Books and Arts

At this year’s Oscars ceremony, there was a moment that only those blind to symbolism could have failed to pick up. The presenter of the Best Director award was none other than Steven Spielberg, himself the most commercially successful film director who has ever lived. The recipient was Christopher Nolan, whose films so far this millennium have grossed over $6 billion worldwide, making him the seventh-highest earning filmmaker of all time. Those above him — no disrespect to the likes of the Russo brothers, David Yates and even Michael Bay — are journeymen directors whose franchise work makes a lot of money without bothering the Academy; the auteur-ish likes of Peter Jackson, James Cameron and Spielberg have all now been rewarded with their own Best Director Oscars.

New York is gilded in beguiling art. It has an excess of riches and though summer is one of the best times to visit, quenching your cultural thirst can be difficult, as the arts patrons decamp to the Hamptons and watering holes ending in -an. From museums to galleries to street art at subway stations or parks, each borough is a canvas, so much so that it is often an afterthought against a landscape of pavement and honking cars. Will you be uptown for the first Monday in May? While the performances on the Met Gala’s red carpet are an art form in themselves, the exhibit the gala underwrites offers plenty to check out uptown as the tulips bloom on Park Avenue.

As I entered the lobby of Circle in the Square Theatre, now showing Broadway’s hottest ticket, An Enemy of the People, staff were upselling booze. “Do you want to buy a shot?” offered one enthusiastic barman, waving a bottle of bracing Linie aquavit. He added, grinning: “It’s what the actors drink on stage.” Sam Gold’s revival of Henrik Ibsen’s didactic and stuffy morality play aims to draw direct comparisons between past and present, including what alcohol we consume (more on that later). In late nineteenth-century Norway, a town finds itself prosperous by selling access to the local spa baths, which supposedly have curative properties. When Dr.

Have you been watching Sexy Beast on the Paramount+ streaming service? No? Well, it’s hard to say whether you’ve missed out on much. Amid the current vogue for reviving decades-old films and turning them into television series, musicals or what-have-you, revisiting Zone of Interest director Jonathan Glazer’s 2000 debut, a blackly comic crime caper that owes equal debts to Harold Pinter’s The Dumb Waiter, Stephen Frears’s The Hit and Nicolas Roeg’s Performance, was probably not on anyone’s bingo card for 2024.

Much has been made in the Thomas Pynchon Reddit community — a crazed bunch — of the author’s rumored cameo appearance in Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2014 adaptation of his 2009 novel, Inherent Vice. Photos circulate in a frenzied online meta conspiracy: is he this old man? That guy in the hat? Famously reclusive, Pynchon has barely been photographed in real life. His only acting credit was when he voiced himself on The Simpsons, while his cartoon likeness appeared with a paper bag over its head. Pynchon revels in the oxymoron of the anonymous celebrity and his fans simply can’t get enough. He found the right director to bring his work to the screen.

Merrily We Roll Along starts in 1976, at a party held by big-shot Hollywood producer Franklin Shepard, who is surrounded by stars (not least his second wife, a veteran Broadway siren, and his young lover, the nubile leading actress of his latest hit movie). It ends in 1957, with stars of a different kind: constellations in an inky sky that provoke awe and inspiration for a younger, more naive Frank, as he sits on a rooftop with friends Mary and Charlie, dreaming about their future. The juxtaposition — of celestial bodies with shiny, obnoxious celebrity — helps to frame this musical about the loss of innocence.