Variety 4/5/2023

As anyone who grew up on Nintendo can tell you, nothing — not even those treacherous turtle shells — could stop Super Mario. He wove through Bowser’s labyrinthine castle in the original 1985 video game that launched a $30 billion gaming empire. He raced laps on Koopa Troopa Beach and the psychedelic Rainbow Road in the beloved Mario Kart 64. He even taught children how to master a keyboard without looking in the ’90s educational game Mario Teaches Typing. So it’s a little surprising that Mario and his brother Luigi’s first foray into movies was such a dud. The 1993 live-action “Super Mario Bros.,” starring Bob Hoskins as Mario and John Leguizamo as his plunger-wielding partner in crime, barely made a dent in pop culture — short of being ridiculed…

Executive editor Brent Lang was one of the unhappy few who saw the 1993 “Super Mario Bros.” in theaters. Co-writing a cover about the much, much better 2023 version has helped him recover. Almost. Associate online editor Ethan Shanfeld co-wrote this week’s cover story on “The Super Mario Bros. Movie.” While franchise creator Shigeru Miyamoto refused to reveal his go-to Mario Kart character, Ethan’s is Toadette. Senior editor Trish Deitch would like to curl up on the couch of “Camelot” director Bartlett Sher’s tiny Lincoln Center office and read every book on his shelves. “Typically, my portrait work involves using physical environments to create visually distinctive images,” says Adam Amengual, who photographed our Super Mario cover subjects in L.A. on Feb. 15. “However, this recent assignment offered me the chance…

In 2008, Don Lemon was co-anchoring CNN’s “Live From” weekday show with Kyra Phillips, a gig he landed not long after arriving at the network. For months, tensions between the pair kept mounting. On more than one occasion, a “Live From” producer and a newsroom supervisor had to pull Lemon off the air during a commercial break because of his provocative antics. It’s a situation reminiscent of Lemon’s most recent gaffe, when he declared that the 51-year-old Nikki Haley isn’t a viable presidential candidate because she “isn’t in her prime.” Even before the issue with Phillips, sources say Lemon disrespected colleagues Nancy Grace on air and Soledad O’Brien during an editorial meeting. But his antipathy toward Phillips was particularly concerning. While she was on assignment in Iraq — a high-profile…

Sire Records co-founder Seymour Stein was indisputably one of the greatest music executives of all time, with a career that spanned six decades and a rare ear for talent that led Madonna, Talking Heads, Lou Reed, Ice-T, Depeche Mode, the Pretenders, the Smiths and many others to his label. Stein, who died on April 2 at the age of 80, is remembered here by Chris Frantz, drummer of Talking Heads, who, with his wife, Tina Weymouth, Jerry Harrison and David Byrne, signed with the label in 1976. Seymour told this story many times. His first visit to CBGB on the Bowery was to see the Ramones. His wife, Linda, insisted that he see them because they were something new and fabulous and she thought he should sign them, which he…

“What the fuck is happening?” That was Steven Yeun’s reaction while shooting the cataclysmic climax of “Beef,” which he leads with Ali Wong. The Netflix and A24 dramedy opens plausibly enough with a road-rage scene between Wong’s Amy, an entrepreneur whose easygoing nature masks secret desires, and Yeun’s Danny, a contractor who goes to extremes to obtain what he wants. But that initial conflict drives both to exact bizarre acts of revenge on each other, revealing the darkest corners of their psyches. The result? Chaos. In one scene, Amy masturbates with a gun; in another, Danny urinates all over her bathroom — and that’s just the beginning. Seeded throughout are quiet explorations of the characters’ anger, loneliness and fear. “Both assume incorrectly that they cannot show their true selves to…

“Method acting” long ago lost its meaning. Instead, it’s become a catchall to describe an intense commitment to getting it right on stage or screen. It’s an all-out approach that sees performers pack and shed pounds, feast on live cockroaches or raw bison, extract teeth or eschew showers, and remain in character between takes. Those are just a few examples of the extremes to which Robert De Niro, Nicolas Cage, Leonardo DiCaprio, Shia LaBeouf, Charlize Theron, Daniel Day-Lewis and their ilk push themselves in the service of their art. For their suffering, they receive Oscars and Emmys, along with a ton of media coverage — just look at the scores of pieces documenting the gonzo things Jared Leto has done each time one of his movies get released. The payoff…