The actor stars in Michael Schurs Netflix series about a widower who goes undercover in a retirement home to catch a thief.

Accompanied by the Orchestra of St. Lukes, the troupes current Lincoln Center run is at its best in the works choreographed by its founder, with newer dances and world premieres proving less compelling.

Putting the "psycho" in acoustics Study: Why Aztec death whistles sound like human screams The basic mechanism relies on the Venturi effect, producing a unique rough and piercing sound. Jennifer Ouellette Nov 20, 2024 2:37 pm | 36 The skull-shaped body of the Aztec death whistle may represent Mictlantecuhtli, the Aztec Lord of the Underworld. Credit: Sascha Frhholz The skull-shaped body of the Aztec death whistle may represent Mictlantecuhtli, the Aztec Lord of the Underworld. Credit: Sascha Frhholz Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreArchaeologists have discovered numerous ceramic or clay whistles at Aztec sites, dubbed "death whistles" because of their distinctive skull shapes. A new paper published in the journal Communications Psychology examines the acoustical elements of the unique shrieking sounds produced by those whistles, as well as how human listeners are emotionally affected by the sounds. The findings support the hypothesis that such whistles may have been used in Aztec religious rituals or perhaps as mythological symbols.Archaeologists unearthed the first Aztec death whistles, also known as ehecachichtlis, in 1999 while excavating the Tlatelolco site in Mexico City. They found the body of a sacrificial victim, a 20-year-old male who had been beheaded, at the base of the main stairway of a temple dedicated to the wind god Ehecatl. The skeleton was clutching two ceramic skull-shaped whistles, one in each hand, along with other artifacts. More skull whistles were subsequently found, and they've found their way into popular culture. For instance, in Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021), Egon Spengler had such a whistle in his secret laboratory collection.Scholars have puzzled over the purpose of the skull whistles, although given the dearth of concrete evidence, most suggestions are highly speculative. One hypothesis is that it was used in battle, with hundreds of warriors blowing their whistles simultaneously as a battle cry. Music archaeologist Arnd Adje Both has dismissed that idea, suggesting instead that the whistle's purpose was more likely tied to ceremonial or religious practices, like human sacrifice. Yet another hypothesis proposes that the whistles were intended as symbols of a deity. The skull shape, for instance, might allude to the Aztec god of the underworld, Mictlantecuhtli.Aztec death whistles don't fit into any existing Western classification for wind instruments; they seem to be a unique kind of "air spring" whistle, based on CT scans of some of the artifacts. Sascha Frhholz, a cognitive and affective neuroscientist at the University of Zrich, and several colleagues wanted to learn more about the physical mechanisms behind the whistle's distinctive sound, as well as how humans perceive said sounda field known as psychoacoustics. The whistles have a very unique construction, and we dont know of any comparable musical instrument from other pre-Columbian cultures or from other historical and contemporary contexts, said Frhholz.A symbolic sound? Human sacrifice with original skull whistle (small red box and enlarged rotated view in lower right) discovered 198789 at the Ehecatl-Quetzalcoatl temple in Mexico City. Credit: Salvador Guillien Arroyo, Proyecto Tlatelolco For their acoustic analysis, Frhholz et al. obtained sound recordings from two Aztec skull whistles excavated from Tlatelolco, as well as from three noise whistles (part of Aztec fire snake incense ladles). They took CT scans of whistles in the collection of the Ethnological Museum in Berlin, enabling them to create both 3D digital reconstructions and physical clay replicas. They were also able to acquire three additional artisanal clay whistles for experimental purposes.Human participants then blew into the replicas with low-, medium-, and high-intensity air pressure, and the ensuing sounds were recorded. Those recordings were compared to existing databases of a broad range of sounds: animals, natural soundscapes, water sounds, urban noise, synthetic sounds (as for computers, pinball machines, printers, etc.), and various ancient instruments, among other samples. Finally, a group of 70 human listeners rated a random selection of sounds from a collection of over 2,500 samples.The CT scans showed that skull whistles have an internal tube-like air duct with a constricted passage, a counter pressure chamber, a collision chamber, and a bell cavity. The unusual construction suggests that the basic principle at play is the Venturi effect, in which air (or a generic fluid) speeds up as it flows through a constricted passage, thereby reducing the pressure. "At high playing intensities and air speeds, this leads to acoustic distortions and to a rough and piercing sound character that seems uniquely produced by the skull whistles," the authors wrote. (e) Digitalization and 3D reconstruction of the skull whistle replicas using CT scans of the replicas. (f) 3D models of an original skull whistle demonstrate the air flow dynamics, construction similarity, and sound generation process. Credit: Sascha Frhholz et al., 2024 That is consistent with the rough piercing sounds of the recordings of original skull whistles, per the authors. The spectral signal contains features of pink noise, along with high-pitched frequencies. There were only minor differences between recordings of the original skull whistles and the replicas. The whistle sound is most similar to natural sounds and electronic music effects, and least similar to other instruments like Mexican flutes. Animal, human, and synthetic sounds fall somewhere in between. Finally, the whistle sounds corresponded to a distinct pitch of the modulation power spectrum (MPS) with psychoacoustic significance, associated with primate screams, terrifying music, and the like.Perhaps, then, it is not surprising that human listeners consistently rated skull whistle sounds as having negative emotional quality, as well as sounding largely unnatural, scary, or aversive. This was further bolstered by a follow-up experiment in which 32 participants listened to skull whistles and other sounds while undergoing an fMRI. Per Frhholz et al., there was a strong response in brain regions associated with the affective neural system, as well as regions that associate sounds with symbolic meaning. So the death whistles combine basic psycho-affective influences with more complex mental processes involving symbolism.This is consistent with the tradition of many ancient cultures to capture natural sounds in musical instruments, and could explain the ritual dimension of the death whistle sound for mimicking mythological entities, said Frhholz. Unfortunately, we could not perform our psychological and neuroscientific experiments with humans from ancient Aztec cultures. But the basic mechanisms of affective response to scary sounds are common to humans from all historical contexts."Communications Psychology, 2024. DOI: 10.1038/s44271-024-00157-7 (About DOIs).Jennifer OuelletteSenior WriterJennifer OuelletteSenior Writer Jennifer is a senior reporter at Ars Technica with a particular focus on where science meets culture, covering everything from physics and related interdisciplinary topics to her favorite films and TV series. Jennifer lives in Baltimore with her spouse, physicist Sean M. Carroll, and their two cats, Ariel and Caliban. 36 Comments

just circling back Microsoft pushes full-screen ads for Copilot+ PCs on Windows 10 users Microsoft has frequently used this kind of reminder to encourage upgrades. Andrew Cunningham Nov 20, 2024 1:45 pm | 150 One of several full-screen messages that has been sent to Windows 10 users over the last few days. Credit: Kyle Orland One of several full-screen messages that has been sent to Windows 10 users over the last few days. Credit: Kyle Orland Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreWindows 10's free, guaranteed security updates stop in October 2025, less than a year from now. Windows 10 users with supported PCs have been offered the Windows 11 upgrade plenty of times before. But now Microsoft is apparently making a fresh push to get users to upgrade, sending them full-screen reminders recommending they buy new computers.The reminders, which users have seen within the last few days, all mention the end of Windows 10 support but otherwise seem to differ from computer to computer. My Ars colleague Kyle Orland got one focused on Windows 11's gaming features, while posters on X (formerly Twitter) got screens that emphasized the ease of migrating from old PCs to new ones and other Windows 11 features. One specifically recommended upgrading to a Copilot+ PC, which supports a handful of extra AI features that other Windows 11 PCs don't, but other messages didn't mention Copilot+ specifically.None of the messages mention upgrading to Windows 11 directly, though Kyle said his PC meets Windows 11's requirements. These messages may be intended mostly for people using older PCs that can't officially install the Windows 11 update.The full-screen reminders also don't mention the one official escape hatch that Microsoft provides for Windows 10 users: the Extended Security Update (ESU) program, which will offer a single additional year of security updates to home users for a one-time fee of $30. Schools, businesses, and other organizations will be able to get up to three years of ESUs, but years two and three of the program aren't being offered to regular consumers.Though this is a fresh wave of full-screen update reminders, it's far from the first time Microsoft has used this tactic. Microsoft sent a wave of full-screen Windows 11 upgrade messages to Windows 10 users in early 2023. Toward the end of Windows 10's free upgrade period in 2016, users of Windows 7 and 8 were shown a full-screen message reminding them to update before the offer expired. In 2014, Windows XP users were warned of the upcoming end of support with a pop-up message; Windows 7 users received similar pop-ups in 2019.Paying for ESUs or buying a new PC isn't the only way to keep getting Windows updates after October 2025. Supported PCs can install Windows 11 directly, though sometimes Windows 10 PCs will need some configuration changes. And the experience of running Windows 11 on an older "unsupported" PC can occasionally be annoying, but the day-to-day user experience is surprisingly good most of the time.Andrew CunninghamSenior Technology ReporterAndrew CunninghamSenior Technology Reporter Andrew is a Senior Technology Reporter at Ars Technica, with a focus on consumer tech including computer hardware and in-depth reviews of operating systems like Windows and macOS. Andrew lives in Philadelphia and co-hosts a weekly book podcast called Overdue. 150 Comments

TechnologyUsing GPT-4o, the model behind ChatGPT, researchers have replicated the personality and behaviour of more than 1000 people, in an effort to create an alternative to focus groups and polling 20 November 2024 Can AI replicate individual humans?gremlin/Getty ImagesAn experiment simulating more than 1000 real people using the artificial intelligence model behind ChatGPT has successfully replicated their unique thoughts and personalities with high accuracy, sparking concerns about the ethics of mimicking individuals in this way.Joon Sung Park at Stanford University in California and his colleagues wanted to use generative AI tools to model individuals as a way of forecasting the impact of policy changes. Historically, this has been attempted using more simplistic rule-based statistical models, with limited success.

An artists depiction of a system showing its host star, transiting planet and misaligned protoplanetary discNASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt, K. Miller (Caltech/IPAC)A world seen orbiting a 3-million-year-old star about 520 light years from Earth is one of the youngest known planets, offering a window into early planet formation.The star is an early-stage dwarf star, one much dimmer and less massive than our sun. Its age has been estimated by comparing the intensity and wavelengths of the light it emits with other stars.Madyson Barber at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and her colleagues studied the star using NASAs Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). They found a planet about a third of the mass of Jupiter and 10 times the diameter of Earth by noticing the dip in the stars light as the planet passed in front.AdvertisementThe worlds mass and size suggest it is either a large rocky planet, known as a super-Earth, or a small gas giant, called a sub-Neptune, in the process of formation.We think Earth took between 10 million and 20 million years to form, about 4.5 billion years ago, says Barber. So it was kind of surprising to see anything at 3 million years. Voyage across the galaxy and beyond with our space newsletter every month.Sign up to newsletterThe system is also notable for still having its protoplanetary disc of dust and gas, meaning the star and planets are still in the process of taking shape, although that disc is oddly misaligned out of the plane of the system for reasons that arent clear. Were not super sure what caused the misalignment, says Barber. Its possible a stellar flyby happened as the system was forming.The planet is extremely close to its star, completing an orbit every nine days, which is also puzzling as it is unclear whether planets can form in such proximity. They can move inwards over time, as is thought to have taken place in our solar system when some of the giant planets jostled for position. It hints at fast migration of planets being a thing, says Barber.While we know of other young planets, they have tended to be much larger worlds. This one could give us a closer representation of how the worlds in our own solar system came into being. We try to extrapolate from these other worlds how quickly planet formation might have taken hold in the early solar system, says Melinda Soares-Furtado at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.Some young stars have even been seen with gaps in their protoplanetary disc after just half a million years, hinting at the existence of planets forming in tandem with their host stars, she says.It looks like things happen early, says Soares-Furtado, so its really cool to grab snapshots of systems like this one.Journal reference:Nature DOI: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-08123-3Topics:exoplanets

Once again, global greenhouse-gas emissions are projected to hit a new high in 2024. In this time of shifting political landscapes and ongoing international negotiations, many are quick to blame one country or another for an outsize role in causing climate change. But assigning responsibility is complicated. These three visualizations help explain why and provide some perspective about the worlds biggest polluters. Greenhouse-gas emissions from fossil fuels and industry reached 37.4 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2024, according to projections from the Global Carbon Budget, an annual emissions report released last week. Thats a 0.8% increase over last year. Breaking things down by country, China is far and away the single biggest polluter today, a distinction it has held since 2006. The country currently emits roughly twice as much greenhouse gas as any other nation. The power sector is its single greatest source of emissions as the grid is heavily dependent on coal, the most polluting fossil fuel. The US is the worlds second-biggest polluter, followed by India. Combined emissions from the 27 nations that make up the European Union are next, followed by Russia and Japan. Considering a countrys current emissions doesnt give the whole picture of its climate responsibility, though. Carbon dioxide is stable in the atmosphere for hundreds of years. That means greenhouse gases from the first coal power plant, which opened in the late 19th century, are still having a warming effect on the planet today. Adding up each countrys emissions over the course of its history reveals that the US has the greatest historical contributionthe country is responsible for about 24% of all the climate pollution released into the atmosphere as of 2023. While its the biggest polluter today, China comes in second in terms of historical emissions, at 14%. If the EUs member states are totaled as one entity, the group is among the top historical contributors as well. According to an analysis published November 19 by the website Carbon Brief, China passed EU member states in terms of historical emissions in 2023 for the first time. China could catch up with the West in the coming decades, as its emissions are significant and still growing, while the US and EU are seeing moderate declines. Even then, though, theres another factor to consider: population. Dividing a countrys total emissions by its population reveals how the average individual in each nation is contributing to climate change today. Countries with smaller populations and economies that are heavily reliant on oil and gas tend to top this list, including Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates. Among the larger nations, Australia has the highest per capita emissions from fossil fuels, with the US and Canada close behind. Meanwhile, other countries that have high total emissions are farther down the list when normalized by population: Chinas per capita emissions are just over half that of the US, while Indias is a small fraction. Understanding the complicated picture of global emissions is crucial, especially during ongoing negotiations (including the current meeting at COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan) over how to help developing nations pay for efforts to combat climate change. Looking at current emissions, one might expect the biggest emitter, China, to contribute more than any other country to climate finance. But considering historical contributions, per capita emissions, and details about national economies, other nations like the US, UK, and members of the EU emerge as those experts tend to say should feature prominently in the talks. What is clear is that when it comes to the emissions blame game, its more complicated than just pointing at todays biggest polluters. Ultimately, addressing climate change will require everyone to get on boardwe all share an atmosphere, and were all going to continue feeling the effects of a changing climate. Notes on data methodology: Emissions data is from the Global Carbon Project, which estimates carbon emissions based on energy use. Territorial emissions take into account energy and some industry, but dont include land use emissions. Data from the European Union is the sum of its current 27 member states. The bloc is represented together because the EU generally negotiates together on the international stage. Historical emissions for some countries are disaggregated from former borders, including the former USSR and Yugoslavia. The per capita emissions map uses official World Bank boundaries, with the exception of Taiwan, which has separate emissions data in the Global Carbon Project. Western Saharas energy data are reported by Morocco, so its emissions are included in that total. Per capita emissions for Morocco are also used for Western Sahara on the map. More detailed information about the Global Carbon Project methods (including the particulars on how territorial emissions are broken down) is available here.

Google's DeepMind and YouTube previously built and shelved Orca, an AI music tool.Orca could generate music mimicking artists. Google trained it on copyrighted YouTube music videos.Google's AI strategy led to Orca's development. Legal risks halted its release.Name your favorite artist, choose a genre, and feed it some lyrics, and AI will create a song that sounds completely authentic.That was the vision of "Orca," a project Google's DeepMind and YouTube collaborated on and ultimately shelved last year after butting up against copyright issues, according to four people familiar with the matter, who asked to remain anonymous because they were not permitted to talk to the press.The tool, which was internally codenamed "Orca," let anyone generate music with just a few simple prompts. It was developed as Google scrambled to catch OpenAI.Users could generate a new song by giving Orca prompts like a specific artist, lyrics, and musical genre, said one person familiar with the project. For example, they could use the tool to generate a hip-hop song with the voice of Taylor Swift, that person said, adding that it was "mind-blowing."Google eventually approached some music labels about releasing the Orca tool to the public, offering a revenue-share agreement for the music and artists Orca trained from, and the labels demurred, forcing Google to put the brakes on the project, that person said, adding that it was a "huge legal risk."Orca is yet another example of how tech companies have moved at breakneck speeds to get ahead in the AI race. It also demonstrated how tech companies were willing to ride roughshod over their own rules to compete.Google had previously avoided using copyrighted videos for AI training. When OpenAI started scraping YouTube for its own models, Google leadership decided to be more aggressive and reneged on its rule, said a person with direct knowledge of Orca.Google has terms that allow it to scrape data from YouTube videos to improve its own service, although it's unclear if building an AI music generator would fall under this policy.Developments on Orca throughout 2023 were so promising that at one point, some employees suggested that giving it a codename after a killer whale wasn't a good idea if DeepMind was about to destroy an entire music industry, one person involved recalled.Some researchers inside Google had developed a similar model of their own, MusicLM, trained on "a large dataset of un-labeled music," as detailed in a paper published early last year.In November 2023, DeepMind announced a music generation AI model named Lyria, which was a pared-down version of the Orca project. Users could ask Lyria to generate music using the voice and music style of some artists who had explicitly worked with Google on the project, such as John Legend although it was far more limited in scope than Orca, three people familiar with the project said.Some employees who worked on Lyria and Orca left to found a new startup named Udio, which makes an AI music creation app.Google did not respond to a request for comment.Are you a current or former DeepMind or YouTube employee? Got more insight to share? You can reach the reporter Hugh Langley via the encrypted messaging app Signal (+1 628-228-1836) or email ().

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, co-heads of DOGE, are figuring out how to cut the federal government.Both men admire Javier Milei, the Argentine leader elected on a pledge to slash the state.Milei closed nine ministries, firing thousands of officials, and the economy is feeling the effects.About a year ago, standing in front of a whiteboard with a gleam in his eye, Javier Milei started pulling apart Argentina's government."Ministry of Culture Out! Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development Out!" he yelled with escalating joy, shredding an org chart of the state.Soon after, he was elected his nation's president and started to make good on his program of massive spending cuts. Javier Milei pulls apart a chart of Argentina's state in a video published on September 9, 2023. TikTok/@javiermileii Watching admiringly were Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk, the men now charged with a similar task in the US.Both men have praised Milei repeatedly, seeing in him a model for their Department of Government Efficiency.So, how has Milei's hack-and-slash agenda played out? And what could it mean for the federal government?'Just cut to the chase'Milei's program was swift and brutal.Within days of taking office, Milei shut down half of the country's 18 ministries by presidential decree.He fired some 25,000 public employees, and is working throughCuts of a similar scale in the US, with about seven times Argentina's population, would mean shedding 700,000 government workers.Milei also hacked back the Argentine equivalent of Social Security by an estimated third, canceled infrastructure projects, and froze budgets at the surviving ministries.This week, in an interview with the podcaster Lex Fridman, Milei said DOGE should act with speed too.When prompted for advice, he said, "Just cut to the chase."Milei described a physical timer in Argetina's deregulation ministry meant to focus minds by counting down days.Harsh medicineHis measures helped tame a crisis: Argentina's inflation was25.5%when Milei took office, and as of October, it was 2.7%.The government ran its first surplus in 12 years, and trimmed tens of billions from its national debt.It also spurred a recession and mass civil unrest as hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets and unions held regular strikes across the country.Economists told Business Insider that major differences in the US and Argentine economies make the two tough to compare.First Milei took power in an economic meltdown where inflation of 25.5% was hammering the economy.Milei solved that, said Maria Victoria Murillo, director of the Institute of Latin American Studies at Columbia University.But "the consequence was a deep recession that facilitated controlling inflation but has been very painful and is accepted because inflation was terrible and people do not want to go back.""I am not certain that would be the case in the US," she said. Argentinians have taken to the streets to protest against Javier Milei's economic policies since his election. Luciano Gonzalez/Anadolu via Getty Images Kimberley Sperrfechter, Capital Economics' Latin America Economist, noted that President-elect Donald Trump's policies mostly point to more state spending, not less. He explicitly ruled out changes to Social Security, the government's single biggest budget item.The US balance of power is also different. Milei was able to make his changes mostly by executive decree. As BI reported, Trump would have to contend with Congress, where Republicans have only slender majorities.The toast of Mar-a-LagoDOGE's leaders don't seem blind to that in August, Ramaswamy touted Milei as an inspiration but said Argentina was "much less complicated" an economy to overhaul.It hasn't dimmed Milei's popularity in Trumpworld.Milei was a guest of Trump's at Mar-a-Lago, the first world leader to meet him since his election victory, where he called his victory "the greatest political comeback in history."On the Fridman podcast, Milei advised Musk and Ramaswamy to go "all the way" in cutting US federal spending.Since Election Day, Ramaswamy and Musk have posted about Milei more than a dozen times: DOGE is readying its work with at least one eye on Buenos Aires.

Welcome to Know-It-All. In the age of intellectual property grabs, docudramas, and so very many sequels, it can be difficult to find a way into the complicated worlds we see on screen. In this series, Vox experts explain what you need to know to get into the latest hot release.Like a friendship between a popular blonde princess and a dour lime-skinned outcast, the story of Wicked is a bit more complicated than it looks. Wicked is billed as the true story of Glinda the Good and the Wicked Witch of the West, the very famous, very what-you-see-is-what-you-get witches from The Wizard of Oz. Its based on a well-loved, very catchy Broadway musical thats been around for 20-plus years. It also stars pop queen Ariana Grande and powerhouse Cynthia Erivo, and the movies very expansive, very expensive marketing campaign seemed determined to forever alter the way we think about pink and green.Wicked is everywhere. Surely it cant be that impenetrable! But did you know that the Broadway musical was based on Gregory Maguires revisionist novels which were, in turn, inspired by L. Frank Baums beloved series of over a dozen books about Oz? And that a major plot in the novels involves sentient, talking animals that love sonnets and science? Or that Wicked is really a political thriller about corrupt government officials scapegoating a minority and creating an enemy of the state?Beneath the movies airy aesthetics and its bubblegum pop moments is a broiling, chaotic tale of power, greed, and discrimination. The more you know about Wicked, the weirder and weirder it gets. With that in mind, I asked my colleague Constance Grady to help us navigate the world of Wicked and Oz. Grady has read Gregory Maguires original novel multiple times, the Baum novels as a child, seen the Broadway production, and like me, saw the movie this week. We discussed everything from anti-goat fascism, to Grandes delicious performance, to what from the book didnt make it into the adaptations. Heres what you need to know about the movie musical of the moment. Do I have this correct? Wicked is a movie musical adaptation of the Tony-winning Broadway show Wicked, which is an adaptation of the novel Wicked, which is a retelling of The Wizard of Oz. Youre right, but theres another adaptation layer in there.All those layers. The whole thing starts with the L. Frank Baum childrens novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, which he published in 1900. Baums book was so successful that it was almost immediately adapted into a Broadway musical of its own (now largely forgotten) and an entire franchise worth of sequels, 13 of which Baum wrote himself. Then in 1939 we got the most famous and, for most people, canonical version of the story: The Wizard of Oz, the Judy Garland film based on the Baum novel. The first Wicked was Gregory Maguires novel, first published in 1995 as Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West. Maguires gimmick was to take Margaret Hamiltons cackling, green-skinned Wicked Witch of the West from the 1939 film surely one of childhoods scariest villains and make her the beating heart of his novel. He renamed her Elphaba, a name suggested by the initials of L. Frank Baum.Wicked the musical came in 2003, with music from Stephen Schwartz and a book by Winnie Holzman. It was a smash hit success when it came out, and its still running on Broadway now, 21 years later. Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba in Wicked. You cant tell here, but she is green. Wicked/UniversalThe musical was such a hit that Universal, which owns the rights, has had various versions of the film in development for a very long time now. Finally and at last, in 2021, Universal put director Jon M. Chu of Crazy Rich Asians on the task. Chu split the stage musical into two halves, with Wicked Part 1 to premiere in November 2024 and Wicked Part 2 set to come in 2025. And now here we are! Do you have a favorite? At different times, all of the Oz stories have been my favorites.I grew up on the 1939 movie like everyone else. When Dorothy opens the black-and-white door to her Kansas home and walks out into brilliant, Technicolor Oz? Thats what cinema was made for, baby! When I was around 8 or 9 I came upon the L. Frank Baum novels, and I was tickled to find that they contained such an expansive and playful mythology. I gobbled up those books like candy. Then at around 11 years old, I read Wicked and was entranced by it: all that moral complexity, all the political intrigue, all those slippery, winding sentences. When the musical came along, I immediately resented it for being a glitzier, simpler story than the book was really boiled down to the complicated friendship between Elphaba and Glinda, set against the backdrop of the Wizards manipulations but when I was 17 I saw it on Broadway and was overwhelmed by the sheer spectacle of it and the gleeful drive of the songs. When Elphaba started flying at the end of act one, I burst into tears. To be fair to 17-year-old you, there is at least one person, if not 10 to 20 people, bursting into tears at every performance when Elphaba defies gravity. Its a spectacle. Its monumental. Its as important to Broadway as the chandelier coming down in Phantom of the Opera.God, its truly so good. For that moment, I even forgive Schwartz for writing the lyric Nessa, Nessa, Ive got something to confess-a.Wicked is famously one of only six musicals I enjoy. And I feel like the movie sticks to the musical. How well do the musicals stick to the book? The musical is very, very loosely based on Maguires book.What Gregory Maguire wanted to write was a really sophisticated allegorical exploration of the nature of evil itself and what might drive Elphaba to wickedness. As such, his Wicked is bleak, at times self-indulgently so. Maguires Elphaba is raised by missionaries in a Southern Gothic childhood right out of Flannery OConnor. After she abandons both religion and schooling and is politically radicalized by the cause of Ozian Animal rights, she becomes a terrorist, complicit in multiple acts of violence against civilians. By the end, however much you might sympathize with Elphabas cause, you understand why people call her the wicked witch.Wicked: Part I (the official name of this movie) feels less like, Wow, this lady is really wicked, and more like, Oh, shes just misunderstood. Maybe we havent gotten to the full terrorist part yet, but I cant imagine Elphabas morality is ever going to be as ambiguous as the novel. Absolutely. The Wicked of the stage show is a much sweeter and sillier version of the story. Schwartz and Holzman ditch as much of the religion and the politics as they possibly can to focus on the relationship between Elphaba and Glinda, the Good Witch of the North or Galinda, as she originally calls herself. Ariana Grande as Glinda, the good witch. Wicked/UniversalMaguire imagined Glinda as Elphabas college roommate, and shes key to Elphies college years, but he largely abandons her after Elphie drops out of school to go into politics. Schwartz and Holzman, however, make comic, superficial Glinda into the heart of the story. Perhaps in part to make room for the shift in focus, Elphabas misdeeds are significantly toned down, and as for Maguires dark, heartbreaking ending lets just say it gets, um, revised.The movie convinced me that Glinda is actually the splashier, better-written role. Ive always envisioned Glinda as an SEC-coded mean girl blonde, bubbly, a bit passive aggressive rather than aggressive aggressive. Grande gets us there, and seems to really understand what makes this character so surprisingly funny. So buy or sell: Oscar nominee Ariana Grande?Oh, man. I buy.This movie struggles a lot with its tone. It doesnt know whether it wants to be as silly as the stage musical or as serious as the Maguire book, and as a result, it ends up veering wildly around. The only element of this movie that never has this problem is Grandes performance. Grande nails it top to bottom. She makes spoiled, selfish Glinda so gleefully mean, so deliciously phony in all her virtue-signaling, that you want to laugh at her the way you would laugh at Regina George and then she shows you Glindas tender, insecure heart, and you fall in love with her. Grande has always had an uncanny knack for vocal mimicry, and here she pitches her speaking voice into something halfway between Judy Garlands earnest Dorothy tones and the distinctive showbiz patter of Kristin Chenoweth, who originated the role of Glinda on Broadway. You wouldnt think you could combine the two, but Grande does, and she makes it make sense. As for the singing well, that kind of goes without saying, doesnt it? Shes in phenomenal voice.Whatever happens with the Oscars race this year, Ill know that Grande is the Academy Award nominee of my heart.Tonally, the movie goes from Legally Blonde to The Fugitive. The last 10 minutes are absolutely bonkers. What in the world?Yikes, right? For me, this tonal mismatch is the big flaw of the film, and I think its a byproduct of this very long and winding adaptation process. When Schwartz and Holzman adapted Maguires Wicked, they stripped away as much of his rather baroque mythologizing as they could while still allowing the plot to make a modicum of sense. The vibe of this musical is generally: Why go on and on about the ontological differences between humans and animals if we could be singing fun bops about being popular? It doesnt all have to be so serious all the time.In their version of the story, the Wizards plans are vague, but clearly evil, and Elphabas resistance to his regime is likewise vague, but clearly righteous. The Wizards main sin in the stage musical is that he is lying to his people to stoke up their fears and marshal support to his own side, because this musical hit Broadway in 2003, when George W. Bush was just about to invade Iraq. Other than that, we dont know that much about why hes so bad. We dont really care, either. It all pretty much works if you just sit back in the theater and let the songs wash over you.Chu, however, takes Wicked very seriously indeed; so much so that hes stretched out the musicals 90-minute first act into a lugubrious two hours and 40 minutes, mostly by keeping the pacing slow and solemn. The side effect of moving so slowly, though, is that it puts a lot of pressure on the political subplot of this musical to not only make sense, but to be emotionally impactful. Unfortunately, all of the background that could make it work got left behind in Maguires novel. Are we supposed to care this much about anti-animal fascism in the movie? Or the musical? Do the people who adapted Wicked care that much?Yeah, this is one of the big plotlines where the cracks in the adaptation show. It also makes for a kind of interesting timeline of how different authors have thought about Oz.One of the inconsistencies of L. Frank Baums Oz is that its a land where animals can talk and go on quests and be guests at dinner parties, and so on youll recall the Cowardly Lion but also all the characters are constantly eating meat. Its the kind of minor quirk in world-building that a childrens book can skate right over, but it becomes weird and confusing in an adult novel.So when Maguire wrote Wicked, he imagined an Oz that distinguished between Animals, who are talking and intelligent beings who wear clothes and hold jobs and can be invited to dinner parties, and animals in lowercase, who are non-sentient and can be killed or treated as chattel. In Maguires Oz, the Wizard consolidates his power in part by making the Animals into a scapegoat race. Emphasis, quite literally, on goat. Over the course of the novel, we see them go from full citizens to living under restrictions to slaves who are occasionally cooked and eaten. Elphaba is radicalized into terrorism when her favorite college professor, the Goat and Animal rights agitator Doctor Dillamond, is assassinated by the government. Doctor Dillamond, voiced by Peter Dinklage. This is a CGI goat. I (Alex) do not particularly enjoy looking at CGI goats. Wicked/UniversalWhen Schwartz and Holzman got their hands on the story, they were transforming it once again into a childrens tale, so they didnt particularly have time for this piece of world-building. They ditched the distinction between Animal and animal, so that Doctor Dillamond becomes a guy in a silly goat costume who exists to nudge Elphaba into realizing that the Wizard might not have her best interests at heart. It would be a stretch to think that the stage musical really wants the audience to care about animals in general, or Doctor Dillamond in particular.Chu, characteristically, seems to want to give the animal plotline more gravitas. He makes Dillamond an eerily photorealistic CGI goat who appears in one of Elphabas visions shivering and cringing in a cage, in a dark foretelling of the Wizards eventual goals. Under Chus solemn and slightly heavy-handed touch, you can feel how important the animal rights plotline is to Elphabas character arc. But the part of Maguires novel that made you care about the animals, and about Elphabas commitment to their freedom, was jettisoned long ago. Its an uneasy balance.This contradiction is part of why, I think, Grandes Glinda feels so much like a breath of fresh air whenever she appears on screen. The part of this story that Schwartz and Holzman cared about was Glinda and Elphaba, so thats the part of the story architecture that remains rock solid. No matter what happens, you cant not root for their friendship.Are we going to get more of that in Wicked: Part II? Are people going to want to see the second half of this musical if its all about authoritarianism? I am very curious to see how Chu handles Wicked: Part II, because the second act of Wicked is famously much worse than the first half. All the iconic songs are over by then (although personally, I quite like No Good Deed), the storytelling gets bogged down in mythology that never becomes either clear or interesting, and Glinda and Elphaba spend most of the act in separate places, effectively depriving the show of its strongest dynamic for long stretches of stage time. In the stage show, youre generally invested enough in the characters on the strength of the first half to sit through the second half with minimal complaints, but for that act two to hold its own for a full movie? Tricky! As for the anti-animal fascism, though, we can all breathe easy. As originally staged, Wickeds act two focuses on the animal rights plotline for exactly as long as it takes to hook Elphaba up with her iconic flying monkeys and not a single second longer. Well see if Chu keeps it that way.Youve read 1 article in the last monthHere at Vox, we're unwavering in our commitment to covering the issues that matter most to you threats to democracy, immigration, reproductive rights, the environment, and the rising polarization across this country.Our mission is to provide clear, accessible journalism that empowers you to stay informed and engaged in shaping our world. By becoming a Vox Member, you directly strengthen our ability to deliver in-depth, independent reporting that drives meaningful change.We rely on readers like you join us.Swati SharmaVox Editor-in-ChiefSee More: Culture