There’s an intrinsic value to every word Fernanda Montenegro speaks.

In Portuguese, from her native Rio de Janeiro, the Oscar-nominated Brazilian actress repeatedly ensures the interpreter conveys each response with precision. Ultimately, a conversation is a performance, and she’s always sought emotional specificity for her roles.

At 90 years old and with four new films released in 2019 and a recently published memoir (“Prólogo, Ato, Epílogo: Memórias”), Montenegro speaks of acting as an inexplicable higher calling, an undeniable vocation that came over her at an early age and never let go. “It’s a mystery,” she said. “Suddenly as a teenager I started finding my path through a profession that I consider almost like a religion.”

Rather than a television actress or an icon of the cinema — mediums in which she’s worked extensively — Montenegro considers herself a woman of the stage who forged the foundations for a remarkable career during the 1950s among companies of writers, actors and directors, where a collective energy reigned.

“The theater taught me about the needs of others, the presence of others, and to dialogue with others,” she explained.

An elemental force without embellishments, she encapsulates the history of her South American homeland as the granddaughter of Italian immigrants from Sardinia raised in a working-class Carioca neighborhood. Without the initial support of her family, she rose undeterred by acknowledging her inclination for the dramatic arts as a divine mission, not a selfish desire.

“When a vocation exists, we overcome the lack of acceptance,” she declared.

Though already regarded as Brazil’s greatest actress for her peerless body of work and tireless pursuit of reinvention (she recently played a murderous elderly woman on the soap opera “A Dona do Pedaço”), Montenegro refuses to dwell on past glories and is far from contemplating retirement.

“Miraculously, I’m still whole and I’m giving this interview,” she humorously noted. “So as long as I can see, listen, speak and walk, I’m not going to stay still, I’m not going to stop.”

Testament to that unfaltering stance is her latest film appearance, in Karim Aïnouz’s “Invisible Life,” an exuberant melodrama creatively adapted from the 2016 novel by Martha Batalha, currently nominated as best international film at the Independent Spirit Awards.

Hinged on an imperishable sororal bond, the dually heartrending plot set mostly in 1950s Rio observes how a merciless patriarchal system sunders the Gusmao sisters, Eurídice and Guida, and tragically banishes one of them into anonymity and forces the other to give up her musical aspirations for a loveless, arranged marriage.

For Montenegro, there’s no demagogy in Aïnouz’s narrative, only wholehearted inquisitiveness.

“It’s a uterine film, it’s vaginal, and it’s absolutely humanistic. There is a cellular denunciation of femicides in this film,” Montenegro said, referring not to the physical death of the characters but the hopelessness caused by the destruction of their ambitions and the possibility of a life together.

“These are two sisters who both want an independent life. One of them goes toward it through art and tries to be a pianist, while the other uses romances to go for that liberty,” she said. “The dream of freedom didn’t even materialize for the one that tried to attain it through love.”

After decades of admiring the vigorous Montenegro, Aïnouz met her for the first time a few years ago at a late-night birthday party while the thespian rejoiced among a young crowd. She sees her star not as a diva but as an artist of the people who has proven meaningful excellence attainable in a field often erroneously judged in Brazil.

“She introduced the idea of acting as a real craft, as something that’s not superficial but profound,” Aïnouz said. According to the filmmaker, growing up in a country where arts culture has perpetually struggled to survive, someone like Montenegro serves as an example of poetic resilience.

“I am an actress because Fernanda Montenegro dignified the acting profession,” said Carol Duarte, an emerging talent who played young Euridice. “It’s impossible to be an actress in Brazil and not recognize her legacy.” Montenegro came on set to see Duarte perform on several occasions, to inform her rendition of the same character at a much older age.

Duarte remembers an exchange in which the veteran star succinctly summarized their shared passion for storytelling. “Our profession sweetens the soul,” Montenegro told her casually, but the weight of her words left a permanent impression.

Since they didn’t exist in the original book, Montenegro’s scenes in “Invisible Life” did not appear in Aïnouz’s screenplay until a few years into the writing process, when he realized concluding with an elder Euridice was the most sincere finale to a story of spiritually undefeated women.

“It could have only been Fernanda,” said Aïnouz. “It was important that the film ended with this veteran of war, someone who has been through a lot and is still here.”

“Fernanda becomes the co-author of every project she elects to make,” said director Walter Salles, whose landmark feature “Central Station” won the top prize at the Berlin International Film Festival and the Golden Globe for best foreign-language film and earned Montenegro an Academy Award nomination for best actress in 1999.

It remains her most celebrated onscreen work, a movie she describes as “a broad and unrestricted miracle only the gods can explain.” Salles wrote the part of Dora, a stern, retired schoolteacher who embarks on a cross-country trip with a boy looking for his father, specifically for Montenegro’s luminous sensibility.

Produced with scarce resources in a country transitioning back to democracy after 30 years of a brutal military dictatorship, “Central Station” was a reflection of a people finding their national identity. For Salles, the letters that Montenegro’s character sends throughout the film are the messages that were silenced by censorship and violence, while the boy’s yearning for an absent parent is a communal search for a country named Brazil.

“All of us came together for our love of cinema, of Brazilian cinema,” said Montenegro about how serendipitous she believes Salles’ vision and wisdom were to accomplish that cinematic feat.

Touched by Dora’s flawed humanity, she found direct inspiration in a teacher from her own childhood in the 1930s who taught her how to read and who was herself an example of respectability in spite of the poverty that surrounded her. To garner international acclaim and the attention of Hollywood’s elite playing an everyday Brazilian woman, from a background not unlike her own, added significance to the magic that “Central Station” brought to the actress’ life.

“It was like a trip to Jupiter,” she said of the marathon Oscar campaign that included a visit to “Late Show With David Letterman,” where she charmingly referred to herself as the “old lady from Ipanema.” For Montenegro the experience is a sacred memory that made her feel again a 15-year-old debuting in front of a boundless world.

“I was 70 years old, speaking in another language, representing another culture, and I was celebrated by major artists who I’d never stopped watching on the screen,” she added. “They treated me as an equal.” Years later, in 2007, she made her English-language debut with Mike Newell’s “Love in the Time of Cholera” based on Gabriel García Márquez’s seminal novel.

Salles describes Montenegro’s praxis in cinema and in the theater as a “constant quest to unveil the most profound secrets of the human soul.” He was first impressed when he encountered her in a local production as the title character in Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s play “The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant,” and most recently found himself enraptured by her ability for transmutation onstage as French intellectual Simone de Beauvoir.

“There’s a constant digging in her performances until somebody that lies really deep below the surface emerges,” said Salles. “She immerses herself not only to understand what motivates her character but what can truly allow the story be a transformative experience.”

Montenegro is a rigorous truth-teller. That much is clear. Her courageous obsession with complexity born of exhaustive investigation created an ethical and aesthetic level that influenced Brazilian actors that came after her and in turn cemented her as a guiding light that has weathered political and socioeconomic storms for nearly a century.

“We in Brazil are aware that it is a rare privilege to see her act and speak. She is our ethical and artistic compass,” said a moved Salles. “In a country constantly awaiting a future that is promised but never achieved, Fernanda Montenegro’s process and her work offer us an inspirational present, a counterweight to a myriad of impossibilities.”

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Will Smith has had a hit or miss year at the movies. Though “Aladdin” was a huge hit, his experiment with high-frame-rate action and acting opposite a digital composite of his younger self in Ang Lee’s “Gemini Man” didn’t exactly light the world on fire. So it’s nice that he’s closing out the year on a more positive note, with the insubstantial but lightly entertaining animated spy feature “Spies in Disguise.”

Longtime animation artists Nick Bruno and Troy Quane make their directorial debuts on the film, written by Brad Copeland and Lloyd Taylor. The film takes its premise and inspiration from the 2009 animated short “Pigeon: Impossible” by Lucas Martell, and therein lies all you need to know about “Spies in Disguise,” a strange tonal mashup that takes the hypermasculine and hyperviolent world of glamorous espionage, in the vein of James Bond or “Mission: Impossible,” and turns it into kid-friendly family entertainment.

What becomes apparent is that introducing and then skewering those tropes is at the heart of “Spies in Disguise,” a film that wonders if conflict could be cuddlier and if lone wolves can work as a team or perhaps a flock. Smith voices the smooth Lance Sterling, super spy and the star of his agency headed up by a tough talking Southern-twanged boss, Joy Jenkins (Reba McEntire). On a dangerous mission fighting a nefarious supervillain with a robotic hand (Ben Mendelsohn), he discovers that one of his exploding gadgets has been replaced with kitty holograms and glitter, which are surprisingly effective at incapacitating his would-be assassins. Though Sterling emerges victorious, he seeks out the oddball tech who slipped him the kitty glitter, Walter (Tom Holland), and fires him.

The tables are turned when the arrogant Sterling needs Walter’s help to go underground, after finding himself at the center of an internal affairs investigation led by the hard-hitting Marcy (Rashida Jones), who has accused Sterling of theft and sabotage. At Walter’s home lab, Sterling gulps down a mysterious liquid and transforms into a pigeon. On the run from his own agency in avian form, Sterling’s going to have to learn to use his wings, and fast.

Walter is a wunderkind scientist who firmly believes in nonlethal weapons: protective balloons that wrap you up in an inflatable hug, sticky pink bubblegum that stops anyone in their tracks. It takes time for Lance to get on board, but the advantages of life as a pigeon spy soon reveal themselves. It’s through his friendship with Walter, and with the help of a few feathered friends, that Lance learns to embrace friendlier methods too.

There’s a warm message of companionship and teamwork at the center of “Spies in Disguise,” but what makes it subversive is its emphasis on gentler methods of conflict resolution, or at least less bloody ones. It’s refreshing to see bubbles, bubblegum and lots of kitty glitter defeat deadly robots. “Spies in Disguise,” despite a fun chemistry between Smith and Holland, is a lot like a soap bubble: pretty to watch, entertaining for a bit, but disappears on contact. It’s entertaining but ephemeral.

Katie Walsh is a Tribune News Service film critic.

“The Song of Names,” adapted by Jeffrey Caine (“GoldenEye,” “The Constant Gardener”) from cultural commentator Norman Lebrecht’s award-winning 2002 novel, may be a fictional mystery-drama, but its story feels as real as many of the true-life, Holocaust-centric tales that have made their way to the screen, stage or page. It’s a profound, affecting and beautifully told chronicle of faith, family, obsession and the language of music.

Director François Girard is no stranger to movies involving music: He wrote and directed the singular 1993 biopic “Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould” and 1998’s Oscar-winning “The Red Violin” (best original score) plus helmed 2014’s “Boychoir.” The French Canadian filmmaker, aided immeasurably here by Academy Award-winning composer Howard Shore (“The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring”), has put his musical acumen to fine use to craft an absorbing and memorable portrait, a kind of requiem for a nightmare.

But don’t despair: Despite its many urgent, powerful and somber moments, the piece is ultimately about love and forgiveness, acceptance and redemption.

In the late 1930s, just before the start of World War II, London music publisher Gilbert Simmonds (Stanley Townsend) agrees to take in Dovidl Rapoport (Luke Doyle), a 9-year-old Jewish violin wonder from Warsaw, whose father, Zygmunt, wants to keep his gifted son safe and far away from the looming Nazi invasion of Poland. Zygmunt returns home to protect his wife and daughters, while the conceited but playful Dovidl (“I am genius!”) settles in with Gilbert, wife Enid (Amy Sloan) and their fussy son, Martin (Misha Handley), also 9.

After a rocky start, Martin and Dovidl become close friends, competitive and combative yet also deeply trusting and protective of each other. Dovidl’s violin expertise, nurtured by the generously supportive Gilbert, grows through his teenage years (where he’s played by Jonah Hauer-King), as does his brotherhood with Martin (now Gerran Howell). Meanwhile, Dovidl’s parents and sisters have never been heard from again and, though Dovidl presumes the worst, he maintains a sliver of hope.

But on the night of Dovidl’s 1951 London concert debut, a major event that has been riskily staged and financed by Gilbert, the now-21-year-old violinist is a no-show — and disappears. This is after a disillusioned Dovidl, in a powerful scene in a London synagogue, renounces his Judaism, deeming religion “a coat to be taken on and off.”

Flash forward to 1986 and the adult Martin (Tim Roth), now a music examiner married to his childhood sweetheart, the cynical Helen (Catherine McCormack), suddenly has reason to believe that Dovidl may have moved back to Poland in 1951. The tipoff: a signature gesture of Dovidl’s involving a violin bow and a lump of rosin that Martin witnesses in another young musical prodigy.

So off Martin goes to Warsaw on the start of a detective-like search — against Helen’s better judgment — to learn what became of the elusive Dovidl.

Clues mount up, including during a moving visit to the Treblinka memorial (on the site of the actual death camp) with a woman revealed to be Dovidl’s old girlfriend (Magdalena Cielecka). This sequence eventually leads Martin to New York where he comes face to face with Dovidl (Clive Owen, in an inspired bit of casting) who, suffice to say, has regained his love of Judaism big time.

It’s a painful, heartbreaking reunion that plays out throughout the film’s superb third act in a series of illuminating and surprising yet inescapable ways. Bring a handkerchief.

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As for the book and movie’s title, it refers to a musical recitation of the names of all those who died at Treblinka. This stirring commemorative song (composed for the film by Shore, who echoes its elements elsewhere on the soundtrack) is chanted prayer-like and performed several times on violin. The work adds a unique and pivotal resonance to the story, both musically and thematically.

Also of note: Although Luke Doyle was already a skilled violinist, Hauer-King and Owen went through major training to look like real-deal virtuosos. Still, the film’s various violin pieces were actually performed by renowned Taiwanese Australian violinist Ray Chen. (The bomb shelter-set violin “duel” between young Dovidl and a fellow prodigy is one of several highlights.)

A few of the characters, including Helen and Enid, are a bit one-note, and the movie’s climactic, deeply felt concert is light on details (how exactly did it all come together in such a big way?). But this Canada-Hungary co-production, deftly shot by David Franco in Montreal, Budapest, London, Warsaw and Treblinka (“Song” is the first feature ever allowed to film at the memorial), remains among the better serious, adult-oriented films of this holiday season.

The year is 1964, the event a karate tournament in San Francisco, and all eyes are on Bruce Lee as he gives a demonstration of Chinese martial arts. All eyes except those of Bruce Lee himself.

The future international sensation is instead looking reverentially toward a slight figure in the stands, a quiet man in a traditional long black Chinese robe, someone sure of himself but composed. Could it be? Yes, it is. Ip Man is in the house.

A master of the Wing Chun school of fighting, the actual Ip Man was a revered figure who served as Bruce Lee’s teacher when the actor was growing up in Hong Kong. But for the last decade this real individual, who died in 1972, has been the subject of a series of action movies starring Donnie Yen that intertwine the story of his life with fictional adventures.

Now comes “Ip Man 4: The Finale,” which moves the story largely to San Francisco and benefits from the sure hand of Yuen Woo-Ping, first among equals among action choreographers, whose work includes “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” and the “Matrix” films as well as dozens of Hong Kong efforts.

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Directed, as were the previous three films, by Wilson Yip Wai Shun, and written by Edmond Wong, who’s also had a hand in all of them, the Ip Man movies are basically genre exercises, the martial arts equivalent of B westerns, albeit with bigger budgets. In this particular film, the bad guys, instead of wearing black hats, are all white Americans, not just random citizens but xenophobic racists of the most unapologetic sort. “Go back to Asia” is pretty much the mildest thing they say.

After that opening moment at the San Francisco karate tournament, the film flashes back to Hong Kong a month earlier, where Ip has to deal with some difficult situations. First, he is diagnosed with cancer, and second, as a recent widower, he is having trouble with an unruly teenage son who is always getting into fights.

Feeling that being sent to a school in San Francisco might straighten his son out, Ip decides to visit, but aside from meeting up with former student Lee (Kwok-Kwan Chan), America is a sour experience.

Even Ip’s fellow countrymen are not a welcoming bunch. Taking a meeting with the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Assn., led by Wan Zong Hua (Wu Yue), Ip is confronted by a group of fellow martial arts masters who are angry because Bruce Lee is breaking with tradition by taking American students.

This leads to one of “Ip Man 4’s” signature scenes, a face-off involving a single cup of tea, a revolving circular glass table and two very powerful wills.

Visiting a trendy private school, Ip is shocked to find Wan’s teenage daughter Yonah (Vanda Margraf), having to fight off some thuggish fellow students. Yonah lives for cheerleading (much to her father’s disapproval) and her skill has sparked some prejudiced resentment.

Though other martial artists have their moments, especially Bruce Lee, this, as the title indicates, is very much Ip’s show, and he ends up battling not one but two beefy and muscle-bound Americans who share a contempt for all things Chinese.

Fought first is Colin Frater (Chris Collins) a karate instructor for the U.S. Marine Corps who believes “Chinese kung fu is only good for folding laundry.” He will learn otherwise.

Egged on by Gunnery Sgt. Barton Geddes (Scott Adkins), who encourages Frater to “shut these kung fu charlatans up for good,” Frater and then Geddes himself take on the deceptively mild-mannered Ip.

One of the unexpected pleasures of “Ip Man 4” is a warm montage of highlights from the previous three films that plays at the close. Star Yen has said there are no more Ip films in his future, but no one would be upset if another one happened to come along.

In ever-evolving Las Vegas, you can expect the city to look different next year. The NFL’s Raiders will be moving in (sorry, Oakland) and Gordon Ramsay’s sixth restaurant will open along the Strip. Here’s a look at what’s to come, starting with two must-sees set to launch just before the clock strikes midnight on New Year’s Eve.

Dec. 31
Viva Vision at the Fremont Street Experience

Prepare to be wowed by the light show on the five-block canopy in downtown Vegas that will break out a brighter-than-ever screen capable of displaying 3-D graphics. The $32-million video screen, touted as the world’s largest, will light up starting at 10 p.m. Viva Vision is free, except on New Year’s Eve, when admission to the Fremont Street Experience costs $35. Info: Viva Vision

The Mayfair Supper Club at Bellagio

Part dinner, part show, the Mayfair will merge your meal with entertainment. “The show is not just onstage; it’s in the entire space,” says Dennis Jauch, cofounder of No Ceilings Entertainment. “You have dancers and singers walking around you.” The company is reviving the supper club concept nearly 100 years after it was a hit in Harlem during the Roaring ’20s. Backed by an eclectic mix of jazz, disco, rock and house music, even servers and bartenders will be part of the act. Info: Mayfair Supper Club

Jan. 1

Flat-rate taxi fares to and from the airport

Taxi companies in Vegas will launch flat-rate fares between McCarran International Airport and resorts along the Strip. During peak travel times when ride-hailing services such as Uber and Lyft may tack on surcharges, cabs won’t add a single cent. It’s a six-month experiment that, if successful, could be extended by state regulators, which oversee taxi fares.

February

Kamu Ultra Karaoke at the Grand Canal Shoppes

Want to sing your heart out karaoke-style without the embarrassment of everyone listening? The coming Kamu Ultra Karaoke lounge will have 40 private karaoke rooms for wannabe vocalists. You can choose from a catalog of thousands of chart-topping songs from around the world. Guests have the option to stream their performances through Bluetooth and WiFi. Info: Kamu Karaoke

By March

New Mexican restaurant at the Wynn Las Vegas

Chef Enrique Olvera will bring contemporary Mexican flavors to Wynn Las Vegas with a new eatery, whose name won’t be announced until January. The restaurant follows in the footsteps of his existing Pujol in Mexico City, often ranked among the world’s finest restaurants. The new spot will fill the space occupied for six years by Andrea’s, which featured pan-Asian cuisine. It closed in September. Olvera also has been poised to open side-by-side restaurants in L.A.’s Arts District with Daniela Soto-Innes: Damian, serving à la carte Californian-Mexican cuisine, and Ditroit, an all-day taqueria serving mostly vegetable tacos. Info: Wynn Las Vegas

April

Area 15

Just a few minutes’ drive from the Strip, this indoor and outdoor arts, dining and entertainment venue hopes to become one of Vegas’ top destinations. Why? Its top tenant is Meow Wolf, the quirky interactive and immersive art meld in Santa Fe, N.M. Meow Wolf plans to up the ante in Vegas with a larger, more dynamic venue. “It’s an immersive, alternative reality that is magical and whimsical and explorable,” says founder Vince Kadlubek. “It will be an incredible storytelling experience. It will be an insane, shocking experience. It will be one of the coolest indoor playgrounds you’ve ever experienced.” Area 15 is rising along Rancho Drive about 10 minutes from the Strip.

By spring

Delilah

The Vegas version of West Hollywood’s swanky supper club will open at Wynn Las Vegas. The current site features classic entrees such as roasted chicken, veal chop marsala, salmon en croute and baby back ribs.

August

Allegiant Stadium

The new arena under construction will feature a retractable roof and will serve as home to the Las Vegas Raiders and the Runnin’ Rebels football team at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. The NFL’s schedule won’t be determined until spring, but the Rebels are set to square off against the California Golden Bears on Aug. 29. The stadium is just across the 15 Freeway from Mandalay Bay.

September

Lucky Cat

Restaurateur and TV celebrity Gordon Ramsay will launch a sixth Las Vegas location with the arrival of Lucky Cat. He opened a restaurant of the same name earlier this year in London. “Lucky Cat is a beautiful, authentic, 1970s-type Japanese restaurant,” Ramsay says. “It’s got a beautiful raw bar and an amazing grill [and] a beautiful open-plan kitchen that is just electrifying. … A lot of chefs turn up once a year or once every 18 months. I’m here 12 to 14 times a year.” Ramsay has yet to announce Lucky Cat’s Vegas location.

Fall

Virgin Hotels

Look for Virgin Hotels to open late in the year on the site currently occupied by the Hard Rock Hotel. That resort will close Feb. 3 to allow for a complete overhaul before being rebranded. It will be marketed as part of Hilton’s Curio Collection.

December

Circa

It will become downtown Las Vegas’ first newly built hotel in 40 years, with 777 rooms on 44 floors, claiming the title of the tallest hotel north of the Strip. It will occupy an entire square block and feature six pools, including a multitiered rooftop one with an amphitheater. A massive sports book and installation in the lobby of the vintage Vegas Vickie sign (which reigned over Fremont Street since 1980) also are planned. “There’s an awful lot of public demand for new product in Las Vegas,” says Chief Executive Derek Stevens, who already owns downtown’s Golden Gate and The D hotels.

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A growing number of talented Las Vegas chefs are trading steady salaries and the job security of prime casino restaurants to forge their own paths. The upside for visitors? There’s never been a better time to eat out in Las Vegas.

It’s not just along Las Vegas Boulevard, where outsized images of Gordon Ramsay, Bobby Flay and other celebrity chefs shine down from bright marquees. You also can find great dining along less familiar roads such as Spring Mountain, Blue Diamond and South Durango Drive that unspool into neighborhoods full of strip malls and supermarkets.

For the record:

1:19 PM, Dec. 23, 2019
An earlier version of this story misspelled the names of chefs Andy Hooper and Ralph Perrazzo.

Tucked behind the storefronts, inside cramped kitchens, those former Strip chefs are mapping out a new culinary topography.

You may not yet recognize their names, but you’ve probably eaten their food. They’re the chefs who ran the kitchens (and often developed the menus) for such star chefs as Ramsay and Flay. Now they’re rolling up their knives and heading out on their own. They are the chefs you need to know about right now.

And you’ll find them off the Strip.

“It’s hard to leave the comfort of a job on the Strip,” said Nicole Brisson, formerly executive chef at Park MGM Eataly and the Venetian’s now-closed CarneVino Italian Steakhouse. Brisson and Andy Hooper, another respected Strip restaurant alum, recently opened Locale, in the Mountain’s Edge neighborhood, about 20 minutes from the Strip.

“Five years ago, people would never spend money on truffles or wine dinners off the Strip,” Brisson said. “Guests who knew us at our restaurants on the Strip drive over to see us, tell their friends from L.A. about us, and then they become regulars too.”

Price may be part of the attraction. Visitors are open to leaving the Strip for a top-quality dining experience that’s more affordable, said Ralph Perrazzo, a veteran chef who, until recently, co-owned a casino steak-and-burger restaurant.

“Vegas is more than Las Vegas Boulevard,” said Perrazzo who plans to open his own off-Strip restaurants in the Vegas Arts District and another in downtown Los Angeles. “We can give [visitors] a better meal for less money, even if they have to jump in an Uber to get here.”

In the people business

Brian Howard thinks Las Vegas is on the cusp of culinary greatness, but he wants to redefine the restaurant business. In 2016, Howard, a 10-year veteran of Strip kitchens, traded the top toque position at David Myers’ now-closed Comme Ça restaurant at the Cosmopolitan Resort for Sparrow + Wolf, his start-up a short drive from the Strip.

“It’s easy to feel out of touch with your guests on the Strip because it becomes a business transaction,” he said. “I left to open my own place because I’m not in the restaurant business; I’m in the people business.”

That focus on hospitality — knowing that the chefs and servers are looking out for the guests — gives diners the confidence to push their flavor boundaries and try new cuisines or blends of cuisines.

At Sparrow + Wolf, for example, customers queue up well into the night for Howard’s bold cooking, which blends ingredients from Western ranches, local farmers and neighboring Asian markets into an origami of modern dishes such as osso bucco tortellini, beet and green apple tartare and Chinatown Clams Casino, where lap cheong (Chinese sausage), shiitake mushrooms and uni (sea urchin roe) hollandaise take the place of pancetta, oregano and Parmesan.

At Locale, Brisson serves more assertively flavored rustic Italian food than she felt comfortable offering on the Strip. The one-page menu includes fresh pastas, plenty of vegetables, a half-dozen pizzas, but none of the massive cuts of long-dry-aged beef (and prices for same) for which CarneVino was known.

Howard is grateful for the training he received on the Strip, but, he said, “That also means when you leave the Strip, you have the skills that set you up for success.”

Those skills helped chef Sheridan Su find success a decade ago when he swapped fancy French cooking at the Cosmopolitan for a food truck, then three successful brick-and-mortar restaurants of his own.

He landed a James Beard Award nomination last year, not for tablecloth cuisine but for Hainan chicken, the specialty of his counter-service Flock &Fowl and for the bao, burgers, chicken wings and rice bowls that are his calling cards at Fat Choy, his throwback diner mashup. He’s aiming for another win with Every Grain, a new fast-casual rice bowl spot he and his wife, Jenny, opened recently in downtown.

Chef James Trees also found his niche in expertly crafted comfort food. After helping well-known chefs Michael Mina, Bradley Ogden, Éric Ripert, Heston Blumenthal, Akasha Richmond and Ray Garcia build successful restaurants, Trees, a Vegas native, chose his hometown for Esther’s Kitchen, his first solo venture, and for Ada‘s, his recent follow-up,.

Esther’s Kitchen, in the Vegas Arts District, fuses modern Roman cooking with a Californian, veg-forward obsession. Both restaurants excel at a variety of dishes, including grilled meats, handmade pastas, natural sourdough pizzas and ice creams, but it’s the vegetable dishes that sing loud and clear here.

Need proof? Order a plate of his flash-fried cauliflower, which he anoints with capers, garlic, red chilies and anchovies. It’s the best $10 you’ll spend in Vegas.

A dash of daring

Chef Gina Marinelli last year opened La Strega, her modern Italian charmer after a long stint behind the range at D.O.C.G. Enoteca, chef Scott Conant’s restaurant (now closed) at the Cosmopolitan. Few tourists ventured into Marinelli’s popular restaurant at first, but now it draws a nearly equal share of locals and visitors, who book tables for her blistered pizzas, house-made bucatini tumbled with dandelion pesto, and crostini stacked with tiny anchovies, shaved coins of tart preserved oranges and shaved ricotta salata.

“Don’t tell Scott [Conant], but her version of pasta pomodoro is even better than his,” said Perrazzo, the chef with plans for two restaurants next year.

Luis de Santos and Khai Vu heard the off-Strip siren call too. De Santos, a master sommelier, decamped from Wolfgang Puck’s fine dining group to open Mordeo Boutique Wine Bar last year with Vu, a well-regarded chef whwo also owns the popular District One restaurant downtown.

Mordeo, which means “small bites” in Latin, offers a one-page menu of hefty prime steaks, bite-size tapas, small plates of ibérico ham, and wines and sakes. De Santos’ wine cellar and Vu’s cooking lean to Spain and Japan (and sometimes both, as with Vu’s popular cauliflower bisque, a corrida de toros of shiitake mushrooms, salmon roe, scallions, chili oil and cauliflower), with nods to Italy.

“We came out here to offer old-school hospitality and solid values, especially in wines,” de Santos said. “I’d rather someone spend half as much twice a week than a whole lot every six months.”

Thoughtfully crafted tapas also are featured prominently at Edo Tapas and Wine, where former Strip chef and Edo co-owner Oscar Amador revisits classic Catalan cuisine.

The all-Spanish wine list is packed with labels you might not recognize. The tapas? Plenty of oysters, iterations of corn-fed ibérico pork and an array of Spanish cheeses. If the vegan green tartare (a brilliant use of zucchini) or Peruvian scallops with ibérico pork shoulder and foie gras are on the menu that day, order them.

Or double down with Edo’s $48, ten-course tasting menu, which is served (like everything else) with a pair of tweezers. “The tweezers are for the charcuterie and crudos,” said Roberto Liendo, Edo’s managing partner. “We have a lot of chefs who eat here, and you know chefs love to play with tweezers.”

There aren’t any tweezers on the tables at Partage, a French boîte, but you will find them in the kitchen, firmly in the pincers of Yuri Szarzewski, Partage’s chef and owner. With Partage, he and Vincent Pellerin, his business partner and long-time pastry chef, created one of the city’s most exacting French restaurants, where the decor is a mix of buttery leathers, dark woods and high-key design.

Szarzewski, who cooked in Michelin-starred kitchens throughout France, said he sensed Vegas would embrace star-worthy food away from the Strip. He was right. Partage’s 70 seats fill each evening with a mix of locals and visitors, who arrive for his modern French cooking. His three-, five- and seven-course tasting menus, from $55 to $100, may convince you that neighborhood cooking deserves its buzz.

Cooking without borders

If you prefer cooking without borders, The Black Sheep, chef Jamie Tran’s off-Strip restaurant, gallops from California to Mexico then jumps to Vietnam for the win.

Tran, a protégé of chef Daniel Boulud, serves fish tacos unlike those usually found in Baja; instead of supple corn tortillas, she fills flash-fried salmon skins shaped into taco shells with salmon-belly tartare, tobiko and smoked shishito peppers. Consider yourself lucky if her lemongrass-braised short ribs and creamy grits with Asian pears are on the menu that day.

If you’re a fan of Lotus of Siam, one of the city’s best-known off-Strip restaurants, then you’ll like Lamaii, former Lotus sommelier Bank Atcharawan’s new, modern Thai restaurant. From its shotgun space in an unassuming strip shopping center (also home to Sparrow + Wolf) it turns out high-voltage dishes that include slow-roasted duck and from-scratch curries, which synch well with one of the city’s best value-priced wine lists. His sweet spot? Wines for less than $50 a bottle.

Besides lower rents, many chefs revel in a certain freedom.

“I’m working just as hard or harder than I did on the Strip, but I love it,” said Brisson, the former CarneVino chef who left Eataly to open Locale. “I finally have the freedom to create a dish and put it on the menu that night without going through three layers of approval.

“This is why I became a chef.”

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Sports-betting firm DraftKings Inc. is going public in a three-way deal with gaming technology provider SBTech and an acquisition fund founded by former Hollywood executive Jeff Sagansky that values the new firm at about $3.3 billion.

Boston-based DraftKings said it agreed to be sold, alongside SBTech, to Diamond Eagle Acquisition Corp., a publicly traded special purpose acquisition company or SPAC. The combined group will trade under the name DraftKings Inc.

Diamond Eagle is the fifth SPAC set up by serial dealmaker Sagansky, who founded Diamond Eagle with investor Harry Sloan. SPACs raise money from public investors to pursue acquisitions, allowing a private company to go public without an initial public offering.

DraftKings was founded in 2011 as a fantasy sports company. Its earlier investors include the Raine Group, and the owners of the New England Patriots.

The deal allows DraftKings to accomplish its three main goals — combine with SBTech, raise money to help fuel growth and go public — according to co-founder and Chief Executive Jason Robins.

“A lot of companies wait to go public until they’ve hit the end of what is their very obvious growth phase, when they’re already at their scale level,” said Robins, who will be CEO of the new entity. “We’re going public in the early days of what we hope will be a very expansive and large market in the U.S. that develops over the coming years, so it gives public shareholders a real opportunity to ride that growth.“

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The combined company projects to have $540 million in revenue next year, with $400 million of that coming from DraftKings and $140 million from SBTech, Robins said. It’s expected to grow to $700 million in 2021, with $550 million coming from DraftKings.

The deal continues a string of mergers in the fast-growing U.S. sports-betting market. FanDuel, DraftKings’s longtime fantasy sports rival, was sold to Irish bookmaker Paddy Power Betfair Plc last year. That group later agreed to merge with Canadian betting company Stars Group, which is a partner in the Fox Sports app Fox Bet.

Media mogul Shari Redstone and other Viacom Inc. directors are being accused by a pension fund of selling out the entertainment company’s shareholders by ramming through an $11.7-billion merger with CBS Corp.

Redstone, who also is CBS’ controlling shareholder, and her colleagues on Viacom’s board “expropriated potentially billions of dollars from Viacom’s minority stockholders” by agreeing to a deal that was unfavorable to investors, lawyers for the fund said in a complaint in Delaware Chancery Court that was unsealed Monday.

The merger was a long-sought reunion of CBS and Viacom — which were two parts of the same company until 2006 — engineered by Redstone over vehement opposition from now-former CBS executives.

The combination, which closed this month with unanimous approval from special board committees of CBS and Viacom, brought the U.S.’ most-watched TV network back together with the parent of Paramount Pictures and cable channels such as MTV and Nickelodeon. The combined company trades as ViacomCBS Inc.

In the complaint, the Employees’ Retirement System of the City of Kansas City, Missouri Trust seeks damages rather than a court order unwinding the merger.

Sara Evans, a spokeswoman for Redstone, declined to comment on the lawsuit. Justin Dini, a spokesman for the combined company, didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The Redstone family decided to spin off CBS in 2006 as part of a bid to unlock greater shareholder value. That strategy didn’t work as expected, spurring sporadic efforts to re-combine the entertainment companies. Shari Redstone’s National Amusements Inc. is the controlling shareholder of both CBS and Viacom.

CBS executives led by Les Moonves, who at the time was CBS’ chief executive, derided Redstone’s recombination plan last year as “having no economic or strategic rationale,” according to court filings.

After Moonves was forced out over sexual-misconduct claims, Redstone was able to push the merger forward. She took over as National Amusements’ leader after illness forced her billionaire father, Sumner Redstone, to relinquish the reins.

In the unsealed suit, the pension fund accuses Shari Redstone of packing Viacom’s board with her supporters so she could push through the merger without allowing minority shareholders to vote on it. Directors also negotiated an unfair exchange ratio in the stock-for-stock deal that failed to account for value created by the combination of the entertainment companies, the fund said.

“From the beginning of the negotiation process, the Viacom Transaction Committee — comprised of Shari Redstone’s loyalists — put her interests and objectives ahead of the interest of minority stockholders,” the fund’s lawyers said.

Jaelyn Farrell climbed into a tree fort, played in fake sand and pushed around a “Paw Patrol” toy car.

But the 8-year-old wasn’t at a playground or a friend’s house. She was at the mall in a new Toys R Us. The chain, relaunched for this holiday shopping season after going out of business in 2018, is trying to get kids playing in the hopes that parents will get buying again.

The Paramus, N.J., store she was visiting “has cool stuff,” said Jaelyn during an outing with her dad and little brother. “Little kids, or big kids like my age, can play in here.”

Toy stores have long offered activities and interactive elements, such as the floor piano at FAO Schwarz that Tom Hanks danced on in “Big.” Toys R Us, in its heyday, drew crowds for its Pokemon tournaments, but its appeal faded with Amazon’s rise.

Now a new generation of toy stores hopes to capitalize on the demise of the old Toys R Us by emphasizing playtime. They are fighting for a chunk of the $28-billion U.S. toy market, which today is spent mostly at Amazon.com Inc., Walmart Inc. and Target Corp.

Richard Barry, head of Toys R Us’ new parent company, thinks about $2 billion of that market is up for grabs.

“We sell toys,” Barry said. “But what the kids really want is play.”

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The revamped Toys R Us today consists of just two stores, the one in New Jersey and one in Houston, although it plans eight stores in 2020. They are one-seventh of the size of the old stores and emphasize hands-on experiences.

While the old Toys R Us had fun events to draw in kids, merchandise was still king, with toys stacked to the ceiling. The new Toys R Us unwraps the toys so that kids can try them out. In the New Jersey store, kids shot Nerf blasters and sat in a circle for story time while Geoffrey, the chain’s mascot, roamed around.

When another iconic toy brand, FAO Schwarz, opened a store in New York in 2018, three years after shutting its 5th Avenue flagship, it brought back the famous floor piano and added a toy grocery store where kids can shop for artificial produce, complete with small carts, and a Barbie doll fashion parlor that charges $75 for a styling session.

A new chain, Camp, has a scooter race track and a room devoted to arts and crafts and musical performances. At a New York store, children ran around and sat on the floor and at tables playing with toys, while store workers sang songs. To amp up the theatrics, both FAO Schwarz and Camp hire actors as staff.

“Amazon and other online sellers are dramatically changing retail, and it will only get more difficult for brick-and-mortar stores to compete,” said Michael Goldstein, a former Toys R Us chief executive who now sits on the board of Camp. “We want people to come to our stores and have a gratifying experience.”

Experiences inside a store are an increasingly important marketing tool as television audiences shrink and kids see fewer TV ads, said toy marketing consultant Marc Rosenberg.

While playtime makes sense for selling toys, it’s not just toy stores that are focusing on activities. Department stores such as Macy’s are also trying to give shoppers more reason to spend time — and money — in their stores rather than shop online.

Elizabeth Sorio of Park Ridge, N.J., watched her 3-year-old twin boys play with robot toys and an interactive mirror as she shopped for Christmas gifts at the New Jersey Toys R Us. She appreciated the way the store let her kids test out the toys.

“It’s easier for us to know what they like if they actually play with it,” Sorio said, recalling the frustration of buying her kids “something they think they like and they have no interest.”

D’Innocenzio writes for the Associated Press.

A few places to see (fake) snow during the holidays:

The Grove, Los Angeles, nightly 7 p.m. and 8 p.m., through Wednesday

Palisades Village (in The Park), Pacific Palisades, 6 p.m. and 7 p.m. Tuesday

The Americana at Brand (in The Green), Glendale, nightly at 7 p.m. and 8 p.m. through Wednesday

The Market at Westfield, Century City, on the hour, daily through Jan. 5

The Queen Mary, Long Beach, select nights through Dec. 31

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Citadel Outlets, Los Angeles, nightly, 6 p.m. and 8 p.m. through Monday

Six Flags Magic Mountain, Valencia, nightly, every 20 minutes starting at 5 p.m. through Jan. 5

Legoland, Carlsbad at Fun Town, every 30 minutes, starting at noon, through Jan. 5

Universal Studios Hollywood, nightly every 30 minutes, through Sunday

Disneyland, Anaheim, Main Street, nightly through Jan. 6