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Wednesday, January 9, 2019

CES 2019: It’s the Year of Virtual Assistants and 5G

A visual tour of the world’s most important tech conference offers a window into the year’s trends, including next-generation wireless networks and the invasion of A.I.

LAS VEGAS — The show must go on.

That sentiment couldn’t have been stronger this week at CES, the largest consumer electronics convention in the country. The conference, which brought more than 180,000 people to Las Vegas, was a reminder of what the tech industry is best at: being optimistic about itself.

Who cares about the abysmal stock market and growing fears that we are sliding into a recession? Check out these virtual-reality headsets, self-driving cars and big-screen TVs.

Filippo Yacob, a tech entrepreneur who attended, was blasé about the state of the market. “The speed of progress and innovation happens at such a rapid pace that it’s not like it pulses with the stock market,” said Mr. Yacob, whose company Primo Toys makes tech products for children. “It’s more like a bullet train.”

This year’s event was also slightly larger than the last, with more than 4,500 exhibitors sprawled across 2.7 million square feet. The conference offered a peek at the year’s hottest tech trends, including artificially intelligent virtual assistants, next-generation wireless networks and connected cars.

And companies unveiled thousands of products. Google and Amazon showed car accessories, alarm clocks and speakers that can be controlled with their virtual assistants by speaking commands like “Hey, Google, what’s the weather today?” or “Alexa, what’s my sports update?”

Wireless carriers and chip makers highlighted 5G, the next-generation cellular network arriving this year in a small number of cities with data speeds so zippy that devices can download an entire movie in seconds.

Devices That Will Invade Your Life in 2019 (and What’s Overhyped)

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A.I. that responds to your voice. Next-generation wireless networks. If this year’s biggest consumer technology trends have a familiar ring, there’s a reason for that.

Imagine a future where you are never truly alone. Even when your spouse is on a business trip or your children are away at summer camp, you will always have someone (or something) to talk to. In the morning, you could ask the microwave to heat up a bowl of oatmeal. In your car, you could tell your stereo to put on some ’90s music. And when you walk into the office, you could ask your smartphone, “What’s on my calendar today?”

This is increasingly the world the tech industry is building with a bloating portfolio of devices that can react to voice commands — and that the companies will be pitching to you even more in 2019.

The future will be on display next week at CES, a consumer electronics trade show in Las Vegas that serves as a window into the year’s hottest tech trends. Artificially intelligent virtual assistants will take center stage as the most important tech topic, with companies big and small expected to showcase voice-controlled devices like robot vacuums, alarm clocks, refrigerators and car accessories. Most of these products will be powered by Amazon’s Alexa or Google’s Assistant, the two most popular artificially intelligent assistants, industry insiders said.

“A.I. will pervade the show,” said Gary Shapiro, chief executive of the Consumer Technology Association, which owns CES.

If this all sounds like a repeat of last year, that’s because much of it is. Artificial intelligence was 2018’s hottest tech trend, too. In other words, the tech industry is in a state of iteration rather than making leaps and bounds with something totally new.

Other tech trends that are progressing include the debut this year of fifth-generation cellular networks, known as 5G, which will significantly quicken mobile internet speeds. Cybersecurity products for home networks are also proliferating, an important safeguard now that consumers own so many devices that can connect to the internet.

But as is often the case, there will also be plenty of talk in the coming week about overly optimistic tech that you would do best to sidestep for now. That’s because some of the most hyped technologies — especially self-driving cars — are so far from reality that you won’t see them in stores or dealerships anytime soon.

Here’s what to watch, and what to avoid.

Battle of the virtual assistants

Last year, Amazon introduced a microwave powered by its Alexa virtual assistant.

In 2015, Amazon birthed the Echo, the artificially intelligent speaker featuring the virtual assistant known as Alexa. A year later, Google responded with Home, its smart speaker powered by Google’s own digital companion, called Assistant.

Since then, in a bid to become your go-to digital companion, the two tech giants have teamed up with makers of devices like thermostats, doorbells, light bulbs and car accessories to add their virtual assistants to them.

Google is expected to be even more aggressive this year with its Assistant. The company will triple the size of its presence at CES this year, suggesting that it is likely to unveil a large array of products that work with Assistant.

“We’re really leaning into the Assistant as the best way to get things done, helping you for lots of things as you go about your day,” said Nick Fox, a Google executive who oversees Assistant.

Amazon said it would also showcase a wide range of technologies that work with Alexa next week, as part of a vision it calls Alexa Everywhere. The company’s goal is to expand the reach of its virtual assistant into every part of people’s lives, including the kitchen, the living room, the office and the car.

For you and me, here’s a cautionary note: Virtual assistants are still in their infancy and have many shortcomings. We have to speak a very specific command to trigger a virtual assistant to control a device, like setting the temperature on a thermostat or turning on a lamp. Those unfamiliar with the lingo may find the devices even more difficult to use than pressing a button inside an app.

“We still have to learn their language, and they have not learned our language,” said Frank Gillett, a tech analyst for Forrester, a technology research company.

Lost in the hype about virtual assistants is whether people truly want an omnipresent companion involved in their everyday tasks. Owners of smart speakers mostly summoned digital assistants for basic functions like listening to music, checking the weather and setting a timer, according to research by Nielsen last year.

Security for your smart things

Plenty of people install antivirus software on their computers. But what about all the other devices that can be connected to the internet, like smart watches, phones, televisions and speakers?

In an era of smart things, the Wi-Fi router is becoming a bigger target for hackers, so expect a flood of new equipment and software that offer protection by improving your network security.

For a sense of what to expect, consider Eero Plus, a subscription service that Eero, a maker of Wi-Fi equipment, released last year. Eero Plus includes protection against viruses and malware for all the devices connected to its Wi-Fi network. Last year, NetGear released NetGear Armor, a similar security service.

More should follow this year — beginning next week at CES, where Scalys, a networking company, plans to introduce TrustBox, a router with built-in security features.

The arrival of 5G

Carriers like Verizon and AT&T said new network technology would deliver data at incredible speeds.

This year, the wireless industry will begin a big upgrade to its infrastructure. Phone carriers like AT&T and Verizon Wireless say the 5G technology will deliver data at incredibly fast speeds, allowing people to download entire movies in a few seconds.

In addition to increasing smartphone speeds, 5G will be important for other types of devices, like robots, self-driving cars, drones and security cameras. The technology is expected to greatly reduce latency, or the time it takes for devices to communicate with one another.

But don’t get too excited. Carriers say the new network technology will be deployed this year in only a few cities in the United States, and in some parts of Britain, Germany, Switzerland, China, South Korea and Australia.

And not many smartphones will be compatible with 5G initially. Some Chinese handset makers and Samsung Electronics have said they will release their first 5G smartphones this year. Apple is not expected to release a 5G-compatible iPhone until 2020.

“For the early adopters with deep pockets, that’s great,” Mr. Gillett said. “For the rest of us, big whoop.”

Here’s what is still overhyped

Virtual reality and self-driving cars have been talked about a lot in recent years, and they will still be talked about this year. But these two technologies are still nascent or premature.

Over the last two years, tech companies like Facebook’s Oculus, HTC, Google and Samsung have flooded the market with virtual reality headsets and plenty of software and games. Yet people have not exactly embraced the products.

“The industry has been plagued by high-cost hardware, motion sickness, a dearth of compelling content and a general lack of consumer interest,” said Victoria Petrock, an analyst for the research firm eMarketer, in a recent post.

Self-driving cars are also still many years from becoming mainstream. Even though some companies have permits to test autonomous cars in California, Arizona and elsewhere, several of the leaders in the technology — such as Alphabet’s Waymo — have refrained from committing to a release date for self-driving vehicles.

“There’s going to be a lot of noise about automotive technology, but nothing distinct or specific,” Mr. Gillett said.

Pioneering Virtual Reality and New Video Technologies in Journalism

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Marcelle Hopkins, deputy video editor at The Times, trying on virtual reality technology at a V.R. event this month.

How do New York Times journalists use technology in their jobs and in their personal lives? Marcelle Hopkins, deputy video editor and co-director of virtual reality at The Times, discussed the tech she is using.

Video has changed a lot in recent years. How have you and the video department incorporated new video technologies, and what technologies has the department helped pioneer for journalism?

Journalists and technologists from various parts of The Times started experimenting with virtual reality a few years ago. We launched NYT VR in November 2015 with the publication of the V.R. documentary “The Displaced” (about three children displaced by war) and the distribution of more than one million Google Cardboard headsets to our subscribers. Since then, we’ve produced more than 20 V.R. films, and we learn a lot with each one.

Last year, we launched The Daily 360, a series that produces a 360-degree video from somewhere in the world every day. The volume and cadence of daily publication accelerated our learnings in V.R. It allowed us to quickly iterate on a young storytelling form, train our journalists in a new reporting tool and introduce immersive journalism to a broad Times audience.

How do you pilot test new technologies for video? How do you determine if something makes the cut for broader use in the newsroom?

Ms. Hopkins said that V.R. helps create a sense of place, such as an interactive music installation inspired by myths of forest spirits.

Sometimes we practice with new cameras around the office or at home before using them on a story. Other times we send them out on a reporting trip for a trial by fire.
The first time we used the V.R. camera Z Cam S1, we took it to the hottest place on Earth: Danakil, Ethiopia, where temperatures can reach 125 degrees Fahrenheit. In the early days of our V.R. production, we’d had a lot of problems with cameras overheating and turning off. So we weren’t sure how the Z Cam would perform in such a difficult environment. To our delight, it never overheated as it captured stunning images for the resulting film, “The Land of Salt and Fire.”

What have been the strengths of using virtual reality for journalism? What unexpected stumbling blocks have you come across with it?

V.R. is great for creating a sense of place. We often use it for stories in which the place is important to the story and being there can create a visceral experience that is rare in other mediums. V.R. can transport our audience to places they otherwise couldn’t or wouldn’t go, as in “The Antarctica Series,” which takes people below and above the ice of Antarctica.Unexpected stumbling blocks arise frequently because we’re working on the edges of what we know how to do. There’s often a gap between how we want to tell a story and the tools that we have to do it. That’s when we hack available hardware or software to suit our needs.

Among the virtual reality headsets from Facebook’s Oculus, HTC, Google, Sony and Samsung, which do you think is most likely to become mainstream first, and why?

I don’t know who will make it, but the first immersive media wearable to be widely adopted will look and function more like a pair of reading glasses than like the V.R. headsets we have today. The first generation of modern V.R. and augmented reality headsets are too clunky to go mainstream. They’re heavy and awkward, sometimes connected to a computer by a cable. They’re good prototypes for getting us started in immersive platforms, but I hope someone builds something that’s more convenient for everyday use.

Ms. Hopkins, right, tried a V.R. demonstration that transports viewers back to John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s bed-in protests of 1969.

I’m ready for a pair of glasses that uses light field technology to integrate interactive digital information in the real world around me. I want Google Maps to draw directions on the street in front of me. I want Netflix to project a movie on my living room wall. I want AccuWeather to show me today’s highs and lows on my coat closet door. I want NYT Cooking to put recipe demos on my countertop.

When that’s possible, I think, glasses will eventually replace smartphones.

How are you thinking about augmented reality and its application toward journalism?

A.R. has huge potential for journalism. There are already a few applications that we’ve seen that could be useful in our reporting.

One is creating three-dimensional objects and putting them in the user’s environment. For example, if we build a 3-D model of how gravitational waves are generated from colliding black holes, you could walk around it to observe the mechanics of an invisible astronomical event.

Location-based A.R. has widespread applications for news, travel, culture and real estate. When visiting the vineyards of Sonoma County, you could access tips and highlights from our Travel section.

I’m also very interested in A.R. portals. Imagine a digital “door” in your living room that leads to a Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh.

Of course, I’m most excited about the A.R. applications we haven’t thought of yet.

Outside of work, what tech product are you currently obsessed with using in your daily life and why?

I often joke that Spotify knows me better than anyone in my life. My favorite feature is Spotify’s Discover Weekly, which serves me a personalized playlist of music I’ve never heard. I save the songs I like, and occasionally make my own playlists out of the ones I love. As with any machine learning algorithm, the more you use it, the smarter it gets. At this point, Spotify is really good (probably better than me) at something I don’t have time for anymore — finding new music I like.

How much do you take video personally for friends and family and for social media? Or do you leave all of that at work?

I’ve gone through phases with documenting my personal life. Right now I’m in a social media lull and don’t take many photos or videos outside of work. It’s a real treat for me to abandon my phone when I’m spending time with friends and family.

Michelle Yeoh on Ferocious Mothers and Heartbreaking Leaders

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Michelle Yeoh was an established martial arts star in Asia by the time Western audiences came to know her, first as a Bond girl and then a balletic warrior in the 2000 hit “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.” During Yeoh’s action-hero days, she performed her own stunts — like launching herself and the motorcycle she was riding onto a moving train — and was at one point, she said, uninsurable. Little wonder, then, that Yeoh’s portrayal of the imperious mother, Eleanor Young, in the summer smash “Crazy Rich Asians” was so ferocious. Now she and her co-stars are nominated for the top prize, outstanding performance by a cast, at the Screen Actors Guild Awards on Jan. 27. (The film is also up for a Golden Globe for best musical or comedy at Sunday’s ceremony.)

During a recent trip to New York, Yeoh — who is 56, and cut an edgy figure wearing head-to-toe black and a supple motorbike jacket — met me at the Four Seasons for black coffee and a conversation about the film, the racism she encountered in her earlier years, and her heartbreak over Myanmar’s repressive government under Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Yeoh played in the 2012 biopic “The Lady.”

Here are edited excerpts.

It is almost unfathomable that “Crazy Rich Asians” was the first Hollywood movie with a contemporary setting and a majority Asian-American cast since “Joy Luck Club” in 1993.

Asian communities are so hungry, they never see themselves on the big screen. Honestly when I first came out here, suddenly to be told I’m a minority was a big shock. I came from China — how did I suddenly switch to being a minority? We want to be represented, we don’t want to be invisible, we don’t want to be told that we’re not good enough to be on the silver screens. You don’t have to treat us special. Just treat us as equals.

Was your mom like Eleanor?

Oh no. My mom is not Eleanor at all. She’s not a hippie, but she’s very carefree, very outgoing. Eleanor would be truly my homage to the mothers that I know in Asia. A lot of my friends or my friends’ mothers.

Your crazy rich Asian friends?

Ha ha. Yes. And their mothers-in-law. Or their mothers. Because I drew a lot of inspiration from them.

Eleanor was up to the last moment trying to please her mother-in-law. She wanted her son to look good because she wasn’t good enough.

That was the one thing we really, really worked on. We needed Eleanor to be vulnerable to make her more human. In the book Eleanor was black-and-white-movies mean. I didn’t want her to be a villain. I wanted her to have very high standards, to be very elegant. But the most important thing, what we really worked on, is the love between the mother and son.

The mah-jongg scene was great. I take it you know how to play.

Yes, it’s my sort of specialty, I had no problem in that scene at all. It was the showdown, right? And the movie could’ve ended there. At the end of the day it wasn’t a prince-Cinderella movie. If you look at all of the women, they all were stronger. They weren’t waiting to be rescued.

Eleanor had a very intense presence.

Eleanor was very composed. She didn’t talk with her hands. She was very contained. For a character like that, she has to command a lot of attention, with the stillness. That I worked on.

Yeoh as Daw Aung San Suu Kyi in “The Lady.”CreditMagali Bragard/Cohen Media Group

“The Lady” was quite contained.

“The Lady” is. But “The Lady” is also very emotional on other levels.

How are you reacting to news about the atrocities against Rohingya Muslims under Aung San Suu Kyi’s leadership?

I feel very against of course what is happening to the Rohingyas. We do have a foundation inside Burma. We felt when the country opened up, it’s not the top layer [of society] that needed help. It’s the rest. But they adore her. Because they really believe that she’s trying to do whatever she can for the lower people.

They still adore her?

They still feel like that. But the thing is, it’s so complicated. I don’t believe she has the power. Maybe she’ll hate me for saying this. She has no power. The power is still with the military.

Are you in touch with her?

We are in touch with her. But recently it has been very difficult because of all the things that have been going on. But she knows that I have been a little bit outspoken about the fact that I’ve been so disappointed. It’s tragic.

It must be very strange for you, having played her. Do you think she should lose her Nobel?

I think we should really take a step back and try and understand. What they are condemning her for is for not speaking out. For not turning around and saying, “You are wrong, you shouldn’t have.” Yes, maybe she can do that and be thrown out of the country again. I feel that she’s trying to keep the door open so that there’s still dialogue within her country and she still can have some kind of say. What I fear is without the support of the international people, it’s easy for the military to just disregard her. So I think she’s in a really, really rough place.

Let me ask you about another controversial thing.

Why stop now while we’re at it? Don’t get me into trouble.

It’s been over a year since news about Harvey Weinstein broke. You have said you never had any trouble with sexual harassment, and if you had, you would have deployed your martial arts skills. What do you think about men hoping to come back?

It was an adjustment. Something that we needed to clean up. We needed skeletons to come out from the closet. The most important thing is that the person has changed and understands that all that is bad.

With “Crazy Rich Asians,” were there reactions to the film that surprised you?

Asians are quite reserved, but after the movie they’ve come up to me on the streets to say “Can I give you a hug? I just want to say thank you.” The first opening weekend, I was on my knees, because God forbid, if it didn’t work, it could’ve set us back 20 years.

I was shocked by the opening scene, the intense discrimination aimed at Eleanor’s family. I thought it couldn’t have been like that in the ’90s.

[Yeoh arches a brow and shoots me a piercing “Girl, you’re so naïve” look.]

I remember when I first went to Paris, in the late ’80s, early ’90s. Every time I walked into a store, the women would fold their arms. They wouldn’t even speak to me. So the next day, my ex sent his designer to go shopping with me, and doors flew open.

Just like “Pretty Woman”!

You’d be surprised how racist people were at that time, it’s a shame. But I’m glad it’s not like that now. I work with the [United Nations Development Program] as a good-will ambassador, to promote gender equality, all these things we [need] to have a better world, more peaceful world. If we don’t we’re not going to be able save our world. We have to work together, start dialogue together and have no judgment. Why are we so judgmental?

Twitter. It’s all Twitter’s fault.

I don’t know. I don’t know how to twit.

Hurricanes. Shootings. Fires. Time for an Editor’s Emergency Kit.

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When news of natural disasters or man-made ones break in the U.S., Julie Bloom taps a variety of tools to communicate with reporters, edit stories and get them published.

As a deputy editor on the national desk, you oversee a lot of breaking news. What tech tools do you use to help?

Hurricanes. Shootings. Wildfires. Elections and earthquakes. I didn’t think anything could be as crazy as the fall of 2017 in this country, but 2018 came pretty close.

I primarily oversee California and parts of the West, but also handle a lot of our coverage of major breaking news. With my colleagues on the desk and our boss, Marc Lacey, the national editor, we’ve developed a tool kit of sorts to handle these stories that are fast-moving and intense.

I feel like each day is a little like being caught in a batter’s box without knowing when or where the balls are coming from, and that can be both exhilarating and exhausting. Technology certainly helps.

My phone is pretty much everything. It’s kind of its own command center, and I can do almost everything on it except edit. For stories, I still need my laptop. Most of the reporters know that if they get a call from me at an odd hour, it usually means they’re on their way to something awful, but the reason we can do what we do is that they are total pros. Nobody ever just hangs up and goes back to sleep.

In these cases, our job is to help them produce the best journalism possible in difficult situations and make sure they stay safe, too. I’m in awe of the reporters on National who are relentless and often put themselves in danger while covering tough stories with compassion. Unfortunately, we’ve done enough of them now that we kind of know what to do.

Recently, we had a ton of breaking news out of California, where the majority of my reporters are based. The combination of the shooting in Thousand Oaks and the wildfires was a good example of having to be really nimble. One of our California reporters, Jenny Medina, called me in what was the middle of her night to say she and a bunch of F.B.I. agents who were in Thousand Oaks after the shooting had been forced to evacuate their hotel because of the fires. You can never predict what’s next, so you just have to be ready to switch gears and work with what you have.

In breaking news, I rely on Twitter and Dataminr, which monitors Twitter for newsworthy patterns, to keep track of developments. We’re also paying attention to police scanners, local television and all forms of social media and trying to break and confirm our own scoops, too. The trick is being careful and fast at the same time. A lot of bad information gets out in the immediate aftermath, and you never want to get it wrong.

In the middle of any given story, reporters and I communicate using text messages, Slack, Signal, Gchat and phone calls. We often spin off a Slack channel just for one event and have an email set up for breaking news that teams of reporters feed to. Those are split up into a bunch of different Google docs that we keep building out simultaneously for, say, a profile or a piece just on weapons or victims. Stories are updated dozens of times. We’re also watching search trends and adjusting headlines to make sure we’re showing up first. On a big, big story we’ll also send out multiple alerts with new developments.

"My phone is pretty much everything," Ms. Bloom said. "It’s kind of its own command center."

Many of your reporters are based on the West Coast, while you are stationed in New York. How do you keep in touch with them and work with them on stories?

Even though it’s a different time zone, we’re still covering the news no matter when and where it happens. My reporters are all early risers, or they’re becoming ones. We have regular calls where we brainstorm ideas, but most editing is a constant back and forth over email, Gchat and text, and that seems to work well.

We’re fortunate because The Times has bureaus all over the place, so sometimes we hand off to Hong Kong or London and the editors there can help keep stories going.

Your contributors sometimes report stories from odd situations, like natural disasters. What tools do they use, and how do they get stories to you expediently?

For stories like wildfires or hurricanes, reporters often take satellite phones with them to make sure they can keep in contact when cell communication is down. But it doesn’t always work. During the recent wildfires, one reporter, Julie Turkewitz, was one of the first to enter the fire zone in Paradise, Calif., with a team of forensic experts searching for remains, and we lost contact with her for a few hours right on deadline. Thankfully, she surfaced just in time.

Sometimes good old dictation is the best means of getting scenes and reporting in real time. Reporters are also well versed in filing from their cars, Waffle Houses or the side of the road. We’ve had a few instances in hurricanes when reporters have had to abandon their rental cars because they were flooding and get to safety and they still managed to file.

You are a Los Angeles native. In your view, how has tech changed California?

I grew up in the Los Angeles area and went to school at Berkeley and keep close ties to both parts of the state, and I go back a lot to see family. California is an endlessly exciting place for The Times to cover: It’s the world’s fifth-largest economy, at the forefront of all sorts of change, extremely complex and a hotbed of contradictions. I like to think of it more as its own country. Technology is obviously a big part of all of that, and we’re a long way from when I was a teenager on AOL Messenger.

When you’re not at work, what tech product do you use a lot?

I’m pretty low-tech in my nonwork life — or I try to be. When you’re responsible for news, it’s hard to let go. I’ve tried everything from burying my phone under my kitchen sink to deleting certain apps on the weekend, but at a certain point you just relent and accept.

I think social media is a mostly necessary evil and try to avoid it when I’m not working, but I still haven’t quit Instagram. Besides friends and family, I follow a lot of dancers and ballet companies — remnants from a former life — and museums, chefs and fashion designers. It’s good to be reminded that there are people out there creating beautiful things, too.

Queen, Ally and the Alchemy of Musical Stardom on the Big Screen

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I was waiting for a subway last month in Mexico City when I figured out what’s wrong with the Queen movie. I mean, I knew what was wrong. “Bohemian Rhapsody” is scared of tapping into the imagination that made the band so innovative and powerfully, addictively strange. But that’s not what hit me waiting for the subway.

The platform entertainment system was playing a concert video of “Another One Bites the Dust.” I don’t know what year the clip was from or what city Queen was in. I just know that the lighting is warm, the groove is skintight (you could feel it on the platform), and that Freddie Mercury is wearing — is packed into — white short-shorts and almost nothing else. No shoes, no shirt yet all service. The towel he’s whipping around gets an almost immediate, theatrical toss into the crowd. The red wristband and red bandanna tied round his neck bring out the red in his Montreal Canadiens trucker’s cap.

The real Freddie Mercury, mesmerizing French fans in 1984.

Mercury does all his Mercurial moves — the side gallop, the chug-a-lug, the duck strut, the steed swipe, the rewind, the vroom-vroom, the Wimbledon Final frozen pirouette, the one where he kind of dries his tushy with the microphone stand in a full march. And he does them while belting out this uppercut of a song (with some shockingly forceful assistance from the drummer Roger Taylor). Commuters, tourists, kids: we looked up at this thing, mesmerized, in jeopardy of missing a train. That’s right about when I figured out what was wrong with the Queen movie: There’s nothing in it remotely like this.

“Bohemian Rhapsody” plods, explains, obscures, speculates and flattens. It does not mesmerize. I mean, I wouldn’t miss a train for this. We learn how “We Will Rock You” allegedly sprang from a fit of personal protestation. But it’s news we can’t use. The movie won’t stop telling us things — about the music business and the songs, about Mercury’s tortured sex life. And it fails to show you anything close to what that clip on the subway platforms makes you feel: sweaty.

The musical biography has an impossibly high degree of alchemical difficulty. One performer has to become a totally different performer, and not any performer, just this one star the whole world knows, and it has to be done in a way that makes you believe you’re seeing either the impersonated star or something quintessential about them. Val Kilmer made you believe you were seeing something vitally true about Jim Morrison. Joaquin Phoenix did the same with Johnny Cash. And Jamie Foxx became Ray Charles. Angela Bassett convinced you that if you were seeing if not Tina Turner, then Turner’s indestructibility; and Marion Cotillard, the brittle incandescence of Edith Piaf.

For my money, one of the triumphs of this type of acting is Chadwick Boseman’s James Brown in “Get On Up.” Boseman pumps Brown full of edginess and spite while having to reconstruct Brown as a stage specimen, and part of that reconstruction involves learning to lip sync to Brown. You sense that you’re watching an actor who’s done more than homework. He’s written himself a little dissertation. It’s not an impression of Brown. It’s an interpolation.

Some movies pivot and omit the musical performance altogether. That’s the approach Todd Haynes applied to Bob Dylan in “I’m Not There” and John Ridley took in having Andre 3000 play Jimi Hendrix in “Jimi: All Is by My Side.” But the alchemy is a reason to dislike the genre. It’s hard to get the proportions right. It takes some work in, say, “Cadillac Records” to figure out where Beyoncé ends and Etta James is supposed to begin.

Rami Malek has a different challenge in “Bohemian Rhapsody.” He’s not a superstar playing another superstar. He just has to become the superstar Freddie Mercury was. Just. And yet because the movie is mostly scenes of recording sessions, squabbling and self-pity, Mercury’s stardom is made beside the point — it’s assumed — so Malek gets to play a charismatic sufferer, -quipster and, eventually, proud brown gay man. It’s just that this version of Mercury isn’t terribly exciting without the reward of seeing him vroom-vroom in short-shorts. The movie rides the roller coaster of biographical cliché. What’s missing are musical numbers that showcase his showmanship and eternal capacity for self-delight.

This means more time watching Malek struggle with dental effects meant to bring his mouth into more realistic alignment with Mercury’s. Maybe Malek has done the best anyone could with the teeth. But they wind up bringing something vampiric out of Mercury that I don’t know was ever there. Either way, the alchemy is off.

In “A Star Is Born,” Lady Gaga (with Bradley Cooper) shows a lovely hesitance.

WE’RE IN A HAPPY MOMENT for musical-movie excitement. “Mary Poppins” has returned with new songs. And despite that lie of a title, “The Greatest Showman” is the most impressive phenomenon nobody saw coming or took seriously once it came. “Bohemian Rhapsody” is now the musical biopic’s biggest hit. We can have the argument later about the difference between a classical movie musical and a movie where people get on stage and do music, but you could also add to the mix this latest incarnation of “A Star Is Born,” which was a smash too.

It’s the story of how a waitress became a Grammy winner. And because the tale is essentially a fantasy — of love, fame and ruin; biography as mythology — its casting is the inverse of the rock bio. A musician does the acting. In Bradley Cooper’s version, the musician is Lady Gaga. She starts off as Ally the restaurant grunt. But when Cooper’s beloved alt-country pill guzzler sees her belt “La Vie en Rose” in a drag parlor, he hauls her into stardom, which Gaga knows well.

But the surprise of her acting comes in the first hour when the movie is closer to earth and requires her to be more like you and me — daughter, employee, listener. There’s a lovely hesitance to her here, not in the camera-shy way singers tend to get when it’s time to act. Reluctance is a performance strategy for her in this movie. Again, she’s like you and me, she can’t believe Bradley Cooper’s happening to her, either. Some of what’s great about the first hour is how it gets you thinking about the kind of career Gaga could have in movies they haven’t made in, like, 30 years.

Lady Gaga with Andrew Dice Clay as her father in the movie.

The scenes at home with Ally, her chauffeur father and his fellow drivers are loud, funny and warm in a way that reminded me of “Moonstruck.” And some of the pleasure I had watching Gaga in them is how she reminded me of another singer who acts: Cher. A friend points out that she could have Cher’s career if the movies were still interested in normal people. I, at least, would love to see Gaga in a “Mask” or a “Suspect.”

She and Malek are both near the top of the heap for Oscar nominations. And she’s got an alchemical advantage over Malek’s Freddie Mercury. When Ally’s career takes off, Gaga winds up playing a pop star not unlike herself. And you realize she has the opposite problem that Malek does. You’re less interested in her as a singer — but only because we’ve seen her do huge, stadium-size razzle-dazzle before. And yet she’s indifferent to playing the fame stuff. It doesn’t seem to interest Ally or Gaga. If the movie loses Ally a bit in the second half, Gaga never appears lost. She’s giving a serious, considered, committed performance of a person she seems to know. Malek’s commitment is to a movie committed in the wrong proportions. It doesn’t know who it wants Freddie Mercury to be.

“Bohemian Rhapsody” doesn’t fixate on the showmanship until the finale, which restages their electric, legendary Live-Aid performance at Wembly Stadium and passes for showstopping. Yet you exit hungry for a movie that gets closer to the bottom of a man who renamed himself after both an element and a planet. If someone dares take another crack (and someone really should), I know the perfect Freddie. Her first name is Lady. And her last name comes straight from a Queen song.

King SRK Zone

Wednesday, January 9, 2019

CES 2019: It’s the Year of Virtual Assistants and 5G

Devices That Will Invade Your Life in 2019 (and What’s Overhyped)

Battle of the virtual assistants

Security for your smart things

The arrival of 5G

Here’s what is still overhyped

Saturday, January 5, 2019

Pioneering Virtual Reality and New Video Technologies in Journalism

How do New York Times journalists use technology in their jobs and in their personal lives? Marcelle Hopkins, deputy video editor and co-director of virtual reality at The Times, discussed the tech she is using.

Thursday, January 3, 2019

Michelle Yeoh on Ferocious Mothers and Heartbreaking Leaders

Hurricanes. Shootings. Fires. Time for an Editor’s Emergency Kit.

Wednesday, January 2, 2019

Queen, Ally and the Alchemy of Musical Stardom on the Big Screen

CES 2019: It’s the Year of Virtual Assistants and 5G

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