Welcome toOne Fine Show, where Observer highlights a recently opened exhibition at a museum not in New York City, a place we know and love that already receives plenty of attention.
The output of the artist Steve McQueen (b. 1969) is so varied that there need not be a throughline that runs through his oeuvre, and I’m not certain that one does exist. However, when I think about his work, I remember all the times he seemed to draw my attention directly to exactly where he wanted it. Static (2009) takes the viewer in a helicopter circling the Statue of Liberty, showing you each of its features so that you must appreciate it as a sculpture, which we don’t tend to do. Seeing Shame (2011) in the theater, I remember watching the corner of Carey Mulligan’s eye just as a tear welled in it and wondering how he did that.
One of his latest offerings, Bass (2024), has demonstrated his purest control of my perception yet. The work is both simpler and more complicated than anything involving a helicopter or an A-lister, consisting of lights that shift their color and tone as they fill an entire space, amid an original score that is full of a subtle bass. The composition is far less techno rave than you might imagine from the images and “emerged in collaboration with an intergenerational group of musicians from the Black diaspora under the direction of McQueen along with the renowned bassist Marcus Miller, who brought in several other acclaimed musicians: Meshell Ndegeocello and Aston Barrett Jr. (both on electric bass), Mamadou Kouyaté (on ngoni, a traditional West African string instrument) and Laura-Simone Martin (on upright acoustic bass),” per the press materials.
Despite living in New York City, I missed the work when it debuted at Dia Beacon because it somehow made more sense for me to catch it in Basel—it’s been that kind of year. In Beacon, it was in the sprawling basement of that former factory. At the Schaulager, the work was not contained on one floor, taking advantage of over 1,000 LED tubes temporarily installed in the place of the lightly brutal interior of the Herzog & de Meuron-designed space. These lights shift subtly between almost every color of the visible light spectrum, breathing in tune with the music, with such a flow that you will barely notice going from deep red to teal.
McQueen has said that he sought “oceanic frequencies” for the composition, so it’s not original to say that it feels like you’re swimming underwater. Instead, I’ll say it feels like you’re walking around underwater, which is far stranger. I didn’t experience the Beacon iteration, but the effect of inundation must have been stronger in Switzerland, because it featured multiple floors. You felt like you were on the seabed, with leagues above you. Light doesn’t behave that way when you’re that deep down with scuba gear, but you can still feel the currents, and those sensations were recreated by the synchronicity between the music and all the LEDs changing color at the same time.
The perfection of this coordination would almost be enough to make you paranoid, were it not so soothing. This unexpected offering from McQueen shows that he’s still challenging himself and still finding new ways to get into our heads.
Steve McQueen’s Bass is on view at the Laurenz Foundation, Schaulager Basel, through November 16, 2025.
The annual Screen Actors Guild Awards celebrate the best acting in film and television, as voted on by SAG-AFTRA members. Along with a shiny trophy, winning a SAG Award also comes with the honor of acknowledgment and recognition of industry peers. This year, Barbie and Oppenheimer each scored four nominations, leading the film pack in terms of the most nods. For television, Succession came in hot with five nominations.
The 30th SAG Awards kick off this evening at the Shrine Auditorium and Expo Hall in Los Angeles, California, and for the first time ever, will stream live on Netflix, starting tonight (Saturday, Feb. 24) at 8:00 pm ET. There will not be host for the ceremony, as has been the case for the past four years.
Before the main event, though, there’s the red carpet, which always delivers major memorable style moments. Below, see the best red carpet fashion from the 2024 Sag Awards.
The BAFTAs red carpet has begun. BAFTA via Getty Images
Awards season is in full swing, and after a flurry of ceremonies in Los Angeles, it’s time to head across the pond. Tonight (Feb. 18), the British Academy of Film and Television Arts will host their annual Film Awards, celebrating the best in cinema. Oppenheimer received the most BAFTA nominations (a staggering 13), with Poor Things coming in second (11 nods).
David Tennant is hosting the 2024 BAFTAs ceremony, held at Royal Festival Hall in London’s Southbank Centre. It’s always an exciting night, as A-listers flock to the British capital to fête the best and brightest in the film industry. The star-studded red carpet never fails to impress, as attendees go all out for the glamorous evening. Below, see all the most exciting moments from the 2024 BAFTAs red carpet,
The interview takes place over three continents. There’s one virtual zoom window overlooking four living rooms: Two in New York, one in New Zealand, and one at THR Roma‘s office in Italy.
Maestro, Bradley Cooper‘s take on the life, personal and professional, of legendary conductor Leonard Bernstein and his wife Felicia Montealegre, played by Carey Mulligan, has just dropped worldwide on Netflix. Bernstein’s three children, Jamie, Alexander and Nina, have gathered to talk about the movie and their memories.
The siblings took center stage at the Venice Film Festival this year, leaping up after the film’s screening to jokingly conduct the bombastic standing ovation that greeted the film’s world premiere, imitating their father’s atypical and vibrant conducting style.
“It was cathartic in a moment when joy and tears, memories and pain were overwhelming,” says Alexander. “We became children again. And of course, we had to fill those seven minutes of applause with something!” Adds Nina: “We just did what used to happen when the Overture of Candide was on TV, we watched our father and imitated him in the living room.”
The trio speak in unison, finishing each other’s sentences, and picking up a word or comment to spin off in another direction. Always, incredibly, in tune. A tiny orchestra. Thousands of miles and two oceans divide them, but they sound like the kids shown in Maestro, chattering on the lawns of the Bernstein family estate in Connecticut.
“Do you know, that they actually filmed there?” says Alexander. “It was strange for us, surreal. Nina said it’s like those dreams you have when you’re in your house, but it somehow isn’t your house. My parents were there, but they sort of weren’t my parents. It was like a dream.”
“We would see Bradley and Carey there, and they would come already in makeup and stage clothes, to get into character. They would walk around the garden, around the rooms, and to us, it seemed both strange and natural,” says Nina.
Leonard Bernstein and family in Fairfield, CT in June 1996.
Courtesy of Leonard Bernstein collection
“At a screening the other day, when we were photographed with Bradley and Carey, Jamie and I looked at each other and said, ‘This is a very strange family picture, our parents are younger than us!’” notes Alexander.
It’s hard to get a word in edgewise. The three go back and forth, mixing personal nostalgia with their enthusiasm for a film that evokes memories both sweet and painful. They reflect on the long journey to get their family’s story to the screen.
“They’ve been trying to make this film for 15 years,” says Alexander. “Originally it was with Martin Scorsese. He kept renewing the option, but no decision was made. Fred Berner and Amy Durning were already attached as producers. We agreed with them, we just asked to be able to read the script, to talk to the writer or the director who would do it.”
“At a certain point it had become a joke between us, all this talk of life rights, of options. We had resigned ourselves to the fact that this film would never be made,” says Jamie.
Alexander picks up: “When everything had stopped moving, when it seemed impossible to bring it to the screen, came the twist: Steven Spielberg. Well before he remade West Side Story, he entered the production team, and it looked like he might go behind the camera as well. The idea of Bradley playing the lead came from him. But the more Bradley got involved in the project, the more he talked to us, the more he felt the story was his.”
Jamie was the first among the siblings to see Bradley Cooper’s directorial debut, A Star is Born.
“She just told us: ‘Go see it.’ We did, and we fell out of our chairs,” says Alexander. “We were really impressed with his work. And when we found him in front of us, he was like we imagined him to be after seeing the film: Focused, attentive, committed, and full of generosity.”
“And respectful,” adds Nina. “His approach won us over. When Jamie also met him, and they connected, it was a crescendo. He included us in his work, made sure that we got, without saying anything, all the drafts of the script, and then he screened the work in progress for us at various stages of the project. He asked us a lot of questions, and we tried to not ask for too many corrections. Ultimately, it’s his movie and if he wants to take a certain artistic license, that’s up to him. Only if there was a glaring error would we say: Actually, it happened this way.”
“There was an atmosphere of mutual trust,” Jamie stresses.
The trio quickly brushes over the controversy involving the prosthetic nose Cooper wears to play Bernstein, calling the “scandal” absurd and undeserving of further comment. Much more painful, they say, was watching some of the darkest moments of their parent’s lives revealed on screen.
“The most difficult part, of course, was when our mother gets sick and then dies,” says Jamie. “We had read the script, we knew it would be in the film, but seeing it was a real punch in the gut, even though Bradley handled everything with wonderful delicacy. In shooting it, in narrating it, even and especially in pitching it to us: If we had seen it all at once, in a preview, it would have destroyed us, we would have fallen apart.”
Bradley Cooper as Leonard Bernstein in ‘Maestro’
Jason McDonald/Netflix
“I don’t know if by seeing the film I learned more about our family or about Lenny Bernstein,” adds Alexander. “But I do know that I learned a lot about Bradley Cooper. Now we are far enough removed from everything, I think I am able to say that he and our dad are so much alike. A lot more than we could have imagined. There’s the same intensity, focus, and perfectionism. The ability to devote oneself to art around the clock if necessary. Being able to handle tension better than anyone else, not sleeping for days when inspiration comes. The same charisma. And love.”
They pause. They smile at each other as if they were in the same room. And, almost in chorus, they say: “And the hugging. They hug in the same way. They are both full of love, of warmth, of wanting to connect.”
Maestro explores the incredible challenge Felicia Montealegre faced being the wife of the genius Lenny Bernstein. But what is it like to be his children, to bear the responsibility of his legacy?
“It is tremendously difficult,” Nina admits.
“You have expectations of yourself that you can never meet,” says Jamie.
“We had a book when we were little, tiny kids,” Alexander remembers. “On the cover, it was called ‘Just like mommy.’ Then you would turn it upside down and the back cover said, ‘Just like daddy.’ It was all about a businessman getting up in the morning and having breakfast with his children. And his wife is making breakfast. And he goes to work with his briefcase. Takes the train and all that. Just what you would expect. I used to read this book and say, ‘Wow. That sounds like an amazing life.’ But also I just knew there was something else going on in my life, that was pretty extraordinary. And that there was never going to be a book about me being like daddy.”
Hi I’m Bradley Cooper. I co-wrote and directed ‘Maestro.’ It was very important to me, at the onset of this scene, that she be in a position of power. So, her on the windowsill, the light haloing her behind, waiting for whoever was gonna come in to be scolded. And then he’s sort of like a dog who knows that he’s done something bad, comes in, stays right on that side of the frame, almost out of the scene, and then slowly comes over, and then parks himself back in that position, almost trying to get out of the frame. And then I wanted sort of for you to be hearing this celebratory Thanksgiving Day parade going on, and seeing these floats go by, to sort of play into the juxtaposition between this sort of horrific scene happening and this joyous occasion outside, and for it also to be kind of comedic, in a way, and ridiculous. This was a scene that I wrote many years ago, when I first started to work on this project, and it maintained its integrity all the way ‘till we started shooting five and a half years later. “You’re letting your sadness get the better —” “Oh, stop it!” “Let me at least finish!” “This has nothing to do with me!” “Let me finish what I’m going to say!” “No! No!” “I think you’re letting your sadness get the better of you.” “This has nothing to do with me! It’s about you, so you should love it!” So this is the point of the film that everything has come to a boiling point, specifically for Felicia. She’s entered into a marriage eyes wide open in terms of how she perceived it would be, and how her husband, Leonard Bernstein, would behave, and now it’s gotten to a point where it’s encroached so much into her emotional state that she can’t take it anymore. “Hate in your heart! Hate in your heart, and anger for so many things, it’s hard to count. That’s what drives you. Deep, deep anger drives you. You aren’t up on that podium allowing us all to experience the music the way it was intended. You are throwing it in our faces.” “How dare you?” My fear was that we wouldn’t be able to maintain this frame for the entire scene. But because Carey Mulligan is such an assassin actor, it was effortless. We did this three times. This was the third take. And once we got it, that was it. Her main thrust is that he’s got hate in his heart, and he’s not up there on the podium doing anything other than teaching the audience that they’re not as good as him. It was very important to me that the audience, as they watched the film progress after this scene, know that that’s not really what she felt, because there’s no way that Felicia would have fallen in love with a man who has hate in his heart. But when we are trying to hurt somebody that we love, we’ll try to hit them where we think we can hurt them, and on the podium is where he feels, I think, the most free, and the most able to fulfill his potential. To me, when you’re not cutting, it, as a viewer, it should feel unsafe. You don’t know where it’s going. And if you start cutting, it just changes everything. “— zero opportunity to live, or even breathe as our true selves. Your truth makes you brave and strong, and saps the rest of us of any kind of bravery or strength!” But what I loved about it was just, and Matty Libatique is so incredible, the cinematographer, able to execute what I wanted, which was to have her feel almost regal. But she was, Felicia, in that moment. “If you’re not careful, you’re going to die a lonely, old queen.” Mommy, daddy! [CHEERING] Daddy! Snoopy’s here! Hurry up! [KNOCKING ON DOOR] You’re missing Snoopy! What are you guys doing in there? I love when they’re shadowed here by his ego. Outside the window, this Snoopy sort of represents where he is in his life. And then for her to leave him in the middle at the end of the scene, and he’s just there, you know, in the center of the ring, as Snoopy goes by. That was always what I had envisioned. [CHEERING]
Bradley Cooper is a certified romantic. There was intriguing indication of that sensibility in his directorial debut, 2018’s glorious remake of A Star Is Born, an old-fashioned swooner staged with elegant, modern technique. Further confirmation arrives with Cooper’s second directorial effort, Maestro, a loose biopic of conductor-composer Leonard Bernstein and his wife, actress Felicia Montealegre. The film, which premiered here at the Venice Film Festival on Saturday, is a swirling love poem, both rousing and bitterly sad. It’s also confused, as passion can often make us.
Cooper, who plays Bernstein under some controversial prosthetics, has opted for even more high style than he did in A Star Is Born. The first half or so of the film is in black and white, in a square aspect ratio, as Cooper quickly traces Bernstein’s rise to fame and then more deliberately captures scenes of Bernstein and Montealegre (Carey Mulligan) falling for one another amid a ghost-lit theater and the rolling hills of the Berkshires. They first meet at a smoky, song-filled house party and are instantly enamored of each other’s smarts and openness, their mutual willingness to feel and want in front of one another. These artists from comfortable backgrounds are not living any sort of pinched, mid-century stiffness, denied their ambitions. They are active creatives drawn to a shared flame. And thus, together, they burn—in a good way, for a while.
Cooper, who co-wrote the script with Josh Singer, zooms through the years, scenes tumbling into other scenes—children are born, professional trajectories reach ever more heights. Maestro only pauses its ceaseless motion for small moments meant to define a relationship’s dynamic, not to plot significant points on a known timeline. It is refreshing that Maestro is not a staid biopic structured in plodding fashion, delineating Bernstein’s life in its most pertinent beats. West Side Story is only mentioned twice, by my count; Candide no more than that. We occasionally see the great man at work at the podium, huge moments of sweaty physicality that Cooper attacks with gusto. But otherwise this is not a career movie, nor really a creation one. Which may be disappointing for those wanting to see important events in a vital American artist’s history dutifully reenacted; lovers of romantic melodrama, though, ought to be more satisfied.
The Bernstein of it all—his uniquely notable presence in, and effect on, the world—is conjured up mostly through music, that which he wrote or famously conducted. What wonders these selections are: the towering thrill of his Ely Cathedral performance of Mahler’s “Resurrection” Symphony; the nimble pluck of Fancy Free, with its early evocations of West Side dance-battles; the sweep and lilt of A Quiet Place. Cooper relies heavily on these selections to convey meaning. And why shouldn’t he, when they are such testament to a prodigy’s output, his novel inventions and his singular ear for interpreting classics of old? The extended sequence in which Bernstein furiously conducts the Mahler symphony is especially striking, an artist in his older years finding his fire anew—nicely linked, in the movie’s narrative, with a rekindling of his marriage.
The union of Bernstein and Montealegre was peculiar or progressive, depending on whom you asked. Bernstein had many affairs with men, a fact from which the film—while still devoted to its mission of depicting a deep and abiding heterosexual marriage—does not shy away. Declarative statements are never made; labels are not assigned. But the matter of Bernstein’s sexuality, and his increasing indiscretion about it, is bandied about quite often as the film reaches its climax, by then unfolding in Matthew Libatique’s rich color photography. Cooper uses Bernstein’s consistent dalliances with men—and, in some cases, genuine romantic affairs—as the wedge threatening to drive Bernstein and Montealegre apart for good. We may never know for certain whether or not that was exactly the case in real life. But it is squarely presented as such in Maestro, an argument that plays as perhaps too easy and direct an analysis given all the abstraction and nuance afforded the couple in the rest of the film.
Though Maestro confronts queerness head on, it is curiously silent on Bernstein and (perhaps especially) Montealegre’s political activism. The famous Black Panther Party event Montealegre held at the family’s apartment in 1970, which led to the writer Tom Wolfe sneeringly coining the term “radical chic,” is not mentioned at all in the film. Nor are any of the couple’s other noble causes. One gets the queasy impression that Cooper wants to keep his film free of those particular complications, lest they too rigidly define and contextualize these two lovers so fiercely vying for our affection.
When it comes to airport style, I am all about outfits that are comfortable without sacrificing style, and the shoes are the key component for accomplishing this. Heels are a hard no in my book, as well as any other shoes that make for a complicated run through the security line. This leaves flat shoes like loafers, ankle boots, sneakers, and my all-time favorite: ballet flats. While ballet flats truly never go out of style, they are currently at the forefront of shoe trends at the moment.
I know I am not alone in this preference as evidenced by the many stylish celebrities that are spotted traveling in the timeless flat shoe style. Besides the ease, they instantly elevate even the most basic of outfits. Just don’t forget to pack a pair of socks in your carry-on to save you from a grimy barefoot walk through security. Ahead, check out 11 inspiring celebrity airport looks with ballet flats. Plus, shop some of the chicest options at the moment.
Mulligan: In those brief moments, what’s the alternate?
Dano: Oh, you know, those things that are never going to happen, which I’m really not cut out for, like I’ll go live on a farm. I would like to spend more time writing. I really want to make another film.
How is the point you’re both at now in your careers, and since you both now have families, influencing your career choices?
Dano: First of all, becoming a parent has changed everything. The Fabelmans, frankly, was the first time that I’ve really used so much of my present life, so to speak. It was about marriage. It was about being a father. When I do The Batman, that part of me is not coming to work in the same way. So, it felt transitional almost. I was like I’m stepping into my adult self even further somehow through this character and through this film. In a weird way, it makes it harder. It’s harder to go away. It’s harder to ask your family to go away on location. It’s harder to prepare. It’s harder to come home after work, but I also think that I feel like my priorities just keep becoming clearer.
Mulligan: I think it also changes as they get older. It’s different now. When they’re tiny, they are sort of portable. Now mine are getting a bit older, it will become clearer what is and isn’t possible for us. But I think in terms of the work, I feel a lot more relaxed. It’s that old cliché—the acting you do for free and everything else is what you get paid for. I’m so lucky, we’re both so lucky that at the moment we get to do jobs because we want to do them, not because we have to. And that’s such a luxury in life and in the world to be able to do that. I think it’s sort of very obvious when it’s the right time to do something and not, whereas I think I probably debated more in the past. I feel very cut and dry.
Since you’re friends in real life, can you share something surprising about each other?
Mulligan: For a long time Zoe and I would hang a lot and it was not like the three of us. Like even at my wedding, Zoe was there all week and you came for the weekend. I think for a while I was so intimidated by you as an actor, from There Will Be Blood. It was so otherworldly and incredible. I think for a while I was like, “Ugh, he’s a proper one.” And, and then after a while I was like, “oh, he’s so goofy.” I don’t know if that’s the perception of serious actors, and I think you are perceived as a serious actor.
Dano: But I’m just like a silly person. Yeah, I don’t know why. It’s hard, this part of what we do is weird, right? I do think that I have to save some part of myself for me in my real life, so to speak. Because I think it’s important to separate them actually. When you’re there for work, I do think the character is guiding you. And then when we come to do this, I have to have some sense of separation. I don’t know why.
