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      Barry Newman, Star of the Cult Film ‘Vanishing Point,’ Dies at 92

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      Panned when it was released in 1971, the movie gained acclaim decades later. Mr. Newman also starred on TV in the legal drama “Petrocelli.”Barry Newman, whose terse integrity and understated rebelliousness made the 1971 movie “Vanishing Point” an enduring hit in the annals of American cinema about the open road, died on May 11 in Manhattan. He was 92.The death, in a hospital, which was not widely reported until this week, was confirmed by his wife, Angela Newman. While seeking treatment for back pain, she said, he came down with a lung infection that spread to his spine and heart.Mr. Newman was briefly a leading man in movies and television in the 1970s. He starred as a Harvard-educated defense attorney who moved to a small Southwestern town to work criminal cases in the 1970 feature film “The Lawyer,” and he reprised the character, Tony Petrocelli, in an NBC legal drama, “Petrocelli,” which ran from 1974 to 1976.Two decades later, he returned to prominence as a character actor, with small roles in memorable movies like Steven Soderbergh’s “The Limey” (1999); “Bowfinger,” also in 1999, alongside Steve Martin and Eddie Murphy; and “40 Days and 40 Nights” (2002), a romantic comedy starring Josh Hartnett.But Mr. Newman’s most notable performance was undoubtedly in “Vanishing Point.”In that film, he played Kowalski, a one-named car-delivery driver who makes a bet with his drug dealer while buying Benzedrine: If he can make it from where they are in Denver to San Francisco in about 15 hours, then Kowalski gets the amphetamines for free.“Vanishing Point” then becomes one long psychedelic car chase. Kowalski skillfully evades highway cops, nonchalantly accepts his deification by a rhapsodic radio D.J. named Super Soul (played by Cleavon Little), and befriends a succession of slender hippie-ish blondes. From conversations among police officers and Kowalski’s own flashbacks, we learn about his past as a decorated Vietnam War veteran, frustrated police officer and demolition derby racer.The bulk of the movie replaces dialogue with the sounds of a revving car engine, a police siren and a shredding electric guitar. The camera is often trained on Mr. Newman’s face — its shaggy hair, stubble, righteous sideburns, sharp jawline and watery blue eyes — as he stares ahead resolutely but wearily at desert highways that never seem to end.The other star of the movie is Kowalski’s car, a souped-up white 1970 Dodge Challenger that can go up to 160 miles per hour. It remains fairly pristine even as it kicks up enough dust to confound the highway patrols of several Western states.With characters making druggy proclamations about “the last American hero to whom speed means freedom of the soul,” the movie did not initially attract critical praise. Roger Greenspun, reviewing it for The New York Times, called it “a dumb movie that is nothing but an automobile chase,” and added, “I suspect that Barry Newman really can act, though in ‘Vanishing Point’ all he needs is a driver’s license.”Yet it is now regularly featured on lists of the best American road movies, car movies and action movies. Bruce Springsteen and Steven Spielberg have both ranked “Vanishing Point” among their favorite films.“It became a cult film without me even realizing it,” Mr. Newman told the movie journalist Paul Rowlands in 2019. “To this day, I’m always being asked to talk about it somewhere.”Barry Foster Newman was born on Nov. 7, 1930, in Boston, where he grew up. His father, Carl, managed the Latin Quarter nightclub. Barry visited on Sundays and saw performances by Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., Milton Berle and others. His mother, Sarah (Ostrovsky) Newman, worked a variety of jobs, including saleswoman at Filene’s Basement and ticket seller at a movie theater.Mr. Newman earned a bachelor’s degree in anthropology from Brandeis University in 1952. He then served in the Army until 1954, playing saxophone and clarinet in a military band.Several years later, while studying for a master’s degree in anthropology at Columbia University, Mr. Newman tagged along with a friend to an acting class being taught by Lee Strasberg. He was “mesmerized,” he told Mr. Rowlands, and soon began pursuing a career as an actor.He married Angela Spilker in 1994. They divorced in 2007 but got back together and remarried in 2018. She is his only immediate survivor.Mr. Newman lived in the same apartment in Midtown Manhattan from 1962 until his death.In portraying both the quick-witted lawyer Petrocelli and the stoic hot-rodder Kowalski, Mr. Newman became known for characters with opposing types of masculinity. That paradox, he told Mr. Rowlands, inspired him to take on the part of Kowalski in the first place.“I had just done ‘The Lawyer,’ where I was speaking nonstop for 90-odd minutes, and I got the script for ‘Vanishing Point,’” he said. “I wasn’t even thinking of the idea of the film or the existentialism of the character — I just thought it would be interesting to do a part where I am playing the antithesis of the character I had just played.” More

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      in Television

      The Joan Rivers Card Catalog of Jokes Finds a Home

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      Take a look at some of the artifacts from her archive, which includes 65,000 cross-referenced gags and is headed to the National Comedy Center.When Joan Rivers died in 2014, ending one of the greatest careers in modern comedy, several groups were interested in acquiring her archives, which included a meticulously organized collection of 65,000 typewritten jokes.Her daughter, Melissa Rivers, recalled a conversation with a representative from the Smithsonian Institution who wanted the catalog of jokes but said it would not be on permanent display. Her mind instantly went to the final tracking shot of “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” in which the golden Ark of the Covenant is locked inside a crate and placed in a vast warehouse with hundreds of other crates.“I couldn’t do that because so much of who she was is in those files,” Melissa Rivers told me on a video call from Los Angeles. For her mother, a pioneering stand-up and withering critic of celebrity fashion, “a view was always important.”Instead, Rivers is donating the extensive collection to the National Comedy Center, the high-tech museum in Jamestown, N.Y., joining the archives of A-list comics like George Carlin and Carl Reiner. The fact that the jokes will be accessible is only one of the reasons for Melissa Rivers’s decision.The museum is in the planning stages of an interactive exhibition that will center on Joan Rivers’s card catalog of jokes and include material covering a vast swath of comedy history, from the 1950s to 2015. The show will allow visitors to explore the file in depth.Jamestown is where Lucille Ball grew up, and “Joan Rivers was the first headliner I booked for the Lucille Ball Comedy Festival the year we announced to the world our intention to build the National Comedy Center,” Journey Gunderson, the executive director, told me by phone. Melissa Rivers, a television personality in her own right, was on hand for the groundbreaking in 2015.When it comes to the Joan Rivers joke collection, “I don’t know that another exists that is nearly as vast,” Gunderson said. In Carlin’s archives, by contrast, the jokes were “mainly scraps of paper organized into Ziploc baggies then put into a folder by topic.”Rivers, who wrote gags at all hours, paid close attention to setups and punchlines, typing them up and cross-referencing them by categories like “Parents hated me” or “Las Vegas” or “No sex appeal.” The largest subject area is “Tramp,” which includes 1,756 jokes.Along with this bounty of material, the collection includes snapshots of other aspects of this major cultural figure, including her sense of fashion, like the pearls and a little black dress she wore early in her career as well as the multiple boas from her later fashionista years. Here’s a look at a few of the artifacts headed to the center.Insults in CharacterThe jokes were categorized by topics like fashion and career, and even cross-referenced.Joan Rivers EstateAs you can see from these cards, Joan Rivers often made herself the butt of the joke, leaning on tight, snappy punchlines to describe herself as unwanted or ugly or old. Gunderson said the self-deprecating gibes emerged from a character “she was using as a position of power to comment on the plight of woman.” In real life, Melissa Rivers said that “every now and again, she would say that for whatever age she was, she looked good. But that was that.” Rivers added that those jokes came from a real place. “That was a part of her, but maybe not as crippling as everyone assumed it would be,” she said. “But she also knew she looked good.”An Unparalleled CatalogIn a scene from the documentary “Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work,” the comedian explains how she kept a record of her jokes and cross-indexed them.Break Thru Films/IFC“Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work” (from 2010 and available on major platforms) is one of the greatest documentaries about a stand-up comic ever made: candid, unflinching and alert to the brutal amount of work necessary to succeed in show business. It also introduced the world to the cabinet of jokes that Rivers kept in her home. Gunderson, of the National Comedy Center, described the catalog as one of “the crown jewels of comedy that exist on planet Earth.”Help With HecklersWhen Rivers was starting out, she planned her responses to hecklers.Joan Rivers EstateRivers, a fixture on television who never stopped performing live, loved sparring with a crowd. But early in her career, she prepared for rambunctious audience members with this list of comebacks that could be weaponized to mock hecklers without losing the tempo of her set. Melissa Rivers said she saw her mother upset by a heckler only once, when later in her career someone was offended by a joke about Helen Keller. “She spun around and said: ‘Don’t you dare! My mother was deaf. She lost her hearing early. Don’t tell me what’s inappropriate.’”Early AmbitionsRivers hoped for a career as an actress and regularly went to the theater.Joan Rivers EstateBefore Joan Rivers became a comedian, she wanted to be a dramatic actress. After graduating from Barnard College in 1954, she commissioned this series of head shots to display her range. She didn’t make her Broadway debut until 1972 with “Fun City,” which she co-wrote (with her husband, Edgar Rosenberg, and Lester Colodny) and starred in. It closed after nine performances. But Rivers remained a stalwart fan of the stage, a regular at shows and a savvy commentator on the television series “Theater Talk.” When she went to the theater, she always dressed up and insisted her family do the same. Melissa Rivers said: “She always said, ‘This is church.’”Ticket From a Momentous TimeThe short-lived late-night show proved both a high and low point in Rivers’s career.Joan Rivers EstateWhen Joan Rivers left her position as the permanent guest host of “The Tonight Show” on NBC to start her own version in 1986 on the then-fledging network Fox, she became the first woman in the modern era to host a late-night talk show. It was a bold move, a career landmark that also preceded a painful period of her life. She made an enemy of the “Tonight Show” host Johnny Carson, who saw her departure as a betrayal. “That made her angry,” Melissa Rivers said. “Like she often said, if it had been a man, it would have been the great send-off to my protégé.” Rivers was banished from the Carson show and fired from her own the following year. Her husband, a producer on “The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers,” died by suicide months later. “It took a huge toll on their marriage and our family,” Melissa Rivers recalled, describing the period represented by this ticket as one of “great elation and great horror.” More

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      in Television

      ‘Tucker on Twitter’ Is Equal Parts Fox News and Fox Mulder

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      The low-fi “Tucker on Twitter” finds the former prime-time host at the intersection of Fox News and Fox Mulder.Most of the time, it does not qualify as newsworthy to see a man in your social media feed staring into a camera, asking “What exactly happened on 9/11?” and demanding to know why the media isn’t digging for the truth about J.F.K.’s assassination. Usually, it’s just a sign that you should not have accepted so many friend requests from high school classmates you barely remember.But when that man was recently paid millions of dollars by Fox News to say much the same things on one of the most popular shows on cable TV, attention is paid. In Tuesday’s debut episode of “Tucker on Twitter,” the new home-brew show from Tucker Carlson, the ousted prime-time star’s brand of resentment, insinuation and dog-whistly mocking finally gets the guy-ranting-from-his-den visuals that suit it.There’s a touch of echo in the audio; there are wall hangings, wood paneling, a bit of woodsy green through a window. Carlson holds his own Teleprompter controller and wears a suit with a pocket square. The overall look is talk-show “Green Acres,” or Ron Swanson if he shaved and went to prep school.As a production, “Tucker on Twitter” looks less like a newscast than one of the improvised lockdown shows that late-night talk hosts recorded from home in the early Covid days of 2020. But in this case, Carlson’s quarantine is self-inflicted.Fox abruptly let him go in April, after the investigation in its now-settled litigation with the voting software company Dominion turned up a racist text message and misogynistic slurs from him, as well as statements disparaging Fox executives. It’s not clear whether streaming on Twitter violates Carlson’s contract with Fox, which lasts until early 2025.But commentators gotta commentate, and the time off in the woods has not mellowed Carlson. He gives the barest intro —“Hey, it’s Tucker Carlson!”— before giving a rundown of the dam explosion in Ukraine that would go down in the Kremlin like the smoothest vodka. “Any fair person would conclude that the Ukrainians probably blew it up,” he says, given that the dam, located in a region taken by Russia in an invasion, was “effectively Russian.”Carlson also called Volodymyr Zelensky, the Jewish president of Ukraine, “a persecutor of Christians” and described him as “shifty, dead-eyed” and “sweaty and ratlike.” For years, Carlson laundered far-right fringe rhetoric and bigotry on Fox, and there is no sign that, in the anything-goes regime of Elon Musk’s Twitter, the laundry is shutting down.Carlson’s rhetoric has not diminished, but his production has. In the 10-minute first episode, there are no guests, no produced segments, a handful of news-footage clips. It’s pure monologue, from the opening Ukraine comment to the offhand swipes at diversity and transgender women to a closing bit on a whistle-blower who contends that the U.S. government possesses material from extraterrestrial aircraft.It’s a Tucker Carlson show, in other words. A big question is whether Carlson can be what he once was without the Fox News platform and production resources.Fox has ideology, of course (which has cycled through different flavors of conservatism over the decades), but it also has an aesthetic. Its shows are produced to be glossy and urgent, to convey a sense of slick confidence. Fox News is designed to look like it is broadcasting from the top of the world; “Tucker on Twitter” looks not unlike something livestreamed after the apocalypse.Others — Bill O’Reilly, Glenn Beck — have failed to reclaim their peak influence after losing their Fox perches. Carlson could be different; Fox News has yet to recover in the prime-time ratings from his sudden departure.But Carlson, for all his anti-elite posturing, is wholly a creature of legacy TV, having hosted shows on Fox, CNN and MSNBC. He is a houseplant grown under corporate studio lights, even when they were installed in his rural Maine town for him to broadcast remotely to Fox.On the other hand, it’s possible that the pivot to low-fi Twitter is more of a match for the current incarnation of Carlson. Whether he is holding forth on Russia or immigrants or the Jan. 6 riot, he has one persistent meta-theme: The elites are controlling your information and telling you what you’re allowed to say. “Go ahead and talk about something that really matters and see what happens,” he says at one point, seeming to allude to his firing by Fox while casting himself as a free-speech martyr. “If you keep it up, they’ll make you be quiet. Trust us.”Within this rhetorical framework, it is not necessary to prove that aliens have been discovered on Earth or that Ukrainians blew up a Ukrainian dam. It is enough for Carlson to say They don’t want you to believe it, and the viewer can accept the idea for the sake of sticking it to them. They say you’re wrong, you’re crazy, you’re a racist. Well, what do they know?It is a premise made for social media, as many a red-pilled YouTuber and Facebook proselytizer has found. The premise of his appeal — that he is the one teller of truth, and you the one critical thinker, in a world of shepherds and sheep — dovetails with the idea of booting up your computer to seek out a man giving speeches from his den.It also dovetails with the interests of Twitter’s owner, Musk, who styles himself as a heterodox freethinker — whose heterodoxy happens to be expressed through reinstating right-wing trolls and hosting the Republican presidential campaign announcement of Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor.But since 2017, Carlson has made himself likely the most influential broadcaster in conservative politics by posturing as an outsider on the inside. However well he can monetize a Twitter audience, it’s another matter to retain as much political-cultural power as an outsider on the outside. Nor do we know if this is a real transformation or just a stopgap until Carlson is contractually free to go back on TV.Until then, the truth is out there, and so is Tucker Carlson — whether or not they are necessarily in the same place. More

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      in Theater

      John Beasley, Late-Blooming Actor Known for Playing Sages, Dies at 79

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      A former railroad clerk, he didn’t became a full-time actor until his 40s, but he made up for lost time in films like “Rudy” and TV shows like “Everwood.”John Beasley, who left his job as a railroad clerk in his mid-40s to pursue acting full time, bringing an understated power to films like the inspirational 1993 football movie “Rudy” and television series like the WB drama “Everwood” and the TV Land comedy “The Soul Man,” died on May 30 in Omaha. He was 79.His son Michael said his death came after he was admitted to a hospital for liver tests, but he did not specify a cause.Mr. Beasley’s tenure at the Union Pacific Railroad marked just one stop on a long journey toward a Hollywood career. “I was a longshoreman,” he said in a 2002 interview with The Associated Press. “I even worked one day as a bill collector and knew that wasn’t for me. All I wanted to do was be an actor.”His perseverance paid off. Mr. Beasley became an in-demand character actor in the 1990s and went on to appear in nearly 70 movies and television shows, often playing steady, dignified men of integrity.He first drew notice for his work with Oprah Winfrey in four episodes of “Brewster Place,” a short-lived spinoff of the 1989 television movie “The Women of Brewster Place,” based on a novel by Gloria Naylor about the intertwined lives of Black women living in tenements on a dead-end street.He also earned plaudits for his work in “The Apostle,” a 1997 film starring Robert Duvall (who also wrote and directed) as Sonny, a fiery Pentecostal preacher who flees trouble with the law to start over in Louisiana. “John Beasley is especially good as the retired Black preacher who is suspicious of Sonny at first,” Janet Maslin wrote in a review for The New York Times. “‘I tell you what,’ he says, ‘I’m going to keep my eye on you. And the Lord keep his eye on both of us. And we all three keep an eye out for the Devil.’”His many other film credits included the 1992 family hockey comedy “The Mighty Ducks,” starring Emilio Estevez; the 1999 John Travolta drama “The General’s Daughter”; the 2002 Ben Affleck terrorism thriller “The Sum of All Fears”; and the 2014 gore-fest “The Purge: Anarchy.”He is perhaps best remembered for his role as a kindly school-bus driver on “Everwood,” which starred Treat Williams as a New York neurosurgeon who starts a new life in the mountains of Colorado after his wife dies in a car accident. Mr. Beasley was in every episode from the show’s debut in 2002 until it ended in 2006.Starting in 2012, Mr. Beasley also turned heads for five seasons on “The Soul Man” as the father of the R&B star turned preacher played by Cedric the Entertainer.Last fall, Mr. Beasley scaled a personal peak as a stage actor with a prominent role as the older incarnation of Noah, the love-struck male protagonist, in a musical adaptation of the 1996 Nicholas Sparks novel “The Notebook,” and the 2004 film based on it, at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater. He died before the production could make its anticipated move to Broadway.John Beasley was born on June 26, 1943, in Omaha, the oldest of five sons of John Wilfred Beasley, who owned an electrical supply business, and Grace (Triplett) Beasley.He was active in theater in high school, and after graduating he briefly studied the subject at the University of Nebraska Omaha before dropping out to join the Army.After being discharged, he married Judy Garner. She survives him. In addition to his son Michael, Mr. Beasley is also survived by another son, Tyrone; his brothers Gary, Steven and Leon; and six grandchildren, including the basketball player Malik Beasley.By 1968, he had became active in the civil rights movement, and he ended up moving his family to Philadelphia because of threats he faced after participating in protests of policing practices in Omaha’s Black community.After returning with his family to Omaha in the early 1970s, he kept his acting dreams alive by appearing in industrial films and stage productions, honing his talent locally before being cast in regional theater roles in Minneapolis, Chicago and Atlanta. Through it all, however, he stayed focused on his home life — and on Omaha.“We were going through some ups and downs early in our relationship, my wife and I,” Mr. Beasley said in an interview last year with American Theatre magazine. “There were things to work through — and we did. I felt it would be better for me to stay here with my wife and family. It turned out to be the best decision I made.” More

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      in Music

      Popcast (Deluxe): Taylor Swift and Matty Healy, Plus ‘The Idol’

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicThis week’s episode of Popcast (Deluxe), the weekly culture roundup show hosted by Jon Caramanica and Joe Coscarelli, includes segments on:The premiere episode of HBO’s “The Idol,” a maybe(?) satirical psychodrama about a troubled female pop star and the Svengali figure, played by the Weeknd, who worms his way into her orbitNew collaborations from Latto and Cardi B, and Central Cee and DaveRecent developments in Taylor Swift’s world, including blowback from her relationship with Matty Healy of the 1975, and her collaboration with Ice SpiceThe pop music documentary explosion of the last few yearsConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. More

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      in Movies

      Can HBO’s ‘The Idol’ Revive 1980s Erotic Thriller Sleaze?

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      Over-the-top locations and characters bathed in red light recall an all but dead genre that was once a staple of late-night cable: the erotic thriller.A slick executive drives a cherry red convertible.A nightclub owner carries a coke spoon and wears his hair in a rat tail.A troubled pop star masturbates while choking herself.Those images might have come from an erotic thriller made by Brian De Palma, Paul Verhoeven or Adrian Lyne, directors who were prominent in the 1980s and 1990s thanks to movies like “Body Double” (Mr. De Palma), “Basic Instinct” (Mr. Verhoeven) and “9 ½ Weeks” (Mr. Lyne).But those scenes were actually part of “The Idol,” the HBO series that made its debut on Sunday with the apparent intention of reviving an all but dead genre.Filled with close-up shots of luxury goods and body parts, “The Idol” also recalled the works of lesser filmmakers whose R-rated creations populated the late-night lineups of HBO and its rivals long before the advent of prestige television.It was a style that died out over the years — the death blow might have been Mr. Verhoeven’s infamous “Showgirls,” an expensive 1995 flop — and seemed highly unlikely to make a return to the cultural stage amid the #MeToo movement.As Karina Longworth, the creator of the film-history podcast “You Must Remember This,” recently observed, today’s films are so devoid of steamy sex scenes that they “would pass the sexual standard set by the strict censorship of the Production Code of the 1930s.”Gina Gershon, left, and Elizabeth Berkley, who is in the cast of “The Idol,” in the much-maligned 1995 film “Showgirls.”Murray Close/United ArtistsSharon Stone in “Basic Instinct,” a film referred to in “The Idol.”Rialto PicturesThe old aesthetic was on full display in the first moments of “The Idol,” a series created by Sam Levinson, Abel Tesfaye (known as the Weeknd) and Reza Fahim, three men who came of age when flipping through cable channels late at night was a frequent pastime for adolescent boys.The first episode begins with the pop star Jocelyn, played by Lily-Rose Depp, baring her breasts during a photo shoot as a team of handlers, crew members and an ineffectual intimacy coordinator look on.Later, Ms. Depp’s character smokes in a sauna, rides in the back of a Rolls-Royce convertible and rubs up against a man she has just met (a club owner portrayed by Mr. Tesfaye) on a dance floor bathed in smoky red light. There will be no flannel PJs for Joss; a pair of wake-up scenes make it clear to viewers that she sleeps in a thong.It isn’t only the show’s gratuitous nudity that harks back to Mr. Lyne and company, but the overall look and mood, which recall a louche glamour from the time of boxy Armani suits and cocaine nights. A main setting is a $70 million mansion in Bel Air that looks like something out of Mr. De Palma’s “Scarface” but is in fact Mr. Tesfaye’s real-life home.A number of young viewers have said they find sex scenes embarrassing, but Mr. Levinson, who created the HBO drama “Euphoria,” and his fellow producers have made no secret of their desire to pay homage to the heyday of Cinemax (when it had the nickname Skinemax).A wink to viewers comes when Joss, in the darkness of her private screening room, watches “Basic Instinct.” And then there is the pulsating score, which seems to conjure Tangerine Dream, the German electronic group who scored the sex scene on a train in “Risky Business.” In another nod to the show’s influences, the cast includes Elizabeth Berkley, the star of “Showgirls.”While it may seem like an outlier, “The Idol” has seemingly tapped into a cultural moment that would have seemed unthinkable just a few years ago: Ms. Longworth recently devoted a season of her film-history podcast to the “Erotic ’80s”; no less a tastemaker than the Criterion Channel has recently presented a series on erotic thrillers from the same time period; and last month in Los Angeles, the American Cinematheque held a screening of “Basic Instinct.”“The Idol” also has a close competitor in the world of streaming: “Fatal Attraction,” a 1987 hit for Mr. Lyne, has been rebooted as a series on Paramount+.Mr. Tesfaye and Lily-Rose Depp in a scene from the first episode of “The Idol.”Eddy Chen/HBOStephanie Zacharek, the film critic for Time, suggested that the return of such fare may have arisen from the yearslong glut of comic book movies, along with the lack of a certain kind of R-rated film that was once all the rage for adult viewers.“In the ’80s, that’s almost all there was in the multiplex,” Ms. Zacharek said. “Grown-ups went to see those movies. Now we don’t even have that many movies for grown-ups, period.”Ms. Zacharek slammed “The Idol” in her review and in a phone interview — “It feels like it was made by someone who has never had sex,” she said — but she said she was a fan of “Body Double” (and even “Showgirls”) and laments the disappearance of that kind of thing.“I always enjoyed those films, even when I thought they were sexist or ridiculous,” Ms. Zacharek said. “They do have a certain element of glamour to them.”It is a distinct possibility that the idea of reviving this particular genre may appeal more to Mr. Levinson and his colleagues than audiences and critics.After a two-decade absence from big-budget productions, Mr. Lyne attempted a comeback last year with “Deep Water,” an erotic thriller starring Ana de Armas and Ben Affleck. Mr. Levinson was one of the film’s writers.“Deep Water,” which streamed on Hulu upon its release, was never shown in theaters. It drew a 36 percent approval score from critics and a 24 percent audience score on the review aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes.“The Idol” has fared both better and worse: A mere 24 percent of critics have given it a thumbs-up, and 63 percent of audience members have weighed in favorably. More

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      in Music

      For Some, Blackpink’s Jennie Is the Only Reason to Watch ”The Idol”

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      Fans of the K-pop group are tuning in to the new HBO series to marvel at the global pop star in her acting debut.Before airing on HBO, the drama “The Idol” dominated headlines and social media for its controversies: At the Cannes Film Festival, where the first two episodes premiered, the series was widely panned for its graphic sexual content; it was rewritten and reshot after Sam Levinson, the creator of the series “Euphoria,” replaced Amy Seimetz as its director; and in March, Rolling Stone published an article detailing a troubled production.But after its first episode was released on Sunday, a pop songstress took center stage. Not the main character Jocelyn, the show’s aspiring idol played by Lily-Rose Depp, but Dyanne, one of Jocelyn’s backup dancers portrayed by Jennie Kim, better known as Jennie of the K-pop girl group Blackpink.Blackpink — which consists of Jennie, Jisoo, Lisa and Rosé — has become one of the most globally recognized K-pop acts in recent years. Though Jennie isn’t the only member of the group to try her hand at acting, she may have its most high-profile role.On the internet, clips abound praising Jennie in her acting debut. In one widely circulated scene, Dyanne, eyes half-lidded, lips parted and hair perfectly tousled, shows Jocelyn how to do the choreography for her new single.The K-pop idol — clad in a loose, slightly ripped midriff, a black sports bra and high-waisted booty shorts — struts, poses, grinds, pops, locks and drops. Later, Jocelyn can be seen watching and wiping her tears over her failure to embody Dyanne’s indomitable stage presence.That star quality wasn’t lost on fans of the singer and viewers of the show either.“Jennie’s acting was very good for what her character was,” said Greta Dobson, a 27-year-old student in Brooklyn who considers herself a “blink,” what Blackpink fans affectionately call themselves. “It seems like it almost felt natural for her since she always has to do this for dance rehearsals. It must have been so meta for her.”“Jennie’s acting was very good for what her character was,” said Greta Dobson, a student in Brooklyn who considers herself a “blink,” what Blackpink fans affectionately call themselves.Eddy Chen/HBOSearch “The Idol” on TikTok or Twitter, and the number of posts critiquing the show is likely to match those commending Jennie’s performance.Within hours after the series premiere was released, a TikTok account (@d4jenn) posted seven “fancam” videos of nearly all the scenes where Jennie was featured in the show’s pilot. (Each clip has garnered thousands of views.)Anisa, 18, of Seattle, who runs the account and declined to give her last name, was one of many viewers who tuned into “The Idol” to watch her favorite K-pop star. She said had it not been for Jennie, she never would have watched the show.“I would completely stop watching it,” she said. “And end my subscription with HBO Max.”Though fans like Anisa were proud of Jennie’s acting debut, many hope the show’s first season, which consists of six episodes, will provide her with more screen time. “The show producers could’ve done a little more, even if she was a side character,” Ko Im, 37, a managing producer in Seattle, said in a message on Twitter. “They barely gave her lines she could really own.”She added, “We need to see that main character energy she already has.”Ms. Dobson, however, already speculates that Jennie may play a bigger role in the series.“Are they going to utilize Jennie’s dancing and singing background in the show? Is she going to take Jocelyn’s role?” she said. “I guess we’ll just have to watch to find out.” More

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      in Movies

      Actors Authorize Potential Strike With Hollywood Writers Still Picketing

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      The NewsThe union that represents more than 160,000 film and television actors voted on Monday night to authorize a strike, two days before it is to begin negotiations on a new labor deal with the Hollywood studios. The result from members of the SAG-AFTRA union, with 98 percent authorizing a strike, was expected, and it came during the sixth week of a strike by Hollywood writers and just a day after the Directors Guild of America tentatively agreed to a new contract.“Together we lock elbows, and in unity we build a new contract that honors our contributions in this remarkable industry, reflects the new digital and streaming business model and brings ALL our concerns for protections and benefits into the now!” Fran Drescher, the president of the actors’ union, said in a statement.About 65,000 members cast ballots, or 48 percent of eligible voters. The actors’ current agreement with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which bargains on behalf of the studios, expires on June 30.Members of SAG-AFTRA supported the striking Writers Guild of America at a rally last month outside Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank, Calif.Chris Pizzello/Associated PressWhy It Matters: The actors have the same worries as the writers.Many of the actors’ concerns echo what the Writers Guild of America is fighting for: higher wages; increased residual payments for their work, specifically for content on streaming services; and protections against using actors’ likenesses without permission as part of the enhanced abilities of artificial intelligence. According to the writers, the studios offered little more than “annual meetings to discuss” artificial intelligence, and they refused to bargain over limits on the technology.The Directors Guild, in contrast, said on Sunday that it had reached a “groundbreaking agreement confirming that A.I. is not a person and that generative A.I. cannot replace the duties performed by members.” Details about what that meant were not revealed.Background: It has been a long time since the last actors’ strike.The last time the actors went on strike was in 2000, in a dispute over commercial pay. The strike lasted close to six months.What’s Next: Negotiations begin on Wednesday.With negotiations expected to begin on Wednesday, SAG-AFTRA is bullish about what this strike authorization means. “We’re obviously coming in from a position of strength, but we’re not looking to strike,” said Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, the union’s chief negotiator. “We’re here to make a deal.” He added: “But we’re also not going to accept anything less than what our members deserve. If a strike is necessary to achieve that, we’re prepared.”The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers said in a statement that “we are approaching these negotiations with the goal of achieving a new agreement that is beneficial to SAG-AFTRA members and the industry overall.” More