Aurelia Butler

More stories

  • 150 Shares159 Views

    in Music

    Timothée Chalamet Sings Live for the Bob Dylan Biopic, ‘A Complete Unknown’

    The actor’s vocals so impressed the film’s director that he used the live recordings, instead of those prerecorded in a studio. Here’s a look at other actors who have hit their own high notes in musical biopics.In one trailer for the upcoming Bob Dylan biopic, “A Complete Unknown,” a fan pleads with the musician, played by Timothée Chalamet, saying that she can’t hear the music at his sold-out concert.Chalamet, his eyes hidden behind Dylan’s trademark Ray Ban sunglasses, his hair a frizzy mop, responds: “I’ll sing louder.”Biopics have often relied on creative license to portray a star, but Chalamet’s words are not just blowin’ in the wind. The songs in “Unknown,” directed by James Mangold, have resonated through generations, and Chalamet’s voice was so impressive that his live vocals — sung while performing in character — were kept for the final cut.That is not the industry standard. Some films use an original artist’s track while an actor lip-syncs. When actors in biopics do sing, it is common for them to record the vocals in a studio and then overdub them onscreen. Singing live on camera can leave a performance falling flat, especially if the actor is not a trained vocalist.But when done well, live vocals can add a touch of realism.“The idea was to get a little bit different sound in each different venue by using practical microphones from the period,” Tod Maitland, the sound mixer for “Unknown,” said in an interview with Variety this month. “That helped create a nice tapestry of sounds. But Timmy went 100 percent live. It was pretty amazing.”It’s not Chalamet’s first time at the mic — he sang in the 2023 film “Wonka,” and attended LaGuardia High School, a performing arts school in New York City.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

  • 125 Shares199 Views

    in Movies

    What ‘Wicked’ Has to Say About Our Current Political Moment

    By breaking the story into two movies, the emphasis in “Part One” shifts to a nation’s potential decline into authoritarianism. Sound familiar?In the big-screen adaptation of “Wicked,” Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) uses magic to defend her sister and unwittingly destroys a courtyard mural of the Wizard at Shiz University. When her outburst shatters the wall, it also unearths an image that has been intentionally covered up: the school’s original founders, animal professors whose ability to speak, teach humans, and organize politically posed a threat to the Wizard’s autocratic reign.This surprising fact is revealed early on, but as I watched it, I realized Elphaba’s discovery came too late.As a repeat viewer of Broadway’s “Wicked,” I’m usually fascinated by how the story’s retrospective lens encourages us to sympathize with Elphaba, who eventually will become the Wicked Witch of the West. Her rich back story — she’s a perennial outsider and highly empathetic person — has forced me to rethink my assumptions about her and reflect on how easily I accepted L. Frank Baum’s own prejudices and his representation of her as a one-dimensional villain in his novel, “The Wizard of Oz.”But, unlike the stage version, which tracks Elphaba as a young adult to her fateful encounter with Dorothy, the movie delves even more into Elphaba’s biography. It follows her to Shiz University, where she ends up rooming with her frenemy, Galinda, later renamed Glinda (Ariana Grande), whose jealousy of Elphaba’s magical powers leads to conflict. The film ends at the characters’ climactic midpoints. “If Part One is about choices,” the director, Jon M. Chu, recently told Entertainment Weekly, “Part Two is about consequences.”But for now that also means the story remains unresolved. At the end of the Broadway version, there’s relief in the surprise ending when we learn that the Wicked Witch was far kinder than we gave her credit for and that she successfully challenged the Wizard’s dominance.Instead, onscreen, Elphaba is left suspended in midair (on her broom), made a scapegoat by the Wizard (Jeff Goldblum) as the Shiz professor Madam Morrible (Michelle Yeoh), falsely warns the people of Oz about an enemy who must be captured. Madam Morrible goes even further, blasting on the loudspeaker, “Her green skin is but an outward manifestorium of her twisted nature. This distortion! This repulsion! This wicked witch!”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

  • 138 Shares189 Views

    in Movies

    Children’s Movies to Stream Now: ‘That Christmas,’ ‘Transformers One’ and More

    This month’s picks include a sequel to a 1980s Tim Burton classic and an animated tale of a Christmas nearly gone wrong.‘Beetlejuice Beetlejuice’Stream it on Max.One of the joys of parenthood is introducing your child to classic films that you once loved. It thrills me that my 7-year-old son adores “E.T.” and the original “Star Wars” and “Indiana Jones” films. Watching him mimic the “Banana Boat (Day-O)” dance in Tim Burton’s 1988 goth horror comedy “Beetlejuice” has been one of the highlights of my year. For older children that love scary-ish movies, Burton’s long-awaited follow-up film is a kooky medley of wacky scares and outrageous scenarios. Winona Ryder returns as a grown-up Lydia. She’s now a widow who hosts a ghost show on TV, and her goth teenage daughter, Astrid (Jenna Ortega), is every bit as brooding as her mother was at her age.Justin Theroux plays Lydia’s smarmy boyfriend, Rory, and Monica Bellucci is Beetlejuice’s (dead) ex-wife, Delores. Michael Keaton masterfully yuks it up again as the titular character, and Catherine O’Hara returns as the pompous artist Delia. Alfred Gough and Miles Millar wrote the script (Seth Grahame-Smith shares story credit). If your children delight in dark tales and don’t mind shrunken heads and some campy gore, this one’s worth a watch.‘That Christmas’Stream it on Netflix.Brian Cox sheds any evidence his tyrannical “Succession” character, Logan Roy, to voice none other than Santa Claus in this animated tale of a Christmas gone (almost) wrong. Based on a children’s book series written by Richard Curtis (yes, the one who wrote “Four Weddings and a Funeral,” “Notting Hill” and “Love Actually”), the plot involves intertwining stories about loneliness and the importance of family and friends — Curtis’s sweet spot.Here we meet Danny (Jack Wisniewski), a new kid in the small fictional seaside town of Wellington-on-Sea. His newly divorced mother (Jodie Whittaker, “Doctor Who”) gets called in to work on Christmas, leaving Danny alone as a blizzard blows into town and strands a bunch of parents so they can’t get to their children’s Christmas pageant. Fiona Shaw (“Killing Eve”) voices the strict Ms. Trapper, who tries to keep the youngsters in line as the town goes haywire, and in a nod to “Love Actually,” Bill Nighy teams back up with Curtis here to voice a character named Lighthouse Bill.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

  • 138 Shares169 Views

    in Movies

    Werner Herzog’s ‘Theater of Thought’ Explores the Mysteries of the Brain

    In “Theater of Thought,” he talks to scientists and other experts about consciousness, quantum computing and whether parrots understand human speech.There’s a moment in “Theater of Thought” (in theaters) when Darío Gil, the director of research at IBM, is explaining quantum computing to Werner Herzog, the movie’s director. Standing before a whiteboard, Gil draws some points on spheres to illustrate how qubits work, then proceeds to define the Schrödinger equation. As he talks and writes, the audio grows quieter, and Herzog’s distinctive resonant German accent takes over. “I admit that I literally understand nothing of this, and I assume most of you don’t either,” he intones in voice-over. “But I found it fascinating that this mathematical formula explains the law that draws the subatomic world.”It’s a funny moment, a playful way to keep us from glazing over when presented with partial differential equations. Herzog may be a world-renowned filmmaker, but he’s hardly a scientist, and that makes him the perfect director for “Theater of Thought,” a documentary about, as he puts it, the “mysteries of our brain.”Emphasis on mysteries. Herzog interviews a dizzying array of scientists, researchers, and even a Nobel Prize winner or two. He asks them about everything: how the brain works, what consciousness means, what the tiniest organisms in the world are, whether parrots understand human speech, whether rogue governments can control thoughts, whether we’re living in an elaborate simulation, how telepathy and psychedelics work, and, at several points, what thinking even is. Near the end of the film he notes that not one of the scientists could explain what a thought is, or what consciousness is, but “they were all keenly alive to the ethical questions in neuroscience.” In other words, they’re immersed in both the mystery and what their field of study implies about the future of humanity.There’s a boring way to make this movie, with talking-head interviews that are arranged to form a coherent argument. Herzog goes another direction, starting off by narrating why he’s making it, then talking about his interviewees as we are introduced to them in their labs or in their favorite outdoor settings. (He also visits Philippe Petit, the Twin Towers tightrope walker, as he practices in his Catskills backyard.) Herzog’s constant verbal presence brings us into his own head space — his own brain, if you will — and gives us the sense that we’re following his patterns of thought.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

  • 100 Shares109 Views

    in Movies

    ‘Kraven the Hunter’ Review: A Seriously Silly Movie

    Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s buff Marvel hero is overshadowed by unabashedly fun villains.Built on brawn, J.C. Chandor’s action sci-fi picture “Kraven the Hunter” is limited by incomprehensible plotting and dodgy one-liners delivered by a cast who seem to be practicing their worst Russian accents. If not for the bevy of anticlimactic fights, “Kraven the Hunter” could be so bad it’s good. Instead, it’s merely another excursion away from the Marvel Cinematic Universe to Sony’s series of defanged comic book villains.Kraven’s baffling origin story finds a jumbled through-line in half brothers Sergei and Dmitri’s tight-knit relationship. Sons of Russian drug dealer Nikolai Kravinoff (Russell Crowe, adopting a low, growling accent), the boys are persistently pushed by their bloodthirsty father to be stronger than Sergei’s mother, who recently died by suicide. To harden them, Nikolai takes them hunting in Ghana. “Shoot to kill. Fun,” Nikolai grumbles. Fun for Sergei is short-lived when a lion mauls him. Only a potion provided by a passerby named Calypso saves Sergei, imbuing him with otherworldly vision, agility and strength.Fast forward 16 years and a hulking Sergei (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) is now a vigilante known as “Kraven the Hunter,” who’s pursuing criminals that remind him of his estranged father. Aleksei Sytsevich (Alessandro Nivola), a Russian mercenary who can morph into a rhino, is not only worried that Kraven will soon pursue him. Aleksei also wants to eliminate his rival Nikolai. Aleksei kidnaps Dmitri and dispatches a time-morphing assassin called the Foreigner (Christopher Abbott) to pursue Kraven. With an adult Calypso (Ariana DeBose) providing aid, Kraven tries to free Dmitri.Thankfully, “Kraven the Hunter” doesn’t take itself too seriously. Like Sony’s “The Venom” franchise and “Madame Web,” the story is incidental to these larger-than-life characters. While Taylor-Johnson does his best Hugh Jackman impression — posing for glamour shots of his ripped body before crawling and flying across the frame — only a couple of actors here know exactly what movie they’re in. Abbott is captivatingly slippery, rolling his slender frame and casting his bewitching eyes on his victims with cool intent. Nivola, on the other hand, is the type of ham you’d find in Joel Schumacher’s Batman films. From his surprising hissing to his stocky build, every choice he makes is spontaneous yet wholly grounded in this troubled character.If the action in “Kraven the Hunter” was as well conceived as its villains, it’d be a riot. Unfortunately, the brawls are physically detached from the environment. The choreography lacks punch and design; the compositions are spatially unaware. Kraven and Aleksei ‘s final tussle, an anticlimactic mud fight in the middle of a field, ends as quickly as it began. The film adds a pound of revenge and an ounce of a surprise to its final moments, but these ingredients, including the entertaining silliness, aren’t enough for “Kraven the Hunter” to catch the biggest game — our admiration.Kraven the HunterRated R for violence, blood and daddy problems. Running time: 2 hours 7 minutes. In theaters. More

  • 150 Shares99 Views

    in Music

    Match the Taylor Swift Song to the Poem Inspired By Her Music

    In honor of Madison Cloudfeather Nye Somehow the voices twined around a young mind encouraging gentle stanzas, open endings, even in a Texas town where they wanted you to testify before cashing a check. Heck with that, boys. I’m heading out in my little gray boots, slim volumes of poetry in my holster, William of […] More

  • 75 Shares129 Views

    in Movies

    ‘Carry On’ Review: Travel Nightmares Amplified

    In this tense thriller, Taron Egerton plays a T.S.A. agent who goes up against an implacable terrorist (Jason Bateman). The man has a funny idea of what he wants to bring on a plane.If you’re a fan of white-knuckle-tension suspense thrillers, you know the debate as to whether or not the 1988 classic “Die Hard” is a Christmas movie. “Carry-On,” directed by the expert technician Jaume Collet-Serra, makes absolutely no bones about being a Christmas movie as it seeks to work your nerves in the “Die Hard” tradition.The setting here is a Los Angeles airport. The T.S.A. agent Ethan Kopek, played by Taron Egerton, finds himself the unwilling pawn of a determined terrorist hellbent on getting a nasty package on an eastbound jet. Kopek has a history of not putting himself out there — for years he’s tamped down his ambitions to become a real police officer — who is now blackmailed into stepping up in all the wrong ways. The alternative is a staggering body count.While the character details are conventional and treacly — what do you know, Kopek’s beautiful wife (Sofia Carson) also happens to be pregnant with the couple’s first child! — the suspense mechanisms of T.J. Fixman’s script, which support a fat-free running time of nearly two hours, are consistently tightly wound.As Kopek’s nameless tormentor, Jason Bateman is chilling. A lot of actors who’ve spent their careers playing relatively amiable characters, as Bateman has, can barely restrain themselves from winking at least a little when they take on a bad guy role. But the actor only ever knuckles down at being loathsome.While the picture doesn’t break any new genre ground, it has several jaw-dropping set pieces, including an incredibly physical fight inside a speeding car. Collet-Serra’s staging is excellent throughout. The simulated airport setting is filled with hustle and bustle that looks just as annoying as real air travel is, especially during the holidays. Except this particular airport is way more sparkling and clean than any in real life.Carry OnRated PG-13 for violence and language. Running time: 1 hour 59 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

  • 113 Shares179 Views

    in Music

    Morgan Wallen Pleads to Reduced Charges in Chair-Throwing Incident

    The country superstar agreed to misdemeanor reckless endangerment charges and a week at a D.U.I. education center.The country superstar Morgan Wallen pleaded guilty on Thursday in a Nashville courtroom to misdemeanor reckless endangerment charges stemming from an arrest in April, in which he was accused of throwing a chair from the sixth-story roof of a downtown bar.In exchange for prosecutors dropping the felony counts of reckless endangerment against Mr. Wallen, the singer, 31, entered a plea agreement that requires him to spend seven days at a D.U.I. education center and be on probation for two years.“Upon the successful completion of his probation, the charges will be eligible for dismissal and expungement,” Worrick Robinson IV, a lawyer for Mr. Wallen, said in a statement following the court appearance. “Mr. Wallen has cooperated fully with authorities throughout these last eight months, directly communicating and apologizing to all involved. Mr. Wallen remains committed to making a positive impact through his music and foundation.”The chart-topping performer had just opened his latest blockbuster stadium tour earlier this year when he was arrested and charged for throwing the chair from atop Chief’s, a bar on lower Broadway owned by a fellow country star, Eric Church. The chair landed near Nashville police officers, authorities said, and staff members at Chief’s told them Mr. Wallen was responsible.Mr. Wallen was previously arrested and charged in May 2020 with public intoxication and disorderly conduct in downtown Nashville. Months later, he was dropped from an appearance on “Saturday Night Live” for not following Covid-19 protocols after social media footage showed him doing shots and kissing fans at a bar in the lead-up to his appearance.The next year, immediately following the release of his breakout album, “Dangerous: The Double Album,” Mr. Wallen faced widespread but temporary industry backlash when TMZ published a video of him referring to a friend with a racial slur. Mr. Wallen cited a night of hard drinking for his “ignorant” language, calling it “hour 72 of a 72-hour bender,” and said he checked himself into rehab for 30 days following the incident.“You know, just trying to figure it out,” Mr. Wallen said on “Good Morning America” as he returned to the spotlight. “Why am I acting this way? Do I have an alcohol problem? Do I have a deeper issue?”His next album, “One Thing at a Time,” did not suffer commercially, spending a total of 19 weeks at No. 1. Last month, he won entertainer of the year, the top honor, at the Country Music Association Awards, though he did not attend the ceremony. More