs and broke her shoulder. Seeking help during her recuperation, she flew to Los Angeles to stay with her parents, who had moved there. So had Mr. Russell, and when she looked him up he suggested that she do some songwriting herself. Unable to play the piano because of her injury, she recalled many years later, she could not compose and so decided to write lyrics instead.Working under the name Marilyn Keith, she took a job with Mr. Spence, who also worked with Alan Bergman. Mr. Spence introduced the two, and their musical partnership began immediately. They were married two years later.Asked in 2010 on the television program “CBS News Sunday Morning” how she and Mr. Bergman managed to work together while staying married, she said: “The way porcupines make love. Carefully.”Ms. Bergman’s husband survives her, as do their daughter, Julie Bergman, and a granddaughter.In a 2002 interview with American Songwriter magazine, Ms. Bergman defined the difference between an amateur and professional songwriter as “the ability to rewrite” and “not to have fallen so in love with what you have written that you can’t find a better way.”The Bergmans were inducted in the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1980 and jointly received a Trustees Award from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences in 2013.Although best known for their movie and television work, the Bergmans did try writing for the Broadway stage, although they did not have much success. “Something More!,” starring Barbara Cook and Arthur Hill, for which they wrote the lyrics and Sammy Fain wrote the music, lasted less than two weeks in 1964. They fared better, but not by much, in 1978 with “Ballroom,” an adaptation of the 1975 TV movie “Queen of the Stardust Ballroom” with music by Billy Goldenberg. Despite being produced and directed by Michael Bennett, whose previous Broadway show had been the monster hit “A Chorus Line,” “Ballroom” closed after three months.“Our experiences in the theater and film,” Ms. Bergman told The New York Times in 1982, “have shown us that the two require entirely different kinds of writing.” And movies were always the couple’s first love.“We found we must be more abstract when writing for film,” she said, “because film really speaks more to the preconscious part of the brain, the part of us that dreams.” More

    • 138 Shares189 Views

      in Movies

      Max Julien, Star of a Cult Blaxploitation Film, Dies at 88

      by

      Black audiences flocked to see him in “The Mack,” and generations of cinephiles have paid homage to his star turn, his smooth delivery and his extraordinary costumes.Max Julien, the sultry, soft-voiced actor and screenwriter who rose to pop-culture prominence with his starring role in “The Mack,” a 1973 film about the rise and fall of a pimp, died on Jan. 1 at a hospital in Los Angeles. He was 88.His wife, Arabella Chavers Julien, said the cause was cardiopulmonary arrest.“The Mack” is the story of Goldie, a young man who is framed and sent to jail, and who upon his release aims to make his fortune and his name by becoming a pimp. (The word “mack” is an Americanization of “maquereau,” French street slang for pimp.) It’s a hero’s journey, played out on the mean streets of Oakland, Calif., a real-life war zone in the early 1970s presided over by Black crime lords and Black militants, who battled each other for turf.Mr. Julien’s Goldie had a gentle gravitas and a kinetic sidekick, portrayed by Richard Pryor. Mr. Julien said that he and Mr. Pryor, working off a story written in prison by an actual convict, wrote much of the screenplay, though they did not receive credit onscreen.In the decades since its release, “The Mack” has accrued legions of devotees who can recite its lines verbatim. Artists like Snoop Dogg, Too Short and others have sampled its dialogue in their work. Quentin Tarantino paid homage to it in his script for the 1993 film “True Romance.” In 2013, when the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art held a screening in honor of the film’s 40th anniversary, Mr. Tarantino lent his vintage 35-millimeter print.“The film is a blaxploitation classic,” Todd Boyd, chair for the study of race and popular culture at the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts, said in an interview. Part of the film’s legend is that Oakland’s crime boss, Frank Ward, gave the filmmakers his protection so they could shoot there. (He has a cameo as himself, dispensing pimp wisdom in a barbershop scene as a barber tends to his kingly locks.) The movie’s vernacular and its rituals were authentic, and they still fascinate, as do the clothes.Goldie’s single-breasted white fur maxi-coat was a character in its own right. (Years later, Russell Simmons, the hip-hop mogul, would offer Mr. Julien $10,000 for it, Mr. Julien told The Los Angeles Times in 2004. It now lives in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture.) Mr. Julien had a hand in the film’s costumes and made sure they were crafted by local Black clothing designers, he said in a 2002 documentary about the film.The white fur maxi-coat worn by Mr. Julien’s character in “The Mack” is now in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture.Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and CultureWhile the blaxploitation genre was problematic for some — Junius Griffin, then president of the Hollywood branch of the N.A.A.C.P., coined the term and described its themes as “just another form of cultural genocide” — urban Black audiences flocked to movies like “The Mack.” (The Los Angeles Times noted in 2013 that it was released in only 20-odd theaters in African American communities but quoted its director, Michael Campus, as saying it did better in those cities than “The Godfather” and “The Poseidon Adventure.”)Such movies “were critic-proof,” Dr. Boyd said. “People were not reading Pauline Kael reviews to determine if they should go see these films.”Melvin Van Peebles had set the tone with “Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song,” his independently made 1971 box-office hit about a performer in a sex show turned revolutionary. Gordon Parks’s “Shaft,” less transgressive but still wildly popular, appeared the same year.By the late 1970s, the blaxploitation category had fizzled out. A decade later, young cinephiles and hip-hop artists would devour VHS tapes of “The Mack” and other gems from that era — a trove of movies with powerful Black imagery that also included “Super Fly” and “Black Caesar.”“Because of Hollywood’s racism,” Dr. Boyd said, “at the time there was just not that much else. And the tale of an underworld figure like Goldie, working outside the system, was enormously appealing to the young rising stars of a new musical genre, gangsta rap.”Mr. Julien worked as a screenwriter, too. “Cleopatra Jones” (1973), which he wrote, featured a different kind of hero, on the right side of the law. It starred the statuesque Tamara Dobson as a machine-gun-toting, martial-arts-swirling model and undercover agent on a mission to rid her community of drugs. (Shelley Winters played a drug lord named Mommy.)He also wrote “Thomasine & Bushrod,” a lightly feminist western, released in 1974, and starred in it with Vonetta McGee, his girlfriend at the time. The film brings to mind a sweeter and goofier version of the 1967 movie “Bonnie & Clyde.” Mr. Julien said he was inspired by the exploits of a great-grandfather, a bank robber named Bushrod, to turn his family history into a love story.Maxwell Julien Banks was born on July 12, 1933, in Washington. His father, Seldon Bushrod Banks, was an airline mechanic. His mother, Cora (Page) Banks, was a restaurant owner. She was murdered in her home in 1972, and Mr. Julien said that his grief over her death influenced his performance in “The Mack.”He won a basketball scholarship to Southern University in Baton Rouge, La., where he spent a year before transferring to Howard University. He joined the Air Force in 1955 and served as an air traffic controller before beginning his acting career. He took his middle name as his stage name because he felt it sounded more theatrical than Banks.Mr. Julien played a Black militant in “Getting Straight,” a much-panned 1970 drama about campus unrest starring Elliott Gould and Candice Bergen, and appeared in “Uptight,” a 1968 update of the 1935 movie “The Informer” written by Ruby Dee and directed by Jules Dassin. He also acted on television. He and Ms. Chavers Julien married in 1991. She is his only immediate survivor.As much as Mr. Julien enjoyed the accolades from generations of “The Mack” fans — he appeared as a suave, pimplike elder in the 1997 comedy “How To Be a Player” — he told Dr. Boyd that he often felt his Goldie character overshadowed his own persona.Mr. Julien and Vonetta McGee in the 1974 film “Thomasine & Bushrod,” for which he wrote the screenplay. He said he was inspired by the exploits of a great-grandfather who was a bank robber to turn his family history into a love story. Columbia Pictures, via PhotofestEarly on, he also disliked the term “blaxploitation,” which he felt diminished his work.“The average white audience has had opportunities to explore every facet of their existence by now,” he told The Atlanta Journal Constitution in 1974, the year “Thomasine & Bushrod” was released. “No one ever talks about white exploitation films. If ‘The Sting’ had been done by Ron O’Neal” — the star of “Super Fly” — “and Max Julien, everyone would have called it Black exploitation. A 10-year-old kid came up to us in Baltimore and thanked us for making the picture. He said he’d read about Black cowboys all his life, but didn’t believe it until he saw it on the screen.”He added: “Blacks didn’t want to see ‘Sounder’” — the 1972 film taken from the book of the same name about a poor Black boy, his dog and the grim travails of his sharecropping family in the 1930s. “That’s not the image they want. They’ve seen that image all their life.” More

    • 175 Shares99 Views

      in Movies

      Sidney Poitier, Who Paved the Way for Black Actors in Film, Dies at 94

      by

      The first Black performer to win the Academy Award for best actor, for “Lilies of the Field,” he once said he felt “as if I were representing 15, 18 million people with every move I made.”Sidney Poitier, whose portrayal of resolute heroes in films like “To Sir With Love,” “In the Heat of the Night” and “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” established him as Hollywood’s first Black matinee idol and helped open the door for Black actors in the film industry, died on Thursday night at his home in Los Angeles. He was 94.His death was confirmed by Eugene Torchon-Newry, acting director general of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the Bahamas, where Mr. Poitier grew up. No cause was given.Sidney Poitier was the first Black actor to win the Academy Award for best actor, for “Lilies of the Field,” and helped open the door for Black actors in the film industry.Matt Sayles/Associated PressMr. Poitier, whose Academy Award for the 1963 film “Lilies of the Field” made him the first Black performer to win in the best-actor category, rose to prominence when the civil rights movement was beginning to make headway in the United States. His roles tended to reflect the peaceful integrationist goals of the struggle.Although often simmering with repressed anger, his characters responded to injustice with quiet determination. They met hatred with reason and forgiveness, sending a reassuring message to white audiences and exposing Mr. Poitier to attack as an Uncle Tom when the civil rights movement took a more militant turn in the late 1960s.Mr. Poitier with, from left, Katharine Houghton, Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy in “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” (1967). He played a doctor whose race tests the liberal principles of his prospective in-laws.Columbia Pictures“It’s a choice, a clear choice,” Mr. Poitier said of his film parts in a 1967 interview. “If the fabric of the society were different, I would scream to high heaven to play villains and to deal with different images of Negro life that would be more dimensional. But I’ll be damned if I do that at this stage of the game.”At the time, Mr. Poitier was one of the highest-paid actors in Hollywood and a top box-office draw, ranked fifth among male actors in Box Office magazine’s poll of theater owners and critics; he was behind only Richard Burton, Paul Newman, Lee Marvin and John Wayne. Yet racial squeamishness would not allow Hollywood to cast him as a romantic lead, despite his good looks.“To think of the American Negro male in romantic social-sexual circumstances is difficult, you know,” he told an interviewer. “And the reasons why are legion and too many to go into.”Mr. Poitier often found himself in limiting, saintly roles that nevertheless represented an important advance on the demeaning parts offered by Hollywood in the past. In “No Way Out” (1950), his first substantial film role, he played a doctor persecuted by a racist patient, and in “Cry, the Beloved Country” (1952), based on the Alan Paton novel about racism in South Africa, he appeared as a young priest. His character in “Blackboard Jungle” (1955), a troubled student at a tough New York City public school, sees the light and eventually sides with Glenn Ford, the teacher who tries to reach him. In “The Defiant Ones” (1958), a racial fable that established him as a star and earned him an Academy Award nomination for best actor, he was a prisoner on the run, handcuffed to a fellow convict (and virulent racist) played by Tony Curtis. The best-actor award came in 1964 for his performance in the low-budget “Lilies of the Field,” as an itinerant handyman helping a group of German nuns build a church in the Southwestern desert. Mr. Poitier and Lilia Skala in “Lilies of the Field” (1963), for which Mr. Poitier won an Oscar. United ArtistsIn 1967 Mr. Poitier appeared in three of Hollywood’s top-grossing films, elevating him to the peak of his popularity. “In the Heat of Night” placed him opposite Rod Steiger, as an indolent, bigoted sheriff, with whom Virgil Tibbs, the Philadelphia detective played by Mr. Poitier, must work on a murder investigation in Mississippi. (In an indelible line, the detective insists on the sheriff’s respect when he declares, “They call me Mr. Tibbs!”) In “To Sir, With Love” he was a concerned teacher in a tough London high school, and in “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” a taboo-breaking film about an interracial couple, he played a doctor whose race tests the liberal principles of his prospective in-laws, played by Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn. Throughout his career, a heavy weight of racial significance bore down on Mr. Poitier and the characters he played. “I felt very much as if I were representing 15, 18 million people with every move I made,” he once wrote.Mr. Poitier grew up in the Bahamas, but he was born on Feb. 20, 1927, in Miami, where his parents traveled regularly to sell their tomato crop. The youngest of nine children, he wore clothes made from flour sacks and never saw a car, looked in a mirror or tasted ice cream until his father, Reginald, moved the family from Cat Island to Nassau in 1937 after Florida banned the import of Bahamian tomatoes.When he was 12, Mr. Poitier quit school and became a water boy for a crew of pick-and-shovel laborers. He also began getting into mischief, and his parents, worried that he was becoming a juvenile delinquent, sent him to Miami when he was 14 to live with a married brother, Cyril.Mr. Poitier played a Philadelphia detective and Rod Steiger played a bigoted Mississippi sheriff in “In the Heat of Night,” one of three hit films in which Mr. Poitier appeared in 1967.Mirisch/United Artists, The Kobal CollectionMr. Poitier had known nothing of segregation growing up on Cat Island, so the rules governing American Black people in the South came as a shock. “It was all over the place like barbed wire,” he later said of American racism. “And I kept running into it and lacerating myself.”In less than a year he fled Miami for New York, arriving with $3 and change in his pocket. He took jobs washing dishes and working as a ditch digger, waterfront laborer and delivery man in the garment district. Life was grim. During a race riot in Harlem, he was shot in the leg. He saved his nickels so that on cold nights he could sleep in pay toilets.In late 1943 Mr. Poitier lied about his age and enlisted in the Army, becoming an orderly with the 1267th Medical Detachment at a veterans hospital on Long Island. Feigning a mental disorder, he obtained a discharge in 1945 and returned to New York, where he read in The Amsterdam News that the American Negro Theater was looking for actors.His first audition was a flop. With only a few years of schooling, he read haltingly, in a heavy West Indian accent. Frederick O’Neal, a founder of the theater, showed him the door and advised him to get a job as a dishwasher.Undeterred, Mr. Poitier bought a radio and practiced speaking English as he heard it from a variety of staff announcers. A kindly fellow worker at the restaurant where he washed dishes helped him with his reading. Mr. Poitier finally won a place in the theater’s acting school, but only after he volunteered to work as a janitor without pay.His lucky break came when another actor at the theater, Harry Belafonte, did not show up for a rehearsal attended by a Broadway producer. Mr. Poitier took the stage instead and was given a part in an all-Black production of “Lysistrata” in 1946. Although panned by the critics, it led to a job with the road production of “Anna Lucasta.”“No Way Out” was followed by a sprinkling of film and television roles, but Mr. Poitier still bounced between acting jobs and menial work.In 1951 he married Juanita Marie Hardy, a dancer and model, whom he divorced in 1965. They had four daughters, Beverly, Pamela, Sherri and Gina. In 1976 he married Joanna Shimkus, his co-star in “The Lost Man” (1969), a film about a gang of Black militants plotting to rob a factory. They had two daughters, Anika and Sydney.Ms. Shimkus survives him. His daughter Gina Patrice Poitier Gouraige died in 2018. Complete information about his survivors was not immediately available. Mr. Poitier with Tony Curtis in “The Defiant Ones” (1958), which established him as a star and earned him an Academy Award nomination for best actor.United ArtistsAfter breakout movies like “Blackboard Jungle” and “The Defiant Ones,” Mr. Poitier’s fate was tied to Hollywood, his purpose to expand the boundaries of racial tolerance. “The explanation for my career was that I was instrumental for those few filmmakers who had a social conscience,” he later wrote.In “The Defiant Ones” and “In the Heat of the Night,” racial politics coincided with meaty roles. Just as often, however, Mr. Poitier found himself playing virtuous messengers of racial harmony in mawkish films like “A Patch of Blue” (1965) or taking race-neutral roles in less than memorable films, like a newspaper reporter in the Cold War naval drama “The Bedford Incident” (1965), Simon of Cyrene in “The Greatest Story Ever Told” (1965) or the former cavalry sergeant in “Duel at Diablo” (1966). “The Defiant Ones” remained one of Mr. Poitier’s favorite films, but to get the part he had to cross swords with Samuel Goldwyn, who was assembling a cast for “Porgy and Bess.” After Mr. Belafonte turned down the role of Porgy as demeaning, Mr. Goldwyn set his sights on Mr. Poitier, who also regarded the musical as an insult to Black people. As Mr. Poitier told it in his lively, unusually frank first memoir, “This Life” (1980), Mr. Goldwyn pulled strings to ensure that unless Mr. Poitier played Porgy, the director Stanley Kramer would not hire him for “The Defiant Ones.”Mr. Poitier, seething, bowed to the inevitable. “I didn’t enjoy doing it, and I have not yet completely forgiven myself,” he told The New York Times in 1967.The critics who would later accuse him of bowing and scraping before the white establishment seemed to dismiss Mr. Poitier’s longstanding, outspoken advocacy for racial justice and the civil rights movement, most visibly as part of a Hollywood contingent that took part in the 1963 March on Washington. Early in his career, his association with left-wing causes and his friendship with the radical singer and actor Paul Robeson made him a politically risky proposition for film and television producers.His style, however, remained low-key and nonconfrontational. “As for my part in all this,” he wrote, “all I can say is that there’s a place for people who are angry and defiant, and sometimes they serve a purpose, but that’s never been my role.”Mr. Poitier with Claudia McNeil in the 1959 Broadway production of “A Raisin in the Sun.” Reviewing his performance, Brooks Atkinson of The Times wrote, “Mr. Poitier is a remarkable actor with enormous power that is always under control.”Leo FriedmanIn 1959 Mr. Poitier made a triumphant return to Broadway in Lorraine Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun,” winning ecstatic reviews. “Mr. Poitier is a remarkable actor with enormous power that is always under control,” Brooks Atkinson wrote in The New York Times. “Cast as the restless son, he vividly communicates the tumult of a high-strung young man. He is as eloquent when he has nothing to say as when he has a pungent line to speak. He can convey devious processes of thought as graphically as he can clown and dance.” Mr. Poitier repeated the role in the 1961 film version of the play.With the rise of Black filmmakers like Gordon Parks and Melvin Van Peebles in the late 1960s and early ’70s, Mr. Poitier, now in his 40s, turned to directing and producing. He had proposed the idea for the romantic comedy “For Love of Ivy” (1968), in which he starred with Abbey Lincoln. After joining with Paul Newman and Barbra Streisand in 1969 to form a production company called First Artists, he directed the western “Buck and the Preacher” (1972), in which he acted opposite Mr. Belafonte, and a series of comedies, notably “Uptown Saturday Night” (1974) and “Let’s Do It Again” (1975), in which Mr. Poitier and Bill Cosby teamed up to play a pair of scheming ne’er-do-wells, and “Stir Crazy” (1980), with Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder.The critics thought little of Mr. Poitier’s directing talents, but enthusiastic audiences, Black and white, made all three films box-office hits. Neither audiences nor critics found much to like in subsequent directorial efforts, like the comedy “Hanky Panky” (1982), with Mr. Wilder and Gilda Radner, or “Ghost Dad” (1990), with Mr. Cosby as a dead father who refuses to leave his three children alone.President Barack Obama presented Mr. Poitier with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009.Jewel Samad/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIn his later years, Mr. Poitier turned in solid performances in forgettable action films and thrillers like “Shoot to Kill” (1988), “Little Nikita” (1988) and “Sneakers” (1992). It was television that provided him with two of his grandest roles.In 1991 he appeared in the lead role in the ABC drama “Separate but Equal,” a dramatization of the life of Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. In 1997 he delivered a widely praised performance as Nelson Mandela in “Mandela and de Klerk,” a television movie focusing on the final years of Mr. Mandela’s imprisonment by the white-minority government in South Africa, with Michael Caine in the role of President F.W. de Klerk.“Sidney Poitier and Nelson Mandela merge with astonishing ease, like a double-exposure photograph in which one image is laid over the other with perfect symmetry,” Caryn James wrote in a review in The New York Times.In 2002, Mr. Poitier was given an honorary Oscar for his career’s work in motion picture. (At that same Oscar ceremony, Denzel Washington became the first Black actor since Mr. Poitier to win the best-actor award, for “Training Day.”) He received a Kennedy Center Honor in 1995. And in 2009, President Barack Obama, citing his “relentless devotion to breaking down barriers,” awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom.Mr. Poitier was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1974.Mr. Poitier’s memoir “This Life” was followed by a second, “The Measure of a Man,” in 2000. Subtitled “A Spiritual Autobiography,” it included Mr. Poitier’s thoughts on life, love, acting and racial politics. It generated a sequel, “Life Beyond Measure: Letters to My Great-Granddaughter” (2008).Despite his role in changing American perceptions of race and opening the door to a new generation of Black actors, Mr. Poitier remained modest about his career. “History will pinpoint me as merely a minor element in an ongoing major event, a small if necessary energy,” he wrote. “But I am nonetheless gratified at having been chosen.” Neil Vigdor contributed reporting. More

    • 63 Shares169 Views

      in Movies

      Stream These Peter Bogdanovich Movies

      by

      The director loved the world of classic Hollywood so much that it’s as if he never left it. Here are nine of his film highlights.Peter Bogdanovich, who died Jan. 6 at 82, loved the world of classic Hollywood so much that it’s as if he never left it. He directed movies as if trying to bottle an ineffable essence or panache from the heydays of Orson Welles, John Ford and Howard Hawks, whose legacy he helped preserve in his first calling as a film historian.But Bogdanovich’s knowledge (and name-dropping) didn’t produce movies for a select few cinephiles. Even Francis Ford Coppola, a New Hollywood contemporary who would release “The Godfather” the next year, marveled at the rapt, packed audiences for Bogdanovich’s 1971 masterpiece “The Last Picture Show.” Writing and filming with flair, elegance, and the heart of an old romantic, Bogdanovich reimagined the storied past and played with genre, dialing up or down the noise of the plot. Having studied as an actor, he also brought a palpable affection for his stars that persisted even as his own star as a filmmaker faded after the 1970s. The joy of moviemaking, however, never left him.Here are nine highlights of Bogdanovich’s work, all available to stream.‘The Last Picture Show’ (1971)Stream it on Showtime. Rent it on Apple.After years of interviewing the masters, Bogdanovich directed his own canonical classic, adapting Larry McMurtry’s personal novel about a small Texas town in the 1950s. Bittersweet and funny, it’s a warm portrait of folks dealing with loneliness, tedium and, frankly, horniness in a tight-knit place where there’s little to do but see a picture show. Cybill Shepherd makes her screen debut as a high schooler tiring of her roughneck boyfriend (Jeff Bridges); her disillusioned mother (a wonderfully sly Ellen Burstyn) knows a dead end when she sees one. The heart of the movie might lie with Sonny (Timothy Bottoms), a well-meaning teenager with all the direction of a tumbleweed. Well-deserved Oscars went to two more standouts, Cloris Leachman and Ben Johnson. Shot in a lovely, dusty black-and-white, the movie sighs with the lived experience of a hundred memoirs.‘What’s Up, Doc?’ (1972)Rent or buy it on Amazon or YouTube.Ryan O’Neal and Barbra Streisand face off in probably the truest screwball comedy since the days of “His Girl Friday.” A nerdy musicologist (O’Neal) bumps into a gleeful troublemaker (Streisand, pure magic) while looking for aspirin in a store. Feature-length lunacy follows. Not a line or shot is wasted as the stars expertly carry out the clockwork chaos orchestrated by Bogdanovich in a San Francisco hotel through syncopated dialogue, comic bits of business and, of course, chases. Four identical suitcases fuel the madness, creating a sensation of absolute giddiness.‘Targets’ (1968)Stream it on Fubo; rent or buy it on Apple.Born out of an assignment from the B-movie maestro Roger Corman, Bogdanovich’s ingenious and unusual directing debut taps into a late-1960s mood of upheaval and disorientation. Boris Karloff plays a retiring horror star who decides that no movie could match the fearsome violence of the real world. At the same time, a sniper is on the loose — a conceit inspired by the University of Texas tower shootings by Charles Whitman. The story lines converge at a drive-in to produce a genuine sense of shock, previewing the talents of the young director, who has a part as a filmmaker looking to cast Karloff.Remembering Peter BogdanovichThe filmmaker, who became one of Hollywood’s most celebrated directors in the ‘70s before a public fall from grace, died Jan. 6, 2022.Obituary: Mr. Bogdanovich was hailed for his ability to coax nuanced performances from actors, and for the bittersweet luminosity of movies that conjured a bygone past.Streaming Guide: The director loved the world of classic Hollywood so much that it’s as if he never left it. Here are nine of his film highlights.From the Archives: Read our original reviews of Mr. Bogdanovich’s most acclaimed films: “The Last Picture Show” and “Paper Moon.”‘Paper Moon’ (1973)Stream it on Amazon; rent or buy it on YouTube.Ryan O’Neal plays a con man who makes quick bucks by selling Bibles to widows, and his real-life daughter, Tatum O’Neal (an Oscar winner at age 10), is the orphan who falls under his care and keeps outwitting him. A number of directors in the 1970s looked back to the Depression era, but Bogdanovich’s comedy has a mischievous verve. Shooting again in black and white, he clearly delights in Tatum’s defiant streak, and gives Madeline Kahn an immortal monologue as Trixie Delight, a dancer seeking to ensnare the con man.‘Saint Jack’ (1979)Stream it on Tubi; rent or buy it on Amazon.Ben Gazzara brings his effortless charm, amused grin and gravelly baritone to this story of an expat pimp in Singapore running into trouble. You can almost feel the film’s rhythms being given over entirely to Gazzara, as he glides through rooms and streets, saying his hellos. It’s a site-specific view on the shifting sands of expatriate existence, with cinematography by Robby Müller. It also brings to a close the freewheeling, high-flying ’70s chapter of the director’s filmmaking career, as his fortunes shifted.‘The Thing Called Love’ (1993)Stream it on Hoopla; rent or buy it on Apple.A fondness for country music crops up throughout Bogdanovich’s work, and it blooms here in this overlooked, warmhearted story of an aspiring singer-songwriter in Nashville. While trying to land gigs, Miranda (Samantha Mathis) finds herself living a series of country songs: pining for one singer (River Phoenix), mooned over by another (Dermot Mulroney), wondering whether to pack up and go back home. Sandra Bullock co-stars, pre-“Speed,” as Miranda’s aimless roommate. The film’s gentle story provided Phoenix with his final role before his tragic death. Bogdanovich’s other musical interests later culminated in a four-hour-plus 2007 documentary about Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.‘The Cat’s Meow’ (2001)Stream it on Tubi; rent or buy it on YouTube.In 1924, the Hollywood producer Thomas H. Ince died under mysterious circumstances on William Randolph Hearst’s yacht, on a cruise to celebrate Ince’s birthday. The incident, which became the basis for a 1997 play by Steven Peros that he adapted for the screen, proves irresistible to Bogdanovich, who assembles a cast game for louche partying and meaningful glances. An effervescent Kirsten Dunst headlines as the actress and Hearst amour Marion Davies, with Eddie Izzard as Charlie Chaplin, Edward Herrmann as the ever-jealous Hearst, and Joanna Lumley and Jennifer Tilly to boot.‘The Great Buster: A Celebration’ (2018)Stream it on Kanopy; rent or buy it on Amazon.Some of Bogdanovich’s greatest work was done off screen as a film historian, interviewer (see, for example, “Who the Devil Made It: Conversations with Legendary Filmmakers”) and curator, but his feature-length documentary on the great silent comedian gives a taste. Stirring clips of Buster Keaton’s work accompany admiration from fans ranging from Mel Brooks to Johnny Knoxville. In this vein it’s also worth tracking down Bogdanovich’s even better documentary “Directed by John Ford.”‘The Other Side of the Wind’ (2018)Stream it on Netflix.Bogdanovich stars in one of cinema’s great, lost works, begun in the early 1970s by Orson Welles and painstakingly reassembled in 2018. The main setting is the 70th birthday party of the raucous director Jake Hannaford (John Huston), with glimpses of a radical new film to come. Bogdanovich plays Hannaford’s young foil — fittingly, a hotshot director on the rise. The film’s cinematic phantasmagoria belongs to Welles’s legacy, but also captures Bogdanovich’s double life as filmmaker and film-chronicler. More

    • 150 Shares199 Views

      in Movies

      Watch Sidney Poitier’s 1964 Oscar Speech for His Historic Best Actor Win

      by

      Sidney Poitier made history in 1964 as the first Black performer to win an Oscar in the best-actor category, for Ralph Nelson’s comedy-drama “Lilies of the Field,” in which Mr. Poitier played Homer Smith, an itinerant worker who helps a group of nuns build a chapel in rural Arizona.“Because it is a long journey to this moment, I am naturally indebted to countless numbers of people,” he said in his acceptance speech, in which he thanked the creative team behind the film, his agent, and the members of the Academy. “For all of them, all I can say is a very special thank you.”Anne Bancroft, who had won the best actress Oscar in 1963 for her role as Anne Sullivan in “The Miracle Worker,” presented Mr. Poitier with the award. He was competing against Albert Finney (“Tom Jones”), Richard Harris (“This Sporting Life”), Rex Harrison (“Cleopatra”) and Paul Newman (“Hud”).When Mr. Poitier accepted an honorary Academy Award in 2002, he took a similar tack, thanking the “handful of visionary American filmmakers, directors, writers and producers” he said made his career possible by going against the odds.“Without them, this most memorable moment would not have come to pass and the many excellent young actors who have followed in admirable fashion might not have come as they have to enrich the tradition of American filmmaking as they have,” Mr. Poitier said. More

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Movies

      11 of Sidney Poitier's Greatest Movies to Stream Now

      by

      As an actor and filmmaker, he strove to bring layered Black individuals to the screen at a time when that was rare.Sidney Poitier has died at age 94. A perennial Oscar nominee in the 1960s, Poitier became a movie star at a time when Hollywood tended to relegate Black actors to roles as servants, appearing for just a scene or two, often as comic relief. But he was rarely a supporting player, even at the start of his career. He took leads, specializing in a specific type: the educated, well-mannered, middle-class professional who had assimilated into the parts of white society willing to accept him.Throughout his first two decades in show business, Poitier’s films often promoted powerful messages about the ignorance of bigotry. His charisma and grace made him popular with white and Black audiences alike, and played no small part in easing some of the racial tensions in America — just by giving controversial issues an amiable advocate.These 11 Poitier movies span the ’50s to the ’90s, when he semiretired. They offer a good overview of not just the scope of his career, but of how the country changed during his 50-plus years in show business.1950‘No Way Out’After a relatively short stint as a New York stage actor, Poitier made an auspicious big-screen debut in 1950 with the writer-director Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s unusual hybrid of social drama and film noir. As a doctor struggling against the ingrained racism of his patients — including a career criminal played by Richard Widmark — Poitier allowed audiences to see what even accomplished Black Americans were facing every day, and how that kind of abuse could rattle a person’s psyche.Stream it on The Criterion Channel; rent or buy it on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu or YouTube.1957‘Edge of the City’In Poitier’s best 1950s film, he plays a longshoreman who becomes fast friends with a co-worker (played by John Cassavetes) who’s secretly AWOL from the military. Though one’s an upstanding citizen and the other’s a deserter, they are treated differently by their cruel boss (Jack Warden), who doesn’t like seeing any of his people getting chummy — especially not when one’s white and one’s Black. Less preachy than many of Poitier’s pictures from this era, “Edge of the City” has a bracing naturalism, born of its roots in the adventurous, progressive New York theater and television scenes.Rent or buy it on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu or YouTube.1961‘A Raisin in the Sun’In a sublime bit of cultural kismet, the playwright Lorraine Hansberry’s masterpiece arrived when Poitier was the right age to tackle one of theater’s great characters: the pragmatic, prickly Walter Younger. Unlike the softer-edged, friendlier men Poitier had been portraying up to then, Walter doesn’t have much faith in the great dream of integration. He argues with his more idealistic family members about whether they should use a financial windfall to move into a white neighborhood, and his cynicism brings to light arguments that were being had by Black families everywhere in the ’50s and ’60s — except on the big screen.Rent or buy it on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu or YouTube.Poitier opposite Ruby Dee, a frequent co-star, in “A Raisin in the Sun.”Columbia Pictures/Alamy1965‘A Patch of Blue’Poitier won a best actor Oscar for “Lilies of the Field” (1963), which would become the first of a short string of films (including “To Sir, With Love” from 1967 and “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner”) in which he played handy, disarming individuals, helping white people improve their attitudes. Most of these movies are more interesting now for how they reveal the subtle racism of well-meaning left-leaning filmmakers, but “A Patch of Blue” is a refreshing exception, and the first movie to watch from this batch. As a kindly soul who helps a poor, abused blind teenager stand up for herself, Poitier is saintly but grounded. And the writer-director Guy Green’s adaptation of an Elizabeth Kata novel is unusually wise about how sometimes class matters as much as race in America.Rent or buy it on Amazon Prime, Google Play, Vudu or YouTube.1967‘In the Heat of the Night’In between his social-issue films, Poitier made plenty of genre pictures where race was a key element of the plot (as in the two-fisted 1958 adventure “The Defiant Ones,” and the 1966 western “Duel at Diablo”). The most popular of these is the best picture-winning “In the Heat of the Night,” in which the actor plays a brilliant Philadelphia homicide detective, Virgil Tibbs, who is drafted to help a small-town Mississippi police department crack a difficult case. Refusing to defer to his virulently prejudiced hosts, Tibbs carries himself as a truly free man, in ways that audiences back in 1967 found thrilling. He’d go on to play the character twice more: in “They Call Me Mister Tibbs!” (1970) and “The Organization” (1971).Rent or buy it on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu or YouTube.1967‘Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner’The critical reputation of this Oscar-winning blockbuster hit has diminished in recent years. It’s been held up as an example of Hollywood’s heavy-handed social messaging — rather than as a groundbreaking interrogation of some purportedly open-minded white and Black families’ conflicted feelings about interracial marriage. Nevertheless, Poitier gave one of his most memorable performances in the film, using his charisma and wit to peck away at the underlying prejudices of the older generation, represented here primarily by characters played by the venerable movie stars Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn. The points that the director-producer Stanley Kramer and the screenwriter William Rose are making may be blunt, but Poitier delivers them in electrifying fashion.Rent or buy it on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu or YouTube.1972‘Buck and the Preacher’After acting in films almost nonstop throughout the ’50s and ’60s, Poitier slowed his output from the mid-70s onward, in part because he began working more behind the camera. He made his directorial debut in 1972 with this offbeat western, which arrived toward the start of the blaxploitation era, when the movie industry began to realize the commercial potential of films about self-actualized Black protagonists. Joined by Harry Belafonte and Ruby Dee, a frequent co-star, Poitier cast himself in “Buck and the Preacher” as a skilled scout having lightly comic adventures on the frontier. While attuned to 19th-century racial strife, this film is more an amiable entertainment than a hard-hitting commentary. As such, it has held up better than some of the star’s more incendiary projects.Rent or buy it on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu or YouTube.Poitier as a skilled scout in “Buck and the Preacher,” which he also directed.Columbia Pictures1974‘Uptown Saturday Night’Many of the Black-themed films that filled American theaters in the ’70s were raunchy and R-rated, but Poitier had hits in that era with three PG caper comedies, which he directed and starred in alongside Bill Cosby and a host of A-list African American entertainers. The first in this loose trilogy was “Uptown Saturday Night,” with Poitier and Cosby playing buddies who go on an all-night odyssey through their neighborhood — encountering colorful characters played by the likes of Belafonte, Flip Wilson and Richard Pryor — while searching for a stolen lottery ticket.Rent or buy it on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu or YouTube.1975‘The Wilby Conspiracy’One of Poitier’s first feature films was a 1951 adaptation of Alan Paton’s best seller, “Cry, the Beloved Country,” an unusually forward-thinking exposé of the horrors of South African apartheid. Poitier returned to that theme 24 years later with “The Wilby Conspiracy,” a chase thriller in which he plays a revolutionary on the run from the authorities with a sympathetic white buddy (played by Michael Caine). Though essentially an action picture, the movie does a fine job of making injustice come alive. Poitier and Caine would later team up again for the 1997 TV movie “Mandela and de Klerk,” dramatizing apartheid’s last days.Stream it on Tubi; rent or buy it on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Google Play or YouTube.1992‘Sneakers’Poitier made some baffling professional choices during the ’80s and ’90s, when he rarely acted, and directed more than his share of duds. But it’s hard to fault him for joining Robert Redford, Dan Aykroyd, David Strathairn and River Phoenix for the ensemble adventure-comedy “Sneakers.” As a former C.I.A. agent aiding a team of well-meaning super-hackers, Poitier makes good use of his iconic screen presence, representing one of the last sparks of ’60s idealism in an increasingly synthetic age.Rent or buy it on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu or YouTube.1999‘The Simple Life of Noah Dearborn’One of Poitier’s last screen performances was in this 1999 TV movie, in which he plays an intensely private, self-sufficient, elderly Georgian whose mental competency is questioned when he refuses to sell his land. Noah Dearborn is the kind of character Poitier played throughout his career — skilled, stubborn and deeply decent — but it says something about how the culture changed during his lifetime that his race is no longer the defining element in his story. That’s a direct consequence of how Poitier spent his career defying stereotypes and fighting to bring layered Black individuals to the screen.Stream it on IMDbtv; rent or buy it on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu or YouTube. More

    • 125 Shares189 Views

      in Movies

      ‘The Tender Bar’: A Tale of Drinking That Ducks Alcoholism

      by

      Though the memoir this film is based on confronts the issue of addiction to alcohol, the adaptation skirts the topic and its deeper implications.There’s a moment near the end of J.R. Moehringer’s 2005 memoir, “The Tender Bar,” when the author realizes he’s circling the drain. The owner of his favorite bar, Steve, has died an alcoholic’s death, overserving himself, falling, hitting his head and lapsing into a coma. Seeking solace, the young Moehringer, fresh out of Yale, turns to his most seductive companion: booze.“I no longer made any pretense of drinking to bond with the men, or to blunt the cares of the day, or to participate in male rituals,” Moehringer writes. “I drank to get drunk. I drank because I couldn’t think what else to do. I drank the way Steve drank at the end, to achieve oblivion.”“The Tender Bar,” which has been adapted as an Amazon Prime movie, directed by George Clooney, isn’t strictly about alcoholism. It’s about community and family and the void left by an absent (alcoholic) father. But Moehringer’s words would make for a standard drunkalogue at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, of which I’ve attended many. “Oblivion” is a popular word there, and a popular destination among alcoholics. This is one of the smartest things about Moehringer’s memoir: It deftly captures that moment when the party comes to an end, when it’s just not fun anymore and it’s time to sink or swim. (Moehringer quit drinking when he was 25.)But that moment never comes in the movie, mostly because J.R., played by Tye Sheridan, drinks without consequences, as does everyone else at the Long Island watering hole where his bartender uncle, Charlie (Ben Affleck), dispenses words of wisdom with his dry martinis. The closest the movie comes to acknowledging alcoholism is when J.R.’s ne’er-do-well father (Max Martini) enters the picture. A classic deadbeat dad, he disappears for years at a time, shows up to announce his sobriety, but explains that he can actually have the occasional cocktail because he’s not really an alcoholic. Then he beats up his girlfriend. He’s the movie’s designated alcoholic and also its villain.“He’s somebody who’s making a big deal of his sobriety, and it’s like, ‘I’ve decided I can allow myself a cocktail,’” the “Tender Bar” screenwriter William Monahan said by phone. “Then that cocktail is like 10 million of them, resulting in domestic violence.”Aside from J.R.’s dad, however, no one in the movie seems to have a drinking problem, despite spending all of their free time at a bar.“George Clooney didn’t hammer on it,” Monahan said. “But the J.R. character does definitely have a point where he realizes he’s got to straighten up.”Well, yes and no. In the movie, J.R. comes to Charlie concerned that he’ll end up like his old man. Charlie’s advice: Cut back on the drinking. And that’s that. We don’t see J.R. slam cocktails at Penn Station and pick up a few Budweiser tallboys for the ride to the bar, as he does in the book. Instead, his uncle tells him to cool it a little. Does he heed this advice? We never really find out.“Flight,” with Denzel Washington, illustrates the ease with which alcoholics lie to themselves. Paramount PicturesMoehringer, who has gone on to write novels (“Sutton”) and other books (“Open,” with Andre Agassi), sees drinking as an inherently difficult subject to depict in film.“It’s woven so tightly into the social fabric, and it’s such a central part of many rites and rituals, holidays and special occasions,” he told me via email. “Alcohol can be wonderful, enriching, spirit-enhancing, so it’s hard to think — unpleasant to think — that it can also be dangerous, and sometimes deadly. It doesn’t seem fair, this thing that makes us feel so good can also make us feel so bad. The paradox makes it hard to discuss.”Five Movies to Watch This WinterCard 1 of 51. “The Power of the Dog”: More

    • 138 Shares119 Views

      in Television

      A Guide to What Is Happening With the 2022 Golden Globes

      by

      A guide to everything we know about the 79th annual Golden Globes on Sunday night.First, the Golden Globes were going to go toe-to-toe with the Critic’s Choice Awards on Sunday night. Now, after the critics’ ceremony was postponed amid the Omicron surge, the Globes will have Sunday night all to themselves for a big, splashy …… audience-less, glorified PowerPoint presentation. Which may or may not be livestreamed.After NBC bowed out as the broadcaster for this year’s event over ethical missteps and a lack of diversity at the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the group of journalists that puts on the Golden Globes, the ceremony on Sunday will be decidedly low-key. A small number of vaccinated, boosted, masked, socially distanced H.F.P.A. members and other guests will attend the 90-minute event, kicking off at 9 p.m. Eastern time (6 p.m. Pacific) in the ballroom of the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills. There will be no red carpet or outside media covering the night in person. It seems the event will be more like a graduation ceremony than the freewheeling party of years past.Muted format aside, there are still some names to watch: Jane Campion is the favorite to take home her first Golden Globe in the best director category for “The Power of the Dog,” Will Smith and Kristen Stewart could build Oscar momentum with wins for “King Richard” and “Spencer,” and “West Side Story” could score big with wins in several categories..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-1g3vlj0{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1g3vlj0{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-1g3vlj0 strong{font-weight:600;}.css-1g3vlj0 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1g3vlj0{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0.25rem;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}Here’s a recap of how we got here and what to expect.What exactly is the controversy surrounding the Hollywood Foreign Press Association?In February, The Los Angeles Times published an investigation that uncovered infighting, possible financial missteps, questionable journalistic ethics and a jarring lack of diversity in the H.F.P.A.’s ranks. (Not a single one of the organization’s 80-plus voting members, the paper found, were Black.) A New York Times article published a few days later explored the finances of the group, a tax-exempt nonprofit, and reported that it had paid more than $3 million in salaries and other compensation to its members and staff, and that a tax filing showed it had paid $1.3 million in travel costs one year.The scandal-ridden group also came under scrutiny after reports revealed that more than a third of the H.F.P.A. members had been flown on a luxury press trip to the French set of the Netflix series “Emily in Paris” in 2019, after which the critically panned comedy picked up two Golden Globes nominations.How has the H.F.P.A. responded?During the 2021 Golden Globes telecast last February, leaders of the group committed to diversifying their membership — a vague, underwhelming overture that fell flat in Hollywood. Then, after NBC announced in May that it would not air the 2022 ceremony, the H.F.P.A. released a statement that said it was working to reform itself with “extreme urgency” and offered a timeline for changes. In the months since, the H.F.P.A. has hired its first chief diversity officer, adopted new rules that prohibit members from accepting gifts from studios and added its first outside board members. In October, it added 21 new journalists to its ranks, 29 percent of whom it said identified as Black.How has Hollywood responded?Celebrities like Scarlett Johansson and Mark Ruffalo criticized the H.F.P.A. for its proposed changes, arguing they fell short, and a timeline they felt was too long. Tom Cruise returned his three Golden Globes in protest. More than 100 P.R. firms threatened to boycott the H.F.P.A., and Netflix, Amazon, WarnerMedia and Neon cut ties with the organization. NBC still isn’t airing the awards but left the door open for them to return in 2023 if the H.F.P.A. could demonstrate “meaningful reform.”Oh, right, there’s also an award ceremony! What should I watch for?On the film side, “Belfast” and “The Power of the Dog” dominated the nominations with seven each, with the latter’s director, Jane Campion, favored to win her first Golden Globe. “King Richard,” “Don’t Look Up,” “Licorice Pizza” and “West Side Story” followed with four apiece. On the TV side, “Succession” received five nominations, followed by four for “Ted Lasso.” There’s a large crop of first-time nominees among the performers, including Ariana DeBose (“West Side Story”) and Kristen Stewart (“Spencer”) in film, and Jeremy Strong (“Succession”), Jean Smart (“Hacks”), Jennifer Coolidge (“The White Lotus”), and Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany (“WandaVision”) on TV.The field is more diverse than in years past, when artists of color were often overlooked: The best actor in a drama category features three Black contenders, Will Smith (“King Richard”), Denzel Washington (“The Tragedy of Macbeth”) and Mahershala Ali (“Swan Song”).Wait, but can I even watch the Golden Globes?No. A representative for the H.F.P.A. said the ceremony would be private and would not be livestreamed. Instead, real-time updates will be provided on the Golden Globes website and on social media. More