Aurelia Butler

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    in Music

    3 Unsettled Questions in the Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Trial

    The major outlines of the prosecution of the music mogul Sean Combs have taken shape in a Manhattan courtroom. But several issues at the core of the case remain unanswered.After two weeks of testimony in the racketeering conspiracy and sex-trafficking trial of Sean Combs, the rapper and producer known as Diddy, much of the prosecution’s central narrative is clear. Mr. Combs, they say, used his power and wealth, along with violence and threats of blackmail, to coerce women into complying with his elaborate sexual demands that included commercial sex workers.Such coercive behavior was enabled, the government argues, by members of his staff, who helped to arrange and stock the marathon sex sessions known as “freak-offs” and to clean up any fallout from Mr. Combs’s entanglements.The groundwork of the defense’s counternarrative has been laid firmly, as well. Mr. Combs, they have argued, while jealous, aggressive and drug-addicted, had nontraditional but consensual sex with long-term girlfriends. That may have led to damaging, interpersonal chaos but it was not sex trafficking, Mr. Combs’s lawyers have argued.Even as some of the contours of the case have become more clear through the testimony of Casandra Ventura, Mr. Combs’s former girlfriend, and others, major lingering questions will remain when the trial continues next week. Below are three unresolved issues that could affect how the trial, which is estimated to last about six more weeks, pans out.What happened to ‘Victim-3’?Before trial, the government repeatedly referred to a woman it called Victim-3, saying that she was subjected to sexual coercion by Mr. Combs outside of any freak-off activity. She was listed prominently in the indictment as an additional person whose experience would demonstrate that Mr. Combs’s conduct hurt people beyond Ms. Ventura, the singer known as Cassie who is the prosecution’s star witness.But for reasons that have yet to be explained publicly, Victim-3 is no longer expected to take the stand, according to the lawyers involved. The trouble first surfaced two weeks ago when prosecutors told the court they were having a hard time reaching her lawyer.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 Movies

    A New Pee-wee Herman Documentary Peeks Inside the Playhouse

    Though he is well-known for only one, the performer and writer Paul Reubens lived many lives.As the new documentary “Pee-wee as Himself” details, before he created his alter ego Pee-wee Herman, Reubens was a successful child actor in regional theater. Growing up in the circus town of Sarasota, Fla. (the longtime home of Ringling Bros.), he was surrounded early on by self-proclaimed freaks. He became an Andy Warhol-loving cinéaste; a serious collector of kitsch; and, by his 20s, an aspiring performance artist.Among the many revelations in the three-hour documentary — which premieres Friday on HBO, in two parts — is his acknowledgment that he is gay, and that he was out of the closet before deciding early to barricade back in.Reubens’s death, at age 70 in 2023, was another surprise; the cancer he lived with for years had been a secret to almost everyone. (The filmmakers, who captured 40 hours of footage with him, were unaware of his illness; he was still due to sit for his final interview.)In 2010, Reubens took a version of “The Pee-wee Herman Show,” which debuted originally in 1981, to Broadway. Sara Krulwich/The New York Times NYTCREDIT: Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesEven more startling, and illuminating, is the audacity of Reubens’s lifelong ambitions — and his vast and continuing influence. During his heyday in the ’80s, with the hit movie “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure” and the Saturday morning children’s show “Pee-wee’s Playhouse,” he offered fans a world of outlandish creative possibility, where anyone could be anything they dreamed up. Also, chairs gave hugs, the floor talked, and a mechanical Abraham Lincoln cooked you pancakes.Pee-wee was bizarre at the time, too, but in retrospect, the global superstardom Reubens achieved is downright bonkers. With a B.F.A. from the California Institute of the Arts, he viewed his creation as conceptual art. He also meant to be famous. He was an avant-gardist, but “he wanted to be a superstar,” said Matt Wolf, the director of the documentary.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 Movies

    What Tom Cruise Understands About Stunts. (And Movies.)

    His intense devotion to doing his own stunt work can seem pathological. But it’s part of a more charming devotion to moviegoing itself.Every “Mission: Impossible” movie can be boiled down to a single, central image. Tom Cruise in glasses and a black vest, hanging by wires, inches above the floor. Tom Cruise dangling from a rocky cliff ledge. Tom Cruise sticking like a gecko to the glass panels of the Burj Khalifa. Tom Cruise in some kind of spacesuit, hurtling through the air toward the camera. Tom Cruise in midair again, arms stretched backward as a motorbike falls below him, making it look all the more as if he were flying. For the newest and purportedly last installment in the series, “The Final Reckoning,” the iconography has been perfected: We see Cruise dangling from a banana-yellow biplane as it hurtles through the sky. Oh, and the plane is upside down.In the opening minutes of “The Final Reckoning,” all of the iconic images from previous films are repeated back to us, reminding us that what we are here for is to see Tom Cruise perform breathtaking stunts. Of course, if you were in the theater, then you would have been sold on this idea already. The film’s marketing has made the sight of the upside-down biplane so familiar that before the movie had even started, I overheard a couple in the seats behind me discussing how the stunt might have been done. (“Where are the wires, you think?”)We’re compelled to know how these stunts were done for one very simple reason: We believe that Tom Cruise really is clutching the side of a skyscraper or an upside-down plane. This is because Cruise and many, many other people have worked hard to ensure our belief that Tom Cruise does his own stunts.‘How can we involve the audience?’Some of this belief-bolstering work is technical and filmic: The cameras move close to Cruise and linger there, convincing us that it really is him doing the thing. But a monumental part of the effort has to do with Cruise himself, and his ability to persuade us that if we buy a ticket for his movie, we will see him create a harrowing spectacle. On one hand, we will be watching a movie about a fictional character named Ethan Hunt, whose mission seems impossible. On the other, we will be watching Tom Cruise, a movie star we have known for 40-plus years, doing the seemingly impossible.This collapsing of character and star has become only more central to the films as the franchise goes on, sometimes sabotaging the movies’ impact, sometimes making them more interesting, sometimes both at the same time. For example, the antagonist in these final two installments is a runaway A.I. called the Entity. For a series that once had the great Philip Seymour Hoffman play a villain, evil software feels like a step down. But Ethan Hunt/Tom Cruise battling a faceless, ageless superintelligence that is able to fake practically anything? That is a rich text.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 Movies

    If This Movie Wins the Palme d’Or, It Will Extend a Staggering Streak

    The distributor Neon has been on a run at the Cannes Film Festival, and it has three movies, including “Sentimental Value,” considered front-runners.They sounded froggy. Their eyes were heavy. But underneath all that fatigue, it was clear that the cast and crew of “Sentimental Value” were in good spirits during their Cannes Film Festival news conference on Wednesday.“If my voice is a little rusty, it’s because the film was apparently well-received and we had the party yesterday,” said the co-writer Eskil Vogt.Later, the actor Stellan Skarsgard’s voice also faltered at the news conference. “I was at the same party,” he said apologetically.I, too, had been to that late-night soiree, crammed shoulder-to-shoulder with people eager to celebrate the festival’s biggest hit so far. Earlier that night, “Sentimental Value” received the most supersized standing ovation of Cannes, immediately distinguishing it as one of the strongest contenders to win the Palme d’Or. And if it does take that prestigious trophy, one of the most remarkable streaks in cinema will extend even further.The film’s distributor, Neon, is now angling for its sixth consecutive Palme d’Or, following “Parasite,” “Titane,” “Triangle of Sadness,” “Anatomy of a Fall” and “Anora.” Most insiders believe the Palme could go to “Sentimental Value,” the Iranian drama “It Was Just an Accident” or the Brazilian entry “The Secret Agent,” though Neon also bought the latter two films after they premiered this week, further improving the company’s odds.It may help that the “Sentimental Value” director Joachim Trier has come close to the top prize here before: His previous film, the dramedy “The Worst Person in the World,” won the best-actress award at Cannes for its lead, Renate Reinsve. “Sentimental Value” finds them reteaming for the story of Nora, a Norwegian stage actress who is reluctantly reunited with her estranged father, Gustav (Skarsgard), after her mother’s funeral.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 Movies

    Without a Prenup, David Geffen’s Divorce Could Get Interesting

    The billionaire’s marriage to David Armstrong ended with the familiar “irreconcilable differences.” Is Mr. Geffen’s fortune in jeopardy?David Geffen’s name is affixed to concert halls, medical programs and drama schools. Last week, however, it landed on divorce papers.Mr. Geffen, 82, was the instigator in a divorce petition filed on Friday in Los Angeles, signaling a split from his husband of two years, David Armstrong, a 32-year-old dancer he married in March 2023.While the legal grounds were familiar to anyone with a passing knowledge of divorce — “irreconcilable differences,” according to the petition — the circumstances of the dissolution raised some eyebrows because of one detail: The petition also indicates that Mr. Armstrong did not sign a prenuptial agreement with Mr. Geffen, the entertainment mogul whose net worth has been estimated at more than $8 billion.Whether that will lead to financial distress for Mr. Geffen remains to be seen, say experts in California divorce law. The filing last week shows that Mr. Geffen intends to pay spousal support, which — considering the brevity of the marriage — is generally disbursed over a period equal to about half the length of a marriage.Still, that support could be sizable considering the luxurious world in which Mr. Geffen — and, until recently, Mr. Armstrong — resided.Samantha Bley DeJean, a family law attorney in San Francisco, said she would guess that the couple’s lifestyle “was fairly significant,” though she also noted that Mr. Geffen could probably afford whatever the court deemed support to be.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 Movies

    Scarlett Johansson Makes Her Debut as Director of ‘Eleanor the Great’

    Few movie stars today win over critics and convey Old Hollywood glamour as effortlessly as Scarlett Johansson does, all while seemingly impervious to the industry’s convulsions.Now 40, she has been famous most of her life. She turned 10 the year her first movie, “North,” opened in 1994; four years later, she was upstaging Robert Redford in “The Horse Whisperer.” In the decades since, she starred in cult films and blockbusters, made a record with Pete Yorn and earned a couple of Oscar nominations. In between hits and misses, she also married three times (most recently to Colin Jost) and had two children.The kind of diverse professional portfolio that Johansson has cultivated can make life more interesting, of course, but it’s also evidence of shrewd, career-sustaining choices. In 2010, she made her critically celebrated Broadway debut in a revival of Arthur Miller’s tragedy “A View From the Bridge.” (She went on to win a Tony.) That same year, she slipped on a bodysuit to play the lethal Russian superspy Black Widow in Marvel’s “Iron Man 2,” a role that propelled her into global celebrity.On Tuesday, Johansson publicly took on another role when she presented her feature directing debut, “Eleanor the Great,” at the Cannes Film Festival. Playing outside the main lineup, it is the kind of intimately scaled, performance-driven movie that’s ideal for a novice director.June Squibb stars as the 94-year-old Eleanor, who, soon after the story opens, moves into her daughter’s New York apartment. Life gets complicated when Eleanor inadvertently ends up in a support group for Holocaust survivors. It gets even trickier when a journalism student insists on writing about Eleanor. A friendship is born, salted with laughter and tears.I met with Johansson the day after the premiere of “Eleanor the Great.” She first walked the festival red carpet in 2005 for “Match Point,” returning last year with “Asteroid City.” (She’s also in “The Phoenician Scheme,” which is here, too.) It had rained hard the day of her premiere, but the sky was blue when she stepped onto a hotel terrace overlooking the Mediterranean. Seated in a quiet corner shaded by a large umbrella, Johansson was friendly, pleasant and a touch reserved. Wearing the largest diamond that I’ve seen outside of a Tiffany window, she kept her sunglasses on as we talked, the consummate picture of movie stardom.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 Movies

    The Etiquette of Touching a Stranger

    A tense exchange between the actor Denzel Washington and a photographer at Cannes is raising questions about laying hands on someone you don’t know.In a tense exchange on the red carpet at the Cannes Film Festival this week, a photographer grabbed the actor Denzel Washington’s arm, apparently seeking another photo.Mr. Washington, perturbed, yanked his arm back, and then repeatedly warned the photographer to stop — a brief squabble between seeming strangers that made headlines, and raised the question: Is it ever OK to touch someone you don’t know?The New York Times reached out to a handful of etiquette experts and therapists who specialize in boundary setting to ask about the rules around making physical contact with a stranger.‘Keep your hands to yourself.’Etiquette, when it comes to spontaneous touching, is nuanced — social rules vary from place to place and culture to culture. Still, the manners experts we spoke with were unanimous: “The hard and fast rule about touching strangers is that you shouldn’t,” said William Hanson, an etiquette coach in Britain and the author of “Just Good Manners.”We ran some scenarios by him. What if you are trying to flag down a server in a restaurant? No, he said. Placing a hand on someone as you are trying to move through a crowd? Nope, he answered. Weave!Others allowed for exceptions. If, say, someone drops a wallet without noticing and doesn’t hear your calls, “you could use touch briefly,” said Juliane T. Shore, a marriage and family therapist in Austin, Texas, and the author of “Setting Boundaries That Stick.” But don’t grab or clasp the person, she said.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 Music

    How ‘The Queen of Spades’ Brought Two Tchaikovsky Brothers Together

    The composer’s brother Modest long wanted to collaborate. They eventually got their chance, to bring Pushkin to the opera stage.In 1888, Modest Tchaikovsky wrote a letter to his brother Pyotr, the composer. Modest, a former law student and budding dramatist and critic, had recently been commissioned by the Imperial Theaters in St. Petersburg, Russia, to write his first opera libretto: an adaptation of Pushkin’s “The Queen of Spades.”Modest revered his older brother’s talent and international renown. He had already proposed potential collaborations to Pyotr twice, to no avail. He had a composer lined up for “The Queen of Spades,” Nikolai Klenovsky, but he was disheartened that he and his brother would not be working on it together.Pyotr’s response to the letter was measured but blunt. “Forgive me, Modya, but I do not regret at all that I will not write ‘The Queen of Spades,’” adding: “I will write an opera only if a plot comes along that can deeply warm me up. A plot like ‘The Queen of Spades’ does not move me, and I could only write mediocrely.”Then Klenovsky dropped “The Queen of Spades.” Ivan Vsevolozhsky, the director of the imperial theaters, asked Pyotr to take over. He agreed.And so “The Queen of Spades,” which returns to the Metropolitan Opera on Friday, became the first collaboration between the two Tchaikovsky brothers, men of different disciplines and artistic abilities, despite their closeness. This work was the culmination of nearly 40 years of Modest’s attempt to escape the cool of Pyotr’s shadow and bask in his light. The result, the musicologist Richard Taruskin wrote, was the “first and probably the greatest masterpiece of musical surrealism.” It’s a testament to their camaraderie and fraternity, as well as their openness and intimacy.When stripped to its thematic core, Pushkin’s “The Queen of Spades,” first published in 1834, has all the makings of spectacle — obsession, greed, madness, phantasmagoria — that you could also find in sentimental Italian operas of the 19th century. Pushkin was not just god of Russian letters, but the god, yet his writing wasn’t easy to adapt into a libretto. His storytelling is anecdotal and ironic, lacking in empathy and tenderness for and between its characters. No one evolves, and there are no changes of heart. And “The Queen of Spades” is short; Taruskin counts the text at “barely 10,000 words.”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