Aurelia Butler

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    Anthea Sylbert, Costume Designer Who Became a Producer, Dies at 84

    Her career unfolded in three phases: as the creator of costumes for movies like “Chinatown,” as a studio executive and as a producer, largely with her friend Goldie Hawn.Anthea Sylbert, the Oscar-nominated costume designer of the films “Chinatown” and “Julia,” who left Hollywood fitting rooms to be a studio executive and, later, Goldie Hawn’s producing partner, died on June 18 at her home on the Greek island of Skiathos. She was 84.Robert Romanus, her stepson, said the cause was complications of emphysema.Ms. Sylbert began designing costumes for films in 1967. Over the next decade, she collaborated with A-list directors like Mike Nichols, Roman Polanski and Elaine May and conceived what Jack Nicholson wore when he starred in “Chinatown,” “The Fortune” and “Carnal Knowledge.”“Jack Nicholson actually gave me the best compliment I ever got as a costume designer,” she said in “My Life in 3 Acts,” a forthcoming documentary about Ms. Sylbert directed by Sakis Lalas. “He said, ‘When “The Ant” does your clothes, you don’t have to act as much.’” (“The Ant” was short for Anthea, she explained.)Ms. Sylbert envisioned Jake Gittes, the natty, determined private detective played by Mr. Nicholson in “Chinatown” (1974), as a dandy.“I thought he would be interested in fashion,” she told Sam Wasson for his book “The Big Goodbye: ‘Chinatown’ and the Last Years of Hollywood” (2020). “The one who would be noticing what the stars were wearing when he went to the races.”Deborah Nadoolman Landis, chair of the David C. Copley Center for the Study of Costume Design at the School of Theater, Film and Television at the University of California, Los Angeles, recalled a vivid scene in “Chinatown” in which Gittes and Evelyn Mulwray, played by Faye Dunaway, sit together in a red restaurant banquette.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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    Judy Belushi Pisano, Who Defended Her Husband’s Legacy, Dies at 73

    She was married to John Belushi until his fatal drug overdose in 1982. She went on to celebrate his comic talent in books and a documentary.Judy Belushi Pisano, who after the death of her husband, the actor and comedian John Belushi, from a drug overdose in 1982 became a fierce defender of his legacy, died on July 5 at her home on the island of Martha’s Vineyard, in Massachusetts. She was 73.Her son, Luke Pisano, said the cause was endometrial cancer.Mr. Belushi, a member of the original cast of “Saturday Night Live” and a star of hit films like “National Lampoon’s Animal House” and “The Blues Brothers,” was among the best-known comic actors in the world when he was found dead in a Hollywood hotel.Though it took weeks to determine the cause — from a mix of heroin and cocaine — the public immediately seized on Mr. Belushi’s death as a cautionary tale of excess in an era defined by it.His reputation as a hard-partying drug addict was further underlined by Bob Woodward of The Washington Post in his book “Wired: The Short Life and Fast Times of John Belushi” (1984), which Ms. Pisano had initially authorized but later came to regret.“The book is both unfair and inaccurate,” she told The Philadelphia Daily News in 1984. “To me the biggest lie is that it claims to be a portrait of John but it’s not. It’s only about drugs.”Ms. Pisano at the 2004 ceremony posthumously honoring John Belushi with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Vince Bucci/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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    Katy Perry’s ‘World’ of Mixed Signals, and 11 More New Songs

    Hear tracks by Bright Eyes, Johnny Blue Skies (a.k.a. Sturgill Simpson), Magdalena Bay 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.Katy Perry, ‘Woman’s World’“It’s a woman’s world and you’re lucky to be living in it,” Katy Perry insists in “Woman’s World,” a song with six writers (among them Lukas Gottwald, a.k.a. Dr. Luke, who was behind her blockbuster album “Teenage Dream” before his extended legal battle with Kesha). “Sexy, confident, so intelligent, she is heaven-sent,” Perry sings. “So soft, so strong.” With echoes of Madonna’s 1990s electro-pop, the praise continues throughout this synthesizer-pumped, positive-vibes affirmation of the obvious. It’s too bad the overblown video clip — including a postapocalyptic sequence dotted with social media influencers — doesn’t live up to the euphoric sound.Nelly Furtado and Bomba Estéreo, ‘Corazón’Bomba Estéreo, from Colombia, supplies the beat, flute, chant and Spanish-language bridge behind a cheerfully assertive Nelly Furtado in “Corazon,” from her album “7,” due in September. Floating a blithe, catchy chorus over the Afro-Colombian rhythm, Furtado summons a perpetual, be-here-now party spirit, insisting, “My heart can’t stop.”Bright Eyes, ‘Bells and Whistles’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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    France’s Army Is Singing for Ukraine

    The Choir of the French Army will join the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra in Paris to show support for Ukraine in its war against Russia.When President Emmanuel Macron of France refused in February to rule out sending Western troops to Ukraine, he shattered a taboo and spooked his NATO allies. But five months later, his statement looks more like a provocation than a promise, and the idea of French boots on the ground seems a distant prospect.There are other ways, however, that France’s military can aid the Ukrainian cause.In a Paris church on Friday, 30 members of the Choir of the French Army will lend their voices to a free concert to honor Ukraine’s fighting spirit.“We are here on a mission,” said the conductor Keri-Lynn Wilson during a recent rehearsal for the concert, “a mission to support Ukraine, on the artistic and cultural front.”Then she led the singers of the all-male military choir, joined by 30 female members of a Ukrainian vocal ensemble, through a rendition of the last movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, the famous “Ode to Joy.” The massed voices soared in the echoing space.At Friday’s concert, Wilson, a Canadian with Ukrainian roots, will conduct the singers alongside the 74-musician Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra in Saint-Eustache church. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the orchestra — some of whose members still live in the country at war — have been coming together each summer to perform across Europe, with Wilson conducting.The concert in Paris is the first stop on the orchestra’s third tour. The ensemble will perform with local choirs when it plays concerts in London, Poland and the United States, where it will perform in Washington and, on Aug. 1, at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York.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 Best True Crime to Stream: Truly Random Crimes

    Four picks across television, film and podcasting that highlight a fundamental human fear: complete lack of control.Watch or listen to any amount of true crime, and it quickly becomes evident that some of the most disturbing cases involve wrongdoers who know their victims. At times, that might be simply an acquaintance, a co-worker, a classmate or a neighbor.But most often it’s someone much closer, like a partner, former partner, friend, parent or child. Truly random crimes, in which the perpetrators have no relationship to the victims, are relatively rare, which is comforting — until it isn’t. Hearing about such crimes, where any sense of perceived control is stripped away, can prey on our greatest fears.Here are four offerings across television, podcast and film that examine these dark, disconcerting fringes.Documentary Film‘American Nightmare’This three-part 2024 Netflix docuseries about the abduction of Denise Huskins could easily top a streaming list about shockingly botched investigations. It’s stunning how quickly she and her husband, Aaron Quinn (her boyfriend at the time), were dismissed and labeled liars by law enforcement, then mocked by the news media after they had endured a horrific attack. But just as astonishing is how bizarre the crime was.The documentary, from the filmmakers behind “The Tinder Swindler,” Felicity Morris and Bernadette Higgins, incorporates interrogation footage and new interviews to illustrate the widespread reluctance to believe the victims. We witness Quinn being pressed as though he were a suspect and Huskins being branded the “real-life Gone Girl,” referring to Gillian Flynn’s 2012 novel about a woman who stages her own kidnapping and frames her husband for her disappearance.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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    This Soprano Sings ‘the Sound of the Soul’

    “Un bel dì,” the title character’s great aria in “Madama Butterfly,” begins with the soprano singing a hovering G flat. Puccini writes in the score that the note is to emerge not just pianissimo, or very soft, but also “come da lontano”: as if coming from far away.The opera is about a young Japanese woman convinced that the American naval officer who abandoned her will return, and “Un bel dì” narrates her fantasy of seeing his ship sailing back into the harbor at Nagasaki.At the Aix-en-Provence Festival in France, Ermonela Jaho condenses that desperate illusion into a haunting filament of tone. What’s more, she sings the note while lying on her back on the floor in this bracingly intimate new production of the beloved work.“The attack on the G flat, it’s like hope is being suspended in midair, it’s a sound like the ship appearing on the horizon,” Daniele Rustioni, who conducts the Lyon Opera Orchestra in the production, said in an interview. “And Ermonela does it. You wait for that moment and she delivers.”Jaho, left, and the tenor Adam Smith, as Pinkteron.Ruth WalzJaho, who turns 50 on July 18, delivers these time-stopping threads of sound again and again at moments like Butterfly’s ethereal entrance, marked even softer than pianissimo; during her love duet with Pinkerton, the callous American officer, when she says that the stars are like eyes, gazing at them; and later, when she insists that when Pinkerton returns, their son’s name will change from Sorrow to Joy.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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    Martin Scorsese’s ‘Made in England’ Is a Tribute to Powell-Pressburger Films

    “Made in England” is an essay film about the artists whose passion and cinematography deeply influenced the American director.What you can learn about movies from just reading about them is pretty limited — an ironic admission from a movie critic, I know. The best way to understand what makes a film or a filmmaker interesting is to submerge yourself in their work, to binge a whole catalog. But when that’s not possible, or if you want more context, a great guide and a well-crafted essay film can be invaluable.Few such guides could outpace Martin Scorsese, whose narration (often delivered directly to camera) powers “Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger” (in theaters), directed by David Hinton. Scorsese’s World Cinema Project restores movies from underrepresented and forgotten filmmakers from around the world, works that might otherwise be lost to time. Among those were “The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp” and “The Red Shoes,” two seminal movies from the 1940s by the duo Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. Scorsese has long counted the pair among his greatest influences; their movies pushed the boundaries of color, story and passion.What makes “Made in England” so compelling is how effortlessly it swings from film analysis to cinema and cultural history to personal narrative. It’s a roughly chronological documentary about the filmmakers, but it’s also the story of personal obsession. For Scorsese, that story started in his own childhood, when he saw rough black-and-white transfers on TV that transfixed him. Later, he became obsessed with the filmmakers’ works, and Powell in particular eventually became a mentor and a friend. He and Scorsese’s longtime editor, Thelma Schoonmaker, were married until Powell died in 1990.The film works through the history of both men, the origins of their collaboration and the ways their films evolved during and after World War II, particularly as commercial taste shifted. Their experimentations with sound, music and heightened realism are illuminated through “The Red Shoes,” “Colonel Blimp” and films like “Black Narcissus,” “The Tales of Hoffmann,” and the nearly career-killing “Peeping Tom,” all lovingly explored through Scorsese’s viewpoint.Scorsese has narrated documentaries about film history before (including “A Personal Journey With Martin Scorsese Through American Movies” and “My Voyage to Italy”), always with a distinctive angle. And it’s easy to see why. The average viewer — that is to say, someone not quite as obsessed with movies as Scorsese is — pops open the queue on a streamer of choice and starts drowning. There are, quite literally, more movies now than there have ever been, and even a fairly sophisticated viewer can struggle to choose.“Made in England” is remarkably engaging thanks to Scorsese’s animated commentary and some flourishes, like comparisons between shots from Powell and Pressburger’s films and Scorsese’s. But whether you are lucky enough to attend the summer of Powell and Pressburger in New York’s cinemas, enjoy streaming from home or are just curious about these fascinating filmmakers, the documentary is a personal, vibrant gift. More

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    For This Drama, Some Actors Had to Return to Prison by Choice

    Alongside Colman Domingo and Paul Raci, ex-inmates shot “Sing Sing” in a decommissioned correctional facility. Then came the screening in the actual prison.Between the jangle of keys and the beeps of walkie-talkies, the men watched.The occasion was an advance screening of the new A24 film “Sing Sing,” and at the prison it’s set in, the men were taking in a fictional version of their lives.Amid a heat wave, the audience — a mix of the studio’s guests and incarcerated men in hunter-green pants — crowded into the correctional facility’s chapel-turned-cinema. With the sun streaming through a stained-glass window of Christ kneeling before the cross, the viewers fanned themselves with paper plates.It was the first time Clarence “Divine Eye” Maclin had been to the prison in Ossining, N.Y., since 2012, when he finished serving more than 17 years for robbery.While incarcerated, Maclin had starred as Hamlet in the prison’s makeshift auditorium. Now he was free and returning for his screen debut. He entered the chapel with a grin and a triumphant bounce.Based on the work of the nonprofit Rehabilitation Through the Arts, “Sing Sing,” directed by Greg Kwedar, follows the production of a prison troupe’s first comedy, a fever dream of a play featuring time travel, ancient Egypt and Shakespeare. Maclin and the recent Oscar nominee Colman Domingo star as fellow prisoners alongside Paul Raci (also an Oscar nominee) as their earnest director.Maclin watching himself at the screening. “I always knew I wanted to act,” he said, but “I thought I would be doing it for free somewhere.”Hiroko Masuike/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