Aurelia Butler

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    John Mayer on Being the Watch World’s Celebrity ‘Go-To Guy’

    When the guitarist John Mayer takes the stage this week in Las Vegas, to cap Dead & Company’s 10-week residence at the Sphere arena, his wristwatch is bound to loom large on the venue’s massive LED screen.“I happen to have a job where my wrist is naturally looked at,” Mr. Mayer, 46, said last month on a video call from his home in Los Angeles.That suits the longtime watch collector (and downright watch nerd) just fine.“The number of people who come up to me and ask me what I’m wearing is far greater than the number of people who come up to me and say, ‘Love your music, or how’d you write that song?’” he said. “People want to know about watches more than anything. They’ll say, ‘Gotta ask: What do you have on?’ It’s such a great entree to conversation.”One of Mr. Mayer’s favorite talking points is his new collaboration with the Swiss watchmaker Audemars Piguet (A.P.). After three years of development, in March the brand introduced a Royal Oak perpetual calendar wristwatch designed by Mr. Mayer.Limited to 200 pieces, the $180,700 timepiece, encased in 18-karat white gold, featured a blue metallic dial inspired by the night sky as well as some subtle aesthetic details that Mr. Mayer conceived.“When you look at this perpetual calendar, the first thing you should see is the time,” he said. “You shouldn’t see the vastness of the universe when it comes to timekeeping if you’ve got 15 minutes to get to a meeting.”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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    A Hip-Hop Comic Book Star Comes to Life in Steel

    A statue of Rappin’ Max Robot is bound for Paris. But first it’s making a stop in the Bronx.Good morning. It’s Thursday. We’ll meet a new iteration of Rappin’ Max Robot that is bound for Paris, via the Bronx. We’ll also get details on Robert Kennedy Jr.’s testimony in the court case seeking to have him removed from the November ballot in New York.Clark Ivers, Welder UndergroundRappin’ Max Robot began life as a comic book character only a few inches tall. Now he is a man of steel. He has a skin of steel plates up to an inch thick that covers an I-beam skeleton.He is on his way to Paris, to take note of breaking’s debut in the Olympics, but he will get there a little late. First he will spend some time in the Bronx, the birthplace of hip-hop.Today an 18-foot-tall statue of Rappin’ Max Robot that was fabricated in Brooklyn will be hauled to a spot outside the Hip Hop Museum in the Bronx. The museum is not scheduled to open until next year. But Marc Levin, who with his wife, Adina, runs the studio and foundry where the statue took shape, said it would be assembled for a Champagne toast on Saturday, the second day of breaking events at the Olympics.Hip-hop is a “wondrous and centerless tangle,” The New York Times critic Jon Caramanica wrote last year, so perhaps it is not surprising that the toast will not be the only hip-hop event this weekend. Sunday is the 51st anniversary of the day hip-hop is said to have gotten its start, in the rec room of the apartment building at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue in the Bronx, and a group that is not affiliated with the museum is planning a march from that neighborhood to Crotona Park, a couple of miles away.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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    At 50, ‘The Texas Chain Saw Massacre’ Still Cuts Deep

    Eli Roth, Paul Feig and other directors with movies out this month explain how this gory horror classic has inspired their work.The movies never recovered after “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” hit theaters in 1974. Focused on a family of cannibalistic, butcherous crazies living in a rural house of horrors, Tobe Hooper’s sleaze-oozing film rattled audiences and was banned in some places. It also inspired filmmakers to take horror in new, more brutal directions.Fede Álvarez, director of the forthcoming “Alien: Romulus,” said that the “unapologetic savagery” of “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” influenced his work.“It’s a humbling reminder of how a hard dose of unsolicited anarchy onscreen is a key ingredient for any horror movie that hopes to endure the test of time,” he said.Beginning Aug. 8, the Museum of Modern Art in New York will offer a weeklong run of the film timed to its 50th anniversary, and will follow that with a retrospective (Aug. 13-20) of Hooper’s other less shocking but still daring genre films from the 1980s, including “Poltergeist” (1982) and “Invaders From Mars” (1986).MoMA didn’t dawdle in taking “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” seriously: It added the film to its collection two years after the movie came out.“Its power hasn’t dimmed,” said Ron Magliozzi, a curator in MoMA’s film department and the organizing curator for the series. “It has matured.”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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    Food Porn Gets Dark

    Shots of extravagantly composed dishes have become cliché. “The Bear” and two other summer releases use well-plated food to convey darker themes.We love sexy food: the dressed-up dishes on cooking shows, a camera zooming in on an angelically lit plate. The influencer’s video that’s less about food than vibes. The ambrosial spreads in ads. Food porn titillates the senses to sell an idea, a product or an experience: the memorable opulent meal, the communion of sharing food as a sacred rite. But three recent releases have perverted this approach, offering extravagantly composed plates that traumatize, not tantalize.In “The Bear,” the meaning of the beautiful food that Chef Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) creates now that he is finally running his own upscale establishment has changed. It represents old grievances, lingering fears and simmering power struggles. Season 3 opens with an expressionist self-portrait: no plot, just scenes of Carmy working, interspersed with flashbacks of him in kitchens run by chefs he’s idolized.Some of the memories evoke a visceral joy: Carmy wistfully strolling among fields of veggies and making vibrantly detailed illustrations of menu ideas. He admires a photo of one successful creation that could be a salad, arranged like a bouquet. A sunburst of something orange lies petaled and sectioned like a flower, resting on a bed of wild greens. Carmy texts a picture of the arrangement to his brother, Mikey, who is baffled. The message is clear to the audience, though. It’s not just sustenance we’re admiring; it’s art.When Carmy shares an artfully curated dish, Mikey isn’t sure what to make of it.FXScenes of present-day Carmy lack this brightness, literally and figuratively. Kitchen shots are harshly lit to match his clinical approach to the work. Instead of loving glances of plated dishes, we get unsatisfying teases of food that fly by in succession. When Carmy’s frustration mounts and his expectations become impossible for anyone — even him — to meet, mouthwatering meals are swept aside. Two juicy-looking strips of Wagyu beef are flung into the trash, the metal kitchenware clanging violently against the lid, because, Carmy says curtly, “the cook is off.”Carmy’s diminishing relationship with food provides the closest thing “The Bear” has to an enticing conflict. As he settles into the early weeks of running a fine-dining hot spot, he’s increasingly haunted by memories of his tutelage under the sadistic David Fields (Joel McHale). In flashbacks we see Chef David craning over Carmy predatorily, ready with a bitter rebuke or challenge. By season’s end, food is no longer a comfort for Carmy; producing the requisite artful plate of food is necessary to his restaurant’s survival.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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    ‘Good One’ Review: Revelation in the Woods

    Lily Collias delivers an extraordinary lead performance in this exquisite debut feature about a camping trip and a moment of self-realization.“Good One” is a drama about human relationships, but it starts with close-up shots of plants and insects, setting the scene in more ways than one. Yes, the characters will spend most of the movie in the woods, and high summer in upstate New York is quite literally full of dirt, bugs and leafy canopies. But contemplating the rich greens and earthy red-browns, I found myself pondering life cycles, the mutating forms and constant shifts of the natural world — and of human life, too. I don’t think that’s an accident.The “good one” of the title is Sam (Lily Collias), who is 17 and on a camping trip with her high-strung father, Chris (James Le Gros), and one of his oldest friends, an underemployed actor named Matt (Danny McCarthy). Matt’s son was supposed to come too, but bailed in a fit of pique, still bitter about his parents’ divorce. So it’s just Sam and the men.Sam is exactly the type to get called the “good one” — not because she’s a prim Goody Two-shoes, but because she’s the sort of teenage girl that adults, especially adult men, feel comfortable around. She’s levelheaded and knows how to snark when necessary. In the woods, she pulls more than her own weight — she can pitch a tent, load up a day pack, filter water, build a fire and cook steaming bowls of ramen. She’ll take advice, but she’s equally good at giving it, an independent thinker with whom any grown-up could talk.And boy, do Chris and Matt talk. Their relationship is rife with old rivalries and structured by all the selves they once were, all the way back to nearly Sam’s age. You can see them fall into an old script, Matt the hapless mess who packs all the wrong stuff and Chris the organized leader who gets mad when the energy bars aren’t in the right place.Sam observes her father’s digs at Matt as they trek across the forest for three days, often silently, only her eyes betraying her thoughts. She has seen this dynamic her whole life. It unnerves her a little, the realization that these guys in their 50s, a couple of life stages ahead of her, are as immature as the boys she knows from home.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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    ‘Cuckoo’ Review: Never Has a Movie Been More Aptly Named

    Dan Stevens and Hunter Schafer face off in this unexpectedly fun and undeniably nutty horror-comedy about cross-species pollination.“Is this normal?” a bewildered hotel guest in “Cuckoo” inquires after witnessing a fellow guest stagger, vomiting, into the lobby. Viewers might be wondering the same thing about a movie whose title could reveal as much about the sensibility of its director as the nature of its plot.Possessed of a singular, at times inexplicable vision, the German filmmaker Tilman Singer proves once again — after his experimental debut, “Luz” (2019) — that he’s more drawn to sensation than sense. Liberated from logic, his pictures dance on the border between bewitching and baffling, exciting and irksome. Sidling several steps closer to an identifiable plot, “Cuckoo” flaps around Gretchen (an excellent Hunter Schafer), a grieving, unsettled 17-year-old whose mother has died and whose father (Marton Csokas) has brought her to live with his new family in a resort in the Bavarian Alps.From the moment she arrives, nothing seems quite right. Missing her mother and her life in America, Gretchen is slow to connect with her brisk stepmother (Jessica Henwick) and her much younger half sister, Alma (Mila Lieu), who is mute and suffers from unexplained seizures. Adding to Gretchen’s uneasiness is the resort’s touchy-feely owner, Herr König (Dan Stevens), who seems weirdly fixated on Alma. Strange screechings fill the woods, and a frightening figure in white appears to be stalking Gretchen as she walks home from her job at the resort’s reception desk. Maybe that switchblade we saw her unpack will come in handy, after all.A tale of human-avian experimentation with phantasmagoric flourishes, “Cuckoo” is unsubtle and frequently unhinged. The narrative may be blurred, but the mood is pure freak show, and Stevens, bless him, immediately grasps the comic possibilities of the movie’s themes and the nuttiness of his character. Reprising his flawless German accent from the charming 2021 sci-fi romance “I’m Your Man,” he gives König a seductive creepiness that’s less mad scientist than horny ornithologist. Obsessed with replicating — in unspeakable ways — the breeding behaviors of the titular bird, König requires the cooperation of willing young women. Gretchen is not eager to become one of them.Shooting on 35-millimeter film, Paul Faltz, backed by Simon Waskow’s whining, fidgety score, leans into the surreality of Gretchen’s predicament with bizarre close-ups. Ears jerk and twitch in response to mysterious calls; throats flutter with a rapid, stuttering pulse; slimy secretions are passed from one woman to another. And as the resort’s dangers escalate and Gretchen’s injuries multiply, the film’s bonkers, body-horror ambitions become the means by which she will overcome her grief and heal her emotional dislocation.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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    Judge John Hodgman on the Most Iconic Beatles Album Cover

    A couple compete to see who can be more wrong.Ben writes: My girlfriend and I were talking about the Beatles. I said the album covers for “Abbey Road” and “Let It Be” are the most recognizable images of the band. She said that’s ludicrous, and the White Album cover is easily more recognizable. I find that logic to be wild: It’s just a white cover!The correct answer is “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.” So the real question is which one of you is more wrong. Your girlfriend is correct that Richard Hamilton’s blank, anti-Pepper design of “The Beatles”/The White Album is more important than John Kosh’s semi-pedestrian, high-school-yearbook layout for “Let It Be.” But Kosh’s literally pedestrian cover for “Abbey Road” is probably one of the most known images in pop culture. And it actually has the Beatles in it, so you win on points. But mostly, be happy you have a girlfriend who wants to talk about the Beatles with you. Meanwhile, if anyone was worried I might not be a white guy over 50, this column should set all doubts to rest. More

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    Gloriously Noisy Latinas Are Coming to Lincoln Center

    The free Ruidosa Fest is a showcase for innovative female musicians that has injected its founder “with a lot of energy and love and connection.”In Spanish, “ruidosa” means noisy, loud, roaring, rumbling and attention-grabbing. The final “a” makes it a feminine adjective.It’s the name that Francisca Valenzuela, an American-born Chilean songwriter, chose when she decided to create a festival, and an organization, dedicated to getting Latina musicians heard — and defying the gender imbalance across the music business. Since 2016, Ruidosa Fests have taken place across Latin America, presenting female-led acts from multiple countries and gathering industry figures for panel discussions and strategic networking.On Saturday, New York City gets its first Ruidosa Fest, with 10 acts on multiple stages at Lincoln Center, followed by a silent disco D.J. set. At 3 p.m., before live music begins at 4:30, journalists and media executives will speak on a panel titled “Latinx to the Front: Nuestro Ruido (‘Our Noise’) Is Worldwide.” The festival is part of Lincoln Center’s Summer for the City series, and the day’s admission is free.Ruidosa’s lineup is filled with genre-stretching musicians: electronic experimenters, pop adepts and songwriters bringing new thoughts to traditional forms.In a video interview, Valenzuela said she wanted to present “artists that have sounds and careers that are very authentic and unique, and you see that there’s a point of view.”She added, “One of the things we say at Ruidosa all the time is that there’s not one way to be a woman. There’s no one way to be successful, or to be Latina identified.”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