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      in Music

      ‘It Taunts the Eye’: Footwork’s Fast Moves Loom Over Chicago

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      Projected onto the Merchandise Mart, “Footnotes” honors a style that’s become popular around the world but isn’t always given recognition in its hometown.Footwork, the Chicago-born music-and-dance form, is famous for its speed. D.J.s deliver a tense, polyrhythmic mix of stuttering samples at the jacked-up rate of 160 beats per minute, and dancers meet the challenge with an onslaught of swivels, kicks and scissoring steps even more bewilderingly quick and intricate than the music.This summer, that speed is finding a match in size. From Tuesday through Sept. 16, “Footnotes,” a short footwork film, is being projected across the 2.5-acre facade of the Merchandise Mart, a behemoth of a building covering two blocks of downtown Chicago. That’s a screen the size of about two football fields. Each night, the incredibly fast dance grows incredibly large.It’s a boost in visibility for a style, developed by Black youth, that hasn’t always been welcome in the city’s center — a style that has become popular around the world but isn’t always given recognition and respect in its hometown.“It’s about damn time,” said the footwork dancer Jamal Oliver, better known as Litebulb. “Footwork has been part of Chicago for 30 years.”Litebulb, in “In the Wurkz,” a touring show by the Era Footwork Crew.Wills GlasspiegelLitebulb, 31, who dances in the film and helped produce it, said that while appearing on the side of a building is exciting, “what’s more fulfilling is giving that opportunity to kids who would never get that chance.” Paying it forward is part of the mission of the Era Footwork Crew, a collective Litebulb helped found in 2014, and of its offshoot nonprofit organization, Open the Circle.In footwork parlance, “opening the circle” means making a space for dancing when the floor is too packed. Open the Circle seeks to do something similar in the field of social justice, not just making spaces for dancing and dancers but also spreading knowledge through education and funneling resources like grant money into the communities that created footwork.“When most people create these kinds of organizations, they’ve already made a fortune and now they want to give back,” Litebulb said. “But we’re doing it from the grass roots.”By design, the work of the Era and Open the Circle blurs in footwork projects, including public “dance downs,” a summer camp (Circle Up), videos, rap singles, a touring show (“In the Wurkz”) and a feature-length documentary on the way (“Body of the City”). The collectives extend footwork into the world of art galleries, universities and music festivals without losing touch with where it came from.Wills Glasspiegel, working on “Footnotes.”Jason PinkneyBrandon Calhoun, adjusting the camera, with DJ Spinn on the MPC drum machine.Jason Pinkney“Footnotes” is an extension of these efforts, both an advertisement and an upshot. “We’ve been doing a lot of work with the City of Chicago,” said Wills Glasspiegel, the documentary filmmaker and scholar who made the film with the Era dancer and animator Brandon Calhoun. “The city has recognized us as a good partner.” (Glasspiegel and Litebulb are both founders of the Era and executive directors of Open the Circle.)In this case, the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events reached out about its “Year of Chicago Music” project and a partnership with Art on theMart, which has been projecting public art on the building since 2018.Glasspiegel jumped at the chance. “Footwork is emblematic of our city,” he said, “so we tried to make the film as Chicago as possible, expressing the city as we Chicagoans experience it.” The filmmakers brought in musicians with deep local roots: Angel Bat Dawid; Amal Hubert of Hypnotic Brass Ensemble; and the Chicago Bucket Boys, who, Glasspiegel said, “are the sound of Chicago’s streets.” Elisha Chandler, a dancer with “In the Wurkz,” sings.But if the film’s musicians connect footwork to the city, its method of composition connects the musicians to footwork. To create the soundtrack, the Bucket Boys improvised at 160 beats per minute, then the others laid down improvisations in response, riffing on the blues song “Sweet Home, Chicago.” DJ Spinn, a seminal figure in the genre, took all those pieces and treated them as samples, turning them into footwork.Using the music as a map, Glasspiegel edited together footage of the musicians with footage of dancers. The contribution of Calhoun, also known as Chief Manny, was crucial, too: transforming some of that footage into animation. It makes the dancing more legible.Angel Bat Dawid in a scene from “Footnotes.”Wills Glasspiegel and Brandon K. CalhounThat’s particularly important for “Footnotes,” since the Merchandise Mart presents a challenging surface for projection — the facade is perforated with hundreds of windows that may or may not be lighted. But the animation is useful in conveying footwork more generally. “Footwork moves so fast, it taunts the eye,” Glasspiegel said. Calhoun — with his dancer’s inside knowledge — clarifies its phrasing and shape.At one point in the film, an animated DJ Spinn taps an MPC, the sampling device that is the main instrument of footwork music, and an animated dancer bounces on the keys. This image is important, Glasspiegel said, because it’s a metaphor. “That’s a driving theme for us — that footwork is both music and dance — which people might not know if they don’t know the history.”Footwork developed in the late 1980s and early ’90s in dance clubs, community centers and roller-rink discos that played house music. Another important site was the Bud Billiken parade, one of the largest African American parades in the country and one of the oldest, happening every summer since 1929. In these places, foundational footwork moves, like the Holy Ghost (a slack-limbed shaking) and the Erk n Jerk (a sequence of seesawing, sideways kicks), emerged before footwork got its name.Some of the top dance crews of those days — Main Attraction, House-O-Matics, U-Phi-U — included dancers who became D.J.s, most importantly RP Boo and DJ Rashad. And it was these dancers-turned-D.J.s who created the footwork sound, increasing the tempo and stripping things down to ratchet up the tension (or throw off rival dancers) in dance battles — intense, improvisational face-offs that became the core of footwork culture in the early 2000s. Overlapping rhythms gave dancers more options, and competition pushed innovation.As had happened before with hip-hop — when M.C.s, who made money for the music industry, eclipsed b-boys, who didn’t — the music spread without the dance, especially abroad. “People didn’t really see the dance until DJ Rashad and DJ Spinn brought dancers on tour with them in 2010,” Litebulb said.Elisha Chandler, center, a dancer with “In the Wurkz,” who sings in the “Footnotes” film.Wills GlasspiegelLitebulb was one of those dancers, discovering rapturous fans in Europe but finding less recognition back home. “Too often dancers are viewed as background or bodies, not artists,” he said. “It’s important to have the balance, celebrating what the DJs are doing and what the dancers are doing.”“Footnotes” does that, but it also shows other ways that the Era and Open the Circle have been influencing the footwork scene. When footwork moved from clubs, parades and dance groups into more insular battles, women got pushed out. The Era and Open the Circle have been inviting them back in.“In battling culture, women were expected to stand on the side and look cute,” said Diamond Hardiman, a 27-year-old dancer who appears in the film. “You couldn’t get in the circle.”Women of her generation began battling one another. “It was empowering, seeing what we could do with each other to make ourselves better and letting the guys know that us women can do the same thing that y’all doing.”Diamond Hardiman: “In battling culture, women were expected to stand on the side and look cute. You couldn’t get in the circle.”Jason PinkneyWomen like Hardiman made space for themselves, but Open the Circle has also helped by reconnecting footwork with the youth dance groups in which it began. These groups are filled with girls and often run by women. (Women in the family of Shkunna Stewart, who directs the group Bringing Out Talent, have been running groups for four generations.)Members of such groups are the core population of Open the Circle’s summer camps on the South and East Sides of Chicago, camps where women like Hardiman teach. Some of these children appear in “Footnotes.” A girl called Ladybug leaps like a grasshopper, a dozen stories tall.The goal of the camps is broader than correcting the gender imbalance, though. “In our community, footwork is kind of viewed as nostalgia, but if we can get the kids, then footwork can live on,” Litebulb said. “It will be a whole new evolution than what we thought it was.”And it’s about more than perpetuating a style. As some of the camp T-shirts attest, “Footwork saves lives.”“It really did save my life,” Hardiman said, echoing the sentiment of other Era members. “I grew up seeing the stuff I wasn’t supposed to see at a young age, but footwork showed me I didn’t have to do those things.”“I don’t want my child to go through what I had to go through,” she added.That aspiration can be felt in the film as well. “The big kicker for me is showing the kids anything’s possible,” Litebulb said. “Look at yourself on the side of a building now. Who would have thought?” More

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      ‘America: The Motion Picture’ Review: In Bros We Trust

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      The American Revolution gets a frat-style sendup in this irreverent animated comedy.Two nights before signing the Declaration of Independence, George Washington threw a celebratory rager where America’s founding father was said to have rung up a bar tab equivalent to $17,253. Our nation began with a hangover, a fact too factual to be included in “America: The Motion Picture” (streaming on Netflix), a raunchy, aggressively inane cartoon that flips the bird — both onscreen and thematically — to a strain of patriotism that insists that the slave owners who started this country were sober-minded heroes whose vision of democracy remains flawless, bro. “That’s why we make the rules, baby!” bellows Samuel Adams (voiced by Jason Mantzoukas) after a keg stand. Here, to be a privileged white man in America is intoxicating, a truth no less fictional than watching Paul Revere win a “Fast and Furious”-inspired street race that goes “one quarter-mule at a time.”This sacrilegious prank, directed by Matt Thompson and written by Dave Callaham, opens with Abraham Lincoln (Will Forte) getting his throat ripped out by the turncoat (and werewolf) Benedict Arnold (Andy Samberg). Let’s dodge a description of Lincoln’s deathbed flatulence and skip ahead to the plot where Lincoln’s prom date George Washington (Channing Tatum, perfectly himbo-esque) vows revenge on the “fun police,” a.k.a. King James (Simon Pegg), who has constructed a dirigible that will tea-bag the fratty Yanks into submission. What follows is a rowdy sendup of the country’s id. Eagles scream. “Free Bird” wails. Paul Bunyan boxes Big Ben. And in a nod to America’s ill-informed history classes, Washington also stutters his goal to do “something about taxation?”The one-joke premise results in a headache by the time we witness Washington impregnate Martha (Judy Greer) during a montage that includes Old Faithful and a sledgehammer crushing a cherry pie. Squint hard, and the first lady’s buoyant pep and pectorals could charitably be a satire on ideal womanhood. Less subtle are the film’s cheeky rip-offs of “Star Wars” and “The Avengers,” and the inclusion of a reimagined Thomas Edison (Olivia Munn), now a female Chinese immigrant who exists to roll her eyes at the dingbats. Ultimately, Edison decides the country is worth defending anyway. Is it? The fictional ending isn’t sure — and the real ending is yet to be written.America: The Motion PictureNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 38 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      in Television

      ‘False Positive’ and the Horror-Filled Truth About Fertility Treatments

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      The new Hulu movie is the rare Hollywood production that portrays the struggles to conceive as women actually experience them.As millions of women know, fertility treatments can be a nightmare. The painful, sterile procedures, the loss of control over your own body, the never-ending blood tests and experiments and strange medications that take over your refrigerator shelves and your life.If so many women have endured this terror in real life, do we really need an exaggerated Hollywood version of our experiences? After seeing the new Hulu movie “False Positive” and other recent screen depictions, I would say, it depends who’s watching.Like so many others, I did not experience the “Knocked Up” version of pregnancy in real life. It took a lot more than one night of drunk sex with Seth Rogen to do the job. Instead of being rom-com cute, my story of becoming a parent was heartbreaking, tedious and dominated by scenes of exhausted women packed into the fertility-clinic waiting room. That might not sound cinematic, but when you’re going through it, the inner turmoil can feel as dramatic and dire as any war story. And audiences love a good war story, right? So why not ours?Watching “False Positive” and the stunning in vitro fertilization episode of Netflix’s “Master of None,” I saw my story, the story of so many others, turned into the main event instead of a subplot or a character’s back story. Surrogacy and adoption and miscarriage and in vitro fertilization have been portrayed onscreen before, from “Friends” and “Sex and the City” to “Fuller House” and Princess Carolyn’s fertility struggles on “BoJack Horseman.” But even if those shows handled the topic with sensitivity and honesty, the stories were still treated as secondary plots.I felt for Charlotte as she tried to get pregnant on “Sex and the City,” but the day-to-day ugliness that infertility can bring was glossed over. To be fair, the show had other stories to tell. Still, Charlotte didn’t need to stress about the mind-boggling price of I.V.F. medications or the cost of adoption.I hadn’t seen the raw truth about infertility onscreen until I watched Tamara Jenkins’s “Private Life” (2018), which focused entirely on the “by any means necessary” fertility quest of a New York couple in their 40s, played by Kathryn Hahn and Paul Giamatti. They tried (and failed) to appear calm in the fertility clinic waiting room. He gave her hormone shots. They fought and they made up. The scenes unfolded as in real life.There was no cutting away to see what Samantha or Carrie or Miranda were up to in an effort to avoid becoming too heavy. In “Private Life,” the story felt familiar — raw, sad, funny and, yes, dramatic.The conception efforts of a couple (Kathryn Hahn and Paul Giamatti) are the primary focus of “Private Life.”Jojo Whilden/NetflixFertility treatments and pregnancy can be terrifying, and “False Positive” takes that fact and runs with it, pushing this narrative into “American Psycho” territory. It opens with a shot of a woman in a crisp white button-down, covered in blood, trudging ominously down the street. Directed by John Lee and co-written by Lee and the film’s star, Ilana Glazer, “False Positive” opts for over-the-top horror and social satire instead of the quietly funny, everyday moments of “Private Life.” But the filmmakers aren’t exploiting a painful experience for the sake of some scares. They’re taking that painful experience, one that is so visceral for so many women, and allowing us to laugh, even as we cringe.Glazer, with her signature wild curls ironed straight, plays Lucy, a “marketing genius” married to a Peloton-loving surgeon named Adrian (Justin Theroux). Without an ounce of irony, Lucy says things like: “Am I going to be one of those women who has it all? My career, my kids, my old man by my side?”In other words, she’s the kind of woman Glazer’s “Broad City” character might literally slap into shape if they ran into each other on a Brooklyn street. More

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      in Movies

      Rita Moreno: Pathbreaker, Activist and ‘A Kick in the Pants’

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      The actress discusses being the subject of a new documentary, and spending eight-plus decades in the spotlight.Rita Moreno was all of 6 when she made her professional debut, duetting with her Spanish dance instructor on a stage in Greenwich Village. “I remember every detail,” she said. She wore a traditional, resplendently ruffled dress. “We danced a jota — that was a country dance. And we played castanets. My mom let me put on lipstick — I was so thrilled.” It was 1937.For the next eight-plus decades, Moreno, who will turn 90 in December, has found her way to the spotlight. And she is still dancing, as we see in the opening moments of a new documentary, “Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go for It,” which shows her kicking up her strappy heels at her own Cuba-themed birthday party.She also set up the party. “Boy, I hate doing this,” she says in the film, unwrapping silverware by the chafing dishes. “You can tell I’m not a real star, because somebody else would be doing this.”“That’s why you must never really believe anything about your fame,” she continues, with a curse. “It goes up and down.”Moreno, who is Puerto Rican by birth and Hollywood by steely determination, occupies a singular place in the cultural firmament. The joy, and the luck of it, is not lost on her. “I damn near peed my pants!” she told me, describing a rarefied moment in her career. (Irreverence keeps her afloat.) She is indisputably well-crowned: She had minted her EGOT status by 1977, including being the first Latina actress to win an Oscar, for her indelible turn as Anita in “West Side Story.” The trophies haven’t stopped piling up; if there were an EGOT for lifetime achievement awards — Kennedy Center Honors, Presidential Medal of Freedom — she would have earned that too.The actress is the subject of the documentary, “Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go for It.”Act III ProductionsThose accolades were largely for Moreno’s triple-threat talent. What has been less heralded is her depth as a pathbreaker — as a person of color, as a mother (and now grandmother), and as an irrepressible (sometimes ignitable) activist and personality.“She’s obviously an icon for all the noteworthy reasons — but she’s a kick in the pants too,” said Representative Jackie Speier, the California congresswoman and her friend of two decades.And as Moreno’s career propels forward — she will next be seen in Steven Spielberg’s remake of “West Side Story,” which she also executive produced — her unorthodox status only grows. There are few compatriots whose longevity stretches from before the studio era (Louis B. Mayer signed her to her first contract, calling her the “Spanish Elizabeth Taylor”) to reboots, the meme age and beyond.For Mariem Pérez Riera, the Puerto Rican filmmaker who directed the documentary, Moreno was foundational. “I’ve known about Rita since I’ve known about movies,” she said.On-screen and off, Moreno is the first to giddily admit that she loves attention. And she wields it expertly, with a burnished supply of boffo Showbiz stories and zingy one-liners, even if she sometimes forgets a word (at her age, “nouns and I have become mortal enemies” — that’s one of the zingers). The bellowing voice that welcomed a latchkey generation with “Hey you guys!” on “The Electric Company” is still supple enough to sing, pull off an accent, and toggle between profane and poetic; she narrated Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s memoir, at the justice’s request, and then they became friends. There is categorically no wilt in her game.“She really is a born performer,” said her daughter, Fernanda Gordon Fisher. “She doesn’t have to try at all, it just happens — that’s her substance, that’s what she needs. It feeds her soul, it feeds her energy.”Moreno, center, in the 1961 film “West Side Story.”United ArtistsAnd in Steven Spielberg’s 2021 version of the film.Niko Tavernise/20th Century StudiosStill, convincing Moreno to do the documentary took nearly a year. “I just didn’t know if I wanted to entrust anyone with my life,” she said. “Because if I was going to do this, I was prepared to be completely truthful.”During the yearlong production, she added, “That’s one of the things I remember reminding myself of: Rita, don’t try to charm the camera.”She agreed to be filmed without makeup — and even more reluctantly, without a wig. She gave the documentary team a key to her home in Berkeley, Calif., so they were there when she woke up, and followed along as she drove herself to the studio for “One Day at a Time,” the sitcom on which she starred as the scene-stealing Cuban grandmother. (Her grandson on the show was played by Pérez Riera’s son, and the documentary was the brainchild of Brent Miller, a producing partner of Norman Lear, the series’ creator.) More

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      Wait, Who’s Fast, Who’s Furious?

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      A guide to the characters and the melodramas in the sprawling, surprisingly complicated “Fast & Furious” franchise.At one point, rather a long time ago now, the “Fast & Furious” movies were about street racing. They do still involve cars moving at breakneck speeds, but only as one component in a blockbuster machine that also routinely includes high-stakes espionage, military-grade shootouts, multimillion-dollar bank heists and villainous schemes for global annihilation. They lately have more in common with James Bond or “Mission: Impossible” than with “Gone in 60 Seconds.”As the movies have gotten bigger and more spectacular, so too has their ensemble swelled and broadened, and with the latest installment, “F9,” the list of marquee names makes “Game of Thrones” look like “Waiting for Godot.” This is made more complicated by the franchise’s tendency to shuffle characters in and out of the troupe without warning or explanation — actors are frequently being written out and then written back in, or killed off, then suddenly resuscitated. It can be very, very hard to keep track of who’s who and what their deal is.With “F9” nitrous-boosting its way into theaters this weekend, here’s a handy cast explainer to get you up to speed.Vin Diesel in “Fast Five.”Jaimie Trueblood/Universal PicturesDominic Toretto (Vin Diesel)The heart of the series, Dom’s a world-weary, Corona-drinking street racer and car hijacker with an obsessive devotion to his family and a fraught relationship to the law. He first appeared in “The Fast and the Furious” (2001, the movie that started it all) as a small-time Los Angeles crook with a heart of gold, and has gradually evolved to become a sort of freelance secret agent and globe-trotting supercop. In “The Fate of the Furious” (2017), it was revealed that he had an infant son.Paul Walker in “Fast & Furious 6.”Giles Keyte/Universal PicturesBrian O’Conner (Paul Walker)The original series hero, Brian was a cop going undercover as a street racer to bust Dom and his crew of hijackers. When it came time to make the arrest, Brian chose to let Dom get away, and the two have been like brothers ever since. Paul Walker died in an automobile accident in 2013, but rather than kill him off, the films wrote Brian into peaceful retirement. He was last seen in the closing moments of “Furious 7” (2015) literally riding off into the sunset.Michelle Rodriguez in “Fast & Furious 6.”Giles Keyte/Universal PicturesLetty Ortiz (Michelle Rodriguez)Dom’s wife and partner in crime, Letty was killed at the beginning of the fourth film, “Fast & Furious” (2009), after she ran afoul of a master criminal. In “Fast & Furious 6” (2013), however, she was revealed to have survived the murder attempt after all — though with a serious case of mind-wiping amnesia, which caused her, temporarily, to team up with the bad guys. She saw the error of her ways at the end of that movie, and she’s been back with Dom and company ever since.Tyrese Gibson in “Fast & Furious 6.”Giles Keyte/Universal PicturesRoman Pearce (Tyrese Gibson)One of Brian’s childhood friends, Roman was introduced in “2 Fast 2 Furious” (2003, the first sequel) as a silver-tongued Lothario who is sensational behind the wheel. Since being called upon for help with a bank heist in “Fast Five” (2011), he’s been a mainstay of Dom’s crew, usually serving as the comic relief.Ludacris in “Fast & Furious 6.”Giles Keyte/Universal PicturesTej Parker (Ludacris)Like Roman, Tej first appeared in “2 Fast 2 Furious” and has been a series regular since “Fast Five.” He’s the crew’s gifted computer hacker, handling comms, tech and surveillance, although when necessary, he’s willing to drive or fight. Tej and Roman have a friendly rivalry and tease each other constantly.Dwayne Johnson in “Furious 7.”Scott Garfield/Universal picturesLuke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson)Dwayne Johnson made his debut in “Fast Five” as the brawny Diplomatic Security Service agent Luke Hobbs, the antagonist striving to foil Dom and his crew’s heist plans. Eventually, Dom and friends won him over to their side, and since “Fast & Furious 6” he’s been their frequent teammate and friend. He most recently appeared in the series spinoff “Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw” (2019).Jordana Brewster in “Fast Five.”Jaimie Trueblood/Universal PicturesMia Toretto (Jordana Brewster)Dom’s sister, Mia, was Brian’s love interest in “The Fast and the Furious,” and she has continued to accompany him on his adventures. After she gave birth to her first child, in “Furious 7,” she and Brian have been in retirement, and is back for “F9” after being sidelined in “The Fate of the Furious.”Sung Kang in “Fast & Furious 6.”Giles Keyte/Universal PicturesHan Lue (Sung Kang)Han, a Korean street racer living in Japan, co-starred in the third film in the series, “The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift” (2006), and was killed in a car crash during the finale. He appeared alive and well in the next three sequels, however, because they evidently took place before the third film chronologically. To add to the confusion, his accidental death was rewritten as a murder in “Furious 7,” using a mix of archival and new footage. And now he is back, alive again, in “F9,” for reasons that are as yet unclear.Gal Gadot in “Fast Five.”Jaimie Trueblood/Universal PicturesGisele Yashar (Gal Gadot)A femme fatale in “Fast & Furious,” Gisele was inducted into the crew in “Fast Five,” when she started a romantic relationship with Han. She died in “Fast & Furious 6,” sacrificing herself to save Han during the action-packed climax. She has not been brought back to life — yet.Nathalie Emmanuel in “F9.”Giles Keyte/Universal PicturesMegan Ramsey (Nathalie Emmanuel)A world-renowned super-hacker rescued by Dom and his crew from kidnapping in the middle of “Furious 7,” Ramsey has since become a series regular who helps the team with computer-related problems. Tej and Roman have been steadily competing to win her affections.Lucas Black in “The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift.”John Johnson/Universal PicturesSean Boswell (Lucas Black)The hero of “Tokyo Drift,” Sean is a ne’er-do-well young street racer who hopes to avoid a stint in juvenile detention by shipping out to live with his father in Japan. Other than a brief cameo in “Furious 7,” he hadn’t appeared in a “Fast” movie since, but surprisingly enough, he’s back for “F9.”Kurt Russell in “The Fate of the Furious.”Matt Kennedy/Universal PicturesMr. Nobody (Kurt Russell)A top-secret government agent with seemingly limitless resources, Mr. Nobody hired Dom and his crew to help save the world in “Furious 7” and again in “Fate of the Furious.” Think of him as the M to Dom’s James Bond.2017 FATE OF THE FURIOUSUniversal PicturesDeckard Shaw (Jason Statham)Another villain turned hero, Shaw tried to wipe out Dom’s crew in “Furious 7” before teaming up with them in “The Fate of the Furious.” He last co-starred in the series spinoff “Hobbs & Shaw” and only has a small cameo in “F9.”Helen Mirren in “F9.”Giles Keyte/Universal PicturesMagdalene Shaw (Helen Mirren)Deckard’s cockney-accented mother, Magdalene, turned up in “The Fate of the Furious” to lend a hand to Dom. She was last seen in “Hobbs & Shaw,” serving time in prison.Luke Evans in “Fast & Furious 6.”Universal PicturesOwen Shaw (Luke Evans)Deckard’s brother, Owen, meanwhile, was the villain terrorizing the crew in “Fast & Furious 6,” hounding them across London before being thrown out of an airplane in mid-takeoff. He survived that fall and came to Deckard’s (and Dom’s) aid in “The Fate of the Furious.”Charlize Theron in “F9.”Giles Keyte/Universal PicturesCipher (Charlize Theron)Cipher is reputedly the world’s most gifted and terrifying hacker, so much so that even the notorious Anonymous collective is afraid to mess with her. She tries to bring about nuclear war in “The Fate of the Furious,” holding Dom’s baby son hostage and killing the baby’s mother in the process. She returns — apparently as a villain again — in “F9.”John Cena in “F9.”Giles Keyte/Universal PicturesJakob Toretto (John Cena)A newcomer to the saga. Jakob is Dom’s never-before-mentioned brother, and of course the primary antagonist of “F9.”Elsa Pataky in “Fast & Furious 6.”Giles Keyte/Universal PicturesElena Neves (Elsa Pataky)Dom’s love interest when Letty was presumed dead, Elena was a cop in Rio tapped by Hobbs for assistance in “Fast Five.” She had Dom’s baby, unbeknown to him, and was killed by Cipher shortly after revealing the news to him in “The Fate of the Furious.”Tego Calderon and Don Omar in “Fast Five.”Jaimie Trueblood/Universal PicturesTego and Rico (Tego Calderon and Don Omar)Perennial comic sidekicks Tego and Rico have tagged along on several of Dom’s jobs, and usually turn up once or twice per movie for some pratfalls. More

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      in Movies

      Honk if Helen Mirren and Vin Diesel Should Have Kissed in ‘F9’

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      The Oscar winner’s cameo involves a car chase and some crackling chemistry. But could things turn romantic? We put the question to Mirren herself.Fire up the petitions. Notify the lobbyists. When the 10th “Fast and Furious” film is made, I have a suggestion that is really more of a demand: Vin Diesel and Helen Mirren must kiss.This was my primary takeaway from watching the latest installment, “F9,” in which the 75-year-old Mirren and 53-year-old Diesel share a car chase and display more crackling chemistry than any other duo in the movie. She flirts with him, he beams at her, and Diesel’s evident delight in having the Oscar-winning Mirren as a scene partner is just delicious. By the end of the sequence, as her Queenie drove Diesel’s Dom Toretto through the streets of London, I couldn’t help but hope that she would lean over and snog our hero.And why not? In the previous “Fast” film, Diesel kissed another Oscar winner, Charlize Theron. Imagine the smooch streak that could be engineered if even more best-actress winners were persuaded to join the franchise: After Mirren, maybe we’d get Diesel in a romantic clinch with Frances McDormand! (Surely Diesel’s series flame, Michelle Rodriguez, would issue a hall pass for that.)Charlize Theron with Diesel in the previous “Fast” film, “The Fate of the Furious.”Universal PicturesSometimes you have to be the change you want to see in the world, which is why I set up a video chat with Mirren this month to pitch this character coupling directly to her. Here are edited excerpts from our conversation.Your scene with Vin is the best one in the movie, and it’s clear that he adores you. Still, I have a note: There should have been a kiss, don’t you think?A very chaste kiss would be nice, yes.Listen, I’d settle for that. Maybe part of the thrill of this pairing is that it’s so rare to see Vin Diesel riding in someone else’s passenger seat.This is true. What an honor to find myself driving him, and also very intimidating. Vin doesn’t make it intimidating — he was so easy and lovely — but the technology of this kind of filming is very complex, and it’s a world I’m not that familiar with at all. So it was a great help to have a good friend sitting next to me, for sure. And just to hear that voice!Tell me about it.I mean, Vin has the most unbelievable voice. I go a bit gooey when I hear it. That velvety brown rumble in your ear is so fabulous to experience for a whole day or two. It is like hearing the most incredibly well-oiled engine.You’ve always had good screen chemistry with bald action stars — Vin, Jason Statham (notably in “Hobbs & Shaw”), Bruce Willis (“Red” and other movies). Is there something about you that just plays well off that stoic action hero type?There might be! First of all, I come into these things with a great respect for these guys because what they do is quite different from everything that I’ve done in my career. Their commitment and depth of knowledge of how these movies work is very impressive. I always feel I can learn from them. Maybe it’s the fact that I really bring a lot of respect that makes the whole thing work, but I think they’re great. More

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      in Television

      What’s on TV This Week: ‘The People vs. Agent Orange’ and Macy’s Fireworks

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      PBS airs a documentary about the enduring effects of Agent Orange. And the Macy’s annual fireworks display returns to New York in full force.Between network, cable and streaming, the modern television landscape is a vast one. Here are some of the shows, specials and movies coming to TV this week, June 28-July 4. Details and times are subject to change. More

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      in Movies

      ‘F9’ | Anatomy of a Scene

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      Film directors walk viewers through one scene of their movies, showing the magic, motives and the mistakes from behind the camera.Film directors walk viewers through one scene of their movies, showing the magic, motives and the mistakes from behind the camera. More