Workers install 192 crystals on Times Square New Year’s ball

Workers installed 192 glittering Waterford crystal triangles on Times Square’s New Year’s Eve ball Sunday in preparation for a pandemic-limited celebration that will lack the usual tightly packed crowds of revelers.

The ball is a 12-foot geodesic sphere covered with 2,688 crystal triangles of various sizes. Some new crystals are swapped in every year. This year’s addition features a new “Gift of Happiness” design represented by a sunburst of bright cuts radiating outward.

The ball blazing with 32,256 LED lights will be dropped at 11:59 p.m. on New Year’s Eve to ring in 2021.

Performances at the event will be designed for TV audiences watching from home.

Ethan Hawke backs Bostonarea theater’s fundraising

Actor Ethan Hawke is throwing his support behind a fundraising effort by a Boston-area independent theater that has struggled to stay afloat during the coronavirus pandemic. The four-time Oscar nominee in a short video made in a Rome hotel room urged people to back the Coolidge Corner Theatre in Brookline.

He said in an age of at-home streaming, movie theaters provide an opportunity to get together, talk and share.

“If we define progress by the fact that we can all stream our movies from our home, and we never have to leave our house, and we never have to see each other again, I think we’ve really lost why cinema and why movies are the church of my choice,” he said. “It’s because of places like the Coolidge, places in America where we go to be together, to share stories, to generate empathy together, to broaden our views, and be together.”

He also recounted what he called “one of the best experiences” of his life at the Coolidge, a question and answer session following the screening of a movie he directed.