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    ‘Asphalt City’ Review: Arbiters of Life and Death

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    Sean Penn plays a flinty paramedic showing a rookie the ropes in this maddening drama about emergency medical workers in New York.Two paramedics — Ollie Cross (Tye Sheridan), a wide-eyed rookie, and Gene Rutkovsky (Sean Penn), a gruff veteran of the trade — traverse the mean streets of East New York, Brooklyn, by ambulance in the solemn drama “Asphalt City.” Flooded with neon and sirens, the movie opens during Cross’s first nights on the corps, tracking his and his new partner’s efforts to provide care for an array of challenging patients.Directed by Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire — with evident inspiration from Martin Scorsese’s “Bringing Out the Dead” — this jittery drama wants viewers to appreciate the unique burdens facing emergency medical workers. Its approach to achieving this goal, however, involves a profusion of overly literal allusions to the paramedics as arbiters of life and death. “We are gods,” a colleague insists to Cross in one of several midnight symposiums on ethics and existentialism. As if those weren’t enough, our hero in training also sports a bomber jacket conspicuously embroidered with angel wings.For reasons beyond my understanding, Cross, an aspiring doctor, looks up to Rutkovsky, a flinty old timer with a propensity to aggress when he feels sad or mad or basically anything. Their dynamic is familiar at best and dull at worst, particularly for those who long ago tired of the tragedies of toxic machismo. A couple of women do inhabit “Asphalt City”: the enthralling Katherine Waterston as Rutkovsky’s nettled ex wife, and Cross’s nameless love interest, whose naked body seems to receive more screen time than her face.Asphalt CityRated R for bloody emergencies and graphic nudity. Running time: 2 hours. In theaters. More

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      ‘Superpower’ Review: Sean Penn Chronicles the War in Ukraine

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      This documentary, which Penn directed with Aaron Kaufman, includes Penn’s interview with the Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky on the first day of Russia’s invasion.Near the beginning of “Superpower,” Sean Penn tries to pre-empt the criticism generated by his previous trips to conflict zones. “Weathered though it is,” he says in narration, “my famous face gets me access to places and people I may otherwise not have known.”That is undoubtedly true, even if, in the past, he has used that access to lob softball questions at El Chapo. When it comes to chronicling the war in Ukraine, the subject of this documentary, which Penn directed with Aaron Kaufman, it is hard to begrudge the actor’s mission. Like the French intellectual Bernard-Henri Lévy, who has been making his own documentaries on the war, Penn appears to have one eye in the mirror, but at least he’s taking some sort of action.“Superpower” began as a film about the unlikely presidency of the Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky and his path from comic actor to politician. Much of the first part consists of material Penn compiled from the preinvasion period. Experts lay out the complexities of the country’s 21st-century history. Ukrainians reflect on the legacy of the Maidan protests and express skepticism about Zelensky’s potential.Penn scores a coup by getting an on-camera interview with Zelensky on the first day of Russia’s invasion, and he films him on two additional occasions, in a video interview and in person on a later visit. Zelensky’s words — about what his country needs, about how his 9-year-old has prematurely grown into being like a “wise political man” — are often familiar but still stirring. Potentially more of a stunt is Penn’s trip to the front, which seems as much about proving his mettle as getting the story.SuperpowerNot rated. In English and Ukrainian, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 55 minutes. Watch on Paramount+. More

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      Eileen Ryan, Actress of Stage and Screen, Dies at 94

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      She put her career on hold for a time to raise her sons, the actors Sean and Chris Penn and the musician Michael Penn.Eileen Ryan, a stage, television and film actress who paused her career to raise her sons, the actors Sean and Chris Penn and the musician Michael Penn, then later racked up dozens of acting credits, sometimes working with her sons and her husband, the director Leo Penn, died on Sunday at her home in Malibu, Calif. She was 94.Her family announced her death through a spokeswoman.Ms. Ryan was in her late 20s and appearing in “The Iceman Cometh” at Circle in the Square in Greenwich Village in 1956 when she met Mr. Penn, who stepped into a role being vacated by Jason Robards. They married soon after.Her career was going well at that point; she had already made her Broadway debut in “Sing Till Tomorrow” in 1953 and would return to Broadway in 1958 in “Comes a Day.” But she prided herself on making her own decisions — “I don’t think anybody could have felt stronger than I did about controlling my own destiny,” she told The Los Angeles Times in 1986 — and soon she made a difficult one, choosing to scale back her acting.The choice, she said, began to be clear when she had a job that took her away from home and had to leave Michael, then a baby, with Leo.“I was out of town and all I did was cry,” she told The Times. “That made it very clear to me that I wanted to be home with the kids.”The family moved to the West Coast, and she still performed occasionally in the 1960s and ’70s; she appeared in episodes of “The Twilight Zone,” “Bonanza” and other shows, some of them directed by Leo Penn, who, though blacklisted in the 1940s and ’50s, emerged to become a prolific television director.But, she said in 1986, for a long stretch her most important performance came in a supporting role in a home movie made by young Sean Penn and his neighbor Emilio Estevez, son of the actor Martin Sheen.“I was a background mother screaming from the kitchen,” she said.Ms. Ryan went back to acting more regularly with her appearance in the 1986 film “At Close Range,” a crime drama in which she played the grandmother of characters played by her sons Sean and Chris. Two years later she played the mother of Sean Penn’s character in the movie “Judgment in Berlin,” a drama directed by Leo Penn whose stars also included Mr. Sheen.Ms. Ryan and her husband also returned to the stage, starring in “Remembrance,” a drama by the Irish playwright Graham Reid staged in 1997 at the Odyssey Theater in Los Angeles, with Sean Penn as producer.Leo Penn died in 1998. Ms. Ryan continued to act, accumulating more than two dozen additional TV and film credits, most recently in the 2016 movie “Rules Don’t Apply,” directed by Warren Beatty.Eileen Rose Annucci was born on Oct. 16, 1927, in the Bronx. Her father, William, was a lawyer and a dentist. Her mother, Rose (Ryan) Annucci, was the source of the surname Eileen later adopted for her acting career.That career, or at least the aspiration to it, started early. As a child growing up in New York she would stage plays in the courtyard of her apartment complex.“I remember beating up all the little boys in my apartment building so they’d be in my plays,” she said.She earned a bachelor’s degree at New York University, then embarked on an acting career, putting her on a path to meet Mr. Penn.Once she restarted her career in the 1980s, among her first credits was Ron Howard’s comic drama “Parenthood” (1989). She played one-half of an older couple; the male half was played by Mr. Robards, the man whose departure from “Iceman” decades earlier had allowed her to meet Mr. Penn.Ms. Ryan’s son Chris died in 2006. In addition to her other sons, she is survived by three grandchildren. More

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      Labor Board Looking Into Complaints at Sean Penn Vaccination Site

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      Two online commenters complained of working 18-hour days and not getting food from Krispy Kreme or Subway. Penn saw “narcissism” and “betrayal.”A nonprofit group co-founded by Sean Penn is facing a National Labor Relations Board hearing over an accusation that he implicitly threatened employees after complaints about long hours and the food served during a Covid-19 vaccination effort.In January the group, Community Organized Relief Effort, played a key role in an operation to administer vaccines in a parking lot of Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles.The work drew praise, but an anonymous online comment posted in response to a New York Times article late that month about the vaccinations said that employees were working up to 18 hours a day. A second comment, also anonymous, said there had been a lack of Krispy Kreme doughnuts and Subway sandwiches — food described by the Times report as being at the site.Soon, CORE employees were sent a long, impassioned email by Penn. He wrote that he was grateful for their work and mindful of his responsibilities in “the race against mutations and the fight against the current strains of Covid-19.”He also appeared to suggest that the online commenters were guilty of “reckless narcissism” and “broad betrayal.”And Penn proposed that those who might feel inclined to gripe online amid a pandemic ought to simply leave the group instead.“Any of us who might find themselves predisposed to a culture of complaint, have a much simpler avenue than broad-based cyber whining,” he wrote. “It’s called quitting.”A labor lawyer in Los Angeles read the message after it was published, in early February, along with an accompanying article, by The Los Angeles Times. That lawyer, Daniel B. Rojas, said Penn’s remarks struck him as unlawful and that he quickly filed a charge with the N.L.R.B. The N.L.R.B. process calls for a charge to be followed by an investigation, which can lead to a complaint or a dismissal.In this instance, the N.L.R.B. issued a complaint, dated Oct. 25, saying Penn’s email violated federal labor law. Penn had, the complaint added, “impliedly threatened” employees with reprisals or discharge.A hearing before an administrative law judge has been scheduled for January.A lawyer for CORE and for Penn said that “on principle and merit,” both had rejected a settlement offer from the N.L.R.B. that did not involve any fine or monetary payment, and will “vigorously contest and fight” the charge.“Despite its utter lack of legal merit, the N.L.R.B.’s General Counsel and Regional Director have decided to waste federal resources and taxpayer dollars by filing an ill‐advised and meritless lawsuit, even as CORE continues its groundbreaking work,” a statement from the lawyer, Mathew S. Rosengart, said. “The N.L.R.B.’s actions to distract CORE from its crucial mission for a case where no employees were harmed, are shameful.”In May, Rosengart and two colleagues sent a letter to the N.L.R.B. saying the complaint about long hours was false and that charges by Rojas were “utterly frivolous” and should be dismissed. Penn’s email, the lawyers added, was “a motivational rallying cry.”The N.L.R.B. general counsel, Jennifer Abruzzo, said in a statement on Thursday: “Although CORE engages in important and admirable work, like all employers, it must respect the right of its employees under the National Labor Relations Act to engage in protected concerted activities, such as discussing matters of mutual concern with one another and bringing workplace concerns to the public, federal agencies, or other third parties.”This week, Rojas explained his motive in filing the charge, writing in an email: “It’s neither selfish nor un-American to discuss your wages or working conditions with the public.”.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-k59gj9{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;width:100%;}.css-1e2usoh{font-family:inherit;display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;border-top:1px solid #ccc;padding:10px 0px 10px 0px;background-color:#fff;}.css-1jz6h6z{font-family:inherit;font-weight:bold;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.5rem;text-align:left;}.css-1t412wb{box-sizing:border-box;margin:8px 15px 0px 15px;cursor:pointer;}.css-hhzar2{-webkit-transition:-webkit-transform ease 0.5s;-webkit-transition:transform ease 0.5s;transition:transform ease 0.5s;}.css-t54hv4{-webkit-transform:rotate(180deg);-ms-transform:rotate(180deg);transform:rotate(180deg);}.css-1r2j9qz{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-e1ipqs{font-size:1rem;line-height:1.5rem;padding:0px 30px 0px 0px;}.css-e1ipqs a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;}.css-e1ipqs a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}.css-1o76pdf{visibility:show;height:100%;padding-bottom:20px;}.css-1sw9s96{visibility:hidden;height:0px;}.css-1in8jot{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;font-family:’nyt-franklin’,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;text-align:left;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1in8jot{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-1in8jot:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1in8jot{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}What to Know About Covid-19 Booster ShotsThe F.D.A. has authorized booster shots for millions of recipients of the Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines. Pfizer and Moderna recipients who are eligible for a booster include people 65 and older, and younger adults at high risk of severe Covid-19 because of medical conditions or where they work. Eligible Pfizer and Moderna recipients can get a booster at least six months after their second dose. All Johnson & Johnson recipients will be eligible for a second shot at least two months after the first.Yes. The F.D.A. has updated its authorizations to allow medical providers to boost people with a different vaccine than the one they initially received, a strategy known as “mix and match.” Whether you received Moderna, Johnson & Johnson or Pfizer-BioNTech, you may receive a booster of any other vaccine. Regulators have not recommended any one vaccine over another as a booster. They have also remained silent on whether it is preferable to stick with the same vaccine when possible.The C.D.C. has said the conditions that qualify a person for a booster shot include: hypertension and heart disease; diabetes or obesity; cancer or blood disorders; weakened immune system; chronic lung, kidney or liver disease; dementia and certain disabilities. Pregnant women and current and former smokers are also eligible.The F.D.A. authorized boosters for workers whose jobs put them at high risk of exposure to potentially infectious people. The C.D.C. says that group includes: emergency medical workers; education workers; food and agriculture workers; manufacturing workers; corrections workers; U.S. Postal Service workers; public transit workers; grocery store workers.Yes. The C.D.C. says the Covid vaccine may be administered without regard to the timing of other vaccines, and many pharmacy sites are allowing people to schedule a flu shot at the same time as a booster dose.By many measures, CORE’s pandemic work has been a success. The group, which Penn co-founded after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, has provided free coronavirus testing in California and beyond. At Dodger stadium, CORE assisted the Los Angeles Fire Department, which led an operation that administered nearly 56,000 vaccinations in its first nine days.The description of the parking-lot scene in The Times article in late January included: “There is Krispy Kreme for breakfast and Subway for lunch (the fruit on the tables is for poking with syringes during training sessions). At the trailers marked ‘Vaccine Draw,’ runners elbow past Mr. Penn, slide their empty coolers inside and await a fresh batch of syringes.”Among 150 comments in response to the story were the two that purported to come from CORE workers. One, attributed to “CORE staff,” referred to the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration, writing: “We have staff working 18 hour days, 6 days a week,” adding: “This is an OSHA violation.”A second commenter, “staff #2,” wrote: “We do NOT get krispy kreme for breakfast. In fact, we usually DON’T get breakfast, just coffee,” that commenter wrote. “And the lunch is NOT subway. It’s the same old lettuce wraps every day. It’s free lunch for staff/volunteers so I’m not complaining but still … not subway.”The day after the article ran, Penn’s message addressed to “All CORE Staff” went out, citing “a pair of highly visible comments on a major news outlet’s platform.” He began by commending CORE workers and wrote that he is consumed with the fight against Covid: “I awaken pre-dawn and pass out post-midnight every morning and every night, pulling at my hair and pounding pavement.”Penn wrote that CORE has strong complaint procedures and complies with OSHA regulations, but also warned against “obscene critiques” and stated that “valuable, organized response is most vulnerable to destruction from within.”And although he wrote that he had “taken counsel” and would refrain from using certain language, Penn left little doubt about his feelings toward the commenters.“And to whoever authored these,” he wrote, “understand that in every cell of my body is a vitriol for the way your actions reflect so harmfully upon your brothers and sisters in arms.” More

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      ‘Flag Day’ Review: Daddy Dearest

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      Sean Penn directs and stars with his daughter, Dylan Penn, in this intimate yet bumpy family drama.As a director, Sean Penn seems drawn to stories featuring lost children of one sort or another, a proclivity that has resulted in some of his strongest work. His latest film, “Flag Day,” tills similar soil: the awakening of a daughter whose adored father is not the demigod she believes him to be.Set mainly in Minnesota and adapted from Jennifer Vogel’s 2004 memoir, “Flim-Flam Man,” Jez Butterworth and John-Henry Butterworth’s screenplay constructs a broken-family melodrama mired in sentimentality. The flowery narration that Jennifer (played as a teen and adult by Penn’s daughter, Dylan Penn) uses to describe her father’s electrically disruptive comings and goings in her life doesn’t help; though it does enable a gauzy, ethereal mood that the cinematographer Danny Moder runs with, lending his picturesque prairie landscapes the softly blurred quality of old photographs.The film opens in 1992 with Jennifer finally learning that her father, John (Penn, directing himself for the first time), has been concealing a violent and colorful criminal past. Flashbacks reveal him to be a complex, charismatic scoundrel whose reckless schemes leave his wife (Katheryn Winnick) and children — a brother, played by Penn’s son, Hopper Jack Penn, is barely seen — to fend for themselves.Heavy-handed and more than a little pretentious, “Flag Day” seems to view John’s volatile fortunes as a metaphor for those of his country. (Close-ups of worn, anonymous faces drift across the screen, symbols of heartland struggle.) Yet Penn gives him a vivid, wheedling desperation that’s weirdly moving, and the younger Penn has clearly inherited the emotional expressiveness of her mother, Robin Wright. Maybe that’s why “Flag Day” feels as much a love letter from Penn to his own daughter as the story of someone else’s.Flag DayRated R for drinking, thieving and a bloody reckoning. Running time: 1 hour 47 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      Cannes Film Festival Will Feature Sean Penn, Wes Anderson

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      The Cannes Film Festival announced the movies that will vie for the Palme d’Or in July.PARIS — Sean Penn is a contender for the top prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, to be held from July 6 to 17, the organizers announced Thursday. In “Flag Day,” the actor-director plays a con man. More

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      ‘Citizen Penn’ Review: A Portrait of Sean Penn as an Advocate

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      The documentary follows the actor’s work helping Haiti, starting in 2011.Sean Penn’s work in Haiti after its devastating 2011 earthquake continues to this day. And this new documentary “Citizen Penn” is a revealing, engaging chronicle of the actor’s activism.One of the opening scenes of the movie, directed by Dan Hardy, is a mini-montage of its subject behaving like the tabloid fodder he was during the 1980s and 1990s. It culminates with a clip from Penn’s acceptance speech at the 2009 Academy Awards ceremony, where he took the best actor prize for his work in “Milk.” He tells the audience, “I know how hard I make it to appreciate me.”Hardy’s subsequent exercise in Penn-appreciation, focusing on Penn’s extraordinary and still-continuing philanthropic activism in Haiti, accepts that challenge, and overcomes it.Speaking with Hardy for this film, Penn reveals, among other things, his acute awareness of the interview as a mode of performance. Dressed in jeans and a denim shirt, an American Spirit cigarette almost ever-present in his hand, the often combative actor adopts a friendly mien and seems frank, engaging and unguarded. He speaks of wasting some time on nightlife in the aftermath of a divorce, and being galvanized by television coverage of the 2011 earthquake.After asking a physician friend down there what was needed, and being told “350,000 vials of morphine,” Penn got them. From the divisive president of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, as it happens. After assembling a volunteer force, Penn went to Haiti and was increasingly astonished at how devastated it was.The actor and filmmaker is the “star” here, yes, but Hardy also profiles Haitians and some expatriates in the medical field who were moved to go back to the country. Their commitment and insight fills out the chronicle. These days, the island country is increasingly hurricane battered. And Penn remains a fierce, and appreciated, advocate for its cause.Citizen PennNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 33 minutes. Watch on Discovery+. More