Aurelia Butler

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    ‘Snack Shack,’ ‘Red Rocket’ and More Streaming Gems

    A handful of the year’s best comedy-dramas are among your out-of-the-box recommendations from this month’s streaming services.‘Snack Shack’ (2024)Stream it on Amazon Prime Video.Adam Rehmeier’s coming-of-age story is set in the summer of 1991, and initially seems not only about that era, but of it, replicating the look and sound of ’90s teen sex comedies. (You can’t get more ’90s than a montage set to EMF’s “Unbelievable.”) But that’s a bit of a head fake; this is a movie with more on its mind. A.J. (Conor Sherry) and Moose (Gabriel LaBelle, currently seen as Lorne Michaels in “Saturday Night”) are a pair of enterprising young entrepreneurs who see a moneymaking opportunity in the concession stand at the local public pool. As often happens in these tales, a girl threatens to come between them, but that’s where we diverge from the formula; as written by Rehmeier and played by Mika Abdalla, the “cool girl” Brooke has the complexity and agency of a contemporary heroine, allowing Rehmeier to navigate a third-act flip into serious waters with grace and dexterity.‘I Used to Be Funny’ (2024)Stream it on Netflix.LaBelle’s “Saturday Night” co-star Rachel Sennott fronts this narratively and tonally tricky examination of a young woman in a free-fall. Sam (Sennott) is an occasional stand-up comic whose last day job, nannying a young firecracker named Brooke (Olga Petsa), ended badly. The writer and director Ally Pankiw takes her time (perhaps a bit too much) revealing exactly what happened there, but it took a toll on Sam, who has become a withdrawn recluse, barely able to crack the jokes that used to come so freely. Pankiw’s script perceptively captures how funny people use deflection and gallows humor to minimize the pains of their past, and Sennott, quickly becoming one of our most captivating young actors (thanks to electrifying turns in “Shiva Baby,” “Bodies Bodies Bodies,” and “Bottoms”), is terrific.‘The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed’ (2024)Stream it on Hulu.Joanna Arnow plays a dour 30-something New Yorker who meets men for various sexual encounters.Magnolia PicturesWe 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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    Pilot Killed in New Mexico Air Show Crash Instructed ‘Top Gun’ Actors

    Charles Thomas “Chuck” Coleman was a flight instructor who prepared actors for the 2022 action movie “Top Gun: Maverick,” which starred Tom Cruise and Miles Teller.An accomplished test pilot who was a flight instructor for the cast of the 2022 movie “Top Gun: Maverick” died in a crash of a small plane during an air show in New Mexico on Sunday, the authorities said.The pilot, Charles Thomas “Chuck” Coleman, 61, was the only person onboard the single-engine Extra Flugzeugbau 300/L plane when it crashed during a performance at the Las Cruces Air and Space Expo around 2:30 p.m. local time on Sunday, according to Las Cruces city officials and the Federal Aviation Administration.The show, a display of aerobatic performances, helicopters, airplanes and spacecraft, was held at Las Cruces International Airport and ended after the crash. The airport was also temporarily closed on Sunday, according to the city.“Unfortunately, we had a tragic ending to our Air and Space Expo this weekend,” Mayor Eric Enriquez of Las Cruces said in a statement posted to social media on Monday. Las Cruces is a city of about 111,000 residents in southern New Mexico.“We would like to extend our deepest condolences to the loved ones and fans of Chuck Coleman,” he added.The cause of the crash is being investigated by New Mexico State Police, the F.A.A. and the National Transportation Safety Board, the city said.Las Cruces officials said that Mr. Coleman, who was based in California, was “a well known and respected engineer, aerobatic and test pilot” with more than 10,000 hours of flight time. He had also performed at hundreds of air shows and had provided more than 3,000 rides in aerobatic aircraft, according to his official website.Mr. Coleman was an aerobatic flight instructor for the actors in the 2022 action movie “Top Gun: Maverick,” which starred Tom Cruise as Capt. Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, who trains a group of eager young combat pilots for a dangerous mission. The movie also starred Miles Teller, Jennifer Connelly and Val Kilmer.“He flew 140 flights in order to prepare the actors to fly in Navy F-18 Hornets,” Mr. Coleman’s website stated. On his Instagram page, Mr. Coleman posted a photo of Mr. Teller in a flight suit and said that the actor had flown with him for 12 training flights or about 14 hours to prepare for the Navy jets.The movie was the sequel to the 1986 blockbuster “Top Gun,” which followed a group of young pilots at the Navy’s elite fighter weapons school, also known as Top Gun.Mr. Coleman also worked on the film productions of “The Round and Round” (2002) and “First in Flight” (2012), and appeared in the 2009 documentary “Air Racer: Chasing the Dream,” according to IMDb.com.Kirsten Noyes contributed research. More

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    6 Social Media Accounts That Changed How I Rediscover Music

    Hear songs surfaced by Ryley Walker, Drumeo and other feeds from Bring Me the Horizon, Lil Tecca and more.Ryley Walker’s X account is filled with wild (true) stories and a pure love of rock.Astrida Valigorsky/Getty ImagesDear listeners,Sometimes, to listen to music, you have to do something more than just listen.Personally, I spend a significant — disproportionate? unhealthy? — amount of time on social media, and I find myself drawn to accounts that are music-adjacent, or perhaps music-enhancing. They’re not criticism or reporting, but through a hammered-home gimmick (all great accounts have them) they serve up extremely engaging information about certain styles and scenes that you might otherwise allow to float on by.Here’s a list of some of the accounts that fill my screen, along with a song that each one either brought me back to or introduced into my life.Get your scroll on,JonListen along while you read.1. Drumeo (TikTok, YouTube)Drumeo’s videos are created as an extension of a drumming-education platform. The clips feature drummers talking about their craft, and the account’s most intriguing recurring series forces well-established drummers to invent a part for a song they’ve never heard and which is outside of their usual style. The results can be chaotic: Dennis Chambers, a jazz fusion and funk legend, treats a Tool song like an unwelcome pop quiz that he then casually rewrites; Dirk Verbeuren from Megadeth takes a surprisingly patient approach to “Mr. Brightside,” perhaps finding the Killers not quite muscular enough; and Liberty DeVitto, who played for decades with Billy Joel, takes a wry joy in pounding along to Deftones, as if unleashing a lifetime’s worth of backlogged pugnacity.A rediscovered song: Bring Me the Horizon, “Can You Feel My Heart”▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTubeWe 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 Art Biennale’s Shadow, Venice Celebrates Music, Too

    The glistening domes of St. Mark’s Basilica seem to billow over Venice’s largest plaza. In the 19th century, when the church was already almost a thousand years old, a mosaic was added above the main entrance, with two angels hovering near Jesus and blowing the trumpets that signal the Last Judgment.The striking placement of the image — you can’t miss it — symbolizes music’s historical centrality in the city that has been home to giants extending from the days of Vivaldi, Gabrieli, Monteverdi and Cavalli to 20th-century masters like Luigi Nono. On a recent Thursday evening at the basilica, under the auspices of the Venice Music Biennale, two choirs in lofts high above the ground faced each other across the glittering gold interior and filled the vast expanse with a “Stabat Mater” by Giovanni Croce, a piece that was written to be performed in this very space some 425 years ago.These days, though, Venice is more of an art town. Every other year, crowds swell this floating labyrinth of twisting alleys and lapping canals for the enormous, seven-month-long Venice Art Biennale, one of the defining events of the global visual arts scene. In 2022, over 800,000 tickets were sold; this year’s iteration continues through Nov. 24.Lisa Streich’s “Stabat” was performed inside St. Mark’s Basilica, alongside Giovanni Croce’s 16th-century “Stabat Mater.”While the Venice Film Festival (organized, like the art event, by La Biennale di Venezia) is world-famous, you could be forgiven for not knowing that under the Biennale’s umbrella are also festivals devoted to architecture, dance and theater — and to music. As fall begins, the temperature cools and the city becomes ever so slightly emptier, the music biennial opens for a two-week stretch of roughly hourlong performances; I attended nine of them over five days earlier this month.Like the art festival, the Music Biennale ventures beyond established exhibition spaces to Venice’s palazzos and churches. It has a base at the Arsenale, a complex of old shipyards and factories, but it sprawls across the city for site-specific concerts: multichoral pieces at St. Mark’s Basilica, delicate viola da gamba duets in the ornate 16th-century Marciana Library, grand ensembles at the gilded Fenice opera house.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 Dancers Haunt Naomi Scott in ‘Smile 2’

    Parker Finn, the film’s writer and director, narrates a scene in which a pop star is chased through her apartment by evil dancers.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.A pop star finds herself surrounded by a menacing version of her dancers in this scene from “Smile 2.”Naomi Scott plays Skye Riley, a pop star who has struggled with the personal demons of addiction. But as soon as she gets her life back on track, she becomes possessed by a different kind of demon, one that has her seeing hallucinations and spiraling once again out of control.In this scene, Skye is in her apartment at night when she begins to see several dancers staring at her, wearing the sinister grin of the film’s title.Narrating the scene, the film’s director, Parker Finn, said, “These dancers that I got to work with, and my choreographer, Celia Rowlson-Hall, it was this incredible collaboration to create something that felt both like a menacing attack, but also at the same time, dance.”Read the “Smile 2” review.Sign up for the Movies Update newsletter and get a roundup of reviews, news, Critics’ Picks and more. More

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    A Mental Tightrope: When Instrumental Musicians Have to Sing, Too

    Artists who take up contemporary music sometimes have to sing and play at the same time. The results can be extraordinarily powerful.There are many difficult moments in Peteris Vasks’s Cello Concerto No. 2, “Klatbutne” (“Presence”). The opening cadenza is exposed and virtuosic; the second movement has intricately rhythmic, Shostakovich-inspired counterpoint. But for the renowned cellist Sol Gabetta, a simple chorale in D minor at the end is the really tricky part, because in that passage she has to not just play, but also sing.At this point in the concerto, Gabetta, to whom the piece is dedicated, has been playing for over half an hour. Her voice is dry, and she has been leaning over her cello. “And suddenly,” Gabetta, 43, said in a video interview, “you need to be open and sing.”The effect of Gabetta’s clear voice joining her own cello, as well as two string soloists from the orchestra, is both startling and organic. By design, the conclusion retroactively changes your whole impression of the piece. Vasks conceived the Cello Concerto No. 2 to represent the cycle of life, with the voice’s entrance evoking metaphysical renewal.“It’s like a birth of a baby which becomes adult, and you can feel that in the music,” Gabetta said. “And then, in the moment when the singing voice is coming up, the person already died, and this is like the spirit living.”Vasks’s concerto is one of many compositions in recent decades that require musicians trained as instrumentalists to sing while they play, working explicitly with the contrast between their instrumental mastery and their typically untrained yet often expressive voices. This is difficult. It requires excellent aural and physical coordination, a more careful and holistic approach to the posture of playing an instrument, and a certain fearlessness: Instrumentalists must be willing to make a sound they haven’t spent their lifetimes honing.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