Aurelia Butler

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    How to Watch the SAG Awards

    In a wide-open best picture race, the awards, which are streaming on Netflix, could offer some clarity.This year’s Oscars best picture race is, for the first time in years, wide open.Will the newly ascendant front-runner “Anora,” Sean Baker’s Palme d’Or winner about a stripper who impulsively marries the son of a Russian oligarch, take the statuette? Will Brady Corbet’s epic “The Brutalist” find its way to the top? And what about the wild card, the papal thriller “Conclave,” which recently took top honors at the EE British Academy Film Awards, or BAFTAs — Britain’s version of the Oscars?With the days ticking down until the March 2 Academy Awards ceremony, the Screen Actors Guild Awards could offer some clarity. In four of the past five years, the SAGs have given their top honor — best ensemble — to the eventual Oscar winner.The 15 awards, which are voted on by actors and other performers who belong to the SAG-AFTRA union, honor the best film and television performances from the past year. The movie musical “Wicked” and the FX series “Shogun” are the leading nominees.Here’s how to watch, and what to watch for.What time does the show start, and where can I watch?The two-hour ceremony begins at 8 p.m. Eastern time (5 p.m. Pacific time) at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, a historic venue that has also hosted the Oscars. For the second year, the awards show will stream live and exclusively on Netflix; there is no way to watch without a subscription.Is there a red carpet?The red carpet preshow will stream live on Netflix beginning at 7 p.m. Eastern time (4 p.m. Pacific time). The YouTube star Lilly Singh and the actress and former “Saturday Night Live” comedian Sasheer Zamata will host the event, which will include interviews with nominees and the announcement of the winners in the best stunt ensemble categories.Who is hosting?Kristen Bell, who recently starred in the Netflix rom-com “Nobody Wants This,” will steer the ship. This will be her second time hosting; the first was in 2018.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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    Carlos Diegues, Filmmaker Who Celebrated Brazil’s Diversity, Dies at 84

    Seeking to shed the gauzy influence of Hollywood and focus on Brazil’s ethnic richness and troubled history, he helped forge a new path for his country’s cinema.Carlos Diegues, a film director who celebrated Brazil’s ethnic richness and its social turbulence, helping to forge a new path for cinema in his country, died on Feb. 14 in Rio de Janeiro. He was 84.His death, in a hospital, was announced by the Brazilian Academy of Letters, of which he was a member. The academy said the cause was complications of surgery. The Rio newspaper O Globo, for which Mr. Diegues wrote a column, reported that he had suffered “cardiocirculatory complications” before the surgery.Mr. Diegues, who was known as Cacá, was a founder of Cinema Novo, the modern school of Brazilian cinema that combined Italian Neo-Realism, documentary style and uniquely Latin American fantasy. He focused on hitherto marginal groups — Afro-Brazilians, the poor, disoriented provincials in an urbanizing Brazil — and was the first Brazilian director to employ Black actors as protagonists, in “Ganga Zumba,” (1963), a narrative of enslavement and revolt that was an early cinematic foray into Brazil’s history of racial violence.The often lyrical results, expressed over the course of 60 years in dozens of features and documentaries, charmed audiences in his own country and abroad, though critics sometimes reproached him for loose screenplays and rough-edged camera work.José Wilker, left, and Principe Nabor in “Bye Bye Brazil” (1979). Mr. Diegues’s international breakthrough, it was nominated for a Palme d’Or at Cannes.Ademir Silva/LC Barreto Productions, via New Yorker FilmsMr. Diegues’s international breakthrough film, “Bye Bye Brazil” (1979), nominated for a Palme d’Or at Cannes, is considered the apotheosis of his dramatic visual style and of his preoccupation with those on the margins of Brazilian society. It follows a feckless group of rascally street performers through the outback, documenting a vanishing Brazil where citizens in remote towns are beguiled by fake falling snowflakes — actually shredded coconut — and hypnotized, literally, by a rare communal television set.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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    Cover Bob Mould in a Weighted Blanket, and Turn on Vintage Wrestling

    The veteran rocker, who’s releasing his 15th album, discusses the thrills of an exclusive techno club and loving “Only Murders in the Building.”Last fall, after an especially blistering concert overseas, the veteran rocker Bob Mould walked offstage and realized he couldn’t breathe. “I’d thrown myself so hard into the physicality of the show that I hyperventilated for about 15 minutes,” the musician, 64, said. “It was just one of those shows where I was like, ‘Did I leave a quart of blood up there tonight?’”Such energy-expending performances are typical for Mould, who’s been a regular on the road since venues reopened after pandemic shutdowns (“I was making up for lost time,” he said). His live gigs informed many of the songs on “Here We Go Crazy,” Mould’s 15th studio album. Due March 7, it finds the onetime Hüsker Dü and Sugar frontman piling on the sort of speedy riffs, dead-center hooks and scream-of-consciousness lyrics that have defined much of Mould’s nearly 50-year career. Many of the tracks were fine-tuned from the stage, with Mould keeping a close eye on the crowd whenever he was test-driving a new tune.“Sometimes you see people’s head bobbing, and they’re poking each other, like, ‘This is a good one,’” Mould said in a phone interview.” And sometimes there’s just a little golf clap, and I’m like, ‘OK. Got it.’”In a phone call from Palm Springs, Calif., where Mould lives part-time — he also resides in San Francisco — the musician discussed the rituals and getaways that get his blood pumping, both at home and on tour. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.Morning Walks at Ocean Beach, San FranciscoI have really bad tinnitus from work — I mean, I will never have silence again. So one of my favorite things in life is to get up before the sun comes up, and just walk for two hours. It’s one of the few places where I can get my head right, because all I can hear is the sound of the ocean.GamesThis is so pandering, but no matter where I am, before I look at the news or start returning calls, I get on The New York Times Games app. Spelling Bee is addictive — if I don’t get Genius on it every day, I get really upset. And when I’m home with the husband, we play a lot of Catan, which is quite fun.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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    Voletta Wallace, the Notorious B.I.G.’s Mother, Dies at 78

    She played the rapper music as a child, stood by his side during his meteoric career and navigated the legal and artistic questions that arose after his killing.Voletta Wallace, the mother of the Brooklyn rapper the Notorious B.I.G., whose stewardship of her son’s career and legacy after he was killed in 1997 helped cement him as a hip-hop legend, died on Friday. She was 78.Ms. Wallace died in hospice care at her residence in Stroudsburg, Pa., according to a news release from the Monroe County coroner, Thomas Yanac. A cause was not specified.A middle-class immigrant and single mother from Jamaica, Ms. Wallace was forced into the hip-hop spotlight after the Notorious B.I.G., born Christopher Wallace and also known as Biggie Smalls, was killed at 24 in a Los Angeles drive-by shooting.Biggie’s death came just six months after the Las Vegas slaying of the rapper Tupac Shakur, a onetime friend turned bitter rival, with the killings abruptly ending a formative and fruitful moment in mainstream gangster rap amid a tangled East Coast-West Coast beef that went far beyond music.For decades, both cases remained unsolved, fueling an ongoing ecosystem of true-crime books, documentaries, articles and more that have attempted to explain the possible links between the two killings, including the involvement of national gangs and crooked cops. (In 2023, prosecutors in Las Vegas charged Duane Keith Davis, a former gang leader known as Keffe D, with murder in the Shakur case; he is set to stand trial later this year.)Ms. Wallace, a preschool teacher, took on the mantle of her son’s career almost immediately. Biggie’s second album, “Life After Death,” came out two weeks after he died; six months later, Ms. Wallace accepted the MTV Video Music Award for best rap video (“Hypnotize”), telling the New York crowd, “I know if my son was here tonight, the first thing he would’ve done is say big up to Brooklyn.”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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    Coming Soon to Trump’s Kennedy Center: A Celebration of Christ

    President Trump took control of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington only last week. But his administration is already making plans for reshaping the institution’s programming.Chief among them: a celebration of Christ planned for December. Richard Grenell, whom Mr. Trump named as the Kennedy Center’s new president, told a conservative gathering on Friday that the “big change” at the center would be that “we are doing a big, huge celebration of the birth of Christ at Christmas.”“How crazy is it to think that we’re going to celebrate Christ at Christmas with a big traditional production, to celebrate what we are all celebrating in the world during Christmastime, which is the birth of Christ?” Mr. Grenell said at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Oxon Hill, Md.The Kennedy Center has long held Christmas-themed events.Last December, the center hosted “A Candlelight Christmas” by the Washington Chorus; “A Family Christmas” by the Choral Arts Society of Washington; and “Go Tell It,” a Christmas celebration by the Alfred Street Baptist Church, a prominent Black church in Virginia. (On Sunday, the church said it would cancel its Christmas concert there this year because the Kennedy Center’s new leaders stood in opposition to the “longstanding tradition of honoring artistic expression across all backgrounds.”)Mr. Grenell’s comments were his first public remarks in which he discussed his plans as the Kennedy Center’s new leader. His appointment was part of a series of extraordinary actions Mr. Trump took to solidify control over the Kennedy Center, which has been a bipartisan institution throughout its 54-year history.Mr. Trump, who stayed away from the Kennedy Center Honors during his first term after some of the artists being honored criticized him, stunned the cultural world when he decided this month to purge the center’s board of all Biden appointees and install himself as chairman, ousting the financier David M. Rubenstein, the center’s largest donor. The new board fired Deborah F. Rutter, the center’s president for more than a decade, and the post was given to Mr. Grenell, a Trump loyalist who was ambassador to Germany during the president’s first term.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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    Tate McRae Dances in and Out of Love, and 10 More New Songs

    Hear tracks by Ledisi, Perfume Genius featuring Aldous Harding, Smerz 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.Tate McRae, ‘Revolving Door’A lack of instantly recognizable, stylistically defining hits — aside from the slinky, irresistible 2023 smash “Greedy” — has somehow not stopped the 21-year-old singer and dancer Tate McCrae’s star from rising over the past few years. She dips into a more promising and vulnerable sound on the moody, pulsating “Revolving Door,” the latest single from her just-released third album, “So Close to What.” “I keep coming back like a revolving door,” she sings on a chorus that thumps like an anxious heartbeat, “saying I couldn’t want you less, but I just want you more.” A McCrae single is still only as good as the choreography in its accompanying music video, and by that measure, it’s one of her strongest yet. LINDSAY ZOLADZPerfume Genius featuring Aldous Harding, ‘No Front Teeth’Perfume Genius (Mike Hadreas) and Aldous Harding share “No Front Teeth,” a surreal excursion that seesaws between pretty folk-Baroque pop and noisy, neo-psychedelic rock. Perfume Genius sings about being shattered; Harding answers him with a high, angelic call for “better days.” The video just adds more layers to the conundrum. JON PARELESHurray for the Riff Raff, ‘Pyramid Scheme’On this heartfelt one-off single, Alynda Segarra returns to the gentle folk-rock sound they honed on “The Past Is Still Alive,” the excellent album they released last year as Hurray for the Riff Raff. “This is not a scene, it’s a pyramid scheme,” they sing, pointing to a larger feeling of social collapse that, as the song progresses, dovetails with personal struggle. “I don’t know who you want me to be,” Segarra sings. “And I don’t know, and that terrifies me.” ZOLADZSleigh Bells, ‘Bunky Pop’The latest blast from the Sleigh Bells album due in April, “Bunky Becky Birthday Boy,” memorializes Alexis Krauss’s dog, who died in 2023. “Nights are long here without you,” she sings. But the song is manic and upbeat, swerving from electro to power-chorded pop, with eruptions of thrash drumming and tangents of dissonance — mourning by celebrating. PARELESMamalarky, ‘#1 Best of All Time’Mamalarky makes musicianly antics sound nonchalant on its new album, “Hex Key.” The singer and guitarist Livvy Bennett breezes through the self-satisfaction of “#1 Best of All Time,” declaring, “I always win even when I fall.” Her voice stays casual (and doesn’t worry about being a little flat) while the beat hurtles ahead and the chords take unlikely chromatic turns. The biggest boast is making it sound so easy. PARELESWe 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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    Jerry Butler, Singer Known as the Iceman, Dies at 85

    Jerry Butler, the graceful singer and songwriter who served as the first leader of the Impressions before launching a long, hit-heavy solo career, died on Thursday at his home in Chicago. He was 85.His death was confirmed by his assistant, who said that Mr. Butler had Parkinson’s disease.Mr. Butler’s resounding baritone voice, though gritty in timbre, was animated by gentility and charm; he approached a lyric with an almost courtly level of sensitivity. His poise explained, in part, how he came to be known as the Iceman.Mr. Butler scored his first hit in 1958 with “For Your Precious Love,” a song he recorded with the Impressions and wrote with two other members of the group. It reached No. 11 on Billboard’s pop chart. Its lyrics stressed perseverance and loyalty, themes Mr. Butler would revisit throughout his career.Immediately after leaving the group in 1960, he reached the Billboard Top 10 with “He Will Break Your Heart,” which he wrote with his bandmate Curtis Mayfield and Calvin Carter. The song proved durable: A reworked version by Tony Orlando and Dawn, “He Don’t Love You (Like I Love You),” would become a No. 1 hit more than a decade later.Mr. Butler’s version of “Moon River,” the Henry Mancini-Johnny Mercer song from the movie “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” climbed to No. 11 on the pop chart in 1961. The next year, his interpretation of Burt Bacharach and Hal David’s “Make It Easy on Yourself” reached No. 20.Two years later, he reached the Top 10 again with “Let It Be Me,” a duet with Betty Everett. It performed even better than the Everly Brothers’ version, widely considered a classic: The Butler-Everett version reached No. 5, two points higher than the Everlys had reached in 1960.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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    A Playlist Packed With Crossword Clues

    Sia! Abba! ELO! Let us help you solve some puzzles with this compilation of songs by crossword-famous musicians.Sia, pictured without cheap thrills.Kevin Winter/BBMA2020, via Getty ImagesDear listeners,In 2012, shortly after the death of the legendary blues musician Etta James, the writer Matt Gaffney provided a somewhat unconventional eulogy on the website Slate, remembering James as “a woman whose handy, four-letter first name has gotten us out of many tough corners and spared us countless painful rewrites.”Gaffney is a crossword puzzle writer, and in this article he amusingly defined a specific type of renown: James was a perfect example of someone who was “crossword-famous.”If you do enough crossword puzzles (as I certainly do; shout out to my esteemed colleagues in The New York Times Games department for enabling my habit), you start to see certain names over and over. (Brian) Eno. (Yoko) Ono. And yes, Etta (James). Why these and not others? Gaffney explained, “short groupings of common letters are the lifeblood of crosswords, and you’ll need a lot of them if you want to make things work. For that reason, crossword-famous names are likely to be three, four or five letters long, with as many 1-point Scrabble letters as possible.”Today’s playlist is a compilation of songs by crossword-famous musicians. You’ll hear the aforementioned Eno, Ono and Etta, as well as a few more recent entrants into the pantheon of crossword fame: Sia, Adele and Ariana Grande. A certain Guthrie is also on this playlist, though avid crossword solvers know that the most famous folk singer with that last name is not necessarily the most crossword-famous.If you’re new to the art of solving crossword puzzles, I hope today’s playlist gives you some pointers — along with some enjoyable tunes. And if you’re more of an advanced puzzler who doesn’t pay much attention to popular music, this playlist should teach you a thing or two. Grab a pencil (or if you’re feeling especially confident, a pen), load up today’s New York Times crossword and press play.I feel like I win when I lose,LindsayWe 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