Aurelia Butler

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    Al Pacino Is Still Going Big

    Al Pacino has been one of the world’s greatest, most influential actors for more than 50 years. He’s audacious. He’s outrageous. He’s Al Pacino, and I’m pretty sure you know what that entails.Listen to the Conversation With Al PacinoA conversation with the legendary actor about, well, everything.Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Amazon | iHeart | NYT Audio AppSo I’d like to talk about some aspects of him that merit fresh discussion. Did you know, for example, that he is cinema’s greatest-ever swearer? (This is fact, not opinion.) He delights in those words. He lustily chomps on them. This zest for delivering colorful language, I suspect, is a source of the criticism that he has become a scenery-chewer. Which isn’t nearly the whole picture. Fans of his layered, subtle work in “The Godfather” or “Dog Day Afternoon” need to immediately see more recent films like “The Humbling” or “The Insider” or “Manglehorn” to understand his enduring range. But also, the parts of Pacino movies where Pacino goes big are always the best parts of Pacino movies! Did anyone want him to underplay Satan in “The Devil’s Advocate”?Though he can go small and internal, Pacino’s ability to really emote is one of his singular gifts. That’s why, secretly, the best Pacino is crowd-pleasing Hollywood movie star ’90s Pacino. Given the revolutionary work he did in the ’70s, this is akin to claiming that the key work of a critically acclaimed, groundbreaking band occurred after it went pop. But ’90s Pacino is when his gargantuan skill, volcanic charisma and joyful desire to entertain all coalesced magically.“Hoo-ah!”The first time I ever consciously noticed a Pacino performance was also the first time I ever consciously saw an actor in a movie and thought, That’s good acting. It was 1990, I was only 8 years old and I’d just seen Pacino play the grotesque gangster Big Boy Caprice in “Dick Tracy.” (Don’t scoff. Pacino earned an Oscar nomination for the part.) Hidden under garish makeup and a hunchback, Pacino was kinetic and uninhibited and, most of all, believable in a way that registered to even a child. That lusty emotionality and passionate exuberance — his sense of being truly alive to each moment in his character’s life — is what Pacino brought with such distinction to his movies in that period, which was also the period when I grew from a child to a young man.Pacino’s engagement with his art was a model for how passionately — and variously — you could engage with the world. He has always been brilliant at playing cops and criminals like Big Boy. But he has also played biblical kings, cockney sociopaths, sharkish salesmen, a short-order cook and a Gucci. He’s done Mamet and Brecht and Shakespeare. (His majestic, tragic Shylock was the best theatrical performance I’ve ever seen.) He has played Phil Spector, Jimmy Hoffa, Jack Kevorkian, Joe Paterno, Roy Cohn and, on two occasions, versions of himself. He did it in the artfully self-reflexive documentary “Looking For Richard,” then in the somewhat-less-artful Adam Sandler vehicle “Jack and Jill.” Has he always been perfect? No. He strives for something riskier and more alive than perfection. Is he always perceptive, free, unmissable? God, yes. More

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    Francis Ford Coppola’s ‘Megalopolis’ Is a Different Kind of Flop

    Plenty of movies bomb, but Francis Ford Coppola’s latest is part of a different class of box office failures.Just before previews began at a Lower Manhattan theater on a recent Saturday night, Tazer Army reflected on the Francis Ford Coppola movie “Megalopolis” before even seeing it.“There’s just so much lore,” Army said.She wasn’t wrong. The lore dates back more than 40 years, to when Coppola, the director of the “Godfather” films and “Apocalypse Now,” conceived the project. Now 85, he finally made this long-gestating project a reality by selling part of his wine business to finance the film, which cost roughly $140 million to make and market. There were allegations of on-set misconduct, and a suit by Coppola over the accusations. There was even a trailer with made-up quotations from famous movie critics. And the biggest piece of lore: the fact that “Megalopolis,” as its title does not bother to deny, is a grandiosely personal vision that seemed fated to lose a lot of money at the box office — something its dismal opening weekend haul of $4 million confirmed.The upshot is that “Megalopolis” is a film both about a tortured-genius artist (the architect Cesar Catalina, played by Adam Driver) overcoming obstacles to realize his solitary vision and the product of one. It appears destined to be remembered as the latest instance of a Hollywood archetype that is every bit as key to the industry’s mythology as its biggest hits: the auteurist flop.“It seems you either have the epic, beautiful win of a film that is beloved, or the one that is wrapped up in ego and is scandalous,” said Maya Montañez Smukler, the head of U.C.L.A.’s Film and Television Archive Research and Study Center. “It’s the perverse pleasure in seeing somebody fail on such an enormous magnitude.”Even at the peak of Hollywood’s studio era, there were flops — ambitious, big-budget spectacles that got out of hand during production and crashed upon contact with the viewing public. Joseph Mankiewicz’s 1963 epic, “Cleopatra,” starring Elizabeth Taylor, brought 20th Century Fox near bankruptcy and failed to recoup its $44 million budget, then a record.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

  • 125 Shares99 Views

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    Francis Ford Coppola’s “Megalopolis” Is a Different Kind of Flop

    Plenty of movies bomb, but Francis Ford Coppola’s latest is part of a different class of box office failures.Just before previews began at a Lower Manhattan theater on a recent Saturday night, Tazer Army reflected on the Francis Ford Coppola movie “Megalopolis” before even seeing it.“There’s just so much lore,” Army said.She wasn’t wrong. The lore dates back more than 40 years, to when Coppola, the director of the “Godfather” films and “Apocalypse Now,” conceived the project. Now 85, he finally made this long-gestating project a reality by selling part of his wine business to finance the film, which cost roughly $140 million to make and market. There were allegations of on-set misconduct, and a suit by Coppola over the accusations. There was even a trailer with made-up quotations from famous movie critics. And the biggest piece of lore: the fact that “Megalopolis,” as its title does not bother to deny, is a grandiosely personal vision that seemed fated to lose a lot of money at the box office — something its dismal opening weekend haul of $4 million confirmed.The upshot is that “Megalopolis” is a film both about a tortured-genius artist (the architect Cesar Catalina, played by Adam Driver) overcoming obstacles to realize his solitary vision and the product of one. It appears destined to be remembered as the latest instance of a Hollywood archetype that is every bit as key to the industry’s mythology as its biggest hits: the auteurist flop.“It seems you either have the epic, beautiful win of a film that is beloved, or the one that is wrapped up in ego and is scandalous,” said Maya Montañez Smukler, the head of U.C.L.A.’s Film and Television Archive Research and Study Center. “It’s the perverse pleasure in seeing somebody fail on such an enormous magnitude.”Even at the peak of Hollywood’s studio era, there were flops — ambitious, big-budget spectacles that got out of hand during production and crashed upon contact with the viewing public. Joseph Mankiewicz’s 1963 epic, “Cleopatra,” starring Elizabeth Taylor, brought 20th Century Fox near bankruptcy and failed to recoup its $44 million budget, then a record.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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    GloRilla, Hip-Hop’s Master Motivator, Rounds Out Her Message

    Self-empowerment rhymes catapulted her onto rap’s A-list. On “Glorious,” her debut LP, she’s hoping that showing more sides of her personality will help her stay there.GloRilla is always on the clock these days. Last month, the rapper born Gloria Hallelujah Woods stomped and bounced through her hits “Yeah Glo!” and “TGIF” at the MTV Video Music Awards, then spent the next morning at a photo shoot.By the time she arrived at Jungle City Studios in Manhattan, around 9 p.m., her trademark bravado was in short supply. Nursing a mild cold, she swaddled herself in a thick woolen blanket and laid practically supine on a couch. But, she explained, she intended to keep slogging through her exhaustion. “I don’t take having a lot of work for granted no more,” she said. “I can’t complain about a lot being on my plate when my goal was to eat.”GloRilla, 25, burst out of Memphis in 2022 with the release of her single “F.N.F. (Let’s Go),” recorded at the end of a 60-day fast — no men, no liquor — that she said changed the trajectory of her life. Its eminently chantable affirmations about being “F-R-E-E” and “S-I-N-G-L-E” proved ideal fodder for TikTok, radio and that year’s Grammys, where the song was nominated for best rap performance. One viral track begot another: “Tomorrow 2,” with Cardi B, vaulted into the Top 10 less than six months after “F.N.F.” dropped.GloRilla played the months that followed with a relative conservatism. She released an EP, “Anyways, Life’s Great …,” at the end of 2022, and a deluxe edition a few months later. She spent much of 2023 on the festival circuit and earlier this year shared “Ehhthang Ehhthang,” a sprightly mixtape that featured “Wanna Be,” a modest hit she shared with Megan Thee Stallion, who brought her on a global tour this summer. On Oct. 11, she’ll release her debut album “Glorious,” more than two years after becoming a next big thing.Myesha Evon for The New York TimesIt was a bit of a slow burn for a budding star of rap, a genre in which hits bloom and wither with astonishing speed. The relatively patient output was not by design: GloRilla was figuring out the shifting sands of her new stardom and how much she wanted to expand on the sound that launched her.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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    Saoirse Ronan Has Lived, and Acted, Through a Lot

    “I wish I could live through something,” says the teenage title character in the 2017 movie “Lady Bird,” yearning for a life beyond suburban Sacramento.The actor playing her, Saoirse Ronan, had, at that point, already lived through enough for several lives. Then 23, she’d been acting since she was 9, and had already garnered two Oscar nominations. “Lady Bird,” Greta Gerwig’s debut as a solo director, would earn Ronan a third. Another followed, in 2019, for her role as Jo March in Gerwig’s “Little Women.”This year, Oscars buzz surrounds Ronan once again, thanks to her leading roles in Nora Fingscheidt’s “The Outrun,” which opens in theaters Friday, and Steve McQueen’s “Blitz,” out Nov. 1st.Ronan’s career reads as a series of evolutions, pushing into new territory with every role — over the years, she has also played a 1950s Irish immigrant in New York, a child assassin, a vampire, Lady Macbeth and Mary, Queen of Scots. Now 30, with over two decades of experience in front of the camera, the Irish actress has committed herself in “The Outrun” to a character containing multitudes: a woman raised in a remote island community, who returns to recover from her addiction to alcohol.In “The Outrun,” Ronan’s character, Rona, returns home to the Orkney Islands in Scotland to recover from her alcohol addiction.Martin Scott Powell/Sony Pictures Classics“It was so much more than just making a film for me,” Ronan said, in a video interview from New York. She described an experience that was both physically and emotionally demanding: “I think actors are sponges, you’re able to open yourself up to everything around you.” For “The Outrun,” that meant swimming in the icy sea, delivering lambs on-camera and going deep into the psyche of a woman in crisis.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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    Lauren Mayberry’s Lush Pop Ecstasy, and 13 More New Songs

    Hear tracks by Bartees Strange, the Smile, Ela Minus and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new tracks. Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes) and at Apple Music here, and sign up for The Amplifier, a twice-weekly guide to new and old songs.Lauren Mayberry, ‘Something in the Air’Lauren Mayberry, the frontwoman of the Scottish synth-pop band Chvrches, strikes a note of defiance on “Something in the Air,” a track from her upcoming debut solo album, “Vicious Creature.” “You come up with your stories, conspiracy theories of why we’re all here,” she sings on a soaring pop chorus, before flinging off all that paranoia with some crescendoing synths and a melody that escalates toward liberation. LINDSAY ZOLADZWaxahatchee, ‘Much Ado About Nothing’MJ Lenderman’s chiming guitar sparks off the warm tone of Katie Crutchfield’s voice on “Much Ado About Nothing,” a previously unreleased track she’s been playing live on the tour for Waxahatchee’s latest album, “Tiger’s Blood.” “Oh no, I’m down and out, I’m tragically amiss,” Crutchfield sings, reaching to her warbling falsetto. But in the face of her desperation, the song’s laid-back and lived-in arrangement offers a safe place to land. ZOLADZBartees Strange, ‘Sober’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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    10 Unforgettable Kris Kristofferson Covers

    Many of his songs are better known by other singers’ interpretations, like Janis Joplin’s “Me and Bobby McGee,” Johnny Cash’s “Sunday Morning Coming Down” and more.Laura Roberts/Invision, via Associated PressDear listeners,“You can look at Nashville pre-Kris and post-Kris,” Bob Dylan once said of Kris Kristofferson, who died on Saturday, “because he changed everything.”That’s high praise coming from Dylan, especially considering that when they first crossed paths in Nashville’s Columbia Recording Studios in 1966, Dylan was recording his opus “Blonde on Blonde” — and Kristofferson was the studio’s janitor, lingering in the halls with his own dreams of songwriting glory. A few years later, he’d finally achieve them, thanks to artists like Ray Price, Roger Miller and Johnny Cash, who all had hits with early Kristofferson compositions. Then came Janis Joplin’s rendition of “Me and Bobby McGee,” which posthumously topped the pop chart and gave Kristofferson, as he once put it, “the biggest shot of fame that I ever got at that time. It was never the same after that.”Though a household name thanks mostly to his acting career, Kristofferson never achieved more than modest success as a solo recording artist. I happen to love that gruff, mumbly Everyman quality of his voice, but I recognize that it’s an acquired taste. That’s probably why so many Kristofferson songs are better known by other singers’ interpretations, whether it’s Joplin’s “Bobby McGee,” Johnny Cash’s “Sunday Morning Coming Down” or a whole host of other musicians who have tackled his breakthrough breakup ballad “For the Good Times.”Today’s playlist is a compilation of some of the best of those covers, from artists as varied as Al Green, Waylon Jennings and Tom Verlaine. If you’d like to hear Kristofferson’s words in his own ragged drawl, consider this a companion piece to the excellent playlist that Jon Pareles put together, featuring 12 of Kristofferson’s essential songs.Lastly, a quick programming note: I’m going to be taking the next few weeks off from writing The Amplifier so I can get some work done on the book I’ve been trying to write. I have a few great guest playlisters lined up while I’m out, and they’ll be sending you an Amplifier once a week, each Tuesday. Enjoy their eclectic selections, and you’ll hear from me again soon!I ain’t saying I beat the devil, but I drank his beer for nothing,LindsayWe 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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    5 New Horror Movies to Stream for Halloween on Hulu, Max and More

    Out this week, a period possession movie starring Sarah Paulson, a chef-driven supernatural thriller starring Ariana DeBose and more.‘Hold Your Breath’Stream it on Hulu.A mother braves the elements, and evil, in this busy but hackneyed feature debut from the directors Karrie Crouse and Will Joines.Sarah Paulson plays Margaret, a loving mother trying to shield her two daughters, Rose (Amiah Miller) and Ollie (Alona Jane Robbins), from sinister entities that she suspects lurk outside their isolated Dust Bowl home. Among them is a mysterious drifter (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) with questionable healing powers.Crouse’s script hurls horror conventions against the wall — possession, survival, eco-disaster, home invasion, folk horror, body horror, religious mania — in hopes that something sticks. But nothing does, so what’s left is a movie about a grieving mother protecting her children from dust and wind for 94 minutes — a scary scenario for 1930s Oklahoma, the film’s setting. But not here.Instead, there are predictable jump scares, creaking floorboards, silhouetted figures in the distance and every 10 minutes another fire for Margaret to put out. It’s “The Mist” but silt, “The Babadook” minus a Babadook, “The Night of the Hunter” with no edge.‘V/H/S/Beyond’Stream it on Shudder.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