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      ‘Dear Comrades!’ Review: When the Party Line Becomes a Tightrope

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCritic’s Pick‘Dear Comrades!’ Review: When the Party Line Becomes a TightropeWith a bureaucrat as the central character, the film at times takes on a bleakly comic tone as it fills in the circumstances surrounding a massacre.A scene from “Dear Comrades!”Credit…Sasha Gusov/NeonDec. 24, 2020, 7:00 a.m. ETDear ComradesNYT Critic’s PickDirected by Andrey KonchalovskiyDrama, History2h 1mFind TicketsWhen you purchase a ticket for an independently reviewed film through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.In 1962, Soviet government forces violently suppressed a strike against rising food prices in Novocherkassk, a city in the Don River region of southern Russia. It would be decades before the event received acknowledgment from official sources. A K.G.B. report, revealed after the fall of the Soviet Union, said that 20 bodies from the “liquidation” had been “buried in various places.” But for years, the slaughter was obscured from public view. Bodies? What bodies?The Novocherkassk massacre, as it has become known, doesn’t occur until just before the halfway mark of “Dear Comrades!” Directed by Andrei Konchalovsky, the film dramatizes these events primarily from the vantage point of Lyuda (Julia Vysotskaya), a city official at the local Communist Party headquarters. Viewed one way, almost everything shown before and after the violence constitutes the bleakest of bleak comedies, as bureaucrats try to square the emergence of a strike with the state’s narrative of socialist prosperity.[embedded content]Lyuda, whose position affords her hypocritical access to choice goods, understands that her committee will take the blame. Clearly, the “clarification” process that she’s involved in — explaining why workers should accept increased food costs, even as their wages fall — “didn’t clarify far enough,” she says. She waxes nostalgic for the days of Stalin. Officially, nothing bad took place then either, although Khrushchev has just expelled Stalin’s body from Lenin’s tomb as part of a revisionist tack. “Why didn’t he say anything while Stalin was alive?” Lyuda asks, in a rueful recognition of past denial.Such incongruities between words and circumstances might be comical if Konchalovsky didn’t so seamlessly infuse each scene with a tense, sickening feeling of inevitability; in a bracing way, it is tricky to pin down the tone of “Dear Comrades!” in any given moment. Rioters believe that Soviet soldiers won’t fire on them. High-ranking officials don’t see the point of an army without munitions.Later, after the carnage — which Konchalovsky, perhaps best known in the United States for the taut action film “Runaway Train” (1985), renders in quick, brutal strokes — the goal becomes erasing it. Blood that the sun baked into the pavement can always be paved over. Lyuda, whose daughter (Yulia Burova) was embroiled in the protests and goes missing after they are over, might be able to save her — by writing a report calling for instigators to be shown no mercy. The K.G.B. issues nondisclosure agreements about the events. (What can’t be disclosed? Anything. What’s the penalty? As much as death.) In the most grimly absurd scene, Viktor (Andrei Gusev), a K.G.B. agent who eventually becomes Lyuda’s confidant, tries to explain the preposterous scope of the pledge to a nurse — then, upon learning she was in the crowd, has her arrested on the spot.Konchalovsky complements the screw-tightening atmosphere with a claustrophobic visual style. “Dear Comrades!” is shot in black-and-white and in near-square image dimensions instead of wide-screen. Even the choice of angles, with an emphasis on doorways and private spaces, contributes to the sense of lives lived furtively.Dear Comrades!Not rated. In Russian, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 1 minute. Watch through Film Forum’s Virtual Cinema.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      ‘Charm City Kings,’ ‘Babyteeth’ and Other Hidden Streaming Gems

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyBeyond the Algorithm‘Charm City Kings,’ ‘Babyteeth’ and Other Hidden Streaming GemsYou may have missed these under-the-radar movies this year. Now’s your chance to catch up.Jahi Di’Allo Winston plays Mouse, the hero of “Charm City Kings,” directed by Angel Manuel Soto.Credit…William Gray/HBO MaxDec. 24, 2020, 7:00 a.m. ETAs 2020 sputters to its conclusion and film critics devise their year-end best-of lists (Manohla Dargis and A.O. Scott’s are here), the customary consensus begins to form around a handful of widely beloved titles: “First Cow,” “Never Rarely Sometimes Always,” “Beanpole,” “Martin Eden,” and the like. But a wide variety of at-home viewing options made this a particularly rich year for independent cinema, so in that spirit, this month’s selection of hidden streaming gems focuses solely on the films of 2020 — from heartfelt indie dramas to searing documentaries to, yes, a thriller about a man and his posterior.‘I’m Your Woman’ (2020)Stream it on Amazon.Rachel Brosnahan and Arinzé Kene in “I’m Your Woman.”Credit…Amazon StudiosThe director Julia Hart, whose stunning “Fast Color” was a superhero movie about people rather than powers, brings that same spirit to this ’70s-set story of a criminal’s wife on the lam; it’s not a crime movie in any conventional sense, but a character drama set on the fringes of the criminal underworld. Rachel Brosnahan (in a wonderful performance that’s 180 degrees from Midge Maisel) is Jean, a housewife pulled from her home in the middle of the night — with her new baby in tow — because her husband has disappeared and their lives are in danger. Hart handles the moments of suspense, action and terror with ease, but she doesn’t smother the viewer with style; her focus is squarely on Jean, which gives the picture an intimacy that’s rare but welcome in genre cinema.‘Babyteeth’ (2020)Stream it on Hulu.Many of the plot points of Shannon Murphy’s coming-of-age drama — a terminally ill teen; her first love with a troubled, older bad boy; her pill-popping mom and poorly coping dad — have been done to the point of cliché, but rarely rendered with this much sincerity and humanity. “Babyteeth” is less about story than feeling, capturing the overwhelming force of being young and infatuated and fearless, as well as the desperation of parents in an impossible situation. Murphy’s direction takes a low-key, slice-of-life approach, emphasizing the sneaky humor of Rita Kalnejais’ screenplay and pulling warm, heart-wrenching performances from Eliza Scanlen, Toby Wallace, Ben Mendelsohn and Essie Davis.‘Charm City Kings’ (2020)Stream it on HBO Max.The director Angel Manuel Soto does similar wonders with familiar materials in this Baltimore-set street drama, which explicitly recalls such urban coming-of-age pictures as “Boyz N the Hood” and “Juice.” But Soto finds a fresh approach, taking an almost anthropological appreciation of the setting — the film was inspired by the 2014 documentary “12 O’Clock Boys,” and aims for a similar lived-in authenticity — while complicating his characters beyond their stock types. The performers do much of that work as well; young Jahi Di’Allo Winston is impressively assured as the protagonist Mouse, while the rapper Meek Mill finds just the right notes as Mouse’s troubled role model and father figure.‘Residue’ (2020)Stream it on Netflix.Obinna Nwachukwu in “Residue.”Credit…Array“Turn the music down, the music’s too loud,” the neighbor barks. “Don’t make me have to call the cops.” Jay (Obinna Nwachukwu) hasn’t even made it to the door of his old home in Washington, D.C., but the warning from his new (white) neighbor makes it clear that the old block has changed, and not in a way that welcomes people like him. But urban gentrification isn’t the only subject of Merawi Gerima’s debut feature; as Jay reconnects with his neighborhood and its people, stories, sins and childhood traumas bubble back up to the surface, making “Residue” less a conventional narrative than a stream-of-consciousness exploration of the ongoing conversations between past and present.‘She Dies Tomorrow’ (2020)Stream it on Hulu.There will likely be a great many movies about the pandemic of 2020, and if we’re being honest, most of them will probably be terrible. The most enlightening cinematic representations of this peculiar moment may well be those that capture our tense and tenuous mental state accidentally, like this psychodrama from the writer and director Amy Seimetz, which was set to premiere at the South by Southwest Film Festival in March (one of the first major cultural casualties of Covid-19). It follows a series of seemingly sane and upper-class characters who, one by one, become convinced they’re about to die — a potent dramatization of the feeling that everything we know is coming to an end, and that paranoia and fear is the most infectious disease of all. (It’s also, by the way, very funny.)‘His House’ (2020)Stream it on Netflix.Genre filmmakers have spent the past three years trying (and mostly failing) to recreate the magic elixir of horror thrills and social commentary that made “Get Out” so special, but few have come as close as the British director Remi Weekes’s terrifying and thought-provoking Netflix thriller. He tells the story of two South Sudanese refugees who are placed in public housing while seeking asylum in London — a residence they are forbidden from leaving, which becomes a problem when things start going bump in the night. Weekes masterfully expands this simple haunted-house premise into a devastating examination of grief and desperation, but sacrifices no scares along the way, making “His House” a rare movie that prompts both tears and goose bumps.‘Butt Boy’ (2020)Stream it on Amazon.Early in Tyler Cornack’s comic thriller, Chip (played by Cornack himself) goes in for a routine medical checkup and discovers that he enjoys … how to put this discreetly … inserting things into himself. The direction Cornack and Ryan Koch’s screenplay takes after introducing this information is difficult to convey in a family newspaper, but suffice it to say that objects begin disappearing, and then pets, and then people, as “Butt Boy” attempts to not only send up the killer-next-door narrative but cop movies and addiction melodramas. It doesn’t all work, and a strong stomach is certainly required. But “Butt Boy” is, unapologetically, what it is, and you can’t help but admire the filmmakers’ stubborn determination to go all the way with their insane premise.‘Tesla’ (2020)Stream it on Hulu.Twenty years ago, the director Michael Almereyda and the actor Ethan Hawke collaborated on a film version of “Hamlet” where the Danish prince delivers the “To be or not to be” speech in the aisle of a Blockbuster Video store. Their take on historical biopics is no less irreverent, dramatizing the life of the inventor Nikola Tesla with winking self-awareness, anachronistic flourishes and even a surprise musical interlude. Hawke is appropriately eccentric in the title role, while Kyle MacLachlan nearly steals the picture with his showy turn as an egocentric Thomas Edison.‘Yusuf Hawkins: Storm Over Brooklyn’ (2020)Stream it on HBO Max.Great historical documentaries don’t just explain important events; they connect them to the present, and ask what, if anything, we can learn. But even the filmmakers behind this made-for-HBO documentary couldn’t have predicted the relevance to be found this year in revisiting the 1989 murder of the 16-year-old Yusuf Hawkins, shot and killed in the white neighborhood of Bensonhurst, Brooklyn for nothing more than being Black. The director Muta’Ali wisely situates Hawkins’ death within the charged racial atmosphere of New York in the 1980s, via the memories of those who were there, and the shocking archival footage of marches, violence and harassment. “Storm Over Brooklyn” is a film not only about Hawkins’ death but his life — and the lives of so many others at that difficult, dangerous moment in the city’s history.‘Rewind’ (2020)Stream it on Prime Video.The director Sasha Joseph Neulinger, who had a large cache of home videos to rely on in making this documentary.Credit…Rewind to Fast-Forward ProductionsThis was a year of intensely personal documentaries — “Dick Johnson is Dead,” “Circus of Books,” and “Time” leap to mind — but few were as brutally, piercingly intimate as this debut feature from Sasha Joseph Neulinger. Drawing primarily from a vast archives of home videos from his childhood (his father, Henry, taped everything), Neulinger investigates his family’s cycle of sexual abuse like an outsider, reporting the story out from that archive as well as interviews with surviving family members and observers. But his proximity to the story is what ultimately renders “Rewind” so powerful, and the results seem as much an act of therapy and catharsis as nonfiction filmmaking.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      ‘Pinocchio’ Review: An Enchanting Yet Befuddling Adaptation

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story‘Pinocchio’ Review: An Enchanting Yet Befuddling AdaptationMatteo Garrone, who directed the searing true-crime drama “Gomorrah,” takes a whack at Carlo Collodi’s classic tale.A scene from Matteo Garrone’s film “Pinocchio.”Credit…Greta De Lazzaris/Roadside AttractionsDec. 24, 2020, 7:00 a.m. ETPinocchioDirected by Matteo GarroneDrama, FantasyPG-132h 5mFind TicketsWhen you purchase a ticket for an independently reviewed film through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.This new cinematic imagining of Carlo Collodi’s classic fantasy tale is alternately enchanting and befuddling. Roberto Benigni plays the woodworker Geppetto — before you recoil at the prospect, let’s note that the frequently over-the-top actor is relatively restrained and appropriate throughout. At the movie’s opening, the character is in such dire straits that he finds fault with the furniture at his local osteria, offering to fix it in exchange for a meal.[embedded content]Since this adaptation is directed by Matteo Garrone, who made a striking film of Roberto Saviano’s true-crime book “Gomorrah” in 2009, one might anticipate a “Pinocchio” with one foot in social realism. But when talking animals and fairies get into the mix, some varieties of verisimilitude are necessarily sidelined.The fanciful creatures here underscore the movie’s problems. The physicians with bird heads who attend to the little wooden boy in one scene look like they stepped out of a Max Ernst collage, which is delightful. On the other hand, the tale’s talking cricket (no “Jiminy” here — this movie is loyal to Collodi, not Disney) resembles W.C. Fields, only green. Doesn’t work.Pinocchio himself, played by the child actor Federico Ielapi with a prosthetic makeup assist, takes getting used to. Maybe decades of movies featuring evil ventriloquist dummies and stiffly demonic children have made the little wooden boy an inherently dubious character.And in the script, by Garrone and Massimo Ceccherini, the character is vague, never quite bringing home the puppet’s desire to be a “real” boy. Geppetto is indistinct, too, at one point rhapsodizing about his ambition to build the “most beautiful puppet,” then rejoicing in the delivery of a “son” for which he’d never expressed any yearning. Once you’ve settled in with the characters, though, the movie presents some genuinely transportive sights and scenes, especially once the action shifts to the sea.PinocchioNot rated. Running time: 2 hours 5 minutes. In theaters. Please consult the guidelines outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before watching movies inside theaters.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      The Breakout Stars of 2020

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThe Breakout Stars of 2020Here are the 12 stars and trends that managed to thrive and shine in an impossible year.Clockwise from bottom left: Sarah Cooper, Maria Bakalova, the hand of the artist Salman Toor, Jonathan Majors and Radha Blank.Credit…Clockwise from bottom left: Lacey Terrell/Netflix; Elizabeth Weinberg for The New York Times; Peter Fisher for The New York Times; Adria Malcolm for The New York Times; Douglas Segars for The New York Times Dec. 23, 2020Updated 7:44 a.m. ETWhile plenty of us felt trapped this year, wandering through the same spaces and talking to the same people, it was the artists and entertainers who kicked open windows to new sights, sounds and experiences. Yes, the pandemic dealt a significant hit to the culture world, but nothing could derail its creativity. So, despite the limitations, stars in a variety of disciplines managed to thrive and shine, and by doing so, made a difficult year more tolerable for most everyone. Here are 12 artists and trends who gave us a fresh perspective in 2020.Radha Blank wrote, directed and starred in the autobiographical satire “The 40-Year-Old Version.”Credit…Douglas Segars for The New York TimesFilmRadha BlankRadha Blank was the hero many of us needed in 2020, when the concept of time got an overdue interrogation. In her autobiographical satire “The Forty-Year-Old Version,” which was on Netflix, she portrays a playwright who — refusing to believe that her dreams have an expiration date — pivots to rap as a grown woman. Like her character, Blank, who grew up Brooklyn, is a 40-something playwright who knows what it’s like to fight to elevate her voice.And elevate it she did. She wrote, directed and starred in the film, her first feature, a New York Times Critic’s Pick that A.O. Scott called “a catalog of burdens and also a heroic act of unburdening.”In “I May Destroy You,” Michaela Cole explores sexual assault, truth, revenge and trauma; she also created the HBO series.Credit…Natalie Seery/HBOTelevisionMichaela CoelMichaela Coel may have created the most important TV show of 2020: “I May Destroy You.” The series, which premiered on HBO in June, is inspired by Coel’s own experience with sexual assault, and in it, she deftly plucks apart ideas around truth, revenge, anxiety, trauma and fear.Coel, a 33-year-old British-Ghanaian writer and actor, plays a writer who is drugged and raped in a bathroom stall. The assault leaves her traumatized and grappling with hazy, fragmented memories. “Coel brings a superb discipline to the portrayal of distress,” wrote Mike Hale, a TV critic at The Times.In a critic’s notebook, Salamishah Tillet, a professor and contributing critic at large for The Times, noted that the show could be considered “part of a larger cultural trend in which Black women’s experiences with sexual assault are appearing with greater frequency and treated with more sensitivity.” (She pointed to the documentary “Surviving R. Kelly” and TV shows like “Queen Sugar,” “The Chi” and “Lovecraft Country” as examples.)“By offering multifaceted endings,” Tillet went on, “Coel gives victims of sexual assault, particularly Black women who have survived rape, some of the most radical and cathartic moments of television I have ever witnessed.”ComedySarah CooperSarah Cooper, 43-year-old comedian, made her mark in 2020 by pantomiming the words of President Trump in viral videos that have been viewed tens of millions of times across social media. Jim Poniewozik called her first Trump lip-sync, “How to Medical,” a “49-second tour de force” and said Cooper was helping to develop “a kind of live-action political cartooning.”“Cooper’s Trumpian drag is partly a caricature of performative masculinity,” Poniewozik wrote.The success of her videos helped land Cooper a Netflix special, “Everything’s Fine,” directed by Natasha Lyonne. “This special shows that she can do much more than lip-sync,” Jason Zinoman, a comedy columnist at The Times, said of the production. “She has a promising future as an actor in television or movies.” She currently has a show in the works for CBS.Maria Bakalova, the Bulgarian actress who plays Borat’s teenage daughter in “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm.” Credit…Elizabeth Weinberg for The New York TimesFilmMaria BakalovaIt’s no easy feat to stand out next to the unabashed actor-prankster Sacha Baron Cohen, but Maria Bakalova, a 24-year-old from Bulgaria, was riveting as the teenage daughter of his Borat character in his most recent mockumentary film. As the culture reporter Dave Itzkoff put it in The Times: “Sacha Baron Cohen may be the star of ‘Borat Subsequent Moviefilm,’ but it is Maria Bakalova who has emerged its hero.”Her performance also grabbed headlines for an edited scene involving President Trump’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani, who is seen putting his hands down his pants in a hotel room, where Bakalova, impersonating a TV journalist, is interviewing him. He later denied any wrongdoing.About the opportunity to star in a major American film, Bakalova said: “I will be really grateful to Sacha for giving this platform to an Eastern European, to play a strong and complicated character who’s not just one thing.”Adrienne Warren was nominated for a Tony for her starring role in “Tina — The Tina Turner Musical.” Credit…Molly Matalon for The New York TimesTheaterAdrienne WarrenAdrienne Warren’s starring role in “Tina — The Tina Turner Musical” earned her a Tony nomination in October for best actress in a musical. But it was her vocal and steadfast stand on racial injustice, including in the arts world, that brought Warren, 33, more deeply into one of the most urgent conversations of 2020. In an impassioned, impromptu speech this summer — during the Times event Offstage: Opening Night on the subject of being Black on Broadway — she questioned whether she even wanted to continue performing as part of an institution that didn’t stand up for people like her.“The last thing on my mind right now is me going back to Broadway,” Warren said. But in an interview with The Times after her nomination, she said, “I know this is what I’m supposed to do, but the question is whether I want to do it at the address I’ve been doing it.”As for what a dream role might look like for her in the future: “I want to make sure that I’m telling stories that represent me as a Black woman and also push the needle forward in ways that resonate with people, both in this nation and abroad,” she said.Jonathan Majors made a mark in both HBO’s “Lovecraft Country” and the Spike Lee drama “Da 5 Bloods.”Credit…Adria Malcolm for The New York TimesTelevisionJonathan MajorsJonathan Majors isn’t afraid of pain, and that may just be his secret to success. “I’m willing to hurt more,” he told Alexis Soloski in The Times over the summer. “It doesn’t bother me.”The 31-year-old star had a big year doing just that to great effect onscreen, as a Korean War veteran in the supernatural HBO thriller “Lovecraft Country,” set in 1950s Jim Crow America, and the son of a Vietnam War veteran in “Da 5 Bloods,” Spike Lee’s drama for Netflix that was named a Critic’s Pick in The Times by A.O. Scott.“Emotions in the men in my family run deep,” Majors told Soloski — who described him as “an actor of precision and intensity.” When asked if acting gave him a place to put those big emotions, he said: “With acting, it was almost like I was in a corridor, and it just appeared to me and said, ‘Go that way, son.’ I didn’t get in trouble once I started acting. I had a place to put the energy, to put my focus.”The artist Christine Sun Kim performing in American Sign Language at the Super Bowl in Miami in February.Credit…A J Mast for The New York TimesArtChristine Sun KimIn February, just minutes ahead of the Super Bowl in Miami, the artist Christine Sun Kim stood at the 40-yard line performing in American Sign Language as Yolanda Adams sang “America the Beautiful” and Demi Lovato sang the national anthem.“As a child of immigrants, a grandchild of refugees, a Deaf woman of color, an artist and a mother, I was proud to perform,” she wrote in an Op-Ed for The Times afterward. But because only a fraction of her performance was aired, she called the experience “a huge disappointment — a missed opportunity in the struggle for media inclusiveness on a large scale.”“Being deaf in America has always been political,” she wrote.Kim, 40, who was born in California and is now based in Berlin, has spent years channeling this perspective into her art. At the Whitney Biennial in New York last year, she exhibited hand-drawn charcoal drawings from her “Degrees of Deaf Rage in the Art World,” and in 2013, the Museum of Modern Art selected her for its exhibition “Soundings: A Contemporary Score,” dedicated to sound art.“I want people to start thinking about what deafness means,” she told Vogue this year, “and maybe that will reduce the stigma and society will be more inclusive of people with disabilities.”MusicVerzuzYou could call it a battle, a face-off, a showdown. But Verzuz is also something else entirely: a pandemic pivot, cutting right to the very core of quarantine entertainment by combining livestreaming and nostalgia while filling a hole left by canceled live shows and shuttered clubs.Since April, Verzuz, the creation of Swizz Beatz and Timbaland, has streamed over 20 battles. Each one has brought together two hip-hop or R&B heavyweights: Gladys Knight vs. Patti LaBelle, Erykah Badu vs. Jill Scott, Gucci Mane vs. Jeezy, Babyface vs. Teddy Riley, Snoop Dogg vs. DMX, Ludacris vs. Nelly, to name a few. Millions of people have tuned in.Initially, Verzuz was streamed on Instagram Live. In July, Verzuz and Apple Music announced they’d struck a partnership which allowed the videos to be viewed live and on-demand on that platform, too.Jon Caramanica, a pop music critic for The Times, called the events staples of this era and “less battles in the conventional sense than choreographed chest-puffing combined with bows of respect.” To that point, there is no winner winner. As Swizz Beatz told ABC News: “The people won, the culture won, the music won.”The artist Salman Toor has his first solo museum show, “How Will I Know,” up at the Whitney Museum of American Art.Credit…Peter Fisher for The New York TimesArtSalman ToorThe painter Salman Toor was about to have his first solo museum show, “How Will I Know,” at the Whitney Museum of American Art early this year when the shutdown thwarted the whole thing. He took it pretty well. “My first reaction was, thank God,” he told The Times in June. “I’m not a social animal.” But disappointment inevitably crept in as he realized the exhibition might never happen.Thankfully for him and fans of figurative and queer art, the show eventually did go up at the Whitney, where it will appear through April. And that’s only the start for Toor. Over the summer, he joined the gallery Luhring Augustine, which will open an exhibition of his work in the next few years.Toor, 37 — who was born and raised in Lahore, Pakistan, and moved to the United States in 2002 — primarily depicts gay men of South Asian descent. In The Times, the writer Ted Loos described Toor’s contemporary settings: “iPhones appear here and there, the glow emanating from them emphasized with bright lines.” Toor said that he aspired to represent “what this new free space is like,” referring to living an openly queer life. In Pakistan, gay sex is illegal. “People are curious to know what it means to have the freedom of so much choice, and what is the nature of that freedom and what is the cost of that.”TheaterElizabeth StanleyUp against Adrienne Warren for that Tony is Elizabeth Stanley, who was nominated for her gutting performance as Mary Jane — “a brittle tiger mom suppressing secret trauma,” as Jesse Green, a theater critic for The Times, put it — in “Jagged Little Pill,” based on Alanis Morissette’s smash album from 1995. When Broadway shut down, Stanley, 42, did not take too long before shifting her energy toward digital performances.In April, she told Deadline that she’d already been wondering about what else she could do during the pandemic: “How can I twist to this and find something new and exciting out of this time?”What came of that question epitomized what much of theater looked like in 2020: creating new digital spaces for live performance.In April, she delivered a jaw-dropping rendition of “The Miller’s Son” from “A Little Night Music,” for the acclaimed event “Take Me to the World: A Sondheim 90th Birthday Celebration.” In June, she sang her wrenching rendition of “You Learn,” from “Jagged Little Pill,” for an Opening Night Times event on the future of Broadway. On Dec. 13, Stanley and her “Jagged Little Pill” co-stars reunited for “Jagged Live In NYC: A Broadway Reunion Concert.”Kali Uchis performing in Atlanta in 2018. She recently released the album “Sin Miedo (del Amor y Otros Demonios).”Credit…Paul R. Giunta/Invision, via Associated PressMusicKali UchisIn 2018, Kali Uchis released a debut album titled “Isolation.” Clearly she was ahead of her time. In November, the Colombian-American artist — with a moody, seductive, dance-inducing style — dropped her second studio album, this time predominantly in Spanish, “Sin Miedo (del Amor y Otros Demonios).” (Its lead single, “Aquí Yo Mando,” features the up-and-coming rapper Rico Nasty.) The album “goes genre-hopping and era-hopping, from romantically retro orchestral bolero to brittle reggaeton,” Jon Pareles, the chief pop music critic of The Times, wrote this month.Having grown up between Colombia and the D.C.-Maryland-Virginia area, Uchis, 26, had many inspirations and influences, she told Interview magazine. “The last thing I ever want to do is be a predictable artist. I love that my fans never know what to expect when I drop a song.”DanceThe Year of the SoloIt wasn’t just that the coronavirus put an end to live performance in March. The need for social isolation uprooted every part of what gets a dance onto a stage: Suddenly, there were no more classes, no more rehearsals. How to fill that void? The solo.This solitary form has provided an outlet for frustration, for sadness and even for euphoria as dance artists continue to find meaning through movement. It’s true that some attempts have been sentimental and aimless, but much good has emerged from it, too. Instagram, from the start, illuminated these explorations in a steady stream of posts; choreographers worked with dancers remotely to create films in which the body could be fearless and free. “State of Darkness,” Molissa Fenley’s 1988 solo revived for seven dancers, was a glittering, harrowing reminder of the achievement that comes from strength, both internal and external.One of its interpreters, the dancer Sara Mearns, said that she saw herself as “someone that has gone through really, really hard times, but then in the end has come out stronger and on top.” Yes, dance and dancers are suffering right now. But the solo has given it — and them — a powerful voice. — Gia Kourlas, dance critic for The New York TimesAdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      In ‘Soul’ on Disney+, Pixar Has Its First Black Lead Character

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story‘Soul’ Features Pixar’s First Black Lead Character. Here’s How It Happened.Mindful of animation’s history of racist imagery, the studio aimed to make the jazz pianist at the center of the film as specific as possible.The movie centers on Joe Gardner, a jazz pianist with a day job as a middle-school music teacher.Credit…Disney/PixarDec. 22, 2020, 3:15 p.m. ETAll Pixar features arrive with technical innovations, but “Soul,” opening Dec. 25 on Disney+, breaks important new ground: The movie centers on the studio’s first Black protagonist, Joe Gardner, a jazz pianist on what might be the biggest day of his life, and the creative team includes the company’s first Black co-director, Kemp Powers.In general, Black stories and talent remain underrepresented in American animation, onscreen and off. You can hear Black stars in supporting roles (Samuel L. Jackson as Frozone in the “Incredibles” movies) or voicing animals (Chris Rock and Jada Pinkett Smith in the “Madagascar” series). But “Soul” is only the fourth American animated feature to make Black characters the leads, following “Bebe’s Kids” (1992), “The Princess and the Frog” (2009) and “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” (2018).“To me, Joe represents a lot of people who aren’t being seen right now,” said Jamie Foxx, who provides Joe’s voice. “Joe is in all of us, regardless of color. To be the first Black lead in a Pixar film feels like a blessing, especially during this time when we all could use some extra love and light.”Knowing their work on “Soul” would be minutely scrutinized, the director Pete Docter, the co-screenwriter Mike Jones and the producer Dana Murray, who are white, set out to create a character who would be believably Black while avoiding the stereotypes of the past.The journey of Joe Gardner — and “Soul” — began four years ago, when Docter felt at loose ends after winning his second Oscar, for “Inside Out.” Murray recalled, “Pete had this feeling, ‘Is this it? Do I just do this again?’ I don’t know if it was a midlife crisis as much as a midlife what-am-I-doing? moment.”Docter began wondering about the origins of human personalities, and whether people were born destined to do certain things. Jones added, “In our first meeting, he told me, ‘Think about an idea set in a place beyond space and time, where souls are given their personalities.’”Docter said he and Jones worked for about two years to develop Joe, a Black middle-school music teacher and musician from Queens. But something was missing. “We wanted somebody who could speak authentically about this character and bring some depth to him,” Docter said. “That’s when Kemp Powers came on,” as the film’s co-directorPowers’s background is in live action and journalism; he adapted the coming film “One Night in Miami” (also due Dec. 25) from his own play. But he felt at home in the new medium. “Animation is a very collaborative, iterative form, which felt very akin to live theater,” he said. He was initially hired for 12 weeks as a writer, but his contract was extended. “Later, I got promoted to co-director, because Pete really wrapped me into the process.”Nevertheless, Powers understood the pitfalls of his role: “Some people might relish the idea of saying they speak for Black people, Black Americans, whatever: I am not one of those people,” he said, adding, “I’m absolutely a Black man, and I know my history; at the same time, I can’t speak for all the Black men who are from New York; I can’t speak for my generation.”Kemp Powers, co-director of “Soul,” said the filmmakers were aware of animation’s history of racist imagery. “At the same time, we didn’t want them to be white characters who happen to be brown-skinned. We had to give them distinct looks.”Credit…Texas Isaiah for The New York TimesMurray said Pixar recognized that “if Joe’s going to be Black, we’d need a lot of help,” She said Britta Wilson, the company’s vice president of inclusion strategies, helped build an internal “Cultural Trust” made up of some of the studio’s Black employees, a group that was diverse in terms of gender, jobs and age. “We also talked to a lot of external consultants and worked with Black organizations to make sure we were telling this story authentically and truthfully,” Murray added.Powers said they were all aware of the specificity needed for Joe’s character. “Treating the Black experience as a monolith makes things a lot easier: You can have one Black person rubber-stamp something and use that as your excuse for not having tried harder to get it right.”He recalled that the individual consultants brought a range of viewpoints: “We’d have 20 Black people in a room: We’d ask a question and get 20 different answers.” Their debates sometimes “broke along generational lines, which was interesting: Things I think are fine may seem offensive to the younger generation. Everyone had a different take, which made the job exponentially harder, but that care was needed.”Further complicating their work was the fact that animation is a medium of caricature: No human is as squat and angular as Carl in Pixar’s “Up,” yet audiences accept him as a crabby old man. For “Soul,” the Pixar crew strove to create characters who were recognizably Black while avoiding anything that recalled the racist stereotypes in old cartoons, from Mammy Two Shoes, the Black maid in the Tom and Jerry cartoons, to George Pal’s stop-motion Jasper.Docter, who has written about animation history, acknowledged, “There’s a long and painful history of caricatured racist design tropes that were used to mock African-Americans.”He recalled that when he was making “Up,” he worried about how the design of the Asian-American scout Russell might be perceived. Docter said his fellow Pixar director Peter Sohn, a Korean-American artist, advised him, “‘Korean eyes are shaped differently than Caucasian eyes. Look at me and draw what you see: The truth isn’t racist.’”Powers agreed that there was an important difference between “leaning into and taking pride in those features and making fun of those features.” Pixar, he said, was mindful of the sorry images from animation history. When it came to designing appealing but stylized characters, the artists “took care not to make them insulting. At the same time, we didn’t want them to be white characters who happen to be brown-skinned. We had to give them distinct looks, so they’re not just boring, monotone characters.”To create those looks, Pixar artists and technicians needed to capture the textures of Black hair and the way light plays on various tones of Black skin. Murray said they brought in the cinematographer Bradford Young, whose work includes “Solo: A Star Wars Story,” to consult as well.Finding the voice that fits an animated character is as challenging as finding the best performer for a live-action role. “You have a voice in your head that you can write to,” Jones explained. “We needed Joe to have ambition, to want to play music at the highest level, but we also needed Joe to be excited to teach what he loves — jazz — to his students, all of which Jamie provided.”Although Foxx has voiced animated characters before, he still had to adjust his performance. “When I got in the recording booth, I was delivering the lines with all kinds of facial expressions and gestures,” Foxx said. “They were like, “Uh, Jamie, let’s try that again and remember … we can’t see you.”During the film, Joe argues — and bonds — with a recalcitrant soul known as 22, who refuses to enter a human body. As 22, Tina Fey found the purely vocal performance liberating. though she too has done other voice-overs before: “I could let go of any worry about how I looked. Even as a comedy person, you’re always thinking a little bit about finding your light and standing up straight. It’s so freeing to not have to do that.” (The relationship between Joe and 22 grows increasing complicated, but neither actor wanted to say anything that might spoil the plot twists.)Reflecting on the creation of “Soul,” Powers said, “When someone told me I was Pixar’s first Black director, I said that can’t be right. Pete said — and my hope is — this is an indicator of changes that are going to be pretty rapid.” There are more animators of color and women in the business than there were 15 or 20 years ago, he noted. “It’s sad it’s taken this long, but I’m glad it’s coming finally.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More