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    Power Outage in Cannes During Film Festival Is Sabotage, Officials Say

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    An arson attack and damage to a transmission tower cut off power in the area, the authorities said. The festival’s closing ceremony on Saturday is scheduled to proceed normally.French authorities said on Saturday that a power outage in the Cannes area in southeastern France that briefly disrupted the film festival there was caused by acts of sabotage, including arson at a substation and damage to a transmission tower.About 160,000 homes in Cannes and the surrounding area were left without power for hours, according to RTE, France’s electrical grid operator, which said service was gradually being restored. The outage interrupted some screenings at the film festival, which quickly switched over to its own generators. Organizers said the closing ceremony Saturday evening — when the Palme d’Or, the festival’s top prize, is awarded — would proceed normally.Laurent Hottiaux, the state representative for the Alpes-Maritimes area, which includes Cannes, said the outage was caused by “major damage to network installations” near the city, including the arson attack and damage to the tower. “All resources are being mobilized to identify, track down, arrest and bring to justice the perpetrators of these acts,” Mr. Hottiaux said in a statement.RTE said the outage started with an overnight fire at a substation west of Cannes. Firefighters brought the blaze under control, and electricity was restored by diverting power from other lines.But around 10 a.m., the company also detected an unstable pylon on a separate line east of the city that was threatening to topple, forcing crews to cut power in the area once more. “We need transparency and fast answers,” Éric Ciotti, a right-wing lawmaker representing the Alpes-Maritimes, said on X, where he posted a photo of a leaning electrical pylon.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Give Yourself a Break, Tom Cruise. Give Us All a Break.

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      The new Tom Cruise movie, “Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning,” is nearly as exhausting to watch as it must have been to make. Mr. Cruise famously does his own stunts, one of the movie’s biggest selling points. But it’s hard to suspend disbelief watching a picture when you’re thinking about how much Tiger Balm went into its making. Is it possible Mr. Cruise and audiences alike would be better off if he didn’t go quite so hard? You can admire his stamina at 62, but a movie shouldn’t make you feel like you’ve been cornered at a party by a guy who can’t stop telling you how freaking amped he is.“Final Reckoning” — even the full title is taxing — is a movie so big, it has by my count both three MacGuffins and three set pieces with nuclear bombs that need to be disarmed before their timers go off. (Dayenu, as Jews sing at Passover; a single such blessing, or cliché, would have been enough.) We get to see Mr. Cruise dangle off not one but two biplanes and sprint back and forth across the streets of London with arms pumping manfully when he could have taken an Uber. For several scenes in which the necessities of plot and beefcake delivery force him to strip down to his boxer briefs, we also get to marvel at his perfectly toned senior body, which would be the envy at any recreational facility, not just the pickleball courts at the Villages.All movie stars, from Mary Pickford to Margot Robbie, are brands, as familiar and comforting in their way as Coke or Irish Spring, and almost as consistent. But Mr. Cruise, an A-lister across five decades now, has transcended even that exalted status. He’s become a genre unto himself, his movies akin to pornography in the sense that they trade not in illusion but in physical, bodily reality. He doesn’t so much act as endure, his stardom adjacent to martyrdom.“It’s actually hard to breathe,” he recently explained to People magazine, discussing the finer points of hanging off a biplane wing. “You’re so tired. Your eyesight’s blurry. There were times that I didn’t have the energy to get from the wing back into the cockpit, and I would have to almost fall asleep and wait till I had the energy to crawl back because we couldn’t land if I was on the wing. We landed, and I was so cold I couldn’t walk.”Mr. Cruise’s willingness to climb aboard real jet fighters, and subject his handsome face to unflattering G-forces, helped “Top Gun: Maverick” gross $1.5 billion worldwide in 2022 and return audiences to theaters postpandemic. The actor was widely credited with saving “Hollywood’s ass,” to quote (reportedly) Steven Spielberg. But how many things — movies, the world, his public image following its couch-jumping, Brooke Shields-hectoring nadir in the mid-2000s — does he have to save now that he’s nearly eligible for Medicare?When he’s not sprinting or dangling, Mr. Cruise can be a terrific actor, gifted with both talent and charisma, which you can see on display in films as varied as “Born of the Fourth of July,” “A Few Good Men,” “Jerry Maguire” and “Magnolia” (all made in the 20th century). Appearing in teen movies at the start of his career, he stood out as a minor character even among the loaded cast of “The Outsiders.” In “Risky Business” his charm not only held the screen’s center but also transformed what could have been a sour, New Hollywood-style satire of the American way into a rollicking Reagan-era salute to entrepreneurship. That wasn’t necessarily a good thing thematically, but it made Mr. Cruise a star.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Best Movies of 2025, So Far

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      Our critics picked 10 films that you might have missed but that are worth your time on this long holiday weekend.“Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning” and the live-action “Lilo & Stitch” are flooding theaters this Memorial Day weekend. But if you don’t want to follow the crowd, it’s also a good time to catch up on some terrific films you may have missed earlier in the year. I asked our chief film critic, Manohla Dargis, and our movie critic, Alissa Wilkinson, to recommend releases worth your time. All are in theaters or available online.‘Sinners’In theaters.The story: The twins Smoke and Stack (both played by Michael B. Jordan) return from Al Capone’s Chicago to open a juke joint in Clarksdale, Miss. That’s when the devil, or rather, an Irish vampire, shows up in this talker of a film.Manohla Dargis’s take: Directed by Ryan Coogler, this “is a big-screen exultation — a passionate, effusive praise song about life and love, including the love of movies. Set in Jim Crow Mississippi, it is a genre-defying, mind-bending fantasia overflowing with great performances, dancing vampires and a lot of ideas about love and history.”Read the review; interviews with Coogler and Jordan, and other cast members; and a critic’s essay.‘I’m Still Here’Stream it on Netflix or rent it on most major platforms.Fernanda Torres in “I’m Still Here.”Alile Onawale/Sony Pictures ClassicsWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Do You Know the English Novels That Inspired These Movies and TV Shows?

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      Welcome to Great Adaptations, the Book Review’s regular multiple-choice quiz about books that have gone on to find new life as movies, television shows, theatrical productions, video games and more. This week’s challenge is focused on popular books set in 18th- and 19th-century England that have been adapted for the screen. Just tap or click your answers to the five questions below. And scroll down after you finish the last question for links to the books and their filmed versions. More

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      Greg Cannom, Who Made Brad Pitt Old and Marlon Wayans White, Dies at 73

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      He won five Oscars as a makeup artist on movies in which characters transformed, like “Mrs. Doubtfire,” “White Chicks” and many more.Greg Cannom, an Oscar-winning movie makeup artist responsible for some of the most striking acts of movie magic in recent decades — including the transformation of Christian Bale into Dick Cheney in “Vice,” the creation of a giant expressive green head for Jim Carrey in “The Mask,” and the reverse aging of Brad Pitt in “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” — died on May 3. He was 73.His death was announced by Rick Baker, a frequent collaborator and another of Hollywood’s most admired movie makeup artists, as well as by the IATSE Local 706 Make-Up Artists & Hair Stylists Guild. Neither source provided further details.An online fund-raising drive for Mr. Cannom posted two years ago listed a series of health challenges, including severe shingles, a staph infection, sepsis and heart failure.Mr. Cannom won Oscars for best makeup for his work on “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” (1992), “Mrs. Doubtfire” (1993), “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” (2008) and “Vice” (2018).In 2005, he won a “technical achievement” Oscar for the development of a modified silicone that could be used to apply fantastical changes to an actor’s face while retaining the appearance of skin and flesh.Robin Williams in “Mrs. Doubtfire.” Mr. Cannom won an Oscar for his work on the film.Getty ImagesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      HBO’s Streaming Service Becomes ‘HBO Max’ Again

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      Warner Bros. Discovery executives are reinstating the name HBO Max for the popular streaming service. It’s the fourth name change for the app in the last decade.It’s not Max. It’s HBO Max — again.In a surprise pivot, Warner Bros. Discovery executives announced Wednesday morning that the streaming service Max would be renamed HBO Max, reinstating the app’s old name and abandoning a contentious change that the company introduced two years ago.The reason for the change, executives explained, was straightforward.People who subscribe and pay $17 a month for the streaming service wind up watching HBO content like “The White Lotus” and “The Last of Us,” as well as new movies, documentaries and not a whole lot more.“It really is a reaction to being in the marketplace for two years, evaluating what’s working and really leaning into that,” Casey Bloys, the chairman of HBO content, said in an interview.HBO, a trailblazer of the cable era, has been on a very bumpy ride to finding an identity in the streaming era. There was HBO Go (2008), HBO Now (2015), HBO Max (2020), Max (2023) and now, once again, HBO Max (2025).Two years ago, Warner Bros. Discovery executives said that they meant well by changing the name to Max. Their overwhelming concern, the executives said, was that Discovery’s suite of reality shows — “Sister Wives,” “My Feet Are Killing Me” — risked watering down the HBO brand, which continued to produce award-winning series like “Succession.”Further, they said, HBO spent decades branding itself as a premium adult service. That was not exactly an ideal anchor for a streaming service that they envisioned would compete head-to-head with a general entertainment app like Netflix.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Miuccia Prada Brings a Show to New York

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      In an exclusive interview, Miuccia Prada explains it all.Since 2011, Miuccia Prada, the patron saint of smart, messy women everywhere, has been using her Miu Miu line as a platform to commission short films by female filmmakers from around the world, including Janicza Bravo, Mati Diop and Haifaa al-Mansour. For Mrs. Prada, the films, which sometimes air during her fashion shows, serve as a backdrop to her clothes, which have always explored the chaotic lives of mothers, sisters, rebels, poets and punks without ever trying to reconcile their contradictions. That has made Miu Miu the darling of the fashion industry, the rare fashion brand to experience explosive growth at a time when sales in general are slowing.Last year, during Art Basel Paris, Mrs. Prada decided it was time to bring all the films together, and she enlisted the Polish artist Goshka Macuga to help. The result was an immersive performance piece of sorts that involved a cast of 35 characters from the films, brought to life by 105 different actors. It was such an unexpected hit, with 11,000 people visiting the Paris show during its five-day run, that she and Ms. Macuga decided to recreate it this weekend for Frieze New York.The new show, entitled “Tales & Tellers,” is being staged in the Terminal Warehouse, the cavernous late-19th-century building on the Far West Side of Manhattan, latterly home to the Tunnel nightclub. And it is an altogether darker take on the state of women than the Paris event was. (Still, wardrobe by Miu Miu.)“We’re looking at the concept of inside and outside, the idea of individuals coming together in a group,” the artist Goshka Macuga said.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesThe show takes place in the Terminal Warehouse in Chelsea.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesMrs. Prada and Ms. Macuga Zoomed in to explain. The conversation has been edited and condensed.There hasn’t been a Miu Miu show in New York in decades, but now there is. Sort of. Why this?MIUCCIA PRADA The clothes are an excuse to have the support of the company to create these projects where women are talking about themselves, which is very important. In my work, I have always embraced the complexity of women, the complexity of our lives, how we can succeed in developing our abilities. So it’s fundamental to know what women do, what they think, in different contexts.GOSHKA MACUGA All these different stories represent different social problems for women in different countries. Like, for example, the film which I feel very close to, “Nightwalk” by Małgorzata Szumowska, was filmed in Poland at a time when gender issues were really repressed by our government. It was talking about this idea of liberation within a context that was not sympathetic to difference.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Ryan Coogler’s ‘Sinners’ Deal Made Hollywood Lose Its Mind

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      In 2050, thanks to an advantageous deal he made with Warner Bros., Ryan Coogler will own the rights to “Sinners,” the Black Southern Gothic blockbuster he wrote and directed. The contract gave him final cut and a piece of the box office revenue right from the start, too. Owning his movie about Black ownership in the Jim Crow South was, Mr. Coogler has said, a nonnegotiable.Since the film came out, these contract stipulations have been much discussed, even controversial. That has little to do with why “Sinners” is so enthralling to watch — after all it’s a genre-bending and -blending film, steeped in horror, blues and history, and even has vampires — but everything to do with the film’s central theme, and why it is so resonant: the art of the deal. Negotiation is a central thread in “Sinners,” a repeated motif about the power and consequence of deal-making in America. (This essay includes spoilers for “Sinners.”)The protagonists of “Sinners” are identical twin brothers nicknamed Smoke and Stack, both played by Michael B. Jordan, Mr. Coogler’s longtime collaborator. After serving in World War I and becoming involved with Chicago gangsters, the slick-talking duo return in 1932 to their Mississippi Delta hometown to set up a juke joint, enlisting their gifted cousin Sammie to play guitar. The town, Clarksdale, happens to also be the location of the crossroads where the legendary blues musician Robert Johnson supposedly sold his soul to the devil for mastery over his guitar. With a satchel full of cash and a truck full of liquor, the twins come back to the South having realized that “Chicago is Mississippi with tall buildings instead of plantations.”Their for-us-by-us plan was to generate wealth by owning and operating a blues-drenched sanctuary for Black joy, a private escape from the daily terror of racial oppression. Many of the clientele are Black sharecroppers who have been forced into exploitative contracts by white landowners, a point made evident in “Sinners” when a customer tries to use wooden coins to buy a drink. The fake money is good only at the plantation store.Nobody Black had the leverage to negotiate a good deal in the Jim Crow South. Despite the vampires in the film, the real monsters are the ordinary-seeming men, like Hogwood, the covert Klansman from whom Smoke and Stack buy the mill they are going to turn into the juke joint, who smile as they take your money and shake your hand, and have no intention of honoring the terms.During this time, legalistic disfranchisement was common for Black blues musicians, who were often unaware of how royalties worked, or were intentionally not told how they worked, or were just given a bottle of booze as payment. Bessie Smith thought she was signing a lucrative deal in 1923 with a white executive, Frank Buckley Walker, who oversaw “race records” for Columbia. Walker crossed out the royalty clause in her contract, and Smith was given a fixed fee of $200 per recording; she thought that was a good deal for a Black musician at the time, unaware that white country artists on Columbia often had royalty agreements, even though Smith was more successful than many. Smith received a little less than $30,000 for the 160 recordings she made for Columbia even though her estimated sales reached over six million records in the 1920s.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      When Taxpayers Fund Shows Like ‘Blue Bloods’ and ‘S.N.L.,’ Does It Pay Off?

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      Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York has proposed an increase in the film tax credit to stay competitive with New Jersey and other states.New Yorkers — and residents of many other states — have paid more for entertainment in recent years than just their Netflix or Hulu subscriptions.Each New York household has also contributed about $16 in taxes, on average, toward producing the drama series “Billions” since 2017. Over that period, each household has also paid roughly $14.50 in production incentives for “Saturday Night Live” and $4.60 for “The Irishman,” among many other shows and movies.Add it all up, and New York has spent more than $5.5 billion in incentives since 2017, the earliest year for which data is readily available. Now, as a new state budget agreement nears, Gov. Kathy Hochul has said she wants to add $100 million in credits for independent productions that would bring total film subsidies to $800 million a year, almost double the amount from 2022.Other states also pay out tens or hundreds of millions each year in a bidding war for Hollywood productions, under the theory that these tax credits spur the economy. One question for voters and lawmakers is whether a state recoups more than its investment in these movies and shows — or gets back only pennies on the dollar.New York has one of the largest tax credit programs and makes most of its data public, so we totaled its spending to see which productions benefited the most. More