Aurelia Butler

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    ‘Titan: The OceanGate Disaster’ Review: A Company’s Failures

    Netflix’s documentary about the catastrophe uses familiar techniques to spotlight the faulty judgment of Stockton Rush, who ran OceanGate.It was only a matter of time before a flurry of documentaries about the Titan submersible disappearance turned up on streaming platforms. The event captured the world’s attention in 2023 after the vessel, operated by the company OceanGate Expeditions, vanished in the North Atlantic, triggering a days-long search for survivors.Netflix’s “Titan: The OceanGate Disaster” offers an adequate rundown of the story. Directed by Mark Monroe, the film wisely does not linger in the lurid details of the Titan’s catastrophic end, and instead uses an investigative framing that sketches the company’s origins and use of carbon fiber while chronicling a series of problematic dives leading up to its final plunge. As it catalogs OceanGate’s failures, the documentary spotlights the faulty judgment of one man: the company co-founder and chief executive Stockton Rush, who died in the implosion.That Rush mismanaged his employees and played fast and loose while priming Titan is, by this point, old news. And creatively, “Titan: The OceanGate Disaster” often relies on familiar techniques, such as a continuous, synth-heavy score and sensationalist chyrons for interviewees: the insider, the investigator, the whistleblower.But audio recordings that capture Rush in fits of frustration, alongside startling footage of him cutting corners during an expedition — “close enough,” he declares, after reaching 3,939 meters on a dive meant to hit 4,000 — lay bare his grandiosity. Add to that the haunting sound of carbon fibers breaking at depth and one appreciates the case for giving this well-known story an audiovisual treatment, even if it is a standard one.Titan: The OceanGate DisasterNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 51 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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    BTS Reunion Nears as RM and V Finish Military Service

    RM and V emerged from a base in South Korea on Wednesday in fatigues. Three other members of the hugely popular boy band will finish their national service this month.RM and V of BTS emerged from a base in Chuncheon, South Korea, and gave fans a brief saxophone performance.Kim Hong-Ji/ReutersJin: check. J Hope: check. And on Tuesday, RM and V: check.That leaves only three members of the K-pop boy band BTS still doing their national service: Jimin, Jungkook and Suga. And when they too are discharged this month, their fans’ long wait will be over. BTS will be civilians again, and a vastly lucrative reunion can follow.RM and V emerged from a base in Chuncheon, South Korea, on Wednesday in military fatigues. V, 29, carried flowers, while RM, 30, had a saxophone on which he gave a brief impromptu performance on one knee.“There were tough and painful moments, of course,” RM said, as translated by The Korea Herald, “but during our service, I came to deeply appreciate the many people who have protected this country.”BTS’s record label, Big Hit Music, had pleaded with fans to stay home and not make a circus of the members’ discharges: “We kindly ask fans to send their warm welcome and support from their hearts.” But hundreds of screaming, camera-wielding, flag-waving fans showed up anyway.RM of BTS gave an impromptu saxophone performance after he and another member of the band, V, were discharged from South Korea’s military on Tuesday.Anthony Wallace/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesNearly all able-bodied young men in South Korea are required to serve a year and a half of military duty.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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    How the Bay Area Shaped Sly Stone

    One of the key figures in American music in the late ’60s got his professional start in the Bay Area. These are some of the spots that were crucial to his career.Several cities played outsized roles in the life of Sly Stone, the musical innovator who died on Monday at 82. There was Denton, the northern Texas town where he was born; Los Angeles, where he spent his later years; and even New York City, where he played several memorable concerts, including a Madison Square Garden date in 1974 at which he got married onstage. But no place was more central to Stone’s formation and rise than the Bay Area. His family moved there shortly after he was born, and it’s where he got his professional start and rose to stardom amid the multiracial psychedelic ferment of the 1960s. Here are five Bay Area spots important in his life.Solano Community College (formerly Vallejo Junior College)Stone’s first encounter with music came as a child in Vallejo, Calif., north of Oakland. His father was a deacon at a local congregation affiliated with the Pentecostal sect the Church of God in Christ, and when he was 8 years old, Stone, whose given name was Sylvester Stewart, and three siblings recorded a gospel track. Stone appeared in several bands in high school. And then for a stint in college, he studied music theory and composition — and picked up the trumpet, to boot — at Vallejo Junior College, today known as Solano Community College.Toni Rembe Theater (formerly the Geary Theater)He was best known for funk and psychedelic rock, but Stone’s eclecticism can be heard in the slow, firmly 1950s-style doo-wop music of the Viscaynes, one of his earliest groups. In an instance of foreshadowing, the Viscaynes, like the Family Stone, were multiracial at a time when that was exceedingly uncommon. (“To me, it was a white group with one Black guy,” Stone wrote in his memoir.) The Viscaynes recorded in downtown San Francisco underneath the Geary Theater, now known as the Toni Rembe Theater, and associated with the nonprofit company American Conservatory Theater.KSOL and KDIA radioStone became known for playing artists like the Beatles and Bob Dylan along with the usual soul and R&B his station specialized in.via Michael Ochs Archive/Getty ImagesStone attended broadcasting school in San Francisco and was then a D.J. at two local AM stations: KSOL, based out of San Mateo, and then KDIA, in Oakland. Both were aimed at Black listeners; KSOL, Stone wrote, had even changed its call sign to remind listeners that it played soul. But Stone again broke the mold, playing not just soul and R&B, but the Beatles and Bob Dylan. “Some KSOL listeners didn’t think a R&B station should be playing white acts,” he later wrote. “But that didn’t make sense to me. Music didn’t have a color. All I could see was notes, styles and ideas.”Mid-Century MonsterWe 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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    Touch Grass With an Unexpected 10-Song Nature-Bathing Playlist

    Explore the outdoors however you see fit with a soundtrack of Doechii, Remi Wolf, Erykah Badu and more.Doechii, as near to nature as one can get on the Met Gala’s blue red carpet.Evan Agostini/Invision, via Associated PressDear listeners,As a pop culture reporter and editor at The New York Times, I spend much of my life toggling from one of a few modes to another: full-focus viewing, extensive conversation about said viewing, deep-think typing and — to cleanse my soul of all I’ve seen on all the screens — blissed-out nature bathing.Still, whether I’m kayaking down a river, hiking up a mountain, hanging around a campfire or swaying in a hammock, my phone tags along so I can listen to music. My tastes run the gamut, but us outdoorsy types sometimes get a reputation for gravitating primarily toward folk, reggae and acoustic light-rock tunes. There’s room in my heart for it all.But often, especially under a radiant sun or shimmering moon, I enter a mental space that can best be described as “forest girlie vibing hard.” The necessary ingredients: a splash of existential euphoria, a twist of party energy, an addictive groove and beats packed to the brim.Here are 10 songs I’ll have on repeat day and night while vacationing in Acadia National Park this summer, listening solo on headphones or triangulated on Bluetooth speakers with my crew.If the sun is bright, no matter where you are, this list will hit,MayaListen along while you read.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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    5 Highlights From the 2025 Ojai Music Festival

    A crowd had gathered at the Ojai Meadows Preserve early Saturday morning. The nearby mountains were still shrouded in mist, and the cool, gray quiet was interrupted only by the sound of birds.Then a throaty quivering of flute emerged from behind the audience — and a stab of clarinet from another spot, a distant burr of saxophone, pips from a second flute. An almost avian quartet gradually coalesced from specks of song and chatter among the instruments, in conversation with the animals in the trees. This was Susie Ibarra’s “Sunbird.”That a couple of hundred people showed up at 8 a.m. for an experimental performance in the middle of a field speaks volumes about the Ojai Music Festival. Since the 1940s, this annual event, nestled in an idyllic valley in Southern California, has catered to audiences eager to be challenged.Each year, a different music director is invited to guide the programming. For this installment, which took place Thursday through Sunday, morning to night, the festival looked to the flutist Claire Chase, one of the most important nodes of creation and collaboration in contemporary music.Chase, a founder of the International Contemporary Ensemble and the instigator of “Density 2036,” an ongoing 24-year commissioning project to create a new repertoire for her instrument, has an aesthetic well matched to Ojai. Her approach is rigorous yet relaxed, with an improvisatory, cooperative, nature-loving, even hippie bent — meditative, sunny and smiling, encouraging open minds and open ears. Two dozen musicians performed in shifting combinations throughout the weekend, so you had the feeling of being dropped in the middle of a joyfully bustling commune.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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    Doechii Criticizes Trump’s Response to L.A. Protests at BET Awards

    The rapper drew attention to the president deploying the military against protesters in Los Angeles and said it was her responsibility as an artist to speak up for all oppressed people.The rapper Doechii accepted the BET award for best female hip-hop artist on Monday night, but instead of using her acceptance speech as a victory lap, she criticized President Trump for deploying the military against protesters in Los Angeles.“There are ruthless attacks that are creating fear and chaos in our communities in the name of law and order,” Doechii said, pointing to ongoing protests over Mr. Trump’s immigration policies. “Trump is using military forces to stop a protest.” The 25th Annual BET Awards were held downtown at the Peacock Theater.The protests began on Friday when federal agents searched the city’s garment district for workers whom they suspected were undocumented immigrants. The action was part of the Trump administration’s new focus on raiding workplaces.Demonstrations continued over the weekend. Though mostly peaceful, there have been scattered protests that became violent, prompting the authorities to make about 150 arrests and in some cases to use tear gas and crowd-control munitions against protesters. Mr. Trump, calling the protesters “insurrectionists,” mobilized the National Guard, a step Gov. Gavin Newsom has said was “purposefully inflammatory” and intended to create a spectacle.By Monday, the protests had turned calmer, but Mr. Trump doubled the number of deployed California Guard troops to 4,000 and ordered a battalion of 700 Marines to the city.Several hours before the awards ceremony began, a spokesman for BET said the network was working with the Los Angeles Police Department and monitoring the situation for safety reasons, CNN reported. The show went on despite the administration’s escalation of the federal response to the demonstrations.Doechii, who beat out Cardi B, Doja Cat, GloRilla, Latto, Megan Thee Stallion, Nicki Minaj, Rapsody and Sexyy Red, continued her acceptance speech by asking the audience to consider why the government would deploy the military against its people who exercise their constitutional right to protest. She also criticized the Trump administration’s raids on workplaces and aggressive deportation policies.“People are being swept up and torn from their families, and I feel it’s my responsibility as an artist to use this moment to speak up for all oppressed people, for Black people, for Latino people, for trans people, for the people in Gaza,” she said. “We all deserve to live in hope and not in fear, and I hope we stand together, my brothers and my sisters, against hate, and we protest against it.”Her speech drew applause from the audience and was in stark contrast to the Tony Awards on Sunday night, where Mr. Trump was barely mentioned — an unexpected turn for a ceremony that often features more political commentary from its winners and presenters.Doechii, who over the last year has experienced a meteoric rise to the top of hip-hop, in February became the third woman to win a Grammy for best rap album, for “Alligator Bites Never Heal.” More

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    How ‘Ballerina’ Set People on Fire

    Ana de Armas wields a flamethrower in “From the World of John Wick: Ballerina” and torches, well, a lot. Here’s how they made that sequence come to life. (And yes, the flames are mostly real.)When Chad Stahelski, best known as the driving force behind the “John Wick” franchise, was in high school he volunteered with his local fire department. Over the years the images from that experience stuck in his head, and the former stuntman started to dream up an action sequence involving lots and lots of fire.“I’m like, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if I combined fire and water, and we had a flamethrower fight?” Stahelski, a producer of “From the World of John Wick: Ballerina,” said in a video interview. “Two guys with flamethrowers and they are going to shoot each other.” Watching an early cut of “Ballerina” he realized he had the ideal vehicle for his fire dreams: It would be a showstopper for the star assassin, Eve, played by Ana de Armas.“How do I make her look smart? How do I make her look badass? It wasn’t about fighting more guys,” he said. “It’s like, OK, let’s give her something that really shows a skill set. And that’s when we went to fire.”The result is a bravura third-act set piece in which Eve torches her enemies in an Alpine village, going flamethrower to flamethrower with a massive villainous henchman named Dex (Robert Maaser). Instead of using digital flames, “Ballerina,” directed by Len Wiseman, mostly went for the real thing. According to Stahelski, 90 to 95 percent of the fires onscreen are “unenhanced real burns.”To accomplish this, Stahelski called in an expert in the world of movie fire, the stuntman Jayson Dumenigo, who developed a long-lasting protective burn gel for stunt performers that recently won him an honor from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Even Dumenigo was skeptical they could accomplish what Stahelski had in mind when he first heard the pitch.Ana de Armas uses a real flamethrower as a weapon in “From the World of John Wick: Ballerina.”Murray Close/LionsgateWe 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 Songs of 2025, So Far

    Ten tracks that push boundaries, uncork emotions and can get the block party started.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new songs. After six months of listening, here’s what they have on repeat. (Note: It’s not a ranking, it’s a playlist.) Listen on Spotify and Apple Music.Bad Bunny, ‘Baile Inolvidable’Heartache and heritage mingle in “Baile Inolvidable” (“Unforgettable Dance”) from Bad Bunny’s album “Debí Tirar Más Fotos” (“I Should Have Taken More Photos”). The song bridges current and vintage sounds, underscoring the multigenerational continuity of Puerto Rican music. It begins as a blurred dirge of synthesizer lines and Bad Bunny’s vocals, mourning a lost romance; “I thought we’d grow old together,” he sings in Spanish, then admits, “It’s my fault.” But the track switches to an old-school salsa jam, with organic percussion, horns and a jazzy piano. The lessons of the girlfriend who taught him “how to love” and “how to dance” have stayed with him. — Jon Pareles▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTubeDrake, ‘Nokia’After making headlines for a war of words with Kendrick Lamar, Drake returned with one of his loosest projects.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesAfter the conclusion (?) of his war of words with Kendrick Lamar, Drake briefly hibernated, then re-emerged with one of his loosest projects, “Some Sexy Songs 4 U,” with longtime collaborator PartyNextDoor. Its charming center is “Nokia,” a saucy and cheeky electro-rap track that calls back to the sweet woe-is-me plaint of “Hotline Bling,” perhaps the peak of universal-approval-era Drake. — Jon Caramanica▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTubeB Jacks featuring Zeddy Will, ‘Get Jiggy’A post-drill hip-house throwback that restores lightness to contemporary rap. These two young rappers — B Jacks from New Jersey, Zeddy Will from Queens — find a middle ground between the dance floor and the comedic internet, making a song that works as a party anthem, a meme soundtrack or a savvy entry in the long lineage of club-focused hip-hop. It’s summer block party manna. — Caramanica▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTubeObongjayar, ‘Not in Surrender’Obongjayar’s “Not in Surrender” finds its way to euphoria.Diego Donamaria/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