Aurelia Butler

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    Sydney Sweeney and Dr. Squatch Launch Soap Infused With Actress’s Bathwater

    Calling the requests “weird in the best way,” the actress worked with Dr. Squatch on a soap that has a manly scent and just a touch of her actual bath water.Sydney Sweeney, the actress known for her roles in “Euphoria,” “Anyone But You” and a host of other buzzy movies and TV shows, is the face of a new bar of soap, purportedly made with a special ingredient: her own bath water. The internet may take quite some time to recover from this news.The product, “Sydney’s Bathwater Bliss,” is a collaboration with Dr. Squatch, a men’s personal care company that describes itself as using natural ingredients and “manly scents.”The actress announced the new soap on Instagram. Her caption referenced a previous advertisement she had done with Dr. Squatch, saying, “You kept asking about my bathwater after the @drsquatch ad… so we kept it.”In a news release, Ms. Sweeney said the requests for her bath water were “weird in the best way.”The limited-edition bar of soap, made with sand, pine bark extract and a “touch” of Ms. Sweeney’s real bath water, according to the company, will be go on sale June 6. Leaning in to the salacious nature of the product, an Instagram post by Dr. Squatch included a provocative description of the soap’s scent.“There’s no playbook for turning Sydney Sweeney’s actual bath water into a bar of soap, but that’s exactly why we did it,” John Ludeke, the senior vice president of global marketing for Dr. Squatch, said in the company’s news release. “We thrive on ideas that make you laugh.”The limited-edition bar of soap is made with sand, pine bark extract and a “touch” of Ms. Sweeney’s real bath water, according to Dr. Squatch.Dr. SquatchNearly as eye-catching as soap made from the slosh of one’s own bathing ritual are the reactions to it on social media. Users’ remarks have run the gamut, from extremely vulgar to celebratory. Others were simply asking, “Why?”In a Reddit thread that questioned whether Ms. Sweeney’s new product was preying on the loneliness of men, Meera Gregerson, 28, said she did not view selling a product to people as predatory.“I think that the fact that she’s been sexualized and made to be a sex icon in some ways as a celebrity — I think it’s fair for her to also want to make money off of that,” Ms. Gregerson said in a phone interview. “I don’t think it’s that different from her selling movies using her appearance as a selling point.”Multiple social media users have pointed out that Ms. Sweeney’s new product is reminiscent of a stunt from Belle Delphine, an adult content creator with a large social media following, who made headlines in 2019 for selling her own bath water.Chad Grauke, 39, who also took to Reddit to share his reaction to the soap, said he did not take issue with the product itself, but was more so curious about “what type of person is buying this stuff.”“I don’t feel it’s the lonely hermit as much as it’s the bro who thinks he has a chance,” Mr. Grauke said. More

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    Peter Seiffert, Acclaimed Tenor in Wagner’s Operas, Is Dead at 71

    A German tenor, he was admired for his clear, powerful voice and his exceptional stamina during hourslong performances.Peter Seiffert, a German tenor admired for his clear, powerful renditions of Wagner, died on April 14 at his home in Schleedorf, Austria, near Salzburg. He was 71.His death was announced by his agent, Hilbert Artists Management, which didn’t specify a cause but said that Mr. Seiffert had suffered from a “severe illness.”Mr. Seiffert was the archetype “heldentenor,” or heroic tenor in German, one of the rarest and most sought-after types of voices in opera. The leading roles in much of Wagner’s work — Tannhäuser, Lohengrin, Tristan, Parsifal — demand big tenor voices of exceptional strength and stamina, able to withstand the most extreme vocal demands over hourslong performances.Wagner himself wanted a tenor that was the opposite of what he had been hearing in the Italian opera of his day, which he considered “unmanly, soft and completely lacking in energy,” he wrote in an essay on the performing of the opera “Tannhäuser.”Mr. Seiffert had the sort of voice that Wagner sought, in the view of critics: It projected strength. Over the nearly five hours of “Tannhäuser,” his voice rang out clear and true, from the bottom of his range to the top. The effort was intense.“You don’t become the knight of the High C just for fun and games,” he told the online magazine Backstage Classical in 1996.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Leonie Benesch Brings a Quiet Intensity to Her Role in ‘Late Shift’

    From TV series to art house films, Leonie Benesch brings a quiet intensity to the screen, including her latest movie.The German actress Leonie Benesch appears in every scene of Petra Volpe’s “Late Shift,” a tense drama about a night nurse in an understaffed hospital.The film, which screens at the inaugural edition of South by Southwest London on Tuesday in its British debut, follows Benesch’s character, Floria, over the course of a single night. She rushes from bedside to bedside, bringing patients painkillers or peppermint tea and calms their nerves by trying to get hold of a doctor — or just by singing to them.To prepare for the role, Benesch said she shadowed nurses in a hospital for a week, learning to handle medical equipment and internalizing the rhythm of care work.“I wanted to understand the choreography and how do they move. How do they interact with patients? What’s the code-switching between talking to one another and talking to patients?” Benesch, 34, said in an interview. “The challenge for me,” she added, “was that a health care professional watch this and go: She could be one of us.”The actress spoke in May from a hotel bar in Cardiff, Wales, in crisp British-accented English. She was in Wales filming the political thriller “Prisoner,” the sort of large-budget international television production that dots her résumé along with smaller art house films.Benesch, right, with Christian Friedel in the 2009 film “The White Ribbon.” She landed the part of Eva, her first major film role, when she was just 17.X FilmeWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    South by Southwest London Has Its Own Musical Touch

    The festival, which has a long association with music, presents an opportunity for London acts to perform on a bigger stage.When South by Southwest first began in Austin, Texas, in 1987, the Shoreditch neighborhood in East London was still filled with empty warehouses. But it was beginning to attract a wave of artists who would help it eventually become synonymous with music and culture.Almost 40 years later, this area will be the site of South by Southwest London, the organization’s first foray into Europe. And for some of the London-born musicians who are performing, it’s a huge opportunity that also reflects the area’s reputation and artistic cachet.“It’s super exciting that it’s now finally arriving on home soil,” said Joel Bailey, an R&B and soul artist from Southwest London whose stage name is BAELY. He continued: “London’s got so many different hubs of, kind of like pockets of creative spaces and Shoreditch is definitely one of them. It’s thriving.”Jojo Orme, who performs as Heartworms, was born in London and said she briefly lived in Shoreditch. “They just have the fingers on the pulse there. It’s always beating,” she said, adding that “so many people love to travel to Shoreditch for a show because it’s always a good time.”Jojo Orme, who performs as Heartworms, said people flock to shows in vibrant Shoreditch, the festival’s home base. “They just have the fingers on the pulse there.”@kate.samsara.photographySouth by Southwest London, which begins on Monday and runs through June 7, will feature performances by more than 500 artists across about 30 venues as part of its music festival. It will also include a film and conference series, just like the flagship festival in Austin. An Asia-Pacific branch of the event started in Sydney in 2023.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    It’s Still South by Southwest, but This Time It’s in London

    The music, tech and film festival, long known for being in Austin, Texas, expands to Europe for the first time.The artist known as Beeple set a record in 2021 when a work of his — a collage of 5,000 images that existed only as a digital file — sold for $69.3 million in a Christie’s auction.Beeple, whose real name is Mike Winkelmann, is one of the artists participating in the inaugural edition of South by Southwest London, the music, film and tech festival. This time, he is presenting “The Tree of Knowledge,” a critique of the human addiction to smartphones.“People don’t fully recognize how much their phone is stressing them out,” and how much they’re “dialing up the noise,” Beeple said in a phone interview. “They could make the choice to dial down the noise, and just put their phone down, and exist in a much more calm state in which technology still exists.”The work is a refrigerator-size box containing a giant tree (recreated via projection mapping), with screens on all sides, and a large dial. When viewers turn the dial, the box is covered with live news, stock prices and data, illustrating the information overload faced by humanity.“The Tree of Knowledge” by Beeple (Mike Winklemann) is designed to address humans’ addiction to smart phones. It features four video screens arranged in rectangular pillars with imagery generated from a variety of real-time data.Tree of Knowledge/Beeple Studios The owner of the Tree of Knowledge can control the work further by pressing a “choose violence” button, which initiates a violent state for several minutes before destroying the tree. The tree regenerates when the violence ends.Beeple Studios“The Tree of Knowledge” encapsulates the spirit of South by Southwest London, which begins on Monday and runs through June 7. The event will feature a diverse group of speakers, including the ABBA singer-songwriter Bjorn Ulvaeus, the actor Idris Elba, the wellness and meditation expert Deepak Chopra, the primatologist Jane Goodall and the comedian Katherine Ryan. There will also be voices from the technology world, including Demis Hassabis, co-founder of Google’s DeepMind lab and co-winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry; and Alex Kendall, the chief executive of Wayve, a developer of artificial intelligence systems for self-driving cars.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Iranian Film at South by Southwest London Offers a Dose of Hope

    Amirali Navaee’s new film, “Sunshine Express,” screening next at South by Southwest London, is a project more focused on hope than politics.For the Iranian writer and director Amirali Navaee, portraying his country is not about depicting sadness and tragedy, which he feels has come to define the onscreen portrayal of his home in recent years.Iranian filmmakers have been as much in the news as their films have been over the past decade. The writer and director Mohammad Rasoulof fled Iran last year after being sentenced to eight years in prison while finishing “The Seed of the Sacred Fig,” which tells the story of a family torn apart by protests that were violently crushed by the Iranian government in 2022-23. His harrowing journey has been well-documented, and the film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival last year, with Rasoulof in attendance, where it received a special award from the competition jury. It was later nominated for best international feature at the Academy Awards.The Iranian director Asghar Farhadi, whose films “A Separation” (2012) and “The Salesman” (2017) both won Oscars for best international feature, refused to attend the Academy Awards the second time he won in protest over President Trump’s executive order that blocked entry of citizens from Iran and several other predominantly Muslim countries to the United States.And “Un Simple Accident,” from the Iranian writer-director Jafar Panahi, was awarded the Palme d’Or at Cannes last month. Panahi has been imprisoned several times in Iran because of his work but has continued to make movies in defiance of the Iranian government.“Sunshine Express” tells the story of people in a role-playing game who hope to win a cash prize.Distorted PicturesFor his first feature-length film, Navaee (pronounced nah-vah-YEE), who is also a choreographer and visual artist, said he wanted to express something more complex and less overtly political than other Iranian films. The project, “Sunshine Express,” debuted in February at the International Film Festival Rotterdam and is making its British premiere at South by Southwest London on Wednesday. Shot in a warehouse in Tehran on a small budget (Navaee, 42, said many of his friends helped finance the movie), it tells the story of people in a role-playing game on a train headed to a place called Hermia in the hopes of winning a cash prize.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Charles Wadsworth, Pianist and Champion of Chamber Music, Dies at 96

    As the founder, director and genial host of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, he helped drive the chamber music boom of the 1970s.Charles Wadsworth, a pianist who parlayed his Southern charm and his passion for chamber music into a career as the founder, director and host of important chamber series — including the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in New York — and whose work helped propel the chamber music boom that began in the 1970s, died on Thursday in Manhattan. He was 96.His death, at a rehabilitation center, was confirmed by his wife, Susan.During his two decades as director of the Chamber Music Society, Mr. Wadsworth was the face of the organization, likely at any time to stride onto the stage of Alice Tully Hall with a broad grin, tousled blond hair and a boyish gait and offer folksy introductions to the music at hand.“I discovered very early that when people laugh, they relax,” Mr. Wadsworth told an interviewer in 2014. “They may be at a chamber music concert for the first time, or they may be unfamiliar with the repertory, but my feeling was that if I could get them relaxed, they would be open to listening, and to letting the music happen to them, rather than worrying about whether they understand it. And that seemed to work very well.”He also performed with the society, playing the piano, harpsichord or even the organ in staples of its repertory as well as some of the oddities he found while assembling the society’s programs — works like Anton Arensky’s Suite No. 1 for Two Pianos, François Couperin’s “Le Parnasse, ou L’Apothéose de Corelli” or Jan Zelenka’s Trio Sonata for Two Oboes, Bassoon and Continuo. But since the society’s roster included pianists who by Mr. Wadsworth’s own admission were more accomplished, he often deferred to them.His real accomplishments took place behind the scenes. Not least was the creation of the society itself, an organization meant to explore the breadth of the chamber music repertory, regardless of the instrumental (or vocal) combinations required. Mr. Wadsworth assembled a core group of “artist members” — string, wind and keyboard players with active careers, who would commit to performing with the society throughout the season — alongside guest musicians, who would expand the instrumental possibilities and bring an extra measure of star power.Mr. Wadsworth often performed with the Chamber Music Society. He played piano alongside the flutist Paula Robison, the violinist Jaime Laredo and the cellist Fred Sherry at Alice Tully Hall in 2009.JB Reed for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Taylor Swift Buys Her Masters From Shamrock Capital, Reclaiming the Rights to Her First 6 Albums

    The master recordings to the pop superstar’s earliest work were sold to Scooter Braun in 2019, and acquired a year later by the investing firm Shamrock Capital.It was a business deal that led to one of the most ambitious recording projects in pop: When Taylor Swift’s catalog was sold in 2019 as part of a larger acquisition of the Nashville record company Big Machine, she said she would redo all of the affected albums to maintain some control over her creative work.Now the original recordings are hers again.On Friday, Swift announced on her website that she had bought her masters back from Shamrock Capital, the Los Angeles-based investment firm that was founded by Roy E. Disney, a nephew of Walt Disney. She did not disclose the price.“I can’t thank you enough for helping to reunite me with this art that I have dedicated my life to, but have never owned until now,” she wrote to fans. “The best things that have ever been mine … finally actually are.”In her statement, Swift said she now had ownership of all of her music videos, concert films, album art and photography and unreleased songs.Shamrock acquired the rights to Swift’s first six albums — “Taylor Swift” (2006), “Fearless” (2008), “Speak Now” (2010), “Red” (2012), “1989” (2014)” and “Reputation” (2017) — in 2020 from Scooter Braun, the music manager who shepherded Justin Bieber’s career and had worked with the longtime Swift adversary Kanye West, and his company Ithaca Holdings.Braun’s 2019 deal for the Big Machine Label Group, founded by Scott Borchetta and also home to country artists like Florida Georgia Line, Rascal Flatts and Thomas Rhett, was estimated at $300 million. Shamrock paid more than $300 million for Swift’s catalog, according to a person briefed on the deal.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More