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    Will Jennings, Oscar Winner for ‘My Heart Will Go On,’ Dies at 80

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    As an in-demand lyricist, he won a shelf of awards for hits with Steve Winwood, Eric Clapton and Dionne Warwick, as well as for the theme song for “Titanic.”Will Jennings, an English professor turned lyricist whose 1998 Academy Award for “My Heart Will Go On,” the theme song from the movie “Titanic,” capped a long career writing hits for musicians like Steve Winwood, Eric Clapton and Dionne Warwick, died on Sept. 6 at his home in Tyler, Texas. He was 80.The office of his agent, Sam Schwartz, confirmed the death but did not cite a cause.Mr. Jennings won the Oscar for best song twice: for “My Heart Will Go On,” which he wrote with James Horner and which was performed by Celine Dion; and in 1983 for “Up Where We Belong,” from the film “An Officer and a Gentleman”; written with Jack Nitzsche and Buffy Sainte-Marie, it was performed by Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes.Mr. Jennings, right, in 1998 with James Horner and Celine Dion, with whom he collaborated on “My Heart Will Go On.”Frank Trapper/Corbis, via Getty ImagesMr. Jennings, right, in 1983 with Jack Nitzsche and Buffy Sainte-Marie when they won an Oscar for “Up Where We Belong.”ABC Photo Archives/Disney General Entertainment Content, via Getty ImagesIn most of his hits, Mr. Jennings wrote the lyrics while his collaborators wrote the melodies — an unsurprising division of labor, given that Mr. Jennings came to songwriting after a career teaching poetry and English literature.He was known for his disciplined work ethic, his subtle references to classical literature tucked into seemingly airy pop tunes and his insistence on getting to know an artist or film to inhabit their perspectives.“With Will, his personality broke down all the barriers and got to what’s real,” said Mr. Crowell, who wrote several songs with Mr. Jennings, including “Many a Long and Lonesome Highway” (1989) and “What Kind Of Love” (1992).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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      Bernard Hill, Actor in ‘Titanic’ and ‘Lord of the Rings,’ Dies at 79

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      With a stout frame, bushy whiskers and a weathered visage, he embodied men of authority facing down danger with weary stoicism.Bernard Hill, a British actor who incarnated a humble style of masculine leadership in three hugely successful Hollywood movies, “Titanic” and two films in the “Lord of the Rings” franchise, died on Sunday. He was 79.His death was announced in a family statement sent by a representative of Lou Coulson Associates, a British talent agency. It did not say where he died or provide a cause.Mr. Hill drew praise from critics for his work in serious TV dramas, small-budget films and theater. But he was best known for playing the ship’s captain in “Titanic” (1997) and the ruler of a horsemen’s kingdom in the second and third installments of the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, “The Two Towers” (2002) and “The Return of the King” (2003).By appearing in “Titanic” and “The Return of the King,” Mr. Hill became the first actor to star in more than one film to gross over $1 billion and the only actor to appear in two of the three films to win a record 11 Oscars (the third is “Ben-Hur”), The Manchester Evening News reported in 2022.In each film, his stout frame, bushy whiskers and weathered visage helped him embody men of authority who faced danger with reluctance, then acceptance and, finally, self-sacrificial stoicism.In “Titanic,” he was Capt. Edward J. Smith. Early in the movie, he grasps the ship’s railing, looks out to sea and instructs one of his crew to increase the ship’s speed: “Let’s stretch her legs,” he declares. The movie ultimately suggests that the undue speed of the ship is a factor in its fatal collision with an iceberg.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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      Kate Winslet on ‘The Regime’ and Resilience In Hollywood

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      Kate Winslet was standing in front of a microphone, breathing hard. Sometimes she did it fast; sometimes she slowed it down. Sometimes the breathing sounded anxious; other times, it was clearly the gasping of someone who was winded. Before beginning a new take, Winslet stood stock still, hands opening and closing at her sides; she looked like a gymnast about to bound into a floor routine. Every breath seemed high-stakes, even though she was well into a long day of recording in a dim, windowless studio in London. Listen to this article, read by Kirsten PotterOpen this article in the New York Times Audio app on iOS.Winslet was adding grace notes to scenes of herself in “The Regime,” a dark satire created by Will Tracy, a writer and producer on “Succession,” that began airing on Max in early March. Winslet plays Elena Vernham, a dictator ruling precariously over an imaginary Central European country, and she was in the studio rerecording (as is common practice) lines that needed improving, including snippets of Elena’s propaganda: “Even if the protests happening in Westgate were real, which they are not” and “He’s still out there, working with the global elite to destroy everything we’ve built.” Sometimes Winslet laughed out loud after delivering a line, and sometimes she fell completely silent, absorbed in watching a scene of herself with her new recording looped in. “God, she’s such an awful, awful cow,” she said at one point, sounding appalled but also a little awed. The part of Elena, a despot on the verge of a nervous breakdown, is a departure for Winslet, who has chosen, over the course of her career, a wide range of characters who have in common an intrinsic power. Elena is erratic and grasping, with a facade of strength that covers up a sinkhole of oozing insecurity. Winslet gave a lot of thought to how Elena would sound: She chose a high, tight voice, the sound of someone disconnected from the feelings that reside deep in the body. Elena has the slightest of speech impediments, a strange move she makes with her mouth, a hand that flies to her cheek when she is under real stress — those tells are her answer to King Richard’s hump, the body politic deformed. Onscreen, as Elena, Winslet is coifed and practically corseted into form-fitting skirt suits, with lacquered fake nails. The day she was recording, in early January, Winslet might have been any woman at the office: blond hair, a hint of roots starting to show, jeans of no particular timely style that she occasionally tugged up from the waist, a black V-neck sweater she occasionally pulled down at the hem. It’s only when you look directly at her, face to face, that you see the extraordinary — the dark blue eyes, the beauty marks (not one, but two), the elaborately curved mouth.As Winslet recorded, Stephen Frears, one of the show’s two directors, guided Winslet with considerable understatement from his seat across the room: a half-nod here, a thumbs-up there. “Was that all right, Stephen?” Winslet called over after one take; she peered over in his direction, expectant, obedient, professional. Frears, who directed “The Queen” and “Dangerous Liaisons,” among others, was silent, with his eyes closed, his head back. Winslet and a few members of the production team waited for his approval. As the moment stretched on, it seemed that Frears was not deep in thought but deep in sleep. Winslet appeared to register a brief moment of surprise, then smiled and moved on — all right, no problem. 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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      A Queer Punk Vaudevillian’s Surreal Take on ‘Titanic’

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      In some ways, turning the movie “Titanic” into a farce about climate change makes a lot of narrative sense. Instead of an iceberg — which has melted, of course — the ship goes down because it hits a mountain of underwater garbage.In other ways, “Titanic Depression,” a new multimedia performance, could only have come from the madcap brain of Dynasty Handbag, the queer vaudevillian with punk origins and questionable taste in unitards.The 1997 movie was a blockbuster, sure, but Dynasty Handbag’s vision may be even more epic than James Cameron’s. Clad mostly in frilly underwear, with a recalcitrant therapist on speed-text, she’s a bawdy version of Rose (Kate Winslet’s character in the movie). Jack, the Leonardo DiCaprio love interest, is played by an octopus, who sneaks aboard the vessel disguised as a fanciful hat. Billy Zane’s villainous snob is replaced by a dildo in a black loafer. A camel and a microscopic tardigrade make cameos. Mark Zuckerberg is there. The whole thing is a metaphor about the seeming futility of fighting industrial capitalism and impending environmental doom, but it is also: a hilarious romp! A sexcapade, with consent forms! A self-own, with a pause for meditation — about death! And Dynasty Handbag, the alter ego of the artist Jibz Cameron, inhabits all the parts.Cameron, 48, has been working various stages in San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles as Dynasty Handbag for over 20 years, building a fan base both at august cultural institutions like the Brooklyn Academy of Music and at underground freak spectaculars.Jibz Cameron as Dynasty Handbag, in rehearsals. The project “just kept getting more money and more attention,” she said. “And then I kept feeling like it had to be bigger and bigger.”Ryan Pfluger for The New York Times“Jibz is able to address all kinds of issues — whether it’s body dysmorphia or childhood trauma or climate change — with the most hysterical absurdity and in ways that you would never expect,” said Ed Patuto, director of audience engagement at the Broad in Los Angeles, which programmed and commissioned her work. “She’s a great performer, in that you never see her rehearsals — it looks completely spontaneous.”“Weirdo Night,” her popular, long-running monthly variety show in Los Angeles, which she summed up as a “live ‘Muppet Show’ meets demented queer ‘Star Search,’” has become a Mecca for the surreal. “The ‘Weirdo Night’ community is freak church and Dynasty Handbag is the weirdo priest,” said Sarah Sherman, the breakout “Saturday Night Live” star, who has performed there. (The series was the subject of a well-received 2021 Sundance documentary.)“Titanic Depression,” which was commissioned by the Brooklyn cultural venue Pioneer Works in 2017 and will premiere there on Saturday and Sunday, is Cameron’s most ambitious and multidisciplinary project yet; it involves animation, video, soundscapes, singing, history and dance. It arrives on the heels of her Guggenheim Fellowship, a lot for an artist who refers to her crew as “dirtbag queers.”As her vision for “Titanic” grew, “it just kept getting more money and more attention,” Cameron said, with an avant-gardist’s note of surprise. “And then I kept feeling like it had to be bigger and bigger.”“What keeps it fresh for me is knowing that I can just make myself something to do, if I want to do it,” she added, on a break from rehearsals near her home in Los Angeles last week, in a studio where she also takes punk aerobics. “I definitely trust that it is what it wants to be.”Her instincts are being recognized all over: She will have visual art in “Made in L.A.,” the Hammer Museum’s biennial this fall; a comedy album, on the artist Seth Bogart’s Wacky Wacko label, is also forthcoming.But even among performance artists — not exactly a conformist bunch — Cameron’s alchemy of comedy, art, music, theater and fashion stands out for actually delivering on its lunacy.“Jibz is a force of nature,” said Jack Black, the actor and musician, adding that he and his wife, Tanya Haden, “were completely blown away” when they first saw Dynasty Handbag. “We were laughing uncontrollably,” he wrote in an email. “It felt like a hallucinogenic experience.” Ryan Pfluger for The New York TimesWith a sharp jawline, an askew wig and features that contort into a bouquet of disdain, Cameron plays Dynasty as an alternate-universe star, whose aesthetic is “Pee-wee’s Playhouse” crossed with a minor ’80s Aaron Spelling crime drama (lately she’s been partial to “Hart to Hart”), “but covered in goo, and a lesbian,” she said.One of those inspirations, Paul Reubens — Pee-wee Herman himself — was impressed by her character work. “To a certain degree, she seems kind of undefinable,” he said. “You have to see it; you can’t explain it very well. And that in itself seems like an incredible thing to have going for yourself.”The show, originally developed with the artist and technologist Sue-C, and presented as part of the New York Live Arts festival Planet Justice, is performed with a video backdrop; our heroine is live onstage, and everyone else is animated, mostly from Cameron’s own drawings, and sometimes with her face.At a recent rehearsal in Brooklyn, Cameron and a team of her collaborators — including her co-writer Amanda Verwey, and the visual director, Mariah Garnett, who is Cameron’s romantic partner — were working through a scene. À la Rose and Jack, Dynasty trails the octopus through gilded-age state rooms — generated partly by Dall-E, the image A.I., because, Cameron explained, that makes them visibly off-kilter, like Dynasty herself. In the bowels of the ship, they find a throbbing dance party. (Cue techno beats, not fiddle.) Cameron choreographed a wiggly duet with her cephalopod lover.“Jibz is a force of nature,” said Jack Black, the actor and musician, adding that when he and his wife first saw Dynasty Handbag, it “felt like a hallucinogenic experience.”Ryan Pfluger for The New York TimesA lot of the hourlong show is this loopy, until it gets to what David Everitt Howe, the Pioneer Works curator who commissioned the project, called “the bonkers death sequence.” A literal meditation, it underscores how consumerist greed led to the tragedy then, and to the vast trouble we’re in now.“It was such a tonal shift,” he said. “It’s dark. I remember I laughed uncomfortably, but I think it’s powerful, too. It makes the silliness stronger.”Jibra’ila Cameron, known as Jibz since childhood, grew up scrappy and poor in Northern California, with glimpses of creative freedom. A performing arts summer camp run by Wavy Gravy, the hippie clown and a friend of her parents, “totally saved my life as a kid,” she said.Her family life was volatile, though, and she left home at 15 or so, bumming around the Bay Area. Though she hadn’t graduated from high school, she was accepted at the San Francisco Art Institute on the strength of some Edward Gorey-style comics she drew. There, she was introduced to performance art and began making videos and joined bands. “I would just kind of freak out onstage, play the keyboard,” she said. (One of the groups was an all-female post-punk act called Dynasty; when it split up, she kept the name, tacking on Handbag — “I always thought the word handbag was really funny.”)“I feel like what I want to evoke with this is making something out of nothing — this tiny hope, survivability,” Cameron said.Ryan Pfluger for The New York TimesLater, hoping to become an actor, she studied at a theater conservatory. She had already embodied Dynasty Handbag, who debuted at Ladyfest in San Francisco in 2002, and her look remains remarkably the same: a misguided take on femininity, a studied failure of aesthetics. “She’s wearing tights, but they’re underneath a bathing suit,” Everitt Howe noted. “It’s all layered wrong.”Her quixotic clarity has influenced a younger generation of artists, like Sherman. “Jibz gave me the best piece of advice ever — after seeing me perform with all my props and costumes and gadgets and gizmos, she said, ‘You don’t need to WORK so hard, you’re funny! You’re ENOUGH!’” Sherman wrote. “I really took that to heart.”Cameron is not related to the “Titanic” director James Cameron, but he’s in the show, alongside industrialists like Benjamin Guggenheim, who “made his money in the mining and smelting businesses,” Dynasty Handbag says, punctuating her monologue about him with fart and bomb sounds. The disembodied voice of Guggenheim, who actually died aboard the Titanic, responds: “How dare you, I gave you a Guggenheim in 2022 and you wouldn’t be making this ridiculous show without me!”Cameron was still working out the ending for “Titanic Depression” last week, conjuring a moment out of a discarded plastic straw, a Lou Reed song and a gown made of garbage.“I feel like what I want to evoke with this is making something out of nothing — this tiny hope, survivability,” she told her crew. “People make music no matter where they are, what socioeconomic class. I get to come out in my showstopper outfit — that’s the showbiz part I really like. And then it gets weird.” More

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      25 Years After ‘Titanic,’ Quebec’s Love for Céline Dion Will Go On

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      The outpouring that greeted the singer’s announcement that she has a rare neurological condition showed how both Céline fandom, and ideas of national identity in her home province, have evolved.MONTREAL — It was a Friday night in Montreal, and hundreds of euphoric revelers were dancing and singing “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now” at a sold-out Céline Dion tribute party. One young man vogued in a homemade version of the gold-tinted headpiece of singed peacock feathers that Dion wore at the Met Gala a few years ago. Another gawked at a mini-shrine of Dion-inspired wigs, showcasing her hairstyles through the decades.“In an era of arrogant stars, she is always authentic,” Simon Venne, the voguer, a 38-year-old stylist, gushed. “She is everything to us, a source of pride, our queen.”If there was ever a sense that Quebec, the French-speaking province of Dion’s birth, was conflicted about Dion’s rise to global superstardom with pop hits that she often sang in English, it has been dispelled. She now occupies an exalted space here, experiencing a cultural renaissance as Quebec’s younger generation has unabashedly embraced her: Radio Canada, the national French language broadcaster, parses her life on a podcast translated as “Céline—She’s The Boss!”; a recent docuseries called “It’s Cool to Like Céline Dion” explored her appeal to millennials, and Céline Dion drag competitions have been surging.Dion’s emotional announcement this month that she is suffering from a rare neurological condition called stiff person syndrome, forcing her to postpone upcoming tour dates, was met with an extraordinary outpouring. Québécois politicians from across the political spectrum, including both Quebec’s premiere, François Legault, and the head of a party advocating Quebec’s independence from Canada, jockeyed to express sympathy for Dion, 54. Fans commiserated over social media. A headline in Le Devoir, an influential Quebec newspaper, called her “Céline, Queen of the Québécois.” Dion, the newspaper noted, had attained the status of untouchable icon after years of being panned by critics and mocked by others.“It’s like hearing your aunt is sick,” Venne, the feathered fan, said. “Céline is famous around the world, but here she is family.”A sold-out Céline Dion tribute party in Montreal drew fans who dressed like her, gawked at Dion-inspired wigs, and danced and sang along to her music. Guillaume Simoneau for The New York TimesThe intensity of the reaction here — 25 years after the premiere of the blockbuster film “Titanic,” which helped make Dion’s bombastically exuberant “My Heart Will Go On” ubiquitous — shows how much Céline fandom and ideas of Québécois identity have evolved over time as the province, like its most famous daughter, has come of age.The Unsinkable Celine DionThe Canadian superstar has won over fans with her octave-hopping renditions of songs like “Because You Loved Me” and “My Heart Will Go On.”Rare Disorder Diagnosis: Celine Dion announced that she had a neurological condition known as stiff person syndrome, which forced her to cancel and reschedule dates on her planned 2023 tour.A Consummate Professional: At a concert in Brooklyn in 2020, the pop diva was fully in command of her glorious voice — and the crowd gathered to bask in it.Adored by Fans: Dion can count on some of the most loyal supporters in the industry. In return, she gives all of herself to them.From the Archives: Dion achieved international stardom in the 1990s after charming audiences in French Canada and France. Here is what The Times wrote about her in 1997.During a recent visit to Céline Dion Boulevard in Charlemagne, a soulless stretch of road in the gritty working-class town of about 6,000 on the outskirts of Montreal where Dion was born, a group of 20-somethings said it was no longer embarrassing to admit to liking her music.“Being stuck at home during the pandemic made people nostalgic for the past, and everything old and vintage is in fashion,” said Gabriel Guénette, 26, a university student and sometime Uber delivery man, explaining why he and his friends were singing “The Power of Love” during karaoke nights. Dion’s unbridled message of hope and optimism, he added, resonated during these uncertain times.Older residents in Charlemagne still refer to her as “notre petite Céline” — our little Céline — and recall her days as a shy teenager who performed French ballads with her 13 brothers and sisters at her family’s restaurant. Younger residents — including Meghan Arsenault, 15, who attends the same high school Dion did — grew up singing her songs.Across Quebec, a Francophone province of 8.5 million people that has been buffeted by centuries of subjugation and fears of being subsumed by the English language, Dion has at times been a polarizing figure. Even as many fans ardently embraced her, she was dismissed by some critics as the cultural equivalent of poutine, the Québécois snack of French fries and cheese curds drenched in gravy drunkenly and guiltily consumed at 3 a.m.Some elites balked at her success, seeing in her sprawling working class family, her garish outfits and her broken English an uncomfortable mirror of an old Quebec they preferred to forget. Some considered her quétaine, cheesy in Québécois argot.Céline Dion Boulevard in Charlemagne, her hometown.Guillaume Simoneau for The New York TimesOlder residents in Charlemagne still call her “notre petite Céline” — our little Céline.Guillaume Simoneau for The New York TimesAnd her singing in English has, at times, been an affront to hard-core Francophone nationalists. But when Dion thanked the audience with a “Merci!” at the Summer Olympics in Atlanta in 1996 after singing “The Power of The Dream,” the single word reverberated across the province, an affirmation that French Canada had gone global.Martin Proulx, a producer who hosted the podcast, “Céline, She’s the Boss!” recalled that as a gay teenager in Montreal in the 1990s, he hid the fact that he was listening to her “Let’s Talk About Love” album on his Sony Walkman. “It wasn’t cool to love Céline when I was in high school — kids my age were listening to hip-hop and heavy rock and she was for soccer moms who watched Oprah,” he recalled.Now, he said, he could proudly proclaim his ardor, in part because a more confident Quebec has shed some of its past complexes. The younger generation of Québécois, he said, seems less hung up than their parents or grandparents on issues of language and identity, and more likely to embrace Dion’s global stardom, financial success and bilingualism as a template for their own international aspirations.“We used to roll our eyes — now we think she’s pure genius,” Mr. Proulx said. “She never changed. We did.”Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the Quebec-born music director of the Metropolitan Opera in New York, said that his first memory of Dion was from 1984, when he was eight years old. Dion, who was 16, sang a song about a dove in front of Pope John Paul II and 60,000 people at Montreal’s Olympic Stadium. Nézet-Séguin said he had surged with pride that she was a fellow Quebecer, and said that he sees Dion as a “diva” in the operatic sense of the word.“When I think about a diva, I think about personality, having something recognizable artistically, and one can’t deny the virtuosic aspect of Céline’s singing,” he said.Bennett’s Dion collection is extensive.Guillaume Simoneau for The New York TimesHe even has a custom Dion sport coat.Guillaume Simoneau for The New York TimesThe intense interest in Dion is hardly limited to Quebec. “Aline,” a highly unusual, fictionalized film drawn from her life, drew buzz at last year’s Cannes Film Festival. When a musical parody of “Titanic” called “Titanique” recently moved to a larger Off Broadway theater in New York, its producers promised “More shows. More seats. More Céline.” And Dion is set to appear alongside Priyanka Chopra Jonas and Sam Heughan in a romantic comedy called “Love Again” that is expected in theaters in North America in May.The fascination with Dion endures in part because her Cinderella story never grows old. The youngest of 14 children of an accordion-playing butcher and a homemaker from Charlemagne, Dion’s first bed as a child was a drawer. At the age of 12, she co-wrote her first song, “Ce n’était qu’un rêve,” with the help of her mother and her brother Jacques. Her brother Michel sent a cassette demo to the impresario René Angélil, who became her manager and, later, her husband.Dion had a complete makeover, disappearing for 18 months in 1986 to study English, cap her teeth, perm her hair, and take voice and dance lessons. A star was born.When Angélil died in 2016, two days before his 74th birthday, his two-day, meticulously choreographed funeral at Montreal’s Notre-Dame Basilica was televised by the CBC, the national broadcaster, and flags were lowered at half-mast across Quebec. Dion, veiled in black, stood by her husband’s open coffin for seven hours, greeting Quebec dignitaries and the public.Nearly every inch of Mario Bennett’s cramped basement apartment is decorated with Céline Dion memorabilia. Guillaume Simoneau for The New York TimesIn the years since, Dion recast her analog image for the Instagram era. A Vetements Titanic hoodie she wore in Paris in 2016 broke the internet. A few years later, she stole the show at the camp-themed Met Gala, in an Oscar de la Renta clinging champagne-colored bodysuit embellished with silvery sequins. Her zany, self-deprecating appearance on James Corden’s Carpool Karaoke in 2019 from Las Vegas, during which she sang “My Heart Will Go On” in front of a replica of the Titanic’s bow at the Bellagio Hotel fountain, helped some people who had made fun of her realize that she was in on the joke.Now her fandom seems as strong as ever.Mario Bennett, 36, who works in a concert hall, began covering every inch of his cramped basement apartment with Céline Dion memorabilia at the start of the pandemic. He said that throughout his life, Ms. Dion’s powerful voice had been a clarion call to dream big. Among his prized possessions is an unauthorized collectible Céline doll, wearing a mini version of the midnight blue velvet gown that the singer wore to the Oscars in 1998.“She makes me feel that anything is possible,” he said.Guy Hermon, an Israeli drag queen who emigrated to Montreal a decade ago and absorbed Quebec culture — and the French language — by trying to embody Dion, said he had never been a fan of her music but invented his Dion alter ego, “Crystal Slippers” out of necessity on the Dion-obsessed Québécois drag circuit.After years of mimicking Ms. Dion, he said he had come to appreciate her. “She just wants everyone to be happy,” he said. More

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      in Theater

      ‘Titanique’ Review: A Musical Finds Its Sea Legs

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      The camp reimagining of the maritime blockbuster revs up into increasing absurdity and Celine Dion songs.“Titanic” got a lot right. After all, it grossed roughly a bazillion dollars, cemented Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet as stars, spawned catchphrases and iconic poses and, most important, reminded us that romance was not dead.Yet some fans still think that wasn’t enough. After all, the movie featured only one Celine Dion song, and you had to wait over three hours to hear it. Clearly this structural defect had to be fixed.Enter “Titanique,” a musical retelling of James Cameron’s nautical blockbuster in which the co-authors, Tye Blue (also the director), Marla Mindelle and Constantine Rousouli, have cranked the Celine-o-meter all the way up. They added not just a bunch of her songs to the story, but the Canadian superstar herself. As played by Mindelle (Broadway’s “Sister Act” and “Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella”), she is now a narrator who keeps popping in and out of the action.The premise is that Dion was on the doomed cruise liner in 1912 and is somehow still around to explain what happened — cue “I’m Alive,” of course. The singer mingles with the passengers, and by mingle I mean she shamelessly tries to overshadow them, sneaking in one of her hits at every opportunity. As James Corden said in his epic “Carpool Karaoke” with Dion: “You really have a song for every moment.” (The music supervisor Nicholas Connell did the arrangements and orchestrations.)Unlike, say, Bob McSmith and Tobly McSmith’s spoofs (“Love Actually? The Unauthorized Musical Parody,” “Showgirls! The Musical!”), “Titanique” does not feature an original score. It feels closer to “Cruel Intentions: The ’90s Musical Experience,” which added a number of tracks from that decade to its adaptation of the film (itself an update of “Dangerous Liaisons”). Rousouli, who portrayed the scheming Sebastian Valmont in that 2017 production, distinguishes himself again here as the lovelorn Jack. He renders him as an aw-shucks, wide-eyed naïf straight out of “Newsies,” a very funny performance that teeters inches from caricature yet never quite spills into it.“Titanique,” playing at Asylum NYC, incorporates a measure of improvisation and a strategy of shattering the fourth wall.Emilio Madrid“Titanique” is playing at the subterranean Asylum NYC, the former home of the Upright Citizens Brigade comedy troupe, a fitting spot for a show that incorporates a degree of improvisation. But it takes a little while to find its sea legs. The first scenes are frantic yet oddly sluggish, and it looks as if the entire evening will consist of Mindelle leaning hard on the goofball humor, idiosyncratic body language and seemingly random non sequiturs that have made Dion’s interviews so popular on YouTube.But eventually “Titanique” comes into its own as it revs up into increasing absurdity and the actors try to out-ham one another. Contrast that with Michael Kinnan’s one-man retelling of “Titanic,” “Never Let Go”: If that production captured the emotion running through both the movie and the feeling of watching it, this one doubles down on “Titanic” and Dion as modern camp icons. And speaking of camp: Ryan Duncan, in the drag role of Rose’s mother, is reminiscent of Everett Quinton at his Ridiculous Theatrical Company finest. Younger pop-culture fiends are more likely to spot Frankie Grande — yes, Ariana’s half brother — as Jack’s pal Luigi and Victor Garber (who played Thomas Andrews, the ship’s builder, in the film).That Grande plays the actor and his character in “Titanic” is typical of the show’s fourth-wall-shattering strategy, which is pretty much its entire strategy. As the production spins ever more crazily into a finale that involves that darn iceberg (Jaye Alexander), a lip-syncing contest and “River Deep, Mountain High,” you might as well admit you have been clubbed into satisfied submission.TitaníqueThrough Sept. 25 at Asylum NYC, Manhattan; titaniquemusical.com. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. More

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      in Movies

      Review: In ‘Never Let Go,’ a Solo Performer’s Heart Goes On

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      Michael Kinnan’s sendup of “Titanic” explores the liminal space between tribute and affectionate satire.Michael Kinnan’s “Never Let Go” is a one-man stage version of “Titanic.” That would be enough to persuade a lot of people to head to the Brick Theater, the adventurous Williamsburg black box where the show opened this week. Just as many might shrug in reflexive disdain.Kinnan is aware of those potential responses. The program for his show, in which he plays all the parts, claims that his “theatrical realization” of the movie was “created for lovers, fans and even skeptics.” Improbably, all three groups may well come away happy: This heart does go on, and for only an hour instead of three and a half.“Never Let Go” is a feat of ingenuity that works regardless of whether you have seen the movie. It’s easy to follow the story and identify the characters, even though there is no ocean liner and only minimal costume alterations. Kinnan embodies a dashing androgyny: lipstick and fake eyelashes, a shaved head, tight black pants, a white shirt emerging from a laced corset.And he needs just a few sound effects and props, including a step ladder and that famous necklace, to drive along the plot. One of the movie’s best scenes is the first meeting between Leonardo DiCaprio’s Jack and Kate Winslet’s Rose, when he talks her out of jumping into the sea from the ship’s stern. Recreating it, Kinnan seamlessly toggles between the two characters, and even nails the moment in which Jack catches Rose when she trips and almost falls into the ocean. As for the sex scene: This may be sacrilegious to say, but it’s better here.While he adeptly reproduces DiCaprio’s youthful cockiness, Kinnan raises his game to another level with Winslet’s role. He captures her coquettish coyness without caricaturing it. It’s hard not to laugh in delight at his resourcefulness and skill — the commotion following the collision with the iceberg is effectively rendered, complete with a hilariously tiny splash zone — which is quite a different reaction from snickering in superiority.Kinnan is not blind to the bombastic cheesiness of “Titanic,” yet appears to hold a genuine place in his heart for it, which gives the show winning élan, even heartfelt sincerity. By the time Rose told Jack “there’s a boat” then piteously pleaded “come back, come back,” I was so caught up in the drama that I’d forgotten the original scenes and was feeling for Kinnan’s version of the characters.In 2009, Pavol Liska and Kelly Copper’s “Rambo Solo” turned the famous Sylvester Stallone into a one-person show that Charles Isherwood of The New York Times described as “a winking shard of low-concept theater for downtown hipsters.” This is not what Kinnan aims for, or even accidentally achieves.What he does is explore the liminal space between tribute and affectionate satire, which is well illustrated by the way he combines a can’t-help-it fondness for Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On” with a playful awareness of its schmaltz. If there is one drawback to the show, it’s that it will send you back into the night with that earworm firmly lodged in your head, all over again.Never Let GoThrough Oct. 10 at the Brick Theater, Brooklyn; bricktheater.com. Running time: 1 hour. More

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      ‘Titanic’ Is My Favorite Movie. There, I Said It.

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      A woman’s heart is a deep ocean of secrets; this is mine.A year ago, I went on a date, and the guy asked me what my favorite movie was. A simple question, but I stammered. His brow furrowed. “Didn’t your profile say that you love movie quotes?” I didn’t want to reveal the truth — not so soon, at least — so I hid behind the Criterion Collection (“ ‘La Strada,’ ‘Rebecca,’ etc.”). Then a scene flashed in my head — a swell of music, an enormous hat: “You can be blasé about some things, Rose, but not about Titanic!” A woman’s heart is a deep ocean of secrets; my secret is that I love “Titanic.” This has been true since I was a 10-year-old in a darkened theater, weeping uncontrollably on my mother’s lap. Like the children onscreen waving farewell to the doomed steamer, I marveled at the grandeur of what was passing before my eyes: a sweeping history lesson and a devastating romance between a first-class passenger named Rose (Kate Winslet) and a below-decks dreamboat named Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio). Until then, my cultural diet had consisted of Rodgers and Hammerstein singalongs and the Disney canon. “Titanic” — rapturous, tragic, real — was an awakening. In just over three hours, the film colored all my notions of grown-up life: love, loss, the female struggle, the unbreakable bond of a string quartet.To my child’s mind, “Titanic” was impossibly vast: It felt as though the movie encompassed the entire mysterious range of human life. It was, unequivocally, the most powerful experience I’d ever had with a work of art — but I was 10. I couldn’t fully understand this feeling of transcendence, so I just kept rewatching. I saw the movie three times when it was released in 1997. The following year, when it came out on VHS — a fat brick of a box set, neatly split into two acts of happy and sad — I routinely popped in the pre-iceberg tape to enjoy with my after-school snack. I began fixating on unlikely features of the film, delighting in its ancillary characters’ banal dialogue: the clueless graybeards (“Freud? Who is he? Is he a passenger?”); the poetry of the bridge (“Take her to sea, Mr. Murdoch. Let’s stretch her legs”); the snobbery of Rose’s mother (“Will the lifeboats be seated according to class? I hope they’re not too crowded”). As I matured, I stopped my regular viewings, but the movie continued playing in my mind. I was a melancholy indoor girl myself, and Rose perfectly articulated my teenage ennui: “the same narrow people, the same mindless chatter.” Even in the face of more complex ideas and challenges — like the travails of gender politics or problems of class — I found myself leaning on its casual wisdom and glossy sentimentality. The film’s unsubtle gender commentary began to feel revolutionary. (“Of course it’s unfair,” the chilly matriarch says while tightening the strings of her daughter’s corset. “We’re women.”) In the late ’90s, everyone I knew adored “Titanic,” but I felt in my heart that my own love affair with it was something special. It was, unequivocally, the most powerful experience I’d ever had with a work of art — but I was 10.Two decades’ worth of late-night jokes and revisionist hot takes, however, have coated my feelings of affection in deep shame. (Just last month, “the iceberg that sank the Titanic” appeared in a bit on “Saturday Night Live,” lamenting, “Why are people still talking about this?”) The older I grew, the more my enduring admiration felt like some sort of clerical error in my development, a box I had accidentally checked on my application to adulthood. I told myself it was just a guilty pleasure. How could it be anything else? Saying “Titanic” is my favorite movie would be like saying my favorite painting is the “Mona Lisa”: It suggests a lack of discernment. But for me, the movie’s broadness is kind of the point. What snarky critics don’t appreciate is that the movie is a meme because it is a masterpiece. The film has become a cultural shorthand, a way of talking about ideas that are bigger than ourselves — mythic themes of hubris, love and tragedy — while also making a joke. (Has any line captured our collective quarantine mood more than that old chestnut, “It’s been 84 years …”?) It also won 11 Oscars. This past January, I decided, for the first time in a decade, to watch the movie from start to finish. When I was young — in my Tape 1 years — I was dazzled by the film’s spectacle. And yes, watching again, I fell for it in all the old ways: Jack’s good looks, Rose’s Edwardian walking suit, the allure of a real party. But as the camera panned over the sleeping elderly Rose, I broke into sobs seeing the pictures of her post-Titanic life — riding horses on the beach, climbing onto a flying machine dressed in Amelia Earheart cosplay, posing in an on-set glamour shot. After a year of great loss, the pathos of that moment hit me differently. Never mind her heart — her life went on. She survived a disaster and ended up living a life so full that the experience became just a memory. It was the message in a bottle I needed, one of many that “Titanic” has sent my way over the years. I imagine I’ll be receiving these messages forever — even as an old lady, warm in her bed.Jessie Heyman is executive editor of Vogue.com. More