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      18 Arts Organizations of Color Selected for National Initiative

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      The Wallace Foundation will fund up to $3.75 million in support for each organization, spread across the country, over the next five years.In the 1970s, a series of fires — set as arson for profit — rocked the Bronx. This story, acted out against a soundtrack of salsa and hip-hop, is currently being told by Pregones/Puerto Rican Traveling Theater at Pregones Theater in the Bronx.These are the types of stories and organizations that the Wallace Foundation, which aims to foster equity and improvements in the arts, will support in its new initiative. Eighteen arts organizations of color across the country, including Pregones/PRTT, will each receive up to $3.75 million over the next five years.“One of the things that distinguishes this opportunity is the acknowledgment that organizations of color have a certain history of undercapitalization,” said Arnaldo López, the managing director of Pregones/PRTT. “And that means that, for many years — compared to primarily white-serving organizations in the arts and culture — we worked with a fraction of the money.”The 18 grantees were selected from over 250 applicants and include 1Hood Media in Pittsburgh, Chicago Sinfonietta, the Queer Women of Color Media Arts Project in San Francisco, the Arab American National Museum in Dearborn, Mich., and the Union for Contemporary Art in Omaha, Neb.This marks the first phase — aimed at organizations with budgets between $500,000 and $5 million — of a broader national arts initiative by the Wallace Foundation. A future phase will focus on a second, larger group of grantees with budgets below $500,000. In total, the foundation has committed to providing funding of up to $100 million.This iteration, though, was designed around a specific guiding question: How can arts organizations of color use their experience working closely with their communities to stay resilient and relevant?“It’s about: What are the aspirations for their future?” said Bahia Ramos, the director of arts at the Wallace Foundation. “And how might these resources — time and space to breathe and learn together — give them the wherewithal to meet those aspirations?”The first year of the initiative will focus on planning before the next four years of project implementation. Over the next year, grantees will map out their funding in partnership with advisers and consultants, including researchers, ethnographers and financial management planners.One recipient, the Laundromat Project in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, hopes to dig deeper into its work: Helping artists and neighbors become agents of change in their own communities. The Laundromat Project was founded 17 years ago by a Black woman, Risë Wilson, at her kitchen table in Bed-Stuy, said the project’s executive director, Kemi Ilesanmi.“We have residencies with artists, we do community engagement, we have a professional development fellowship,” Ilesanmi said. “And all of this is allowing us to figure out how to do that citywide — and do it in the context of Bed-Stuy.”Grantees will also work with a research team from Arizona State University and the University of Virginia to refine their research questions and approaches. Researchers from the Social Science Research Council will develop “deep-dive” ethnographies of each organization to document their histories and practices.“All of us have a great deal to learn from organizations founded by and with communities of color,” Ramos said, “who have deep legacies of working with and on behalf of their communities.” More

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      in Television

      Josh Duggar Is Sentenced to 12 Years for Downloading Images of Child Sex Abuse

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      Mr. Duggar, 34, a former star of the TLC reality show “19 Kids and Counting,” was convicted in December after he tried to covertly download graphic images to his computer in Arkansas.Josh Duggar, a onetime star of the TLC reality show “19 Kids and Counting,” about a large family guided by conservative Christian values, was sentenced to more than 12 years in prison on Wednesday for downloading child sexual abuse imagery.The sentencing, in U.S. District Court in Fayetteville, Ark., concluded Mr. Duggar’s downfall from the eldest sibling on one of the most popular cable reality shows to a convicted criminal, capping a reversal that began with his arrest in April 2021.Prosecutors said that, in May 2019, Mr. Duggar installed a password-protected partition on the hard drive of his desktop computer at his used-car lot in Springdale, Ark., to avoid software that detects explicit images of children.Mr. Duggar, 34, who is married with seven children, downloaded around 600 photographs and seven videos of violent child sexual abuse, according to a sentencing memorandum filed this month by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Arkansas.He was caught after a Little Rock police detective found an I.P. address that had been sharing child sexual abuse material, according to a memorandum opinion filed by Judge Timothy L. Brooks in August 2021. The detective sent the information to an agent from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security who later tracked the I.P. address to Mr. Duggar, Judge Brooks wrote.A jury deliberated for two days before finding Mr. Duggar guilty in December of one count of receiving child pornography and one count of possessing child pornography. Each charge carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison and $250,000 in fines.Prosecutors had asked for a 20-year sentence while Mr. Duggar’s lawyers asked for five years. He was sentenced to 12 years and seven months.On Wednesday, Judge Brooks vacated the charge of child pornography possession, one of Mr. Duggar’s lawyers, Justin K. Gelfand, said.Mr. Gelfand added that he and the rest of Mr. Duggar’s defense team were grateful that the judge had dismissed the charge. “We look forward to continuing the fight on appeal,” he said in a statement after the sentencing.The U.S. attorney’s office did not immediately respond to emails or phone calls on Wednesday.On Tuesday, Judge Brooks denied a request that Mr. Duggar’s lawyers filed in January asking that he be acquitted or receive a new trial. The lawyers argued that, among other things, the prosecutors had not disclosed certain evidence in a timely manner.From 2008 to 2015, Mr. Duggar and his siblings starred with their parents in “19 Kids and Counting,” a reality show following the family’s life in Arkansas. TLC canceled the show after In Touch Weekly reported on a 2006 police report that said Mr. Duggar had molested several girls when he was a teenager.Representatives for Discovery, the company that owns TLC, did not immediately return emails or phone calls on Wednesday.Mr. Duggar was not charged in connection with those earlier allegations, for which the statute of limitations had passed. Mr. Duggar’s parents told Fox News in 2015 that four of the five girls he molested were his sisters.His parents said they had sent him to counseling and had him talk to the police.He apologized at the time in a statement to People magazine, saying, “As a young teenager, I acted inexcusably for which I am extremely sorry.”Mr. Duggar also resigned from his position as the director of the lobbying arm of the conservative Family Research Council. More

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      in Television

      A French Hit on Netflix Changes Its Language and Streaming Service

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      “Call My Agent!,” set at a Parisian talent agency, was a cult favorite during the pandemic. But the English-language adaptation will be on Sundance Now and AMC+.Four bumbling talent agents at risk of losing their business because of poor financial planning. A secret daughter interested in a career in the entertainment industry. Cameos by famous actors playing themselves. One spoiled dog. This is the formula that made the French show “Call My Agent!,” about a Parisian talent agency, into a global hit once it began appearing on Netflix in 2016.On Friday, the British version of the show, titled “Ten Percent” and set at a London talent agency, will debut. But instead of airing on Netflix, the eight-episode series will premiere on Sundance Now and AMC+ in the United States, and Amazon U.K. in Britain, Canada and six other English-speaking territories.Basing an English-language TV show on a popular hit from another country is a tried-and-true convention in the U.S. entertainment industry. Think “Homeland” and “Euphoria” — or even “The Office,” which began life with Ricky Gervais in England before being adapted into the long-running American version starring Steve Carell.“Ten Percent” was conceived in much the same way. David Davoli, who heads the television division for Bron Studios, negotiated, along with London’s Headline Pictures, for the English rights to “Call My Agent!” in 2017, after the show debuted on Netflix but before it truly caught on with English-speaking audiences. According to Mr. Davoli, it was already doing “bonkers numbers on French television,” where it debuted in 2015. Yet it was before “the dawn of international television where people were more comfortable ingesting foreign language stuff,” he said.What makes “Ten Percent” unique is that usually the English-language version is adapted from a show not widely seen in the United States. Not so with “Call My Agent!,” which became a cult favorite with American audiences during the pandemic. The show has run for four seasons on Netflix — with talk of a possible fifth to come — and inspired a film and adaptations in India and Turkey. Its star, Camille Cottin, could be seen in the films “House of Gucci” and “Stillwater” last year.“Call My Agent!” became available on Netflix in 2016.Christophe Brachet/NetflixNetflix won’t give details on the show’s viewership numbers, but the company’s co-chief executive Ted Sarandos referred to the series in his January earnings call as proof that Netflix’s investment in international programming was paying off. It, along with “Money Heist” and “Squid Game,” proved to streaming companies that if a show is good enough, subtitles and cultural specificity are not a deterrent for viewers. And if that’s the case, why spend money on an English-language version? The Race to Rule Streaming TVA New Era: Companies like Netflix, HBO, Hulu and Amazon ushered out the age of “prestige TV” and ushered in an age of anything goes.Netflix’s Woes: The streaming star lost subscribers for the first time in a decade as competitors are continuing to expand.A Warning Sign?: Netflix’s sudden problems may be an indication that other streaming services are heading toward an unstable future.Commercials: Streaming executives are having a change of heart about ads and offering lower-priced versions in exchange for commercials.In contrast, “Ten Percent” will appear on a much smaller platform, one with nine million subscribers, just 12 percent of Netflix’s 74.6 million subscribers in the United States and Canada. (It stars Jack Davenport as the de facto head of the agency and will feature cameos from well-known British actors including Helena Bonham Carter, Dominic West and David Oyelowo.)Netflix had the opportunity to buy “Ten Percent,” as did every other streaming service in the United States, but passed. It declined to comment on its decision. Instead, Sundance Now came up with an attractive offer and licensed the show.“We’re very happy to be there,” Mr. Davoli said of his relationship with AMC Networks, which owns Sundance Now. “I like being a bigger fish in a smaller pond. I think we’re going to get way more attention there. Marketing is half the battle, and on some of the bigger streamers they’re up on Friday and gone on Monday.”AMC Networks, which owns a handful of niche streaming options including AMC+, Acorn TV, Shudder, Sundance Now and AllBlk, will also air the show weekly on its BBC America channel, two days after the episodes become available through streaming.“We jumped at the chance to make Sundance Now the U.S. home of the British remake,” said Shannon Cooper, vice president of programming for Sundance Now. “This is such a fun watch, whether you’ve seen the original or not.”This is a rocky moment for streaming, with Netflix’s stock plummeting after last week’s announcement that it lost 200,000 subscribers in the first quarter of the year and expected to lose two million beyond that in the second. Despite the deluge of content arriving weekly on the various services, consumers are happy to end a subscription if the latest offerings aren’t striking their fancy.Helena Bonham Carter, right, is one of the celebrities playing a version of themselves in “Ten Percent.” Lydia Leonard is one of the show’s stars.Rob Youngson/Sundance NowAccording to a recent survey by Deloitte, 37 percent of consumers in the United States added or canceled a streaming subscription in the last six months, a churn figure that has been consistent since 2020. The primary reasons they cited were price concerns and lack of new content. The return of a favorite show, according to Deloitte’s survey, is a key reason customers would subscribe to a service, or resubscribe to one they recently abandoned. That’s why a show like “Ten Percent,” which has the potential to lure viewers who enjoyed “Call My Agent!,” is an attractive purchase for an upstart streaming service.“It’s an appealing proposition for any of these distributors,” said Dan Erlij, partner at United Talent Agency and co-head of the television literary department. “There’s so much stuff that’s constantly premiering. How do you make sure that people are aware of it? Bus ads and billboards only take you so far. And it’s expensive. So if you know that there’s a word of mouth built in already, I think that can be really helpful.”The executive producer of “Ten Percent” is John Morton, best known for his comedy “W1A,” which satirizes the BBC. In a recent interview, he said he was cognizant of the high stakes he was facing when he took the job of adapting the beloved series. Attracted to the show’s “warm heart” and its ability to connect its audience to its fallible main characters, Mr. Morton said, he was intimidated by the idea of “starting again with something that’s already so good.”His strategy was to go back and rewatch the first season of “Call My Agent!” in its entirety but then never refer to it again. As of the interview, he had yet to finish the third season and hadn’t watched the fourth.The ultimate goal was to take the essence of “Call My Agent!” and make it specifically British, capturing the diversity of London, from its architecture to its people.“London is chaotic — architecturally, logistically, creatively — and that throws up wonderful things and also terrible things,” Mr. Morton said, adding that, as in “Call My Agent!,” the talent agency has a rooftop. But rather than looking out over a pristine Parisian night sky, this roof “looks out over a certain sort of unconnected chimneys.”The cast of the British version is also more diverse, with the secret daughter from the original now played by the British actress Hiftu Quasem, who is of Bengali descent, and the bumbling agent, Dan, portrayed by Prasanna Puwanarajah, a British actor of Sri Lankan descent. Yet the archetypes from the original prevail. For example, Ms. Cottin’s character, a hard-charging lesbian agent, is now played by Lydia Leonard, and her character’s frenetic love life is also complicated by her career ambitions.Mr. Davoli — who since becoming the head of Bron TV has sold three other co-productions to streaming companies, including “The Defeated” to Netflix and “Kin” to AMC — admits that the market for format deals has become more challenged in recent years.“The thing that’s most important that I’ve learned over the last four years is the quality bar cannot be messed with,” he said. “The only way to protect the investment is to ensure that you’re creatively making content that can sell into the U.S., because our audiences are so sophisticated now. They won’t stick around for stuff that’s not rising above a certain bar.” More

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      in Movies

      ‘The Automat’ Review: Put a Nickel in the Slot for Nostalgia

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      A documentary about Horn & Hardart’s automated cafeterias is sweet and shaggy, but an engrossing tale of cultural harmony.Whatever nostalgia is — homesickness, fantasy, delusion — it’s flooding “The Automat.” There’s something about people’s memories of these automated cafeterias that flourished in the United States for much of the 20th century — you put a nickel into a slot, open a door in an enormous wall of cabinets and pull out, say, a slice of pie or a ham sandwich — that sends them back to the era in which they frequented one. The documentary Lisa Hurwitz has directed about Automats is shaggy and full of cutesy stuff, mostly involving Mel Brooks. But the sight of all these lit-up faces — see Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Carl Reiner, Colin Powell — made me hunger to be back where they wish they were: at 5, at 17, at 20-something, plunked down at a table with a bowl of baked beans.The movie unfurls the history of Horn & Hardart, the Manhattan-and-Philadelphia-based chain of restaurants the Automat was synonymous with. It’s an engrossing tale of commercial expansion, industrial innovation and cultural harmony even in times, like the Civil Rights era, when that kind of unison seems tough to fathom. Hurwitz finds biological descendants of Hardart and professional heirs of Horn. She locates John Romas, an Austrian immigrant who was the company’s vice president of engineering. There are conversations with the authors of a Horn & Hardart book, a moving visit to one of the designers of a powerfully witty 1970s ad campaign and a sit-down with W. Wilson Goode, Philadelphia’s first Black mayor, who served during a notoriously cataclysmic period. And the worst that anybody has to say about anything is that the Automat is gone.Hurwitz and her editors, Michael Levine and Russell Greene, have the interviews, archival footage and bright, soaring, relentless music to plunge us, accordingly, into states of delight and visceral lament. I, at least, am astounded that a movie this chipper, one so easily distracted by its boldface names (Hurwitz includes footage of Brooks essentially telling her how to make the movie), also feels like the key to some lock on the American soul. Just about every source says that what they loved about the Automat was that everyone was welcome. So as the millionth exterior shot and umpteenth photo of those towering cabinets hit me, I got sad, too: why oh why did it all have to end? The answer is typical: the interstate, suburbanization, mismanagement, classism, snobbery, inflation. All of which this movie does more than allude to.And yet — and this, for me, is a heavy yet — it feels as if the movie is skirting something. I get it: Hurwitz wins time with at least four American VIPs, three of whom are no longer with us, and the fourth, Brooks, remains so bewitched by the Automat that he writes a theme song and performs it with real Jimmy Durante bark. Romas, we learn, has also died. And each luminary’s enchantment appears to have inhibited an urge to commit more rigorous probing. (This is a feel-good movie!)I just wonder whether it could have felt better to know more precisely how Horn & Hardart managed a racially integrated clientele when its competition couldn’t have cared less for that sort of thing. When Ginsburg and others enthuse that everybody was welcome, they mean matrons and stenographers, executives, artists and “bums,” to quote Brooks; a panorama of metropolitanism commingling over coffee and Salisbury steak. But the montage of images that accompanies Ginsburg’s assessment includes one photo of an Asian family and another of a blurry Asian man sharing a table with a white diner. The movie has photos of other nonwhite diners; they just don’t appear in this “everybody was welcome” section.The doors did appear to be open to all. Goode offers that Horn & Hardart was “a nice place where African Americans could go and feel dignified.” Powell more or less backs him up, only to have Hurwitz interrupt not with a follow-up question but to move and make an unseemly adjustment of his necktie. (He doesn’t seem amused.) On one of our regular phone calls right before she died in 2020, when she was about 90, my grandmother Martha Ann James, a lifelong Philadelphian (and dignified African American) who is very much not in this movie, rhapsodized for 20 minutes about Horn & Hardart: the coffee, the classy downtown building, the meatloaf, the affordable prices, the magnitude of welcome. (This from a woman who maintained quite a catalog of unwelcome.)So — this is not to dispute the film’s gloss on the belonging one could experience at the Automat. It’s merely to say that it is indeed a gloss. Powell remembers that part of the magic of the dining experience was the magic of the automation itself. As a boy, he knew that someone was behind that wall of food lockers — cooks, maintenance men, servers of a sort. But Hurwitz is content to let the mystery be.If anything, “The Automat” seeks to burnish the mystique — it won’t be hijacked by social politics even if the company’s stance in such matters appeared to be the right one. The movie opts for a starry, top-down vantage. We hear about the chiefs and their business decisions and, save for the late appearance of the actor and former busboy Apache Ramos, very little from or about the people behind the lockers, or even regular people who remember eating there. What we learn about the bosses is illustrative, of course. So is Hurwitz’s approach.Her determination to embody nostalgia succeeds all too well. As the film unspools Horn & Hardart’s demise, something telling happens. A person close to the company identifies a shift away from a kind of civic benevolence in its management style after its president, Edwin Daly, died in 1960. A minute later, the movie turns to Howard D. Schultz, the Starbucks founder and executive, who recalls that his first Automat experience is what made him want to be a merchant. The Horn & Hardart ethos infuses Starbucks’s, he says, beaming. You can see what he means. He then holds up a framed photograph of Automat cabinets that hangs in his office, a handsome people-free image of imprisoned pies. He, too, mentions that the place was run by magic. It’s a shame we don’t hear more about the less fancy magicians. The closest we get are rapturous accounts of the women who changed dollars into nickels without ever looking at the coins. With minutes left, Brooks goes gaga at the thought of the Automat’s coconut custard. “God made that,” he says. In this movie, He might as well have.The AutomatNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 19 minutes. In theaters. More

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      in Movies

      ‘The Conductor’ Review: Seizing the Baton

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      In this biographical documentary, Marin Alsop recounts how she became the first woman to lead a major American orchestra.When Marin Alsop became the music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in 2007, she was the first woman to lead a major orchestra in the United States. Alsop, who concluded her tenure in that position last year, recounts her life in classical music in the documentary “The Conductor,” directed by Bernadette Wegenstein. Alsop’s biography is a story of continually challenging a field in which the sexist idea that women can’t conduct persists.The only child of a cellist and a violinist, Alsop recalls being a young girl and seeing Leonard Bernstein conduct; she saw his remarks to the audience as being directed straight at her. Alsop would eventually work under the mentorship of Bernstein (shown looking animated and, frankly, oblivious to the boundaries of personal space in old video) at the Tanglewood Music Center. But much of her career required taking initiative when opportunities were denied to her.She formed an all-female, mostly string swing band. (She speaks of how the demands of the genre ran counter to the perfection classical musicians aspire to.) After being rejected from Juilliard’s conducting program (she says a teacher told her she would never conduct), she founded her own orchestra. And in Baltimore, where her selection for the job originally rankled musicians, she started a music program for children.As filmmaking, “The Conductor” takes a fairly standard approach. The most engaging portions involve music-making itself. Alsop explains her ideas about Mahler. (“There’s a reason why Mahler put every single note in the piece,” she says in voice-over, as the movie shows her on a boat in Switzerland, where she likens a mist to the opening of a Mahler symphony; her job, she continues, is to understand his motivations.) Elsewhere, musicians and pupils describe Alsop’s encouraging approach.The ConductorNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. In theaters. More

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      in Music

      Suga of BTS Tests Positive for Covid

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      SEOUL — Suga, a member of the global K-pop phenomenon BTS, has tested positive for the coronavirus, the group’s management company said on Friday.The company, Big Hit Music, said in a statement that Suga, 28, who returned to South Korea from the United States on Thursday, discovered on Friday that he was infected while in quarantine and after taking a P.C.R. test.He had tested negative before traveling to the United States, the statement said, and had received his second vaccine dose in August.Suga had no contact with the other members of BTS — RM, Jin, J-Hope, Jimin, V and Jungkook — the statement said. He was not displaying any symptoms as of Friday, and he was isolating at home, the company said.The news comes a month after another K-pop megastar, Lalisa Manoban, 24, of Blackpink, better known as Lisa, also tested positive for the coronavirus. The other members of Blackpink — Jennie, Jisoo and Rosé — tested negative for the virus, the production company, YG Entertainment, said in an emailed statement last month.Suga, the stage name for the artist Min Yoon-gi, made his debut with BTS in 2013. The Korean pop group, a multibillion-dollar act, is known for dynamic dance moves, catchy lyrics and fiercely devoted fans.In 2018, BTS became the first K-pop group to top the Billboard album chart, with “Love Yourself: Tear.” In September this year, the group gave a speech at the U.N. headquarters in New York, promoting coronavirus vaccinations and praising young people for their resiliency during the pandemic.Suga has stepped out for solo projects, sometimes performing as Agust D, and as a commercial producer. In an interview with GQ Australia that was published this week, he said: “All three are me. They each take up a third of myself, and one isn’t more reflective of me than another. I simply give people a choice. These three sides of myself are incredibly different, so I’m giving people a choice to see me as they want.”This week, Billboard’s Charts reported that Suga and Juice WRLD, the stage name for the artist Jarad A. Higgins, had the best-selling song in the United States with “Girl of My Dreams,” the first time a song by either artist to hit No. 1 on any chart, according to Yahoo News. Juice WRLD died in December 2019, and the song is part of the artist’s posthumous album, “Fighting Demons.”John Yoon More

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      in Movies

      ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ Breaks Franchise Records and Brings Hope to Box Offices

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      After nearly two years of lackluster box office sales for theatrical releases, Spidey breaks through to do what superheroes are supposed to do.LOS ANGELES — For nearly two years, ever since the pandemic brought moviegoing to a halt, Hollywood has been consumed with a creeping dread. What if the movies never bounce back? What if the naysayers writing big-screen epitaphs are right?So the sense of relief — elation — that washed through the movie capital over the weekend, as “Spider-Man: No Way Home” arrived to sensational ticket sales, was palpable. “Have you seen The Daily Bugle headline?” Thomas E. Rothman, Sony’s movie chairman, said by phone, referring to the tabloid newspaper in the Spider-Man comics. “Spidey Saves the Day!”“No Way Home” collected an estimated $253 million at theaters in the United States and Canada, according to Comscore, which compiles box office data. Not only did more than 20 million people leave their homes to see a blockbuster movie, prying themselves away from their streaming services, but they faced down the Omicron variant to do it — a reflection, box office analysts said, of the film’s novel “multiverse” storytelling, a pent-up desire to be part of a big cultural moment, and, perhaps, weariness with the impingement of the pandemic on their lives.It was the highest opening-weekend result in the 19-year history of the eight-film, live-action Spider-Man franchise. And it was the third-highest in the overall Hollywood history books, behind “Avengers: Endgame” ($357 million) and “Avengers: Infinity War” ($258 million).Some theaters in the New York area, where infection rates have been skyrocketing, played “No Way Home” to sold-out crowds. In contrast, Omicron has cast a shadow on numerous other cultural offerings, from the Rockettes’ canceling the remainder of their holiday run to Broadway shows’ missing performances to an abrupt decision by “Saturday Night Live” to forgo a live audience.Explore the Marvel Cinematic UniverseThe popular franchise of superhero films and television series continues to expand. ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’: The web slinger is back with the latest installment of the “Spider-Man” series.‘Hawkeye’: Jeremy Renner returns to the role of Clint Barton, the wisecracking marksman of the Avengers, in the Disney+ mini-series.‘Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings’: The superhero originated in comics filled with racist stereotypes. The movie knocked them down.‘Eternals’: The two-and-a-half-hour epic introduces nearly a dozen new characters, hopping back and forth through time.No movie has managed more than $90 million in domestic opening-weekend sales since “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker” in 2019, according to Comscore. (Sony-produced “Venom: Let There be Carnage” collected $90 million over its first three days in October. Like “No Way Home,” the “Venom” sequel played exclusively in theaters, with no simultaneous streaming option.)“We can legitimately say that we’re in recovery mode,” Mark Zoradi, chief executive of Cinemark, one of North America’s largest multiplex chains, said by phone. He added, “This is a major shot in the arm. I think it’s going to propel a satisfying Christmas season.” Cinemark, which, like other chains, has implemented wide-ranging safety protocols, said on Friday that “No Way Home” delivered the company’s biggest opening-night gross ever.IMAX’s chief executive, Richard L. Gelfond, called “No Way Home” ticket sales “an emphatic reminder of the unique power of the theatrical experience.” IMAX had its best weekend since 2019.“No Way Home,” directed by Jon Watts and re-teaming Tom Holland as Peter Parker and Zendaya as MJ, collected an additional $334.2 million overseas, according to Sony. The studio said the film’s $587.2 million worldwide total was a record for its primary division, Columbia Pictures, which was founded in 1918.“No Way Home” cost Sony and Disney at least $200 million to make, not including the price of a megawatt marketing campaign.Movie theaters continue to face enormous obstacles, of course, not the least of which is the Omicron coronavirus variant, which has prompted a global surge of infections and tightened safety measures. “The ‘Spider-Man’ numbers are sensational, but until Covid recedes and is considered something like the flu, the business is not out of the woods,” David A. Gross, who runs the film consultancy Franchise Entertainment Research, said in an email.Look no further than “Nightmare Alley,” a lavish noir thriller with an all-star cast that arrived in 2,145 North American theaters on Friday. It collected a disastrous $3 million, a result that Mr. Gross called “a reminder of the parts of the business that are still broken.” Directed and co-written by Guillermo del Toro, “Nightmare Alley” cost Searchlight Pictures, which is owned by Disney, an estimated $60 million to make.Movies aimed at older moviegoers — “Nightmare Alley,” “West Side Story,” “King Richard,” “The Last Duel” — have been struggling at the box office, held back in part because older women, in particular, remain concerned about the coronavirus, analysts say. In addition, audiences do not seem to be in the mood for dark and dour, and “Nightmare Alley” is pitch black.The long-brewing concern that superhero sequels and other fantasy spectacles are pushing more modest films out of theaters gained another proof point over the weekend. Steve Buck, the chief strategy officer for EntTelligence, a research firm, said that “No Way Home” represented 90 percent of film attendance overall; 62 percent of the seats at North American cinemas were dedicated to the movie, which played in 4,336 domestic locations.Ticket buyers gave “No Way Home” a rare A-plus grade in CinemaScore exit polls, an indication that word of mouth will be strong and the film will continue to generate large sums in the weeks to come. The stretch between Christmas and New Year’s Day is traditionally the busiest moviegoing period of the year.Like the “Avengers” movies, “No Way Home” features characters and story lines pulled together from multiple prior movies, turning the film into a can’t-miss event for fans. “No Way Home” finds Peter Parker enlisting Doctor Strange’s help. But a spell goes terribly wrong, tearing a hole in the universe that releases — spoiler alert — villains and Spideys from earlier films. The cast includes Tobey Maguire, Andrew Garfield, Jamie Foxx, Alfred Molina and Willem Dafoe, who returns as the Green Goblin.“This is a radical approach to a superhero movie, one never tried before, and fans are responding to that creative risk,” Rothman said. “To succeed in this marketplace, movies must be great. Not good — great.” More

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      in Theater

      ‘Selling Kabul’ Holds Up a New Mirror After the Taliban Takeover

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      Sylvia Khoury’s play, which takes place over one night in Afghanistan in 2013, has only deepened after a pandemic postponement.In March 2020, “Selling Kabul” was just two weeks from starting previews when the theater industry suddenly went dark.The set — a modest living room in the Afghan capital — sat empty for over 19 months, another abandoned apartment in Midtown Manhattan. Still, the cast and crew stayed in touch, regularly video chatting and sharing their ongoing research.But in August, when the United States ended its longest war and the Taliban took over, their conversations changed. What did their play mean now, in this new geopolitical reality? Had their duty to their characters changed? What memories and frustrations would audiences now be bringing to the performance?“We were in almost daily contact about the changing situation in Afghanistan,” the director, Tyne Rafaeli, said, “and starting to understand and analyze how that changing situation was going to affect our play.”Sylvia Khoury, the playwright, also wrestled with the new resonance of her work. Ultimately, she decided not to alter the text, wanting to honor the historical moment and the individual experiences that had generated it.“The time that we’re in really colors certain moments of the play in different ways,” Khoury said in a video interview last month after the show began previews. “I haven’t changed them. A play is a fixed thing, as history continues.”“Selling Kabul” takes place in 2013, as the Obama administration began its long withdrawal of troops. Khoury wrote it in 2015, after speaking with several interpreters waiting for Special Immigrant Visas. And because that visa program, created by Congress to give refuge to Afghans and Iraqis who helped the U.S. military, requires rigorous vetting, many have been stuck in bureaucratic limbo for years. Now many American allies and partners remain in the country, potentially vulnerable to Taliban reprisals.“That time elapsed really speaks to a profound moral failure,” Khoury said. “That time elapsing, in itself, really showed us our own shame.”“Selling Kabul,” a Playwrights Horizons production that opened earlier this month and is scheduled to close Dec. 23, shines a light on the human cost of America’s foreign conflicts. It neither reprimands its audience nor offers catharsis. Instead, Khoury delivers an intense, intimate look at four people caught in a web of impossible choices.“If I still bit my nails I would have no nails left now,” Alexis Soloski wrote in her review for The New York Times..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-1g3vlj0{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1g3vlj0{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-1g3vlj0 strong{font-weight:600;}.css-1g3vlj0 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1g3vlj0{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0.25rem;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}In the play, Taroon, who was an interpreter for the U.S. military, is waiting for a promised visa. He has just become a father — his wife had their son just before the play starts — but he cannot be with them. He’s in hiding at his sister Afiya’s apartment, where he has been holed up for four months hoping to evade the Taliban. But on this evening, they seem to be growing closer and closer.Taroon has to leave Kabul. And he has to leave soon.“A play is a fixed thing, as history continues,” the playwright Sylvia Khoury said about her decision not to update her play after the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in August.Elias Williams for The New York Times“Beyond the headlines, this play homes in on the detail, the intense detail of how this foreign policy affects these four people, on this day, in this apartment,” Rafaeli said.Told in real time, the 95-minute play is performed without an intermission. As fear intensifies and violence creeps closer, the four characters fight to keep secrets, and to keep one another alive, but they are also forced to make decisions that could endanger the others.“There’s not really one bad person, and they’re not just in a difficult circumstance; they’re in an impossible circumstance,” said Marjan Neshat, who plays Afiya. The coronavirus pandemic has changed the tone of the play, too. During an earlier run in 2019 at the Williamstown Theater Festival, audiences could only imagine Taroon’s claustrophobia. Now, they can remember. Khoury said she hopes that viewers come away with an understanding of how their individual actions can affect people they will never meet.“As Americans, we used to think it was enough to tend our own gardens,” Khoury said. “Now, I think we’re realizing: It’s not even close to enough.” Khoury wrote “Selling Kabul” while in medical school at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Pulling from conversations with Afghan interpreters, and from her own family history, she weaves a nuanced portrait of the myth of America.“No one that I ever spoke to was ever unclear that they wanted to come to America,” she said. “It was safer for them.”In the play, Afiya’s neighbor Leyla remembers the soldiers as fun, even handsome. Afiya — who speaks English better than Taroon does, despite being forced out of school when the Taliban took control in the 1990s — thinks Americans are untrustworthy. “To me, America is just the great abandoner,” said Neshat, explaining her character’s view. “Like, ‘You promised this thing that you could never fulfill. And, how dare you?’”And for Taroon, America is a promise. “America, their word is good,” he tells Afiya.When “Selling Kabul” was first performed at the Williamstown Theater Festival, Donald Trump was president. That was a laugh line. Now, there aren’t many chuckles, but Taroon’s conviction still stings.“Our word still is not good,” Khoury said. “That’s something that’s difficult to admit on this side of the political spectrum.”Dario Ladani Sanchez, left, as Taroon and Marjan Neshat as Afiya in the play at Playwrights Horizons.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesRealizing that her play might leave audience members wondering what they can do to help, Khoury started a private fund-raiser for the International Refugee Assistance Project, which will follow the play as it moves to other cities. Information about the charity is tucked inside each Playbill.“Not giving people somewhere to go after felt like a missed opportunity,” Khoury said.The playwright also held up a moral mirror to audiences in “Power Strip,” a story about Syrian refugees at a migrant camp in Greece, which debuted at Lincoln Center in 2019. In “Selling Kabul,” her characters also stand on the precipice of leaving almost everything they know.“The stories of how we left are the fabric of my childhood, from country to country, in pretty extreme circumstances,” said Khoury, who is of Lebanese and French descent, and whose family has been affected by colonial and imperial shifts across the Middle East and North Africa.“Who are you, before you leave? Who is the person who makes the decision to go?” she said, adding, “And it’s without saying goodbye, in most of the stories I know. It’s immediately. It’s taking the first truck you can.”As audiences filed out of the theater after a recent performance, one friend turned to another. Where do you think they are now? she wondered. What happened to them?For Neshat, who was born in Iran and moved to the United States when she was 8, that’s almost too painful to think about. “How do you choose between your best friend neighbor and your brother?” she said of the play’s excruciating dilemmas. “Like, how do you do that?” More