Aurelia Butler

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    ‘The Interview’: Demi Moore Is Done With the Male Gaze

    Demi Moore’s new movie, “The Substance,” which opens Sept. 20, is a dark comedy about the horrors of getting older as a woman in Hollywood. But it’s also a literal body-horror film — the basic premise is that Moore’s character, an aging actress-turned-celebrity-fitness-instructor named Elisabeth Sparkle, takes a strange elixir (the substance) that allows her to create a younger, more perfect version of herself. And you see that creation in bloody, visceral detail. The movie kind of grossed me out, to be honest, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it afterward. And it was fascinating to see Moore, who has been open about her own struggles with her body image and has lived most of her life in the public eye, play this role.Listen to the Conversation With Demi MooreThe actress discusses how her relationship to her body and fame has changed after decades in the public eye.Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Amazon | iHeart | NYT Audio AppI’ve been mesmerized by Moore for decades, starting in 1985 with “St. Elmo’s Fire,” when her husky voice and bold onscreen persona — in this instance, a kind of wildness that made her seem both alluring and destructive — first broke through. There was a period when it felt as if every movie Moore starred in was an event — “Ghost,” “A Few Good Men,” “G.I. Jane,” “Striptease,” “Indecent Proposal.” She eventually became the highest-paid actress in Hollywood, and also an early advocate for pay equity in the industry, long before the issue was part of the national discourse.But even though Moore was such a visible celebrity of my teenage and early adult years, I never felt I knew much about her until reading her revealing 2019 memoir, “Inside Out,” which opens at the lowest point in her life, with the end of her marriage to Ashton Kutcher and her relapse into alcoholism. Moore’s struggles started early as the child of a mentally ill, alcoholic mother. But much of the book is about the extreme lengths she went to during her prime Hollywood days to control her body through disordered eating and exercise. Now in her 60s and a grandmother, Moore tells me she has finally grown comfortable in her own skin and, with “The Substance” and this stage of her career, is hoping to upend expectations about what it means to be an aging woman in an industry that both embraced and judged her harshly. (And a note: I asked Moore how her former husband Bruce Willis, who’s living with frontotemporal dementia, is doing, and she said he’s stable and OK, all things considered.)Why did you sign on to star in a movie about a woman who’s aging in Hollywood and at war with her own body? It felt very meta watching you do this. Why it was easy for me to step in and do this is because I don’t feel I am her. This is a woman who has no family — she’s dedicated her entire life to her career, and when that’s taken, what does she have? And so, in a way, I had enough separation from her, and at the same time, a deep, internal connection to the pain that she was experiencing, the rejection that she felt. I knew it would be challenging, but potentially a really important exploration of the issue.Tell me what you understand the issue to be. That it’s not about what’s being done to us — it’s what we do to ourselves. It’s the violence we have against ourselves. The lack of love and self-acceptance, and that within the story, we have this male perspective of the idealized woman that I feel we as women have bought into. More

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    A Shocking Country Song Is Dominating TikTok. Is Girly Girl for Real?

    TikTok’s latest musical obsession is a country song. But not the kind that first comes to mind.Miles removed from the weather-beaten earnestness of Zach Bryan, or Bailey Zimmerman’s heart-on-sleeve crooning, the viral “10 Drunk Cigarettes” is plasticky, poppy, alien and seemingly A.I.-assisted. Its lyrics advocate for a carefree, resolutely American way of life, although they replace Nashville standards like beers and Bibles with cigarettes and copious amounts of cocaine, and find humor (and plenty of shock value) in their clash of saccharine femininity and unbridled nihilism. The result is like the cult comedy “Strangers With Candy” or the early web series “The Most Popular Girls in School” for the short-form video generation.“10 Drunk Cigarettes” is by Girly Girl Productions: a mysterious trio supposedly based in St. Louis that seem to have a preternatural ability to turn ironic, startlingly contemporary internet humor into music. Most Girly Girl songs follow a brutally effective structure: an intro verse about how empowered women are, followed by a chorus about using that power to do something horrifyingly self-destructive, in a tone that vaguely echoes the “God forbid women have hobbies” meme.Not every Girly Girl song is indebted to country, but its most ingratiating ones, like “Notes App Girls!” and “Coked Up Friend Adventure!” feel rooted in the genre. “10 Drunk Cigarettes,” which has gained the most traction on TikTok and streaming, combines the smiley feminized empowerment of RaeLynn’s “Bra Off” — which likens a breakup to “takin’ my bra off” — with the boozy escapism of Chase Rice and Florida Georgia Line’s “Drinkin’ Beer. Talkin’ God. Amen.”“10 Drunk Cigarettes” is not dissimilar from that collaboration in structure and arrangement. It’s built around a rhythmic acoustic guitar line and surges to an anthemic chorus structured as a list. But it’s not the kind of song that will be getting played on country radio anytime soon. TikTok is filled with videos of people reacting, mouths agape, to its chorus: “I can name 10 things us girls need before we ever need a man/One new vape/Two lines of coke/Free drinks from the bar/Four more lines of coke” — and so on.The very first line of “Demure,” Girly Girl’s debut album, makes a statement: “Haters mad ’cause my music is A.I./Wish I cared, but I’m way too high.” While many vocals on the album are wobbly and lo-fi in a way that recalls the fake songs by Drake and the Weeknd that proliferated last year, it’s unclear how much of Girly Girl’s songs are A.I.-generated; it’s unlikely that tracks like these could be made without a high level of human involvement. (The company did not respond to a request for comment.)Girly Girl’s songs tap into a vein of humor that’s firmly of-the-moment. Their glib jokes about vaping, drinking, drug taking and trauma — and, specifically, how those things relate to, or form an essential part of, “girlhood” — are the kinds of jokes going viral on X, formerly Twitter, every day. “Demure” was released last month, and even its title (which refers to a TikTok trend about being “very demure, very mindful” that blew up and faded away within the last few weeks) points to a desire for immediate relevance at the expense of longevity.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 Lijadu Sisters, Nigeria’s Twin Musical Pioneers, Are Celebrated Anew

    Taiwo and Kehinde were groundbreaking for their funky songs, as well as their feminism. Five years after Kehinde’s death, their albums will be reissued.High above Harlem in early August, Yeye Taiwo Lijadu sat surrounded by her collection of sacred objects. Shelves displaying statues and icons of some of the 401 deities associated with the Yoruba traditional religion Ifá — in which she’s an ordained priestess — stretched nearly to her apartment’s ceiling. Lijadu (pronounced Lee-JAH-doo), 75, called this room “a museum of the ancestors.”Less prominent were artifacts from her past as one of Nigeria’s biggest 1970s pop stars, when she was half of the vocal duo the Lijadu Sisters, with her identical twin, Kehinde. Beginning in 1963, when they were schoolgirls in a talent competition, the pair became fixtures on Nigerian television. They began releasing records in 1968, and by the mid-1970s they were larger than life; the cover illustration of their 1976 album “Danger” depicted them as superheroes, clad in matching red outfits with knee-high boots.In Nigeria’s male-dominated music scene, the Lijadu Sisters were among the first — and fiercest — popular female artists, groundbreaking not only for their music (a mélange that included folky apala, funky Afrobeat and slinky disco) but also their feminism. In Jeremy Marre’s 1979 documentary “Konkombe: The Nigerian Pop Music Scene” (which will screen at BAM next month), the sisters rehearse and record while taking turns feeding Taiwo’s infant daughter, trying to make their voices heard amid a studio full of male musicians and technicians. “Women suffered at the hands of men in Nigeria,” Lijadu recalled, alluding to an atmosphere of disrespect and sexual harassment.But yesterday’s struggles have yielded to today’s admiration, as the pair have finally been accorded the acclaim their trailblazing influence deserves. After being out of circulation for years, all five of the Lijadu Sisters’ 1970s albums will be remastered and reissued by the Numero Group, beginning with the release next week of perhaps their most fully realized record, “Horizon Unlimited” (1979). But what should be a moment for triumph is filled with grief: Kehinde died in 2019 of breast cancer. “She was my life,” Lijadu said, “she was my everything.”The Lijadu Sisters released their debut album, “Urede,” in 1974 on EMI Nigeria, then signed a four-album deal with the Decca imprint Afrodisia.Pade AladiThe Lijadu Sisters’ music was striking for its sisterly connection. Singing primarily in English or Yoruba, the pair showcased uncannily synchronized harmonies, conjuring a choir of two. Their songs have been sampled — without proper clearance — by artists including Nas and Ayra Starr and cited as inspirations by a new generation of female musicians like Tems and Hayley Williams.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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    Margaret Qualley Is Getting the Hang of Being a Movie Star

    Margaret Qualley could finally breathe again.“I’ve been working a lot,” she said over iced tea at Clark’s, a Brooklyn Heights diner near where she lives with her husband, the music producer Jack Antonoff. “I’m relishing these little lull moments.”Qualley, 29, has more than earned a break. After making a striking debut 10 years ago in the HBO series “The Leftovers,” she appeared in “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood,” followed by Emmy-nominated performances in “Fosse/Verdon” and the Netflix mini-series “Maid.” In the past year, she starred in “Poor Things,” “Drive-Away Dolls” and “Kinds of Kindness,” and when we met, she had just returned from shooting three back-to-back movies — Ethan Coen and Tricia Cooke’s “Honey Don’t!,” John Patton Ford’s “Huntington” and Richard Linklater’s “Blue Moon.”Moviegoers will next see her in “The Substance,” a film that is somehow a departure from all of the above and one she acknowledged was uniquely challenging. Directed by Coralie Fargeat and slated for release on Sept. 20, it is a body-horror blood bath in which Demi Moore plays Elisabeth Sparkle, an actress who, attempting to recapture her fading youth, injects herself with a mysterious serum.“I’m just trying to move through life like water in a river,” Margaret Qualley said, “and stay agile and move around the rocks.”Thea Traff for The New York TimesThe result is Sue, played by Qualley, a younger, taller, “perfect” woman who emerges fully formed from Elisabeth’s body. The two of them must trade places every week, with the one who’s off-duty kept nourished by IV bags of potions. But soon enough, Sue develops a taste for her brand-new world and doesn’t want to be put on ice when it’s her turn to hibernate.Qualley was in Panama, shooting Claire Denis’s “Stars at Noon,” when she read the script, and was drawn to the prospect of playing a character who seemed “really far from me,” she said.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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    Coppola Sues After Report Said He Tried to Kiss ‘Megalopolis’ Extras

    The director Francis Ford Coppola is seeking at least $15 million in damages from Variety.Francis Ford Coppola, the celebrated director of the “Godfather” movies and “Apocalypse Now,” sued the Hollywood trade magazine Variety and two of its editors for libel this week after it reported that he had behaved unprofessionally on the “Megalopolis” set, including by trying to kiss extras.Coppola, 85, is seeking at least $15 million in damages.The Variety article, which was published in July, said Coppola had pulled women onto his lap and tried to kiss them during the filming of a nightclub sequence. The article included two videos from the set in which the director appears to be trying to hug and kiss extras.The claims echoed those in an article that was published by The Guardian in May. An executive co-producer of the film, which is scheduled to open in theaters this month, told The Guardian that he had heard no complaints of misconduct and that Coppola’s behavior during that sequence was intended to “establish the spirit of the scene.”Libel cases against public figures face a high bar in the United States. People who file such suits must prove not only that a falsehood harmed their reputation, but that the publisher knowingly or recklessly disregarded the truth.“To see our collective efforts tainted by false, reckless and irresponsible reporting is devastating,” Coppola said in a statement on Wednesday, the day his suit was filed in California state court. “No publication, especially a legacy industry outlet, should be enabled to use surreptitious video and unnamed sources in pursuit of their own financial gain.”Coppola sold part of his wine estate to put up $120 million to finance “Megalopolis,” an ambitious and experimental saga about an architect (Adam Driver) who seeks to rebuild a futuristic New York City.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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    Herbie Flowers, ‘Walk on the Wild Side’ Bassist, Dies at 86

    A celebrated session musician who appeared on a host of classic rock albums, he made his most lasting mark with his contribution to Lou Reed’s most famous song.Herbie Flowers, a prolific British session musician who rode a handful of notes to rock immortality with his indelible bass line on Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side” — just one of the many landmark recordings on which he supported a constellation of rock stars — died on Sept. 5. He was 86.Family members announced his death on social media. The family did not say where he died or cite a cause.Mr. Flowers, a bassist who also occasionally played tuba, began his career as a session musician in the late 1960s. He carved out his sliver of rock glory by playing on more than 500 hit albums by the end of the 1970s, according to the BBC.The classic albums Mr. Flowers played on could have filled a dorm room shelf in the 1970s and ’80s. Among them were Elton John’s “Madman Across the Water” and Harry Nilsson’s “Nilsson Schmilsson,” both from 1971; Cat Stevens’s “Foreigner” (1973); and David Bowie’s “Diamond Dogs” (1974).He joined forces with three-quarters of rock’s equivalent of the royal family, recording with Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. He also recorded with Dusty Springfield, Serge Gainsbourg and David Essex, whom he joined on the sinewy 1973 hit “Rock On.”Despite his proximity to fame, Mr. Flowers described himself as little more than a hired hand.As a studio musician, he once told Bass Player magazine, “they play you the song or sling you a chord chart, and you come up with what you think are fancy bass lines.” You “get your job done as quickly as you can,” he added, “and as soon as they say ‘Thanks very much,’ get the hell out of there.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 of My Most Anticipated Albums of the Fall

    A new indie-rock supergroup, a fruitful (if unexpected) partnership, an alt-rock icon going solo and more.Kim Deal has been a one-of-a-kind mainstay in underground rock, first with Pixies and then the Breeders, but she’s never released a full solo album until now.Alex Da CorteDear listeners,Fall is a perennially busy season for new music releases, and the deluge can be a bit overwhelming. Fear not: Today I’m here to help.For the Times’s annual Fall Preview, out in print on Sunday, I listened to a bunch of upcoming releases, and this playlist is a brief collection of my recommendations — five albums that, I can now confirm, are worth getting excited about. Some of these LPs showcase familiar names pushing themselves in new directions (Kim Deal is finally releasing her first solo album!) while others (from the English folk singer Laura Marling and the New York post-hardcore group Drug Church) find artists finally coming into the peaks of their powers, perfecting unique sounds they’ve established across previous albums.We’ve also got a power duo (the R&B auteur Dawn Richard and the experimental composer Spencer Zahn) and a power quartet (a new coalition of indie-rock lifers who have named themselves, fittingly, the Hard Quartet). There’s a little something for everyone on this playlist. Check it out and spring forward into fall.You call it superstitions, I call it traditions,LindsayListen along while you read.1. Kim Deal: “Crystal Breath”Since her earliest days in Pixies and her long-running alt-rock group the Breeders, Kim Deal’s hazy, cotton-candy voice has been a one-of-a-kind mainstay in underground rock, but she’s never released a full solo album until now. At turns abrasive and achingly sweet, “Nobody Loves You More” is pure Deal, whether she’s offering her own off-kilter version of yacht rock on the lead single “Coast” (which I shared in a previous Amplifier) or turning more experimental on the angular, staticky “Crystal Breath.” Even at its most infectious, a misty melancholy hangs over the album; it marks Deal’s last collaboration with her friend and longtime engineer Steve Albini, who died suddenly in May. The lilting, pedal-steel-kissed standout “Are You Mine” sounds like a simple, doo-wop-inspired love song but turns out to be an ode to Deal’s late mother, who struggled with dementia. Even in the midst of all that loss, “Nobody Loves You More” heralds, for the 63-year-old Deal, a fruitful new beginning. (Nov. 22; 4AD)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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    6 Movie Trends from the Toronto International Film Festival

    And other cultural predictions based on movies that played at the Toronto International Film Festival, including Pedro Almodóvar’s latest.After years of pandemic delays and Hollywood strikes, the Toronto International Film Festival, which concludes on Sunday, felt particularly alive this year. Unlike recent years, there was no surefire hit like “Everything Everywhere All at Once” (2022) or “Oppenheimer” (2023) that premiered in the spring or summer, which added excitement and uncertainty going into awards season. Movies both big and small come to the Canadian city to launch Oscars campaigns, build audiences, announce major debuts and, in some cases, woo buyers that’ll release films over the coming months. But it’s also a great place to see how culture at large is shifting, at least as far as Hollywood is concerned. Here’s where we’re headed.1. We’re all in the mood for love again …Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield in “We Live in Time.”Courtesy of TIFFIf the September film season (which also includes major festivals in Venice, Italy, Telluride, Colo., and the upcoming one in New York), has shown something, it’s that many writers and directors are feeling romantic. There’s Sean Baker’s “Anora,” about a sex worker who marries the son of an oligarch, and William Bridges’s “All of You,” which depicts Brett Goldstein (of “Ted Lasso” acclaim) and Imogen Poots as best friends who can’t decide whether to date. Chemistry always wins out, of course, and it’s hard to deny the frisson between Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield in John Crowley’s “We Live in Time,” an indie crowd-pleaser that’s ideal for crying your way through on a rainy Sunday afternoon.2. … Or maybe it’s just lust.Nicole Kidman and Harris Dickinson in “Babygirl.”Courtesy of TIFFDaniel Craig and Drew Starkey in “Queer.”Yannis DrakoulidisToronto was brimming with romantic tragedies, not comedies; perhaps because of ongoing conversations about non-monogamy and open relationships, there were a lot of affairs onscreen, too. The most successful scripts focused on intense, almost unnamable desire, often between two people who know it can’t last: In Halina Reijn’s “Babygirl,” Nicole Kidman plays a powerful executive who gets into a complicated psychosexual mess with her intern; in Luca Guadagnino’s “Queer,” based on the William S. Burroughs novel (published in 1985), Daniel Craig’s heroin-addled character deals with the hot-and-cold affections of a paramour while traveling through midcentury Mexico City and South America. Both films sizzle, and it’s no coincidence that the actors playing the young objects of these leads’ affections — Harris Dickinson and Drew Starkey, respectively — are proving themselves to be rising talents.3. Another major star? Danielle Deadwyler.Danielle Deadwyler in “The Piano Lesson.”Courtesy of TIFFWe 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