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    Martin Scorsese Interviews Pope Francis in Upcoming Documentary ‘Aldeas’

    The project will highlight scripted short films from international communities along with snippets of a conversation between the director and the pontiff, who died last month.Martin Scorsese will produce a new documentary featuring an on-camera interview with Pope Francis that was recorded at Vatican City in December, a few months before the pope died at the age of 88.The film, “Aldeas — A New Story,” is about the worldwide cultural project developed by Scholas Occurrentes, a global educational movement founded by Francis in 2013, the same year he was elected pope. Communities around the world will create scripts for short films that highlight their identities, histories and values.Snippets of the conversation between the pope and Scorsese will be interwoven into the film, which does not have a release date.In a statement on Wednesday, Scorsese said it was important to Francis for “people across the globe to exchange ideas with respect while also preserving their cultural identity, and cinema is the best medium to do that.” Before the pope’s death, Francis called “Aldeas” a poetic project because it “goes to the roots of what human life is.”The project punctuates a long relationship between the pope and Scorsese, whose work has sometimes been religious in nature. When “The Last Temptation of Christ” was released in 1988, it drew protests and outrage from religious groups.In 2016, Scorsese met with Francis to discuss his movie “Silence,” a drama about a Portuguese Jesuit priest who heads to 17th-century Japan, where Christians are persecuted. They met again in 2023, when Scorsese announced he would make another film about Jesus. The director’s most recent project, “Martin Scorsese Presents: The Saints,” dramatizes the lives of eight Catholic saints.Before his death, Francis called “Aldeas” a poetic project because it “goes to the roots of what human life is.”Aldeas Scholas Films, via Associated PressWhen Francis died, Scorsese said in a statement to Variety that he was lucky to have known him and that his loss for the world was immense.“He had an ironclad commitment to the good,” Scorsese said. “He knew in his soul that ignorance was a terrible plague on humanity. So he never stopped learning. And he never stopped enlightening.” More

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    Martin Scorsese on His Tour of Catholic Saints

    The Fox Nation series “Martin Scorsese Presents: The Saints” emphasizes the human struggles behind religious legends.The director Martin Scorsese’s filmography teems with troubled protagonists struggling with moral codes. With his new project, that canon now includes the canonized.“Martin Scorsese Presents: The Saints,” premiering Sunday on the Fox Nation streaming service, is hosted and narrated by the filmmaker and dramatizes the lives of eight Catholic saints.The series is premiering in two parts, with the first four episodes rolling out weekly and featuring well-known saints, including Joan of Arc and John the Baptist, as well as more obscure ones like Maximilian Kolbe, a Polish priest who volunteered to die in place of another man at the Auschwitz concentration camp. The second part, scheduled to premiere in April, will include episodes about the Italian friar Francis of Assisi and Mary Magdalene, a follower of Jesus Christ, among others.The series was created by Matti Leshem, a founder of New Mandate Films, a production company that focuses on storytelling rooted in Jewish history and culture. Scorsese is an executive producer. Kent Jones, a frequent collaborator of the filmmaker’s, wrote the scripts, which were informed by lengthy discussions on theology he had with Scorsese.Catholic saints, who are people recognized by the church after death for their virtue as models for holiness, have long interested Scorsese. “I was always fascinated by the idea of a saint and what a saint could be,” he said earlier this week, recalling how he found respite in St. Patrick’s Cathedral as a child growing up in 1950s New York City.In an interview at a hotel on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, Scorsese discussed the show, his relationship to Catholicism and why he thinks faith-based entertainment needs to have depth. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Charles Brandt, Whose Book Inspired ‘The Irishman,’ Dies at 82

    “I Heard You Paint Houses,” his true-crime best seller about the death of Jimmy Hoffa, was brought to the screen by Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro.Charles Brandt, a former homicide prosecutor whose 2004 true-crime best seller, “I Heard You Paint Houses,” was adapted by Martin Scorsese into “The Irishman,” starring Robert De Niro as the Mafia hit man who killed the ex-Teamster boss Jimmy Hoffa, died on Oct. 22 in Wilmington, Del. He was 82.The death, at a hospice facility, was confirmed by his brother-in-law, Gary Goldsmith, who did not specify a cause.Mr. Brandt’s book purported to solve the mystery of Mr. Hoffa’s disappearance and presumed death in 1975. He identified Hoffa’s killer as Frank Sheeran, a World War II veteran and truck driver who had been recruited into the underworld by the Mafia boss Russell Bufalino.Mr. Sheeran did some enforcement work for Mr. Bufalino, who introduced him to Mr. Hoffa, who said to Mr. Sheeran, “I heard you paint houses.” That was apparently mob slang for killing people — with the word “paint” meaning blood.In a series of interviews over five years, Mr. Sheeran told Mr. Brandt that he had been ordered to kill Mr. Hoffa, who had just been released from prison and was trying to regain power in the underworld.Mr. Sheeran recalled luring him to a house in Detroit for a supposed meeting with organized crime figures.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Celebrities Support Plan to Reopen Upper West Side Movie Theater

    Martin Scorsese, Ethan Hawke and John Turturro are all listed as advisers to a new proposal to buy the former Metro Theater, which closed in 2005.After almost two decades of failed attempts to reopen, a landmark Upper West Side movie theater may be resurrected with a plan from a potential new buyer and celebrity support.The independent film producer Ira Deutchman is spearheading the project, along with Adeline Monzier, the U.S. representative of the French film promoter Unifrance and a programmer at the Metrograph, a Lower East Side theater. They have formed the Upper West Side Cinema Center, a nonprofit corporation, whose website lists Martin Scorsese, Ethan Hawke and John Turturro as advisers, along with Bob Balaban, Griffin Dunne and the “American Psycho” director Mary Harron. (They would call it the Metro Cinema Center.)Representatives for Scorsese and Dunne confirmed their involvement.The plan was reported earlier by IndieWire.The proposal includes a five-screen theater dedicated to art house releases, classic film and special events; it would also have an education center and a cafe.Mark Levine, the Manhattan borough president, said he has spoken with two other parties that are talking with the owners about a potential sale, but Deutchman’s proposal is the most fully developed. The estate of the former owner also has yet to engage a broker for the sale, Levine said.The Upper West Side, once a hot spot for art house theaters, is now served by selections at Film at Lincoln Center and large multiplexes. “This is a really underserved audience that is in a community that clearly has an interest in the kinds of movies we’re talking about,” Deutchman said in an interview.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Martin Scorsese’s ‘Made in England’ Is a Tribute to Powell-Pressburger Films

    “Made in England” is an essay film about the artists whose passion and cinematography deeply influenced the American director.What you can learn about movies from just reading about them is pretty limited — an ironic admission from a movie critic, I know. The best way to understand what makes a film or a filmmaker interesting is to submerge yourself in their work, to binge a whole catalog. But when that’s not possible, or if you want more context, a great guide and a well-crafted essay film can be invaluable.Few such guides could outpace Martin Scorsese, whose narration (often delivered directly to camera) powers “Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger” (in theaters), directed by David Hinton. Scorsese’s World Cinema Project restores movies from underrepresented and forgotten filmmakers from around the world, works that might otherwise be lost to time. Among those were “The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp” and “The Red Shoes,” two seminal movies from the 1940s by the duo Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. Scorsese has long counted the pair among his greatest influences; their movies pushed the boundaries of color, story and passion.What makes “Made in England” so compelling is how effortlessly it swings from film analysis to cinema and cultural history to personal narrative. It’s a roughly chronological documentary about the filmmakers, but it’s also the story of personal obsession. For Scorsese, that story started in his own childhood, when he saw rough black-and-white transfers on TV that transfixed him. Later, he became obsessed with the filmmakers’ works, and Powell in particular eventually became a mentor and a friend. He and Scorsese’s longtime editor, Thelma Schoonmaker, were married until Powell died in 1990.The film works through the history of both men, the origins of their collaboration and the ways their films evolved during and after World War II, particularly as commercial taste shifted. Their experimentations with sound, music and heightened realism are illuminated through “The Red Shoes,” “Colonel Blimp” and films like “Black Narcissus,” “The Tales of Hoffmann,” and the nearly career-killing “Peeping Tom,” all lovingly explored through Scorsese’s viewpoint.Scorsese has narrated documentaries about film history before (including “A Personal Journey With Martin Scorsese Through American Movies” and “My Voyage to Italy”), always with a distinctive angle. And it’s easy to see why. The average viewer — that is to say, someone not quite as obsessed with movies as Scorsese is — pops open the queue on a streamer of choice and starts drowning. There are, quite literally, more movies now than there have ever been, and even a fairly sophisticated viewer can struggle to choose.“Made in England” is remarkably engaging thanks to Scorsese’s animated commentary and some flourishes, like comparisons between shots from Powell and Pressburger’s films and Scorsese’s. But whether you are lucky enough to attend the summer of Powell and Pressburger in New York’s cinemas, enjoy streaming from home or are just curious about these fascinating filmmakers, the documentary is a personal, vibrant gift. More

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    A ‘Taxi Driver’ Remake: Why Arthur Jafa Recast the Scorsese Ending

    The artist has gone back to his filmmaking roots, re-examining what he sees as racial undertones in Martin Scorsese’s classic 1976 movie.Call it a return to his roots. The artist Arthur Jafa began his career as a cinematographer, working with his then-wife, Julie Dash, on the acclaimed “Daughters of the Dust” (1991) and with Spike Lee on “Crooklyn” (1994), before garnering art world fame, including a Golden Lion at the 2019 Venice Biennale, for “Love is the Message, The Message is Death,” a snapshot of Black life in the United States created from collaged video footage. Jafa’s practice has embraced film and video, sculpture, installation, and even painting.His newest film, which goes on view Thursday at Gladstone Gallery in Chelsea, has a provocative conceit: Jafa has remade the shockingly violent climax of a classic of American cinema — Martin Scorsese’s “Taxi Driver” (1976) — in which the main character Travis Bickle, played by Robert De Niro, storms into a seedy Times Square brothel and kills everyone in sight in order to save Iris, a child prostitute played by Jodie Foster, then 12 years old.In the original movie — what Jafa calls the “redacted version” — these characters, including Iris’s pimp Sport (played by Harvey Keitel), were white. That never felt right to Jafa. When he discovered that the film’s celebrated screenwriter, Paul Schrader, had intended Sport to be African American, he decided to “restore” the movie by introducing Black actors, except for De Niro and Foster. In the 73-minute-long film, titled “******” — or as the artist pronounces it, “Redacted” — we see this recut version of the bloody climax over and over, each time slightly but crucially different. The result is extraordinary — both technically and conceptually — and brings to the surface the racist animus long accepted as underpinning Bickle’s barely contained rage. (Quentin Tarantino also criticized the decision to change the character to white in his 2022 book, “Cinema Speculation.”)Arthur Jafa cast a replacement actor, right, as the pimp in “Taxi Driver,” originally played by Harvey Keitel, then skillfully wove in the new footage and rerecorded the voices. via Arthur Jafa and Gladstone GallerySchrader, who is still making movies at 77, said in a recent telephone conversation that the change to his original vision was the right call. “Someone at Columbia Pictures said to Marty, ‘we’re going to have a riot in the theater if we cast Sport as Black,’ and I realized they were completely right.”“I think it would have been a much more vile and revolting film if his hatred was directed completely at people of color,” he added. “You can’t make something that is so off the meter that it can’t be seen or that people simply can’t bear watching.” (Martin Scorsese did not return several calls seeking his comment.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Martin Scorsese to Headline a Religious Series for Fox Nation

    The Oscar-winning director is the latest Hollywood name to sign up for the Fox News streaming platform, joining Kevin Costner, Rob Lowe and Dan Aykroyd.Martin Scorsese has agreed to spearhead a documentary series about Christian saints for Fox Nation, the subscription streaming service run by Fox News Media.“Martin Scorsese Presents: The Saints,” which begins airing in November, will be hosted, narrated and executive produced by Scorsese, the decorated director of classic films like “Taxi Driver” and “The Wolf of Wall Street.” Fox Nation is set to formally announce the series on Wednesday.Since its debut in 2018 as a companion service to Fox News, Fox Nation has expanded into entertainment and general-interest programming as it aspires to become a kind of Netflix for conservative audiences. The streaming network already boasts shows with Hollywood stars like Kevin Costner (“Yellowstone: One-Fifty”), Rob Lowe (“Liberty or Death: Boston Tea Party”) and Dan Aykroyd (“History of the World in Six Glasses”).The Scorsese series, created by Matti Leshem, dramatizes the stories of eight saints, including Joan of Arc, John the Baptist, Mary Magdalene, Francis of Assisi and Thomas Becket.“I’ve lived with the stories of the saints for most of my life, thinking about their words and actions, imagining the worlds they inhabited, the choices they faced, the examples they set,” Scorsese said in a statement. “These are stories of eight very different men and women, each of them living through vastly different periods of history and struggling to follow the way of love revealed to them and to us by Jesus’ words in the gospels.”Along with narrating re-enactments of the saints’ stories, Scorsese will also host on-camera discussions with experts. Four episodes will stream on Nov. 16, with the concluding quartet of episodes released in May 2025. The series is directed by Elizabeth Chomko and written by Kent Jones.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Oscars, Torn Between Past and Present, Still Had Some Fun

    Even as the telecast indulged in the usual jokes, references to the 2023 strikes and current wars had their place, in our critics’ view.Last year may have been the year of “Barbenheimer,” but this year’s Academy Awards will henceforth be known as the “Oppenbarbie” Oscars. There was plenty of bubble-gum pink to go around, but the 96th Academy Awards effectively belonged to Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer,” his magisterial biographical portrait of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the so-called father of the atomic bomb. The Times’s chief film critic, Manohla Dargis, and its movie critic, Alissa Wilkinson, discuss the show, the awards, the snubs, the jeers and, yes, even movies.MANOHLA DARGIS The movies are back … again! The survival of the medium often feels like a worrying message at the Oscars, but last night’s show felt particularly — and genuinely — ebullient. Attendees are always jazzed to be there, but you could feel the happiness radiating off people, even on TV. Or maybe it was relief. The industry is still struggling in the wake of last year’s strikes by the Writers Guild and SAG-AFTRA, which effectively shut it down for about a half a year even as it was still trying to recover from the pandemic.It’s no wonder attendees couldn’t stop jumping up to give themselves standing ovations. And while there were memorable moments — the shout-out to Yoko Ono, the close-ups of Messi the dog — I was especially pleased when the host Jimmy Kimmel asked the room to join him in giving a hosanna to the industry’s below-the-line workers, or as he said: “The Teamsters, the truck drivers, the lighting crew, sound, camera, gaffers, grips — that’s right, all the people who refused to cross the picket line.” The very same folks who may soon be on strike if their negotiations go badly. Solidarity, but also fingers crossed! How did it play on your TV?The Oscar host Jimmy Kimmel onstage with movie industry workers and crew, honoring them for their support during the 2023 Writers Guild and SAG-AFTRA strikes.Amir Hamja/The New York TimesALISSA WILKINSON I laughed. A lot! Usually my Oscar night is full of groans and eye rolls — remember the “cheer-worthy moment” poll of 2022? Or exhausting monologue vamps on how nobody saw any of the nominees? — but I was genuinely tickled by the bits and the jokes, by John Cena’s perfectly hammy reluctant streaker bit and John Mulaney’s breathless recap of the entire plot of “Field of Dreams.” I loved all the backup Kens, dressed up to pay tribute to “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” in a number full of Busby Berkeley references, and I found the introduction of acting nominees by past winners genuinely moving.Ryan Gosling performing “I’m Just Ken” on Sunday.Amir Hamja/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