Aurelia Butler

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    ‘Magazine Dreams’ Review: Pain Without Gain

    Shown at Sundance two years ago, the film was shelved when its star, Jonathan Majors, was arrested and charged with assault and harassment of his girlfriend at the time.Killian Maddox (Jonathan Majors) has one goal in life: to be the greatest bodybuilder on Earth. His focus is so single-minded that he has little else to talk about. About a third of the way into “Magazine Dreams,” the shy Killian, having finally worked up the courage to ask, takes Jessie (Haley Bennett), his colleague at a supermarket, on a date.It doesn’t go well. At the restaurant, Killian startles Jessie with his casual disclosure of his mother’s violent death. (“Someone killed her. My dad did. He shot her and then he shot himself. That’s why they’re both dead.”) He orders enough protein to feed a platoon. Then he regales her with details of his regimen and his fear that others don’t respect him. “I’m going to place and get my pro card,” he tells Jessie. “Then I bet they won’t just walk by me.”The too-briefly-seen Bennett has the Cybill Shepherd role in this strained effort to make “Taxi Driver” for bodybuilders. On the evidence, the writer-director, Elijah Bynum, has also studied Scorsese’s other work, particularly “The King of Comedy” (Killian writes obsessive letters to an idol who has made the cover of Men’s Health) and the Steadicam march to the boxing ring in “Raging Bull.”Bynum supplies his own version of that shot midway through, when Killian, having just been savagely beaten by a group of men whose store he has wrecked, arrives at a bodybuilding competition still bloody. In a single, fluid camera movement, Killian enters the building and takes the stage, flexing his muscles and visibly struggling to grin through his pain. It’s an impressive show of bravado from both the actor and the director, albeit in a way that makes it difficult to tell who’s swaggering more — the character or the filmmaker.“Magazine Dreams” bludgeons viewers to show off its sensitivity. Bynum piles on the misery in increasingly bogus ways. As big as Killian is, he has thin skin from the time a judge told him his deltoids were too small. He’s too naïve to realize that posting a video of his training online will invite nasty comments. After he crashes his car, a doctor informs him that he needs surgery. “I can’t have a scar,” Killian replies. “I’m a bodybuilder. Bodybuilders can’t have scars.” Perhaps at a loss as to how to resolve the drama in a less hackneyed manner, Bynum adds guns.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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    ‘Ash’ Review: Deep-Space Horrors

    In this sleek film by Flying Lotus, Eiza González plays a marooned explorer haunted by the killing of her crew mates.The high-concept sci-fi horror film “Ash,” a hazy story about an amnesiac deep-space explorer who awakens to discover her entire crew was killed, is light on answers but heavy on style.The movie begins with a staggered Riya (Eiza González) surveying the mutilated bodies on the cold minimalist floors and walls of her interstellar outpost. There is an unexplainable gash on her forehead and a robotic system alerting her to abnormal activity happening around her. She and her crew members arrived on this distant planet — a craggy world curtained by cobalt-blue shadows and white embers — in search of a potential new home for mankind, but found something far more sinister. If only she could remember what happened.Though not as adventurous, “Ash,” from the musician-turned-director Steven Ellison, known as Flying Lotus, conjures comparisons to “Alien” and “Mission to Mars.” Its futuristic science: a terraforming planet, celestial alignment, parasitic beings — is equally wonky. Because the fractal script doesn’t aim to provide explanations, this film can be confusing. But that incomprehensibility is part of its aesthetically alluring package.By applying psychedelic medical patches to her neck, Riya is able to channel gruesome memories in loud drips and booming drops, releasing a wave of scratchy, blurred frames recalling melted faces and stomach-churning scenes set to Flying Lotus’s brooding score. When another voyager (Aaron Paul) arrives, this incites further questions whose revelations inspire a grisly third act freak-out; the mesmerizing barrage of gore makes for a memorable display.AshRated R for bloody violence, gore and language. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. In theaters. More

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    Jensen McRae and 10 More Artists to Watch

    Every week, our critics spotlight notable new songs on the Playlist. Here’s more about 11 artists behind them, selected by the pop music critics Jon Pareles, Jon Caramanica and Lindsay Zoladz; a culture reporter, Joe Coscarelli; and Caryn Ganz, the pop music editor for The New York Times. (Listen on Spotify and Apple Music.)an interview withJensen McRaeJensen McRae writes constantly: journals, poems, fiction, screenplays and, most publicly, songs. “I’ve always wanted to do a million things with regard to writing and telling stories,” she said. “But music was always the first choice.”Born in Santa Monica, Calif., and still based in Los Angeles, McRae, 27, joins a long history of California folk-pop songwriters — the legacy of the Laurel Canyon era — who draw on the diaristic specifics of their lives for songs that listeners take to heart. Her second album, “I Don’t Know How But They Found Me!,” is due April 25, with a tour that starts in May.As a child, “I was usually one of the only Black kids in a class,” McRae recalled in a video interview. “When you’re put into the observer, outsider position early on, it makes it pretty easy to figure out who you really are and what you really want, because conformity isn’t a choice. I started to develop this identity of being a narrator and a collector of details about my life, about other people’s lives.”McRae has old-school inclinations. Her music relies on hand-played, organic instruments and the power of her unadorned voice. Her 2022 debut album, “Are You Happy Now?,” included stark songs like “Wolves,” about sexual predators, accompanied only by her guitar.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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    Touring Kennedy Center, Trump Mused on His Childhood ‘Aptitude for Music’

    During his first visit to the Kennedy Center since making himself the chairman of its board, President Trump had a lot to say about Broadway shows, dancers in silk tights, the Potomac River and Elvis Presley.But in a private discussion at the start of a meeting of the center’s board on Monday, Mr. Trump offered something he usually steers away from in bigger settings: a personal anecdote about his childhood.He told the assembled board members that in his youth he had shown special abilities in music after taking aptitude tests ordered by his parents, according to three participants in the meeting.He could pick out notes on the piano, he told the board members, some of whom he’s known for years and others who are relatively new to him. But the president said that his father, Fred Trump, was not pleased by his musical abilities, according to the participants, and that he had never developed his talent. One person in the room said Mr. Trump appeared to be joking about his father. “I have a high aptitude for music,” he said at one point, according to people at the meeting. “Can you believe that?”“That’s why I love music,” he added. Mr. Trump’s remarks have not been previously reported. They were not part of an audio recording of the board meeting obtained by The New York Times earlier this week.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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    Amid Kennedy Center Upheaval, a Maestro Decides to Stay On

    As the center goes through changes after President Trump’s takeover, Gianandrea Noseda is extending his tenure at the National Symphony Orchestra, one of the center’s main groups.The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington has gone through big changes since President Trump’s recent takeover of the institution.But there will be at least one constant in the coming years: The conductor Gianandrea Noseda will stay on as music director of the National Symphony Orchestra, one of the center’s flagship groups. Mr. Noseda has extended his contract through at least 2031, the ensemble announced on Wednesday.Mr. Noseda, 60, the ensemble’s maestro since 2017, said that he felt he still had more to accomplish with the orchestra. He wants the ensemble to tour more often, to commission more pieces and to perform more opera.“We have established this kind of mutual trust in our relationship,” Mr. Noseda, whose contract had been set to expire in 2027, said in an interview this week. “It would have been a pity to stop.”Mr. Trump took over the Kennedy Center last month, purging its board of all Biden appointees and installing himself as chairman. Deborah F. Rutter, the center’s president for more than a decade, was fired. She was credited with luring the highly esteemed Mr. Noseda to the orchestra in what was widely seen as a coup.After the president’s takeover, Ben Folds, the singer and songwriter, resigned his post as an adviser to the orchestra. The orchestra has stayed largely quiet about the changes; its musicians issued a statement saying they were “proud to perform for our patrons, our community in our nation’s capital, and the country at large.”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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    Dismayed by Trump, the Star Pianist András Schiff Boycotts the U.S.

    Mr. Schiff, who has refused to play in Russia and his native Hungary because of strongman rule, said he was alarmed by President Trump’s “unbelievable bullying.”András Schiff, an eminent concert pianist who has boycotted strongman rule in Russia and his native Hungary, said on Wednesday that he would no longer perform in the United States because of concerns about President Trump’s “unbelievable bullying” on the world stage.Mr. Schiff, 71, a towering figure in classical music, said he was alarmed by Mr. Trump’s admonishments of Ukraine; his expansionist threats about Canada, Greenland and Gaza; and his support for far-right politicians in Germany. Mr. Schiff, who was born to a Jewish family in Budapest that witnessed the horrors of the Holocaust, said that Mr. Trump’s calls for mass deportation reminded him painfully of efforts to expel Jews during World War II.“He has brought an ugliness into this world which hadn’t been there,” Mr. Schiff said in a telephone interview this week from Hong Kong, where he is performing. “I just find it impossible to go along with what is happening.”So Mr. Schiff decided to stop performing in the United States. He said that he was canceling appearances next spring with the New York Philharmonic and the Philadelphia Orchestra, and a recital tour this fall with a stop at Carnegie Hall.Mr. Schiff, revered for his interpretations of the music of Bach and Mozart, is the latest artist to boycott the United States because of Mr. Trump. Last month the German violinist Christian Tetzlaff announced he would no longer perform in the country, citing Mr. Trump’s embrace of Russia, among other concerns.The small but growing cultural boycott is a jarring reversal. In the past, it was American performers who often canceled engagements overseas to protest war, autocracy and injustice. Now the United States is seen by some as a pariah.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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    Yasuaki Shimizu, a Japanese Sax Master, Takes North America

    The composer and saxophonist Yasuaki Shimizu is at home in free jazz, classical and art pop. Finally touring North America, he’s going big by staying small.Halfway through “Bye Bye Kipling,” Nam June Paik’s mash-up of music and video graphics from 1986, the camera pans to a tenor sax player as he leaps through “Tribute to N.J.P.” with its composer, Ryuichi Sakamoto, behind him on piano, conjuring a blend of Shostakovich and Keith Jarrett.The two musicians had joined Paik’s project, which was simultaneously broadcast from New York and Tokyo, to help rebut Rudyard Kipling’s line, “East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.”The twain meets again this week, when that saxophonist, Yasuaki Shimizu, embarks on his first North American tour, starting at National Sawdust in Brooklyn, Thursday and Friday, before going on to Chicago, Toronto, California and Seattle. And on Saturday, at the Metrograph theater on the Lower East Side, Shimizu will introduce four films that he scored, including “Bye Bye Kipling.”For a musician whose inventive arrangements of Bach and whose TV and movie scores have made him a minor celebrity in Japan, the tour is long overdue. (He last performed in the United States in the 1970s.)Shimizu at work in Kanagawa. Kentaro Takahashi for The New York TimesA career retrospective, it should give audiences a taste of Shimizu’s wide-ranging music. He has recorded some 40 albums in as many years — starting in the late 1970s with slick fusion boogie and progressive rock — and has been a prized sideman in the electronic and improvised scenes. With most of his recordings still out of print in the States, he has remained something of a cult figure here.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 ‘Moneyball’ and ‘Sugar’ Altered the Baseball Movie

    Two contemporary films reimagined the stories we tell about the sport.From “Eight Men Out” to “Field of Dreams,” baseball movies are usually enraptured by the past. Steeped in traditions, these films celebrate homespun heroes whose anything-is-possible journeys toward a championship elevate our spirits. But two baseball movies from the last 20 years had something else on their minds that would alter how the sport was looked at onscreen. Bennett Miller’s “Moneyball” (2011), based on a true story, and Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck’s “Sugar” (2008), aren’t about tenacious winners or mythic achievements. Instead, they’re fascinated by failure and community.That notable shift defies a subgenre built on uplift. A baseball movie will often spin a yarn about a band of misfits coming together for an unlikely title run (“Angels in the Outfield”). They can also center once-talented players given one more chance at greatness (“The Natural”), or recall life-changing summers (“The Sandlot”). They tout the majesty, poetry, superstitions and purity of the sport, appealing to truisms lodged in our cultural understanding of fairness: three strikes, you’re out and, as Yogi Berra said, “It ain’t over till it’s over.”Following the Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane (Brad Pitt), “Moneyball” aims to critique an unfair system not by yearning for the past, but by deconstructing the present. Beane is an executive whose small market ball club can no longer compete monetarily with big spenders like the New York Yankees, so he hires the nerdy Yale economics graduate Peter Brand (Jonah Hill) and turns to the teachings of Bill James, a writer who preached sabermetrics as a statistically informed way to maximize talent. Beane and Brand’s unorthodox approach puts them in opposition to the team’s irritable old school manager (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and the craggy scouts who rely on their ingrained biases to evaluate players.Pitt plays the Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane.Melinda Sue Gordon/Columbia PicturesWhile Beane deconstructs the business of baseball, assembling a stacked roster of discarded players, “Moneyball” the movie also disassembles the subgenre by not really being about baseball. Partway through the film, Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin’s patient screenplay introduces Beane’s young daughter, who hopes the team wins enough for her dad to keep his job. Pitt is wonderful in these scenes, softening Beane’s rigid executive exterior for a kinder, sweeter approach that slowly builds the importance of this father-daughter relationship to the point of Beane turning down a higher paid position with the Boston Red Sox (coincidentally, the A’s are leaving California in 2028 for a lucrative offer to play in Las Vegas).Seeing Beane’s embrace of fatherhood recalls an imperative moment in Ken Burns’s “Baseball.” In that documentary mini-series, Mario Cuomo, the former New York governor, describes baseball as a “community activity,” in which “you find your own good in the good of the whole.” As much as Beane prizes winning in “Moneyball,” his journey becomes about cherishing family.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