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      in Music

      LL Cool J Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop. (And Why Would He?)

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      At a dusty studio space in an industrial corner of Los Angeles, LL Cool J bounced and vibed in black satin and bulging, size 13 Balenciaga boots.The actor and rap luminary was filming a video for a sexy track, “Proclivities,” from his new album — but he wasn’t in front of the cameras, or rehearsing. He was just cheerfully shooting the you-know-what, with a late night of production ahead of him. Background players in feathered dresses floated by; his security circled. He did a little dance, demonstrating the inspiration for another song. He walks with a swagger and stands with a spring, too much rhythm in his 6-foot-3 frame to keep still. “Making fantasies happen,” he said, grinning, taking all of it in.LL Cool J is 56, and has been a hip-hop eminence for 40 years: His whole life is a stretch into realizing the improbable, including a sneakily successful pivot into network television. Even before adulthood, he strode with a preternatural confidence in his abilities, and a willingness to dig into the work. His rap career is not now — and, to hear him tell it, has never been — about the money, the trappings of celebrity or the cultural prestige.“I do it because I love it,” he said. “I love a fresh beat. A new lyric, a chord, the feeling — and then sharing that. Putting that on the easel of life, so to speak, for people to walk through the sonic gallery and listen to this, these vibes. I love that. I wanted my voice to be heard, and I wanted to share.”Because he started so young, the first to sign to the then-fledgling label Def Jam, when he was just 16 — and when hip-hop itself was only a decade old — he influenced an entire pantheon of artists who followed, including contemporaries his same age. Hits like the bruising, Grammy-winning “Mama Said Knock You Out,” from 1990, and plaintive grooves from his lovelorn Lothario persona (“I Need Love”; “Around the Way Girl”), cemented his legacy as a crossover pop superstar.LL Cool J outside a concert in the late 1980s. He was the label Def Jam’s first signing, when he was just 16 years old.Michael Ochs Archives/Getty ImagesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Movies

      Stream These 12 Titles Before They Leave Netflix in September

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      A lot of great movies and TV shows are leaving for U.S. subscribers this month. Watch them while you can.A wide array of terrific titles are leaving Netflix in the United States in September, including three beloved CW comedies, a movie musical classic, a recent family favorite and two of Eddie Murphy’s best. (Dates indicate the final day a title is available.)‘Beverly Hills Cop’ / ‘Beverly Hills Cop II’ (Sept. 3)Stream ‘Beverly Hills Cop’ here and ‘Beverly Hills Cop II’ here.To supplement the July release of the Netflix original “Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F,” the service added the first two outings of the long-running franchise, quintessential examples of the ’80s action-comedy. (They didn’t bother with the much-derided “Beverly Hills Cop III,” to no one’s objection.) The 1984 original introduced Eddie Murphy as Axel Foley, a wisecracking Detroit street cop who invades the tony environs of 90210 to investigate a friend’s murder. The director Martin Brest cleverly mixes hard-hitting action sequences with flashes of character-based comedy, all held aloft by Murphy’s confidence and charisma. The 1987 sequel was directed by the master stylist Tony Scott, so it feels a bit more like a straight-up action picture (albeit a fine one), but Murphy still teases out big laughs where he can find them.‘Crazy Ex-Girlfriend’: Seasons 1-4 (Sept. 5)Stream it here.The best TV comedies are frequently the outgrowth of a singular sensibility, like Larry David’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” Lena Dunham’s “Girls” and Tina Fey’s “30 Rock.” Add to that list this CW series from Rachel Bloom, the star and co-creator, who infuses the formula of the television rom-com with generous volts of manic, theater-kid energy. She stars as Rebecca Bunch, an unhappy Manhattan corporate lawyer who abandons her career to follow an old summer camp crush to California. With its oddball musical numbers, candid depiction of mental illness and winking inversions of romantic conventions, it’s a true, terrific original.‘iZombie’: Seasons 1-5 (Sept. 5)Stream it here.That same year, the CW debuted this wryly funny and thankfully light addition to the seemingly endless canon of undead television entertainment. The charming Rose McIver stars as Liv, a young doctor whose ill-advised ride on a cursed booze cruise turns her into a flesh-eating zombie. She makes the best of it, taking a job at a morgue, where there’s an endless supply of fresh brains — which she soon discovers hold the memories of their deaths, turning the show into an unlikely but enjoyable crime procedural.‘Jane the Virgin’: Seasons 1-5 (Sept. 5)Stream it here.Our CW trifecta concludes with this sparkling and screwy telenovela spoof, which ran on the network from 2014 to 2019. Gina Rodriguez found her breakthrough role as the title character, a waitress and would-be writer who takes a vow of chastity until marriage, then finds herself in a state of near-constant challenge to that vow. Rodriguez is a spark plug, playing Jane with equal emphasis on the heart, mind and libido, while Jennie Snyder Urman, the creator and showrunner, introduces endless and frequently preposterous romantic entanglements without subverting the genuine warmth at the story’s center.‘Bodies Bodies Bodies’ (Sept. 19)Stream it here.The director Halina Reijn assembles a gifted ensemble cast — including Maria Bakalova, Pete Davidson, Lee Pace, Rachel Sennott, Amandla Stenberg and Chase Sui Wonders — in this inspired mash-up of locked-room whodunit and “Spring Breakers”-style party movie. Davidson is a spoiled-rotten trust fund kid who hosts a rager for his friends as they ride out an incoming hurricane, and it’s all fun and games and drunken revelry until guests start turning up dead. Reijn threads a delicate needle here, making her characters flawed but not quite loathsome, and sending up current trends of online activism and halfhearted wokeness without punching down.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

    • 150 Shares129 Views

      in Television

      With New FX Sitcom ‘English Teacher,’ Brian Jordan Alvarez Takes Another Leap

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      For over a decade, Brian Jordan Alvarez has been bootstrapping his way across platforms and screens big and small, collecting fans and followers.In the early days, he starred with friends in short comedic sketches he posted on YouTube. Then in 2016, on a paltry budget of around $10,000, he created “The Gay and Wondrous Life of Caleb Gallo,” a five-part comedy web series about a misfit group of queer friends in Los Angeles. Alvarez wrote and directed it, and starred as the title character.“Caleb Gallo” quickly found an audience. It was shown at the Tribeca Film Festival that year, earned a Gotham Award nomination and topped IndieWire’s list of best web series of 2016, edging out Jerry Seinfeld’s “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.” The next year, Alvarez landed a recurring role in the three-season revival of “Will & Grace,” as the fiancé, then husband, of Jack McFarland (Sean Hayes).In 2023 he leveled up again, starring alongside Allison Williams in the horror comedy box office smash “M3gan” and reaching new heights of virality with a stable of absurdist face-filtered characters. The most famous of them, the bug-eyed, duck-lipped pop star TJ Mack, delighted millions on TikTok and Instagram with the earworm “Sitting” (pronounced “Sittim”).Alvarez plays an English teacher at a high school in Austin, Texas, who is navigating relationships and discussions of hot-button topics.Richard Ducree/FXNow Alvarez is taking another major leap: “English Teacher,” a feel-good sitcom with an edge that he created and stars in, debuts on FX on Sept. 2.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

    • 100 Shares179 Views

      in Movies

      The Highly Deceptive, Deeply Loved, Down-to-Earth Carol Kane

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      Do you hear Carol Kane before you see her? The voice that can go pipsqueak high or deep rasp, wavering at just the right moment? Or do you imagine first the mass of golden curls, which telegraph unruliness while actually framing exactly what she wants you to experience?She modulates that distinctive quaver to match the character, too — “whether it should be lower, or denser, or higher, or an accent,” she said. “I work a lot on that. I get it as specific as I can.”It’s nearly absent in her “Annie Hall” grad student, and filtered through quiet Yiddish in “Hester Street,” the 1975 immigrant drama that earned her an Oscar nomination at 22. It swings from the pinched cadences of Simka, with her invented language on the sitcom “Taxi,” to the brash Lillian, the batty, mouthy New York landlord on “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.”And in her newest film, the Sundance favorite “Between the Temples,” in which Kane stars opposite Jason Schwartzman, she runs the gamut from vulnerable to sharp — a vocal confidence scale that’s not far from how her own real-life lilt changes. “It depends on the second, the moment, the day,” she said, laughing.More than an eccentric character study, Kane, 72, who has been acting professionally for nearly 60 years, is actually a deceptively versatile performer who, through friendship and dedication to craft, is connected to Hollywood’s golden age — but also appeared at a sci-fi convention this month. (She joined the second season of “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds” on Paramount+ as an alien engineer with an unplaceable accent — her twist.)There were long stretches when the phone didn’t ring, then periods like now, a late renaissance (Kanaissance) when the superlative parts stack up. What she has learned, Kane said in a recent interview, is that in her career, “one thing does not necessarily lead to another — no matter how well-received or successful. It’s kind of a life lesson in a way.”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

    • 138 Shares119 Views

      in Television

      ‘The Rings of Power’ Season 2 Premiere Recap: All That Glitters

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      The new season picks up roughly where Season 1 left off — with most of the same strengths and flaws.Amazon released the first three episodes of Season 2 of “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” at once; read the recaps for Episode 2 here and Episode 3 here.Season 2, Episode 1: ‘Elven Kings Under the Sky’When last we visited Middle-earth in the Amazon Prime Video series “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power,” our heroes were recuperating from two massive blunders. An army of Númenóreans had failed to prevent the orc-father Adar (Sam Hazeldine) from establishing the shadowlands of Mordor in the realm formerly known as the Southlands; and the regal elf warrior Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) had failed to recognize that Halbrand (Charlie Vickers), the man she intended to install as the Southlands’ rightful king, was in fact her sworn enemy Sauron, in human form.Good effort, everyone. But not exactly a rousing success.The same could be said of “The Rings of Power” itself, which had a first season that delivered a lot of what its creators, J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay, said they had intended: blockbuster-level special effects and scenery, spectacular action sequences, an epic sweep and a deep exploration of the fantasy world created by the author J.R.R. Tolkien (arguably even deeper than any of Peter Jackson’s gargantuan “Lord of the Rings” and “Hobbit” movies).But what the show failed to deliver was the kind of “Game of Thrones”-level cultural buzz and critical acclaim that such an expensive project needs to survive. So just as Galadriel and her allies have a lot to prove as Season 2 begins, so do Payne, McKay and their “Rings of Power” cast and crew.In the season’s first three episodes, released all at once on Prime Video, very little has changed in the creative team’s approach to telling a story. The action picks up roughly where Season 1 left off and continues in the same basic format, with each episode following just a few of the show’s many story lines, in long sequences that resemble chapters in a book. (It takes all three episodes to bring back every character and plot from the previous season. If you’re anxious to find out what’s happening in Numenor, you’ll have to wait a couple of hours.)The flaws of Season 1 are still evident, right from the start. The novelistic approach leads to some sections that drag on too long; and the series on the whole can feel a bit over-serious and leaden. That said, the Season 2 premiere also contains everything that worked well in the previous season: the visual splendor, the wide narrative canvas, the rich performances and the complex consideration of how and when to wield extraordinary power.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

    • 138 Shares119 Views

      in Television

      ‘The Rings of Power’ Season 2, Episode 2 Recap: Strange Weather

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      The Stranger tries his hand again at magic but with mixed results. For now, Sauron does it better.Amazon released the first three episodes of Season 2 of “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” at once; read the recaps for Episode 1 here and Episode 3 here.Season 2, Episode 2: ‘Where the Stars are Strange’The Halbrand heel-turn at the end of “The Rings of Power” Season 1 brought focus to a story that, to a degree, had lacked a clear antagonist. Yes, Galadriel had sensed Sauron was still alive; and yes, she had persuaded the Numenoreans to secure the Southlands against Adar’s orcs, as a bulwark against whatever Sauron might have in mind. But this big enemy, while having a name, still remained somewhat theoretical.To quote “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” at times last season it was hard to hear Galadriel’s plans without asking: “Who versus? Who are we doing it versus?”As Season 2 began, the existence of Sauron had been confirmed. But because he fled after helping forge the first three rings of power, at this point he remains — to our heroes at least — a chilling shadow, not a present threat. So this season’s second and third episodes, while revealing some of Sauron’s secret schemes, also returns to some of the minor villains and complications introduced in Season 1, showing how the elves, dwarfs and humans still have a lot of conflict to sort through, internal and external, before they can unite to vanquish their Big Bad.Here are five takeaways and observations from Episode 2:Those weird witches are back!Remember how at the end of Season 1, the Stranger had to protect his harfoot friends from three mystics dressed in white who referred to him as “the Dark Lord?” This was a clever bit of misdirection from the “Rings of Power” writers, meant to keep the viewers from catching on too quickly that Halbrand was secretly Sauron. But the incident also helped the Stranger remember that he is actually of the Istari, an ancient order of wizards who in various forms have often intervened in the affairs of Middle-earth.In this season’s second episode, those mystics return to their home base to report to the Dark Wizard (Ciaran Hinds) on their encounter with the Stranger. The sequence is one of the show’s most visually inventive to date, involving a woman bleeding onto the floor while surrounded by hundreds of butterflies — the form the mystics dissipated into after the Stranger violently attacked them — which flutter about and then reconstitute into a different woman.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

    • 138 Shares139 Views

      in Television

      ‘The Rings of Power’ Season 2, Episode 3 Recap: Forging Ahead

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      Arondir is back, along with some other major characters not yet seen this season. And this installment asks: Is Mordor maybe an OK place to live?Amazon released the first three episodes of Season 2 of “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” at once; read the recaps for Episode 1 here and Episode 2 here.Season 2, Episode 3: ‘The Eagle and the Scepter’One of the central themes in J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings” is the alliance. Given the inspiration the author reportedly drew from his personal experiences fighting in World War I — and given that World War II was raging during the years he was working on the books — it’s not too difficult to read into his story a strong endorsement of the idea that brave men and women of different backgrounds should come together to thwart a common enemy. Their cause then becomes a bond that holds, even after the battle is over.But because “The Rings of Power” is more of an origin story, it makes a related but distinct point to Tolkien’s, which is that alliances are never easy. Even if everyone can agree on what they oppose — armies of orcs, for example — that may not be enough for them to overcome their old grudges. If, say, the humans resent the elves, the elves distrust the humans and the dwarves would rather be left alone, that’s a big gap for these various factions to bridge before they can take up arms together.And that’s not even taking into account all the factions within factions: the rural humans who struggle to get along with the rich city-dwellers, the half-elves who feel disrespected by elfin aristocrats and so on.In the third episode of Season 2, the last of the main Season 1 characters who had yet to be seen this season finally reappear; these are the “Rings of Power” story lines in which the acrid aroma of racism and classism sours the air. They will come together some day, we know. But it will be a long, winding road.Here are four takeaways and observations from Episode 3:Numenor is for the birdsThe wealthy and sophisticated island kingdom of Numenor was one of the most stunningly opulent locations in Season 1 and the source of a lot of political intrigue that, frankly, did not get its full due in that season’s eight episodes. As soon as Numenor’s queen regent, Miriel (Cynthia Addai-Robinson), made the controversial decision to lead an expedition to the Southlands, her home became more or less an afterthought in the season until the finale, when she returned — blinded from battle — to find her father had died.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

    • 125 Shares179 Views

      in Movies

      Why an Asian American Reporter Wanted to Write About Romance

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      Hollywood has portrayed Asian American men in unflattering ways for decades. One Culture reporter aimed to bring the uncomfortable conversations out of group chats, and into The Times.There is a scene in the 2023 film “Past Lives” in which Nora Moon, the protagonist, calls Hae Sung Jung, her childhood friend, “really
masculine, in
this
way
I
think
is
so
Korean.”When I first heard that dialogue, I remember jolting to attention. It felt like the movie was going out of its way to label an Asian man as manly. I had never heard that kind of talk on the big screen before.And, if I’m being honest, it made me, a Korean American man, feel good.I knew there was more I wanted to unpack, and doing so falls into my jurisdiction as a reporter on The New York Times’s Culture desk. So I was delighted when The Times’s Projects and Collaborations team asked me if I’d be interested in writing about the representation of Asian American men — and specifically their romantic roles — onscreen.Asian and Asian American men have been emasculated and marginalized for decades on American screens, and I wanted to chronicle the modest, but meaningful, shift happening right now. The article, which was published online today alongside visuals from Ricardo Nagaoka, explores how roles available to Asian and Asian American actors have evolved, especially over the last few years.I spoke to almost two dozen Asian Americans: Mostly actors, writers and directors, but also scholars, historians and everyday people. I needed to understand how laws and immigration policy — and especially pop culture — had shaped America’s view of Asian men. And I was interested in how the years of unflattering Hollywood portrayals made Asian and Asian American men feel.Surveys from the 2000s and 2010s had concluded that Asian men, along with Black women, were at the bottom of the racial romantic hierarchy when it came to dating in real life. And the frustration felt by Asian American men in that realm has at times manifested itself in misplaced toxicity, anger and resentment — particularly toward Asian women.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