Aurelia Butler

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    Isabelle Huppert on the Importance of the Venice Film Festival

    The veteran French actress of stage and screen is the jury president of this year’s Venice Film Festival.Actors often have more than one project on the boil. The French actress Isabelle Huppert takes multitasking to the next level.For the next 11 days (Wednesday through Sept. 7), Huppert is heading up the jury of the Venice Film Festival, watching nearly two dozen movies (together with the other jurors) and handing out awards, including the coveted Golden Lion.In the days and weeks leading up to the festival, Huppert has been working nonstop.Earlier this week, for two nights in a row, Huppert performed alone onstage at the Ruhrtriennale festival of the arts in Germany, delivering the 100-minute monologue “Bérénice” (an adaptation by Romeo Castellucci of the 17th-century French tragedy by Jean Racine).Days before that, she was on a film set in Belgium, playing a fictionalized version of Liliane Bettencourt — the billionaire heiress to the L’Oreal cosmetics fortune — in “La Femme la plus riche du monde” (“The World’s Richest Woman”).Huppert’s résumé is correspondingly impressive. She has more than 120 films to her name, as well as an Academy Award nomination (best actress in 2017 for “Elle”) and quite a few theater productions. She manages to toggle between film and stage acting, appearing regularly in cinemas and theaters around the world.Fresh off the set in Belgium, and busy relearning her lines for “Bérénice,” Huppert discussed film festivals, the future of cinema and the American stage director Robert Wilson in a recent phone interview. This interview was conducted in French and has been edited and condensed.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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    Beyoncé Rumors Briefly Took Center Stage. Kamala Harris Grabbed It Back.

    Unsubstantiated rumors that the star would appear at the Democratic National Convention, perhaps alongside Taylor Swift, created a daylong frenzy. Then the headliner took control.The report was published around 7 p.m. on Thursday, in all caps. TMZ announced that Beyoncé would be “PERFORMING AT DNC’S FINAL NIGHT!!!” After days of increasingly frenzied rumors that she would make an appearance at the Democratic National Convention, this report set the United Center in Chicago abuzz. But TMZ was wrong. So was Mitt Romney. So were the betting markets. So was basically all of social media.Instead, Vice President Kamala Harris ended the convention by advising attendees to take seriously the task of preserving democracy and not to celebrate prematurely.It was a sobering end to a day of celebrity-centered anticipation. Since the Harris campaign chose Beyoncé’s “Freedom” as its campaign theme song, I had heard intense speculation that the singer would be a special guest on the night of Harris’s acceptance speech to become the party’s presidential nominee. On the convention’s first day, Harris released her new campaign ad, featuring “Freedom.” There was the precedent set by past conventions, with Stevie Wonder performing in 2008 for Barack Obama, and Katy Perry in 2016 for Hillary Clinton. There was the footage of a marching band rehearsing Beyoncé’s songs in the arena.As I entered the United Center, I heard the rumor that Beyoncé and Jay-Z had been in Chicago for several days. Before I settled in at the arena, she had been “sighted” at O’Hare airport. Similar stories were ricocheting across the arena.There was the national anthem sung by the Chicks, with whom Beyoncé performed at the Country Music Association Awards in 2016. Their presence seemed only to reinforce the inevitability of her grand entrance. By 9 p.m., things had reached a fever pitch: I was told by a friend of a friend I was sitting next to that Beyoncé and Taylor Swift were expected to appear onstage together in a mark of feminist solidarity, and stand with the thousands of delegates dressed in suffragist white clothing. The specificity of the rumor was astounding.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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    Sabrina Carpenter Slices Up Her Sunny Image, and 7 More New Songs

    Hear tracks by Yaeji, Amythyst Kiah featuring Billy Strings, Broadcast and more.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.Sabrina Carpenter, ‘Taste’Sabrina Carpenter’s winning streak of singles continues on “Taste,” the lilting, deceptively chirpy opening track from her hook-filled new album, “Short ’n’ Sweet.” A bright, buoyantly delivered blend of ’80s pop gloss and ’90s country sass, Carpenter lets a paramour’s on-again-off-again ex know exactly whose bed his boots have been under lately: “I heard you’re back together, and if that’s true,” Carpenter taunts, “you’ll just have to taste me when he’s kissing you.” The music video, which stars the “Wednesday” actress Jenna Ortega, makes the lyrics’ queer subtext clear as day, while also indulging in some surprisingly gory Tarantino-esque violence that subverts Carpenter’s sunshiny image. Not that she’s taking any of it too seriously. “Singin’ ’bout it don’t mean I care,” she coos on the bridge, issuing another giggling wink at that image: “Yeah, I know I’ve been known to share.” LINDSAY ZOLADZAmythyst Kiah featuring Billy Strings, ‘I Will Not Go Down’“I’m the only one to ease my soul/I’m the only one that’s in control,” Amythyst Kiah vows in “I Will Not Go Down.” It’s a fierce, foot-stomping song laced with backup vocals and bluegrass virtuosity — on multiple instruments — from Billy Strings. The song’s stark declarations arrive fully armored in musicianship. JON PARELESGeordie Greep, ‘Holy, Holy’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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    8 Correct Answers to ‘What Was the Song of the Summer?’

    Revisit contenders from Sabrina Carpenter, Kendrick Lamar and Billie Eilish.Sabrina Carpenter has the top contender for song of the summer.Amy Harris/Invision, via Associated PressDear listeners,I’m sorry to be the one to break it to you, but the end of the summer is approaching. Every year around this time, music fans’ favorite unwinnable debate reaches an apex: What was the song of the summer?At the risk of breaking even more bad news, I’ll say that for the most part, the Song of the Summer is a fictitious and even pointless construction, generally immeasurable and usually difficult to agree on unanimously. Sure, every so often a single tune becomes so ubiquitous during those sweltering, school’s out months that it rightfully earns the title. Think of Lil Nas X’s chart-dominant “Old Town Road” in 2019; the viral glee of Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe” in 2012; or, if you can remember that far back, the Bayside Boys remix of Los Del Rio’s “Macarena” in 1996 (Ay!).But more often than not, the Song of the Summer is up for debate. And given that I believe a true S.o.t.S. must be monocultural and undeniable, most contenders do not truly reach that status.Around Memorial Day, it did seem like we had a prime candidate: the rising pop star Sabrina Carpenter’s fun, flirty “Espresso.” It had all the makings of a summer smash, including a well-timed release date, a beach-themed music video and several goofy, endlessly quotable lyrics that just begged to be printed on novelty boardwalk T-shirts. Case closed, right?But as the summer continued, “Espresso” faced some formidable challengers. The Drake-vs.-Kendrick Lamar beef produced a bona fide anthem in “Not Like Us,” by most measures the biggest hit of Lamar’s career. The rise of the Midwest princess Chappell Roan became one of the year’s most captivating narratives, and her wrenching synth-pop single “Good Luck, Babe!” climbed the Hot 100 accordingly. Even Carpenter herself gave “Espresso” a run for its money with its irresistible follow-up single, “Please Please Please,” which achieved a feat that her previous hit did not: It went to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100.So, which was the Song of the Summer? Today’s playlist contains 8 different and entirely acceptable answers to the question. If I had to pick just one, I’d still go with “Espresso,” but I’d argue this summer contained too many unexpected plot twists for there to be a unanimous winner. Maybe it’s just one of those years where you need a collection of different tunes to tell the full story of the season. So let this playlist be a time capsule that you can return to in subsequent years when you want to conjure up the sound of summer ’24 — or in a couple of months, when the autumn chill makes you long for these endless sunny days.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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    Zoë Kravitz’s ‘Blink Twice’ Is a Horror Mystery Inspired by Her Frustrations

    In the summer of 2017, Zoë Kravitz, on a break from shooting a movie, posted up at a cafe in London with her laptop and began drafting her first full screenplay.It wasn’t immediately clear to her what it would become, she said: “At first I wrote this kind of stream-of-consciousness novella, where the characters came to life.”They eventually inhabited “Blink Twice,” her directorial debut, which revolves around a tech billionaire with a private party island and the guests — whether unsuspecting, or complicit — who are lured there. It’s a Bacchanalia with shades of “Lord of the Flies” and Adam and Eve. At once a psychosexual thriller, a horror-mystery, a revenge fantasy, a dark comedy and a commentary on gender and class, “Blink Twice” was not inspired by any one event, or by her professional trajectory, Kravitz said in a recent video interview.“It was more of an emotional thing that I was trying to work out — a combination of my own experiences and experiences of friends and family, other women that I’m close to, and not really having a place to put those frustrations and complicated feelings,” she said.She had always wanted to direct, she said, but had no plans for how that would come to pass. But as she wrote — she finished the screenplay with her friend E.T. Feigenbaum — she realized she couldn’t “trust somebody else with this vision that I was having.”The polished “Blink Twice,” due Friday, stars an ensemble led by Channing Tatum, now Kravitz’s fiancé, and Naomi Ackie (“Star Wars: Episode IX — The Rise of Skywalker”). The cast includes Adria Arjona (“Hit Man”), Haley Joel Osment and Geena Davis. They shot on location in the Yucatán, “about an hour away from any real town,” Kravitz said, giving them a heightened sense of camaraderie. “We ate all our meals together. We hung out on the weekends. It was like this magical, magical time.”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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    In ‘I Like It Here,’ Documentary Maker Ages Wistfully in the Hudson Valley

    Looking back at the lives he and his friends led, the documentarian Ralph Arlyck delivers a memoir, an essay on mortality and a portrait of his community.“I got taxied into the world in the middle of the last century,” a man’s voice says at the start of “I Like It Here” (at the Firehouse theater in New York). We’re gliding slowly across a green rural landscape. “This is where I live now,” he continues. “I’m 78.”The voice is Ralph Arlyck’s, and the movie is his, too. Arlyck is a veteran documentarian, and “I Like It Here” is part memoir, part personal essay on aging and mortality, part portrait of his community and home in the Hudson Valley. There’s no plot, per se. But I’ve seen the movie twice, and both times I found myself moved near tears.“I Like It Here” feels like a cousin to Agnès Varda’s documentaries, particularly the curiosity and humor of “Daguerréotypes” (1975, Criterion Channel), in which she records the daily lives of her neighbors on the Rue Daguerre. Arlyck also introduces us to several of his friends, most of whom he’s known for decades. They’ve grown old alongside one another, sharing lives that intersect and diverge. Most have started to recognize they’re the age their parents and grandparents were when they thought of them as “old.” It’s a realization that’s equal parts unsettling and amusing.Arlyck’s recollections of his own family history, his marriage and his career as a filmmaker are part of the film. But they’re woven into the present narrative perfectly, without seeming at all self-indulgent. Instead, he’s doing precisely what great memoirists do: invite us into their stories as a way of making space for us to reflect on our own.“I Like It Here” is loaded with gentle humor as a counterbalance to the pathos inherent in any reflection on mortality by a man who knows most of his life is behind him. Near the beginning of the film, we see hands pull a box of 36 new pencils from a desk drawer. In voice-over, Arlyck notes that he doesn’t go through pencils very fast, and it occurs to him that this is probably the last box of pencils he’ll ever purchase. It’s almost a morbid thought, but it’s also kind of funny, and he treats it as such. Pencils: they mean nothing, and everything.The “here” of the title — Arlyck likes it here — opens up in complexity as the film progresses. It’s that green landscape from the beginning, where the neighbors and horses and Arlyck and his family live. But it’s also the planet, and an ineffable moment in time that he’s been lucky enough to inhabit. He and his friends talk about being aware that the end is coming, and have mostly gotten used to the idea. But late in the movie, he expresses a wistfulness that there’s nobody he can bargain with to stay longer than his time. “I’m having fun,” he says, while we see his grandchildren playing. “I’d actually rather not leave just yet.” More

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    ‘Incoming’ Review: Not Another Teen Movie

    Freshman engage in some fairly predictable debauchery in this routine high school gross-out comedy streaming on Netflix.“Incoming,” a bawdy teen comedy from the directors Dave and John Chernin, opens with a familiar gag: an awkward adolescent boy (Mason Thames) delivers a speech to the camera professing his love, only for a cut to reveal that he’s actually rehearsing in the mirror. In a genre rank with cliché, this is not a very promising start — it suggests that the Chernins, who also penned the screenplay, are satisfied with whatever joke is closest to hand.The rest of the movie does little to dispel that impression. Its story of high school freshmen navigating a libertine house party follows exactly the trajectory you would expect, with few laughs and even fewer surprises. If there’s a cute girl incoming, she’ll be introduced in a slow motion montage. If a couple leans in for a kiss, they’ll be interrupted by a lewd gag. Will the dork score with the hottie? Will the rowdy teacher get out of hand? Cue the record scratch sound effect!A generous interpretation is that “Incoming” is derivative as an act of loving homage. In practice, it just feels old hat. The movie is heavily indebted to the teen gross-out comedies of the late 1990s and early 2000s, like “American Pie” and “Van Wilder,” which were themselves indebted to the teen sex comedies of the 1980s, like “Porky’s” and “Screwballs,” and it’s so far from an original idea or point of view that it’s hard to see the point.All it offers is ribald escalation: Instead of beer bongs, there are lines of ketamine; instead of fart jokes, there’s diarrhea in a Tesla. Maybe that’s progress. But I’d say the filmmakers flunked.IncomingRated R for strong language, drug use, sexual innuendo, mild violence and “Porky’s”-style shenanigans. Running time: 1 hour 31 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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    ‘The Killer’ Review: John Woo With a French Twist

    Woo’s new version of his Hong Kong action movie “The Killer,” starring Nathalie Emmanuel and Omar Sy, may be a remake, but it’s not a retread.When he started a run of contemporary action movies in the early 1980s, the Hong Kong director John Woo forged a personal mode influenced by the stylized violence of American directors like Sam Peckinpah and Don Siegel (see the shootouts in “The Getaway” and “Dirty Harry”), and the mentholated cool of the French filmmaker Jean-Pierre Melville (à la the existential assassin of “Le Samouraï”). Before taking up in Hong Kong again in 2008, Woo created some galvanizing work in the United States: “Face/Off” (1997) and “Mission: Impossible 2” (2000).It is exhilarating, then, to see him set his sights on Paris with a remake of his 1989 Hong Kong classic, “The Killer.” He depicts the City of Lights with a loving, romantic eye.Woo’s original starred the incredibly charismatic Chow Yun-fat as the title assassin, a hired killer with an ethos who makes some sacrifices on behalf of a young woman he accidentally blinded during a shootout. (Woo has more than a touch of Chaplin’s “City Lights” in him, too.) One challenge for a remake would be finding a younger lead actor to match Chow’s magnetism. There is none, and Woo knows it as well as we do; hence, the film’s rather delightful surprise of gender-switching the title character.The British actress Nathalie Emmanuel plays the soulful marauder Zee, and man, does she cause a ruckus. The film’s first big blowout, in a cabaret-bar, features quarts of spilled blood, a skyscraper’s worth of shattered glass and mirrors, slow-motion flying bullets and, yes, a mishap in which a cabaret singer named Jenn (Diana Silvers) is blinded. Zee is a little more coldblooded than Jeffrey was in 1989; at first she tries to get rid of the singer rather than help her.Zee’s contractor, Finn, played by Sam Worthington, isn’t pleased that the singer was allowed to live. Zee is confused — she always asks before taking a job whether her future victims deserve to die. Finn tells her that this one had it coming. But Zee insists on keeping Jenn alive, despite the shadowy forces trying to wipe her out.Omar Sy plays Sey, a French cop who will, of course, form an uneasy alliance with Zee. (Woo’s world is like the one Mick Jagger’s devil envisions: Every cop is a criminal and all the sinners saints. Sort of.) Sy projects assuredness and vulnerability in almost equal measure.Emmanuel, best known as Missandei, the trusted adviser to Daenerys in “Game of Thrones,” conveys a smooth, chameleonic expertise. As in the first film, the killer spends a lot of time in a moody, deconsecrated church, which is, of course, kitted out with a complement of doves — Woo’s favorite symbolic animals. The direction is energetic, incorporating frantic flashbacks and resourceful split-screen perspectives, and the plot adds several new twists not found in the first movie. Rest assured, this may be a remake, but it’s not a retread.The KillerRated R for — guess — violence. Running time: 2 hours 6 minutes. Watch on Peacock. More