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      ‘Zeros and Ones’ Review: Plague and Paranoia

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      Abel Ferrara’s lockdown experiment is a spooky political thriller with a double dose of Ethan Hawke.Cryptic to a fault, Abel Ferrara’s “Zeros and Ones” unfolds in a murkiness that’s both literal and ideological. Even its star, Ethan Hawke — speaking to us as himself in two brief scenes that bookend the movie — admits that, initially, he didn’t understand Ferrara’s script. His candor is comforting, and emboldening, encouraging persistence with a story whose destination seems as vague as its characters’ motivations.What’s clear is that the constraints of pandemic filmmaking were catnip to Ferrara, whose jittery camera patrols the deserted nighttime streets of a locked-down Rome alongside J.J. (Hawke), an elite American soldier on a mysterious undercover mission. This requires finding his twin brother, Justin (also Hawke), an imprisoned revolutionary whom we see being questioned and repeatedly tortured.Surveilled by shady foreign agents, J.J. creeps from one furtive encounter to another, constantly filming his progress. Pitiless, grainy close-ups capture him sipping tea with a mother and child — perhaps his brother’s family — in a blank apartment and, later, alongside a mullah in a mosque. A terrorist attack on the city may be imminent, but J.J. is otherwise engaged with a couple of slinky prostitutes (“They’re both negative,” their madam helpfully advertises) and a beautiful Russian woman (played by the director’s partner, Cristina Chiriac) who’s forcing him to have sex at gunpoint. By this juncture, the only thing we know for sure is that Ferrara, bless his guttersnipe soul, is still bracingly, adamantly himself.Steadfastly shouldering this rambling, barely penetrable narrative, Hawke smoothly distinguishes the implacable intensity of J.J. from the delusions of his brother (whose messianic rantings recall Hawke’s startling performance as John Brown in last year’s Showtime drama “The Good Lord Bird.”) Saddled with some of the film’s dippiest dialogue (“You hate trees!,” he screams at his unidentified tormentors), Justin serves as the enfeebled, despairing conscience of a world seemingly abandoned by God and compassion alike.With its prickling, apocalyptic aesthetic and persistent paranoia, this spooky political thriller is all about a mood: conspiratorial, sinister, unsettled. Here, the accessories of pandemic life become even more ominous: A sanitizing team on the subway recalls plague thrillers like “Contagion” (2011), and a suddenly-brandished thermometer pointed at J.J.’s forehead plays like a gun attack. When everyone is wearing a mask, how do we tell the good guys from the bad?Utterly baffling, yet never less than intriguing, “Zeros and Ones” lingers in the mind. Even after you think you’ve brushed it off, its chilly tendrils continue to cling.Zeros and OnesRated R for temptation and torture. Running time: 1 hour 25 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Amazon, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      ‘India Sweets and Spices’ Review: Gossip, Secrets and Biting Laughs

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      A party invitation exposes a family and a community in this Geeta Malik feature starring Sophia Ali.In Geeta Malik’s comedy-drama “India Sweets and Spices” the aunties maim. At least emotionally. The wives and mothers who live in an upscale New Jersey enclave of Indian Americans like their gossip spicy and don’t seem to care who feels the burn. (The scotch-drinking, suit-clad uncles aren’t laggards in that department either.)When Alia Kapur (Sophia Ali) arrives home from the University of California, Los Angeles, for the summer, she sets in motion a maelstrom of chatter. Her plans to chill are derailed by her parents, who draft her into attending the Saturday parties that move from well-appointed home to well-appointed home, starting with theirs. On a whim, she invites Varun Dutta (Rish Shah) and his hard-working parents (the new owners of the titular grocery store) to the gathering. A summer of revelations ensues — the most startling of which concern Alia’s dad and mom, Ranjit (Adil Hussain) and Sheila (Manisha Koirala).Caste snobbery has followed these families from India to the United States. While Alia and her friends roll their eyes at each other about their parents’ obsessions with status, they also enjoy the swimming pools, BMWs and California universities that those priorities make possible.“India Sweets and Spices” is a gentle but firm take on the costs of keeping up with the Joneses, or the Devis in this case. Without sacrificing comedic buoyancy, Malik and her ensemble make palpable a community that is vibrant and claustrophobic. Koirala, a Bollywood star, brings a taut poise to a mother whose veneer seems adamantine until the Duttas walk in the door. Deepti Gupta delivers a soulful performance as the sage shopkeeper who knew Sheila a lifetime ago.India Sweets and SpicesRated PG-13 for frisky fooling around and some smoking. Running time: 1 hour 41 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Tick, Tick … Boom!’ Review: A Bohemian’s Rhapsodies

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      Andrew Garfield stars as Jonathan Larson, the composer and lyricist of “Rent,” in this meta-musical directed by Lin-Manuel Miranda.For his feature directing debut, the “Hamilton” honcho Lin-Manuel Miranda points his spotlight at the composer who inspired his own creative awakening: Jonathan Larson.That artist heard little applause in his lifetime. He died at age 35 from an aortic aneurysm the day before the first preview of his breakthrough hit, “Rent.” In addition to “Rent,” Larson left behind the 1991 meta-musical “Tick, Tick … Boom!,” a self-portrait of the artist as an angst-ridden wretch, which Miranda has reverently dusted and polished like a sacred totem for a select cult. When Larson introduces himself as “a musical theater writer, one of the last of my species,” the line prods fans to protest that his as-yet-unwritten rock musical would galvanize a generation of creators. Miranda, who saw “Rent” at 17, is palpably thrilled to gain access to his hero’s hovel on Greenwich Street, here recreated with exactitude — right down to the Scorpions cassette.“Tick, Tick … Boom!” is an autobiography of anxieties. Larson, played with kinetic desperation by Andrew Garfield, fixates on success. How can he get it? How long can his wallet can hold out for it? How much might his all-consuming ambition cost him emotionally? Larson stakes his hopes on wowing producers with a head-scrambling sci-fi operetta called “Superbia.” At the same time, his dancer girlfriend, Susan (Alexandra Shipp, primarily tasked to look beatific), threatens to slink off to a teaching job in the Berkshires, and his best friend, Michael (Robin de Jesús), sells out for a corporate salary and an apartment big enough to host the film’s only full-on dance number. (The charismatic de Jesús celebrates his walk-in closet by letting Garfield spin him in the air like a Christmas puppy.)“Compromise or persevere?” Garfield’s striver croons, convinced that his impending 30th birthday — the time bomb in the title — will mark his decline from future superstar to “waiter with a hobby.” Foreshadowing carries the film. Even the songs cop that Larson was not yet the lyricist he would become. The lyrics dwell on chirpy observations about his diner job, his writer’s block, his favorite swimming pool (another location in the film) and, of course, his prescient fear of mortality, which is the only reason Steven Levenson’s screen adaptation has dramatic heft.Miranda’s devotion to his idol keeps him from expanding the musical’s myopic fretting into a universal story of sacrifice and resolve. Garfield at least gives Larson an endearing vulnerability. While he isn’t a lifelong singer like Vanessa Hudgens (in a supporting role as a cast member in Larson’s show-within-the-show), Garfield holds up his half of their duet with a capable voice that creaks just enough to sound sincere. As a dancer, Garfield is a gleeful pogo-bopping creature in the homespun key of David Byrne. His gangly limbs fill the frame, and the cinematographer Alice Brooks even follows his lead by eschewing pizazz for the humble grays of a walk-up apartment in winter. Instead, it’s up to a constellation of stage legends to bring the glitz — and boy, do they, in a centerpiece number with so many cameos that this small-scale film briefly becomes Broadway’s “Avengers.”Tick, Tick … Boom!Rated PG-13 for unmelodic cursing and a whiff of drug use. Running time: 1 hour 55 minutes. In theaters and on Netflix. More

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      ‘Black Friday’ Review: Killer Sales Bring Killer Customers

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      In this horror-comedy, a group of resentful retail workers struggle to survive as shoppers overtaking their toy store are ravaged by a zombie plague.“Black Friday,” a horror-comedy directed by Casey Tebo, is as chaotic as its characters. The premise goes like this: As an alcoholic single father, Ken (’90s horror vet Devon Sawa), and a hypochondriac, Chris (Ryan Lee), join their neurotic co-workers on Thanksgiving night to prepare for the Black Friday onslaught at a big-box toy store, they have no idea that alien zombies are overtaking the human race. Once the carnage reaches their registers, the workers must band together to make it out alive. That harrowing journey yields a lot more goofiness than it does character development.This film would be perfectly delightful if it only strove for absurdity. Andy Greskoviak’s script lampoons corporate apathy and retail-work ennui with the same swiftness as his voracious zombies. Unfortunately, “Black Friday” also tries to make viewers root for its characters, who are mostly delightful because they are such wildly mediocre people. At one moment while hiding from the monstrous horde, each character explains what brought them to retail. It’s an excellent sequence that offers back story without forcing these misfits to bond. Yet at the end, the film seems to apologize for its refreshing misanthropy by tying these dynamics up with a Christmas bow.Unapologetically low-budget, “Black Friday” makes great use of prosthetics, practical effects and some very game actors to deliver its zany scares. This is exactly the kind of thing horror lovers should watch with like-minded friends as the holidays roll around (probably pre-meal, though, thanks to copious amounts of zombie puke). But it would be more memorable if it delivered a bitter end.Black FridayNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 24 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Vudu and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      ‘Out of the Blue’: When Dennis Hopper Cast Himself as a Dad

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      As the director and star, Hopper delivered some wildly self-indulgent moments. But it’s Linda Manz, playing a troubled teenage girl, who stole the show.One of the weirder episodes in the long, strange trip of Dennis Hopper’s career, “Out of the Blue,” from 1983, was intended as a cautionary after-school special about a troubled teenage girl. It mutated mid-production when Hopper, cast as the girl’s father, became the director and, scarcely less violently than his character, threw caution to the wind.The movie, which looks great in a new 4K restoration, is at Metrograph in Manhattan through Nov. 28.Set amid the impressive vistas of the Canadian northwest, “Out of the Blue” is a boldly feel-bad film about punk rock, lunatic driving and deranged family values. A disgraced trucker, Don (Hopper) returns home after five years in prison to find work in the town dump. Meanwhile, his malleable wife, Kathy (the veteran TV actor Sharon Farrell), shoots up in the bathroom and their Elvis-obsessed daughter, the hard-faced urchin Cebe (Linda Manz, fresh from her attention-grabbing turn in Terrence Malik’s “Days of Heaven”), plots to escape high school.Cebe has already run away to Vancouver for a short-lived idyll involving an Elvis impersonator; a degenerate cabdriver; a house of sin; a rowdy punk performance in which she got to play drums; a stolen car; and a session with a stern social worker, played by the Canadian actor Raymond Burr whose fleeting presence sealed the project’s status as a Canadian tax-shelter production. “Out of the Blue” takes its title and several songs from Neil Young and Crazy Horse’s 1979 LP, “Rust Never Sleeps.” It’s a pop culture assemblage not unlike Cebe’s boudoir which, in addition to an Elvis shrine and several punk rock posters, contains a teddy bear, a model truck, a car-top flashing light, various road signs, a decapitated Barbie and a framed picture of a pink poodle.Many scenes have a semi-improvised feel. Hopper, who gives himself some spectacularly self-indulgent moments, is often riveting, but the movie ultimately belongs to Manz, introduced in Halloween clown-face makeup happily riding in Daddy’s rig. “Am I as sexy as Elvis?” Hopper demands, eyes off the road, heading for a particularly horrendous collision with destiny.“This father and daughter may not resemble any other father and daughter you’ve ever seen,” Janet Maslin wrote in her appreciative New York Times review, adding that “whatever wavelength Mr. Hopper is on here, she’s on it, too.” Indeed, unfazed by the antics of her director-father, Manz doesn’t appear to be acting.At one point, Cebe goes with friends to a movie that, less than likely, is Chaplin’s “Modern Times.” “I hate happy endings,” she announces. It’s a foregone conclusion that “Out of the Blue” won’t have one, but Hopper uncorks a closer far beyond mere unhappiness.Reviewing the movie for The Village Voice, I observed that “Out of the Blue” is just that: “You rarely know what will happen next and you scarcely believe it when it does.” That still holds true.Out of the BlueThrough Nov. 28 at Metrograph, Manhattan; metrograph.com. More

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      'Rust' Script Supervisor Sues Alec Baldwin and Others

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      A lawsuit filed by the supervisor, Mamie Mitchell, said an injury or death on the set was “a likely result” of the production’s failure to follow safety protocols.A script supervisor for the movie “Rust” recalled Wednesday how she had been watching the actor Alec Baldwin practicing a move with a gun on the set in New Mexico last month, holding her script and checking photos on her iPhone to make sure that he was wearing the right shirt and vest, when she heard a loud blast.“Then, an explosion,’’ the supervisor, Mamie Mitchell, recalled at a news conference in Los Angeles. “A deafening, loud gunshot. I was stunned. I heard someone moaning and I turned around and my director was falling backward and holding his upper body.”Then, she said, she turned and saw the film’s cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins, sink down to the ground. Law enforcement officials have said that Ms. Hutchins, 42, was shot and killed, and the film’s director, Joel Souza, 48, was wounded, when the gun that Mr. Baldwin had been practicing with, which he had been told did not contain any live ammunition, discharged, firing a real bullet that struck them both.Ms. Mitchell, who said that she ran out of the wooden church set and used the phone in her hand to call 911, announced Wednesday that she had filed a lawsuit against the producers on the film, including Mr. Baldwin, and several members of its crew.“Alec Baldwin intentionally, without just cause or excuse, cocked and fired the loaded gun even though the upcoming scene to be filmed did not call for the cocking and firing of a firearm,” the lawsuit, which was filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, said.The script supervisor, Mamie Mitchell, at the news conference Wednesday announcing the lawsuit. Rodin Eckenroth/Getty Images“The fact that live ammunition was allowed on a movie set, that guns and ammunition were left unattended, that the gun in question was handed to Mr. Baldwin by the assistant director who had no business doing so, the fact that safety bulletins were not promulgated or ignored, coupled with the fact that the scene in question did not call for a gun to be fired at all, makes this a case where injury or death was much more than just a possibility — it was a likely result,” the lawsuit said..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-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-m80ywj header{margin-bottom:5px;}.css-m80ywj header h4{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:500;font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.5625rem;margin-bottom:0;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-m80ywj header h4{font-size:1.5625rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}.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;}A lawyer for Mr. Baldwin did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The lawsuit was announced at a news conference with Ms. Mitchell’s lawyer, Gloria Allred.It claims assault, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and deliberate infliction of harm, and requested unspecified damages. It said Ms. Mitchell, who was standing less than four feet from Mr. Baldwin when the revolver discharged, “sustained serious physical trauma and shock and injury to her nervous system and person” and “will in the future be prevented from attending to her usual occupation as a script supervisor.”The shooting took place Oct. 21 on the set of the film on Bonanza Creek Ranch in Santa Fe County, N.M., as Mr. Baldwin prepared to film a close-up of him drawing a .45 revolver from a shoulder holster. According to Ms. Mitchell’s lawsuit, Mr. Baldwin failed to check the gun himself to see if it was loaded before handling it.They were preparing for three tight camera shots, according to the lawsuit: one of Mr. Baldwin’s eyes, one of a blood stain on his shoulder, and one of his “torso as he reached his hand down to his holster and removed the gun.”According to court papers filed by the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Department, the movie’s first assistant director, Dave Halls, had called out “cold gun” before handing the revolver to Mr. Baldwin, using a term indicating that the gun did not contain live ammunition. A lawyer for the movie’s armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, said that Ms. Gutierrez-Reed had loaded the revolver with what she believed to have been dummy rounds, which do not contain gunpowder and cannot be fired.The lawsuit charges that Mr. Baldwin knew that it was typical protocol for an armorer or prop master to hand a gun to the actor after demonstrating that it is empty — not for the first assistant director to do so — and that Mr. Baldwin failed to follow those rules. It also charges that Ms. Gutierrez-Reed allowed guns and ammunition to be left unattended on the set that day. The lawsuit accuses the production of hiring Ms. Gutierrez-Reed, 24, who had just started out her career as a lead armorer in the film industry, as part of a series of “cost-cutting measures.”Ms. Gutierrez-Reed’s lawyer, Jason Bowles, has said that his client noticed that day the gun was left unattended for several minutes after she had asked other crew members to watch the firearms and ammunition. Mr. Bowles has defended Ms. Gutierrez’s qualifications for the job, saying that she was dedicated to ensuring safety on set. Previously lawyers for Ms. Gutierrez-Reed said that she had been hired to two positions on the film, “which made it extremely difficult to focus on her job as an armorer.”Mr. Halls, Ms. Gutierrez-Reed and Sarah Zachry, the movie’s prop master, are all named as defendants in Ms. Mitchell’s lawsuit. Ms. Zachry and a lawyer for Mr. Halls did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Mr. Bowles said he had not yet reviewed the lawsuit.Last week, Serge Svetnoy, the film’s gaffer, or chief lighting technician, filed a lawsuit accusing the movie’s producers, Mr. Baldwin and several other crew members of failing to follow appropriate firearm safety protocols that would have prevented the fatal shooting. Mr. Svetnoy said he was standing just six or seven feet away from Mr. Baldwin and said that he was injured by discharge materials from the gun and traumatized by seeing his friend die, trauma that had left him unable to work. More

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      ‘Prayers for the Stolen’ Review: Coming of Age Among the Poppies

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      Tatiana Huezo’s feature film is based on a novel about girls growing up in Mexico in communities terrorized by opium cartels.In “Prayers for the Stolen,” the first narrative feature by the Mexican-Salvadoran documentarian Tatiana Huezo, young 8-year-old girls weep as their mothers chop off their long tresses under the pretext of preventing head lice. In reality, their boyish haircuts are meant to disguise their true genders from the cartel members who terrorize their rural Mexican town.Soon the girls will grow hardened to the reality that plagues the sparkling and verdant highlands surrounding their remote village. These criminals kidnap, sexually assault and often leave for dead any girls they can get their hands on.Loosely based on Jennifer Clement’s 2014 novel of the same name, “Prayers for the Stolen” is on the one hand a meandering coming-of-age film, sensitively charting the evolution of Ana and her two girlfriends, Paula and Maria. The girls covertly apply makeup behind their mothers’ backs, fantasize about their schoolteachers and eventually embark on small flirtations of their own. But violence circumscribes their every whim.The threat posed by the cartel, which runs a poppy harvesting operation using the townspeople’s cheap labor, undermines any sense of normality. Black SUVs can come charging from across the valley without warning, forcing the girls into hiding, and helicopters spraying toxic pesticides to preserve the opium-producing crop often invade during playtime.A leap forward in time turns the girls into young women. A new set of older actresses steps in to play the girls at 13, and their masculine hairdos aren’t fooling anyone.The film swings back and forth from scenes of pastoral bliss to brutality, generating a narrative that, while unfocused, is nevertheless anchored by the tender and wounded performances by its adolescent cast.In the end, tragedy arrives abruptly, an unsurprising turn given the unchanging circumstances, yet one that imparts a girl with a sudden awakening to the monumental bleakness of her fate.Prayers for the StolenRated R. In Spanish, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 50 minutes. In theaters and on Netflix. More

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      Hollywood Crew Union Narrowly Ratifies Its Contracts With Studios

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      Camera operators, prop makers, lighting technicians and other members of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees ratified new contracts with Hollywood studios on Monday. But the margin was perilously narrow, with many members viewing the pact as toothless in terms of preventing long working hours — the kind of conditions recently endured on the set of “Rust,” the Alec Baldwin movie where the cinematographer was killed and the director wounded.IATSE, as the union is known, uses an Electoral College-type system for contract ratification, in which local shops are assigned different numbers of delegates based on their size and all delegate votes are cast based on the majority vote at each local. IATSE said the combined delegate vote for the two contracts was 56 percent in favor, with 641 total votes from 36 locals.The popular vote, however, revealed deep division: 50.3 percent of members voted yes on both contracts. About 72 percent of 63,209 eligible members cast ballots, according to the union.Only 49.6 percent of members in Los Angeles voted yes. In other areas of the country — except the Northeast, which largely operates under a different set of unexpired contracts — the popular vote stood at 52 percent.“The vigorous debate, high turnout and close election indicates we have an unprecedented movement-building opportunity to educate members on our collective bargaining process and drive more participation in our union,” Matthew Loeb, IATSE’s president, said in a statement.In posts on Twitter, some outraged members demanded recounts and flung insults at Mr. Loeb and other IATSE officials.Under the new, three-year contracts, the studios for the first time agreed to give crews a minimum of 54 hours of rest on weekends when working five-day weeks, on par with actors. The contract includes pay increases of up to 60 percent for some workers who were previously paid near minimum wage in California. Studios also agreed to fund a roughly $400 million deficit in the union’s pension and health plan without imposing premiums or increasing the cost of health coverage.The studios include stalwarts like Disney, NBCUniversal and WarnerMedia and insurgents like Amazon, Apple and Netflix.Last week, a smattering of IATSE members held a news conference in Hollywood to criticize the proposed contract — in particular a provision allowing crews to continue to work 14-hour days. The contracts provide for 10-hour “turnarounds,” or the time between leaving a set at the end of a work period and being required to return.The shooting death last month of Halyna Hutchins, the cinematographer for “Rust,” and the wounding of Joel Souza, the film’s director, thrust concerns about crew rest into the spotlight. Hours before Mr. Baldwin fired a gun being used as a prop — he had been told the firearm was “cold,” meaning that it contained no live ammunition, according to an affidavit — a half dozen camera technicians walked off the set to protest working conditions. Their complaints included marathon work days, long commutes to the set (cutting into turnaround rest time) and delayed paychecks.IATSE and the studios reached a tentative agreement for a new pact on Oct. 16, averting a threatened strike, which would have come at a particularly bad time for Hollywood. Studios have been scrambling to make up for lost production time during the coronavirus pandemic. Another shutdown would have left content cupboards dangerously bare — particularly at streaming services, which have become crucial to the standing of some of the companies on Wall Street. More