Aurelia Butler

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    ‘Love’ Review: Connection, Oslo Style

    A poetic drama weaves together the lives of Norwegians as they pursue connection in their own ways.The subject of “Love” is right there in the title. But that might be deceptively simple: The director Dag Johan Haugerud’s gently humanistic drama is one of those films that feels akin to a prism, refracting its theme into the array of colors it contains.“Love,” one of a trilogy of films from Haugerud set in Oslo (the others are named “Sex” and “Dreams”), braids a few stories into one another, the way its characters’ lives are woven together. The central strands are Marianne (Andrea Braein Hovig), a middle-age urologist in Oslo, and the nurse who works most closely with her, Tor (Tayo Cittadella Jacobsen). She is straight; he is gay; they’re both single. One evening after work, they find themselves on a ferry to a neighboring island, where Marianne and her friend Heidi (Marte Engebrigtsen), who’s organizing the city’s centenary celebrations, are meeting with some people involved with the planning. (January 2025 marked 100 years since the name of the city was changed from Kristiania to Oslo.)One of those people is Heidi’s friend Ole (Thomas Gullestad), a soft-spoken architect. Marianne and Ole vibe immediately. He’s divorced, with children, and his ex-wife lives next door. Marianne can’t deny her attraction to him, but the whole thing seems pretty complicated, and she doesn’t mind being alone. On the way back, though, she finds herself on the ferry with Tor, and they fall into a conversation about Tor’s own relationship philosophy — one that’s much more casual and expansive than hers. She decides to try it out for herself.Meanwhile, Tor meets Bjorn (Lars Jacob Holm) one night, then runs into him at the urology office, where he’s been diagnosed with prostate cancer. He finds himself falling into a different sort of relationship with Bjorn than he’s ever sought with another person. It turns out Tor and Marianne both have a lot of room to grow.“Love” moves slowly through its languid moments, set against the backdrop of Oslo and its architecture. There’s a loveliness to every scene, quiet urban beauty that leaves space for the audience’s contemplation. Characters spend a lot of time conversing, with frank openness, about their connections to others and themselves, about the ways they navigate the world. Sometimes during these conversations, the camera pulls back and drifts over the Oslo rooftops, shining in the bright August sun. The voices continue, but we’re observing a broader cross-section of the city, a reminder that these kinds of conversations are happening everywhere in town, all the time. People are interested in love, looking for love, swiping on their apps for love. And for each of those people, love looks a little different.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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    ‘Final Destinations: Bloodlines’ Review: Born to Die

    The sixth installment in the horror franchise might be the most self-consciously silly of the bunch — and it’s all the better for it.It’s no surprise that the “Final Destination” franchise — a schlocky, spectacularly gory series of horror films that kicked off in 2000, spawning a total of five movies — has staying power. Unlike most horror properties, there’s no big baddie (à la Jason Voorhees or Leatherface) — or at least not one capable of getting old and seeming played out. The villain is Death itself, and both onscreen and off, it’s coming for us all, though in the “Final Destination” movies this unseen force is a shameless showboat.That’s no exception in the new, sixth installment, “Final Destination: Bloodlines,” which begins with a terrifically tense set piece in and around a Space Needle-style glass tower in the 1950s. Iris (Brec Bassinger) is on a date with her beau on the building’s opening night when she experiences a vivid hallucination of their imminently brutal deaths by towering inferno. The vision allows Iris to escape her grisly fate and save everyone around her. In this regard, “Bloodlines” follows the template of all the “Final Destination” movies (the first movie saw its characters escaping an airplane explosion, the second film a highway pileup and the third a roller coaster malfunction).But as things go in the “Final Destination” universe, Death doesn’t like being cheated — and it’ll take its lives, one by one, in what has become the franchise’s claim to fame: ingeniously choreographed kill scenes that turn everyday settings and objects into potential murder weapons. Consider some of the series’s greatest hits: death by tanning bed; by head-mashing weight machine; by, uh, slipping on spaghetti and getting your eyeball pierced by a falling fire-escape ladder.“Bloodlines,” gleefully directed by Adam Stein and Zach Lipovsky, offers a compelling tweak on its predecessors by introducing — with a wink and a shove — the element of inherited trauma. The opening glass-tower tragedy, it turns out, happened decades ago and the premonition takes the form of Iris’s granddaughter’s nightmares. Stefani (Kaitlyn Santa Juana) is flunking out of college because of these recurring visions, leading her to return home and reconnect with her long-estranged grandmother (Gabrielle Rose).Of the dozens of people who were supposed to die that night, Iris was nearly the last. Death proceeds in the intended order of the original blood bath, meaning it has taken years to work through all its victims — including the children those people were never supposed to have. Iris is now something of a doomsday prepper, having single-handedly fended off Death’s wrath by sheltering in a remote cabin. Her family thinks she’s nuts, but it’s not long before Death works its way down the family tree, making conspiracists out of all of them.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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    Tom Cruise Teaches Cannes About Star Power

    Whether in “Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning” or on the red carpet, the 62-year-old actor ensured that all eyes were on him.At Wednesday night’s Cannes Film Festival premiere of “Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning,” the film’s director, Christopher McQuarrie, shared a story with the audience about his imaginative childhood, then clasped a hand on the shoulder of his star, Tom Cruise.“I got to grow up and have my very own action figure,” McQuarrie said.With his deep tan, blinding smile and He-Man haircut, Cruise surely looked the part of a kid’s favorite toy. Certainly, Cannes has proved ever eager to play with him: Even in recent years, when Cruise has moved away from auteur-driven dramas to focus almost exclusively on action films, the festival continues to find new reasons to welcome him back.Three years ago, Cannes honored Cruise with a fighter-jet flyover for the premiere of “Top Gun: Maverick,” where he sat with an obsequious moderator for a 90-minute talk about his devotion to big-screen filmmaking. This time, Cruise’s presence was more subdued. Instead of a solo spotlight, he made a surprise appearance at the end of McQuarrie’s panel, and while major studios often hold lavish parties at Cannes, Paramount staged no such celebration for what’s been billed as the final chapter of the “Mission: Impossible” franchise.(Perhaps the movie’s rumored mega-budget of around $400 million played a part in the studio’s penny-pinching.)The “Final Reckoning” premiere had to stand on its own, then, and Cruise ensured that it would. At two hours and forty-five minutes, the film already dwarfed every Cannes title in competition for the Palme d’Or (though the movie, which opens May 23 in the United States, isn’t in the running for the prize). Cruise further goosed the experience beforehand by signing autographs outside the Palais, where the festival is held, for fans who offered him hand-drawn portraits and beckoned him in for selfies. Even on the red carpet, even as the film’s sprawling cast gathered for a group photo, most photographers kept their cameras focused solely on Cruise.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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    Cassie Testifies Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Used Sex Videos as Blackmail

    Ms. Ventura, Mr. Combs’s ex-girlfriend, said he threatened to use tapes of their sexual encounters, known as “freak-offs,” to control her behavior.Casandra Ventura, the singer and model known as Cassie, told a jury in Manhattan on Wednesday that her life with Sean Combs had its moments, but was largely filled with beatings, threatened blackmail and even a rape.During more than five hours of testimony in Mr. Combs’s sex trafficking and racketeering trial, Ms. Ventura recounted how he had stomped on her in the back of his car and how she suffered a gash above her eye when he threw her against a bed frame.She also recounted how, after the pair had dinner in 2018, Mr. Combs raped her in her living room.“I just remember crying and saying no, but it was very fast,” she testified.At the end of her testimony, Ms. Ventura said through tears that after she had broken up with Mr. Combs, the trauma remained and she enrolled in treatment for drug abuse. Even so, she said, she contemplated taking her life by walking into traffic. She said her husband stopped her.Ms. Ventura told the court she stayed with Mr. Combs despite beatings and other abuse partly because of the nagging, persistent fear that videos of their sexual encounters with male prostitutes, the hundreds of “freak-offs” that she said Mr. Combs enjoyed watching and recording, would be posted online.Hers was not idle anxiety based on what she viewed Mr. Combs might be capable of, she said, but the consequence of repeated threats he had made to use the material to damage her if she deviated from his wishes. In one case, she described sitting beside him on a flight when he displayed for her videos that she thought had been destroyed.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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    Can Eurovision Avoid Politics in Neutral Switzerland?

    The competition is run by an opaque Swiss organization that wants to sidestep controversies that could spoil the fun.At the Eurovision Song Contest, one rule stands above all others: no politics.That order is enforced by the competition’s organizer, the European Broadcasting Union, an opaque federation of nearly 70 public service broadcasters, based in Geneva. It scrutinizes performers’ lyrics, their outfits and even their stage props in hopes of bringing some Swiss neutrality to the contest and avoiding anything controversial that could spoil the fun.Yet when the Eurovision final takes place this Saturday on the European Broadcasting Union’s home turf in Basel, Switzerland, politics will still be bubbling in the background, even if the organizers manage to keep such topics off the stage. At a time when the effects of Israel’s war in Gaza are still rippling through cultural life, and Russia and Belarus are pariahs because of the invasion of Ukraine, the question of who gets to compete in Eurovision brings politics to the fore. And the question of what is actually political can be slippery, and one for which the European Broadcasting Union sometimes lacks a consistent answer.In recent weeks, broadcasters in Spain, Ireland and Slovenia have called for a debate on Israel’s participation, rehashing a furor that threatened to overshadow last year’s competition. Before the last final, in Malmo, Sweden, some Eurovision performers signed petitions and made statements calling for Israel’s exclusion because of its actions in Gaza. Some crowd members booed Israel’s singer during the final, though others cheered. Yuval Raphael, representing Israel, at a Eurovision rehearsal in Basel. Broadcasters in Spain, Ireland and Slovenia have called for a debate on Israel’s participation.Alma Bengtsson/EBUEurovision officials responded with a line that the competition has clung to at previous moments of tension: Eurovision, it said, is a contest between broadcasters, not nations. That means a government’s actions should have no bearing on the contest.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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    Key Moments in the Third Day of the Sean Combs Sex-Trafficking Trial

    Casandra Ventura, the singer and model known as Cassie, said that the relentless sexual demands and routine violence she experienced from Sean Combs over the course of their decade-plus relationship left her emotionally devastated and led her to consider suicide. In dramatic testimony on Wednesday, Ms. Ventura spent a full day of Mr. Combs’s federal trial describing physical violence that she said culminated in a rape after she left him in 2018.Ms. Ventura is widely considered the star witness at the trial, where Mr. Combs is charged with sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy. He has pleaded not guilty, and his lawyers have vehemently denied that any of his sexual arrangements were not consensual.After maintaining her composure for most of her two days on the stand, where she had remained largely dispassionate, Ms. Ventura finally broke down while discussing why she entered drug rehab and trauma therapy in 2023. “I was spinning out,” she said. “I didn’t want to be alive anymore at that point.”Beginning to cry, Ms. Ventura recalled putting their children to bed one night and telling her husband, “You can do this without me. You don’t need me here anymore.” She tried to walk out of the door into traffic, she said, but he stopped her.It was the emotional peak of a day of testimony that saw Ms. Ventura spend lengthy stretches responding to a prosecutor’s questions about individual instances of physical violence delivered by Mr. Combs. Her testimony on Wednesday afternoon began with her recollection of the first time that he physically abused her in 2007 or 2008. It was early in their relationship, she said, and she had caught him flirting with someone else at dinner. Later, in a car, he hit her on the side of her head, in view of the driver and security guard, sending her flying onto the floor.“I was just shocked,” she said.Answering questions about events that did not always follow a linear timeline, Ms. Ventura appeared weary, even resigned at times, as she cataloged her injuries — bruises on her body, a gash on her eyebrow, a busted lip — which were documented in photos that were shown to the jury as evidence.She testified that there were times she initiated violence against Mr. Combs and fought back against his abuse but, Ms. Ventura said, it did not stop his attacks.During one night out early in their romance in 2009, Ms. Ventura testified, she punched him in the face after he insulted her. His demeanor changed. “I remember his eyes went black,” she said, and he beat her in a car, stomping on her face with his foot. She said she was then sneaked into a hotel to heal in secrecy.When she went with some friends to a party in Los Angeles where Prince was to perform — a “once-in-a-lifetime experience” — she was afraid to tell Mr. Combs, she said. According to her account, he appeared at the event and she rushed out, falling into some bushes in out front, and fled to a hotel. He burst into the room, she said, where they fought, and he beat her. “He was throwing luggage at me, just calling me all kinds of names,” she testified.Ms. Ventura also testified about Mr. Combs’s reaction when he learned — by looking through her phone during a freak-off — that she had begun dating the rapper Kid Cudi, whose real name is Scott Mescudi. Mr. Combs, furious, told her he was going to hurt both of them, and that Mescudi’s car would be “blown up.”Later, the three had a meeting to “discuss the relationship that we were no longer in.” According to Ms. Ventura, Mr. Mescudi said, “‘What about my vehicle?’ And Sean said, ‘What vehicle?’” Ms. Ventura recounted. “And that was the end of the meeting.”Mr. Combs was also violent with other people, Ms. Ventura said. She testified that she witnessed him assaulting employees and assistants, punching one man in the head and dragging another, a woman — known at trial as Mia, or Victim-4 — out of bed once during a vacation.During the afternoon testimony, she repeatedly mentioned wanting to hide the abuse from her mother. After a fight led to her recuperating at a hotel, Ms. Ventura said, her mother sent her a blind item from a gossip publication that Ms. Ventura testified had reported the incident accurately. Her mother asked if it was her, and she denied that it was.A couple of years later, in late 2011, she wrote an email to her mother saying that Mr. Combs had threatened to release two sexually explicit tapes of her around Christmas, and that he would arrange to have someone “hurt” her and Mr. Mescudi, while Mr. Combs was out of the country.According to her testimony, Ms. Ventura was visiting her mother’s house in Connecticut at Christmas and showed her the bruises on her backside and thigh that were the result of Mr. Combs’s abuse. She said she lied and told her mother that it had been the first time he physically hurt her.She wasn’t ready to tell her mother about the freak-offs yet.“You can’t justify it to anyone,” she said. “Especially not your mom.”Near the end of her testimony, Ms. Ventura described a sort of farewell dinner in 2018 for her and Mr. Combs, seeking closure at the end of their relationship. She said that after a pleasant night, he raped her in her home. “I just remember crying and saying no, but it was very fast,” she said.After suing Mr. Combs in 2023, Ms. Ventura reached a $20 million settlement in one day, but that did not prevent her from becoming the central witness in the criminal case against him.As the last hour of her testimony reached a tearful climax at its conclusion on Wednesday, Ms. Ventura addressed why she was choosing to testify. “What’s right is right and what’s wrong is wrong,” Ms. Ventura said on the stand. “I’m here to do the right thing.”When Ms. Ventura finished her direct testimony, Mr. Combs turned to his family members in the spectators’s gallery. He mouthed to them, “I’m OK.”Olivia Bensimon More

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    Casandra Ventura ends an emotional day of testimony with dramatic revelations.

    Casandra Ventura, the singer and model known as Cassie, said that the relentless sexual demands and routine violence she experienced from Sean Combs over the course of their decade-plus relationship left her emotionally devastated and led her to consider suicide. In dramatic testimony on Wednesday, Ms. Ventura spent a full day of Mr. Combs’s federal trial describing physical violence that she said culminated in a rape after she left him in 2018.Ms. Ventura is widely considered the star witness at the trial, where Mr. Combs is charged with sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy. He has pleaded not guilty, and his lawyers have vehemently denied that any of his sexual arrangements were not consensual.After maintaining her composure for most of her two days on the stand, where she had remained largely dispassionate, Ms. Ventura finally broke down while discussing why she entered drug rehab and trauma therapy in 2023. “I was spinning out,” she said. “I didn’t want to be alive anymore at that point.”Beginning to cry, Ms. Ventura recalled putting their children to bed one night and telling her husband, “You can do this without me. You don’t need me here anymore.” She tried to walk out of the door into traffic, she said, but he stopped her.It was the emotional peak of a day of testimony that saw Ms. Ventura spend lengthy stretches responding to a prosecutor’s questions about individual instances of physical violence delivered by Mr. Combs. Her testimony on Wednesday afternoon began with her recollection of the first time that he physically abused her in 2007 or 2008. It was early in their relationship, she said, and she had caught him flirting with someone else at dinner. Later, in a car, he hit her on the side of her head, in view of the driver and security guard, sending her flying onto the floor.“I was just shocked,” she said.Answering questions about events that did not always follow a linear timeline, Ms. Ventura appeared weary, even resigned at times, as she cataloged her injuries — bruises on her body, a gash on her eyebrow, a busted lip — which were documented in photos that were shown to the jury as evidence.She testified that there were times she initiated violence against Mr. Combs and fought back against his abuse but, Ms. Ventura said, it did not stop his attacks.During one night out early in their romance in 2009, Ms. Ventura testified, she punched him in the face after he insulted her. His demeanor changed. “I remember his eyes went black,” she said, and he beat her in a car, stomping on her face with his foot. She said she was then sneaked into a hotel to heal in secrecy.When she went with some friends to a party in Los Angeles where Prince was to perform — a “once-in-a-lifetime experience” — she was afraid to tell Mr. Combs, she said. According to her account, he appeared at the event and she rushed out, falling into some bushes in out front, and fled to a hotel. He burst into the room, she said, where they fought, and he beat her. “He was throwing luggage at me, just calling me all kinds of names,” she testified.Ms. Ventura also testified about Mr. Combs’s reaction when he learned — by looking through her phone during a freak-off — that she had begun dating the rapper Kid Cudi, whose real name is Scott Mescudi. Mr. Combs, furious, told her he was going to hurt both of them, and that Mescudi’s car would be “blown up.”Later, the three had a meeting to “discuss the relationship that we were no longer in.” According to Ms. Ventura, Mr. Mescudi said, “‘What about my vehicle?’ And Sean said, ‘What vehicle?’” Ms. Ventura recounted. “And that was the end of the meeting.”Mr. Combs was also violent with other people, Ms. Ventura said. She testified that she witnessed him assaulting employees and assistants, punching one man in the head and dragging another, a woman — known at trial as Mia, or Victim-4 — out of bed once during a vacation.During the afternoon testimony, she repeatedly mentioned wanting to hide the abuse from her mother. After a fight led to her recuperating at a hotel, Ms. Ventura said, her mother sent her a blind item from a gossip publication that Ms. Ventura testified had reported the incident accurately. Her mother asked if it was her, and she denied that it was.A couple of years later, in late 2011, she wrote an email to her mother saying that Mr. Combs had threatened to release two sexually explicit tapes of her around Christmas, and that he would arrange to have someone “hurt” her and Mr. Mescudi, while Mr. Combs was out of the country.According to her testimony, Ms. Ventura was visiting her mother’s house in Connecticut at Christmas and showed her the bruises on her backside and thigh that were the result of Mr. Combs’s abuse. She said she lied and told her mother that it had been the first time he physically hurt her.She wasn’t ready to tell her mother about the freak-offs yet.“You can’t justify it to anyone,” she said. “Especially not your mom.”Near the end of her testimony, Ms. Ventura described a sort of farewell dinner in 2018 for her and Mr. Combs, seeking closure at the end of their relationship. She said that after a pleasant night, he raped her in her home. “I just remember crying and saying no, but it was very fast,” she said.After suing Mr. Combs in 2023, Ms. Ventura reached a $20 million settlement in one day, but that did not prevent her from becoming the central witness in the criminal case against him.As the last hour of her testimony reached a tearful climax at its conclusion on Wednesday, Ms. Ventura addressed why she was choosing to testify. “What’s right is right and what’s wrong is wrong,” Ms. Ventura said on the stand. “I’m here to do the right thing.”When Ms. Ventura finished her direct testimony, Mr. Combs turned to his family members in the spectators’s gallery. He mouthed to them, “I’m OK.”Olivia Bensimon More

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    Cassie Settled Lawsuit Against Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs for $20 Million

    Casandra Ventura testified in federal court about her 2023 lawsuit against Mr. Combs, whom she had accused of years of physical abuse and sexual coercion.In her final moments of direct testimony at the federal trial of Sean Combs on Wednesday, Casandra Ventura revealed the amount of a civil settlement that Mr. Combs and his businesses paid her after she filed a bombshell lawsuit in November 2023.Mr. Combs’s lawyers had previously disclosed that the payment was a “substantial eight-figure settlement.” Ms. Ventura clarified in court that she had received $20 million.The lawsuit, which accused Mr. Combs of years of physical abuse and sexual coercion, was settled one day after it was filed. But it precipitated a deluge of lawsuits and the federal criminal investigation that resulted in the music mogul’s arrest on racketeering conspiracy and sex-trafficking charges.Mr. Combs has vehemently denied that he coerced Ms. Ventura — or anyone — into sex and has pleaded not guilty to all of the charges against him.On the witness stand in Federal District Court in Lower Manhattan, Ms. Ventura testified for hours on Wednesday about injuries she said she received from physical abuse by Mr. Combs, and detailed the drug-dazed sex marathons with male escorts that she said occurred “hundreds” of times throughout their decade-long relationship.The defense first disclosed months ago that before Ms. Ventura filed her lawsuit, a lawyer representing her approached counsel for Mr. Combs and offered to sell the rights to a book she had written that detailed her account of their relationship. The suggested price: $30 million.On the stand, Ms. Ventura confirmed that proposal.“I wanted to be compensated for the time, the pain,” Ms. Ventura testified, as well as for the “many, many years” trying to “fix” her life.Ms. Ventura said she wrote the book during and after she went to rehab in 2023, which she described as involving “trauma therapy” and coming off Valium. She said her mother helped her get the materials organized. She decided to send chapters to Mr. Combs.“I really wanted Sean to read the information,” Ms. Ventura testified. “I wanted him to understand what I had to learn to understand over that period.”Ms. Ventura said she checked with one of his top employees, Kristina Khorram, to check if he read it, but she was told that people did not believe she was the author.Mr. Combs’s lawyers have described Ms. Ventura’s attempt to sell the book rights as “extortion” in court papers. Ms. Ventura decided to ask for $30 million without having done research about book payments, she testified, but she thought that number would get his attention.Olivia Bensimon More