More stories

  • in

    What’s on TV This Week: Olympic Specials and ‘Big Brother’

    ABC and CNN gear up for the Games. CBS airs the season premiere of the reality competition show.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, July 15-21. Details and times are subject to change.MondayTHE REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION starting at 8 p.m. on various channels. Republican delegates will be gathering in Milwaukee through Thursday to nominate the party’s candidate for president. Former President Donald Trump is the only candidate since Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy dropped out of the race. The Democratic National Convention will be held in mid-August.TuesdayCATFISH 8 p.m. on MTV. Nev Schulman and Kamie Crawford have another successful season in the books after doing what they do best — catching people who are lying about who they are online. And it truly never gets old — anyone who watches the show can immediately tell you their favorite episode (mine is a tie between the infamous Kelly Price one or the one with the slow-clapper on crutches).WednesdayBIG BROTHER 9 p.m. on CBS. As “Love Island USA” is wrapping up its run this year, this prototypical reality show is coming back for its 26th season. In a somewhat haunting, “Black Mirror” type twist, the theme will be artificial intelligence, or what the producers are referring to as “B.B.A.I.” In the newly redone house, each room is designed based on a prompt like “sci-fi rocky planet setting” or “futuristic bedroom for the year 2500.” I’m a little creeped out, but at least it’s inventive.A scene from “Wild Wild Space.”Courtesy of HBOWILD WILD SPACE 9 p.m. on HBO. With the rom-com “Fly Me to the Moon” newly released and the 55th anniversary of the lunar landing looming, the moon is on our minds. But, as this documentary points out, the new and more valuable frontier is low Earth orbit. This area, at an altitude of 1,200 miles or less, could serve as the future of communication, transportation and observation. This documentary follows Chris Kemp and Peter Beck and their rocket companies, which are competing to be the overlord of L.E.O.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

  • in

    Anthea Sylbert, Costume Designer Who Became a Producer, Dies at 84

    Her career unfolded in three phases: as the creator of costumes for movies like “Chinatown,” as a studio executive and as a producer, largely with her friend Goldie Hawn.Anthea Sylbert, the Oscar-nominated costume designer of the films “Chinatown” and “Julia,” who left Hollywood fitting rooms to be a studio executive and, later, Goldie Hawn’s producing partner, died on June 18 at her home on the Greek island of Skiathos. She was 84.Robert Romanus, her stepson, said the cause was complications of emphysema.Ms. Sylbert began designing costumes for films in 1967. Over the next decade, she collaborated with A-list directors like Mike Nichols, Roman Polanski and Elaine May and conceived what Jack Nicholson wore when he starred in “Chinatown,” “The Fortune” and “Carnal Knowledge.”“Jack Nicholson actually gave me the best compliment I ever got as a costume designer,” she said in “My Life in 3 Acts,” a forthcoming documentary about Ms. Sylbert directed by Sakis Lalas. “He said, ‘When “The Ant” does your clothes, you don’t have to act as much.’” (“The Ant” was short for Anthea, she explained.)Ms. Sylbert envisioned Jake Gittes, the natty, determined private detective played by Mr. Nicholson in “Chinatown” (1974), as a dandy.“I thought he would be interested in fashion,” she told Sam Wasson for his book “The Big Goodbye: ‘Chinatown’ and the Last Years of Hollywood” (2020). “The one who would be noticing what the stars were wearing when he went to the races.”Deborah Nadoolman Landis, chair of the David C. Copley Center for the Study of Costume Design at the School of Theater, Film and Television at the University of California, Los Angeles, recalled a vivid scene in “Chinatown” in which Gittes and Evelyn Mulwray, played by Faye Dunaway, sit together in a red restaurant banquette.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

  • in

    Judy Belushi Pisano, Who Defended Her Husband’s Legacy, Dies at 73

    She was married to John Belushi until his fatal drug overdose in 1982. She went on to celebrate his comic talent in books and a documentary.Judy Belushi Pisano, who after the death of her husband, the actor and comedian John Belushi, from a drug overdose in 1982 became a fierce defender of his legacy, died on July 5 at her home on the island of Martha’s Vineyard, in Massachusetts. She was 73.Her son, Luke Pisano, said the cause was endometrial cancer.Mr. Belushi, a member of the original cast of “Saturday Night Live” and a star of hit films like “National Lampoon’s Animal House” and “The Blues Brothers,” was among the best-known comic actors in the world when he was found dead in a Hollywood hotel.Though it took weeks to determine the cause — from a mix of heroin and cocaine — the public immediately seized on Mr. Belushi’s death as a cautionary tale of excess in an era defined by it.His reputation as a hard-partying drug addict was further underlined by Bob Woodward of The Washington Post in his book “Wired: The Short Life and Fast Times of John Belushi” (1984), which Ms. Pisano had initially authorized but later came to regret.“The book is both unfair and inaccurate,” she told The Philadelphia Daily News in 1984. “To me the biggest lie is that it claims to be a portrait of John but it’s not. It’s only about drugs.”Ms. Pisano at the 2004 ceremony posthumously honoring John Belushi with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Vince Bucci/Getty ImagesWe 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

  • in

    For This Drama, Some Actors Had to Return to Prison by Choice

    Alongside Colman Domingo and Paul Raci, ex-inmates shot “Sing Sing” in a decommissioned correctional facility. Then came the screening in the actual prison.Between the jangle of keys and the beeps of walkie-talkies, the men watched.The occasion was an advance screening of the new A24 film “Sing Sing,” and at the prison it’s set in, the men were taking in a fictional version of their lives.Amid a heat wave, the audience — a mix of the studio’s guests and incarcerated men in hunter-green pants — crowded into the correctional facility’s chapel-turned-cinema. With the sun streaming through a stained-glass window of Christ kneeling before the cross, the viewers fanned themselves with paper plates.It was the first time Clarence “Divine Eye” Maclin had been to the prison in Ossining, N.Y., since 2012, when he finished serving more than 17 years for robbery.While incarcerated, Maclin had starred as Hamlet in the prison’s makeshift auditorium. Now he was free and returning for his screen debut. He entered the chapel with a grin and a triumphant bounce.Based on the work of the nonprofit Rehabilitation Through the Arts, “Sing Sing,” directed by Greg Kwedar, follows the production of a prison troupe’s first comedy, a fever dream of a play featuring time travel, ancient Egypt and Shakespeare. Maclin and the recent Oscar nominee Colman Domingo star as fellow prisoners alongside Paul Raci (also an Oscar nominee) as their earnest director.Maclin watching himself at the screening. “I always knew I wanted to act,” he said, but “I thought I would be doing it for free somewhere.”Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesWe 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

  • in

    Stream Shelley Duvall’s Greatest Performances: ‘The Shining,’ ‘Popeye’ and More

    In “The Shining,” “Popeye” and more, her unusual presence jumps off the screen. That’s true even in small roles in “Annie Hall” and “Time Bandits.”Shelley Duvall, who died on Thursday at 75, had one of the most thrilling and complicated careers in modern cinema history. Discovered by the director Robert Altman, who became her greatest collaborator, Duvall fell into acting almost by accident. But her screen presence was so beguiling and irresistible that she became one of the defining stars of the 1970s and ’80s.Her layered and detailed performances in the likes of “3 Women” and “The Shining” made her a celebrated star. And yet she never fit easily into Hollywood, remaining always decidedly herself. In later life, Duvall retreated from acting and the public eye, but left behind a remarkable and diverse body of work. Here’s where you can stream some of her best.1970‘Brewster McCloud’Buy or rent on most major platforms.Duvall in her first onscreen role, as an optimistic tour guide in “Brewster McCloud.”MGMWhen Duvall was discovered by Robert Altman and the actor and casting director Bert Remsen, in Houston, she had no intention of becoming a performer. “I wanted to be a great scientist, not an actress. Madame Curie was my heroine,” she once told Roger Ebert. But Altman and Remsen had other plans, putting her in their strange delight of a movie about a boy, played by Bud Cort, who lives in the Houston Astrodome and wants to build wings to fly. Once she appears onscreen as the tour guide Suzanne, it’s clear she is one of the most unusual presences ever to grace the screen. With her oversize eyelashes, a staple of her personal style that highlighted her features, she’s intriguingly cheerful as she chirps away about diarrhea. Her optimism seduces Cort’s Brewster, and with him the audience, even if she turns out to be fickle.1971‘McCabe & Mrs. Miller’Stream on Tubi; buy or rent on most major platforms.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

  • in

    Shelley Duvall, Star of ‘The Shining’ and ‘Nashville,’ Dies at 75

    Her lithesome features and quirky screen presence made her a popular figure in 1970s movies, particularly Robert Altman’s.Shelley Duvall, whose lithesome features and quirky screen personality made her one of the biggest film stars of the 1970s and early ’80s, appearing in a string of movies by the director Robert Altman and, perhaps most memorably, opposite Jack Nicholson in “The Shining,” died on Thursday at her home in Blanco, Texas. She was 75.A family spokesman said the cause was complications of diabetes.Ms. Duvall wasn’t planning on a film career when she met Mr. Altman while he was filming “Brewster McCloud” (1970); she had thrown a party to sell her husband’s artwork, and members of his film crew were in attendance. Taken with her, they introduced her to Mr. Altman, a director with his own reputation for oddball movies and offbeat casting. He immediately asked her to join the cast, despite her lack of training.Ms. Duvall with Bud Cort in Mr. Altman’s “Brewster McCloud” (1970), her first film. She wasn’t planning on a film career when she met Mr. Altman, but he cast her despite her lack of training.Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, via Everett CollectionShe said yes — and went on to appear in an unbroken string of five more Altman movies: “McCabe and Mrs. Miller” (1971), “Thieves Like Us” (1974), “Nashville” (1975), “Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull’s History Lesson” (1976) and “3 Women” (1977). She also starred as Olive Oyl opposite Robin Williams in Mr. Altman’s “Popeye” (1980).“I thought: boy, if it’s this easy, why doesn’t everybody act?” Ms. Duval told The New York Times in April.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

  • in

    In ‘The Shining,’ Shelley Duvall Was a Perfect Gothic Heroine

    Her performance was perhaps misunderstood at the time, just as the narrative surrounding her life would be later.If Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining” was a twist on the centuries-old Gothic horror genre, there was no one better suited to play a modern Gothic heroine than Shelley Duvall. Duvall, who died Thursday at 75, was in her late 20s when she shot the role of Wendy Torrance, put-upon wife of blocked writer Jack (Jack Nicholson). The pair have holed up with their young son in the Overlook Hotel, working as winter caretakers.But something evil is afoot. The Overlook is less hotel than haunted house, saddled with the weight of inexplicable and violent history. Wendy is virtually trapped there, a small woman often alone in a rambling, dangerous building full of secrets. It might be more accurate to call the Overlook a monster, one that pushes its monstrousness onto its inhabitants. And it is Wendy, not Jack, who successfully resists in the end.The Gothic heroine, the woman trapped in the menacing haunted home, must exhibit courage in the face of danger, remaining resolute while also being susceptible to the evil that lurks around every corner. Without that tension, we wouldn’t be kept in suspense. In the film, Duvall is waifish, eyes wide, hair flat and scraggly, and it’s hard not to believe she’s going to die. Her only objective is to save her son, Danny, from his father, who — we learn early on — previously broke Danny’s arm in an alcoholic rage. This evil she is fighting is malevolent and abusive and real, a threat she has seen in action before, only now it carries an ax.The Wendy of Kubrick’s 1980 movie is a different kind of woman than the Wendy of Stephen King’s earlier novel — she’s more vulnerable, more frightened. King complained that the movie’s version was “basically just there to scream and be stupid and that’s not the woman that I wrote about.” Duvall was cited as a weak point in many of the film’s mixed reviews and nominated for a Razzie for worst actress.Yet her work in “The Shining” has grown in critical esteem in recent years; today it can feel as if detractors simply weren’t expecting how unsettling it would be to witness her performance of abject terror. There’s a strangeness to it: Her eyes are both huge and heavy-lidded, her mouth equally able to draw into a rosebud or spread wide for a shriek. Throughout the film, her affect is almost that of a china doll, terrified of being shattered. She appears afraid to breathe, barely able to speak.Duvall’s work in the film has grown in critical esteem in recent years. Warner Bros. Inc, 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

  • in

    ‘Inside Out 2’ Passes $1.25 Billion Mark and Is Pixar’s Biggest Movie Ever

    The animated film about a young teenage girl and her complex emotions has passed the $1.25 billion mark globally and is expected to keep growing.Emotions are running wild at the box office this summer. Pixar’s newest animated feature, “Inside Out 2,” passed the $1.25 billion mark globally on Wednesday, making it the studio’s highest-grossing film of all time, not adjusted for inflation. It has raked in $543 million domestically and $708 million internationally.“Incredibles 2,” which earned $1.24 billion worldwide in 2018, was previously in the top spot for Pixar, which is owned by Disney.“Inside Out 2” is also the most successful film of 2024 so far and the fourth highest-grossing animated movie ever — behind “Frozen” (2013), “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” (2023) and “Frozen II” (2019). Its profits are poised to keep climbing as it is released in more countries, including Japan.“Inside Out 2,” Pixar’s 28th movie, continues the story of Riley as she turns 13 years old and grapples with puberty and her bevy of personified emotions, now including anxiety.Directed by Kelsey Mann, the movie has a voice cast that includes Amy Poehler, Maya Hawke, Tony Hale, Lewis Black, Phyllis Smith, Ayo Edebiri and Yvette Nicole Brown.It opened on June 14 to rave reviews from critics and audiences, who bestowed it with an A grade in CinemaScore exit polls, the same score as “Inside Out,” which made about $860 million globally in 2015. The sequel also surpassed opening weekend box office predictions, collecting about $155 million in the United States and Canada, about 70 percent more than anticipated.Since last year’s “Barbenheimer” phenomenon — when “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” opened simultaneously on July 21 — the box office has been generally sluggish, without a single film achieving phenomenon status like Greta Gerwig’s smash or Christopher Nolan’s Oscar-dominating hit. “Inside Out 2” has filled that gap and is the first movie to clear the billion-dollar hurdle since “Barbie.”It was a crucial win for Pixar, which has had a wobbly run since the coronavirus pandemic started keeping audiences home in March 2020. Its film “Onward” was released in theaters on March 6, 2020, and its next three movies — “Soul,” “Turning Red” and “Luca” — went straight to the Disney+ streaming service.Last year, the original Pixar movie “Elemental” had a weak start but managed to reverse course, eventually collecting about $500 million worldwide. More