Aurelia Butler

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    How I Aged Into the Bad Christmas Movie

    When I first discovered the existence of made-for-television Christmas movies, maybe 15 years ago, they struck me as sentimental and anti-feminist. Also, they seemed to be made for older people. The leads were always floundering in midlife until their romantic and professional lives were reformed through the magic of Christmas. Then, one December morning, I awoke to find that I had transformed into the target demographic. I am older now, and the movies are made just for me.The crop of Christmas movies released this year — broadcast most prominently on the Hallmark Channel, though increasingly rivaled by Netflix’s holiday machine — are sprinkled with millennial bait. They feature weathered stars from nostalgic childhood properties and crib plots and vibes from touchstone films. They have anticipated my critiques, modulating the melodrama with self-conscious winks and dialing up the sexual innuendo.Romantic comedies are about one party lowering her defenses and another raising his game until they finally meet on level ground. That’s what’s happened here: The bad Christmas movies grew more cynical, and I grew softer. As I neared the end of “Our Little Secret,” a Netflix Christmas movie starring Lindsay Lohan, I actually cried.Lindsay Lohan, star of “The Parent Trap” and “Mean Girls,” is now building a midlife holiday empire at Netflix, including “Our Little Secret.” Chuck Zlotnick/NetflixWhat’s happening to me? In recent years, my feelings about work, romantic love, big city living, small town charm and secular holiday cheer have not appreciably changed. It’s my relationship to rote sentimentality that has shifted. Recently I have felt so pummeled by stress and responsibility that I have found it difficult to turn on a compelling new television show at the end of the day. I have no extra energy to expend familiarizing myself with unknown characters, deciphering twists or even absorbing scenes of visual interest.What I’ve been looking for, instead, is a totally uncompelling new television show — one that expects nothing from me, and that gives me little in return. The bad Christmas movie’s beats are so consistent, its twists so predictable, its actors and props so loyally reused, it’s easy to relax drowsily into its rhythms. The genre is formulaic, which makes for a kind of tradition. Now it plays through the winter like a crackling fireplace in my living room.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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    For Taylor Swift, It’s the End of the ‘Eras’

    Anyone with an ear tuned to the world of pop music knew the Eras Tour was going to be a big one.It was Taylor Swift’s first tour in almost five years, the longest gap of her career. And Swift, long the biggest star in pop music, had become even bigger, transcending the Top 40 to become a cultural phenomenon.Moreover, this tour would include extensive music, not just from her most recent album, “Midnights,” but from her entire career, from the country of “Fearless” to the pop of “1989” to the indie pop of “Folklore.”The first concert came in March 2023 in Glendale, Ariz., and it was even bigger than anyone imagined: three hours, 15 minutes without intermission and more than 40 songs.And the excitement just kept building, with frenzied anticipation in every city, attendance records broken and vast economic impacts in regions and even entire countries.Tickets vanished in seconds, then quickly popped up on the secondary market at 10 times the price. Fans who couldn’t obtain or afford tickets came to the venues anyway, content to commune with others like them and sing along with the amplified music coming from inside.Now, almost two years later, the tour is coming to an end on Sunday night in Vancouver, Canada.The atmosphere outside the concert venue on Saturday night was friendly and bubbly.Alana Paterson for The New York TimesHayley Pallin from Oregon came with her family to watch the concert.Alana Paterson for The New York TimesWe 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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    Miho Nakayama, Japanese Music and Movie Star, Dies at 54

    A top-selling pop singer as a teenager in the 1980s, she also had an award-winning career as a dramatic actress.Miho Nakayama, a reigning J-pop star of the 1980s who broke through to become a critically acclaimed dramatic actress and gained international attention for her starring role in the sentimental Japanese drama “Love Letter,” died on Friday at her home in Tokyo. She was 54.Ms. Nakayama was found dead in a bathtub, according to a statement from her management company. The statement added, “We are still in the process of confirming the cause of death and other details.”The Japan Times reported that Ms. Nakayama had canceled an appearance at a Christmas concert in Osaka, Japan, scheduled for that same day, citing health issues.Ms. Nakayama — known by the affectionate nickname Miporin — rocketed to fame in 1985, becoming one of Japan’s most successful idols, as popular young entertainers there are known, with the release of her first single, “C.” That same year, she took home a Japan Record Award for best new artist.She exploded on both the big and small screens that same year with starring roles in the comedy-drama series “Maido Osawagase Shimasu” (roughly, “Sorry to Bother You All the Time”) and the film “Bi Bappu Haisukuru” (“Be-Bop High School”), an action comedy set on a dystopian campus filled with uniformed schoolgirls and brawling schoolboys.Such stories were popular teenage fare at the time, as evidenced by her subsequent role in “Sailor Fuku Hangyaku Doumei” (“The Sailor Suit Rebel Alliance”), a television series that made its debut in 1986, in which Ms. Nakayama played a member of a group of martial arts-savvy girls who squared off against wrongdoers at a violence-marred high school.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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    Ruby Slippers From ‘Wizard of Oz’ Sell for $28 Million at Auction

    The slippers worn by Judy Garland in “The Wizard of Oz” were stolen from the museum that bears her name in 2005 before investigators recovered them in 2018.The ruby slippers that Judy Garland wore as Dorothy in the 1939 production of “The Wizard of Oz” were sold for a record-breaking $28 million on Saturday during an auction in the latest turn for one of the most recognizable and storied artifacts in film history.Heritage Auctions sold the slippers on behalf of a collector, Michael Shaw, who owned them. The slippers are one of only four known surviving pairs worn by Ms. Garland in the movie.The auction house did not immediately disclose the identity of the buyer.The final bid of $28 million was the largest sum spent at an auction for a piece of entertainment memorabilia, the auction house said. It exceeded the previous record-holder, Marilyn Monroe’s subway dress from the 1955 film “The Seven Year Itch,” which sold in 2011 for $5.52 million with fees, the auction house said. Including taxes and fees, the slippers sold for $32.5 million.During the auction, which was peppered with “Wicked” and “Wizard of Oz” references and puns, the auctioneer excitedly held a crouching position — like the Wicked Witch of the West in the story — as he pointed to people around the room, who called out bids in $100,000 increments. At times, a bidder, often on the phone with a client, would elevate the top bid by $800,000 or more, which garnered some stifled “ooohs” and “ahhhs” from attendees.In addition to being featured in some of the most famous scenes in one of the most popular movies in film history, the slippers have an intriguing story that have added to their lore.Mr. Shaw had lent the slippers to the Judy Garland Museum in Grand Rapids, Minn., where they were stolen on Aug. 27, 2005. F.B.I. agents set up a sting operation and recovered the slippers in Minneapolis in July 2018. A Minnesota man, Terry Martin, was later indicted and pleaded guilty to the theft.The authorities believed Mr. Martin was under the impression that the slippers were made with real rubies, which he planned to sell. The rubies, however, were made of glass.During the film’s production, the costume team made at least four pairs of the slippers for Ms. Garland to wear in case one of the slippers was ruined, according to Rhys Thomas, who wrote “The Ruby Slippers of Oz,” a book about their history.Although the slippers looked nearly identical, a consultant for the Smithsonian analyzed slight differences in the pairs and determined that the ones that were sold on Saturday were in many of the most famous scenes of the movie.Large portions of the famous “We’re Off the See the Wizard” song feature Ms. Garland skipping in the bright red, $28 million shoes.This is a developing story. More

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    Silvia Pinal, Golden Age Star of Mexican Cinema, Is Dead

    She found outsize success in her native land and gained international recognition for her work with the acclaimed Spanish surrealist director Luis Buñuel.Silvia Pinal, an award-winning actress who was considered one of the great stars of Mexico’s golden age of cinema, and who earned worldwide acclaim for her work with the groundbreaking Spanish-born Surrealist director Luis Buñuel, died on Nov. 28 in Mexico City.Her death, in a hospital, was announced on social media by President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico, who said that Ms. Pinal’s “cinematic and theatrical talent is part of Mexico’s cultural memory.” She was generally believed to be 93, although some news reports gave her age as 94.A star of both stage and screen, the golden-haired Ms. Pinal, who collected more than 100 film and television credits in a career that began in the late 1940s, was known for balancing urbane glamour with saucy humor and sensuality.The Mexican television network Las Estrellas posted on social media that she was her country’s “last diva.” She starred with celebrated leading men like Pedro Infante, the dashing screen idol and celebrated ranchera singer; Germán Valdés, known as Tin-Tan; and the comedy heavyweight Mario Morena, known as Cantinflas.Ms. Pinal won her first of three competitive Ariel Awards — the Mexican equivalent of an Oscar — as best supporting actress for her performance in the 1952 film “Un Rincón Cerca del Cielo” (“A Corner Near Heaven”), which starred Mr. Infante as a poor man who encounters love and hardship after moving to Mexico City.The award helped vault her to lead actress status, and she enhanced her budding stardom with a sultry performance in the 1955 thriller “Un Extraño en la Escalera” (“A Stranger on the Stairs”). The next year, she teamed with Mr. Infante again in the comedy “El Inocente” (“The Innocent”), in which she played a moneyed and capricious woman who takes up with an auto mechanic.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 Interview’: Tilda Swinton Would Like a Word with Trump About His Mother

    Unexpected, even uncanny, connections sometimes arise in this job. An interviewee might, for example, raise an idea that chimes with something I’ve long been thinking about. Or I’ll find while doing research that someone’s work illuminates a problem I’d been dealing with. Two such surprises occurred with this week’s subject, the Academy Award-winning actress Tilda Swinton. Both shaped my feeling about the ensuing conversation, though in very different ways.Listen to the Interview With Tilda SwintonThe Academy Award-winning actress discusses her lifelong quest for connection, humanity’s innate goodness and the point of being alive.Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Amazon | iHeart | NYT Audio AppThe first: In a book of sketches and musings by the British writer John Berger called “Bento’s Sketchbook,” one drawing has always mesmerized me. It’s of an androgynous face with almond-shaped, almost alien eyes, and it exudes a deeply human compassion. That sketch is labeled, simply, “Tilda,” and I hadn’t much thought about upon whom it was based. Until, that is, when in preparation for my interview with Swinton, I watched a documentary she co-directed about Berger. In it, she mentions “Bento’s Sketchbook” — and a lightbulb went on. I’d long admired that sketch and Swinton’s daring, shape-shifting acting — in her avant-garde films with her mentor and friend Derek Jarman, her indie collaborations with directors like Bong Joon Ho and Wes Anderson and her Hollywood triumphs like “Michael Clayton” and the “Chronicles of Narnia” trilogy — but I’d never put together that I’d been entranced by the same person, the same presence, the whole time. I couldn’t help taking that as a good omen for the interview.The second connection was harder to interpret. Readers of this column may remember that my last Q&A was with a doctor about medical aid in dying — a subject with which I’ve had recent personal experience. Swinton’s upcoming film, “The Room Next Door,” directed by the great Pedro Almodóvar and opening in select theaters on Dec. 20, is about — and I swear I didn’t know this ahead of time — a distressingly similar topic. In the movie, Swinton plays a woman named Martha, who asks her friend Ingrid, played by Julianne Moore, to support her decision to die by suicide after becoming terminally ill. I would have felt disingenuous not to be open about this coincidence with Swinton, but I also wasn’t exactly eager to explore it. She, as it turns out, felt otherwise.“The Room Next Door” is based on a novel by Sigrid Nunez, “What Are You Going Through,” which takes its title from a quote by the French philosopher Simone Weil: “The love of our neighbor in all its fullness simply means being able to say to him, what are you going through?” So what are you going through? I’m enjoying right now the attention to that question, and the fact that our film puts that question into the air. The idea of bearing witness, and the question of what is friendship, but even more than friendship, what is it to coexist? What is it to not look away? I think of it actually as a political film.I have questions about that, but I want to preface them by sharing what I hope is a morbidly humorous anecdote. Sounds good! More

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    Indiana Jones Chooses Wisely: The Biggest Voice in Gaming

    Troy Baker, the industry’s go-to voice actor, channels a young Harrison Ford in the action-adventure Indiana Jones and the Great Circle.When Todd Howard heard the name Troy Baker, he could not help but roll his eyes.For months, the team behind Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, a first-person action-adventure video game based on the film franchise, had been discussing who to cast as the charismatic archaeologist. (The 82-year-old Harrison Ford, it was decided early on, would not be reprising the role.) The game’s performance director was pushing for Baker. But Howard, who is its executive producer and previously led several Elder Scrolls and Fallout games, was unconvinced.“I’m not putting Troy Baker in my game,” Howard told the team, “just because that’s what you do.”Baker, a veteran voice actor with more than 150 video game credits, is sympathetic to this perspective. He is one of the industry’s most recognizable names, turning up in multiplayer shooters, comic book fighting games, online battle royale hits and Japanese role-playing games.Indiana Jones and the Great Circle uses a young Harrison Ford’s likeness, but Baker provided the motion capture for the character.MachineGamesHe earned enthusiastic acclaim playing Joel Miller, the morally conflicted hero of the postapocalyptic drama The Last of Us, and won legions of fans as the voice of Booker DeWitt, the disgraced Pinkerton agent turned class liberator in the steampunk BioShock Infinite. He has played Batman, Superman, the Joker and Robin, each in a different game. He has played countless numbers of soldiers, aliens and demons in franchises like Call of Duty, Final Fantasy and Mortal Kombat. If you have played a video game in the past two decades, you have probably heard him speak.He is aware that it is a lot.“I think that there is this misconception that people just call me up and put me in their game,” Baker, 48, said last month from a hotel in London. “What people don’t understand is that it’s more often like the Todd Howard situation, where someone is going, ‘No, don’t give me that.’ And I think to a certain extent that’s what they should be thinking. This industry owes me nothing, man.”Howard came around after hearing Baker’s audition tape. Axel Torvenius, the game’s director, said the tape was so good that it was actually disorienting. By the time his team cued up Baker’s recording, Torvenius had spent hours comparing auditions with snippets of dialogue from “Indiana Jones” movies.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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    1984: The Year Pop Stardom Got Supersized

    Forty years ago, the chemistry of pop stardom was irrevocably changed. Nineteen eighty-four was an inflection point: a year of blockbuster albums, career quantum leaps, iconic poses and an enduring redefinition of what pop success could mean for performers — and would then demand from them — in the decades to come.The indelible albums of 1984 were turning-point releases: Prince’s “Purple Rain,” Madonna’s “Like a Virgin” and Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.” among them. Tina Turner reintroduced herself as a bruised but resilient survivor on “Private Dancer.” And Van Halen proved that hard rock could mesh with pop — even synth-pop — on “Jump.” These were pivotal statements from established acts who were decisively multiplying their impact.Those blockbusters were propelled by an unlikely convergence of artistic impulses, advancing technology, commercial aspirations and popular taste, all shaped by the narrow portals of the pre-internet media landscape. The eye-popping novelty of music videos, the dominance of major record labels and the cautious formats of radio stations still made for a limited, recognizable mainstream rather than the infinitude of choices, niches, microgenres and personalized recommendation engines that the internet opened up. It was a peak moment of pop-music monoculture. Listeners in the 1980s absorbed hits that felt like ubiquitous earworms: the fanfare-like synthesizer riff of “Born in the U.S.A.,” the saxophone cushioned by synthesizers in George Michael’s “Careless Whisper,” the drone and percussion and bawled vocals of “Shout” by Tears for Fears. Younger generations have definitely heard and seen their repercussions, whether or not they’ve played back the originals. The sounds and lessons of 1984 have been durable and widely recycled by countless synthesizer-pumped 21st-century hitmakers, among them the Weeknd (“Blinding Lights”) and Sabrina Carpenter (“Please Please Please”). More