Oppenheimer (Movie)

Subterms

    More stories

    • 50 Shares169 Views

      in Music

      Barbenheimer: The Unofficial Playlist

      by

      10 songs marked by aesthetic contrasts for the movies’ big opening weekend.Are you a Barbie girl in the Oppenheimer world?Universal Pictures, Warner Bros.Dear listeners,A long awaited day has finally arrived: the cinematic collision of matter and antimatter represented by the two biggest and perhaps most thematically divergent summer blockbusters opening on the same date. To all who celebrate, a very happy Barbenheimer to you.The conversation around “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” runs the risk of relying on lazy stereotypes about gender essentialism and taste: men are from Mars, and women are from Venus; “Oppenheimer” is for boys, and “Barbie” is for girls. But what I find so amusing about a lot of the “Barbenheimer” memes is the way they also subtly make fun of those assumptions and treat the idea of “masculine” and “feminine” aesthetics as something more artificial, interchangeable and downright laughable than they might at first appear to be.I admit that the Barbenheimer memes are still making me laugh. (Well, the good ones.) Even the jokes about how ridiculously overdone the Barbenheimer memes are at this point are making me laugh. I wanted to make my own contribution. So, behold — Barbenheimer: The Playlist.Sometimes a good playlist is all about cohesion and tonal similarity. But when compiling a collection of songs, I also love playing around with aesthetic contrasts — the wilder, the better. And I definitely went a little wild on this one.Yes, this playlist segues one of Leonard Cohen’s most depressing songs ever into Natasha Bedingfield’s feel-good mid-aughts radio hit “Unwritten.” It also follows a Nine Inch Nails song with a fake pop song that interpolates (a generous word in this context) that same Nine Inch Nails song. One thing it does not contain is “Barbie Girl.” Even I know my limits.But for all its zany juxtaposition, I hope you find something to enjoy in each of this playlist’s extremes. We all contain multitudes — in each of us, an inner “Barbie” and an inner “Oppenheimer.” Here’s a soundtrack to satisfy of both them.Listen along on Spotify as you read.1. Dolly Mixture: “Baby It’s You”The Shirelles were the first group to record the sweetly swooning “Baby It’s You” — written by Burt Bacharach, Luther Dixon and Mack David — a hit, but I love the driving tempo of this version from 1980, by the underrated British post-punk band Dolly Mixture. (Get it? Dolly?) (Listen on YouTube)2. Nine Inch Nails: “Head Like a Hole”Trent Reznor’s recording career began with a gnashing roar, as this pummeling track kicked off Nine Inch Nails’ 1989 debut album “Pretty Hate Machine.” The chorus sounds like someone upending an entire drawer of cutlery, and it still absolutely and unequivocally rules. RIP J. Robert Oppenheimer; you would have loved Nine Inch Nails. Maybe. (Listen on YouTube)3. Ashley O: “On a Roll”In a 2019 episode of the sci-fi anthology show “Black Mirror,” Miley Cyrus played Ashley O, a fictitious pop star with a Barbie-pink bob and a creepy holographic alter ego. One of Ashley O’s hits, hilariously, interpolates “Head Like a Hole” and changes its most brutal lyrics to empty, #girlboss-worthy slogans: “I’m on a roll, riding so high, achieving my goals.” (Reznor, a fan of the show, approved the use of his music, including a rework of “Hurt” called “Flirt,” which, tragically, did not make the episode.) “On a Roll” is so dystopian and absurd that it is legitimately enjoyable — or at least catchier than anything heard on “The Idol.” (Listen on YouTube)4. Mclusky: “To Hell With Good Intentions”“And we’re all going straight to hell!” yells Andrew Falkous, from the middle of an inferno of guitar noise, on this propulsive and darkly funny single from the Welsh rock band’s beloved 2002 album “Mclusky Do Dallas.” (Listen on YouTube)5. Hannah Diamond: “Every Night”Excessively sugary, synthetically glossy and slightly uncanny, “Every Night,” from 2014, sounds as though it were written and performed by an AI program schooled on ’90s Jock Jams and Max Martin hits. But it’s actually the work of Hannah Diamond, the British musician and visual artist who has worked with the experimental pop collective PC Music. (Her recent single, “Affirmations,” has a slight Ashley O vibe about it, too.) (Listen on YouTube)6. Leonard Cohen: “Avalanche”The morose opening track of Cohen’s “Songs of Love and Hate,” from 1971, “Avalanche” is … definitely one of the songs of hate. (Listen on YouTube)7. Natasha Bedingfield: “Unwritten”If ever a CW coming-of-age dramadey is made about my life (it won’t be), I feel this should be the theme song. Curse “The Hills” for getting there first. (Listen on YouTube)8. Lou Reed: “Waves of Fear”Here’s Lou Reed doing his best Danzig, from his 1982 solo album “The Blue Mask” — one of the middle-period gems buried in his vast discography. The song is both cartoonishly macabre and a very convincing evocation of an anxiety attack: “Waves of fear, pulsing with death/I curse my tremors, I jump at my own step.” (Listen on YouTube)9. Sophie: “Immaterial”The great electronic performer and producer Sophie, who died in 2021, looks beyond the limitations of the material world and reaches for something transcendent and liberatory on this swirling pop fantasy. It’s from her first and only full-length album, “Oil of Every Pearl’s Un-Insides,” from 2018. (Listen on YouTube)10. The Gap Band: “You Dropped a Bomb on Me”This is the way this playlist ends. Not with a whimper, but with a jam. (Listen on YouTube)I’ve got more songs than a song convention,LindsayThe Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“Barbenheimer: The Unofficial Playlist” track listTrack 1: Dolly Mixture, “Baby It’s You”Track 2: Nine Inch Nails, “Head Like a Hole”Track 3: Ashley O, “On a Roll”Track 4: Mclusky, “To Hell With Good Intentions”Track 5: Hannah Diamond, “Every Night”Track 6: Leonard Cohen, “Avalanche”Track 7: Natasha Bedingfield, “Unwritten”Track 8: Lou Reed, “Waves of Fear”Track 9: Sophie, “Immaterial”Track 10: The Gap Band, “You Dropped a Bomb on Me” More

    • 125 Shares179 Views

      in Movies

      Who’s Who in ‘Oppenheimer’: A Guide to the Real People

      by

      Christopher Nolan’s complex drama depicts the development of the nuclear bomb and midcentury political machinations. Here’s the back story.The premise of “Oppenheimer,” Christopher Nolan’s biopic, is straightforward: tell the story of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the physicist known as the “father of the atomic bomb.” But, as with the director’s other movies, the execution is far from simple. The film skips between time periods, and it features a dizzying array of scientists, politicians and possible Communist agents amid a series of government hearings.Here’s a guide to help you keep track of the real-life characters and events of the movie.J. Robert Oppenheimer (played by Cillian Murphy)The American theoretical physicist (played by Cillian Murphy) spearheaded the development of the atomic bomb through the Manhattan Project.Born in New York City in 1904, Oppenheimer spent his undergraduate years at Harvard before moving to Cambridge, England, for graduate work in physics. There, he grew frustrated with his tutor’s insistence that he focus on lab work instead of theory and is reported to have given the man, Patrick Blackett, a poisoned apple. The tutor never ate the apple, but university officials placed him on probation. That said, the episode is the subject of conflicting stories.After receiving his doctorate in physics at a German university, Oppenheimer accepted professorships at the University of California, Berkeley, and the California Institute of Technology, helping to pioneer work in an American school of theoretical physics.With World War II well underway, Oppenheimer was appointed director of Los Alamos, part of the mammoth effort to develop the bomb. Having fallen in love with New Mexico when he was sent there as a boy to recover from dysentery, he established a secret lab in the desert of Los Alamos, N.M., coordinating efforts by top physicists and engineers that culminated in the first nuclear explosion, at Alamogordo on July 16, 1945, known as the Trinity test.He later directed the Institute for Advanced Study, an independent center for theoretical research, in Princeton, N.J., and became chairman of the General Advisory Committee to the Atomic Energy Commission.Lewis Strauss (played by Robert Downey Jr.)Robert Downey Jr. plays the man who campaigned to revoke Oppenheimer’s security clearance.Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal Pictures, via Associated PressOppenheimer’s primary antagonist in the film, Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.) was chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission and a leader of the campaign to revoke Oppenheimer’s security clearance.Born in West Virginia, he worked variously as a traveling shoe salesman, an investment bank partner and a bureaucrat helping the future president Herbert Hoover’s Food Administration during World War I. After World War II, President Harry S. Truman appointed Strauss to the Atomic Energy Commission and he became its chairman, pushing for the development of the hydrogen bomb. Strauss later served as acting secretary of commerce under President Dwight D. Eisenhower, but his nomination was rejected by the Senate, in part because of the scientific community’s outrage over his treatment of Oppenheimer.Jean Tatlock (played by Florence Pugh)An active member of the Bay Area’s Communist Party, Tatlock (Florence Pugh) was a graduate student at Stanford Medical School when she began dating Oppenheimer in 1936. She helped introduce him to Communist activists, fueling his left-leaning sympathies. She ended her relationship with Oppenheimer in 1939, even as he continued to visit her. Their last meeting, in June 1943, was surveilled by F.B.I. agents. In 1944, the 29-year-old Tatlock was found dead in her bathroom. Most historians conclude she died by suicide.William Borden (played by David Dastmalchian)Born in 1920 in Washington, D.C., Borden (David Dastmalchian) had degrees from Yale and Yale Law. He eventually worked as legislative secretary for a Connecticut senator, Brien McMahon, and became staff director of the congressional Joint Committee on Atomic Energy in 1949.In 1953, most likely with the encouragement of Strauss, he sent a letter to the F.B.I. director, J. Edgar Hoover, suggesting that “more probably than not J. Robert Oppenheimer is an agent of the Soviet Union.” This was the catalyst for a closed-door hearing about Oppenheimer’s Communist ties — depicted in the film — and the eventual revocation of his security clearance.Ernest Lawrence (played by Josh Hartnett)A Nobel Prize-winning scientist, Lawrence (Josh Hartnett) was born in 1901 in South Dakota. He earned a doctorate in physics from Yale and became a professor of physics at U.C. Berkeley, where he invented the cyclotron, a particle accelerator that was instrumental to the development of the atomic bomb. It was Lawrence who helped introduce Oppenheimer to the Manhattan Project. After the war, he advocated for the development of hydrogen nuclear weapons.Edward Teller (played by Benny Safdie)Benny Safdie as the physicist Edward Teller, who testified against Oppenheimer.Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal Pictures, via Associated PressBorn in Budapest, Teller (Benny Safdie) earned his physics doctorate in Germany and was later offered a professorship at George Washington University, becoming a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1941. Known for his research into nuclear energy, he joined Oppenheimer’s team at Los Alamos, where he worked in the theoretical physics division.Teller was obsessed with hydrogen energy and the development of a hydrogen bomb, which led him to butt heads with other members of the Manhattan Project. After the Soviet Union tested an atomic weapon in 1949, Teller became a primary proponent of developing hydrogen bombs to gain leverage in the Cold War.He later testified against Oppenheimer in the closed-door hearing, saying, “I feel I would prefer to see the vital interests of this country in hands that I understand better and therefore trust more.”Did Oppenheimer really meet Einstein?Yes, they were colleagues at the Institute for Advanced Study. “Though I knew Einstein for two or three decades, it was only in the last decade of his life that we were close colleagues and something of friends,” Oppenheimer wrote in The New York Review of Books in 1966.However, Nolan has admitted that he made up a key scene between the two: At one point, Oppenheimer goes to the taciturn Einstein for advice on calculations by the Los Alamos team, which showed that the Trinity test could be contained and wouldn’t blow up the world.“It wasn’t Einstein who Oppenheimer went to consult about it,” Nolan said in a recent interview. “It was Arthur Compton, who directed an outpost of the Manhattan Project at the University of Chicago. But I shifted that to Einstein.”What are the two hearings featured in the film?Cillian Murphy, center, as Oppenheimer. Black-and-white scenes follow 1959 Senate hearings on the nomination of Lewis Strauss for commerce secretary. Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal PicturesThe film revolves around two committee hearings — one, in 1954, depicted in color and the other, in 1959, in black and white.The first was a four-week secret meeting in which the Atomic Energy Commission deliberated on whether to revoke Oppenheimer’s security clearance. Amid a scare about Soviet technological advances, Oppenheimer’s possible links to left-wing causes had come under scrutiny, and Borden’s letter to Hoover provided the tipping point. When the commission chairman, Strauss, informed Oppenheimer that his security clearance had been suspended, Oppenheimer refused to resign and demanded a hearing from the commission’s Personnel Security Board.That hearing was one-sided from the beginning, with Oppenheimer’s lawyers barred from accessing confidential materials, while the commission’s prosecuting attorney had access to hundreds of wiretap recordings. Ultimately, the three-person board decided that Oppenheimer was a loyal citizen but that his security clearance should be rescinded.In 1959, the Senate held a hearing on Strauss’s nomination for commerce secretary, a heated process that Time magazine called “U.S. history’s bitterest battle over confirmation of a presidential nomination.” The nomination was rejected, in a 49-to-46 vote.What ultimately happened to Oppenheimer?After losing his security clearance, Oppenheimer continued to teach and conduct research with the support of many in the scientific community, who saw him as a martyr. In 1963, President Lyndon B. Johnson granted him the Enrico Fermi Award, which honors lifetime achievements in energy science.In 1966, he retired from the Institute for Advanced Study and died from throat cancer the next year.In December 2022, a few days after a trailer for “Oppenheimer” was released, Energy Secretary Jennifer M. Granholm nullified the 1954 decision to revoke Oppenheimer’s clearance. She cited a “flawed process” that violated the Atomic Energy Commission’s own regulations.“More evidence has come to light of the bias and unfairness of the process that Dr. Oppenheimer was subjected to,” Granholm said, “while the evidence of his loyalty and love of country have only been further affirmed.” More

    • 100 Shares199 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Barbenheimer’ and a Film Critic’s Perspective, in Review

      by

      Manohla Dargis, the chief film critic for The New York Times, shares her thoughts on the movie event of the year and an industry still reeling from the pandemic.Times Insider explains who we are and what we do and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.Manohla Dargis’s notebooks are full of illegible words and phrases.The chief film critic for The New York Times, Ms. Dargis takes note of memorable scenes while watching films she intends to review. In the darkness of a movie theater, her notes are rarely coherent, she admits, and distractions are inevitable.“Every so often when I’m watching a film, my pen drifts onto my shirt and I ruin it,” she said. “This is one of the great tragedies of being a movie critic.”This week, Ms. Dargis reviewed two much-talked-about movies new to theaters, “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” — nicknamed the “Barbenheimer” movie event of the year on the internet.This highly anticipated film pairing comes at a fractious time for the American film industry, as 160,000 actors represented by SAG-AFTRA went on strike last week. They joined the thousands of television and film screenwriters already on the picket line over issues including pay and the use of artificial intelligence in creative capacities. The strikes have brought Hollywood productions largely to a standstill.In an interview, Ms. Dargis shared her thoughts on the industry’s recovery from the pandemic and what the strikes may bode for the imminent future of film. This interview has been edited.How does one begin to cover two of the most highly anticipated movies of the year?I’ve been at The New York Times for about 20 years, so I’ve experienced similar moments when two huge movies open on top of each other. Around Christmas time, movie studios release their big, so-called prestige movies, for example.I try to avoid reading about the movies before I write about them, but I do background research. I just want to have my own experience with a movie and know that a review is made up of my thoughts.How do you decide which films to write about?I try to find a balance that works for readers and what they expect from a film critic. I also have to be interested in the film. I reviewed an array of movies the other week, like the new “Mission Impossible,” a big studio movie, and “Earth Mama,” a smaller independent film.That week in some ways represents my ideal mix, where I’m really covering the field. I think if you only cover the spectacle blockbusters, you’re really missing out on the splendor of cinema.Can you take me through your review process?I try to see movies about a week in advance of their release date. I go to screenings; some are called all media screenings, where there are several hundred people in a big room at a commercial movie theater or at a movie studio. There are also smaller private screening rooms scattered across Los Angeles, where I live. I like seeing movies with other people. There’s something very special about the kind of energy that you have from being with others, particularly when you’re watching a comedy or horror movie and there’s a crowd dynamic.I always bring a notepad and a pen and write in the dark. Writing helps me remember things later because I try to absorb as much as possible while watching a film.You wrote in January about your optimism about women in film amid a range of movies centered on female characters. Are there other trends you are seeing in film right now?I mentioned that I reviewed a film called “Earth Mama” by a woman named Savanah Leaf; it’s her first feature film. It’s exciting to me that she’s one of a number of Black women filmmakers. We’re nowhere near where it needs to be, but there is a diversity of women who are making movies.Has there ever been moment like this in the movie industry?One of the funny things about the American movie industry is that it has lurched from crisis to crisis over time. Part of my optimism and hope is hanging onto the idea that the industry has managed to survive its transition to movies with sound, for example. Then TV came along and everyone thought it was the end. And then the internet happened.The American movie industry is built on crises. Right now, the streaming bubble has passed. We don’t know what happens next. That’s my greatest concern.Which film did you screen first, “Barbie” or “Oppenheimer?’I saw “Barbie” first; I saw them a few days apart, so I could be in the right head space. “Barbie” is enjoyable, but it didn’t linger with me. It wasn’t something where I came back home and said to my husband, “I just need to talk about ‘Barbie’ and its deep impression on me,” because it didn’t have one. I enjoyed it and then I had to figure out how to write about it.After a heavy film like “Oppenheimer,” do you need a film palate cleanser? How do you come down?Right after a movie, I often don’t want to talk to anyone about it. Except maybe my husband. When you leave a movie that really affects you, you’re still in the bubble of the movie for a while. That can be a joyous experience sometimes. I remember seeing a “Fast and Furious” movie and really enjoying it. But I also remember driving home a little too fast that night.A film like “Oppenheimer” — a smart, thoughtful movie talking about profound issues of great philosophical meaning — is pretty damn special. Even though I was shocked by the movie, I was happy to say that the film made me think about life. I am grateful for that experience. More

    • 88 Shares119 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Oppenheimer’ Review: A Man for Our Time

      by

      Christopher Nolan’s complex, vivid portrait of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the “father of the atomic bomb,” is a brilliant achievement in formal and conceptual terms.“Oppenheimer,” Christopher Nolan’s staggering film about J. Robert Oppenheimer, the man known as “the father of the atomic bomb,” condenses a titanic shift in consciousness into three haunted hours. A drama about genius, hubris and error, both individual and collective, it brilliantly charts the turbulent life of the American theoretical physicist who helped research and develop the two atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II — cataclysms that helped usher in our human-dominated age.The movie is based on “American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer,” the authoritative 2005 biography by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin. Written and directed by Nolan, the film borrows liberally from the book as it surveys Oppenheimer’s life, including his role in the Manhattan Engineer District, better known as the Manhattan Project. He served as director of a clandestine weapons lab built in a near-desolate stretch of Los Alamos, in New Mexico, not far from a cabin that Oppenheimer had, he and many other of the era’s most dazzling scientific minds puzzled through how to harness nuclear reactions for the weapons that killed tens of thousands instantly, ending the war in the Pacific.The atomic bomb and what it wrought define Oppenheimer’s legacy and also shape this film. Nolan goes deep and long on the building of the bomb, a fascinating and appalling process, but he doesn’t restage the attacks; there are no documentary images of the dead or panoramas of cities in ashes, decisions that read as his ethical absolutes. The horror of the bombings, the magnitude of the suffering they caused and the arms race that followed suffuse the film. “Oppenheimer” is a great achievement in formal and conceptual terms, and fully absorbing, but Nolan’s filmmaking is, crucially, in service to the history that it relates.The story tracks Oppenheimer — played with feverish intensity by Cillian Murphy — across decades, starting in the 1920s with him as a young adult and continuing until his hair grays. The film touches on personal and professional milestones, including his work on the bomb, the controversies that dogged him, the anti-Communist attacks that nearly ruined him, as well as the friendships and romances that helped sustain yet also troubled him. He has an affair with a political firebrand named Jean Tatlock (a vibrant Florence Pugh), and later weds a seductive boozer, Kitty Harrison (Emily Blunt, in a slow-building turn), who accompanies him to Los Alamos, where she gives birth to their second child.It’s a dense, event-filled story that Nolan — who’s long embraced the plasticity of the film medium — has given a complex structure, which he parcels into revealing sections. Most are in lush color; others in high-contrast black and white. These sections are arranged in strands that wind together for a shape that brings to mind the double helix of DNA. To signal his conceit, he stamps the film with the words “fission” (a splitting into parts) and “fusion” (a merging of elements); Nolan being Nolan, he further complicates the film by recurrently kinking up the overarching chronology — it is a lot.It also isn’t a story that builds gradually; rather, Nolan abruptly tosses you into the whirl of Oppenheimer’s life with vivid scenes of him during different periods in his life. In rapid succession the watchful older Oppie (as his intimates call him) and his younger counterpart flicker onscreen before the story briefly lands in the 1920s, where he’s an anguished student tormented by fiery, apocalyptic visions. He suffers; he also reads T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land,” drops a needle on Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring” and stands before a Picasso painting, defining works of an age in which physics folded space and time into space-time.This fast pace and narrative fragmentation continue as Nolan fills in this Cubistic portrait, crosses and recrosses continents and ushers in armies of characters, including Niels Bohr (Kenneth Branagh), a physicist who played a role in the Manhattan Project. Nolan has loaded the movie with familiar faces — Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr., Gary Oldman — some distracting. It took me a while to accept the director Benny Safdie as Edward Teller, the theoretical physicist known as the “father of the hydrogen bomb,” and I still don’t know why Rami Malek shows up in a minor part other than he’s yet another known commodity.As Oppenheimer comes into focus so does the world. In 1920s Germany, he learns quantum physics; the next decade he’s at Berkeley teaching, bouncing off other young geniuses and building a center for the study of quantum physics. Nolan makes the era’s intellectual excitement palpable — Einstein published his theory of general relativity in 1915 — and, as you would expect, there’s a great deal of scientific debate and chalkboards filled with mystifying calculations, most of which Nolan translates fairly comprehensibly. One of the film’s pleasures is experiencing by proxy the kinetic excitement of intellectual discourse.It’s at Berkeley that the trajectory of Oppenheimer’s life dramatically shifts, after news breaks that Germany has invaded Poland. By that point, he has become friends with Ernest Lawrence (Josh Hartnett), a physicist who invented a particle accelerator, the cyclotron, and who plays an instrumental role in the Manhattan Project. It’s also at Berkeley that Oppenheimer meets the project’s military head, Leslie Groves (a predictably good Damon), who makes him Los Alamos’s director, despite the leftist causes he supported — among them, the fight against fascism during the Spanish Civil War — and some of his associations, including with Communist Party members like his brother, Frank (Dylan Arnold).Nolan is one of the few contemporary filmmakers operating at this ambitious scale, both thematically and technically. Working with his superb cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema, Nolan has shot in 65-millimeter film (which is projected in 70-millimeter), a format that he’s used before to create a sense of cinematic monumentality. The results can be immersive, though at times clobbering, particularly when the wow of his spectacle has proved more substantial and coherent than his storytelling. In “Oppenheimer,” though, as in “Dunkirk” (2017), he uses the format to convey the magnitude of a world-defining event; here, it also closes the distance between you and Oppenheimer, whose face becomes both vista and mirror.The film’s virtuosity is evident in every frame, but this is virtuosity without self-aggrandizement. Big subjects can turn even well-intended filmmakers into show-offs, to the point that they upstage the history they seek to do justice to. Nolan avoids that trap by insistently putting Oppenheimer into a larger context, notably with the black-and-white portions. One section turns on a politically motivated security clearance hearing in 1954, a witch hunt that damaged his reputation; the second follows the 1959 confirmation for Lewis Strauss (a mesmerizing, near-unrecognizable Downey), a former chairman of the United States Atomic Energy Commission who was nominated for a cabinet position.Nolan integrates these black-and-white sections with the color ones, using scenes from the hearing and the confirmation — Strauss’s role in the hearing and his relationship with Oppenheimer directly affected the confirmation’s outcome — to create a dialectical synthesis. One of the most effective examples of this approach illuminates how Oppenheimer and other Jewish project scientists, some of whom were refugees from Nazi Germany, saw their work in stark, existential terms. Yet Oppenheimer’s genius, his credentials, international reputation and wartime service to the United States government cannot save him from political gamesmanship, the vanity of petty men and the naked antisemitism of the Red scare.These black-and-white sequences define the last third of “Oppenheimer.” They can seem overlong, and at times in this part of the film it feels as if Nolan is becoming too swept up in the trials that America’s most famous physicist experienced. Instead, it is here that the film’s complexities and all its many fragments finally converge as Nolan puts the finishing touches on his portrait of a man who contributed to an age of transformational scientific discovery, who personified the intersection of science and politics, including in his role as a Communist boogeyman, who was transformed by his role in the creation of weapons of mass destruction and soon after raised the alarm about the dangers of nuclear war.François Truffaut once wrote that “war films, even pacifist, even the best, willingly or not, glorify war and render it in some way attractive.” This, I think, gets at why Nolan refuses to show the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, world-defining events that eventually killed an estimated 100,000 to upward of 200,000 souls. You do, though, see Oppenheimer watch the first test bomb and, critically, you also hear the famous words that he said crossed his mind as the mushroom cloud rose: “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.” As Nolan reminds you, the world quickly moved on from the horrors of the war to embrace the bomb. Now we, too, have become death, the destroyers of worlds.OppenheimerRated R for disturbing images, and adult language and behavior. Running time: 3 hours. In theaters. More

    • 175 Shares149 Views

      in Movies

      Can’t Decide Whether to See ‘Barbie,’ ‘Oppenheimer’ or Both? Our Barbenheimer Quiz Can Help.

      by

      Barbenheimer is upon us, and moviegoers must decide between two chisel-cheeked midcentury marvels: “Oppenheimer,” Christopher Nolan’s three-hour biopic of J. Robert Oppenheimer, “father of the atomic bomb,” or “Barbie,” Greta Gerwig’s Day-Glo feminist-magical realist take on Mattel IP. While box office trackers say “Barbie” is likely to far outpace Oppie, at least 40,000 fans have already bought tickets for both. Should you opt for a head-snap of a double feature? Or see just one – and which one, at that? Answer these five questions to find out if you’re a Barbie girl, an Oppie nerd or a bona fide Barbenheimie.3 of 5Warner Bros. PicturesIs there an opposite-gender character who serves as a lesson on sexism? Oh boy, is there! In “Oppenheimer,” it’s one female scientist, played by Olivia Thirlby. In “Barbie,” it is, of course, just Ken. (A lot of Kens, who belatedly learn about the patriarchy.) More

    • 138 Shares129 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Barbie’ vs. ‘Oppenheimer’: The Real Winner May Be the Box Office

      by

      The toy-based comedy is expected to draw $100 million; the biopic half that. But in an uneven year for movies, the duel seems to be engaging audiences.It’s a matchup for the ages, up there with Ali vs. Frazier, the Hatfields vs. the McCoys and Athens vs. Sparta.Well, let’s not get carried away.But it is fair to say that with “Barbie” vs. “Oppenheimer,” Hollywood has not captured the popular imagination in this way for quite some time. On Thursday night, the two wildly incongruous Hollywood megamovies arrive in theaters after weeks of internet meme-ification and questionable marketing tie-ins. (We’re looking at you, Barbie-inspired Burger King sandwich topped with what looks like chewed bubble gum.) Together, the movies could generate the biggest crowds at North American multiplexes in four years, numbers not seen since before the pandemic, box office prognosticators said.“‘Barbie’ and ‘Oppenheimer’ are basically the perfect frenemies at the box office this weekend,” said Dave Karger, the Turner Classic Movies host. “Yes, they’re technically competitors, but they’re largely going after different audiences, and the Barbenheimer hype seems only to be helping both films.”Greta Gerwig’s candy-coated “Barbie,” which cost an estimated $145 million to make, not including marketing costs, has the potential to earn $100 million in the United States and Canada through Sunday, according to analysts who track audience interest and use complex formulas to forecast box office performance. Christopher Nolan’s weighty “Oppenheimer,” which cost at least $100 million before marketing, is looking at around $50 million in domestic ticket sales over the same period.Warner Bros., citing presales of about $30 million, said it was expecting closer to $75 million in weekend ticket sales for “Barbie.” (Studios try their darnedest to downplay expectations.) The studio has booked the PG-13 comedy onto about 4,200 screens in North America.Universal Pictures, the studio behind “Oppenheimer,” an R-rated historical drama about the making of the atomic bomb, declined to comment. It will unfurl Nolan’s film on about 3,600 domestic screens.“Barbie” has a run time of just under two hours. “Oppenheimer” stretches three, limiting the number of screenings that theaters can squeeze into the weekend. “Oppenheimer,” however, has the benefit of playing on most of North America’s large-format screens, which come with a ticket surcharge of up to $12 in New York. IMAX is devoting its entire footprint to Nolan’s opus for the next three weeks (to the chagrin of Tom Cruise, who hoped his “Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One” would continue to play on some of those screens after opening last week).AMC Entertainment, the world’s largest cinema chain, said on Monday that more than 40,000 people had purchased tickets to see “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” as a double feature, up from 20,000 last week.Hollywood urgently needs a weekend that exceeds — or even meets — expectations. This was the year when moviegoing was finally supposed to bounce back from the pandemic, which closed many theaters for months on end and sped the growth of streaming services in homes. At last, cinemas would reclaim a position of cultural urgency.But ticket sales in the United States and Canada for the year to date (about $5 billion) are down by about 20 percent from the same period in 2019, according to Comscore, which compiles box office data. Blips of hope, including strong sales for the innovative “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” and the hyper-violent “John Wick: Chapter 4,” have been blotted out by disappointing results for expensive franchise films like “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania,” “Shazam! Fury of the Gods” and “Fast X.”The latest “Mission: Impossible” film arrived last weekend to solid results, but below what Hollywood had been expecting.Ticket buyers seem to be tiring of new installments in decades-old franchises. What is succeeding? For the most part, characters that have not been onscreen in recent memory (“The Super Mario Bros. Movie”), new chapters in series that are not as well worn (“Creed III”) and movies that cater to audiences ignored by Hollywood (“Sound of Freedom,” which has been promoted by the right).For all of her world domination, Barbie has never before had her own big-budget movie. “Oppenheimer” is based on the 2005 biography “American Prometheus” by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin. “Both studios went all-in on original films, directed by notable auteurs with an interest in pushing the envelope,” said Paul Dergarabedian, a senior Comscore analyst. “These are not the tried-and-true safe bets that are the hallmark of the summer movie season.”“Barbie” has major movie stars — Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling — while “Oppenheimer” cast the lesser-known Cillian Murphy in the title role. “Barbie” is aimed at women, while “Oppenheimer” has the edge with men. One represents what many cinephiles loathe about Hollywood: movies based on toys. The other was written and directed by one of Hollywood’s most serious cinephiles.Comedy against drama. The brightest side of human imagination vs. the darkest. Creating worlds, destroying worlds.The contrasts are irresistible.While rare, such box-office matchups are not without precedent. Just ask Nolan. In July 2008, his sinister Batman movie “The Dark Knight” (Warner Bros.) arrived head-to-head with Universal’s silly, sun-drenched “Mamma Mia!” His was No. 1 that weekend, but both movies became runaway hits. More

    • 100 Shares189 Views

      in Movies

      Why You Should See ‘Oppenheimer’ in IMAX 70-Millimeter

      by

      The IMAX 70-millimeter format is usually associated with action. But Christopher Nolan says his biopic benefited from the tall image.On Friday morning, Vasili Birlidis and three friends will pile into a rented car in Gainesville, Fla., and drive 10 hours round-trip to see a movie that will be playing on thousands of screens across the country, including in their own town.But this is not just any movie. And more important, they are not traveling for just any screen.It’s “Oppenheimer,” the new biopic about the man who spearheaded the development of the atomic bomb during World War II, and Birlidis, 27, insists on seeing it at the Mall of Georgia outside Atlanta on opening day because that is the closest the movie is being shown in IMAX 70-millimeter.Many movie aficionados consider that format the gold standard, and Christopher Nolan, the writer and director of “Oppenheimer,” made it to be seen that way. But the film is available in IMAX 70-millimeter at just 30 screens in the world, 19 of them in the United States. None of those sites are in Gainesville. Or Chicago, where Ayethaw Tun, 30, lives; he is driving to Indianapolis to see it. Or Rome, where Federico Larosa, 34, lives; he is flying to London.If you see an IMAX theater option for “Oppenheimer,” odds are it is not 70-millimeter film but a digital projection. This format, in which “Oppenheimer” is available on more than 700 screens globally, has much to recommend it: high resolution, excellent sound. Like IMAX 70-millimeter, digital IMAX has a different aspect ratio than standard theaters, meaning you will get a taller image. Imagine watching E.T. and Elliott bicycling past the moon, but you also see the night sky above the moon and all the way to the ground.Film threaded through an IMAX 70-millimeter projector. The frames provide a much taller image than usual. Evelyn Freja for The New York TimesTo film buffs who are buffs, specifically, of film — of movies shot and projected with a physical, photochemical product — comparing IMAX 70-millimeter to IMAX digital, let alone standard digital, is like comparing lightning to the lightning bug.“It’s how much of the image you’re missing if you see it on another screen,” said Birlidis, a former theater manager. “To be able to see the full film the way the director intended,” he added, “and see it on film, which is a dying breed, and at one of 30 theaters on the planet — that’s pretty special.”Nolan acknowledged in an interview that the vast majority of moviegoers will not see “Oppenheimer” in what he considers the optimal way. “I am of the first or second generation of filmmakers for whom it was absolutely clear that the majority of people were going to see their work on television, after the fact,” he said. The first time he saw the 1982 film “Blade Runner,” one of his favorites, he added, was on a pirated VHS tape.But Nolan, who brought to our interview two kinds of film stock and a flip book the IMAX company made for him to illustrate film’s superior visual detail over digital, is evangelical about the format. He explained that IMAX 70-millimeter negatives are roughly 10 times the size of those for 35-millimeter film, for decades the theatrical standard that digital projection aspired to supplant, resulting in a crisper, clearer image. He can cite several IMAX 70-millimeter destinations off-the-cuff. (The AMC Metreon in San Francisco is “a wonderfully huge screen.”) He knew Brooklyn has one of the roughly 100 theaters showing “Oppenheimer” in ordinary 70-millimeter film — an “absolutely beautiful” print, he said.Despite the comparatively few theaters showing the most advanced formats, he argued, the effort to make it available at all was worth it to him as well as to audiences, who can expect to pay a premium (an evening ticket to see “Oppenheimer” in IMAX 70-millimeter film in Manhattan costs nearly $30). “It’s like getting a nice dinner rather than going to Jimmy John’s,” Julian Antos, the executive director of the Chicago Film Society, said, referring to the Midwestern sandwich chain.“The event, epic size, quality of that trickles down to the excitement for the film in all other mediums, down to when somebody’s watching on their telephone,” Nolan said. “They have different expectations of what a film that has been distributed in that way is. And so it’s always been important beyond the sheer number of screens.”The IMAX 70-millimeter projectors require specialists to run. Evelyn Freja for The New York TimesA digital projector. “Oppenheimer” will be shown this way on most screens.Evelyn Freja for The New York TimesA digital-projector lens. Nolan recommends that audiences see his movie on film.Evelyn Freja for The New York TimesIMAX has come to stand for an entire experience: IMAX certifies theaters for stadium-like seating, viewing angle and darkness. The film itself is projected onto a huge screen — the one at the AMC Lincoln Square in Manhattan is 97 feet by 76 feet — that dominates your peripheral vision.Nolan’s are practically the only feature films these days that both use IMAX film cameras and are shown using IMAX projectors. (Several recent movies shot partly with IMAX cameras, including last year’s “Nope,” were not projected on IMAX 70-millimeter.) For “Oppenheimer,” theaters are trotting out most of the 48 working IMAX 70-millimeter projectors left in the world. These mammoth machines can drag an “Oppenheimer” copy — 53 reels that together weigh 600 pounds and hold footage that would run 11 miles — across their 15,000-watt lamps. The theaters call into service 60 projectionists with special training, some of them retired. “Chris has a particular affinity — and he’s almost a unicorn in this regard — for IMAX film,” Rich Gelfond, IMAX’s chief executive, said. “Without Chris, certainly, there wouldn’t be as many as exist today.”The director working with the star, Cillian Murphy, on the set of “Oppenheimer.” Nolan is the rare filmmaker to use IMAX cameras and projection.Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal Pictures, via Associated PressAfter his 2005 action movie “Batman Begins,” screened in digitally remastered IMAX, Nolan’s follow-up, “The Dark Knight” (2008), was the first Hollywood feature shot partly with IMAX cameras. He used them for the opening set-piece, a daring bank heist masterminded by Heath Ledger’s the Joker, and showed a reel to studio executives. “They were absolutely thrilled,” Nolan said. “Once you see it, you understand it kind of in your bones.”Almost every Nolan movie since has used IMAX cameras. “Dunkirk” (2017) is roughly two-thirds IMAX, and, as in both his 2020 drama “Tenet” and now “Oppenheimer,” what is not IMAX was shot in traditional 70-millimeter. If you are seeing a Nolan film in IMAX, you might notice how the image toggles between filling up the whole screen and letterboxing to fill just the middle.Unlike many Nolan movies, “Oppenheimer” is dominated not by action spectacle, but by tense conversations. Nolan said he and his cinematographer, Hoyte van Hoytema, realized IMAX was “a wonderful format for faces” and even for the cramped committee room where a good deal of “Oppenheimer” takes place. “The screen disappears,” Nolan said. “So you’re in intimate space with the subjects.” (The filmmakers also helped develop the first black-and-white IMAX film expressly for certain scenes.)“It’s how much of the image you’re missing if you see it on another screen,” one fan, Vasili Birlidis, said, explaining why he’s driving hours to watch “Oppenheimer” in IMAX 70-millimeter.Evelyn Freja for The New York TimesNolan argued that his passion for how his movies are made and displayed was justified by their influence over the viewer’s ultimate experience, even if the average filmgoer might not consciously register the difference.“I have to believe I wouldn’t care about it as much if it didn’t have an emotional effect,” Nolan said. “There’s a favorite tactic of studio executives,” he added, “which is to say, Well, at the end of the day, isn’t it all about story? To which you say, Well, no, otherwise we would be distributing audiobooks or radio plays. In the last analysis, it is not all about story. It’s about the moving image, it’s about cinematic storytelling, and the greatest movies made could only be films.” More

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Barbie’ and ‘Oppenheimer’ Fans Are Ready for Their Double Feature

      by

      Some of the moviegoers planning on a “Barbenheimer” — seeing both on the same day — are relishing the incongruous subject matter of the two new releases.One movie is bursting with life-size doll houses and blowout parties and so, so much pink. The other tells the origin story of the deadliest weapon in human history.On July 21, with the opening of two of the most anticipated films of the year, “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer,” thousands of fans will head to theaters to watch both movies on the same day — relishing the irony of seeing two star-studded films with such incongruous themes.“It’s a juxtaposition to show the brightest and darkest sides of the human imagination,” said Eden Schumer, a paralegal in Manhattan, who plans to wear a T-shirt featuring both “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” designs to the theater. “You’re creating worlds and also destroying worlds.”This double feature — branded “Barbenheimer” by the internet — promises to be a cultural event, a movie buff’s dream and a magnet drawing people back to theaters even as the movie industry struggles to compete against streaming services and recover prepandemic engagement.More than 20,000 people have already purchased tickets to see “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” on the same day, according to Elizabeth Frank, the executive vice president of worldwide programming and chief content officer for AMC Theaters. From July 7 to July 10, AMC saw a 33 percent increase in the number of guests buying tickets for the double feature.Even one particular celebrity with his own high-profile movie is getting in on the action.Kevin Sabellico, a political consultant from Carlsbad, Calif., said he used to see movies multiple times a month, but stopped going during the pandemic. He hasn’t been to a theater in more than a year.“This is the event that will bring me back,” Sabellico said. “I don’t know why, but the duality of these films happening on the same day just has me captivated and wanting to see both on the big screen.”Like Sabellico, Jackson Kennedy, a graduate student at Stanford University, is ending a theatrical hiatus for the double feature.“I haven’t been to the theater this entire year, and now I’m going to spend all day in one,” he said.In which order should the movies be seen? The consensus seems to be “Oppenheimer” first: Take in the strong stuff, then end the night with a party.“My friends and I in Chicago are spending our day at the Alamo Drafthouse and seeing the films the way the Lord herself intended: ‘Oppenheimer’ at 10 a.m. with a black coffee / ‘Barbie’ at 4:20 p.m. with a big Diet Coke,” Andrea Ledesma, a marketing operations manager, wrote in an email.Rita Wenxin Wang of Brooklyn, who is also starting with “Oppenheimer,” decided to purchase tickets for the double feature after seeing dozens of memes and jokes juxtaposing the two movies online.“It feels more fun to end the night on a fun light movie than a serious movie where someone builds an atomic bomb,” Wang said.Many other double-feature moviegoers are putting their outfits together accordingly. Thomas Cuda, from Jacksonville, Fla., said he plans to dress with a subdued style for “Oppenheimer” in the morning, perhaps wearing a suit. For the afternoon “Barbie” showing, he has something flashy planned. For the past year, he has had a pair of pink jeans — a gift from his wife — sitting in his closet.“I haven’t ever had the courage to give them a try, but I will be busting them out for ‘Barbie,’” he said.Cuda couldn’t believe it when he found out the movies were both opening on July 21, a week and a half after his birthday. He decided to postpone his birthday celebration until next week.“We’re not going to spend any money. We’re going to save it all. We’re going big on release day,” he said. “For me this is probably the third most important day of the year behind my anniversary and Halloween.” More