Aurelia Butler

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    ‘Pavements,’ ‘My Undesirable Friends’ and Other Documentaries at New York Film Festival

    In epic takes like “My Undesirable Friends” and playful biopics like “Pavements,” the vital art of the documentary is on full display.Documentaries face a great paradox in 2024: They proliferate, but most nonfiction filmmakers will tell you they’re also harder to get made. Streaming services groan under the weight of true crime and biographical films, but most feel fast, formulaic and shoddy, designed specifically to throw on while watchers scroll on their phones. Meanwhile, directors who aspire to challenge audiences and craft art from reality say that they struggle to find money and distribution — and that it’s gotten markedly tougher in just the past few years.That’s why the festival circuit is so important to independent and international documentarians. It can be their best shot at reaching audiences and, perhaps, finding a distributor. But I notice that at many major film festivals, nonfiction can feel like a second-class citizen, unless a celebrity is involved. The films are often programmed in documentary-specific categories, as if they need to be kept away from the “real” movies. Some festivals, like Cannes, barely program any nonfiction at all.Thankfully, the New York Film Festival is not one of those. This year’s edition includes 18 feature-length (and longer) documentaries and 10 nonfiction shorts, and they’re placed alongside fiction in various sections rather than siloed. And while the festival, which rarely features world premieres, has only two this year, both are nonfiction.Technically there are two celebrity-focused documentaries on the slate (unless you count the delightful botanist Mark Brown, of the equally delightful “7 Walks With Mark Brown,” as a celebrity). The more conventional is “Elton John: Never Too Late,” directed by R.J. Cutler and David Furnish, the singer’s husband. The other is Alex Ross Perry’s gonzo “Pavements,” about the indie-rock band Pavement, which involves a little reflection and history from the band but mostly a bunch of elements that mess with the audience: footage from a Pavement jukebox musical that was briefly mounted downtown in 2022 (I saw it) specifically for this movie; a dramatic movie about the band, starring Joe Keery (“Stranger Things”) as the lead singer Stephen Malkmus, that may or may not actually exist; a museum exhibition of Pavement memorabilia. It’s terrifically strange and entertaining even if you (like me) have never really been a fan — and you’ll get a lightly satirical skewering of the whole musician biopic genre, to boot.“Youth (Hard Times) is one of two films from Wang Bing showing at the festival.via NYFFBut where “Pavements” is goofy and doesn’t take itself too seriously, several other documentaries tackle serious subjects with aplomb, and run times to match. “Exergue — on Documenta 14,” directed by Dimitris Athiridis, is a whopping 14 hours, presented in chapters. It’s a riveting and often dryly funny film about Adam Szymczyk — the artistic director of the 2017 edition of Documenta, the highly influential every-five-years exhibition of contemporary art — as he works with his team of curators to put together that show. While there’s a specific event at its center, “Exergue” is also a formidable survey of the challenges facing the contemporary art world as it wrestles with racism, colonialism, politics and power.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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    Osvaldo Golijov’s ‘Ainadamar’ Opera Makes Its Met Debut

    Osvaldo Golijov’s opera about Federico García Lorca makes its Met debut in a dance-heavy production, directed by the choreographer Deborah Colker.Rippling scales of Spanish guitar, the howls of a raspy-voiced singer, thunderous clapping and stamping — the sounds could have been coming from a tavern in Andalusia, home of flamenco. But this was the Metropolitan Opera House during a recent rehearsal for its new production of “Ainadamar.”A one-act opera by the Argentine-born composer Osvaldo Golijov, “Ainadamar” has its Met debut on Tuesday. And it wasn’t just the sounds of flamenco that were unusual for the opera house. There were two choreographers in the room, one of whom, Deborah Colker, was the production’s director.Since its premiere at the Tanglewood Music Center in 2003, “Ainadamar”— an 85-minute work about the Spanish poet and playwright Federico García Lorca — has had many productions, including in a Golijov festival at Lincoln Center in 2006. But this one, which played at the Scottish Opera and Detroit Opera before coming to New York, has by far the most dance in it.“What Deborah has done blew me away,” Golijov said in a phone interview. “She revealed to me something I had not thought about”: that the opera “can be danced throughout.”Colker is known for her dance company in Brazil, as well as her choreography for Cirque du Soleil and the opening ceremony of the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. She had a musical education, seriously studying classical piano as a child, but “Ainadamar” is the first opera she has directed.“I direct like a choreographer,” she said after the rehearsal, noting that her theatrical approach to the opera was simple: gestures, movement, dance. “This is my language, yes, but this is also what the music is asking for.”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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    ‘Joker’ Sequel Falls Far Short of Original at the Box Office

    The bleak musical drama is on track to open to around $40 million, significantly less than what the 2019 version made on its first weekend.The original “Joker,” in 2019, earned 11 Oscar nominations, $1 billion in global box office receipts and created a cultural phenomenon. So it was inevitable that Warner Bros. would make a sequel, with the same director, Todd Phillips, and star, Joaquin Phoenix.More of a surprise is that the new film was dismissed by its audience this weekend. Titled “Joker: Folie à Deux,” and featuring Lady Gaga as Mr. Phoenix’s love interest/partner-in-crime, the bleak R-rated musical drama is on track to open to around $40 million, significantly less than what the 2019 version made on its first weekend. The studio will now struggle to earn back its production budget of around $200 million, plus its hefty marketing costs.Reviews have been dismal. The New York Times called it “a dour, unpleasant slog,” and audiences awarded it a D score in exit polls, according to tracker CinemaScore. The musical element — an idea that apparently came to Mr. Phoenix in a dream — offered audiences a fresh idea and, to many critics, it served as the proper way to further explore a deranged main character with a warped imagination. But in this case, it alienated the typical fanboy audience who would be expected to have been frothing for a follow-up to the nihilistic film that won Mr. Phoenix his Best Actor Oscar.The opening draw is a far cry from the $96 million “Joker” generated in its first weekend five years ago, almost to the day. That film cost $55 million to make. This one is contained primarily to two locations: Arkham Asylum, which houses Arthur Fleck, a.k.a. The Joker, after his murderous spree killed six people, and the courthouse, where he’s being tried for his crimes. So it shouldn’t have cost as much. But everyone was paid handsomely for their efforts, under the new production heads at Warner Bros., Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy. (Trade reports indicate that Mr. Phoenix received $20 million to reprise his role of Arthur Fleck/Joker while Lady Gaga earned $12 million to return to the bleak world of Mr. Phillips’s creation.)“Lady Gaga in a musical was an unconventional choice,” David A. Gross, a film consultant who publishes a newsletter on box office numbers, said in an email. “‘Joker’ was a well-made character study about a dark, sad figure. That story had limited potential to grow, and ‘Folie à Deux’ is not overcoming it.”With overall box office receipts down 12 percent compared with last year at this time, Hollywood was looking for a big hit to kick off October and help the studios stoke momentum through the rest of the year. Now it looks as if it will have to rely on “Venom: The Last Dance” and the Thanksgiving movies: “Wicked,” “Gladiator 2” and “Moana 2” to recover. More

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    Review: Philharmonic Returns to Classics, at Its Own Expense

    Led by Manfred Honeck, the orchestra all too quickly revisited Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony and, with Vikingur Olafsson, Brahms’s Piano Concerto No. 1.A risk of programming standard repertory works over and over is that an orchestra is practically begging to be compared with its own recent performances — not to mention a huge and ever-growing body of recordings. Why should someone buy a ticket to a concert if they just heard the same group do the same piece, or if they can stay home and listen to dozens of masterly versions online?That question came to mind on Friday, when the New York Philharmonic played Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony at David Geffen Hall. Just over a year and a half ago, the ensemble did Beethoven’s Seventh at Geffen under Esa-Pekka Salonen — a stirring rendition that balanced accented force and long-lined legato into a propulsive, joyful whole.If the work came around every five or 10 years, it would be easier to judge each arrival in a vacuum. But the Philharmonic’s choice to perform it again so soon — its programming this season is particularly uninspired — meant that Friday’s concert, conducted by Manfred Honeck, was inevitably going to be held up against the last one.Honeck, who led without a score, is experienced in Beethoven’s classic; his 2015 recording with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, of which he is the longtime music director, is one of the finest in a crowded field. But under his baton, the Philharmonic didn’t come close to matching its February 2023 self, let alone Pittsburgh’s rich, vigorous example.In the first movement, Honeck lingered over pastoral passages, perhaps to try and provide respite from — and intensification of — the relentlessly rhythmic surrounding music. But the orchestra negotiated these transitions of speed and atmosphere in a way that was stiff, not agile. An unusually drawn-out tempo in the third movement’s contrasting Trio section could have conveyed wistful longing if the Philharmonic had fuller, creamier tone, but as it was the orchestra just seemed strained by the slowness.Honeck always approaches standards like this with fresh ideas. He presented the second movement as a hushed hymn rather than the traditional sturdy dirge, a choice that elicited extraordinarily soft, silky sound from a group that generally doesn’t like to whisper.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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    Marvin Schlachter, Record Executive Who Championed Disco, Dies at 90

    In the 1960s, he helped get wide exposure for Black artists like Dionne Warwick. A decade later, he brought dance music from the clubs to radio success.Marvin Schlachter, a music executive who helped launch Dionne Warwick and the Shirelles in the 1960s and who a decade later created one of the world’s most influential disco labels, bringing acts like Musique and France Joli to the masses, died on Sept. 19 in Manhattan. He was 90.His son Brad said the cause of his death, in a hospital, was intestinal cancer.Beginning in the early 1960s, Mr. Schlachter played a crucial role in the emergence of Black musicians from genre-based appeal to become a force in the American music mainstream.Mr. Schlachter in 1962, a year after he became executive vice president of Scepter Records.Record World magazine, via Schlachter familyHe spent nine years as an executive with Scepter Records, a New York label comparable in some ways to Motown in Detroit (although much smaller). The label brought in Black songwriters, producers and musicians and promoted their albums among white audiences — still an unusual idea at the time.Among Scepter’s biggest successes was Ms. Warwick, whom the label paired with the songwriters Burt Bacharach and Hal David. The Bacharach-David team wrote many of Ms. Warwick’s early signature hits, including “Don’t Make Me Over,” “Walk On By” and “Alfie.”Dionne Warwick’s first album was released by Scepter Records in 1963, early in her long association with the songwriters Burt Bacharach and Hal David.Scepter RecordsWe 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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    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

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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