Aurelia Butler

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    Jimmy Buffett’s Widow Sues in Battle Over $275 Million Estate

    Jane Buffett wants a court to replace her co-trustee, claiming that he mistreated her and neglected to provide key financial information.A vicious legal battle has erupted over Jimmy Buffett’s $275 million estate, with his widow and his accountant filing lawsuits this week seeking to remove each other as co-trustees of a trust containing the “Margaritaville” singer’s sprawling holdings.The widow, Jane Buffett, is angry with the way her husband’s estate has been managed since his death nearly two years ago and has filed a petition seeking to oust her co-trustee, the accountant Richard Mozenter. She complains that the marital trust set up by the singer — who built a musical empire off his laid-back, beach-bum persona and infectious, often self-deprecating country-rock and calypso-inflected songs — is producing far too little income.Mrs. Buffett asked a judge in Los Angeles Superior Court on Tuesday to appoint an independent third party to replace Mr. Mozenter. Her petition accused Mr. Mozenter of failing to provide her with basic information about the trust’s assets and finances, keeping her “in the dark with regard to the state of her own finances.” The complaint also said that Mr. Mozenter had “belittled, disrespected and condescended to Mrs. Buffett.”“As a result, the majority of Mrs. Buffett’s net worth is controlled by someone she does not trust, and to whom the trust for her benefit must pay enormous fees — more than $1.7 million in 2024 to him and his firm — no matter how badly he treats her,” the petition said.Mr. Mozenter filed his own lawsuit in Palm Beach County, Fla., this week, asking the court to remove Ms. Buffett as co-trustee. His suit said that he was a “trusted financial adviser” to Mr. Buffett for more than 30 years and that he was also the singer’s business manager.He claimed that during their partnership, Mr. Buffett expressed concerns about his wife’s ability to manage and control his assets after his death. The singer was careful to set up the trust “in a manner that precluded Jane from having actual control” over it, the lawsuit said. “Other than serving as a noncontrolling trustee, Jane has no ability to manage the trust,” the filing said. “This fact has made Jane very angry.”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

    Chefs Pick Their Favorite Food Films

    Nancy Silverton, Daniela Soto-Innes and more talk about the movies that have inspired and continue to reignite their love of cooking.The rigor and schedule of professional cooking don’t allow for many movie nights, but that’s not to say chefs don’t find inspiration on the big screen. When we asked a handful of food-world figures about the films that make them want to cook or eat or both, they spoke about narratives that remind them of the joy of a leisurely meal, food’s ability to comfort and what drove them to cook in the first place. Here, 11 chefs discuss the food films, old and new, that still excite them.From left: Philippe Noiret, Ugo Tognazzi and Andréa Ferréo in the 1973 film “La Grande Bouffe,” directed by Marco Ferreri.Collection Christophel/Alamy Ruth Rogers, 76, chef and owner of the River Café, London: “La Grande Bouffe” (1973)I saw this film when I was living in Paris, in 1973. We were there because Richard [the architect Richard Rogers, Ruth’s late husband] was building the Pompidou Center. The movie was quite controversial when it came out. It’s about a group of friends who decide they’re going to eat themselves to death. They get together and start to binge. These four men just absolutely love to eat; it’s their great thing in life. My husband and I loved this movie, so we decided to judge people on whether or not the film made them hungry or disgusted. We, of course, were hungry. Years later, I was having lunch with Francis Ford Coppola, and he told me it was his favorite food movie too.Kel Mitchell, left, and Kenan Thompson in the 1997 film “Good Burger,” directed by Brian Robbins.© Paramount/Everett CollectionCharlie Mitchell, 32, chef of Saga, New York City: “Good Burger” (1997)I watched “Good Burger” again this year. I’m from Detroit but I live in New York City, and when I’m homesick I usually get nostalgic for food, music or films. I must’ve been in elementary school the first time I saw it, probably on VHS. I always connected with the character [Ed (played by Kel Mitchell), a cashier at the burger restaurant where the film is set]. He’s in his own world, and he creates this sauce that everyone loves. I felt like I was the only person in my friend group and community who was interested in food at a young age: Everyone was loving Dragon Ball Z and I enjoyed cooking dinner for my mom or cooking with my grandmother on the weekend. So “Good Burger” was about connecting with that character who was in his own world having so much fun cooking.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

    Mara Corday Dead: Actress and Pinup Model Was 95

    She appeared in magazines like Playboy and sci-fi films in the 1950s. Later, in Clint Eastwood’s “Sudden Impact,” she was a hostage until he uttered five famous words.In the 1950s, Mara Corday — a nightclub showgirl and popular pinup model — was a star of three science-fiction thrillers, including “Tarantula” (1955), in which she fled from a 100-foot-tall spider that had escaped from a laboratory.“The whole world is after him,” Ms. Corday told the gossip columnist Hedda Hopper that year about the terrifying arachnid. “He’s a pretty unhappy spider, I can tell you. I’m a lady scientist, and Leo Carroll and John Agar are playing two top roles.”At a time when sci-fi cinema was focused on subjects like alien invasions, space exploration and nuclear paranoia, Ms. Corday was cast in B-movie tales about nasty, gigantic creatures.In 1957, Ms. Corday played a mathematician in “The Giant Claw,” in which a gigantic bird tears down buildings and foments panic.Columbia Pictures, via LMPC/Getty ImagesIn 1957, she played a mathematician in “The Giant Claw,” in which a gigantic bird (first thought to be a U.F.O.) tears down buildings and foments panic. She returned that year to outsize insects, as a rancher in “The Black Scorpion,” about giant scorpions threatening the countryside after rising out of a volcanic eruption in Mexico.Ms. Corday was a rancher in “The Black Scorpion” (1957) about giant scorpions that threaten the countryside in Mexico.Warner Bros, via LMPC/Getty ImagesWe 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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    Billy Joel Documentary ‘And So It Goes’ Traces His Early Days

    The first half of the HBO documentary premiered at the Tribeca Festival on Wednesday night. Joel, who is fighting a brain disorder, sent a message via its directors.The Tribeca Festival’s opening-night premiere of the upcoming HBO documentary “Billy Joel: And So It Goes” was marked, in part, by the absence of Billy Joel himself. Late last month, the musician announced that he was canceling all of his upcoming concerts because of a brain disorder called normal pressure hydrocephalus, which has led to problems with his hearing, vision and balance.After Robert De Niro called Joel “the poet laureate of New York” and helped introduce the film with a dramatic reading of some of his lyrics (“He works at Mr. Cacciatore’s down on Sullivan Street,” he intoned), one of the film’s co-directors, Susan Lacy, told the Beacon Theater audience that Joel sent his greetings — with typical wry humor: “In fact, he said, ‘Getting old sucks, but it’s still preferable to getting cremated.’” The audience roared with laughter. On a note of encouragement, Lacy said Joel “will be back.”The crowd broke out into applause throughout the screening, which included just the first part of the two-part film. It still ran nearly two and a half hours as it covered Joel’s childhood and rise to fame through his infamous 1982 motorcycle accident. (To put that in perspective: It doesn’t get to the writing of “Uptown Girl.” No Christie Brinkley yet.)There are pictures and footage of early Joel performances and stories about the surprisingly robust Long Island rock scene of the 1960s. But “Part One” is largely an intimate portrait of Joel’s relationship with his first wife, Elizabeth Weber, who would eventually become his manager, and it elevates her to a starring role in his life. It also features a host of stories about the making of some of his best-known songs, and tidbits about his Long Island obstinance. Here’s some of what we learned.As Joel’s relationship with Weber first foundered, he attempted suicide twice.Joel and Weber’s relationship began in dramatic fashion: She was married to Jon Small, Joel’s early bandmate, and had a son with him. Joel and Small first played together in a group named the Hassles, then broke off to start a Led Zeppelin-inspired metal outfit called Attila. (An album cover shoot featuring a longhaired Joel standing amid sides of raw beef, wearing fur, is something to behold.) Eventually, Joel fell in love with Weber, but when a guilt-ridden Joel shared his feelings with Small, he got punched in the nose and Weber left.Despondent, Joel overdosed on pills and was in a coma for days. His sister, Judy Molinari, who had provided the pills to help him sleep, recounts her guilt onscreen. “I felt that I killed him,” she says. Joel drank a bottle of furniture polish in another attempt on his life. After moving back into his mother’s house, he checked into an observation ward where his own struggles were put into perspective. From there he started to channel his feelings into music, and the songs that he wrote as a result of the experience would become his first solo album, “Cold Spring Harbor.” After about a year, Weber re-entered his life.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

    At Combs Trial, ‘Jane,’ an Ex-Girlfriend, to Testify About Sex Abuse

    Prosecutors say the woman, who will take the stand under a pseudonym, endured coerced sex marathons called “freak-offs.” The defense contends they were consensual.A second woman who prosecutors say was sex trafficked by Sean Combs is set to take the stand on Thursday at his federal trial in what is expected to be several days of testimony about drug-fueled sex marathons with male prostitutes known as “freak-offs.”A judge has allowed the woman to testify anonymously, and she is being referred to in court by the pseudonym “Jane.” She is the most significant witness since Casandra Ventura, Mr. Combs’s on-and-off girlfriend of 11 years, whose allegations of physical and sexual abuse gave rise to the criminal case.Prosecutors have said that Jane’s relationship with Mr. Combs mirrored the one he had with Ms. Ventura in many ways. Like Ms. Ventura, they have said, Jane was coerced into freak-offs through violence, financial control and threats related to videos of the sexual encounters, which they said Mr. Combs directed step by step.Unlike Ms. Ventura, who is a singer known as Cassie and a public celebrity, Jane’s identity has not been revealed.The government has described Jane as a single mother who started spending time with Mr. Combs in 2020 and quickly fell in love with the music mogul, agreeing to participate in an initial freak-off to please him.“Jane thought the first freak-off was a one-time, wild night,” Emily Johnson, one of the prosecutors, said at the start of the case. “Jane was 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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    ‘Sunlight’ Review: A Man Wakes Up in a Camper, Monkey at the Wheel

    In Nina Conti’s absurdist love story, a radio host and a new friend have nowhere to go but up.When it comes to monkey costumes, you can keep your “Better Man” biopic C.G.I. Nina Conti’s “Sunlight” brings its own bizarro, handmade appeal: A gnarly love story that starts with a guy waking up in an RV driven by a simian-suited stranger. It’s a movie within the indie subgenre of comic encounters between lost outsiders, but powered by its own fringe logic of attraction and rebellion.The stranger in the toylike disguise turns out to be a woman (Conti) fleeing her manipulative stepfather, who took over her mother’s motel. That’s where she found Roy (Shenoah Allen) after a failed suicide attempt in his room. Her name, we eventually learn, is Jane. The RV actually belongs to Roy, a mild-mannered radio host burdened by a hectoring mom and tough memories of his deceased father.Not exactly a meet-cute, but their cracked road trip never loses its warmth under the New Mexico sun. The big question looms: Just who is Jane, and why the blank-eyed monkey suit? But we also wonder how Roy got to his wit’s end. “Sunlight” essentially follows two people helping each other extract and preserve what’s left of their sanity and will to live.Conti bases Jane’s furry alter-ego on her monkey ventriloquist act, part of her career in British TV and theater. A little of “Sunlight,” which she directs and co-wrote with Allen, goes a long way. But there’s still something to seeing a performer go for broke, purging a character’s shame and despair through a screwy, confessional sense of humor.SunlightNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 36 minutes. In theaters. More

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    ‘The Ritual’ Review: An Exorcism to Forget

    Al Pacino speaks in an exaggerated accent and Dan Stevens looks overly concerned in this movie directed by David Midell.When a movie begins by announcing that “The following is based on true events,” the intent, one presumes, is to get the viewer to sit up and get ready.It doesn’t help when the true events contain well-worn genre elements, as is the case with “The Ritual,” an exorcism story directed by David Midell. The trailer for this movie says that it tells “the true story that inspired ‘The Exorcist.’” And indeed, we have several elements remembered from that picture: a young woman possessed; a young priest who is having trouble with his faith; and an imposing older priest whose conviction carries the day.Did I say imposing? In William Friedkin’s 1973 movie, Father Merrin (Max von Sydow), casting a long shadow and speaking in stentorian tones, was immediately formidable. Here, two priests in a small town in Iowa in 1928 are enlisted to perform the exorcism. As Father Theophilus, a hunched Al Pacino speaks in an exaggerated accent that wavers between Crazy Guggenheim and “It’s-a me, Mario.” As the younger priest, Father Joseph, Dan Stevens doesn’t have much to do besides look extremely concerned.The movie doesn’t serve its actresses particularly well either. During her possession scenes, Emma (Abigail Cowen) is obliged to contort herself and froth at the mouth, while Mother Superior (Patricia Heaton) is called upon to furrow her brow a lot. Topping it all off is a deliberately shaky and agitated shooting and cutting style that heightens nothing. Just watch “The Exorcist” again.The RitualNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 38 minutes. In theaters. More

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    ‘Slumlord Millionaire’ Review: Costs of Living

    A documentary looks at New York City residents pushing back against housing troubles.The documentary “Slumlord Millionaire” aims to put a face to a problem that far too many readers in New York will already be familiar with: the high cost of housing in the city. The film, directed by Steph Ching and Ellen Martinez, tells the stories of a cross section of people who in different ways are pushing back.In Brooklyn, the film follows Samantha Bravo-Huertero and her family in Sunset Park as they pursue a legal remedy against a landlord whom they claim neglects maintenance and discriminates against Latino residents. Elsewhere in the borough, Janina Davis recounts how she lost control of her dream brownstone in Clinton Hill to a developer.The movie tags along with Moumita Ahmed, from Jamaica, Queens, during her run for City Council in 2021, when she emphasized the issue of tenants’ rights. And in Manhattan, a group of residents in Chinatown is shown banding together to protest the construction of luxury towers that they fear will displace them.Both the horror stories (mold-induced asthma; rats that, in one woman’s words, “will come marching in, almost like troops”) and the complaints (that politicians and courts are more receptive to moneyed interests than to renters) are far from new. And because “Slumlord Millionaire” has assembled a dynamic and engaging group of activists, it seems churlish to complain that it hasn’t found a way to make the material cinematic.But its bullet-point-laden interviews often seem more suited to a news segment than an unfolding documentary. And it would help, particularly in the discussion of rent stabilization, if the film acknowledged more economic complexity than it does.Slumlord MillionaireNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 26 minutes. In theaters. More