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"content": "\u003cp>[\u003cem>This piece assumes you’ve seen the first four seasons of \u003c/em>Downton Abbey\u003cem>. As to the fifth, it avoids specific spoilers, but does talk about themes and threads enough that you might be 20 percent less surprised by a couple of developments. It’s the best balance I could strike.\u003c/em>]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Let us get this out of the way right off: Particularly after its first two seasons, \u003cem>Downton Abbey \u003c/em>has been enormously uneven. It’s satisfying in some moments, dull in others, and always prone to falling so in love with a particular story beat that it cannot move past it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The season premiering in the U.S. on PBS on Sunday (and yes, lots of people still watch it on plain old television, and suggestions to the contrary say more about the limited social circle of the speaker than they do about technology) isn’t free of the repetition problem. We still find Edith in a state of angst, we still find Bates and Anna suffering nobly in the shadow of suspicion about something they didn’t do, and perhaps more interestingly, we find the widowed Mary Crawley echoing her first-season self more than ever: The selfish and insensitive edge that her relationship with Matthew smoothed down seems to have returned.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the same time, there is a theme to the season, and it’s more than “rich people and poor people under one roof” (though that’s still present) and more than “change, change, change!” (though that’s still present, too). 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Bates and Anna have long been trapped in a revolving door of misery that makes it honestly hard for them to do anything but grimace at each other, and the two suitors Mary began juggling last season felt more like cat toys than real prospects. Its best romance is barely one at all — the end of the fourth season found Mr. Carson and Mrs. Hughes lightly holding hands on the beach.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But, for instance, the loving exasperation that exists between Mrs. Patmore and Daisy is sweet and moving, as is the friendship between Tom and Mary, built largely on the unexpected single parenthood they have in common. Rob James-Collier has found nuance in Thomas Barrow, Evil Underbutler, who began as an almost pure villain and has emerged as a lonely person in pain who distracts himself with schemes. 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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We will see that love and sex — and emotions — do not end as going concerns at 40, at 50, or at 60. We will see women with grandchildren and even great-grandchildren deciding what to do about partners and friends. We will see women trying to figure out how to navigate a world of increased independence \u003cem>sort of\u003c/em>, in which they may make choices about striking out on their own at the risk of being treated as if they’re doing something impossibly silly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The show has always featured plenty of sex — after all, the first season revolved largely around a corker of a potential scandal involving a guy dying in a bed where he wasn’t supposed to be. But this is much more interesting: sex as a part of life, used to contribute to conflicts and choices, rather than sex as an oh-my-goodness thing to be concealed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What always makes \u003cem>Downton \u003c/em>so frustrating is that the show creates so many brilliant, shimmering moments of both high drama and deep feeling — it really does — while at the same time being glacially paced with regard to some stories and skittering and inattentive with others. At a macro level, it can be so very middling, while at a micro level, the performances are so spot-on and many of the relationships so sturdily built that individual scenes are as good as anything on television.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Truth be told, \u003cem>Downton \u003c/em>is much stronger with everything else than it is with romances, particularly since the departure of Dan Stevens as Matthew. Bates and Anna have long been trapped in a revolving door of misery that makes it honestly hard for them to do anything but grimace at each other, and the two suitors Mary began juggling last season felt more like cat toys than real prospects. Its best romance is barely one at all — the end of the fourth season found Mr. Carson and Mrs. Hughes lightly holding hands on the beach.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But, for instance, the loving exasperation that exists between Mrs. Patmore and Daisy is sweet and moving, as is the friendship between Tom and Mary, built largely on the unexpected single parenthood they have in common. Rob James-Collier has found nuance in Thomas Barrow, Evil Underbutler, who began as an almost pure villain and has emerged as a lonely person in pain who distracts himself with schemes. And the way Mary and Edith bring out each other’s worst qualities is sad and aggravating, but feels specific and earned.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I haven’t yet seen the Christmas special that caps the season, but I’ve seen the rest of it, and I did enjoy it quite a bit more than some recent chunks of the show. Maggie Smith blessedly has more to do than drop one-liners (though she does that too, of course), and there’s happily very little talk about the estate, for those of you who (like me) have been long bored by that. There is still a theme of change, certainly, but it’s expressed in the changes in particular people’s lives, as well as in general observations about things like the dwindling number of servants. Yes, you still are asked to invest in the lives of the very wealthy, but you’re asked to invest more in them as people, and less in them as Keepers Of A Certain Way Of Life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are moments in which people frustrated by the show’s tendency to move in lazy circles will say “Good grief, \u003cem>not this again\u003c/em>.” But there are also sneaky touches that reminded me, at least, of why I have at times enjoyed \u003cem>Downton \u003c/em>so much. \u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2015 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=The+Madly+Uneven+%27Downton+Abbey%27+Turns+Its+Eye+From+Money+To+Sex&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Paul Thomas Anderson probably wouldn’t take kindly to being called a period filmmaker. And it’s true that one of our finest pulse-takers of the American predicament is so much more than that. Anderson’s movies track warped obsessives who come to define the particular times and places from which they get the tarnished American Dreams they pursue.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But he is period-perfect, in part because he knows the terrain. In the fabulous \u003cem>Boogie Nights\u003c/em>, set in the booming 1970s porn-film industry in the San Fernando Valley where he grew up, Anderson captured the feel of a Southern California blessedly devoid of the usual Rodeo Drive shoppers or psychics hawking horoscopes on the Venice boardwalk. For him, noir visits nobodies who look like Adam Sandler or William H. Macy in sunny suburbs of Los Angeles County. Or, as in his new comedy, at the beach in the early 1970s, in the strange interregnum between the hippie moment and the “me” decade.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>http://youtu.be/OUZgOQ186-A\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Inherent Vice\u003c/em> unfolds in a period so mangled and maligned by Monday-morning cultural quarterbacking, it may never emerge from self-parody. It needs an interpretive revisit from Anderson. But where \u003cem>Boogie Nights \u003c/em>was an exuberant homage to the loony vitality of a community of hacks convinced they were making art, \u003cem>Inherent Vice\u003c/em> addresses a time that vitality forgot. Based on a 2009 novel by Thomas Pynchon, the action — an endless round of one step forward, two steps back, and wilting in place — rambles along in one of the countless beach towns that spread along the coast of Los Angeles. Such places, Manhattan or Redondo or Huntington Beach, became a haven for a backwash of refugees from a counterculture that promised freedom and creativity, then collapsed into apathy, disillusion and paranoia.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Spinning his wheels in this weird vacuum, we find private investigator and round-the-clock stoner Doc Sportello, who’s not a big stretch for Joaquin Phoenix, a vision in mutton-chop whiskers and unfortunate hair. In his vacant fashion, Doc is looking for his vanished ex-girlfriend Shasta (Katherine Waterston, wistful and full of seductive cunning), who came to him for help after getting mixed up with a shady real estate developer (Eric Roberts).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Following her trail, Doc tangles with a huge cast of strange bedfellows played by big movie stars in funny garb. Ideology has imploded. Black nationalists keep murky company with suited-up FBI agents, who may or may not be in cahoots with the police, represented (“after a long day of civil rights violations”) by a very funny Josh Brolin in a sensationally horrid buzz cut. There will be heroin, for sure. There may or may not be a cartel called Golden Fang. Beyond that, is someone out to get Doc or is it all in his addled head, suspended between a permanent high, grief for lost love, and the billowing paranoia he shares with everyone he meets?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Anderson gets so much contextually right here: The dreadful threads in which orange prevails, the red vinyl couches and mauve rug wallpaper; the bizarre, made-up names like Japonica, Sortilege, Shasta; the Ouija boards, the quacks and “spiritual coaches” fleecing customers with nothing left to prop them up but the tattered remnants of Eastern religions. Jonny Greenwood’s score, along with a soundtrack heavy with Neil Young, match the mood of low-key confusion punctuated with despair.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That may be the problem. I love Anderson’s ambition, but it is awfully hard to make a movie about a culture adrift that doesn’t make its audience feel the same. \u003cem>Inherent Vice\u003c/em> runs a punishing 148 minutes, not enough of which are funny or sad enough to hold us. The action bends this way and that; there are far too many reaction shots of Doc staring out of his undeniably beautiful violet eyes or pulling on a toke.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Anderson tries to pull together the rambling dialogue and looping plot with a voice-over by Doc’s assistant (Joanna Newsom). But not every American tale has to approach epic, and as hard as it must have been to live through Doc’s nebulous moment, seeing it through from inside his head sometimes feels like forever. \u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=The+1970s%2C+Ugly+And+Adrift+In+%27Inherent+Vice%27&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Paul Thomas Anderson probably wouldn’t take kindly to being called a period filmmaker. And it’s true that one of our finest pulse-takers of the American predicament is so much more than that. Anderson’s movies track warped obsessives who come to define the particular times and places from which they get the tarnished American Dreams they pursue.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But he is period-perfect, in part because he knows the terrain. In the fabulous \u003cem>Boogie Nights\u003c/em>, set in the booming 1970s porn-film industry in the San Fernando Valley where he grew up, Anderson captured the feel of a Southern California blessedly devoid of the usual Rodeo Drive shoppers or psychics hawking horoscopes on the Venice boardwalk. For him, noir visits nobodies who look like Adam Sandler or William H. Macy in sunny suburbs of Los Angeles County. Or, as in his new comedy, at the beach in the early 1970s, in the strange interregnum between the hippie moment and the “me” decade.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/OUZgOQ186-A'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/OUZgOQ186-A'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>Inherent Vice\u003c/em> unfolds in a period so mangled and maligned by Monday-morning cultural quarterbacking, it may never emerge from self-parody. It needs an interpretive revisit from Anderson. But where \u003cem>Boogie Nights \u003c/em>was an exuberant homage to the loony vitality of a community of hacks convinced they were making art, \u003cem>Inherent Vice\u003c/em> addresses a time that vitality forgot. Based on a 2009 novel by Thomas Pynchon, the action — an endless round of one step forward, two steps back, and wilting in place — rambles along in one of the countless beach towns that spread along the coast of Los Angeles. Such places, Manhattan or Redondo or Huntington Beach, became a haven for a backwash of refugees from a counterculture that promised freedom and creativity, then collapsed into apathy, disillusion and paranoia.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Spinning his wheels in this weird vacuum, we find private investigator and round-the-clock stoner Doc Sportello, who’s not a big stretch for Joaquin Phoenix, a vision in mutton-chop whiskers and unfortunate hair. In his vacant fashion, Doc is looking for his vanished ex-girlfriend Shasta (Katherine Waterston, wistful and full of seductive cunning), who came to him for help after getting mixed up with a shady real estate developer (Eric Roberts).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Following her trail, Doc tangles with a huge cast of strange bedfellows played by big movie stars in funny garb. Ideology has imploded. Black nationalists keep murky company with suited-up FBI agents, who may or may not be in cahoots with the police, represented (“after a long day of civil rights violations”) by a very funny Josh Brolin in a sensationally horrid buzz cut. There will be heroin, for sure. There may or may not be a cartel called Golden Fang. Beyond that, is someone out to get Doc or is it all in his addled head, suspended between a permanent high, grief for lost love, and the billowing paranoia he shares with everyone he meets?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Anderson gets so much contextually right here: The dreadful threads in which orange prevails, the red vinyl couches and mauve rug wallpaper; the bizarre, made-up names like Japonica, Sortilege, Shasta; the Ouija boards, the quacks and “spiritual coaches” fleecing customers with nothing left to prop them up but the tattered remnants of Eastern religions. Jonny Greenwood’s score, along with a soundtrack heavy with Neil Young, match the mood of low-key confusion punctuated with despair.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That may be the problem. I love Anderson’s ambition, but it is awfully hard to make a movie about a culture adrift that doesn’t make its audience feel the same. \u003cem>Inherent Vice\u003c/em> runs a punishing 148 minutes, not enough of which are funny or sad enough to hold us. The action bends this way and that; there are far too many reaction shots of Doc staring out of his undeniably beautiful violet eyes or pulling on a toke.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Anderson tries to pull together the rambling dialogue and looping plot with a voice-over by Doc’s assistant (Joanna Newsom). But not every American tale has to approach epic, and as hard as it must have been to live through Doc’s nebulous moment, seeing it through from inside his head sometimes feels like forever. \u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=The+1970s%2C+Ugly+And+Adrift+In+%27Inherent+Vice%27&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "An Updated 'Annie' And The Tradition Of Nontraditional Casting",
"headTitle": "An Updated ‘Annie’ And The Tradition Of Nontraditional Casting | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>That lovable moppet with the red dress, the curly hair, the big dog, and the even bigger voice is back.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This time, though, Little Orphan Annie is back with a difference: Quvenzhane Wallis is playing an African-American orphan in an ethnically diverse, up-to-date world. And that got us thinking about other instances where producers have breathed fresh life into familiar shows by making them dance to a new beat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>http://youtu.be/F6lNi7cZ-Ho\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the late 1960s, after 1,500 performances, Broadway’s \u003cem>Hello Dolly!\u003c/em> was still arguably “glowin'” and “crowin'” but was no longer “goin’ strong.” Carol Channing had long since departed with a touring company. And her first three replacements on the Great White Way — Ginger Rogers, Bette Grable and Martha Raye — had been playing to ever-diminishing crowds. Newer shows like \u003cem>Man of La Mancha\u003c/em> and \u003cem>Cabaret\u003c/em> were making \u003cem>Dolly\u003c/em> seem old hat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then producer David Merrick figured out how to make \u003cem>Dolly \u003c/em>the freshest face on the block. He hired not just a new star, but a whole new cast. A whole new black cast, at the height of the civil rights movement — Pearl Bailey, Cab Calloway, even a youngster named Morgan Freeman making his Broadway debut — and suddenly, his tired old warhorse looked new again\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Merrick was clear about one thing: This bright cartoon of a show was still a celebration of Yonkers, not Harlem — African-American only in casting, not in sensibility. What you saw with Pearl Bailey was what you’d seen with Carol Channing, and that seemed to please audiences, who lined up around the block.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Recasting an established show with performers of color was not a new idea in 1967. Broadway had done it before, though usually working a few changes on the original to justify the casting. Producer Billy Rose, for instance, was envious when \u003cem>Porgy and Bess\u003c/em> became a huge success in the 1930s for one of his competitors. How could he get a piece of that action? Maybe by adapting the opera \u003cem>Carmen\u003c/em> for a black Broadway cast. He hired Oscar Hammerstein, fresh from writing lyrics for \u003cem>Oklahoma,\u003c/em> to move the story from 19th-century Spain to the segregated American South, where the leading lady — now named Carmen Jones — worked in a World War II parachute factory. Happily she still sang music by Georges Bizet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Carmen Jones\u003c/em> qualified as a thoughtful reworking of its source material in terms of story. But not all producers have the patience for that. Some just update the orchestrations — a revival of \u003cem>Guys and Dolls \u003c/em>in the 1970s started out with Broadway brass, but quickly let you know that it was a disco era staging partly financed by Motown.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Didn’t take long for audiences to figure out that was not a good idea. Other revivals, though, have taken far greater liberties. Gilbert and Sullivan’s \u003cem>Mikado,\u003c/em> for instance, had sounded the same for 40 years. Then in the 1930s, an all-black \u003cem>Swing Mikado\u003c/em> and a mostly black \u003cem>Hot Mikado,\u003c/em> starring Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, started bopping to a different, swinging beat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Call this a case of cultural bait and switch if you like, but note that it does not seriously alter the original. At least, not the way \u003cem>Romeo and Juliet\u003c/em> was altered when it was both musicalized and Hispanicized as \u003cem>West Side Story\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Leaving the script alone, but hiring actors of color to play roles that usually go to white performers — “nontraditional” casting — has long been a stage tradition, not just in musicals, but in straight plays too. That tradition put a 20-year-old kid named Orson Welles on the map when he first leapt from acting to directing, with a production that became known as his “voodoo” \u003cem>Macbeth\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When Welles re-imagined Shakespeare’s Scottish tragedy in a Caribbean jungle, he envisioned a stage full of so many black characters, New York didn’t have enough professional black actors to play them. Didn’t matter — even with a largely amateur cast, the show electrified audiences and got raves from all but one of the city’s major critics. The one pan, though, by the \u003cem>Herald Tribune\u003c/em>‘s Percy Hammond, apparently distressed the cast, prompting one of the show’s African drummers to lay an elaborate voodoo curse on the reviewer. Welles reportedly found this amusing … until Hammond dropped dead of a heart attack 48 hours later.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Happier reviews — and happily, no deaths — have greeted non-Shakespearean examples of nontraditional casting, like James Earl Jones playing Big Daddy in \u003cem>Cat on a Hot Tin Roof\u003c/em> and Ruby Dee as the matriarch in an African-American \u003cem>Glass Menagerie\u003c/em>. And what works onstage has also worked on-screen. Rob Lowe and Jim Belushi were buddies in the film comedy \u003cem>About Last Night\u003c/em> in 1986.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Flash forward a couple of decades to this year, with Michael Ealy and Kevin Hart headlining an updated \u003cem>About Last Night\u003c/em>. The new one is set in Los Angeles and is a raucous good time, which the sweeter, sultrier Chicago-based original mostly was not. Diff’rent strokes as it were, and proof that Hollywood can work some interesting variations on the remake game. Which is certainly what’s happening in the updated \u003cem>Annie\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The new version isn’t just pleasantly diverse in its casting; it’s been pretty thoroughly rethought — little things like including recycling in the orphanage cleanup number “A Hard Knock Life,” and bigger things like having Annie’s benefactor be not a disinterested Daddy Warbucks but a billionaire turned politician who’s been told by his campaign manager that the photogenic foster kid will bring him higher poll numbers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In short, this is not just a matter of changing the racial makeup of a few characters. Yes, there is nontraditional casting, and no, the new \u003cem>Annie\u003c/em> is not a full-fledged rewrite, like \u003cem>The Wiz\u003c/em> was of \u003cem>The Wizard of Oz\u003c/em>. Instead, it occupies an intriguing middle ground, teasing new values from a show that had once traded mostly in nostalgia.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What kind of new values? Well, specifically smart ones: The story now starts in a classroom and ends with the founding of a literacy center. How’s that for a declaration that the intent is to smarten things up? And by listing Jay Z as one of their producers, the filmmakers are also signaling that their smartening will not sound like warmed-over Broadway. \u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=An+Updated+%27Annie%27+And+The+Tradition+Of+Nontraditional+Casting&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>That lovable moppet with the red dress, the curly hair, the big dog, and the even bigger voice is back.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This time, though, Little Orphan Annie is back with a difference: Quvenzhane Wallis is playing an African-American orphan in an ethnically diverse, up-to-date world. And that got us thinking about other instances where producers have breathed fresh life into familiar shows by making them dance to a new beat.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/F6lNi7cZ-Ho'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/F6lNi7cZ-Ho'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>In the late 1960s, after 1,500 performances, Broadway’s \u003cem>Hello Dolly!\u003c/em> was still arguably “glowin'” and “crowin'” but was no longer “goin’ strong.” Carol Channing had long since departed with a touring company. And her first three replacements on the Great White Way — Ginger Rogers, Bette Grable and Martha Raye — had been playing to ever-diminishing crowds. Newer shows like \u003cem>Man of La Mancha\u003c/em> and \u003cem>Cabaret\u003c/em> were making \u003cem>Dolly\u003c/em> seem old hat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then producer David Merrick figured out how to make \u003cem>Dolly \u003c/em>the freshest face on the block. He hired not just a new star, but a whole new cast. A whole new black cast, at the height of the civil rights movement — Pearl Bailey, Cab Calloway, even a youngster named Morgan Freeman making his Broadway debut — and suddenly, his tired old warhorse looked new again\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Merrick was clear about one thing: This bright cartoon of a show was still a celebration of Yonkers, not Harlem — African-American only in casting, not in sensibility. What you saw with Pearl Bailey was what you’d seen with Carol Channing, and that seemed to please audiences, who lined up around the block.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Recasting an established show with performers of color was not a new idea in 1967. Broadway had done it before, though usually working a few changes on the original to justify the casting. Producer Billy Rose, for instance, was envious when \u003cem>Porgy and Bess\u003c/em> became a huge success in the 1930s for one of his competitors. How could he get a piece of that action? Maybe by adapting the opera \u003cem>Carmen\u003c/em> for a black Broadway cast. He hired Oscar Hammerstein, fresh from writing lyrics for \u003cem>Oklahoma,\u003c/em> to move the story from 19th-century Spain to the segregated American South, where the leading lady — now named Carmen Jones — worked in a World War II parachute factory. Happily she still sang music by Georges Bizet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Carmen Jones\u003c/em> qualified as a thoughtful reworking of its source material in terms of story. But not all producers have the patience for that. Some just update the orchestrations — a revival of \u003cem>Guys and Dolls \u003c/em>in the 1970s started out with Broadway brass, but quickly let you know that it was a disco era staging partly financed by Motown.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Didn’t take long for audiences to figure out that was not a good idea. Other revivals, though, have taken far greater liberties. Gilbert and Sullivan’s \u003cem>Mikado,\u003c/em> for instance, had sounded the same for 40 years. Then in the 1930s, an all-black \u003cem>Swing Mikado\u003c/em> and a mostly black \u003cem>Hot Mikado,\u003c/em> starring Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, started bopping to a different, swinging beat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Call this a case of cultural bait and switch if you like, but note that it does not seriously alter the original. At least, not the way \u003cem>Romeo and Juliet\u003c/em> was altered when it was both musicalized and Hispanicized as \u003cem>West Side Story\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Leaving the script alone, but hiring actors of color to play roles that usually go to white performers — “nontraditional” casting — has long been a stage tradition, not just in musicals, but in straight plays too. That tradition put a 20-year-old kid named Orson Welles on the map when he first leapt from acting to directing, with a production that became known as his “voodoo” \u003cem>Macbeth\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When Welles re-imagined Shakespeare’s Scottish tragedy in a Caribbean jungle, he envisioned a stage full of so many black characters, New York didn’t have enough professional black actors to play them. Didn’t matter — even with a largely amateur cast, the show electrified audiences and got raves from all but one of the city’s major critics. The one pan, though, by the \u003cem>Herald Tribune\u003c/em>‘s Percy Hammond, apparently distressed the cast, prompting one of the show’s African drummers to lay an elaborate voodoo curse on the reviewer. Welles reportedly found this amusing … until Hammond dropped dead of a heart attack 48 hours later.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Happier reviews — and happily, no deaths — have greeted non-Shakespearean examples of nontraditional casting, like James Earl Jones playing Big Daddy in \u003cem>Cat on a Hot Tin Roof\u003c/em> and Ruby Dee as the matriarch in an African-American \u003cem>Glass Menagerie\u003c/em>. And what works onstage has also worked on-screen. Rob Lowe and Jim Belushi were buddies in the film comedy \u003cem>About Last Night\u003c/em> in 1986.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Flash forward a couple of decades to this year, with Michael Ealy and Kevin Hart headlining an updated \u003cem>About Last Night\u003c/em>. The new one is set in Los Angeles and is a raucous good time, which the sweeter, sultrier Chicago-based original mostly was not. Diff’rent strokes as it were, and proof that Hollywood can work some interesting variations on the remake game. Which is certainly what’s happening in the updated \u003cem>Annie\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The new version isn’t just pleasantly diverse in its casting; it’s been pretty thoroughly rethought — little things like including recycling in the orphanage cleanup number “A Hard Knock Life,” and bigger things like having Annie’s benefactor be not a disinterested Daddy Warbucks but a billionaire turned politician who’s been told by his campaign manager that the photogenic foster kid will bring him higher poll numbers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In short, this is not just a matter of changing the racial makeup of a few characters. Yes, there is nontraditional casting, and no, the new \u003cem>Annie\u003c/em> is not a full-fledged rewrite, like \u003cem>The Wiz\u003c/em> was of \u003cem>The Wizard of Oz\u003c/em>. Instead, it occupies an intriguing middle ground, teasing new values from a show that had once traded mostly in nostalgia.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What kind of new values? Well, specifically smart ones: The story now starts in a classroom and ends with the founding of a literacy center. How’s that for a declaration that the intent is to smarten things up? And by listing Jay Z as one of their producers, the filmmakers are also signaling that their smartening will not sound like warmed-over Broadway. \u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=An+Updated+%27Annie%27+And+The+Tradition+Of+Nontraditional+Casting&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Chris Rock has been on a tear — a widely shared \u003ca href=\"http://www.vulture.com/2014/11/chris-rock-frank-rich-in-conversation.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">interview\u003c/a> with Frank Rich in \u003cem>New York Magazine\u003c/em>, a widely shared guest \u003ca href=\"http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/top-five-filmmaker-chris-rock-753223\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">column\u003c/a> in \u003cem>The Hollywood Reporter\u003c/em>, interviews with Audie Cornish on \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2014/12/05/368723685/chris-rock-on-standup-sellouts-and-defining-success\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">All Things Considered\u003c/a>, Terry Gross on \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/2014/12/08/368753758/chris-rock-on-finding-the-line-between-funny-and-too-far\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Fresh Air\u003c/a> and Jesse Thorn on \u003ca href=\"http://www.maximumfun.org/bullseye/bullseye-jesse-thorn-chris-rock-john-cleese-scott-aukerman\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Bullseye\u003c/a>. And those are just a few of the many conversations he’s had surrounding the release of his new film, \u003cem>Top Five\u003c/em>, which he wrote and directed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>http://youtu.be/jejCmmawzLY\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a lot of those discussions, Rock has had a lot to say about race in Hollywood, race in general, the atmosphere surrounding comedy, the intersection of some of these things with gender and class, and a whole lot of other pretty provocative things. So it might be that I went into the film primed to be more interested in what it had to say about the industry than in its central love story.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Top Five \u003c/em>follows a comic movie star, Andre Allen (Rock), as he spends a day being interviewed by Chelsea, a beautiful reporter from \u003cem>The New York Times\u003c/em>, played by Rosario Dawson. Early on, they have a fascinating and tense relationship, marked by distrust and the blend of false and real intimacy that develops as she interviews him for her story. Allen is about to marry a Bravo reality star (Gabrielle Union) in a splashy, highly publicized event, and he’s simultaneously promoting his first serious film, a drama about a slave rebellion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The best parts of the film lie in its industry satire: its portrayal of the terrible rote interviews that take place at junkets, its sharp eye for the bad questions asked by lazy entertainment reporters, and little details like the satellite radio engineer — played by straight-up genius Brian Regan — who tries to goad Allen into being more painfully wacky while doing station promos. Rock is great at giving Andre’s frustration a genuinely pained edge, alternately funny and not, and that comes both from his performance and from his careful maintenance, as the director, of the balance in the film’s tone between goofy comedy and a comedic presentation of some of the same observed and thoughtful criticism he’s been offering in the press in recent weeks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Along the way, there are quite a number of good performers in small roles, including but certainly not limited to Kevin Hart and J.B. Smoove as members of Andre’s team, Cedric the Entertainer as a guy he encounters at a particularly bad time, and few folks playing themselves with gusto in cameos. Gabrielle Union is both very funny and oddly sympathetic as a woman whose life has become a gross pageant she now believes it only makes sense to continue making.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What’s disappointing is that what begins as an unconventional relationship of uneasy respect between Andre and Chelsea eventually turns, as I kept hoping it wouldn’t, into a much more conventional and much less interesting road to possible romance. Her boyfriend is dispensed with by way of a hackneyed plot device, and the two of them then are given a thoroughly implausible reason to fight, and by the end, it felt like the movie Rock cared about more had been abandoned in favor of this story that doesn’t have nearly the same tension or attention to detail. Dawson is excellent, particularly in the early scenes: their chemistry is such that just the two of them talking would be a perfectly good movie, like \u003cem>Before Sunrise. \u003c/em>But something is gradually lost as she becomes a much more run-of-the-mill love interest with much less to say.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To be clear, Rock doesn’t have a special obligation to do social criticism in his movie just because he’s been doing it in the press; it’s more that the film gets all its energy from satire that’s strong in the beginning and loses steam as he goes. And the romance that’s ramped up to provide the movie with a direction in its final act is conventional and undercooked.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s fun to watch Chris Rock; it’s just fun. And there are parts of this film where it’s fun to watch him in exactly the ways he wants it to be. (I don’t happen to think the movie’s abundant super-raunchy jokes are as funny as it thinks they are, but opinions on that will vary.) But there is a story here about Andre’s tenuous professional and personal situation that I think I wanted to see more than I wanted to see a romance between these particular people. The movie makes for an enjoyable enough day in New York with good company, but by the end, it’s lagging. \u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=%27Top+Five%27%3A+A+Good%2C+Not+Great%2C+Day+In+New+York+With+Chris+Rock&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Chris Rock has been on a tear — a widely shared \u003ca href=\"http://www.vulture.com/2014/11/chris-rock-frank-rich-in-conversation.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">interview\u003c/a> with Frank Rich in \u003cem>New York Magazine\u003c/em>, a widely shared guest \u003ca href=\"http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/top-five-filmmaker-chris-rock-753223\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">column\u003c/a> in \u003cem>The Hollywood Reporter\u003c/em>, interviews with Audie Cornish on \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2014/12/05/368723685/chris-rock-on-standup-sellouts-and-defining-success\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">All Things Considered\u003c/a>, Terry Gross on \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/2014/12/08/368753758/chris-rock-on-finding-the-line-between-funny-and-too-far\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Fresh Air\u003c/a> and Jesse Thorn on \u003ca href=\"http://www.maximumfun.org/bullseye/bullseye-jesse-thorn-chris-rock-john-cleese-scott-aukerman\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Bullseye\u003c/a>. And those are just a few of the many conversations he’s had surrounding the release of his new film, \u003cem>Top Five\u003c/em>, which he wrote and directed.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/jejCmmawzLY'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/jejCmmawzLY'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>In a lot of those discussions, Rock has had a lot to say about race in Hollywood, race in general, the atmosphere surrounding comedy, the intersection of some of these things with gender and class, and a whole lot of other pretty provocative things. So it might be that I went into the film primed to be more interested in what it had to say about the industry than in its central love story.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Top Five \u003c/em>follows a comic movie star, Andre Allen (Rock), as he spends a day being interviewed by Chelsea, a beautiful reporter from \u003cem>The New York Times\u003c/em>, played by Rosario Dawson. Early on, they have a fascinating and tense relationship, marked by distrust and the blend of false and real intimacy that develops as she interviews him for her story. Allen is about to marry a Bravo reality star (Gabrielle Union) in a splashy, highly publicized event, and he’s simultaneously promoting his first serious film, a drama about a slave rebellion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The best parts of the film lie in its industry satire: its portrayal of the terrible rote interviews that take place at junkets, its sharp eye for the bad questions asked by lazy entertainment reporters, and little details like the satellite radio engineer — played by straight-up genius Brian Regan — who tries to goad Allen into being more painfully wacky while doing station promos. Rock is great at giving Andre’s frustration a genuinely pained edge, alternately funny and not, and that comes both from his performance and from his careful maintenance, as the director, of the balance in the film’s tone between goofy comedy and a comedic presentation of some of the same observed and thoughtful criticism he’s been offering in the press in recent weeks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Along the way, there are quite a number of good performers in small roles, including but certainly not limited to Kevin Hart and J.B. Smoove as members of Andre’s team, Cedric the Entertainer as a guy he encounters at a particularly bad time, and few folks playing themselves with gusto in cameos. Gabrielle Union is both very funny and oddly sympathetic as a woman whose life has become a gross pageant she now believes it only makes sense to continue making.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What’s disappointing is that what begins as an unconventional relationship of uneasy respect between Andre and Chelsea eventually turns, as I kept hoping it wouldn’t, into a much more conventional and much less interesting road to possible romance. Her boyfriend is dispensed with by way of a hackneyed plot device, and the two of them then are given a thoroughly implausible reason to fight, and by the end, it felt like the movie Rock cared about more had been abandoned in favor of this story that doesn’t have nearly the same tension or attention to detail. Dawson is excellent, particularly in the early scenes: their chemistry is such that just the two of them talking would be a perfectly good movie, like \u003cem>Before Sunrise. \u003c/em>But something is gradually lost as she becomes a much more run-of-the-mill love interest with much less to say.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To be clear, Rock doesn’t have a special obligation to do social criticism in his movie just because he’s been doing it in the press; it’s more that the film gets all its energy from satire that’s strong in the beginning and loses steam as he goes. And the romance that’s ramped up to provide the movie with a direction in its final act is conventional and undercooked.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s fun to watch Chris Rock; it’s just fun. And there are parts of this film where it’s fun to watch him in exactly the ways he wants it to be. (I don’t happen to think the movie’s abundant super-raunchy jokes are as funny as it thinks they are, but opinions on that will vary.) But there is a story here about Andre’s tenuous professional and personal situation that I think I wanted to see more than I wanted to see a romance between these particular people. The movie makes for an enjoyable enough day in New York with good company, but by the end, it’s lagging. \u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=%27Top+Five%27%3A+A+Good%2C+Not+Great%2C+Day+In+New+York+With+Chris+Rock&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Major studios once churned out scores of great-person biographical pictures. But now you rarely see them except during awards season. They’re prime Oscar bait. The new Stephen Hawking biopic, \u003cem>The Theory Of Everything,\u003c/em> is a perfect specimen. It’s a letdown, finally, but Eddie Redmayne is amazingly tough. He captures the fury inside Hawking’s twisted frame.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And then there’s \u003cem>The Imitation Game\u003c/em>, which Benedict Cumberbatch lifts far above the standard biopic formula. He’s award-caliber strange. He plays the proto-computer genius, World War II code breaker and gay martyr Alan Turing and has the perfect visage for it, with his alien reptile face and hemisphere-wide blue eyes. They could conceivably see patterns and possibilities the rest of us can’t glimpse. Human interactions are more of a challenge for Turing. Today, we might diagnose him with Asperger’s syndrome, but then he just seemed arrogant. Cumberbatch, as is his wont, gives this indifference to social niceties a comic spin in early scenes. Only later will it have a tragic dimension.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>http://youtu.be/S5CjKEFb-sM\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>The Imitation Game\u003c/em> begins in the 1950s when a police detective summons the squirrelly Turing for questioning. He thinks Turing is a spy. But Turing’s secretiveness is, of course, the result of his homosexuality, considered almost as heinous back then. The bulk of the film is a flashback to the war when the British are having their heads handed to them by the Germans. The Nazis communicate via something called the Enigma machine. And no one is close to cracking the code it generates.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cumberbatch is the one freaky touch in an otherwise conventional movie. But those conventions, in this case, work handsomely. Graham Moore’s script is smart and shapely, the direction, by Morten Tyldum, brisk. At Bletchley Park, Turing promptly alienates his colleagues, but then he finds an ally in Joan Clarke, played by Keira Knightley.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I’ve read most of the book on which \u003cem>The Imitation Game\u003c/em> is based, Andrew Hodges’s \u003cem>Alan Turing: The Enigma,\u003c/em> but the math was so far beyond me. I felt unworthy. The movie is nowhere near so complex. It streamlines the code breaking like mad and doesn’t throw enough credit to other Bletchley figures. But the gist is right. Turing spends months tinkering on a machine he calls Christopher, named for something we learn late in the film, something heartbreaking. Turing’s achievements and everything about Bletchley Park only came out three decades later. When Turing was tried for so-called deviance, no one knew he was a hero.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There’s a final scene between Turing and Joan I doubt happened, but this is a biopic. Someone in the film needs to remind him of his worth at his lowest ebb. The film’s most disturbing irony is that Turing broke the world’s toughest code, but never cracked the code of behavior that would’ve given him the life he richly deserved. \u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Benedict+Cumberbatch+Lifts+Above+Biopic+Formula+In+%27Imitation+Game%27&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Major studios once churned out scores of great-person biographical pictures. But now you rarely see them except during awards season. They’re prime Oscar bait. The new Stephen Hawking biopic, \u003cem>The Theory Of Everything,\u003c/em> is a perfect specimen. It’s a letdown, finally, but Eddie Redmayne is amazingly tough. He captures the fury inside Hawking’s twisted frame.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And then there’s \u003cem>The Imitation Game\u003c/em>, which Benedict Cumberbatch lifts far above the standard biopic formula. He’s award-caliber strange. He plays the proto-computer genius, World War II code breaker and gay martyr Alan Turing and has the perfect visage for it, with his alien reptile face and hemisphere-wide blue eyes. They could conceivably see patterns and possibilities the rest of us can’t glimpse. Human interactions are more of a challenge for Turing. Today, we might diagnose him with Asperger’s syndrome, but then he just seemed arrogant. Cumberbatch, as is his wont, gives this indifference to social niceties a comic spin in early scenes. Only later will it have a tragic dimension.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/S5CjKEFb-sM'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/S5CjKEFb-sM'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>The Imitation Game\u003c/em> begins in the 1950s when a police detective summons the squirrelly Turing for questioning. He thinks Turing is a spy. But Turing’s secretiveness is, of course, the result of his homosexuality, considered almost as heinous back then. The bulk of the film is a flashback to the war when the British are having their heads handed to them by the Germans. The Nazis communicate via something called the Enigma machine. And no one is close to cracking the code it generates.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cumberbatch is the one freaky touch in an otherwise conventional movie. But those conventions, in this case, work handsomely. Graham Moore’s script is smart and shapely, the direction, by Morten Tyldum, brisk. At Bletchley Park, Turing promptly alienates his colleagues, but then he finds an ally in Joan Clarke, played by Keira Knightley.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I’ve read most of the book on which \u003cem>The Imitation Game\u003c/em> is based, Andrew Hodges’s \u003cem>Alan Turing: The Enigma,\u003c/em> but the math was so far beyond me. I felt unworthy. The movie is nowhere near so complex. It streamlines the code breaking like mad and doesn’t throw enough credit to other Bletchley figures. But the gist is right. Turing spends months tinkering on a machine he calls Christopher, named for something we learn late in the film, something heartbreaking. Turing’s achievements and everything about Bletchley Park only came out three decades later. When Turing was tried for so-called deviance, no one knew he was a hero.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There’s a final scene between Turing and Joan I doubt happened, but this is a biopic. Someone in the film needs to remind him of his worth at his lowest ebb. The film’s most disturbing irony is that Turing broke the world’s toughest code, but never cracked the code of behavior that would’ve given him the life he richly deserved. \u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Benedict+Cumberbatch+Lifts+Above+Biopic+Formula+In+%27Imitation+Game%27&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>When producers were laying track for the \u003cem>Hunger Games\u003c/em> series years ago, they couldn’t have foreseen how discomforting author Suzanne Collins’s descriptions of a war-torn authoritarian state would look on the big screen in 2014. In \u003cem>The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part One\u003c/em>, Jennifer Lawrence witnesses and/or learns of: towns reduced to rubble, refugee camps next to mass graves, public executions of innocents with burlap sacks over their heads, law enforcement gunning down protesters in the street, and a military bombing a hospital filled with civilians. All of these images have resonance in real events of this year, generations before Collins predicted civilization would devolve into a regime that maintains control over its citizens with televised death matches.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The series has always evoked real geopolitics, but the earlier films offset those with self-parody: an abundance of purple hair and oily camera-ready suits, an outlandish imperial march composed by Arcade Fire. This playfulness is absent from \u003cem>Mockingjay\u003c/em>, which is laser-focused on the land of Panem quashing dissent by any means necessary. It’s not that the film is “too dark for kids” — that would drastically underestimate teenagers’ capabilities for darkness. It’s that this degree of nastiness doesn’t square with the empty-calories action scenes of the first two films, where nothing that happened in the Hunger Games arenas (look out! Wild monkeys!) seemed to impact the overall story.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>http://youtu.be/3PkkHsuMrho\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But maybe it’s a good thing to be more serious this time, even if the progression wasn’t gradual. “A little on-the-nose, but, of course, so is war,” remarks the dearly departed Philip Seymour Hoffman, playing an architect of the Panem resistance movement. He’s referring to a tweak he’s made to a rally song, but he could also be discussing \u003cem>Mockingjay\u003c/em> itself, how a mass appeal sci-fi franchise chooses its war imagery. In a film about the role that visual communication plays in public opinion, the on-the-nose approach is at once intriguing and exhausting. Strange to think this series used to be about archery in the wilderness.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That, anyway, is where fiery revolutionary Katniss Everdeen (Lawrence) was at the conclusion of the previous film, 2013’s \u003cem>Catching Fire\u003c/em>. Rejecting society’s pressure to kill her friends for amusement a second time, Katniss instead shot a hole in the sky, through which she has been whisked away to the super-secret underground rebel stronghold District 13. In the first two films Katniss was a pawn of Panem’s dastardly, white-bearded President Snow (Donald Sutherland, forever sneering). Sadly, she’s still a pawn, but of a nobler president, the benevolent but still white-haired District 13 leader Alma Coin (Julianne Moore, a hair too robotic). Coin needs Katniss to be her “Mockingjay,” a symbol around which to mobilize the citizens of Panem: a warrior who’s no-nonsense, yet down-to-earth. In short, she needs Katniss to be Jennifer Lawrence.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Until now, the biggest strength of the \u003cem>Hunger Games\u003c/em> series has been the careful construction of Panem, a dystopia-lover’s utopia. All the details from the first two entries were rich in cinematic absurdity, like the party where the rich gladly vomit up their food, or the gaudy stage sets that accompany Stanley Tucci’s gleeful talk show host as he conducts cloying interviews with Games candidates. Having to trade such an expansive setting for a drafty underground bunker (District 13 must be sharing the lease with the Zion rebels from the \u003cem>Matrix\u003c/em> sequels) is the weakest part of \u003cem>Mockingjay\u003c/em>, along with Katniss’s friend-and-maybe-more Gale (Liam Hemsworth) and his mopey “I have feelings, too!” jealousy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There’s also no escaping the fact that this film, co-written by Collins and two others, is a stopgap designed to string audiences along one year more than the source material requires. The artificial division of a narrative for the sole purpose of making money should not normally be cause for a creative success. But somehow, chopping up \u003cem>Mockingjay\u003c/em>, a practice that has become the norm with final installments of YA series adaptations, created some happy accidents. With less material than in \u003cem>Catching Fire\u003c/em>, director Francis Lawrence is free to be contemplative, edit sequences patiently instead of frantically, and linger over small visual details like a speck of blood on Snow’s cheek after his groomer cuts his face shaving. And Jennifer Lawrence has the freedom to interact with each of her allies in more subtle ways: practiced patience with Elizabeth Banks’s fallen fashion maven Effie; steely distrust with Woody Harrelson’s rakish mentor Haymitch; sheer annoyance with her cat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Josh Hutcherson, a bit wooden in the other films, is also doing something fascinating as Peeta, Katniss’s on-camera boyfriend who was captured by Panem’s Capitol at the conclusion of \u003cem>Catching Fire\u003c/em>. For much of \u003cem>Mockingjay\u003c/em>,\u003cem> \u003c/em>we see him only via the Capitol’s authorized interviews saying questionable things about the revolution. Like Katniss, we can only guess at his current state of mind. Hutcherson’s strong, subtle performance lets us read any number of possibilities in his face and minimal line readings. That’s until the very end, when he turns chilling.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If any of this felt like Hobbiting — defined as the practice of throwing useless, fan-serving footage onscreen to bloat up a blockbuster franchise — there’d be a problem. But \u003cem>Mockingjay\u003c/em> doesn’t have that vibe, because it follows one unmistakable theme from beginning to end: an information war. Instead of physically dueling, Katniss and the Capitol fling propaganda films like projectile bombs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The chess match of public opinion is a colder, more calculated game than the testing of wilderness survival skills. Katniss, reluctant viral video star, hilariously fumbles her lines when she’s in front of a green screen leading the CGI army from a Ridley Scott movie. But she draws tears when a tattooed documentarian (\u003cem>Game of Thrones\u003c/em>‘s Natalie Dormer, who could have stepped out of a Copenhagen artist’s co-op) films her examining the rubble of her childhood home. It’s the latter footage, the on-the-nose war stuff, that drives Panem to rebel rather than change the channel to \u003cem>Where Are My Pants?\u003c/em>. Collins and the Lawrences have crossed the uncanny valley separating imagined dystopia from actual horrors, but they’re also delivering a life lesson in cinema to teens: Things are stronger when they look \u003cem>real\u003c/em>. Think about that when the Capitol beams out the next all-CGI superhero movie. \u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=It%27s+Getting+Serious+In+Panem+As+%27Mockingjay%27+Goes+Dark&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Until now, the biggest strength of the \u003cem>Hunger Games\u003c/em> series has been the careful construction of Panem, a dystopia-lover’s utopia. All the details from the first two entries were rich in cinematic absurdity, like the party where the rich gladly vomit up their food, or the gaudy stage sets that accompany Stanley Tucci’s gleeful talk show host as he conducts cloying interviews with Games candidates. Having to trade such an expansive setting for a drafty underground bunker (District 13 must be sharing the lease with the Zion rebels from the \u003cem>Matrix\u003c/em> sequels) is the weakest part of \u003cem>Mockingjay\u003c/em>, along with Katniss’s friend-and-maybe-more Gale (Liam Hemsworth) and his mopey “I have feelings, too!” jealousy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There’s also no escaping the fact that this film, co-written by Collins and two others, is a stopgap designed to string audiences along one year more than the source material requires. The artificial division of a narrative for the sole purpose of making money should not normally be cause for a creative success. But somehow, chopping up \u003cem>Mockingjay\u003c/em>, a practice that has become the norm with final installments of YA series adaptations, created some happy accidents. With less material than in \u003cem>Catching Fire\u003c/em>, director Francis Lawrence is free to be contemplative, edit sequences patiently instead of frantically, and linger over small visual details like a speck of blood on Snow’s cheek after his groomer cuts his face shaving. And Jennifer Lawrence has the freedom to interact with each of her allies in more subtle ways: practiced patience with Elizabeth Banks’s fallen fashion maven Effie; steely distrust with Woody Harrelson’s rakish mentor Haymitch; sheer annoyance with her cat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Josh Hutcherson, a bit wooden in the other films, is also doing something fascinating as Peeta, Katniss’s on-camera boyfriend who was captured by Panem’s Capitol at the conclusion of \u003cem>Catching Fire\u003c/em>. For much of \u003cem>Mockingjay\u003c/em>,\u003cem> \u003c/em>we see him only via the Capitol’s authorized interviews saying questionable things about the revolution. Like Katniss, we can only guess at his current state of mind. Hutcherson’s strong, subtle performance lets us read any number of possibilities in his face and minimal line readings. That’s until the very end, when he turns chilling.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If any of this felt like Hobbiting — defined as the practice of throwing useless, fan-serving footage onscreen to bloat up a blockbuster franchise — there’d be a problem. But \u003cem>Mockingjay\u003c/em> doesn’t have that vibe, because it follows one unmistakable theme from beginning to end: an information war. Instead of physically dueling, Katniss and the Capitol fling propaganda films like projectile bombs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The chess match of public opinion is a colder, more calculated game than the testing of wilderness survival skills. Katniss, reluctant viral video star, hilariously fumbles her lines when she’s in front of a green screen leading the CGI army from a Ridley Scott movie. But she draws tears when a tattooed documentarian (\u003cem>Game of Thrones\u003c/em>‘s Natalie Dormer, who could have stepped out of a Copenhagen artist’s co-op) films her examining the rubble of her childhood home. It’s the latter footage, the on-the-nose war stuff, that drives Panem to rebel rather than change the channel to \u003cem>Where Are My Pants?\u003c/em>. Collins and the Lawrences have crossed the uncanny valley separating imagined dystopia from actual horrors, but they’re also delivering a life lesson in cinema to teens: Things are stronger when they look \u003cem>real\u003c/em>. Think about that when the Capitol beams out the next all-CGI superhero movie. \u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=It%27s+Getting+Serious+In+Panem+As+%27Mockingjay%27+Goes+Dark&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Satirists Go Serious in 'Foxcatcher' And 'Rosewater' — And It Works",
"headTitle": "Satirists Go Serious in ‘Foxcatcher’ And ‘Rosewater’ — And It Works | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>What do you get when you mix big-deal comedians with real-life calamities? Sounds like a joke, but Steve Carell and Jon Stewart are answering that question this week in their movies \u003cem>Foxcatcher\u003c/em> and \u003cem>Rosewater.\u003c/em> And it turns out, seriousness suits them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In fact, you’ll likely do a double-take when you first see Carell’s John Dupont in \u003cem>Foxcatcher\u003c/em>. Maybe when you first hear him, too. He’s the black sheep of the wealthy gunpowder-magnate family circa 1988, and he’s all but unrecognizable behind a putty nose and a flat vocal affect that makes words and phrases emerge from him in what sound like burps.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Talking to an Olympic wrestler he’s hoping to impress, Carell’s Dupont is pasty, heavy, awkward, and when he flashes what he apparently intends as a pleasant smile, it’s downright disquieting.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mark Schultz, the gold medalist he’s inviting to train at a facility he’s built on his Pennsylvania estate, is played by Channing Tatum with a leaden affect and the wounded look of puppy who’s been kicked too often. Mark is the younger of two Olympic medalists in his family. His brother Dave, played with more grace and verve by Mark Ruffalo, has prospered since his Olympic win. Mark, who won later, stalled out quicker, and now, to escape his brother’s shadow, he signs on with Dupont, who showers him with money, sparring partners, cocaine, and inspirational speeches that sound increasingly unhinged.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I am leading men,” says Dupont. “I am giving them a dream and I am giving America hope.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A more astute man might realize his patron is … well, maybe nuts, but Tatum’s Mark isn’t the sharpest tool in the shed, and just gets himself, and later his brother, in deeper.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Director Bennett Miller is no stranger to sports or personal eccentricity in his films, having directed both \u003cem>Moneyball\u003c/em> and the Truman Capote biopic \u003cem>Capote\u003c/em>. In \u003cem>Foxcatcher\u003c/em>, Miller uses three superb performances to take us deep into a privileged world where the choreographed struggle of wrestling mixes toxically with the psychological struggles of familial disappointment. The film does not — or maybe cannot — explain the inexplicable: the acts of a mentally ill man. But it can make the plight of those in that man’s orbit profoundly anguishing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You might expect anguish from \u003cem>Rosewater\u003c/em>, a film drawn by Jon Stewart from BBC journalist Maziar Bahari’s book about surviving solitary confinement in an Iranian prison. But while the film can be unnerving as it details the dangers of reporting on opposition demonstrators after Iran’s elections, it’s also steeped in the sort of humor you’d expect from Stewart, who both wrote and directed the movie. In fact, Stewart’s connection with the story was more than moderately intimate: A \u003cem>Daily Show\u003c/em> interview done by the real Bahari was used against him in jail. Stewart has actor Gael Garcia Bernal re-enact it with Jason Jones.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Funny to American ears, the sketch, in which Jones claims to be a spy, becomes less funny when Bahari’s thrown in prison four days after it airs, and has to defend himself to an interrogator as “just a journalist.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The interrogator — an excellent Kim Bodnia — calls up the interview on his computer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Can you tell me,” he wonders, “why ‘just-a-journalist’ would meet up with an American spy?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bahari, laughing, tells him it’s a comedy show, that Jones is a comedian pretending to be a spy, but that doesn’t even blunt the line of questioning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“So can you tell me why an American pretending to be a spy has chosen to interview you?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jon Stewart took several months off from Comedy Central to make this movie last year, and painful as that sabbatical may have been for fans, it turns out to have been worthwhile. \u003cem>Rosewater\u003c/em> (the title references the cologne by which the usually blindfolded Bahari recognizes the interrogator) has an urgency that’s all about the storytelling smarts of its first-time writer-director. It’s also got first-rate acting, the nuance about media manipulation you’d expect from Stewart, and even cinematic grace notes, as when Bernal, in a burst of antic feeling after months of isolation, dances in his cell, remembering a Leonard Cohen song his sister played for him as a child.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Rosewater\u003c/em> — and \u003cem>Foxcatcher\u003c/em>, too — could doubtless have been anchored by other talents. Their stories needn’t have reached us, tears-of-a-clown-style, through Jon Stewart and Steve Carell. But the involvement of those comics proves a remarkable blessing, at least partly because it connects us to their sense of discovery.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What could be more astonishing, after all, than being moved by those we look to for laughter. \u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Satirists+Go+Serious+in+%27Foxcatcher%27+And+%27Rosewater%27+%E2%80%94+And+It+Works&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "NPR film critic Bob Mondello reviews two serious films based on real-life events — \u003cem>Foxcatcher, \u003c/em>which stars comedian Steve Carrell, and \u003cem>Rosewater\u003c/em>, directed by Comedy Central's Jon Stewart.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>What do you get when you mix big-deal comedians with real-life calamities? Sounds like a joke, but Steve Carell and Jon Stewart are answering that question this week in their movies \u003cem>Foxcatcher\u003c/em> and \u003cem>Rosewater.\u003c/em> And it turns out, seriousness suits them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In fact, you’ll likely do a double-take when you first see Carell’s John Dupont in \u003cem>Foxcatcher\u003c/em>. Maybe when you first hear him, too. He’s the black sheep of the wealthy gunpowder-magnate family circa 1988, and he’s all but unrecognizable behind a putty nose and a flat vocal affect that makes words and phrases emerge from him in what sound like burps.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Talking to an Olympic wrestler he’s hoping to impress, Carell’s Dupont is pasty, heavy, awkward, and when he flashes what he apparently intends as a pleasant smile, it’s downright disquieting.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mark Schultz, the gold medalist he’s inviting to train at a facility he’s built on his Pennsylvania estate, is played by Channing Tatum with a leaden affect and the wounded look of puppy who’s been kicked too often. Mark is the younger of two Olympic medalists in his family. His brother Dave, played with more grace and verve by Mark Ruffalo, has prospered since his Olympic win. Mark, who won later, stalled out quicker, and now, to escape his brother’s shadow, he signs on with Dupont, who showers him with money, sparring partners, cocaine, and inspirational speeches that sound increasingly unhinged.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I am leading men,” says Dupont. “I am giving them a dream and I am giving America hope.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A more astute man might realize his patron is … well, maybe nuts, but Tatum’s Mark isn’t the sharpest tool in the shed, and just gets himself, and later his brother, in deeper.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Director Bennett Miller is no stranger to sports or personal eccentricity in his films, having directed both \u003cem>Moneyball\u003c/em> and the Truman Capote biopic \u003cem>Capote\u003c/em>. In \u003cem>Foxcatcher\u003c/em>, Miller uses three superb performances to take us deep into a privileged world where the choreographed struggle of wrestling mixes toxically with the psychological struggles of familial disappointment. The film does not — or maybe cannot — explain the inexplicable: the acts of a mentally ill man. But it can make the plight of those in that man’s orbit profoundly anguishing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You might expect anguish from \u003cem>Rosewater\u003c/em>, a film drawn by Jon Stewart from BBC journalist Maziar Bahari’s book about surviving solitary confinement in an Iranian prison. But while the film can be unnerving as it details the dangers of reporting on opposition demonstrators after Iran’s elections, it’s also steeped in the sort of humor you’d expect from Stewart, who both wrote and directed the movie. In fact, Stewart’s connection with the story was more than moderately intimate: A \u003cem>Daily Show\u003c/em> interview done by the real Bahari was used against him in jail. Stewart has actor Gael Garcia Bernal re-enact it with Jason Jones.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Funny to American ears, the sketch, in which Jones claims to be a spy, becomes less funny when Bahari’s thrown in prison four days after it airs, and has to defend himself to an interrogator as “just a journalist.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The interrogator — an excellent Kim Bodnia — calls up the interview on his computer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Can you tell me,” he wonders, “why ‘just-a-journalist’ would meet up with an American spy?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bahari, laughing, tells him it’s a comedy show, that Jones is a comedian pretending to be a spy, but that doesn’t even blunt the line of questioning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“So can you tell me why an American pretending to be a spy has chosen to interview you?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jon Stewart took several months off from Comedy Central to make this movie last year, and painful as that sabbatical may have been for fans, it turns out to have been worthwhile. \u003cem>Rosewater\u003c/em> (the title references the cologne by which the usually blindfolded Bahari recognizes the interrogator) has an urgency that’s all about the storytelling smarts of its first-time writer-director. It’s also got first-rate acting, the nuance about media manipulation you’d expect from Stewart, and even cinematic grace notes, as when Bernal, in a burst of antic feeling after months of isolation, dances in his cell, remembering a Leonard Cohen song his sister played for him as a child.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Rosewater\u003c/em> — and \u003cem>Foxcatcher\u003c/em>, too — could doubtless have been anchored by other talents. Their stories needn’t have reached us, tears-of-a-clown-style, through Jon Stewart and Steve Carell. But the involvement of those comics proves a remarkable blessing, at least partly because it connects us to their sense of discovery.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What could be more astonishing, after all, than being moved by those we look to for laughter. \u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Satirists+Go+Serious+in+%27Foxcatcher%27+And+%27Rosewater%27+%E2%80%94+And+It+Works&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Mike Nichols, Award-Winning Director of 'The Graduate,' 'Silkwood,' Dies",
"headTitle": "Mike Nichols, Award-Winning Director of ‘The Graduate,’ ‘Silkwood,’ Dies | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>Mike Nichols has a long string of classic films and plays to his credit as a director and producer, including \u003cem>The Odd Couple\u003c/em> on Broadway, \u003cem>The Graduate\u003c/em> on film and\u003cem> Angels in America\u003c/em> on TV.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10148472\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/11/ap97110101919_enl-568fe3403968c7276e669d562359f872373425fe-1180x1037.jpg\" alt=\"Nichols and television journalist Diane Sawyer, shown above in November 1997, were married for 26 years.\" width=\"640\" height=\"562\" class=\"size-large wp-image-10148472\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/11/ap97110101919_enl-568fe3403968c7276e669d562359f872373425fe-1180x1037.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/11/ap97110101919_enl-568fe3403968c7276e669d562359f872373425fe-400x351.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/11/ap97110101919_enl-568fe3403968c7276e669d562359f872373425fe-682x600.jpg 682w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/11/ap97110101919_enl-568fe3403968c7276e669d562359f872373425fe.jpg 1950w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Nichols and television journalist Diane Sawyer, shown above in November 1997, were married for 26 years.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>He died Wednesday night of a heart attack at age 83, acknowledged as one of the most successful artists in show business. He had earned just about every major award in entertainment, and had an enduring, 26-year marriage to ABC News anchor Diane Sawyer and a family with three children and four grandchildren.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Nichols once said his life as the ultimate showbiz insider came from lessons learned while growing up as an outsider — emigrating from Germany to New York City at age 7 knowing little English and having few friends.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of Nichols’ greatest talents was pulling unforgettable, landmark performances from Hollywood’s acting elite.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 1966, he delivered Elizabeth Taylor as a sharp-tongued wife tearing into Richard Burton in \u003cem>Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? \u003c/em>“You see, George didn’t have much push, he wasn’t particularly aggressive,” Taylor says in the film, playing the hard-drinking wife of a college professor whom she loved to torment with harsh criticism. “In fact, he was sort of a flop — a great, big, fat flop!”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWgIOb_U2Hc\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 1986, he showcased Meryl Streep slowly unraveling as she talked about her philandering husband, played by Jack Nicholson, in \u003cem>Heartburn\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her character, a food writer, sits at a dinner party with her husband and friends when talk about relationships leads her to get real about her own marriage: “You sort of notice that things are not the way they were, but it’s a … a distant bell, and then when things do turn out to have been wrong, it’s not that you knew all along, it was just that you were … uh, uh … somewhere else.” The scene ends with Streep hitting Nicholson in the face with a pie intended for dessert.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iY68ovrzfXc\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But little compared to Nichols’ most famous scene, featuring Dustin Hoffman in his breakout role, playing a bewildered 20-something about to begin an unwise affair with an older, married woman in 1967’s \u003cem>The Graduate\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Mrs. Robinson, you’re trying to seduce me,” Hoffman’s Benjamin Braddock tells Anne Bancroft’s Mrs. Robinson, the wife of his father’s law partner, who is stretched out in a seductive pose that became an iconic symbol for a generation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=My1cjR0rjlI\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nichols was a master at pushing talents like Hoffman and Streep to unexpected places. Their confused characters often highlighted thorny issues in modern life. In \u003cem>The Graduate\u003c/em>, Hoffman became a symbol of baby boomers’ uncertainty in a changing world, suffering through useless advice from clueless elders.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Nichols shrugged off credit for leading actors to great performances in \u003ca href=\"http://www.movingimagesource.us/files/dialogues/2/18025_programs_transcript_pdf_203.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">a 1990 interview\u003c/a> for the Museum of the Moving Image.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You can’t direct actors very much in a movie, because if you tell them what to do, they’ll be doing what you told them,” he said. “What’s interesting in a movie is something happening that nobody planned.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nichols understood American culture as only someone born outside the U.S. really could.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He was born Michael Igor Peschkowsky in Germany, the son of a Russian Jew who fled the Nazis in 1939. His physician father died a few years later, leaving a wife and two sons to struggle in New York City.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2012, Nichols told NPR his early isolation brought a lifelong advantage.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The thing about being an outsider, no matter what, is that there’s a good part, which is that it teaches you to hear what people are thinking,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Because I learned to hear what people are thinking, quite literally, I think it stood me in good stead,” Nichols added. “It’s probably why I’m in the theater, because I can hear an audience. … I could hear an audience thinking when I was in front of them.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That skill at “reading” audiences was crucial when Nichols turned from medical studies to theater in college. By the late 1950s, he had teamed with actress/writer Elaine May to create the improvisational comedy duo Nichols and May. They were all over the TV shows of the day, including \u003cem>The Jack Paar Show\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But performing lost its luster for Nichols, so in 1963, he agreed to direct a play by a TV joke writer. Neil Simon’s \u003cem>Barefoot in the Park\u003c/em> became a blockbuster success.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10148473\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/11/ap680320066_enl-803acf97eeb07ed1ceb816ea8978e46025331fb6-1180x933.jpg\" alt=\"Nichols (left) and playwright Neil Simon pose together after a show rehearsal in March 1968 in New York City.\" width=\"640\" height=\"506\" class=\"size-large wp-image-10148473\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/11/ap680320066_enl-803acf97eeb07ed1ceb816ea8978e46025331fb6-1180x933.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/11/ap680320066_enl-803acf97eeb07ed1ceb816ea8978e46025331fb6-400x316.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/11/ap680320066_enl-803acf97eeb07ed1ceb816ea8978e46025331fb6-758x600.jpg 758w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Nichols (left) and playwright Neil Simon pose together after a show rehearsal in March 1968 in New York City.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Suddenly, as Nichols told NPR, he realized directing was the job he was really meant to do: “To my surprise, where I never quite got how I was gonna be an actor — ’cause I don’t think I’m suited to be an actor — I immediately realized that all this time I thought I was thinking about acting, I was really thinking about directing.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You could spend a long afternoon listing all the classic stage, film and TV projects Nichols touched as a director or producer. \u003cem>The Odd Couple, Plaza Suite, Hurlyburly\u003c/em> and \u003cem>Spamalot\u003c/em> on Broadway; movies like \u003cem>Carnal Knowledge, Silkwood, Working Girl\u003c/em> and \u003cem>Primary Colors\u003c/em>; along with versions of \u003cem>Wit\u003c/em> and \u003cem>Angels in America\u003c/em> for HBO on TV.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At times, Nichols could seem like a showbiz version of Zelig. He co-produced Broadway’s original, 1977 version of the hit musical \u003cem>Annie\u003c/em> and gave Whoopi Goldberg a career in the mid ’80s when he brought her one-woman show to Broadway.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So it makes sense that Nichols would be one of only 12 artists to become what industry types call an EGOT — someone who has won Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony awards.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But when Nichols talked with NPR about why he loved directing, grand honors weren’t a big part of the equation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s a wonderful job,” he said. “It’s exploring and excavating and analyzing all at once. And plays, especially great plays, yield their secrets over a long period of time, and that’s the great excitement.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Despite passion for his work and loads of success, Nichols said, it took his fourth wife, ABC News anchor Diane Sawyer, to rescue him from depression in his mid-50s. By 2012, he was predicting his production of \u003cem>Death of a Salesman\u003c/em>, which won him his sixth Tony award, might be his last play.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But a year later, he was back on Broadway, leading a revival of Harold Pinter’s \u003cem>Betrayal\u003c/em>; he had worked on adapting a version of the Tony-winning play \u003cem>Master Class\u003c/em> for HBO with Meryl Streep before his death.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ultimately, Nichols couldn’t stay away, his passion for the work still driving him after more than five decades at the top of the industry. \u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Mike+Nichols%2C+Award-Winning+Director+Of+%27The+Graduate%2C%27+%27Silkwood%2C%27+Dies&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Mike Nichols has a long string of classic films and plays to his credit as a director and producer, including \u003cem>The Odd Couple\u003c/em> on Broadway, \u003cem>The Graduate\u003c/em> on film and\u003cem> Angels in America\u003c/em> on TV.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10148472\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/11/ap97110101919_enl-568fe3403968c7276e669d562359f872373425fe-1180x1037.jpg\" alt=\"Nichols and television journalist Diane Sawyer, shown above in November 1997, were married for 26 years.\" width=\"640\" height=\"562\" class=\"size-large wp-image-10148472\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/11/ap97110101919_enl-568fe3403968c7276e669d562359f872373425fe-1180x1037.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/11/ap97110101919_enl-568fe3403968c7276e669d562359f872373425fe-400x351.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/11/ap97110101919_enl-568fe3403968c7276e669d562359f872373425fe-682x600.jpg 682w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/11/ap97110101919_enl-568fe3403968c7276e669d562359f872373425fe.jpg 1950w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Nichols and television journalist Diane Sawyer, shown above in November 1997, were married for 26 years.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>He died Wednesday night of a heart attack at age 83, acknowledged as one of the most successful artists in show business. He had earned just about every major award in entertainment, and had an enduring, 26-year marriage to ABC News anchor Diane Sawyer and a family with three children and four grandchildren.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Nichols once said his life as the ultimate showbiz insider came from lessons learned while growing up as an outsider — emigrating from Germany to New York City at age 7 knowing little English and having few friends.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of Nichols’ greatest talents was pulling unforgettable, landmark performances from Hollywood’s acting elite.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 1966, he delivered Elizabeth Taylor as a sharp-tongued wife tearing into Richard Burton in \u003cem>Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? \u003c/em>“You see, George didn’t have much push, he wasn’t particularly aggressive,” Taylor says in the film, playing the hard-drinking wife of a college professor whom she loved to torment with harsh criticism. “In fact, he was sort of a flop — a great, big, fat flop!”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/XWgIOb_U2Hc'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/XWgIOb_U2Hc'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>In 1986, he showcased Meryl Streep slowly unraveling as she talked about her philandering husband, played by Jack Nicholson, in \u003cem>Heartburn\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her character, a food writer, sits at a dinner party with her husband and friends when talk about relationships leads her to get real about her own marriage: “You sort of notice that things are not the way they were, but it’s a … a distant bell, and then when things do turn out to have been wrong, it’s not that you knew all along, it was just that you were … uh, uh … somewhere else.” The scene ends with Streep hitting Nicholson in the face with a pie intended for dessert.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/iY68ovrzfXc'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/iY68ovrzfXc'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>But little compared to Nichols’ most famous scene, featuring Dustin Hoffman in his breakout role, playing a bewildered 20-something about to begin an unwise affair with an older, married woman in 1967’s \u003cem>The Graduate\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Mrs. Robinson, you’re trying to seduce me,” Hoffman’s Benjamin Braddock tells Anne Bancroft’s Mrs. Robinson, the wife of his father’s law partner, who is stretched out in a seductive pose that became an iconic symbol for a generation.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/My1cjR0rjlI'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/My1cjR0rjlI'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>Nichols was a master at pushing talents like Hoffman and Streep to unexpected places. Their confused characters often highlighted thorny issues in modern life. In \u003cem>The Graduate\u003c/em>, Hoffman became a symbol of baby boomers’ uncertainty in a changing world, suffering through useless advice from clueless elders.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Nichols shrugged off credit for leading actors to great performances in \u003ca href=\"http://www.movingimagesource.us/files/dialogues/2/18025_programs_transcript_pdf_203.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">a 1990 interview\u003c/a> for the Museum of the Moving Image.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You can’t direct actors very much in a movie, because if you tell them what to do, they’ll be doing what you told them,” he said. “What’s interesting in a movie is something happening that nobody planned.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nichols understood American culture as only someone born outside the U.S. really could.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He was born Michael Igor Peschkowsky in Germany, the son of a Russian Jew who fled the Nazis in 1939. His physician father died a few years later, leaving a wife and two sons to struggle in New York City.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2012, Nichols told NPR his early isolation brought a lifelong advantage.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The thing about being an outsider, no matter what, is that there’s a good part, which is that it teaches you to hear what people are thinking,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Because I learned to hear what people are thinking, quite literally, I think it stood me in good stead,” Nichols added. “It’s probably why I’m in the theater, because I can hear an audience. … I could hear an audience thinking when I was in front of them.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That skill at “reading” audiences was crucial when Nichols turned from medical studies to theater in college. By the late 1950s, he had teamed with actress/writer Elaine May to create the improvisational comedy duo Nichols and May. They were all over the TV shows of the day, including \u003cem>The Jack Paar Show\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But performing lost its luster for Nichols, so in 1963, he agreed to direct a play by a TV joke writer. Neil Simon’s \u003cem>Barefoot in the Park\u003c/em> became a blockbuster success.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10148473\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/11/ap680320066_enl-803acf97eeb07ed1ceb816ea8978e46025331fb6-1180x933.jpg\" alt=\"Nichols (left) and playwright Neil Simon pose together after a show rehearsal in March 1968 in New York City.\" width=\"640\" height=\"506\" class=\"size-large wp-image-10148473\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/11/ap680320066_enl-803acf97eeb07ed1ceb816ea8978e46025331fb6-1180x933.jpg 1180w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/11/ap680320066_enl-803acf97eeb07ed1ceb816ea8978e46025331fb6-400x316.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/11/ap680320066_enl-803acf97eeb07ed1ceb816ea8978e46025331fb6-758x600.jpg 758w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Nichols (left) and playwright Neil Simon pose together after a show rehearsal in March 1968 in New York City.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Suddenly, as Nichols told NPR, he realized directing was the job he was really meant to do: “To my surprise, where I never quite got how I was gonna be an actor — ’cause I don’t think I’m suited to be an actor — I immediately realized that all this time I thought I was thinking about acting, I was really thinking about directing.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You could spend a long afternoon listing all the classic stage, film and TV projects Nichols touched as a director or producer. \u003cem>The Odd Couple, Plaza Suite, Hurlyburly\u003c/em> and \u003cem>Spamalot\u003c/em> on Broadway; movies like \u003cem>Carnal Knowledge, Silkwood, Working Girl\u003c/em> and \u003cem>Primary Colors\u003c/em>; along with versions of \u003cem>Wit\u003c/em> and \u003cem>Angels in America\u003c/em> for HBO on TV.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At times, Nichols could seem like a showbiz version of Zelig. He co-produced Broadway’s original, 1977 version of the hit musical \u003cem>Annie\u003c/em> and gave Whoopi Goldberg a career in the mid ’80s when he brought her one-woman show to Broadway.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So it makes sense that Nichols would be one of only 12 artists to become what industry types call an EGOT — someone who has won Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony awards.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But when Nichols talked with NPR about why he loved directing, grand honors weren’t a big part of the equation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s a wonderful job,” he said. “It’s exploring and excavating and analyzing all at once. And plays, especially great plays, yield their secrets over a long period of time, and that’s the great excitement.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Despite passion for his work and loads of success, Nichols said, it took his fourth wife, ABC News anchor Diane Sawyer, to rescue him from depression in his mid-50s. By 2012, he was predicting his production of \u003cem>Death of a Salesman\u003c/em>, which won him his sixth Tony award, might be his last play.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But a year later, he was back on Broadway, leading a revival of Harold Pinter’s \u003cem>Betrayal\u003c/em>; he had worked on adapting a version of the Tony-winning play \u003cem>Master Class\u003c/em> for HBO with Meryl Streep before his death.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ultimately, Nichols couldn’t stay away, his passion for the work still driving him after more than five decades at the top of the industry. \u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Mike+Nichols%2C+Award-Winning+Director+Of+%27The+Graduate%2C%27+%27Silkwood%2C%27+Dies&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "In 'The Theory Of Everything,' Science Takes A Back Seat",
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"content": "\u003cp>British science is having a cinematic moment, with \u003cem>The Theory of Everything\u003c/em> now and \u003cem>The Imitation Game\u003c/em> soon. Yet neither film has much science in it. These accounts of Stephen Hawking and Alan Turing, respectively, are engaging and well-crafted but modeled all too faithfully on old-school romantic dramas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the movie universe, scientific breakthroughs — even when they help defeat the Nazis, as Turing’s did — must be less important than love. Which, come to think of it, is also the corn-belt communique beamed back from \u003cem>Interstellar\u003c/em>, a film that relies on the cosmological savvy of Kip Thorne, one of Hawking’s closest colleagues.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Thorne appears briefly in \u003cem>The Theory of Everything\u003c/em>, which introduces several of Hawking’s scientific peers but focuses on a single companion: the one who wrote the book from which co-producer Anthony McCarten’s script is derived.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>http://youtu.be/74Cl_KOO-sE\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She’s Jane Hawking, nee Wilde, as embodied by the ideally named Felicity Jones. Pretty and vivacious, yet not so delicate as she appears, Jane is irresistible to the young Stephen (Eddie Redmayne) when he spots her at a party. This is one of many incidents depicted in the film that didn’t exactly happen. Every time an everyday event can be transformed into a movie moment, McCarten and director James Marsh (\u003cem>Man on Wire\u003c/em>) go for it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In broad outline, the story they tell is true. Hawking, a brilliant Ph.D. candidate at Cambridge, is distracted and disorganized, but becomes studiously focused on Jane. He’s diagnosed with a motor neuron disease related to ALS soon after they meet, but she marries him anyway. Soon she has three young children and a husband whose body is withering.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The couple struggles medically and financially, but he retains his intellect and wit and she her radiance and good humor. She even learns enough of his work to illustrate the conflict between quantum mechanics and the general theory of relativity — using peas and potatoes — to Jonathan (Charlie Cox), a choirmaster who becomes an intimate family friend.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Stephen wins fame as the author of \u003cem>A Brief History of Time\u003c/em>, although the equation that will unify all astrophysics remains elusive. (Marsh embodies the universe in a swirling cup, quoting not Einstein but Godard’s \u003cem>Two or Three Things I Know About Her\u003c/em>.) Then pneumonia — whose operatic onset is another fictionalized episode — leads to a tracheotomy, and further loss of ability to communicate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ultimately, Jane becomes very close to Jonathan, while Stephen does the same with a therapist (Maxine Peake). And so a 25-year marriage ends, a rupture that may have been a little stormier in actuality than in this sanitized telling. Although it probably is hard to get into a shouting match with a husband who speaks through a voice synthesizer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Devolving from a man who seems a bit clumsy to one who can barely move at all, Redmayne gives an impressive physical performance. It recalls Daniel Day Lewis’ in \u003cem>My Left Foot\u003c/em> — minus the rage. There’s little acrimony in \u003cem>The Theory of Everything\u003c/em>, which may reflect Hawking’s actual outlook or just the movie’s puppyish desire to please.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> As gentle and saintly as Jennifer Connelly’s character in \u003cem>A Beautiful Mind\u003c/em>, Jones’ Jane is immensely appealing if a bit unbelievable. And since in movies the essence of female virtue is cuteness, Jane barely ages over three decades.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Perhaps she took a rejuvenating whirl through the wayback machine that, in one of the clunkier touches, rewinds the story at the movie’s end. Certainly it feels as if the script did, yielding the time anomaly of a 2014 film that seems to have been written when its 72-year-old protagonist was still in short pants. \u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=In+%27The+Theory+Of+Everything%2C%27+Science+Takes+A+Back+Seat&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>British science is having a cinematic moment, with \u003cem>The Theory of Everything\u003c/em> now and \u003cem>The Imitation Game\u003c/em> soon. Yet neither film has much science in it. These accounts of Stephen Hawking and Alan Turing, respectively, are engaging and well-crafted but modeled all too faithfully on old-school romantic dramas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the movie universe, scientific breakthroughs — even when they help defeat the Nazis, as Turing’s did — must be less important than love. Which, come to think of it, is also the corn-belt communique beamed back from \u003cem>Interstellar\u003c/em>, a film that relies on the cosmological savvy of Kip Thorne, one of Hawking’s closest colleagues.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Thorne appears briefly in \u003cem>The Theory of Everything\u003c/em>, which introduces several of Hawking’s scientific peers but focuses on a single companion: the one who wrote the book from which co-producer Anthony McCarten’s script is derived.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/74Cl_KOO-sE'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/74Cl_KOO-sE'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>She’s Jane Hawking, nee Wilde, as embodied by the ideally named Felicity Jones. Pretty and vivacious, yet not so delicate as she appears, Jane is irresistible to the young Stephen (Eddie Redmayne) when he spots her at a party. This is one of many incidents depicted in the film that didn’t exactly happen. Every time an everyday event can be transformed into a movie moment, McCarten and director James Marsh (\u003cem>Man on Wire\u003c/em>) go for it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In broad outline, the story they tell is true. Hawking, a brilliant Ph.D. candidate at Cambridge, is distracted and disorganized, but becomes studiously focused on Jane. He’s diagnosed with a motor neuron disease related to ALS soon after they meet, but she marries him anyway. Soon she has three young children and a husband whose body is withering.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The couple struggles medically and financially, but he retains his intellect and wit and she her radiance and good humor. She even learns enough of his work to illustrate the conflict between quantum mechanics and the general theory of relativity — using peas and potatoes — to Jonathan (Charlie Cox), a choirmaster who becomes an intimate family friend.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Stephen wins fame as the author of \u003cem>A Brief History of Time\u003c/em>, although the equation that will unify all astrophysics remains elusive. (Marsh embodies the universe in a swirling cup, quoting not Einstein but Godard’s \u003cem>Two or Three Things I Know About Her\u003c/em>.) Then pneumonia — whose operatic onset is another fictionalized episode — leads to a tracheotomy, and further loss of ability to communicate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ultimately, Jane becomes very close to Jonathan, while Stephen does the same with a therapist (Maxine Peake). And so a 25-year marriage ends, a rupture that may have been a little stormier in actuality than in this sanitized telling. Although it probably is hard to get into a shouting match with a husband who speaks through a voice synthesizer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Devolving from a man who seems a bit clumsy to one who can barely move at all, Redmayne gives an impressive physical performance. It recalls Daniel Day Lewis’ in \u003cem>My Left Foot\u003c/em> — minus the rage. There’s little acrimony in \u003cem>The Theory of Everything\u003c/em>, which may reflect Hawking’s actual outlook or just the movie’s puppyish desire to please.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> As gentle and saintly as Jennifer Connelly’s character in \u003cem>A Beautiful Mind\u003c/em>, Jones’ Jane is immensely appealing if a bit unbelievable. And since in movies the essence of female virtue is cuteness, Jane barely ages over three decades.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Perhaps she took a rejuvenating whirl through the wayback machine that, in one of the clunkier touches, rewinds the story at the movie’s end. Certainly it feels as if the script did, yielding the time anomaly of a 2014 film that seems to have been written when its 72-year-old protagonist was still in short pants. \u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=In+%27The+Theory+Of+Everything%2C%27+Science+Takes+A+Back+Seat&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Jon Stewart's 'Rosewater' Reach Exceeds His Grasp",
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"content": "\u003cp>There’s undoubtedly a farcical element to the true story told in \u003cem>Rosewater\u003c/em> that makes it seem like the ideal directorial debut for Jon Stewart.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The film is about \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/2011/06/30/137521783/journalist-on-surviving-in-iran-don-t-name-names\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Maziar Bahari\u003c/a> (Gael Garcia Bernal), who was jailed in 2009 in Tehran while covering the Iranian elections that would eventually spark widespread protests in the country. Bahari, an Iranian-Canadian based in London, was arrested after filming protests. But Stewart’s best-known connection to the story (which he adapted for the screen from Bahari’s memoir) is that a satirical interview that Bahari filmed with the \u003cem>Daily Show\u003c/em>‘s Jason Jones, which is re-created in the film, was used as evidence of his collusion with American “spies.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>http://youtu.be/k2D7TyCKOC0\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s hard not to laugh at that confusion, but considering that Bahari was held in solitary confinement for 118 days, that he was tortured physically and psychologically, and that he was ultimately coerced into recording a confession admitting that he had betrayed Iran, the joke is a very dark one. In \u003cem>Rosewater,\u003c/em>\u003cem> \u003c/em>Stewart shows no signs that he can handle such tonally complex material.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are moments in \u003cem>Rosewater\u003c/em> where Stewart’s trademark wit shines through, but he largely avoids satire here, opting instead for lighthearted sincerity. The film begins with Bahari’s arrest before flashing back to show his arrival in Tehran and the buildup of tension before the election, in which the hard-line incumbent, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, faced serious competition from opposition candidates. Stewart shows us Bahari interviewing both the young anti-government activists who set up illegal satellite dishes to receive foreign news and the representatives for Ahmadinejad who refuse to admit any problem or accept any criticism.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The mood is largely optimistic in these opening scenes even as it’s clear that a dark turn is coming in the story. At one point, during a montage of demonstrations in Tehran, a web of hashtags like #democracy and #protest floats by on screen. The sense here is of a government that’s out of touch, and an opposition that’s the obvious future of the country.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s all pretty tepid until the movie turns to Bahari’s incarceration, at which point Stewart’s choices become more disconcerting. The issue is not necessarily one of treating Bahari’s story tastefully; in fact, Stewart may have been too tasteful here. He packs jokes into a horrific situation, but never any that come close to ruffling feathers. Instead, they’re predictable knocks against the kinds of insular interrogators and government officials that wouldn’t be able to recognize the \u003cem>Daily Show’\u003c/em>s satire.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s also not necessarily a problem of Stewart’s choosing the wrong tone entirely. Rather, he vacillates between too many of them. When Stewart features news footage of a debate between Ahmadinejad and one of his main challengers, opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, or real video of the violence against those protesting the contested election results, the most serious concerns surrounding Bahari’s arrest come into view. But in other moments, Stewart takes a more dismissive approach, treating Bahari’s interrogator, for example, as an unappreciated buffoon looking for recognition from his superiors. In those moments, Stewart seems to want to turn these men into trifling figures, refusing to give them even the benefit of serious treatment. There are times, too, when the film takes a more broadly inspirational tone, addressing itself to Bahari’s resolute spirit — itself an allegory, it would seem, for Iran’s quelled opposition.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One can imagine a film that combined these various approaches into a cohesive story, but in \u003cem>Rosewater\u003c/em> they’re blindly tossed together, and the result neither portrays the suffering of Bahari’s incarceration adequately nor lampoons the absurdities of the situation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even if nothing in \u003cem>Rosewater \u003c/em>makes you question Stewart’s good intentions in making the film, it’s hard to shake the the feeling that by taking a summer off from the \u003cem>Daily Show\u003c/em> to film the movie in Jordan, Stewart performed the equivalent of parachute journalism and cobbled together what plays as a watered-down version of Bahari’s story.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There’s little chance you’ll emerge from \u003cem>Rosewater\u003c/em> knowing much more about Iranian politics than when you started. The film admirably protests censorship and political repression, but it doesn’t push very hard to reveal new truths. It only superficially gets into what drove the protests Bahari was covering. And while it eventually acknowledges that the story of a foreign journalist with governments and international activists calling for his release says little about life for Iranians under the current regime, the admission comes late in the film and simply leaves it to other movies to dig deeper into the story.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And, of course, many have, including recent films like \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/2014/06/12/321324973/in-manuscripts-a-barred-filmmaker-considers-dissident-art\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Manuscripts Don’t Burn\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/2014/07/10/330207735/a-closed-curtain-conceals-a-directors-real-confinement\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Closed Curtain\u003c/a>, both made by Iranian dissident filmmakers who have \u003ca href=\"http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jan/14/entertainment/la-et-iranian-director-20110114\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">worked in defiance of official bans\u003c/a>. Those are stories that open a window onto a closed society. The usefulness of \u003cem>Rosewater,\u003c/em> meanwhile, seems limited to telling the story of one journalist who crossed paths with a well-connected American. \u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Jon+Stewart%27s+%27Rosewater%27+Reach+Exceeds+His+Grasp&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>There’s undoubtedly a farcical element to the true story told in \u003cem>Rosewater\u003c/em> that makes it seem like the ideal directorial debut for Jon Stewart.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The film is about \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/2011/06/30/137521783/journalist-on-surviving-in-iran-don-t-name-names\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Maziar Bahari\u003c/a> (Gael Garcia Bernal), who was jailed in 2009 in Tehran while covering the Iranian elections that would eventually spark widespread protests in the country. Bahari, an Iranian-Canadian based in London, was arrested after filming protests. But Stewart’s best-known connection to the story (which he adapted for the screen from Bahari’s memoir) is that a satirical interview that Bahari filmed with the \u003cem>Daily Show\u003c/em>‘s Jason Jones, which is re-created in the film, was used as evidence of his collusion with American “spies.”\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/k2D7TyCKOC0'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/k2D7TyCKOC0'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>It’s hard not to laugh at that confusion, but considering that Bahari was held in solitary confinement for 118 days, that he was tortured physically and psychologically, and that he was ultimately coerced into recording a confession admitting that he had betrayed Iran, the joke is a very dark one. In \u003cem>Rosewater,\u003c/em>\u003cem> \u003c/em>Stewart shows no signs that he can handle such tonally complex material.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are moments in \u003cem>Rosewater\u003c/em> where Stewart’s trademark wit shines through, but he largely avoids satire here, opting instead for lighthearted sincerity. The film begins with Bahari’s arrest before flashing back to show his arrival in Tehran and the buildup of tension before the election, in which the hard-line incumbent, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, faced serious competition from opposition candidates. Stewart shows us Bahari interviewing both the young anti-government activists who set up illegal satellite dishes to receive foreign news and the representatives for Ahmadinejad who refuse to admit any problem or accept any criticism.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The mood is largely optimistic in these opening scenes even as it’s clear that a dark turn is coming in the story. At one point, during a montage of demonstrations in Tehran, a web of hashtags like #democracy and #protest floats by on screen. The sense here is of a government that’s out of touch, and an opposition that’s the obvious future of the country.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s all pretty tepid until the movie turns to Bahari’s incarceration, at which point Stewart’s choices become more disconcerting. The issue is not necessarily one of treating Bahari’s story tastefully; in fact, Stewart may have been too tasteful here. He packs jokes into a horrific situation, but never any that come close to ruffling feathers. Instead, they’re predictable knocks against the kinds of insular interrogators and government officials that wouldn’t be able to recognize the \u003cem>Daily Show’\u003c/em>s satire.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s also not necessarily a problem of Stewart’s choosing the wrong tone entirely. Rather, he vacillates between too many of them. When Stewart features news footage of a debate between Ahmadinejad and one of his main challengers, opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, or real video of the violence against those protesting the contested election results, the most serious concerns surrounding Bahari’s arrest come into view. But in other moments, Stewart takes a more dismissive approach, treating Bahari’s interrogator, for example, as an unappreciated buffoon looking for recognition from his superiors. In those moments, Stewart seems to want to turn these men into trifling figures, refusing to give them even the benefit of serious treatment. There are times, too, when the film takes a more broadly inspirational tone, addressing itself to Bahari’s resolute spirit — itself an allegory, it would seem, for Iran’s quelled opposition.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One can imagine a film that combined these various approaches into a cohesive story, but in \u003cem>Rosewater\u003c/em> they’re blindly tossed together, and the result neither portrays the suffering of Bahari’s incarceration adequately nor lampoons the absurdities of the situation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even if nothing in \u003cem>Rosewater \u003c/em>makes you question Stewart’s good intentions in making the film, it’s hard to shake the the feeling that by taking a summer off from the \u003cem>Daily Show\u003c/em> to film the movie in Jordan, Stewart performed the equivalent of parachute journalism and cobbled together what plays as a watered-down version of Bahari’s story.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There’s little chance you’ll emerge from \u003cem>Rosewater\u003c/em> knowing much more about Iranian politics than when you started. The film admirably protests censorship and political repression, but it doesn’t push very hard to reveal new truths. It only superficially gets into what drove the protests Bahari was covering. And while it eventually acknowledges that the story of a foreign journalist with governments and international activists calling for his release says little about life for Iranians under the current regime, the admission comes late in the film and simply leaves it to other movies to dig deeper into the story.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And, of course, many have, including recent films like \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/2014/06/12/321324973/in-manuscripts-a-barred-filmmaker-considers-dissident-art\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Manuscripts Don’t Burn\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/2014/07/10/330207735/a-closed-curtain-conceals-a-directors-real-confinement\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Closed Curtain\u003c/a>, both made by Iranian dissident filmmakers who have \u003ca href=\"http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jan/14/entertainment/la-et-iranian-director-20110114\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">worked in defiance of official bans\u003c/a>. Those are stories that open a window onto a closed society. The usefulness of \u003cem>Rosewater,\u003c/em> meanwhile, seems limited to telling the story of one journalist who crossed paths with a well-connected American. \u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Jon+Stewart%27s+%27Rosewater%27+Reach+Exceeds+His+Grasp&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "'Interstellar': Stunning And Bold, With Lots Of Corn",
"headTitle": "‘Interstellar’: Stunning And Bold, With Lots Of Corn | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>Time is a circle, just like Matthew McConaughey said in \u003cem>True Detective\u003c/em>. But it isn’t flat. It’s spherical.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Interstellar\u003c/em>, Christopher Nolan’s saline-and-starlight-streaked space-time epic, is so beautiful and ambitious and enveloping that to tick down its imperfections — drippy homilies about how love, especially the paternal kind, can transcend dimensions; an over-investment in its widower McCona-hero’s Chuck Yeager/Han Solo-esque expertise on the stick; abuse of a familiar Dylan Thomas quote — ultimately feels small. Released the week after two spaceflight disasters, one of them fatal, the movie is at once a hardscrabble vision of humanity’s darkest night (it opens with talking-head clips from Ken Burns’ 2012 PBS documentary \u003cem>The Dust Bowl\u003c/em> cannily blended with new footage) and a forceful — if not wholly convincing — declaration that we shall outlive our home planet. Human Exceptionalism, you might call its philosophy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>http://youtu.be/0vxOhd4qlnA\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And yet of all the (not that many) kinda-sorta-plausible-ish space exploration flicks to launch since \u003cem>2001: A Space Odyssey\u003c/em> — which predated Neil Armstrong’s historic moonwalk by more than a year — \u003cem>Interstellar\u003c/em> is the most mercilessly awe-inducing. Even if you gag on its payload of sentiment, as many have and shall, it is the film of 2014 that demands to be experienced on the biggest screen available. Nolan would prefer that you see it in 70mm IMAX if you can; Paramount is making a well-publicized exception to its recent switch to exclusively digital exhibition formats just for him. That’s what three wildly successful Bat-movies buy you.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the scenario cooked up by Nolan’s brother Jonathan, with an intellectual kick-start from astrophysicist Kip Thorne, our spendthrift 20th century ways have caught up with us in the unspecified middle or late 21st. Global famine and food wars have drastically thinned our herd. Militaries have disbanded (say what?), and almost everyone — even hotshot former test pilots like our man Cooper, who remembers the Good Old Days even though he’s only in his 40s — works the land, which now yields only corn.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>NASA is a secret organization led by Michael Caine, Nolan’s go-to man for gravitas. In fact, his character is literally a gravity expert, one who has spent decades trying to crack an equation that will enable humanity’s migration to Somewhere Else. What’s more, his team — Anne Hathaway, David Gyasi and Wes Bentley, plus a sarcastic military-surplus robot voiced and manipulated, at least in some scenes, by the brilliant, elastic-limbed clown Bill Irwin — have identified a dozen potentially habitable planets accessible via wormhole, those express lanes across the cosmos that Thorne has theorized. NASA’s best guess is that the wormhole and the planets were put there for us by extraterrestrial intellects vast, cool and weirdly sympathetic. But they need Cooper’s Right Stuff to get to Saturn, where the wormhole is. It’s unclear who was going to handle the driving if an eventually explained series of mysterious portents hadn’t led Cooper and Murph, his 10-year-old budding genius daughter, to their secret lair.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Earthbound first act feels a lot like the Spielberg picture this was once set to be. (Also like M. Night Shyamalan’s thriller \u003cem>Signs\u003c/em>, starring America’s favorite stoic widower circa 2002, Mel Gibson.) As with every Nolan movie, there’s a clockwork narrative logic to it that eventually reveals itself, even if your willing suspension of disbelief has burned up by then.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Anyway, Cooper must leave behind his two kids — Murph and Tom, her less gifted big brother — to try to save the species. Kubrick wouldn’t have wasted a tear on an equation as lopsided as that, but Nolan turns on the waterworks (and Hans Zimmer’s church-organ score), cutting from the bereft Cooper’s drive away from his Norman Rockwell-esque house to the countdown of his rocket. It’s the first of many bravura dialogue-free moments that make \u003cem>Interstellar\u003c/em>‘s 169 minutes feel … well, like less than 169 minutes. (I saw it twice in three days and I was never bored.) Here’s another: Their spacecraft, bearing the weary designation \u003cem>Endurance\u003c/em>, pinwheels across the rings of Saturn while we hear the thunderstorm-sounds recording Gyasi is playing on his headphones.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I wouldn’t have minded a bit if Nolan had lingered on these space vistas more than he does. (Cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema, of \u003cem>Let the Right One In\u003c/em> and \u003cem>Her\u003c/em>, has composed frames well worth the extra few bucks to see them in true IMAX.) But he’s got a supermassive (and highly spoilable) story to tell, one that keeps him rushing even given the lengthy run time. One thing Kubrick never was was \u003cem>hurried\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Iceland stands in for a pair of beautiful, forbidding planets, but its most stunning environments are computer visualizations born of legit science: Thorne gave the film’s army of digital effects artists the equations to visualize both the wormhole and the black hole seen in the film, leading to breakthroughs in “gravitational lensing.” Nolan had reserved the right to assert artistic license if the images Thorne’s equations produced were too plain or simply too weird for audiences to process, but the objects his data generated — a shiny black soap-bubble in space, and a black hole with a fiery halo of starlight wrapped around it like the string of a yo-yo — are what we see. “This is our observational data,” Thorne\u003ca href=\"http://www.wired.com/2014/10/astrophysics-interstellar-black-hole/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> told Wired magazine\u003c/a>. “That’s the way nature behaves. Period.” (This is not to say others don’t take issue with the science on the whole, as astronomer Phil Plait \u003ca href=\"http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/space_20/2014/11/interstellar_science_review_the_movie_s_black_holes_wormholes_relativity.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">does in Slate\u003c/a>.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nolan made his name with \u003cem>Memento\u003c/em>, a tricksy mystery that moved in two temporal directions at once. In the 14 years since, his movies have swollen to monumental scale, but he still compresses and elongates the fourth dimension more poetically than any other blockbuster-maker. Who better than him to make a film dealing so explicitly with relativity?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Other good sci-fi pictures have addressed the existential, sanity-testing loneliness of sailing across eternity in a can. \u003cem>Interstellar\u003c/em> does that, too, but it’s probably the first presumptive blockbuster to grapple, even clumsily, with the problem that everyone you loved back on your home world would almost certainly grow to surpass you in age. (It takes two years in cryo-sleep just to get to the wormhole, apart from the time-dilation problem.) Some of the consequences of this make for stirring, emotional stuff, even if the movie isn’t as profound as it wants us to believe.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nolan, a director often accused of coldness, finally got all mushy when he went to outer space. I can’t solve that equation, but I’ve enjoyed trying to scratch it out. \u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=%27Interstellar%27%3A+Stunning+And+Bold%2C+With+Lots+Of+Corn&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Time is a circle, just like Matthew McConaughey said in \u003cem>True Detective\u003c/em>. But it isn’t flat. It’s spherical.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Interstellar\u003c/em>, Christopher Nolan’s saline-and-starlight-streaked space-time epic, is so beautiful and ambitious and enveloping that to tick down its imperfections — drippy homilies about how love, especially the paternal kind, can transcend dimensions; an over-investment in its widower McCona-hero’s Chuck Yeager/Han Solo-esque expertise on the stick; abuse of a familiar Dylan Thomas quote — ultimately feels small. Released the week after two spaceflight disasters, one of them fatal, the movie is at once a hardscrabble vision of humanity’s darkest night (it opens with talking-head clips from Ken Burns’ 2012 PBS documentary \u003cem>The Dust Bowl\u003c/em> cannily blended with new footage) and a forceful — if not wholly convincing — declaration that we shall outlive our home planet. Human Exceptionalism, you might call its philosophy.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/0vxOhd4qlnA'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/0vxOhd4qlnA'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>And yet of all the (not that many) kinda-sorta-plausible-ish space exploration flicks to launch since \u003cem>2001: A Space Odyssey\u003c/em> — which predated Neil Armstrong’s historic moonwalk by more than a year — \u003cem>Interstellar\u003c/em> is the most mercilessly awe-inducing. Even if you gag on its payload of sentiment, as many have and shall, it is the film of 2014 that demands to be experienced on the biggest screen available. Nolan would prefer that you see it in 70mm IMAX if you can; Paramount is making a well-publicized exception to its recent switch to exclusively digital exhibition formats just for him. That’s what three wildly successful Bat-movies buy you.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the scenario cooked up by Nolan’s brother Jonathan, with an intellectual kick-start from astrophysicist Kip Thorne, our spendthrift 20th century ways have caught up with us in the unspecified middle or late 21st. Global famine and food wars have drastically thinned our herd. Militaries have disbanded (say what?), and almost everyone — even hotshot former test pilots like our man Cooper, who remembers the Good Old Days even though he’s only in his 40s — works the land, which now yields only corn.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>NASA is a secret organization led by Michael Caine, Nolan’s go-to man for gravitas. In fact, his character is literally a gravity expert, one who has spent decades trying to crack an equation that will enable humanity’s migration to Somewhere Else. What’s more, his team — Anne Hathaway, David Gyasi and Wes Bentley, plus a sarcastic military-surplus robot voiced and manipulated, at least in some scenes, by the brilliant, elastic-limbed clown Bill Irwin — have identified a dozen potentially habitable planets accessible via wormhole, those express lanes across the cosmos that Thorne has theorized. NASA’s best guess is that the wormhole and the planets were put there for us by extraterrestrial intellects vast, cool and weirdly sympathetic. But they need Cooper’s Right Stuff to get to Saturn, where the wormhole is. It’s unclear who was going to handle the driving if an eventually explained series of mysterious portents hadn’t led Cooper and Murph, his 10-year-old budding genius daughter, to their secret lair.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Earthbound first act feels a lot like the Spielberg picture this was once set to be. (Also like M. Night Shyamalan’s thriller \u003cem>Signs\u003c/em>, starring America’s favorite stoic widower circa 2002, Mel Gibson.) As with every Nolan movie, there’s a clockwork narrative logic to it that eventually reveals itself, even if your willing suspension of disbelief has burned up by then.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Anyway, Cooper must leave behind his two kids — Murph and Tom, her less gifted big brother — to try to save the species. Kubrick wouldn’t have wasted a tear on an equation as lopsided as that, but Nolan turns on the waterworks (and Hans Zimmer’s church-organ score), cutting from the bereft Cooper’s drive away from his Norman Rockwell-esque house to the countdown of his rocket. It’s the first of many bravura dialogue-free moments that make \u003cem>Interstellar\u003c/em>‘s 169 minutes feel … well, like less than 169 minutes. (I saw it twice in three days and I was never bored.) Here’s another: Their spacecraft, bearing the weary designation \u003cem>Endurance\u003c/em>, pinwheels across the rings of Saturn while we hear the thunderstorm-sounds recording Gyasi is playing on his headphones.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I wouldn’t have minded a bit if Nolan had lingered on these space vistas more than he does. (Cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema, of \u003cem>Let the Right One In\u003c/em> and \u003cem>Her\u003c/em>, has composed frames well worth the extra few bucks to see them in true IMAX.) But he’s got a supermassive (and highly spoilable) story to tell, one that keeps him rushing even given the lengthy run time. One thing Kubrick never was was \u003cem>hurried\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Iceland stands in for a pair of beautiful, forbidding planets, but its most stunning environments are computer visualizations born of legit science: Thorne gave the film’s army of digital effects artists the equations to visualize both the wormhole and the black hole seen in the film, leading to breakthroughs in “gravitational lensing.” Nolan had reserved the right to assert artistic license if the images Thorne’s equations produced were too plain or simply too weird for audiences to process, but the objects his data generated — a shiny black soap-bubble in space, and a black hole with a fiery halo of starlight wrapped around it like the string of a yo-yo — are what we see. “This is our observational data,” Thorne\u003ca href=\"http://www.wired.com/2014/10/astrophysics-interstellar-black-hole/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> told Wired magazine\u003c/a>. “That’s the way nature behaves. Period.” (This is not to say others don’t take issue with the science on the whole, as astronomer Phil Plait \u003ca href=\"http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/space_20/2014/11/interstellar_science_review_the_movie_s_black_holes_wormholes_relativity.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">does in Slate\u003c/a>.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nolan made his name with \u003cem>Memento\u003c/em>, a tricksy mystery that moved in two temporal directions at once. In the 14 years since, his movies have swollen to monumental scale, but he still compresses and elongates the fourth dimension more poetically than any other blockbuster-maker. Who better than him to make a film dealing so explicitly with relativity?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Other good sci-fi pictures have addressed the existential, sanity-testing loneliness of sailing across eternity in a can. \u003cem>Interstellar\u003c/em> does that, too, but it’s probably the first presumptive blockbuster to grapple, even clumsily, with the problem that everyone you loved back on your home world would almost certainly grow to surpass you in age. (It takes two years in cryo-sleep just to get to the wormhole, apart from the time-dilation problem.) Some of the consequences of this make for stirring, emotional stuff, even if the movie isn’t as profound as it wants us to believe.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nolan, a director often accused of coldness, finally got all mushy when he went to outer space. I can’t solve that equation, but I’ve enjoyed trying to scratch it out. \u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=%27Interstellar%27%3A+Stunning+And+Bold%2C+With+Lots+Of+Corn&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Off to the side of the wickedly funny Swedish black comedy \u003cem>Force Majeure\u003c/em> lurks a minor but significant figure with a sour, slightly saturnine face. The man is a cleaner in a fancy French Alps ski hotel and he hardly says a word. But his wordless hovering inspires dread, nervous laughter or both. Which pretty much sums up \u003cem>Force Majeure\u003c/em>‘s adroit shifts of tone, and quite possibly its director’s take on the ways of the hip urban bourgeoisie.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cleaners dig for dirt, and this expressionless snooper keeps popping up to intrude on the unraveling of a seemingly perfect couple. They’re so wrapped up in their bickering efforts to restore equilibrium, they fail to notice that they’ve locked their two young children in a room with a creepy stranger who could pass for an ax murderer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A successful businessman who seems equally pleased with his good looks and his cell phone, Tomas (Johannes Bah Kuhnke) has come to this pricy resort to relax with his trophy wife, Ebba (Lisa Loven Kingsli), and their two children. They make a sleek, perfect domestic unit in a perfect, smooth-running hotel, all clean lines and blond wood.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>http://youtu.be/tZZhB6AUo9k\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Well, forget that: \u003cem>Force Majeure\u003c/em> is framed around the fast-moving degradation of the couple’s week-long vacation, which heads south after a supposedly controlled explosion backfires, setting off an avalanche that bears down on the family’s patio lunch. Instead of protecting his family, Tomas snatches up his phone and takes off. So much for alpha males, and it’s not over yet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Physically, everyone’s fine, but a shocked Ebba can’t stop repeating the story of her husband’s escape to anyone who will listen, as well as some who’d rather not. The couple’s unease quickly infects the friends who join them: a red-headed, hyper-masculine Viking type (Kristofer Hivju) who looks a bit like an escapee from the set of \u003cem>Brave\u003c/em>, and his pert, much younger girlfriend (Fanni Metelius). Here, writer-director Ruben Ostlund pauses to poke more fun at patriarchy, but no one in this increasingly unpleasant, hapless crew gets off unscathed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ostlund is a gifted creator of malignant ambience, which he masterfully uses to keep his audience wound tight and unsure whether the payoff in catastrophe will be physical, emotional or both. He bathes us in pervasive unease (electric toothbrushes play a recurring role) rendered all the more sinister by a snowy backdrop of breathtaking blues and grays.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of course, nature is no more authentic than anything else in this fiendishly contrived movie, in which natural beauty is CG-enhanced to the point of hysteria: The heavy silence is disturbed only by the soft swish of skis on pristine snow or the brittle chatter of ski-suited hotel guests seeking hookups. Those man-made explosions elicit jumps, but in no way prepare you for the feral misbehavior that disrupts this borderline fascistic milieu, only to disappear into white fog — then reappear for encores.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In one of the film most entertaining moments, an unhinged Tomas sinks to the floor and launches into a confession like a fearful 8-year-old. Yet Ostlund isn’t just getting under the skin of a smug bourgeois marriage. \u003cem>Force Majeure\u003c/em> is about the paper-thin fragility of civilization itself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s not a terribly original insight, but it’s cunningly driven home by a crucial turn of the screw when a crowd of homeward-bound vacationers walks down a mountain in a kind of ecstatic silence, aware of precisely how much human frailty they share in common. Metaphorically speaking, one in particular has just been dragged from a very high horse. Let’s just say that that person’s consort is quite pleased. \u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=In+%27Force+Majeure%2C%27+Society+Crumbles+Under+An+Avalanche&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"info": "What kind of no sabo word is Hyphenación? For us, it’s about living within a hyphenation. Like being a third-gen Mexican-American from the Texas border now living that Bay Area Chicano life. Like Xorje! Each week we bring together a couple of hyphenated Latinos to talk all about personal life choices: family, careers, relationships, belonging … everything is on the table. ",
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"info": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown brings listeners the wisdom of the former Governor, Mayor, and presidential candidate. Scott Shafer interviewed Brown for more than 40 hours, covering the former governor's life and half-century in the political game – and Brown has some lessons he'd like to share. ",
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"info": "Our flagship program, helmed by Kai Ryssdal, examines what the day in money delivered, through stories, conversations, newsworthy numbers and more. Updated Monday through Friday at about 3:30 p.m. PT.",
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"mindshift": {
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"info": "The MindShift podcast explores the innovations in education that are shaping how kids learn. Hosts Ki Sung and Katrina Schwartz introduce listeners to educators, researchers, parents and students who are developing effective ways to improve how kids learn. We cover topics like how fed-up administrators are developing surprising tactics to deal with classroom disruptions; how listening to podcasts are helping kids develop reading skills; the consequences of overparenting; and why interdisciplinary learning can engage students on all ends of the traditional achievement spectrum. This podcast is part of the MindShift education site, a division of KQED News. KQED is an NPR/PBS member station based in San Francisco. You can also visit the MindShift website for episodes and supplemental blog posts or tweet us \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MindShiftKQED\">@MindShiftKQED\u003c/a> or visit us at \u003ca href=\"/mindshift\">MindShift.KQED.org\u003c/a>",
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"order": 12
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"info": "\u003cem>Morning Edition\u003c/em> takes listeners around the country and the world with multi-faceted stories and commentaries every weekday. Hosts Steve Inskeep, David Greene and Rachel Martin bring you the latest breaking news and features to prepare you for the day.",
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"onourwatch": {
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"tagline": "Deeply-reported investigative journalism",
"info": "For decades, the process for how police police themselves has been inconsistent – if not opaque. In some states, like California, these proceedings were completely hidden. After a new police transparency law unsealed scores of internal affairs files, our reporters set out to examine these cases and the shadow world of police discipline. On Our Watch brings listeners into the rooms where officers are questioned and witnesses are interrogated to find out who this system is really protecting. Is it the officers, or the public they've sworn to serve?",
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"info": "Our weekly podcast explores how the media 'sausage' is made, casts an incisive eye on fluctuations in the marketplace of ideas, and examines threats to the freedom of information and expression in America and abroad. For one hour a week, the show tries to lift the veil from the process of \"making media,\" especially news media, because it's through that lens that we see the world and the world sees us",
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"perspectives": {
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"order": 14
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"info": "The economy explained. Imagine you could call up a friend and say, Meet me at the bar and tell me what's going on with the economy. Now imagine that's actually a fun evening.",
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"title": "Political Breakdown",
"tagline": "Politics from a personal perspective",
"info": "Political Breakdown is a new series that explores the political intersection of California and the nation. Each week hosts Scott Shafer and Marisa Lagos are joined with a new special guest to unpack politics -- with personality — and offer an insider’s glimpse at how politics happens.",
"airtime": "THU 6:30pm-7pm",
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"possible": {
"id": "possible",
"title": "Possible",
"info": "Possible is hosted by entrepreneur Reid Hoffman and writer Aria Finger. Together in Possible, Hoffman and Finger lead enlightening discussions about building a brighter collective future. The show features interviews with visionary guests like Trevor Noah, Sam Altman and Janette Sadik-Khan. Possible paints an optimistic portrait of the world we can create through science, policy, business, art and our shared humanity. It asks: What if everything goes right for once? How can we get there? Each episode also includes a short fiction story generated by advanced AI GPT-4, serving as a thought-provoking springboard to speculate how humanity could leverage technology for good.",
"airtime": "SUN 2pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Possible-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.possible.fm/",
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"source": "Possible"
},
"link": "/radio/program/possible",
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},
"pri-the-world": {
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"title": "PRI's The World: Latest Edition",
"info": "Each weekday, host Marco Werman and his team of producers bring you the world's most interesting stories in an hour of radio that reminds us just how small our planet really is.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 2pm-3pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-World-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
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},
"radiolab": {
"id": "radiolab",
"title": "Radiolab",
"info": "A two-time Peabody Award-winner, Radiolab is an investigation told through sounds and stories, and centered around one big idea. In the Radiolab world, information sounds like music and science and culture collide. Hosted by Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich, the show is designed for listeners who demand skepticism, but appreciate wonder. WNYC Studios is the producer of other leading podcasts including Freakonomics Radio, Death, Sex & Money, On the Media and many more.",
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},
"reveal": {
"id": "reveal",
"title": "Reveal",
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