The Broadway Shows to See Now – The New York Times

Same-Day Strategies

“TKTS TKTS, that discount-ticket mainstay of Times Square, also has outlets at Lincoln Center, at South Street Seaport and in downtown Brooklyn. The Times Square booth has the longest hours, but it’s the only location that sells same-day matinee tickets. (The other locations sell same-day evening but only next-day matinee tickets.) On the TKTS app, or online at tdf.org, you can see in real time which shows are on sale, and for how great a discount at each location. But that doesn’t mean there will be any seats left for the show you want by the time you get up to the window, and you have to buy them in person. The Times Square booth is the most crowded, especially right after it opens, when options are most plentiful. But new tickets are released all day, even as curtain time nears, so going later can be lucky, too. Want to see a play rather than a musical? At Times Square, there’s a dedicated window for that, and the line is shorter.

Rush Tickets

Many shows, though not the monster hits, offer same-day rush tickets at the box office for much less than full price. Some – including “Hello, Dolly!,” “Dear Evan Hansen” and “The Book of Mormon” – sell standing-room tickets if a show is sold out. Don’t count on these approaches, because availability varies – but it’s worth swinging by the theater to check. Conveniently, Playbill keeps a running online tab of individual shows’ policies on lotteries, rush tickets (sometimes just for students, often for everyone), standing room and other discounts.In-Person LotteriesSome shows (lately including “The Book of Mormon” and “Wicked”) have in-person lotteries, where you go to the theater at a designated time on the day of the performance and put your name into a drawing for the chance to buy cheap tickets. It’s more work on your end than a digital lottery, but these tickets can be substantially less expensive than those.”

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How to Cut the Cord and Stream TV – Watching Guides – The New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/guides/watching/tv-streaming-cut-the-cord?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=Moth-Visible&moduleDetail=inside-nyt-region-3&module=inside-nyt-region&region=inside-nyt-region&WT.nav=inside-nyt-region&redirect=true

“Television has changed remarkably over the past few years. It might be time for your viewing habits to change as well. Unless you enjoy paying more than $100 a month for a cable or satellite subscription you only half-use, you’re likely considering joining the growing ranks of consumers who have “cut the cord” and are now getting their favorite TV shows, movies and even live sports through the internet and streaming services. Making this change requires some preparation, though. Here’s a step-by-step guide to the cord-cutting process. And once you’re set up, hop on over to The New York Times’s site Watching for personalized movie and TV series recommendations.”

The Versatile and Resilient Amy Adams – The New York Times

“IN 2009, AFTER Amy Adams had been discovered and rediscovered, after she had been nominated for two Academy Awards and starred in an international hit, a very important paper self-importantly judged her a “late bloomer.”

“Cool,” Adams said recently. “At least I bloomed.” She laughed. How could she not? Being a movie star can be absurd. More than most roles, it can define a performer and brutally undermine her, affecting how she’s categorized, whether she’s forgiven or forgotten. If Adams has evaded the churn of celebrity culture, it’s partly because stardom came as it did. When “Enchanted” opened in 2007 she was 33, middle age in Hollywood years (especially for women). Wide-eyed and radiant, she looked like an ingénue, but in truth had been honing her craft and overcoming rejection for years. Stardom wasn’t a benediction, but something she had earned role by role.”

The piece ends:

“It’s important to talk about inequality,” Adams said. “But for me, where I feel most empowered is in educating myself and being, hopefully, a mentor for younger women. That’s more important. I offer any young actress I work with my phone number. I’ll tell them on set, ‘You don’t have to do that. You can say no.’ ” It seems like a modest gesture, but less so when you consider that the movie industry has long profited from female submission, from women acquiescing because their only choice is exploitation or unemployment. This is what makes women saying no powerful, and why it’s heartening that many are speaking up. Adams speaks up when she wants, how she wants, and she is saying yes — and no — on her own terms. These days, instead of telling her daughter “Don’t be bossy,” Adams asks her little girl who she is the boss of. “And she says, ‘Me.’ And I say, ‘That’s right. And you get to choose who you are.’ ”

David Lindsay: The first movie I saw Amy Adams in was Arrival, which was haunting, challenging and excellent.  I thought she deserved the Oscar for Best Actress that year over Emma Stone in La La Land.

I didn’t even recognize Amy Adams in American Hustle, or was that before. The point is that there were two different women. This is a good interview, if it gets me to want to see Enchanted, which was primarily for 11 year old girls.

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Attacked by Rotten Tomatoes – The New York Times

“LOS ANGELES — Hollywood had a horrible summer.Between the first weekend in May and Labor Day, a sequel-stuffed period that typically accounts for 40 percent of annual ticket sales, box office revenue in North America totaled $3.8 billion, a 15 percent decline from the same span last year. To find a slower summer, you would have to go back 20 years. Business has been so bad that America’s three biggest theater chains have lost roughly $4 billion in market value since May.
Ready for the truly alarming part? Hollywood is blaming a website: Rotten Tomatoes.”

David Lindsay Hamden, CT Pending Approval

I am a huge fan of the website Metacritic.com. It is extraordinary.
Since I abhor excessive violence and torture, I research new films carefully.
I saw Zero Dark Thrity after researching Metacritc, and am glad I saw the film. It was homework.
I look forward to an in depth analysis or comparison of Metacritc to Rotten Tomatoes.
This article is interesting, and it raises many questions, which are brought up by angry commenters. Ticket and popcorn prices are too high, intermissions too infrequent. Volumes are too high.The violence has gotten out of control. When I saw Dunkirk in Cincinnati, the day Inconvenient Sequel came out and was sold out, the theater showed a preview of a horror film about killing young women, called something like the Snowman Head murdering monster. It was grotesque, and I was deeply offended, that I was exposed to such images. I complained to the manager. There are plenty of reasons why I go carefully and infrequently to the movie theaters. Add to the list, excessive, gratuitous violence in the review trailers.
I posted on my blog, InconvenientNewsWorldwide.wordpress.com, a favorable review of Dunkirk. I agree with the NYT metacric score of 80. I did not enjoy the film, but found it gripping, and extremely useful history and homework. What an amazing historical drama. For those of us who love small yachts, it is a exhilarating story on more than one level.

Harry and Sidney: Soul Brothers – by Charles Blow – NYT

“Please allow me to divert my gaze for one day away from our national political darkness and toward two national rays of light.

Monday is Sidney Poitier’s 90th birthday. His best friend of 70 years, Harry Belafonte, turns 90 on March 1.This is an ode to and appreciation of the friendship — one of the most remarkable and resilient of our time — between two Hollywood royals.Poitier and Belafonte didn’t meet until they were 20 years old, and yet Belafonte still considered Poitier his first real friend in life. As Belafonte put it, he lived a “nomadic” life as a child, shuttling back and forth between New York and islands of the Caribbean with his mother as she searched for work. “I did not get rooted long enough to develop what many people have the joy of experiencing, and that is childhood friends.” ”

Lillies of the Field is one of my favorite movies of all time.

Here are some of the  top comments:

Socrates

is a trusted commenter Verona NJ 1 day ago

“I have always been a learner because I knew nothing.”
– Sidney Poitier

“I never had an occasion to question color, therefore, I only saw myself as what I was… a human being.”
– Sidney Poitier

“I’ve learned that I must find positive outlets for anger or it will destroy me. There is a certain anger: it reaches such intensity that to express it fully would require homicidal rage–self destructive, destroy the world rage–and its flame burns because the world is so unjust. I have to try to find a way to channel that anger to the positive, and the highest positive is forgiveness.”
― Sidney Poitier

“Bring it on. Dissent is central to any democracy.”
– Harry Belafonte

” You can cage the singer but not the song.”
– Harry Belafonte

“Artists are the gatekeepers of truth. We are civilization’s anchor. We are the compass for humanity’s conscience.”
– Harry Belafonte

“I just want to say how much we are indebted to my dear and abiding friend, Harry Belafonte, and to all the distinguished and famous artists and entertainers who have taken the time out from their prestigious schedules to be with us here in Montgomery, Alabama, as we march on the state capital tomorrow morning. I know that our thanks will go out to them and will abide them for years to come.”
– Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1965

America is a much richer place with our soul brothers than without them.

And we shall always overcome the milky white darkness that continues to stain our great country.

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soxared, 04-07-13

Crete, Illinois 1 day ago

I could scarcely get through your column, Mr. Blow, with my emotions intact.

I am a generation younger than both nonagenarians yet it seems that I have known them all my life. When listening to his great “Live at Carnegie Hall” in 1959, I thought that Harry Belafonte had achieved the impossible: he had broken through white America’s doubt and resistance and reluctance to accept the talent of people of color. He left his audience(s) mesmerized, entertained, enthralled. And never in his life did the great singer play the “shame” card; that was something that people carried with them and it wasn’t his problem. The outrage was always there (“Darlin’ Cora,” “Cotton Fields,” “John Henry”) but he never leveraged it as a guilt trip, a pettiness that would have undercut the innate nobility that described him.

Sidney Poitier achieved what Jackie Robinson did on the baseball field but with a far wider audience. Not everyone listened to baseball games in the 1940’s and 1950’s but everybody went to the movies. From his seminal role as Noah Cullen, shackled to Tony Curtis in “The Defiant Ones,” to his professional pinnacle as the itinerant Homer Smith in “Lilies of the Field,” Mr. Poitier was the cultural model for African-Americans my age (19 in 1963), cool; watchful. The shock of his Oscar remains, for neither I nor countless others expected an entrenched Hollywood to step out of its racist character and acknowledge his talent.

Gentlemen, well done, both! And God’s blessings upon you.

• 389 Recommended

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