Aurelia Butler

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    Trump Names Richard Grenell Interim Leader of Kennedy Center

    President Trump announced in a post on social media Monday that he was appointing Richard Grenell as the “interim executive director” of the Kennedy Center in Washington. Mr. Grenell, who was Mr. Trump’s ambassador to Germany during the first Trump administration, is one of his most fiercely loyal apparatchiks.The president wrote that Mr. Grenell “shares my Vision for a GOLDEN AGE of American Arts and Culture” and would be overseeing “daily operations” to ensure there was no more “ANTI-AMERICAN PROPAGANDA.”The appointment was just the latest in a series of moves designed to strengthen Mr. Trump’s grip on the performing arts center in Washington.He kicked off a purge Friday night, when Mr. Trump announced his intent to gut the Kennedy Center’s board and install himself as chairman. He had denounced the center’s programming choices.On Monday, 18 board members and the board chairman were removed from an official roster on the center’s website. The excised members were appointees of Mr. Trump’s predecessor, Joseph R. Biden Jr. The board’s chairman, David M. Rubenstein, was also removed.Mr. Rubenstein, a financier who was initially appointed to the board by former President George W. Bush, has given $111 million to the center over the years, making him the biggest donor in its history.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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    The Weeknd Hits No. 1 for a Fifth Time With ‘Hurry Up Tomorrow’

    Boosted by physical sales and a Grammy performance, the album had the biggest week since Taylor Swift’s huge opening last year.The Weeknd has scored his fifth No. 1 album with “Hurry Up Tomorrow,” posting the biggest overall numbers on the Billboard chart since Taylor Swift nearly a year ago.The release of “Hurry Up Tomorrow,” which the poppy-yet-creepy Canadian star announced at a livestreamed concert in São Paulo in September, was delayed by a week to Jan. 31 because of the Los Angeles wildfires. But then it got a prominent boost when the Weeknd performed a two-song medley on the Grammy Awards broadcast last week, revealing that he had quashed his four-year boycott over the show’s voting process.“Hurry Up Tomorrow,” the Weeknd’s sixth studio album, had the equivalent of 490,500 sales in the United States, according to the tracking service Luminate. Although the Weeknd is a streaming heavyweight — more than 20 of his tracks have garnered at least a billion clicks on Spotify — the album’s opening-week numbers were driven by unit sales. It sold 183,000 digital downloads, 99,000 CDs and 77,000 copies on vinyl, the Weeknd’s best week in that format. (There were even 1,000 on cassette.) Its 22 tracks were streamed 172 million times.The album’s total number of 490,500 — a composite derived from a formula used by Luminate and Billboard to reconcile the various music formats — was the biggest weekly take since last April, when Swift’s “Tortured Poets” burst out of the gate with 2.6 million.Also this week, Bad Bunny’s “Debí Tirar Más Fotos” (“I Should Have Taken More Photos”) fell to second place after three weeks at the top and SZA’s “SOS” dropped one spot to No. 3.The Grammys offered a modest boost to some of the night’s big winners and nominees. Kendrick Lamar, who took record and song of the year (“Not Like Us”), fell one spot to No. 4 with “GNX,” though its numbers were slightly up. Billie Eilish, who performed but went home empty-handed, saw her LP “Hit Me Hard and Soft” rise five spots to No. 5. And Chappell Roan, who performed and won best new artist, jumped eight spots to No. 6 with “The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess.” More

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    Breaking Down Kendrick Lamar’s Drake-centric Super Bowl Halftime Show

    Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | YouTubeOn Sunday in New Orleans, Kendrick Lamar became the first solo rapper to headline the Super Bowl halftime show, performing a medley of hits, deep cuts and Drake disses.Writing in The New York Times, the critic Jon Caramanica called it both “curiously low-key” and, in the case of the climactic use “Not Like Us,” complete with a Serena Williams cameo, “quite a spectacle — perhaps the peak of any rap battle, ever.”Immediately after the game, on an emergency episode of Popcast, we discussed the way Lamar’s beef with Drake provided the momentum of the performance; the cameos from SZA, Samuel L. Jackson and Williams; the rest of the set list, including an unreleased, fan-favorite track (and no “Alright”); the surprise leak of the show a few days early; the protester who unveiled a flag for Gaza and Sudan; and whether this is finally the end of the biggest beef in hip-hop history.Connect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica.Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. More

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    Watch Demi Moore Transform in ‘The Substance’

    The writer and director Coralie Fargeat narrates a sequence from her film, which is nominated for best picture.In “Anatomy of a Scene,” we ask directors to reveal the secrets that go into making key scenes in their movies. See new episodes in the series on Fridays. You can also watch our collection of more than 150 videos on YouTube and subscribe to our YouTube channel.A miracle drug starts to create some side effects in this scene from “The Substance.”Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) has been taking a black-market drug that has created a younger version of herself, Sue (Margaret Qualley). Her time must be divided between the younger and older versions on a strict schedule, but in this sequence, Elisabeth finds out what happens if she doesn’t respect the balance of that time.She wakes up after Sue’s wild evening to a disheveled apartment and one aged appendage, the result of Sue taking more fluid from Elisabeth’s body to buy more time in her young body. Elisabeth notices that one of her fingers now looks dramatically older than the others.As she runs to the sink to try to wash the age away, the pace become faster and closer. Narrating the scene, the director Coralie Fargeat said, “The idea was all those close-ups that go more and more macro on the finger is to project Elisabeth’s fears and Elisabeth’s thoughts about what’s happening to her.”As Elisabeth calls the Substance company to discuss her “alteration,” she is taunted by a giant billboard out her window that shows her younger self. Fargeat said that she included a shot from above on Elisabeth to “film her discomfort, the fact that she’s now threatened.” This point of view is almost “a face-off with her double, and above her as if she was tiny and oppressed by the situation.”Read the “Substance” review.Sign up for the Movies Update newsletter and get a roundup of reviews, news, Critics’ Picks and more. More

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    Kendrick Lamar’s Bell Bottoms Steal the Super Bowl Halftime Show

    Could it be that the lasting impact of Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl halftime show will be … the return of bell bottoms?At halftime of a fairly dull game (unless, well, you’re an Eagles fan), the rapper materialized onstage, flanked by dancers in monotonal outfits of either blue, red or white, dressed in clothes that clearly repped team Lamar.His varsity jacket, custom-made by Martine Rose, a British designer known for her witty and warped sportswear, was coated with patches to please the Lamarologists in the Superdome. The front read “Gloria,” seemingly a reference to the last song on his latest album “GNX.” The back had a “pgLang” insignia, the creative agency Mr. Lamar co-runs with Dave Free.Mr. Lamar’s jacket was made by Martine Rose, a British designer.Emily Kask for The New York TimesThere were other delectable elements to his outfit: a tilted fitted cap with a feather brooch pinned on the side, as well as a conspicuous “a” chain that some online took to be a head nod to the villainous “A Minor” line in Mr. Lamar’s Grammy-gathering “Not Like Us” — a line that the stadium hollered in unison at the appointed time. (Others offered that the “a” could be some sort of nod to pgLang, though it also looked a little like the Amazon logo.)But the pièce de résistance, the item that people started texting me about, oh, two minutes into his performance, were those jeans, which came from the French fashion house Celine. Their official product name is the “flared surf jean in summer dazed wash.” At $1,300 they do not come cheap.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 ‘Festen,’ a Nightmare Birthday Becomes an Opera

    The composer who put Anna Nicole Smith’s life onstage has a new piece: an adaptation of a cult movie about child abuse.Mark-Anthony Turnage has a habit of provoking stuffy opera fans.The revered British composer’s 1988 debut, “Greek,” appalled some audiences by transposing Sophocles’s “Oedipus Rex” into to a cursing, brawling working-class London family. And some critics hated the pole dancers onstage in “Anna Nicole,” his opera about the tragic life of the Playboy model Anna Nicole Smith.Now, Turnage is preparing to present “Festen,” in which a patriarch’s 60th birthday party descends into chaos after a speech exposes a family’s deepest secrets. When “Festen” premieres on Tuesday at the Royal Ballet and Opera in London, the show’s dark subject matter looks set to upset traditionalists, too.Based on Thomas Vinterberg’s cult Danish-language movie of the same name, “Festen” includes descriptions of child abuse and suicide. The opera’s 35-strong cast will fight, engage in simulated sex and hurl racist abuse at the show’s only Black character.Yet Turnage insisted in a recent interview that he hadn’t set out to challenge anyone — except himself. “Part of me thinks, ‘Why don’t I just do a nice fluffy story that will be performed a lot?’” Turnage said. “But I know if I did, it wouldn’t be any good.”Allan Clayton as Christian, who accuses his father, Helge, of abuse.Gabriella Demczuk for The New York Times“I need to be provoked,” Turnage added. “I need an extreme or strong subject to write good music.”This “Festen” premiere comes just over 25 years after Vinterberg’s movie won the jury prize at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival. Released as “The Celebration” in the United States, “Festen” was created under the banner of the Dogme95 movement, which required movie directors to follow 10 strict rules. Those included only using hand-held cameras and a ban on music, unless it occurs naturally in a scene.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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    The Bangles, One of the Biggest All-Girl Bands, Want to Reclaim Their Legacy

    The music industry pushed the group behind hits like “Manic Monday” and “Eternal Flame” hard, then pulled them apart. A new book tells their story.The first time Susanna Hoffs and the Peterson sisters sang together and their voices blended, the frisson was unmistakable. “We knew we had something,” Hoffs said. “We created a band in that moment.”Hoffs, 66, beamed at the memory, sitting in her kitchen on a late January afternoon. Dressed in a sweater and slacks, the diminutive singer and guitarist sipped coffee, an old Margaret Keane painting hanging above her. Her airy Brentwood, Calif., home is just a few blocks from where the Bangles were born, on a cool evening in early 1981 in her parents’ garage.“It’s an overused word, but we were organic,” the guitarist Vicki Peterson, 67, said. “We formed ourselves, played the music we loved, we really were a garage band.” But a garage band “that somehow became pop stars,” the drummer Debbi Peterson, 63, noted. Both sisters were interviewed in video conversations.The Bangles broke big, scoring five Top 5 hits and storming MTV with inescapable songs like “Manic Monday” and “Eternal Flame.” They were one of the era’s rare all-girl groups — and became one of the most successful female bands of all time — a crew of puckish 20-somethings showcasing their collective songwriting and vocal chops.But one of the defining bands of the 1980s also ended in spectacular fashion. Less than a decade after its birth, the group imploded in its manager’s Hollywood mansion, the sisterhood of its members lost amid a farrago of fame and mental fatigue.That story plays out vividly in “Eternal Flame: The Authorized Biography of the Bangles” by Jennifer Otter Bickerdike, out on Feb. 18. Bickerdike — the author of books about Nico and Britney Spears — fashioned a history of a bygone era in the music business, one in which the outsize influence of major labels, domineering producers and Machiavellian managers could routinely make or break a band.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