Aurelia Butler

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    Beyond the Blockbusters, 7 Key Songs From 1984

    The Pointer Sisters, Minutemen and more sounds from a landmark year in pop music.The Pointer SistersAaron Rapoport/Corbis, via Getty ImagesDear listeners,If you’re halfway decent at math, you know that it is currently the 40-year anniversary of 1984 — which is not only the name of a George Orwell novel and a Van Halen album, but a particularly pivotal moment in popular music. This week, we’re running a few articles that look back at the music of 1984, beginning with a sharp, well-reported piece by Ben Sisario about the way a number of ’70s rockers (ZZ Top, Don Henley and Yes among them) rebooted their sounds and images for the brave new world of the 1980s.Most retrospectives of the year focus on the big names and the blockbuster albums: Prince’s “Purple Rain,” Madonna’s “Like a Virgin,” and Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.,” to name a few. For today’s playlist, though, I wanted to spotlight some more under-the-radar releases from that year. It was also a watershed time in underground rock, moody new wave and synth-heavy dance music, and accordingly this collection features tracks from the Replacements, Echo & the Bunnymen and the Pointer Sisters, among others. While the A-listers are the shorthand for the year’s familiar sound and aesthetic, let this playlist remind you that 1984 was also a year with many different soundtracks. Here’s one of many.I don’t wanna tame your animal style,LindsayListen along while you read.1. The Replacements: “Favorite Thing”Let’s kick things off with a propulsive track from one of my favorite 1984 releases, the Replacements’ “Let It Be.” While it’s difficult to pick just one song from such a great album, the raucous “Favorite Thing” contains what I consider one of its best moments: that bridge where the guitars drop out and the bassist Tommy Stinson briefly gets the spotlight — at least before Paul Westerberg ratchets the noise back up with a blisteringly howled, “Bar nothing!”▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube2. Minutemen: “The Glory of Man”Another of my favorite 1984 albums (and another from which it is very difficult to pick just one track, given that there are 45 of them on the original LP) is the San Pedro, Calif. punk band Minutemen’s sprawling double album “Double Nickels on the Dime.” I’ll go with this jaunty rocker — driven by the interplay between Mike Watt’s squiggly bass line and D. Boon’s blurts of guitar — because it contains one of my favorite Minutemen lyrics, “I live sweat, but I dream light-years.” Words to live by.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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    Czech Philharmonic Brings Musical Heritage to Carnegie Hall

    Over three nights, the Czech Philharmonic presented Dvorak’s concertos and more, including a rare performance of Janacek’s “Glagolitic Mass.”You could be forgiven for thinking that there has been some kind of festival going on at Carnegie Hall.Recently, its calendar has been stuffed with appearances by some of the world’s top orchestras. The Berlin Philharmonic was quickly followed by the Concertgebouw Orchestra and, for most of this week, the Czech Philharmonic. This is the programming you would get at major European festivals like Salzburg and Lucerne.And in their festival-style juxtapositions, these concerts make comparisons irresistible. If the Berlin Philharmonic pairs showy gesture with technical perfection, and the Concertgebouw Orchestra has the polish of fine jewelry, then the Czech Philharmonic is more like a timeless treasure, impressive but easy to take for granted.The Czechs, under Semyon Bychkov, their chief conductor and music director, don’t always demand your attention or affection. At Carnegie, though, this orchestra was unpretentious, even unassuming, yet dignified and impeccably balanced. Above all, the Philharmonic was an excellent steward of its country’s musical heritage.In that regard, its visit was something like a festival: a celebration of the Year of Czech Music, an occasional event that began a century ago with the centennial of Bedrich Smetana’s birth. At Carnegie Hall, where musicians typically perform on a bare stage, members of the Philharmonic sat under banners, and in front of toadstool-shaped flower arrangements in the colors of the Czech flag. The president of the Czech Republic, Petr Pavel, flew in to attend Thursday’s concert. Bychkov conducted on his handsome walnut podium from the Rudolfinum hall in Prague.The Philharmonic’s programming had the feel of cultural diplomacy, from an ensemble with a mission to tend a flame. Over three evenings, it offered Dvorak’s three concertos, as well as symphonic and choral works by Smetana, Janacek and Mahler. (Mahler, who was born in Bohemia, isn’t typically discussed as a Czech composer; his sound was more a product of his Viennese education and maturity than his birthplace. And while he may be a name that sells tickets, I wish that someone like Josef Suk, who is thoroughly in this Czech lineage and chronically absent in New York, were represented instead.)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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    9 New Songs From Rosé, Bad Bunny and More

    Hear tracks by Sky Ferreira, Bad Bunny, Sakura Tsuruta and others.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.Rosé, ‘Toxic Till the End’Born in New Zealand, and skillful and disciplined enough to join the K-pop group Blackpink, Rosé is the epitome of an international pop strategist. “Toxic Till the End,” sung entirely in English, is from her solo debut album, “Rosie,” and it’s an indictment of an ex who was “jealous and possessive, so manipulatin’ / Honestly impressive, you had me participatin’.” It uses every device at her disposal, drawing directly from the Taylor Swift and Jack Antonoff synth-pop playbook. Keyboard arpeggios lead to an arena-ready march, a breathy reconsideration, a shout that “You wasted my prettiest years!,” an acoustic moment and a big angry finish. Women’s rage at bad boyfriends is real — and commercial, too.Sky Ferreira, ‘Leash’A tsunami of grungy distortion opens “Leash,” a song Sky Ferreira wrote for the thriller “Babygirl.” It’s her first release since leaving Capitol Records, which released her lone album, “Night Time, My Time,” in 2013; she has said her long-in-the-making second album, “Masochism,” will arrive in 2025. “Leash” could easily segue out of Ferreira’s debut, as she fortifies her pop melodies with armadas of guitars, keyboards, drums and backup vocals. She sings about submission and surrender — “Wanna be caught, go down in flames” — but the heft and crunch of the music insist on her power.Bruses, ‘Coma Party’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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    ‘Trap’ and More Horror Movies to Stream Now

    This month’s picks include a sneaky serial killer, a boy’s vengeance quest and a holiday house of horrors.‘Trap’Stream it on Max.M. Night Shyamalan’s latest psychological thriller is so preposterous it makes “The Front Room,” my pick for the dumbest horror movie of 2024, look like “The Shining.” But unlike “The Front Room,” “Trap” takes itself very unseriously — God, I hope it does — and watching it was the most fun I had at a horror movie this year.Josh Hartnett stars as Cooper, a cool dad who takes his daughter, Riley (Ariel Donoghue), to a concert by her favorite pop star, Lady Raven (a charisma-free Saleka, one of the director’s daughters). Cooper keeps noticing how tight security is in and around the arena, and for good reason: Law enforcement officers are there to capture a serial killer who they think is in the audience. To save himself and his daughter from danger, Cooper desperately seeks a way out.I’ll stop there because to give away more would spoil Shyamalan’s indulgent yet effective and surprisingly unpredictable twists and tensions. (I gasped more than once.) Hartnett does God’s work, finding the right balance of darkness and comedy with material that lands somewhere between “Days of Our Lives” at its silliest and a ’70s TV action movie-of-the-week, especially in the film’s delightfully ridiculous final stretch. It’s my favorite horror comedy of 2024.‘An Angry Boy’Stream it on Tubi.Owen (Scott Callenberger) becomes the talk of his Queens neighborhood when a video of him saving a woman during an attack goes viral. But the celebration is cut short when a home invader assaults Owen and his mother, killing her in front of him. It turns out the violence circling Owen isn’t entirely random, and it sets him and a little boy he keeps seeing on the streets on a bloody, identity-twisting quest to right a long-repressed wrong.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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    Watch the Stirring Climax of ‘The Piano Lesson’

    The director Malcolm Washington narrates a sequence from the film featuring Danielle Deadwyler.In “Anatomy of a Scene,” we ask directors to reveal the secrets that go into making key scenes in their movies. See new episodes in the series on Fridays. You can also watch our collection of more than 150 videos on YouTube and subscribe to our YouTube channel.This article contains spoilers for “The Piano Lesson.”In the August Wilson play “The Piano Lesson,” its characters must wrestle, metaphorically, with a ghost from their past. In the film adaptation, directed by Malcolm Washington, that confrontation becomes more literal.In this scene, the climax, Berniece (Danielle Deadwyler) takes a seat at the piano that she has been avoiding playing for the entire film, a piano that has deep historical meaning in her family. She plays it in an effort to conjure up her ancestors and exorcise the ghost that her brother, Boy Willie (John David Washington), is fighting upstairs.“We have all of our themes converge here,” the director Malcolm Washington said in his narration of the sequence, “the idea of shadow and light, of truth and secrets, and confronting the deepest parts of ourself to get through and transcend.”Washington said that he had “wanted to tell a story of Black spiritual practice in America.” He used iconography from Black Southern Christian tradition and West African spiritual tradition: “The idea that you can call on your ancestors,” he said, “and that there’s a boundaryless relationship between the living and the dead.”Read the “Piano Lesson” review.Sign up for the Movies Update newsletter and get a roundup of reviews, news, Critics’ Picks and more. More

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    12 New Movies Our Critics Are Talking About This Week

    Whether you’re a casual moviegoer or an avid buff, our reviewers think these films are worth knowing about.The dog days of motherhood.Amy Adams channels her feral side in “Nightbitch,” directed by Marielle Heller.Searchlight Pictures‘Nightbitch’Amy Adams stars as a stay-at-home mother who turns into a feral dog in this adaptation of Rachel Yoder’s novel directed by Marielle Heller.From our review:The movie doesn’t need to convince its target audience that there’s something gravely wrong with contemporary American motherhood. … Every thinking woman who watches “Nightbitch,” and a fair share of men, too, already know that score. Given this, it’s frustrating how eager to please the movie is.In theaters. Read the full review.Critic’s PickGoing out with a bang (and a song).Tilda Swinton in “The End.”Felix Dickinson/Neon‘The End’This musical directed by Joshua Oppenheimer follows a well-off family (led by Michael Shannon and Tilda Swinton) in their lavish underground bunker as the world literally burns above them.From our review:“The End” is about one version of the end of the world, and about how the people who could have prevented it might feel when they get there. But to watch it is to think about yourself, at least if you have a conscience, and to ponder the sort of cognitive dissonance you live with every day.In theaters. Read the full review.Critic’s PickTwo sisters in a singular drama.Marianne Jean-Baptiste, left, and Michele Austin play polar-opposite sisters in “Hard Truths,” directed by Mike Leigh.Simon Mein/Thin Man Films Ltd, via Bleecker Street‘Hard Truths’The latest from the writer-director Mike Leigh centers on two sisters, Pansy (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) and Chantelle (Michele Austin), who have vastly different dispositions and outlooks on life.From our review:Leigh doesn’t put his characters on the couch or disgorge the traumas that are etched in every word and gesture. He doesn’t smooth any edges, express his views on race and class, nature and nurture, or float theories as to why Pansy seems so damaged while Chantelle shoulders life with grace. Instead, with deep feeling and lacerating and gentle words, Leigh creates a world that, like the vast, mysterious one hovering outside its frame, can seem agonizingly empty if you can’t see the people in it.In theaters. Read the full review.Critic’s PickRichard Gere and Jacob Elordi in confessional mode.Richard Gere in “Oh, Canada.”Kino LorberWe 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 the ’90s, She Was a Surprise Oscar Nominee. It May Happen Again.

    Marianne Jean-Baptiste’s lead role in “Hard Truths,” directed by Mike Leigh, is her most substantial onscreen role since “Secrets and Lies” earned them Academy Award nominations in 1997.In the spring of 2023, Marianne Jean-Baptiste was on a flight from Los Angeles to London, feeling “petrified.”The actress was off to spend the next five months working with the veteran British director Mike Leigh. As with all of Leigh’s projects, there was no script, and Jean-Baptiste didn’t know she would be playing the lead, let alone what the film would be about. It would also be the pair’s first time working together in almost 30 years.The last time Jean-Baptiste and Leigh had made a film, “Secrets and Lies,” it earned them both nominations at the 1997 Oscars, with Jean-Baptiste becoming the first Black British actress to be nominated for an Academy Award.Her supporting performance as Hortense, a coolheaded young woman meeting her live wire birth mother, launched Jean-Baptiste’s film career. In 2002, she left her hometown London for Los Angeles, and since then she has worked steadily in smaller onscreen roles, including a long stint as an FBI agent on the CBS prime-time drama “Without A Trace.”But reuniting with Leigh would give Jean-Baptiste the chance to play another complex central character. “God, I hope it goes well,” she remembered thinking on the plane. It certainly seems to have done: once again, her collaboration with Leigh is getting Oscars buzz, and on Tuesday, it won Jean-Baptiste best actress at the New York Film Critics Circle Awards.The film, “Hard Truths” which opens in limited theaters on Friday, centers on Jean-Baptiste’s Pansy, a cantankerous middle-aged woman who spits venom at unsuspecting shop assistants, bald babies, her 20-something son Moses (Tuwaine Barrett) and her dentist, among others. What ails Pansy? “She says people,” Jean-Baptiste said in a recent interview, cackling wickedly. But Pansy is hurting, and the actress finds the vulnerability beneath her character’s caustic exterior.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