Air Mail: Film and Television

What's Love Got to Do with It?

Daphne Merkin — Sat, 27 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Tina Turner’s story is one of self-reinvention.

HBO’s new documentary on the Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll tells an inspiring story of survival

By Daphne Merkin

Before the rise of #MeToo, the ongoing cascade of sexual-harassment accusations it set off, and the fetishization of victimhood, there was Tina Turner. A survivor in the truest sense of the word, one who escaped her husband’s brutal grip after 16 years of marriage, then turned around and re-invented her career, Turner is the subject of a riveting, artfully constructed new HBO documentary called, simply, Tina.

I first came upon Turner in the mid-1980s, when she was no longer performing with her husband Ike’s backup group and had started a solo career, going multi-platinum with her breakthrough album, Private Dancer. READ ON

Are We Clear?

James Wolcott — Sat, 13 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

The Church of Scientology in Los Angeles.

Scientology TV picks up where Tom Cruise’s crusade against psychiatry left off

By James Wolcott

I once toyed with the idea of taking up Scientology. I had no illusions that it would enable me to run up the sides of buildings like Tom Cruise or hone my brain into a perfect diamond, though either would have been neat. I just thought it might give me the locked-on-target focus to cut through the everyday dribdrab.

More than once I passed the Church of Scientology in Times Square and was tempted to pop in for a “free tour” and pick up a few colorful brochures without being abducted. What disabused me about signing up for an introductory course was not only Scientology’s culty reputation but the realization of how much READ ON

Mads Mikkelsen

Bridget Arsenault — Sat, 13 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Middle-aged and restless, but not in an alcoholic sort of way.

The Danish actor, who just took over Johnny Depp’s role in the Fantastic Beasts series, discusses his new film, Another Round, a darkly comic look at middle-aged restlessness

By Bridget Arsenault

A couple of years ago, Mads Mikkelsen and the director Thomas Vinterberg were sitting together in a living room in their native Denmark watching a YouTube video that Vinterberg had found. It was called “Two Men and a Lock” and showed two men drunkenly trying to lock up a bicycle. Fodder for an easy laugh, it actually became Vinterberg’s pitch to Mikkelsen for a new film. (The pair, who are close friends, first worked together in 2012’s critically acclaimed The Hunt.)

Another Round, available for streaming on Amazon, follows a group of sapless middle-aged high-school teachers “who are in READ ON

Sasha Spielberg

Elena Clavarino — Sat, 6 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Sasha Spielberg is out with her debut album, Spoiled Love.

Otherwise known as Buzzy Lee, the 30-year-old singer has released her first album, with a second underway

By Elena Clavarino

For Sasha Spielberg, the singer who goes by “Buzzy Lee,” the hardest part about music is the crowd. Spielberg writes soulful lyrics and sounds like a natural onstage, but performing never came naturally. She first took up piano in elementary school, and soon began composition and guitar lessons. But after a Fourth of July performance gone awry, Spielberg realized she had major stage fright. “My voice would break. It would shake,” she says. “I just couldn’t sing in front of people.”

Similar episodes at musicals and other high-school productions led Spielberg to temporarily abandon music. She tried acting instead, including in her father Steven Spielberg’s films READ ON