Aurelia Butler

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    in Music

    On Haim’s ‘I Quit,’ a Breakup Is an Inspiration

    “I Quit,” the band’s fourth album, leans into heartache and moving on.Experience has a way of undermining certainties — especially ones about people. Simple hero-villain narratives develop gray areas, motives are reassessed. Blame gets reapportioned, ambivalences creep in.On “I Quit,” Haim’s fourth album, the sisters Danielle, Alana and Este Haim apply the same generation-spanning pop expertise and ambition that they’ve previously brought to simpler scenarios. It’s a breakup album, but one that navigates all sorts of mixed emotions: recriminations and apologies, righteousness and doubts, longing and renunciation.The songs on “I Quit” move through regrets and second-guessing to find relief, even liberation, in being single. “Now I’m gone, now I’m free / Born to run, nothing I need,” Danielle Haim sings in “Gone,” the album’s agenda-setting opening track. Lest anyone miss the point, the song samples the gospelly chorus of George Michaels’s “Freedom! ’90.”Haim’s 2013 debut album, “Days Are Gone,” introduced a band with classic-rock skills and 21st-century resources. Singing quick-tongued, fine-tuned harmonies, Haim reconfigured decades of physical and computerized California sounds: Fleetwood Mac above all, with its vocal harmonies and panoply of guitar tones, but also Sheryl Crow, Michael Jackson, Tom Petty, Beck and more.Haim used that vocabulary, much of it from before the sisters were born, to sing about matters of the heart with an implicit family solidarity. Their early videos often showed them striding together down Los Angeles streets.Onstage, Haim performs straightforwardly in real time, with the sisters switching among instruments. Meanwhile, in the studio, Haim slips all sorts of clever details and sly electronic textures into natural-sounding tracks.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

  • 138 Shares199 Views

    in Movies

    ‘Jaws’ Is a Masterpiece, but ‘Jaws 2’ Deserves a Legacy, Too

    The sequel had a tough act to follow, but it still delivered a terrifying monster movie with grand sequences, a sweeping score and an indelible tagline.As a child, I collected so many shark jaws that my mom disappeared them all one day while I was at school because my room allegedly smelled “fishy.” I suspect it was my general fixation on the beasts that didn’t pass the sniff test.When I first saw “Jaws” at age 8 — more than a decade after its 1975 release — it exploded my already shark-obsessed young mind. I should have been more scared, but instead I was captivated. When I saw “Jaws 2,” not long after, it spawned another great love of mine: monster movies, with all of their suspense, horror, surrealism and spectacle.The original, which was directed by Steven Spielberg, is of course a monster movie, too — probably the best monster movie ever made — but it was also a masterpiece that changed cinema. But “Jaws 2,” released in 1978, was not trying to be anything but a monster movie. On that score, it’s a horrifying success and a feat in its own right — a sequel that delivers more of everything I want (which explains why I rewatch it every summer): more shark, more shark attacks, more screaming teens.Roy Scheider reprised his role from the original.Universal PicturesThe film takes us back to Amity Island four years after the events of the first movie, with some of the same cast members returning. Roy Scheider is Martin Brody, the beleaguered police chief who once again is fighting to protect the seaside town from another killer great white. Scheider plays him with full-tilt, man-on-a-mission madness. Lorraine Gary is Martin’s wife, Ellen, and is more present in the sequel, offering crucial balance to her frenetic, spiraling husband. And Murray Hamilton is Mayor Larry Vaughn. How the mayor kept his job perhaps requires more suspension of disbelief than the fact that another shark is terrorizing the same community.Unlike the first film, which is known for perfectly executing the slow-burn buildup to its monster reveal, the sequel gives us the creature immediately after the opening credits, when it swoops in on two scuba divers photographing a shipwreck.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

  • 113 Shares129 Views

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    Vote for Your 10 Best Movies of the Century

    <!–> [–><!–> –><!–> [–><!–>In the space below, please list up to 10 titles that you consider to be the best films released since Jan. 1, 2000. Each movie should be feature length and released commercially. If you need a starting point, we have compiled our critics’ favorites from the last 25 years on one handy […] More

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    Pedro Almodóvar, Sofia Coppola and 117 Other Famous Names Share Their Top Movies of the Century.

    <!–> [!–> <!–> –><!–> –>and 73 more ballots from the over 500 voters who determined our list of the century’s best movies<!–> –> 100 Best Movies And more ballots from … actors  Naomi Ackie, Uzo Aduba, Casey Affleck, Joel Kim Booster, Daniel Brühl, Jemaine Clement, Richard Gadd, Tony Hale, William Jackson Harper, Naomie Harris, Sally […] More

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    The 100 Best Movies of the 21st Century

    More than 500 influential directors, actors and other notable names in Hollywood and around the world voted on the best films released since Jan. 1, 2000. Here is how their ballots stacked up. More

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    in Music

    Aide Who Was Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs’s ‘Right Hand’ Draws Scrutiny at His Trial

    Kristina Khorram, the mogul’s former chief of staff, was not charged in his indictment, but the government has identified her and other staff as co-conspirators.For years, anyone who wanted access to Sean Combs had to go through Kristina Khorram first.An employee at his company since 2013, becoming his chief of staff in 2020, Ms. Khorram was the mogul’s “right hand,” as he once called her. Before leaving her role in the last year, she commanded a rotating army of personal assistants for Mr. Combs and was the central go-between for his multifaceted business empire.While much of her work related to Mr. Combs’s businesses, she also made doctor’s appointments for his girlfriends. Made sure their rent was paid. Apprised them of the boss’s daily moods.“Don’t know how I’d function without her,” Mr. Combs wrote in a Facebook shout-out in 2021.The actions of Ms. Khorram and others who worked for Mr. Combs over the years are now being scrutinized in federal court, where prosecutors are trying to convince jurors that Mr. Combs is guilty of sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy, asserting that he ran a “criminal enterprise.”Ms. Khorram, 38, has not been charged in the case, has not been called as a witness and has denied wrongdoing in the past. But her presence is woven through various accounts given at the trial of wrangling hotel logistics for the sex marathons that are at the heart of the case, or of arranging for drugs to be transported by plane to the music mogul.“Her duties as Mr. Combs’s chief of staff were extremely broad,” Meredith Foster, a prosecutor, told the judge this month. “They involved setting up hotel nights,” she added, “facilitating the transportation of narcotics, various items such as that.”During the trial, prosecutors have described the behavior of various bodyguards and staff at Mr. Combs’s companies, as well as Ms. Khorram, as they argue to the jury that the conduct of the employees was not just the work of dutiful assistants, but of racketeering co-conspirators.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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    Dr. Demento Announces His Retirement After 55 Years on the Air

    Barry Hansen, mostly known by his D.J. name, said he’d end his show’s run after 55 years of playing parody songs. His syndicated show was once heard on more than 150 radio stations.“Monster Mash.” “Another One Rides the Bus.” “Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer.”The D.J. most responsible for lodging these earworms in listeners’ heads, Barry Hansen, better known as Dr. Demento, said last month that he would retire from the airwaves in October, on the 55th anniversary of his radio debut.Mr. Hansen, 84, started on KPPC-FM, a free form and progressive rock station in Pasadena, Calif., (now KROQ-FM) in 1970 and soon began focusing on what he called “funny music” because of listener requests for songs that made them laugh.After he played “Transfusion,” a song by Nervous Norvus, which had been banned on many radio stations in the 1950s, another D.J. at the station called Mr. Hansen demented.“Transfusion” — featuring the sound effects of vehicle crashes — is about a reckless driver who repeatedly gets seriously injured in car crashes by breaking traffic laws. In the lyrics, the driver gets a blood transfusion after each crash and vows to drive safely, before getting into another one.The novelty song struck a chord with Mr. Hansen, who would spin up similar parodies for his playlists for the next half century. The nickname Dr. Demento, which he adopted shortly afterward, also stuck.He referred to his fans as dementoids and dementites.“I have been doing this show for nearly 55 years, about two-thirds of my life,” Mr. Hansen said on his May 31 show, which broadcasts online. “It’s been a blast, but I have come to the decision that I need to hang up my top hat soon. The show you just heard is the last of my regular shows.”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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    Lou Christie, ‘Lightnin’ Strikes’ Pop Crooner, Is Dead at 82

    A late-1960s throwback to the days of clean-cut teen idols — he called himself “the missing link” — he rode his gymnastic vocal range to a string of hits.Lou Christie, who with his heartthrob persona and piercing falsetto rode high on the mid-1960s pop charts with hits like “Lightnin’ Strikes” and “Two Faces Have I,” while transcending teen-idol status by helping to write his own material, died on Wednesday at his home in Pittsburgh. He was 82.His family announced the death on social media, saying only that he died “after a brief illness.”With his perky doo-wop-inflected melodies and his gymnastic vocal range, Mr. Christie was at times compared to Frankie Valli of the Four Seasons. Like Mr. Valli, Mr. Christie hit his stride as the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and the other guitar groups of the British Invasion were starting to shatter the handsome-teen-crooner archetype personified by the likes of Fabian and Frankie Avalon.“They started disappearing,” Mr. Christie once said of such singers in an interview with the site Classic Bands. “It was so interesting that I kept going. I hit the end of that whole era.“I’ve always been between the cracks of rock ‘n’ roll, I felt. The missing link.”Mr. Christie in performance in 2013 in Collingswood, N.J. He continued to tour as an oldies act and release music on small labels long after his hitmaking days were over.via Getty ImagesEven in changing times, he held his own, thanks in part to the songs he wrote with his songwriting partner, Twyla Herbert, who was two decades his senior. The songs they created together had more emotional complexity than the standard odes to puppy love.While his debut album, released in 1963, failed to make a splash, two of the singles featured on that album climbed the charts. “The Gypsy Cried” reached No. 24 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1963. “Two Faces Have I,” a showcase for Mr. Christie’s signature falsetto, climbed to No. 6 a few months later.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