Aurelia Butler

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    Richard Gere Calls ‘Blonde on Blonde’ His All-Time Favorite

    “He’s our Picasso,” the actor said of Bob Dylan.It has been more than four decades since an Armani-clad Richard Gere slunk around Los Angeles in Paul Schrader’s “American Gigolo.”Now Gere, 75, and Schrader have reunited on “Oh, Canada,” an adaptation of Russell Banks’s 2021 novel, “Foregone,” about a dying documentarian who wants to confess, mostly to his wife.Gere and Schrader were each dealing with end-of-life losses when they jumped into the project: Banks, a close friend of Schrader’s, had died from cancer in 2023. Gere’s father also died that year.“We were coming from emotional places,” Gere said.In addition to “Oh, Canada,” Gere made his American TV series debut last month in “The Agency,” an adaptation of the French hit “The Bureau.”“My wife and I binge-watched the French show and genuinely loved it,” he said. “So when I got a call saying they wanted to do an English-language version, I thought, Hmm, that’s kind of a double-edged sword. One, yeah, that sounds interesting, but two, the French one was so good, would they screw this up?”Gere was about to travel from Paris to Marrakech to meet his family when he called to talk about his admiration for former House speaker Nancy Pelosi and the chef-humanitarian José Andrés, the Dylan song he can’t imagine not existing and the importance of Tibet. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.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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    Why More Brides Are Skipping the Traditional March Song

    More couples are skipping the traditional processional to Richard Wagner’s “Bridal Chorus.”When Becky Pedroza began planning her wedding, she imagined a celebration as vibrant and free-spirited as her relationship with Erik Revelli.At their wedding in May 2023 at Rimrock Ranch in Pioneertown, Calif., the Atlanta couple bypassed the usual wedding routines: no mother-son dance, no bouquet toss and absolutely no “Here Comes the Bride,” a song also known as “Bridal Chorus” by Richard Wagner. Instead, Ms. Pedroza walked down the aisle, flanked by her parents, to “She’s a Rainbow” by the Rolling Stones.“We wanted something that felt more like us,” said Ms. Pedroza, a 33-year-old graphic designer. She added that she wanted a song that made her “incredibly happy,” not one that honored tradition.Ms. Pedroza isn’t the only one ditching traditional processional music. An online search for “Bridal Processional Songs” will return everything from Neil Young to Billie Eilish before Wagner even gets a mention. And the composer doesn’t even make an appearance on a list of “114 wedding processional songs you should definitely use” by the wedding website the Knot.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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    Miley Cyrus Gives Showgirl Pathos, and 8 More New Songs

    Hear tracks by Benjamin Booker, Julien Baker and Torres, 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.Miley Cyrus: ‘Beautiful That Way’At 32, Miley Cyrus is an old soul in the guise of a provocative modern pop star, which means that she can nail a slow, torchy ballad in her sleep. She brings expected, husky-voiced pathos to “Beautiful That Way,” a Golden-Globe-nominated song from the soundtrack of “The Last Showgirl,” Gia Coppola’s moody character study that stars Pamela Anderson. “Just like a rose, she’ll cut you with thorns,” Cyrus croons on the track, co-written with Andrew Wyatt and the Swedish musician Lykke Li. “She’s beautiful that way.” LINDSAY ZOLADZSnoop Dogg featuring 50 Cent and Eminem, ‘Gunz N Smoke’Self-congratulation reigns on “Missionary,” the new Snoop Dogg album that reunites him with the producer Dr. Dre and other 1990s Dre protégés — including, on “Gunz N Smoke,” 50 Cent and Eminem. Flaunting a “Gun smoke, gun smoke” sample from “Dead Wrong” (by the Notorious B.I.G. featuring Eminem), the track has the three rappers revisiting belligerent poses that have become all too familiar: “I come from freestylin’ over gunshots and sirens / Nothing more gangster than my voice over these violins,” Snoop Dogg claims. But Eminem admits, “Now I’m much older, and I may be calmer.” JON PARELESMario, ‘Questions’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 Messy Modern Music Business, According to Larry Jackson

    Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon MusicThe music executive Larry Jackson, a founder of the entertainment company Gamma, has seen several sea changes in the recording business from different vantages over different eras of disruption.As head of A&R at Arista Records/RCA Music Group under Clive Davis, he oversaw albums by Whitney Houston and Jennifer Hudson while CDs were giving way to the iTunes Store. At Interscope, alongside Jimmy Iovine, he helped sign Chief Keef and Lana Del Rey as YouTube made new stars. As the global creative director at Apple Music, Jackson partnered with artists like Drake, Frank Ocean and Taylor Swift to bring streaming to the masses, while competing with Spotify — and the major labels.On this week’s episode of Popcast, Jackson spoke with the hosts Jon Caramanica and Joe Coscarelli about a topsy-turvy year in music — headlined by the battle between Kendrick Lamar and Drake — and how Jackson is applying lessons from his label days to whatever the industry has become.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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    What Song Did You Discover, or Rediscover, in 2024?

    We want to know why it resonated with you.In a recent edition of The Amplifier newsletter, Lindsay Zoladz shared the music that shaped her year. She rediscovered a classic from the Smiths thanks to a karaoke party, dug into Neil Young’s back catalog after seeing him in concert, and revisited a Frank Sinatra standard because it reminded her of a cherished trip to Vermont.As she pointed out, not all of the music that will remind us of this year actually came out in 2024. Maybe your favorite song this year was an old tune you fell back in love with, a new-to-you discovery or a piece of music linked with an important event in your life. With that in mind, we’re asking readers: What song explains your 2024? Why did it resonate with you this year?If you’d like to share your story with us, fill out the form below. We may publish your response in an upcoming newsletter. We won’t publish any part of your submission without reaching out and hearing back from you first. More

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    Martial Solal, French Jazz Piano Virtuoso, Is Dead at 97

    Mr. Solal, who also wrote music for films and symphony orchestras, was revered in Europe and hailed in the United States on his rare visits there.Martial Solal, Europe’s pre-eminent jazz pianist, who recorded dozens of startlingly original albums in a career of almost three quarters of a century and who wrote scores for numerous films, including Jean-Luc Godard’s masterpiece “Breathless,” died on Thursday in Versailles, France. He was 97.His death, in a hospital, was announced by Rachida Dati, France’s minister of culture.Mr. Solal, who was born in Algeria, was 34 when he performed his first concert at the landmark Salle Gaveau concert hall in Paris, his adopted home, in 1962. He was 91 when he took the same stage in 2019 for his farewell concert.The two performances were bookends to an extraordinary career in which he recorded countless albums and wrote music for solo piano, big bands and symphonies, including four concertos for piano and orchestra, as well as the film scores.Although he was little known in the United States, the critic Francis Davis, writing in The New York Times in 2001, said that Mr. Solal “might be the greatest living European jazz pianist — and is at least the equal of any in the United States.”In 2010, John Fordham, the chief jazz critic of The Guardian, called him “France’s most famous living jazz artist.”Mr. Solal was admired as much for his technical virtuosity as for his exploratory improvisations. Critics compared him to the great jazz pianist Art Tatum, and his playing at times echoed (without imitating) the likes of Duke Ellington and Thelonious Monk. But he blazed his own path, combining spare melodic lines with lush chordal passages in a style the French newspaper Le Monde described as “cutting through his music with the precision of a goldsmith.”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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    Maura Delpero’s Family Story Became Her Latest Movie

    Maura Delpero’s film “Vermiglio,” which won the Grand Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival, is inspired by her own family in Italy during World War II.The mountaintop village of Vermiglio in the Italian Alps is blessed with picture-postcard views of snowy peaks and verdant valleys. It’s also the scene of a dramatic World War II story that moviegoers outside Italy will soon discover.“Vermiglio,” written and directed by Maura Delpero, is inspired by the story of Delpero’s grandparents, whose bucolic existence as a family of 10 was disrupted in the 1940s by a young Sicilian deserter romancing one of their daughters. The film won the Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival in September, and is Italy’s submission to the list of contenders for the Academy Award for best foreign language film.Watching the movie feels like watching life itself: A succession of rustic tableaux — cow milkings, family meals, classroom lessons — are interspersed with moments of high drama that are filmed in the same slow-paced, naturalistic way, without fanfare.Delpero with the Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize, which the film won at the Venice Film Festival in September.Louisa Gouliamaki/ReutersIn a recent video interview, Delpero, 49, who splits her time between Italy and Argentina, spoke about life behind the camera and the future of cinema. The conversation, translated from Italian, has been edited and condensed.This movie was sparked by the death of your father in August 2019. He was one of the eight surviving children of your grandfather, the Vermiglio village schoolteacher. Can you talk about that?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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    European Directors Sometimes Get Lost in Translation When Going Hollywood

    The history of European directors “going Hollywood” and making the leap to English-language filmmaking is long and uneven.When Pedro Almodóvar’s “The Room Next Door” won the Golden Lion for best film at this year’s Venice Film Festival, it was the first time that the Spanish director had garnered the top prize at one of Europe’s major film festivals. What made this victory even more impressive and unusual was the fact that “The Room Next Door” was Almodóvar’s first full-length film in English.For a leading auteur of contemporary cinema, and one whose work is so bound up with the textures of his native tongue, Almodóvar’s late-career shift to English-language filmmaking feels daring. If the film’s reception at Venice is any indication, it appears that the gamble has paid off and that he has succeeded where many others have failed.Almodóvar, 75, is only the latest in a long line of European directors to make the leap to English-language filmmaking. The history of such transitions is uneven, and ranges from the Golden Age Hollywood classics of the Austrian-born Billy Wilder to infamous missteps by Ingmar Bergman and François Truffaut.The Hungarian filmmaker Kornel Mundruczo said that both working in English and directing Hollywood stars presents European directors with a unique set of hurdles. “It was a huge challenge to understand the cultural differences and not to create something which is symbolically, say, sinking into the Atlantic Ocean,” he said, recalling the making of his English-language debut, “Pieces of a Woman,” in a recent phone interview.“There are so many movies like that,” added Mundruczo, who finished shooting “At the Sea,” his new film starring Amy Adams, in Boston this August.Kornel Mundruczo, center, on set with Ellen Burstyn, left, and Vanessa Kirby in 2020, making “Pieces of a Woman.” Mundruczo, a Hungarian filmmaker, has found creative opportunities working in English.Philippe Bosse/Netflix, via Everett CollectionWe 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