Aurelia Butler

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    ‘Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F’ Review: It’s Busted

    Eddie Murphy struggles to revive the moribund action-comedy franchise.In “Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F,” the Detroit detective Axel Foley (Eddie Murphy) is no longer the fast, young cop we last saw 30 years ago. The beleaguered Captain Jeffrey Friedman (Paul Reiser) thinks the older and slower Axel should reconnect with his estranged daughter, Jane (Taylour Paige), who works as a defense attorney in Los Angeles. She is representing someone accused of killing a possible dirty cop. When masked men dangle Jane’s car with her inside from a roof, Axel, at the request of his longtime pal Billy Rosewood (Judge Reinhold), comes to Los Angeles to find the culprits.Murphy returns with the same Detroit Lions jacket, his familiar chuckle and his movie star grin. But there’s little to smile about in this painfully lackluster retread desperately trying to justify its own existence.In his feature directing debut, Mark Molloy — who plied his trade making commercials — tries to imagine a world where Axel is no longer a beloved wisecracker. Jane hates Axel for abandoning her as a child. Her former flame, Detective Bobby Abbott (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), who later teams up with Axel, also thinks Axel’s penchant for public destruction is outdated. Axel’s ruminations on parenting and policing are short-lived in the face of the flashy Captain Cade Grant (Kevin Bacon), who seems to be actively impeding Axel’s investigation as a bemused Chief John Taggart (John Ashton) looks on.Molloy’s film (streaming on Netflix) is a slog: The dirty cop mystery is half-baked; the visual effects are half-rendered; the action lacks any sense of physical space. In the opening scene, Axel’s attempt to stop a robbery in the Red Wings’ locker room becomes a shaky street chase with Axel in a snowplow and the robbers on bikes. Rather than film the scene as a cohesive shot, Molloy filmed the bikers and Murphy separately. The result is a scattered set piece without any visual cohesion.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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    An All ‘Independence’ Playlist for the Fourth of July

    Listen to songs by Martina McBride, Destiny’s Child, Kelly Clarkson and more.Martina McBridePaul Natkin/WireImage, via Getty ImagesDear listeners,Hello again from your guest playlister — Lindsay’s editor, Caryn — in this lead-up to the Fourth of July. Last year, Lindsay brought you a 16-song soundtrack for your holiday barbecues. I am not going to top that, so instead (inspired by my fave, Kelly Clarkson), I did a brief dive into songs that use independence as a thematic trope.While pop has turned to the independent woman many times, Independence Day has been a time for reflection on a variety of emotional topics: a painful breakup (Palehound), an escape from an abusive relationship (Martina McBride), a glimmer of hopefulness cracking through the melancholy (Elliott Smith). Bruce Springsteen’s song is a tad too dark even for this list, sorry, Jersey friends!All of these songs are sharply written, passionately sung and provide some form of release. And taken together, they make a pretty cohesive playlist. (If you did not yet know, I’m fanatical about sequencing.)Throw your hands up at me,CarynListen along while you read.1. Kelly Clarkson: “Miss Independent”Kelly Clarkson’s debut album, “Thankful” from 2003, featured this killer lead single: a genuine jam (with some genuinely dated production) about a strong woman who finds there’s also strength in letting love into her life. If it sounds a bit like a finger-wagging Christina Aguilera song, there’s good reason for that: She’s a writer on the track (along with Clarkson, Rhett Lawrence and Matt Morris), which was at one point destined for her own “Stripped.”▶ 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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    Why We Still Want to Hear the ‘Ode to Joy,’ 200 Years Later

    Beethoven’s aspirational vision of unity and peace can be applied to virtually any situation or place. The music makes sure of that.Even if you don’t know Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, you probably know its finale, the famous “Ode to Joy.”Written 200 years ago, the “Ode” is crafted like the best of pop songs, with easily hummable, simple phrases that use the same techniques you hear in a Taylor Swift hit today.But the “Ode” is more than pop. It’s a supranational anthem that aspires to a world in which “all men become brothers,” as its lyrics say. Its message, taken from a poem by Friedrich Schiller, is so broad and welcoming, so unspecific, that it has been taken up by an extraordinarily broad array of people and political causes.Since its premiere, the “Ode” has become shorthand for unity and hope, whether sincere or ironic. Sunny lyrics like “Be embraced, oh you millions!” and “Here’s a kiss for the entire world” have made it a fixture of the Olympics. It has been adopted by both oppressive regimes and the people who protest them. It sarcastically accompanies terror in “A Clockwork Orange” and “Die Hard,” but innocently entertains infants on “Baby Einstein” albums and in a sketch by the Muppets.Why does this song still have such a hold on the world?The answer starts with the music. Beethoven didn’t always write tuneful melodies, but he certainly knew how. He arranged popular songs, and composed memorable themes like the four-note opening of the Fifth Symphony. Nothing, though, is as brazenly catchy as the “Ode to Joy.”Beethoven designed it to be easily sung and hard to forget. It is in common time, with four beats per measure, and unfolds in neat, four-bar phrases. Often, there is one note for each syllable of text, and, crucially, the range is an octave, with the melodic line moving either up or down the scale. People with no musical training can learn this almost immediately, unlike with most national anthems. “The Star-Spangled Banner,” for example, has a wide range and awkward leaps that trip up even professional singers. More

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    At 100, the Intergalactic Jazz Hero Marshall Allen Is Still on a Mission

    The Sun Ra Arkestra saxophonist, who remains captivated by the power of sound, is an inspiring onstage presence.In late June, the Sun Ra Arkestra was onstage at Roulette in Brooklyn, swinging its way through “Queer Notions,” a jaunty big-band tune by the saxophonist Coleman Hawkins. The rendition hewed closely to the relaxed, seesaw riffing of the original, recorded by Fletcher Henderson and His Orchestra in 1933. But there was one prominent difference: the barrage of bleeps, whooshes and wobbly theremin-like tones emanating from an EVI — short for electronic valve instrument — played by Marshall Allen, the multi-instrumentalist and longtime Arkestra mainstay who had recently celebrated his 100th birthday.Allen’s longevity onstage would be noteworthy on its own. But when you take in an Arkestra gig — watching Allen repeatedly leap to his feet to solo, resplendent in a gold-sequined cap and vest — his endurance is mind-boggling. Both at Roulette, where the ensemble played the concluding set of the Vision Festival in honor of Allen’s centennial, and during a trio performance at the Brooklyn Music School a few days earlier, he wasn’t merely an eminent elder but a mirthful dynamo. His contributions on EVI and alto saxophone often clashed brilliantly with the surrounding textures, embodying the joyous eclecticism that helped make Sun Ra — the pianist, composer and Afrofuturist thought leader who helmed the Arkestra from the mid 1950s until his death in 1993 — one of the 20th century’s most prescient musical visionaries.Much like Sun Ra’s own keyboard work, Allen’s art is a study in extremes. His alto saxophone phrases are mini eruptions: Tensing his shoulders as he blows and raking his right hand up and down over the keys, he produces squeals, snarls and honks that register as Expressionist gestures as much as avant-garde sounds. Even set against the alto work of a musician one-fourth his age — as on the tribute LP “Red Hot & Ra: The Magic City,” where Allen appears alongside the rising star Immanuel Wilkins — his sonic splatters still hold a bracing power.But focusing on Allen’s more outré qualities can obscure just how much history he embodies. Enlisting in the Army during World War II, he played clarinet in a military band and, after an honorable discharge, studied at the Paris Conservatory and recorded with the bebop luminary James Moody. When he joined up with the Arkestra in Chicago in 1957, it was a compact, immaculately swinging big band, with a sound rooted in both Sun Ra’s admiration of giants like Fletcher Henderson and a pervasive Space Age aesthetic, manifesting in shiny costumes and sung slogans like “We travel the space ways/From planet to planet.” Allen was drawn in, he recalled to The New York Times in 2020, by the leader’s lectures on space and “all this other stuff: ancient Egypt and the Bible.”The Brooklyn Music School performance — where Allen was joined by fellow Arkestra members Tara Middleton (vocals) and Farid Barron (piano) — served as a reminder of his firm grounding in a bygone era. Though the set featured plenty of jump-scare saxophone and echoey EVI tones, there were also roomy stretches of poignant lyricism. On “Sometimes I’m Happy,” a 1920s-era standard that Sun Ra often played, Allen answered Middleton’s lines with soft, ruminative phrases that strongly evoked Johnny Hodges, whose legacy is as closely intertwined with Duke Ellington as Allen’s is with Sun Ra.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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    4 Objects That Explain the History of Carnegie Hall

    A new podcast explores an array of items from the 133-year-old hall’s archive, like Ella Fitzgerald’s glasses and an opening-night ticket.Ella Fitzgerald’s glasses. Benny Goodman’s clarinet. A ticket from opening night in 1891. These items have long been a part of Carnegie Hall’s archive. But now they are getting a moment to shine on the new podcast “If This Hall Could Talk.”In eight episodes, the podcast — produced by Carnegie and the classical radio station WQXR — explores “the legendary and sometimes quirky history of the hall,” according to the show’s introduction. The Broadway performer Jessica Vosk is the host of the series, and archivists from the hall offer commentary.“Time moves so quickly,” said Gino Francesconi, Carnegie’s founding archivist, who is featured on the podcast. “These are little anchors to remind people who we are, what extraordinary things have happened here and what continues to happen.”The hall did not devote much effort to preserving its 133-year history until Francesconi was hired in 1986. The collection now includes more than 300,000 items related to more than 50,000 performances and events. The vast majority of pieces were donated, but archivists have also acquired some objects on eBay and other platforms. (One of the pricier acquisitions: a flier for Bob Dylan’s 1961 debut at Carnegie that the hall bought from a man in Sweden for $6,000.)“If This Hall Could Talk,” whose first season concludes next month, also explores social and political aspects of Carnegie’s history, including a 1910 convention on women’s suffrage there and a starry 1961 concert that paid tribute to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.A wide variety of artists offer their reflections on the hall’s history in the podcast, including the jazz singer Samara Joy, the pianist Emanuel Ax, the bass-baritone Davóne Tines and the clarinetist, saxophonist and composer Paquito D’Rivera.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 Nearly Lost Work of a ‘Born Opera Composer’ Returns

    Historians try to be precise, so it is awkward to admit that I can’t recall exactly when I first noticed the existence of an opera by Carolina Uccelli. At some point, maybe about six years ago, the name jumped out at me from a list. I do recall my reaction. A female composer got an opera onto the stage in 1835? With an all-star cast? She must have been extraordinary!That was the start of a journey that culminates this month with the modern premiere of Uccelli’s “Anna di Resburgo” by the Teatro Nuovo company, in Montclair, N.J., on July 20 and in New York on the 24. Uccelli was indeed extraordinary, and so is the single surviving opera by which we can assess her abilities. Behind it lies a human story, touching and somewhat sad, to which there is now a chance to add a happy postscript.Italian opera was the single most competitive and economically significant branch of music worldwide in the early 19th century. No female composer ever established herself in it. Success for women, at the time, meant publishing miniatures for the salon, and Uccelli achieved that while still in her teens. But conceiving whole music-dramas and wrangling them through the marketplace was a gritty, cutthroat business; nobody could imagine a woman pursuing it.The brave youngster who tried to make herself an exception was born Carolina Pazzini, in 1810, to an upper-class Florentine family. She had thorough musical training and gained a precocious local reputation for her singing and keyboard improvisations. Around 1827, when Italy’s leading publisher issued an album of her ariettas, she married the widower Filippo Uccelli, a celebrated and sometimes controversial physician who was supportive of her improbable ambitions. He passed along to journalists a letter from Gioachino Rossini in praise of her first opera, “Saul,” produced in Florence in 1830. He probably also paid some of its costs; one of Filippo’s students later wrote disapprovingly that the good doctor had squandered what should have been his sons’ inheritance on the “caprices” of their young stepmother.The opening night of “Saul” was by all accounts a triumph, but later in its run came evidence of the prejudice that could greet a woman stepping outside her expected sphere. The Harmonicon in London reported that “the Florentines have been making themselves merry, as well in verse as in prose, upon this lady’s production, and the high and mighty protection which Rossini is known to have afforded her.” The German periodical Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung allowed itself a baseless hint that Rossini’s interest might have been more in Uccelli’s beauty than in her talent. The Florence journal Il Censore rebuked the theater for giving place to “feminine vanity.”The only surviving copy of “Anna di Resburgo” is at the Naples Conservatory in Italy.Conservatorio San Pietro a Majella, NapoliConservatorio San Pietro a Majella, NapoliWe 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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    Andrew Scott’s Best Roles and Moments

    The star of “Ripley” and “All of Us Strangers” has become one of our most reliably excellent actors.There are some actors who always, no matter the size of their role or the context of their performance, draw the eye. Andrew Scott, who has most recently appeared as the slippery, scheming protagonist in the Netflix series “Ripley,” is one of them. He is enthralling to watch, his emotional notes meticulously constructed, with playful touches of chaos that always leave space for moments of discovery and surprise. Here are a few of Scott’s favorite modes of performance, and how his popular roles reflect an actor excelling at his craft.The MadmanBBC/Hartswood Films for MasterpieceIn Scott’s breakout role, in “Sherlock,” he plays Moriarty, the criminal mastermind opposite Benedict Cumberbatch’s contemporary Sherlock Holmes. From Scott’s first appearance, in the Season 1 finale, he electrifies an already energetic show. Cumberbatch set the tone for “Sherlock” with his brutal, fast-paced wit; deductions tumble out of his mouth with strict precision, and in an impersonal monotone. Scott’s arrival, and his erratic singsong speaking, break this rhythm. There’s a menacing playfulness to not only his rhetorical delivery but also to his facial expressions. It adds a new dimension to the show.In their initial confrontation scene, Sherlock aims a gun at Moriarty, asking, “What if I was to shoot you now?” Moriarty responds with a cartoonish look of shock that starts at the top of his head and ripples down: his eyebrows popping up, his eyes widening, jaw dropping and neck drawing back. 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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    Young Thug’s Gang Trial Is Paused Because of Judge’s Secret Meeting

    The much-delayed case was halted indefinitely to determine whether the judge should recuse himself after meeting with an uncooperative witness.After more than 10 months of jury selection and 100 days of trial across another half a year, the sprawling and much-delayed gang conspiracy case against the Atlanta rapper Young Thug and five associates has been halted indefinitely.Judge Ural Glanville announced on Monday in a Fulton County, Ga., courtroom that the case would not proceed until another judge decides whether Judge Glanville should recuse himself from overseeing the trial. The surprise ruling followed weeks of disputes between the court and defense attorneys, who have argued that a meeting between the judge, prosecutors and an uncooperative witness was improper and potentially unconstitutional.Judge Glanville had previously denied multiple motions from the defense that called for him to step aside, calling his actions regarding last month’s meeting and its aftermath proper. But on Monday, during a hearing about releasing a transcript of the secret meeting, he agreed that an outside judge should decide how the trial would proceed.Jurors have not heard testimony in the case for two weeks amid the upheaval and were not expected to return until next Monday, following the July 4 holiday weekend. Asked by a prosecutor how long it would take for the trial to get back underway, Judge Glanville said the decision was no longer within his purview. “Hopefully it will get done fairly quickly,” he said.Already plagued by disruptions and complications, both outside and inside the courtroom, the case hit its most recent snag beginning on June 7, when a key prosecution witness, Kenneth Copeland, refused to testify after being sworn in, invoking his Fifth Amendment right to protect against self-incrimination despite having already been granted immunity.Mr. Copeland spent a weekend in jail on contempt charges and then agreed to testify, although he remained hard to pin down on basic factual matters. When Brian Steel, a lawyer for Young Thug, raised concerns about whether Mr. Copeland had been compelled to testify during a coercive meeting with Judge Glanville and prosecutors, the judge demanded to know how Mr. Steel learned of the closed-door meeting and then held him in contempt.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