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Q&A: Maisy Stella of ‘My Old Ass’ on Her Rise to Fame
Maisy Stella stars in “My Old Ass,” a new coming-of-age film. After years as a child actor, she says it was going to high school that helped her prepare.Maisy Stella couldn’t have guessed that the thing that would prepare her for her first major film role would be … being a regular teenager.In 2012, when she was 8, a video of her and her older sister, Lennon, singing Robyn’s “Call Your Girlfriend” took off online — a narrower era of the internet when harmonized covers and cup percussion could charm millions of strangers. The duet, which now has more than 31 million views, landed the pair a segment on “Good Morning America.” Soon after, they were cast in the soapy country music drama, “Nashville.”But it was a four-year pause from acting Ms. Stella took after six years on “Nashville” to attend high school that laid the groundwork for her return to the screen. Now, she stars in “My Old Ass,” where she plays Elliott, a restless teenager whose mushroom trip conjures her 39-year-old future self (played by Aubrey Plaza). The film, written and directed by Megan Park, plays with the buoyant idealism of youth, face-to-face with the hard-earned wisdom of adulthood.Ms. Stella’s high school sojourn of backpacks and lockers and prom — all the things she had romanticized from watching movies — turned out to be just the dose of adolescence she needed to play a starry-eyed Elliott.“My prep for ‘My Old Ass’ was those four years,” Ms. Stella, 20, said. “I can’t imagine how different I would have been in the movie if I had been working consistently since the time I was eight.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
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As ‘Saturday Night Live’ Starts 50th Season, Here’s What Cast and Crew Remember About the Debut
As the historic 50th season of “Saturday Night Live” gets underway, its very first episode has become a piece of show-business mythology: the story of how a group of misfit writers and performers, led by a 30-year-old Canadian upstart named Lorne Michaels, put together a counterculture comedy-variety show in Manhattan amid interpersonal conflict, last-minute changes and substance abuse, and somehow established a television institution.It’s a legend so revered that it has inspired a new film, “Saturday Night,” directed by Jason Reitman, in which a cast of young actors portraying the Not Ready for Prime Time Players (as well as the show’s producers and crew members) act out a version of events as they might have unfolded on that fateful evening of Oct. 11, 1975.For the people actually involved in the debut broadcast of what was then called “Saturday Night” — the writers, cast members, comedians and musicians — that excitement and energy is only one part of the tale. They remember the creation of the NBC show — the long buildup to its premiere, the performance itself and the aftermath — as sometimes hectic, sometimes carefully organized. It was a period full of head-butting, but one that also fostered camaraderie and lifelong friendships. And it never would have happened without some crucial, 11th-hour discoveries, or the right people in place to make those realizations.But at no point did they wonder if they were about to make history. “I don’t think it concerned us one way or the other,” said Chevy Chase, a founding cast member and writer. “We were going to do what we do, and if you laugh, great, you laugh. You’ll tell somebody else about it, and they’ll laugh the next time.”Here, some of those participants share their memories of how “Saturday Night” came to life.Jane CurtinJane Curtin said that she realized the show was catching on when she left 30 Rock and on the street “you’d pass by people and they would shake.”NBCU Photo Bank/Getty ImagesCurtin had acted in theater, commercials and a Boston-area improv group, the Proposition, when she auditioned for “Saturday Night” in summer 1975. At her callback, Curtin expected a conversation with producers: “I walked in the door,” she recalled, “and they said, ‘OK, what have you prepared?’ The classic anxiety dream.” Fortunately, she had some old material in her purse. “It was a big purse,” Curtin 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
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Francis Ford Coppola and ‘Megalopolis’: What to Know
The controversies surrounding the new epic include accusations of on-set problems, a pulled trailer and more.Francis Ford Coppola waged war with studio heads throughout the making of “The Godfather.” Production on his 1979 Vietnam War epic, “Apocalypse Now,” was so troubled — there was a typhoon and a near-fatal heart attack — that it was chronicled in a documentary.So it’s not exactly a surprise that his latest movie, “Megalopolis,” a nearly two-and-a-half-hour futuristic fable about the battle between art and greed that stars Adam Driver, arrives in theaters Friday mired in controversy.The 85-year-old filmmaker’s self-financed passion project, which he conceived all the way back in the 1970s, has earned headlines about a reportedly chaotic shoot, allegations of misconduct and questions about the film’s commercial prospects. While we wait to see whether it will find a place in the canon of Coppola masterpieces or go down as a $120 million mistake, here is a guide to the movie’s complicated history.When did this all start?More than four decades ago. Yes, you read that right — Coppola first had the idea toward the end of filming “Apocalypse Now” in the late 1970s. The new project, he told Film Comment in 1983, would confront big questions — the why and what of existence. It simmered on the back burner for years — Coppola scrapped and re-envisioned the script in each subsequent decade — until he finally began shooting it in 2022.Why did it take so long to make?Coppola followed up “Apocalypse Now” with “One From the Heart,” a 1982 musical romance that bombed at the box office, grossing a mere $636,796 against a $26 million budget. That meant he was stuck making studio-friendly films for a decade so he could pay off his debts. (A film called “Megalopolis,” after all, hardly portends a small budget.)But even after “The Godfather Part III” and “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” put him back on track, studios remained cautious about signing on, fearing a repeat of the infamously chaotic production of “Apocalypse Now.” Also, after Sept. 11, the idea of a film about New York City being rebuilt after being nearly destroyed hit a little too, well, close to home.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
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‘The Bouncer,’ ‘Pearl’ and More Streaming Gems
This month’s under-the-radar streaming suggestions include unexpectedly poignant action flicks, highly stylized horror pictures and documentaries about art thieves and sperm donors.‘The Bouncer’ (2019)Stream it on Amazon Prime Video.It was very easy, for quite some time, to dismiss Jean-Claude Van Damme as just another blank-slate action star. But something truly fascinating has happened as he’s grown older — in his best roles, he’s leaned into his vulnerability, playing his age rather than ignoring it. He no longer seems like a guy who can win every fight, so his fights are far more interesting. His face, like Clint Eastwood’s, has grown richer as its lines grow deeper and harder, and like Eastwood, he does his best acting when he seems to be doing nothing at all. This rough-and-tumble crime thriller from the gifted action director Julien Leclercq (“Sentinelle”) gives Van Damme plenty of character moments — it’s quieter and moodier than your typical bone-cruncher — but when the action beats arrive, they’re lean, mean and effective.‘A Bigger Splash’ (2016)Stream it on Max.With the director Luca Guadagnino’s new film “Queer” on the fall festival circuit, it’s a fine time to check out this sun-soaked psychological thriller, which also serves as an excellent adieu to the summer season. It finds the rock star Marianne (Tilda Swinton) and her boyfriend, Paul (Matthias Schoenaerts), relaxing poolside on the Sicilian island of Pantelleria when they’re visited by two unexpected guests: the music producer Harry (Ralph Fiennes) and his recently discovered daughter, Penelope (Dakota Johnson). Sparks fly, tempers flare and libidos follow; every performance is a stunner, and Guadagnino navigates each turn of events with sly grace.‘Pearl’ (2022)Stream it on Netflix.Mia Goth, with pitchfork, as the title character in “Pearl.”A24We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
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‘Megalopolis’ Review: The Fever Dreams of Francis Ford Coppola
The director’s latest is a great-man story about an architect, played by Adam Driver, driven by ideals and big plans. It’s a personal statement on an epic scale.Francis Ford Coppola’s “Megalopolis” is a bursting-at-the-seams hallucination of a movie — it’s wonderfully out-there. At once a melancholic lament and futuristic fantasy, it invokes different epochs and overflows with entrancing, at times confounding images and ideas that have been playing in my head since I first saw the movie in May at the Cannes Film Festival. There, it was both warmly received and glibly dismissed, a critical divide that’s nothing new for Coppola, a restlessly experimental filmmaker with a long habit of going off-Hollywood.Nothing if not au courant, “Megalopolis” is a vision of a moribund civilization, though also a great-man story about an architect, Cesar Catilina (Adam Driver), who dreams of a better world. An enigmatic genius (he has a Nobel Prize) with an aristocratic mien and a flair for drama, Catilina lives in a city that resembles today’s New York by way of ancient Rome, though it mostly looks like an elaborate soundstage. As familiar as Fifth Avenue and as obscure as the far side of the moon, it is a world that mirrors its real counterpart as a playpen for the wealthy and a prison-house for the destitute. The city haunts Catilina; it also inspires him.What Catilina dreams of is a “perfect school-city,” in which people can achieve their better selves. It’s an exalted aspiration, as seemingly boundless but also as sheltering as the blue sky, and one that invokes a long line of lofty dreamers and master builders. There are predictable obstacles, mostly other people, small-minded types without vision, idealism or maybe just faith. Among these is the mayor, Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), a consummate politician with no patience for fantasies or for Catilina. Their animosity runs through the story, which is narrated by Catilina’s aide, Fundi Romaine (Laurence Fishburne), dense with incident and populated by an array of noble souls and posturing fools.The fools prove better company in “Megalopolis” than most of the upright types, though with their all-too human comedy they’re not always distinguishable. They begin rushing in after the jolting opener, which finds Catilina dressed in inky black and uncertainly climbing out of a window in the crown of the Chrysler Building. Before long, he is standing with one foot firmly planted and the other shakily raised over the edge. He calls out “time stop” and everything — the clouds above, the cars below — freezes, only to restart at his command. He looks like a colossus, though also brings to mind the early-cinema clown Harold Lloyd hanging over a different abyss in “Safety Last!” (a title that could work for this audacious movie).It’s quite the to-be-or-not introduction. Given that filmmakers are in the business of stopping time, Catilina’s entrance also reads as an auteurist mission statement. So it’s a relief when Catilina gets off that precipice, even if Coppola never really does. The filmmaker has a thing for dreamers and their great, big dreams, and it’s easy to see “Megalopolis” — which he mentioned in interviews as early as 1983 — in autobiographical terms. Like Catilina, Coppola has endured and almost been consumed by catastrophic setbacks (most notably with his founding of a film studio that nearly ruined him), only to rise phoenixlike from the ashes. It’s one reason that “Megalopolis” feels like a personal statement on an epic scale.Giancarlo Esposito plays a consummate politician with no patience for the architect’s fantasies.LionsgateWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
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‘The Wild Robot’ Review: Wonder and Whimsy That Does Compute
Chris Sanders’s movie about a robotic assistant and the gosling she raises is defined by dazzling visuals and frank ideas about the circle of life.Have you ever thought about the many ways animals show emotion? Consider an inquisitive snout wriggling in the air, tails coiled protectively around cubs and ears perky or drooping depending on mood. For creatures who didn’t evolve to walk upright, wearing one’s heart on one’s sleeve is a considerably more anatomical business.Among the achievements of “The Wild Robot” is a painstaking regard for details like these. Written and directed by Chris Sanders (“How to Train Your Dragon”) and adapted from Peter Brown’s novel, the movie is a dazzling triumph of animation in which you feel the filmmakers’ attention on every frame. In a revivifying turn away from the gag-a-minute, computer-generated extravaganzas clogging up the animated zoological canon, this is a work that cares most about two things: big feelings and great beauty.That’s not to say that its machine is built entirely of new parts. In some ways, this kid-friendly affair about an interspecies found family even leans into its derivative elements. Roz, the bionic hero of “The Wild Robot,” seems designed to evoke the title character in “The Iron Giant,” sharing that monster’s studying eyes and lanky stature. But rather than outer space, she hails from today’s sinister science-fiction analog: the conglomerate Universal Dynamics, which specializes in robotic digital assistants. Think Alexa in hulking metal form.The movie opens as Roz (short for Rozzum Unit 7134) accidentally washes off a cargo ship and ashore a wildlife island, where she swiftly begins scouting for a task that satisfies her serve-at-all-costs programming. After wreaking havoc on some fauna, the robotic assistant (voiced by Lupita Nyong’o) stumbles upon a purpose: raising an orphaned, newborn gosling whose kin she accidentally squashed.Brightbill, as she names him, is on the runty side, and although Roz grows more sociable — at first, she can speak only in a Robotese, which is so stilted it might as well be Middle English — her ward (voiced by Kit Connor, of the Netflix series “Heartstopper”) struggles to master the basics of his pond and sky habitats. Tagging along for the child-rearing is a rascally fox named Fink (Pedro Pascal), who alternates between parenting advice and snide remarks. The impending winter imposes a ticking clock on Brightbill’s training: Should he fail to become airborne before migration time, he will perish in the cold, assuming he’s not eaten first.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
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‘Killer Heat’ Review: Mediterranean Mischief
Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays a detective running from his past in a murder mystery that is mostly a stiff slog to get through.When it comes to the modern murder mysteries that truly love the genre — the ones that don’t so much subvert but wholeheartedly lean into the familiar tropes of your favorite cheap detective novel — there’s a fine line separating the good and the not-so-good. Not only a properly calibrated twist, but a sense of wit and a legible directorial imagination is what distinguishes, say, your “Knives Out” and “A Haunting in Venice” from a film like “Killer Heat.”The latter, directed by Philippe Lacôte, has the starter elements that might equate to a romp of a detective movie: a hard-drinking private investigator character running from his past, a screenplay based on a short story by the celebrated crime novelist Jo Nesbo. But this film has none of the charm, tension or cinematic energy to elevate those ingredients into a greater sum.It mostly wants to rely instead on brooding, overwrought narration from Nick Bali (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), an American expat detective who has landed on Crete to investigate the death of Leo Vardakis (Richard Madden), a member of a wealthy family that controls the island. Penelope (Shailene Woodley), the wife of Leo’s twin brother, Elias, has secretly hired Nick, suspicious of the actual circumstances that led to Leo’s death from a mysterious rock climbing accident. Soon, relationship secrets, along with Nick’s own personal past of betrayal, come to light.The twists and pedestrian dramatics are a stiff slog to get to, and Gordon-Levitt’s once innate charisma has vanished altogether here; his cheap P.I. outfit itself seems to be wearing him more than the other way around. Perhaps that’s the point “Killer Heat” wants to make about a cynical detective who’s just going through the motions. Yet, inadvertently, that ethos has swallowed the film itself.Killer HeatRated R for language, some sexual content, nudity and violence. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. Watch on Amazon Prime Video. More
