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      Making ‘The Wild Robot’ Even Wilder

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      Roz, the beloved protagonist of Peter Brown’s popular children’s book, gets a glow-up for the big-screen adaptation.On the cover of Peter Brown’s best-selling children’s book “The Wild Robot” are massive evergreens and a matching dark green seascape. Atop a pile of enormous boulders is a tiny but unmistakable image of a robot: Roz, the book’s protagonist, with her bucket-shaped head, squared-off shoulders and two headlights for eyes.“With a book, the cover is often all you’ve got to pull the reader in,” Brown said in an interview. “I very deliberately designed Roz to look simple, so that when people saw the book cover they would immediately know that it’s a robot.”Movies, however, have a bit more freedom when it comes to automatons. “There’s motion, there’s sound effects, there’s all this other stuff that can tell viewers pretty quickly that they’re looking at a robot,” he added.So when the artists and designers at DreamWorks Animation set about adapting Brown’s book and its mechanical star for the big screen, they let their minds run free. In place of the static, unblinking silhouette of Brown’s book cover, DreamWorks created a leaping, whirling, battling protagonist who can scuttle up steep cliffs like a crab and swing from place to place via long telescoping arms.As the movie unfolds, Roz’s tools are revealed: claws that can climb sheer cliffs; fingers that shoot flames; arms that function as vacuums and leaf blowers; a homing beacon that emerges from the top of her head; DreamWorks AnimationFor a studio like DreamWorks, makers of the “Kung Fu Panda” and “How to Train Your Dragon” franchises, coming up with the dramatic action sequences and cool character design was relatively easy. The challenge for the film, which opens on Sept. 27: keeping the soul of a character that millions of readers had fallen in love with over the course of Brown’s trilogy, a character that was, yes, a robot who could stand alongside Hollywood’s and anime’s most exciting droids and bots, but was also, at heart, an adoptive mother trying her best to care for an orphaned gosling.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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      Oscar Contenders Emerge After Film Festival Season

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      After film festivals in Venice, Telluride and Toronto, a slate of contenders has emerged. Still, there are few front-runners.Fall foliage may still be weeks away, but the tea leaves of Oscar season are ready to be read.Now that festivals in Venice, Telluride and Toronto have concluded and all but a handful of this year’s contenders have had their first public peek-out, the story is beginning to come into focus. And unlike the last two years, which were dominated by the season-long sweepers “Oppenheimer” and “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” this race seems much more wide open.Still, two movies already look like significant contenders across the board. One is “Conclave,” a handsomely mounted thriller about sneaky cardinals plotting to pick a new pope. It premiered at Telluride and stars Ralph Fiennes and Stanley Tucci. Some of my fellow journalists sniffed that “Conclave” was just a potboiler with prestige trappings, but I think that’s exactly what will appeal to Oscar voters, who love to reward a rip-roaring yarn as long as it’s well-made with a soupçon of social-issue relevance. Directed by Edward Berger, whose “All Quiet on the Western Front” won four Academy Awards, “Conclave” could be a big hit with audiences, too.If Brady Corbet’s “The Brutalist” felt like the biggest movie of Venice, that’s in part because of its mammoth 215-minute run time, which comes complete with a 15-minute intermission. There’s no denying the outsize ambition of this film, which was shot on the old-fashioned VistaVision format and chronicles the epic tribulations of a Jewish architect (Adrien Brody) as he emigrates to America after World War II. Expect plenty of awards recognition for Corbet and supporting performers Guy Pearce and Felicity Jones, as well as a surefire Oscar nomination for Brody, who somehow still holds the record for the youngest best-actor winner after taking that Oscar at 29 for “The Pianist.”Two buzzy performances from big stars also debuted in Venice. Daniel Craig looks likely to earn his first Oscar nomination, for Luca Guadagnino’s “Queer,” in which he plays an American expat besotted with a young man in midcentury Mexico City. And Nicole Kidman won the best actress award at Venice for the erotic “Babygirl,” which also finds her falling for a younger man. (Perhaps age-gap romances are the new Oscar bait.)The Venice trophy will help Kidman build a case for her sixth Oscar nomination (she won for “The Hours”), though she’ll face a surplus of strong lead-actress contenders who also emerged from the fall fests: Angelina Jolie as the opera diva Maria Callas in “Maria”; the Brazilian star Fernanda Torres in “I’m Still Here”; Marianne Jean-Baptiste as a mouthy malcontent in Mike Leigh’s “Hard Truths”; and the double act of Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore in Pedro Almodóvar’s empathetic “The Room Next Door,” which won the top prize in Venice, the Golden Lion.The director Jason Reitman has crafted a crowd-pleaser in “Saturday Night,” a comedy about the chaotic backstage negotiations that preceded the debut episode of “Saturday Night Live,” though its wide Oct. 11 release will have to go well if the movie hopes to sustain the momentum it earned from Telluride and Toronto. “Joker: Folie à Deux” has the opposite problem: Though this sequel to the billion-dollar hit is certain to make money when it’s released next month, it was coolly received by Venice critics and will face a much more uncertain awards future than its predecessor.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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      Hollywood Has Enough Fake Accents. Bring Back the Weird Voices.

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      David Lynch’s voice is unmistakable — and a national treasure. The world of film deserves more like it.“Something is coming along for you to see and hear,” mewled the filmmaker David Lynch in a video posted online this past spring. The clip was a teaser for a music project, and it caught the eye via the director’s old-school cool — his shades and upswept silver locks, framed in close-up. But it was another bit of business that actually held attention: the jangle and blare of Lynch’s reedy voice.Larger-than-life screen personalities are necessarily watchable. Some also prove mysteriously listenable. Lynch is among them, a member of the small pantheon of filmmakers whose mystique is partly indebted to the textures of their speech: the gorgeous intonations of Orson Welles, the reminiscing tones of Agnès Varda, the runaway-train enthusiasm of Quentin Tarantino.Over his long career, Lynch has offered his own locomotive thrills. It begins with that unmistakable voice — what the director Mel Brooks once called his “kind of crazy Midwestern accent.” In fact, Lynch’s family moved frequently, and his childhood unfurled across a wide swath of midcentury America. Along the way, his voice settled into a faintly comic register: thin and tremulous, with a hint of helium, containing both the threat of a whine and the chirpy approachability of an archetypal 1950s suburbia.Lynch is a raconteur of some renown; he has spoken of Wookiees, decaying factories and an overfed Chihuahua who resembled “a water balloon with little legs.” He enjoys folksy turns of phrase (“Golden sunshine all along the way,” he often declared in the online weather reports he used to offer) and intriguing maxims (“A washed butt never boils”). Ideas, he argues, are pre-existing “gifts” that artists can “catch.” You can sense a similar pursuit in his interviews: At times he speaks as if he were reciting the words of a dimly heard incoming transmission, wiggling his fingers and shutting his eyes. Even his mundane remarks can take on an air of profundity, ringing persistently in the mind.And sometimes, the ears. Lynch “has to have his megaphone to make his voice sound even more nasal,” the actress Naomi Watts once said, describing his on-set carnival barking. “When he’s two feet away from you as well.” He’s liable to stretch out words like “beautiful,” imbuing them with the deep emotion of an explorer bringing home tales of briefly glimpsed miracles. His born-in-the-’40s diction makes matters even stranger: Lynch, a self-identified Eagle Scout, can be heard in one documentary repeatedly and earnestly exclaiming, “Oh my golly.”Lynch ‘has to have his megaphone to make his voice sound even more nasal.’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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      7 People Who Helped Define the ‘Star Wars’ Galaxy

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      James Earl Jones, who died last week, was one of many who made the “Star Wars” films immersive and intricate. Here is a look back at several who have died, having made a lasting impact.In 1977, a space opera movie tinged with samurai culture, cowboy attitudes and alien rivalries seemed like a mishmash doomed to fail, or at least to trickle into the annals of cinema as a cult classic.But on its release in theaters far, far and wide, “Star Wars” became an unexpected global phenomenon.It has since inspired decades of movies and television series and countless imaginary lightsaber battles in backyards around the world. The franchise became a merchandising juggernaut, and to this day remains as active as ever in sci-fi discourse.James Earl Jones, the voice of Darth Vader, died last week. He was one of many members of the “Star Wars” universe who have died, having made an indelible impact on the series.Here are the stories of some of the members of the film’s cast and crew who brought alien planets to life, perfected the beep-boop of android languages and imbued the characters with their gravitas and timeless appeal.James Earl Jones (1931 – 2024)Before he found his powerful voice, he stuttered.Even if you did not recognize James Earl Jones’s face as he shifted into different roles throughout the decades, you would surely have recognized his thunderous voice. His belonged to the embittered but resilient writer in “Field of Dreams”; the tragic commander Othello on Broadway; and, to the delight and spine-tingling terror of “Star Wars” fans, the masked arch-villain Darth Vader.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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      How ‘Speak No Evil’ Starring James McAvoy Differs From the Original

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      The 2022 original retains its chilling power thanks to a worldview that the new version seems unwilling to embrace.Warning: Spoilers ahead.No movie haunts me more than “Speak No Evil.”Not the version starring James McAvoy that’s currently in theaters, but the Danish original from 2022 (streaming on Shudder and Hoopla). That film’s Danish title translates to “The Guests,” which feels more apt than the English name: It’s about an ordinary offer of hospitality that goes horribly, horribly wrong.In the original formulation, written by the brothers Mads and Christian Tafdrup, its director, two couples meet on vacation in the Italian countryside. Bjorn and Louise and their school-age daughter, Agnes, are Danish. Patrick and Karin are Dutch; their son, Abel, is around Agnes’s age, though he seems nonverbal. The families hit it off, and months later, the Dutch invite the Danes to spend a weekend at their rural home. Almost immediately, things feel strange.The genius of the original “Speak No Evil” — and, to an extent, the remake — lies in how it keeps the audience on edge. Most of the tension involves trying to decide whether Patrick is lacking the more buttoned-up Danes’ sense of social niceties or is actually a violent psychopath. Patrick and Karin’s offers of food, for instance, can be read as generous or menacing. Is this a horror film, or just a really, really dark comedy about cultural differences? The filmmakers make us second-guess our reactions to every image, word and action, exactly the way Bjorn and Louise do in their hosts’ home.For a long stretch of the new “Speak No Evil,” directed by James Watkins, the plot matches the original more or less, but the visitors are Americans living abroad (played by Mackenzie Davis and Scoot McNairy) and the hosts are British (played by Aisling Franciosi and McAvoy). The couples share meals, including one at a local roadhouse that becomes uncomfortable when the wine loosens everyone up and the conversation turns inappropriate. One night, Louise wakes to discover that her daughter is in the other couple’s bed. The guests try to flee based on a bad feeling, but are then drawn back because their daughter cannot find her favorite stuffed bunny.By the end, the hosts are actively trying to murder their guests, who have realized their game: They meet families on vacation, invite them to visit, then murder the parents, steal their child and cut out their tongue. In both movies, when Ben/Bjorn asks Patrick/Paddy why he’s doing this, the response is the same: “Because you let me.”From left, Alix West Lefler, Scoot McNairy and Mackenzie Davis in the new film, which more or less matches the original until the end.Susie Allnutt/Universal Pictures and Blumhouse, via Associated PressWe 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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      in Television

      What’s on TV This Week: ‘Dancing With the Stars’ and ‘The Golden Bachelorette’

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      The dance competition and dating show are back for another season.For those who still enjoy a cable subscription, here is a selection of cable and network TV shows, movies and specials that broadcast this week, Sept. 16-22. Details and times are subject to change.MondayFAMILY FEUD: BEST OF STEVE HARVEY 10 p.m. on ABC. Steve Harvey has been hosting this long-running competition show for almost 15 years. During that time, there have been lots of high jinks, memorable moments and weird categories. This one-hour special walks down memory lane of Harvey’s time on the show.TuesdayDANCING WITH THE STARS 8 p.m. on ABC. A fraudster, an Olympian and a reality star walk into a bar … oh, sorry, I meant a ballroom! Anna Sorokin, Stephen Nedoroscik (a.k.a. pommel horse guy) and Phaedra Parks are partnering up with this season’s pros on the dancing competition. Julianne Hough and Alfonso Ribeiro are returning as hosts. Will Sorokin’s ankle monitor interfere with the samba? There’s only one way to find out!Paul Sancya/Associated PressSTOPPING THE STEAL 9 p.m. on HBO. As we approach another presidential election, former President Donald J. Trump is still asserting that he lost the 2020 election because of fraudulent voting. This documentary, featuring elected officials and former members of Trump’s administration, seeks to debunk claims of ballot tampering, voting by deceased people and problems with Dominion Voting Systems’ electronic ballot machines.WednesdayTHE GOLDEN BACHELORETTE 8 p.m. on ABC. Joan Vassos became a fan favorite on the last season of “The Golden Bachelor,” but her budding romance with Gerry Turner was cut short when she decided to go home early to help her daughter with her newborn. Now she’s back as the Golden Bachelorette and ready to date a bunch of silver foxes.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 Life of Chuck’ Wins Toronto Film Festival’s People’s Choice Award

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      This adaptation of a Stephen King novella stars Tom Hiddleston, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Mark Hamill. “The Substance” and a Tragically Hip documentary also won.“The Life of Chuck,” a cosmic story of accounting and life’s mysteries adapted from a Stephen King novella, won the People’s Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival on Sunday. Winners often go on to best picture nominations at the Oscars or even, as in the case of “Green Book” and “Nomadland,” to take the top Academy Award.Told in reverse chronological order and closer in tone to the King adaptation “Stand by Me,” “The Life of Chuck” opens as the world seems about to end. Amid phenomena like enormous sinkholes and television blackouts, ads thanking Charles Krantz (Tom Hiddleston) for his service are everywhere, puzzling denizens played by Chiwetel Ejiofor, Karen Gillan and Carl Lumbly. The film, which also stars Mark Hamill and features a much talked about dance sequence with Hiddleston, was written and directed by Mike Flanagan, who’s no stranger to King’s work: “Gerald’s Game” and “Doctor Sleep” are among his credits. “The Life of Chuck” doesn’t have a release date yet.The festival announced other People’s Choice winners on Sunday. In the Midnight Madness section, devoted to genre titles, the prize went to “The Substance,” written and directed by Coralie Fargeat. That horror film, which won best screenplay at Cannes, stars Demi Moore as an aging actress who takes the mysterious elixir of the title, giving birth to a youthful version of herself played by Margaret Qualley. “The Substance” is due in theaters on Sept. 20.In the documentary section, the People’s Choice award went to “The Tragically Hip: No Dress Rehearsal,” centered on the Canadian band’s final concert. The docuseries was directed by Mike Downie, brother of the band’s lead singer, Gord Downie, who died at 53 of brain cancer. The series is expected to be released on Amazon Prime Video later in the fall. More

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      ‘Beetlejuice Beetlejuice’ Hands Warner Bros. a Lifeline

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      The movie has made roughly $190 million in its first 10 days, giving the studio a needed hit after a summer of misfires.Warner Bros. managed only a 4.7 percent share of domestic movie-ticket sales over the summer. By that measure, it was Warner’s worst performance since analysts started to compile seasonal box office data in 1982.A haze of despair had settled over the studio by mid-August. Warner Bros. Discovery, the studio’s parent company, had announced yet another round of layoffs. Then it botched the renewal of a crucial television rights deal with the National Basketball Association, prompting investors to flee. Shares were trading in the $6 range, down 90 percent from March 2021.So the horror comedy “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” which arrived in theaters from Warner on Sept. 6, in some ways became a flash referendum on the studio’s future. Some people in Hollywood were starting to wonder aloud if there would even be one, at least without a merger with a competitor.Talk about the undead: “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” collected $111 million in its first weekend in North America, one of the best results on record for September. The PG-13 sequel, directed by Tim Burton, has now been No. 1 for two weeks in a row. It took in another $52 million over the weekend, for a 10-day domestic total of roughly $190 million.Worldwide ticket sales will total about $250 million through Sunday, according to box office analysts. The film cost $99 million to make.“Dancing in the hallways, smiles on faces,” said Michael De Luca, one of Warner’s top film executives. “There is really nothing better for morale than a hit.”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