Aurelia Butler

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    ‘Universal Language’ Review: If Tehran Were Winnipeg

    A lightly satirical and surrealist comedy imagines the snowy Canadian city in the style of the Iranian New Wave.The jokes I most enjoy are very specific, aimed at some tiny cross section of people who possess a peculiar shared set of reference points. Sure, broadly crowd-pleasing comedy is a hoot. But when you sense something is funny because it was made for you, and so there are other people like you, too — that’s one of the best feelings art can provoke.“Universal Language,” directed by Matthew Rankin, is a gently funny, gently moving, slightly surrealist little comedy that’s aimed at two groups of people: Canadians, specifically but not exclusively those who know Winnipeg, and aficionados of Iranian cinema. Surely there’s overlap between the two circles in that Venn diagram, but I can’t imagine it’s all that substantial. Combining the two cultural specificities, though, makes for something fresh and weird and delightful to watch — even if, like me, you’re not an expert on either one.Even before the movie begins, onscreen text proclaims that this is “A Presentation of the Winnipeg Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young People.” No such agency exists: It’s a sly wink at cinephiles, who may know that a similar institute — the Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults — produced some of the classic Iranian films in the 1970s and ’80s, including some early children’s films from the celebrated director Abbas Kiarostami. Rankin even uses a logo for his fictitious institute that looks suspiciously like the Iranian one.Actually, the onscreen text that I could read was in English subtitles, because the logo was rendered in Persian — unexpected for a purportedly Winnipeg-based organization. It’s the first indication that this movie is not set in a world strictly like our own. In their screenplay, Rankin, Ila Firouzabadi and Pirouz Nemati came up with a world that is sort of a thought experiment: What if Tehran were Winnipeg? Or Winnipeg were Tehran? What if the landscapes were snowy, the Tim Hortons were teahouses and everyone spoke Persian?Persian and French, technically — this is Canada after all. There’s no reason given for this alt-historical fact: This is just normal Canada but with Iranian cultural traditions having fully melded with Canadian ones for whatever reason. In fact, the first scene is set in a French-immersion language school full of rambunctious children, including one dressed up as Groucho Marx (cigar included) and one, named Omid (Sobhan Javadi), who insists that a turkey stole his glasses. The ill-tempered teacher (Mani Soleymanlou), who excoriates the children for not even having “the decency to misbehave in French,” declares that there will no school until Omid has glasses again.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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    ‘Sly Lives! (aka the Burden of Black Genius)’ Review: Struggling to Transmit

    Questlove’s new documentary aims to dissect the forward-looking brilliance of Sly Stone and his band, but mostly it traces their downward arc.Partway through this new Questlove documentary about Sly Stone, his band, the Family Stone, and the joyous, urgent funk they made, I got a little sad. Not for Stone, per se, and not for fame’s warping effect on his personality and relationships or for the serious drug addiction that maybe helped him cope with being that recognizable. (If “psychedelia” was a look, he looked it: piles of hair often cherried by a hat; capes, tight leather and denim; shirts, vests and jackets that never ever seemed to close.) I got sad because I could predict the notes the movie would hit — collapses, breakups, recriminations, redemption.I could make that prediction because of all the “Behind the Music” I’ve watched. This movie, “Sly Lives!,” tells Stone’s life as one of those “… and then it all fell apart” stories. Ahmir Thompson, the director better known as Questlove, proceeds with more care — with ardor even — than that series, which ran for about 17 years on VH1 and developed a formula that itself became an addictive experience. You don’t know “binge watch” until you’ve lost an entire day on that show’s roller coaster.“Sly Lives!,” which is streaming on Hulu, traces the arc of a vital career, and down is where, for a time, it led. Stone is an artist partly responsible for making “too much, too fast,” in the rock ’n’ roll universe, feel inevitable now. And if George Clinton happens to surprise you with the news that he and Stone had been using crack and were arrested in 1981 for possession, withholding that discovery constitutes minor cultural malpractice. Yet how does a filmmaker devise an alternative to the old rise-before-demise template? Failing that, how does a filmmaker enliven the journalism of the format with insight, feeling, personality, an argument?Questlove would like “Sly Lives!” to brush the dust from Stone’s pop pedestal, to celebrate his music as sui generis polymathic synthesis and as hip-hop’s bedrock, to imply that his ethos, zeal, caution and nerve persist in his scores of studio-wizard and rhythm-vision progeny: for starters, Stevie Wonder, Prince, Lenny Kravitz, Outkast, Erykah Badu, Meshell Ndegeocello, LCD Soundsystem, Kendrick Lamar, Childish Gambino, Steve Lacy. But the movie gets lost in the gulf between standard, if illuminating, biography and roiling existential crisis.For “Sly Lives!” is a title with freight. “The Burden of Black Genius” is what follows in a parenthetical, but “Black” gets a strikethrough. The film opens with its director asking for a definition of “Black genius” from Clinton, D’Angelo, Chaka Khan, Q-Tip, Nile Rodgers, Jimmy Jam, Terry Lewis and the guitarist Vernon Reid. Thought bubbles ensue. André 3000’s endorsement of Black genius as a phenomenon he loves “when it happens” is as near an answer as anyone gets. And Stone, who’s 81 now, evidently couldn’t be cajoled into comment.He was born Sylvester Stewart and reared in Vallejo, Calif. His musical life began in the church and was fortified by playing records on the radio station KSOL and producing songs for other Bay Area acts at Autumn Records. He stopped studying music in college and, in 1966, formed a band of his own with his siblings, Rose (keys) and Freddie (guitar), alongside Cynthia Robinson (trumpet), Jerry Martini (sax), Greg Errico (drums) and Larry Graham (bass). (They all provided vocals. But one of the film’s quieter achievements is the reminder that Stone was the pre-eminent funk singer — growls, yelps, wails; pulpit and pelvis.)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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    ‘La Dolce Villa’ Review: Sweet Italian Nonsense

    A light as air romantic comedy about a cheap villa in a fictional town capitalizes on the “Emily in Paris” model, with pasta.From the start, I had many questions about “La Dolce Villa,” directed by Mark Waters, most of which are easy enough to answer but stick in the mind nonetheless. Why, for instance, is the hot middle-aged dad, Eric (Scott Foley), so incredibly mad at his 20-something daughter, Olivia (Maia Reficco), for wanting to purchase a literal villa in Italy for the whopping price of one euro? Why, for that matter, is her Italian so good? Why does Eric seem so convinced the one-euro Italian villa situation is a complete scam, despite, presumably, living in a world that has the internet? Why does everyone in the tiny, remote, fictional town of Montezara, in which this villa can be found, speak extremely accomplished, crystal-clear English? And why does it feel like “La Dolce Villa” is actually funded by an Italian tourist bureau?The same answer applies to each of these: It’s a Netflix movie, designed expressly for the “Emily in Paris” audience. That is to say, it’s a glossy fairy tale about Americans having lighthearted adventures in Europe, getting into scrapes and falling in love and charming the pants off all the locals.I’ve basically explained the premise, but let’s add that Eric, a widower, and Olivia are from Ohio. After a couple of bad traveling mishaps in the past, Eric is convinced Italy is the worst place ever. He used to be a chef, but now he’s a corporate guy — yet when he sees the villa, with its capacious broken-down kitchen, the gears start to turn. Olivia is more of a free spirit, and she’s made friends with the mayor of Montezara, Francesca (Violante Placido), who is beautiful, around Eric’s age and full of big plans for her little town. Montezara is populated by an assortment of contractors, nonnas and beautiful young people. Everybody eats pasta and rides bikes through the countryside.And Montezara seems full of villas available for one euro, part of a movement in Italy to infuse new life into communities that are in danger of becoming ghost towns. (In the movie and in real life, buyers have to commit to renovating the building within a few years, which can cost thousands of dollars but is still much cheaper than buying a house virtually anywhere else.) It’s basically paradise on earth, and of course, Francesca and Eric — being single, middle-age and extremely beautiful — will meet cute and have a series of slapsticky mishaps and you know the rest.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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    ‘Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy’ Review: A Screwball Heroine Is Back

    The madcap Londoner returns in a third sequel that is just as deliciously satisfying as the first movie in the series — maybe even more.Even though Bridget Jones fans are used to zany plot developments, few could have anticipated the twist in the new installment of her film series: Miraculously, “Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy” reconnects with the deft balance of bubbliness, high jinks and emotion that was the hallmark of the movie that started it all in 2001, “Bridget Jones’s Diary.”That is a surprise, indeed, because of the first two sequels’ diminishing returns. The previous entry in the franchise, “Bridget Jones’s Baby,” may have ended with our heroine (Renée Zellweger) as the beaming new bride of her soul mate, Mark Darcy (Colin Firth), but the franchise itself was in dire straits. Labored and unfunny, that film, from 2016, sounded like a cinematic death rattle rather than peals of joyous wedding bells.Michael Morris’s “Mad About the Boy” opens with Bridget a widow of four years — happiness is always fleeting, a bittersweet undercurrent that anchors those generally buoyant movies.She is as messy and disheveled as ever, the kind of mom who sets pasta on fire and lets her young children (Mila Jankovic and Casper Knopf) run the house. Fortunately, she still has the same supporting friends (James Callis, Shirley Henderson and Sally Phillips). She also continues to hang out with the suave playboy Daniel Cleaver, portrayed, as always, by Hugh Grant — how the Bridget Jones movies have, over the years, handled this now unpalatable type qualifies as magic of the highest order. And blessedly, Emma Thompson pops back as Bridget’s gynecologist, pronouncing “syphilis” in a way that deserves to start a thousand TikTok memes.Still, it’s time for Bridget to move on and make the most of her 50s. In short order, she falls into the toned arms of the 29-year-old Roxster McDuff (Leo Woodall, “The White Lotus”), who rescues her from an ill-fated attempt to climb a tree — one of many instances of slapstick in the movie, a wise decision considering Zellweger’s expert physical comedy.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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    Watched ‘Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy’? Read These Romance Books Next

    Whether you’re in the mood for another Jane Austen adaptation, a British rom-com or a love story with a fabulous older heroine, we’ve got you covered.Good news for fans of everyone’s favorite hapless British diarist: Bridget Jones is back. The wearer of short skirts, smoker of endless cigarettes and romancer of the playboy Daniel Cleaver and the stealth charmer Mark Darcy takes her fourth turn on the big screen in “Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy.” The movie, which premieres on Peacock on Feb. 13, finds Bridget as a widowed 51-year-old mother re-entering the bizarre world of dating.The movies are based on a best-selling book series by Helen Fielding, and there are many things to love about Bridget in both formats: the cheeky reinterpretation of Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice,” the zany British humor, the irrepressible heroine herself. If you’ve already torn through the originals and are craving more romance books with similar vibes, we’ve got some suggestions — whichever aspect of the Jonesiverse you’re craving.If Austen retellings are your dearest loveIf I Loved You LessBy Aamna QureshiThis retelling of “Emma,” set on Long Island, retains all of the original’s charming banter and complex emotions. Humaira Mirza is a matchmaker with an impressive success rate, and when it comes time to find her own perfect man, Rizwan Ali ticks all her boxes. The only problem? Her longtime family friend and verbal sparring partner Fawad Sheikh disapproves, forcing Humaira to confront her own feelings about Fawad and how well he sees her, flaws and all.Pride and ProtestBy Nikki PayneLiza Bennett, an activist and D.J., is determined to stop the developer Dorsey Fitzgerald from building expensive condos in her Washington, D.C., neighborhood. But when Liza’s protest spawns a viral meme that turns her life upside down, the foes find themselves turning to each other. Payne gives the hallmarks of “Pride and Prejudice” a modern spin: Dorsey is a Filipino adoptee who feels like a misfit, while Liza’s family, true to the original, causes her endless embarrassment. If you want your Austen with more spice, you’ll find plenty 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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    ‘Becoming Led Zeppelin’ Review: The Master Blasters

    A new documentary looks back at the band’s early years, featuring interviews with Robert Plant, Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones in retrospective mode.Soon after Sha’Carri Richardson looks right at the camera in the new Nike ad “So Win,” you hear the telltale sounds of one of the most famous guitar riffs in history. Nike dropped the commercial during the Super Bowl, a seemingly apt occasion for a celebration of women athletes. It’s a typical Nike sales pitch, even if I’m still a bit dazed and confused that this ode to female excellence is set to “Whole Lotta Love,” the Led Zeppelin song in which Robert Plant promises, among other things, that he’s “gonna give you every inch of my love.”That particular lyric isn’t in the commercial, but you hear it and much more of Plant’s moaning, groaning and baby-please beseeching in the new documentary “Becoming Led Zeppelin.” A hagiographic look at the group’s beginnings, the movie is as straightforward as it is headbangingly diverting. A smooth assemblage of new and archival material, it introduces Led Zep’s own fab four — Plant (vocals), Jimmy Page (guitar), John Paul Jones (bass, keyboard) and John Bonham (drums) — and sketches in their background, revisiting how they got into music and joined forces. After two hooky hours, it wraps up in January 1970 with a rousing concert at London’s Royal Albert Hall and Plant vowing “you will be mine.”Origin stories tend to be inherently appealing, particularly for viewers already invested in the artist. “Becoming Led Zeppelin” works especially hard to please — including, it seems, its own subjects. The movie might not be an official authorized portrait, but it plays like one, as it skitters over the group’s early highs, steers clear of the band’s excesses and dodges anything unpleasant, scandalous or potentially illegal. The focus here is on the guys’ youthful self-invention and giddy discovery, on who they were before “Stairway to Heaven,” before the private plane called the Starship 1 and the Madison Square Garden gigs. It’s also, instructively, Zeppelin before Bonham’s accidental death in 1980 at age 32.The movie is anchored by a newly uncovered audio interview with Bonham and by contemporary chats with Page, Plant and Jones. Notably, the three surviving members seem to have been interviewed separately, and are usually parked in similar elaborately carved wood chairs in a plush, somewhat gloomy space kitted out with candelabras and Oriental rugs. The location suggests that the royals have graciously granted you an audience, but the results are generally warm, relaxed and, every so often, a touch melancholic. The location visually connects the men, creating a kind of virtual reunion that helps unify the material as each musician strolls down memory lane amid a trove of visual and audio material.The director Bernard MacMahon and his co-writer, Allison McGourty, have gone deep into the archives and, with help from the editor Dan Gitlin and the sound supervisor Nick Bergh, come up with loads of images of the baby rockers at work and at play. As time skips forward, the future rock gods fall ever-deeper in love with music as they begin strumming, banging, singing and posing. Page and Jones become session musicians and back up Shirley Bassey on “Goldfinger.” Jones starts arranging, too, including for the film “To Sir, With Love,” and makes his father proud. Plant finds his voice amid an astonishment of hairstyles. Page joins Jeff Beck in the Yardbirds and, from the ashes of that group, founds Led Zeppelin.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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    Interview: Helen Fielding on ‘Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy’ and Her Reading Life

    With “Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy” streaming, the novelist talked in an email interview about what moviemakers keep cutting from adaptations of her best sellers. SCOTT HELLERDescribe your ideal reading experience.I love a vacation binge-read — I read all 800 pages of “The Goldfinch” in Greece (that’s Greece, not Greek). I also love it when you’re waiting for a novel to come out and can’t put it down when it does. It was like that with “Atonement.” I managed to escape and hide when it arrived and read it all at one sitting.What kind of reader were you as a child?I was crazy for novels as a child and teenager. I read several a week, never distinguishing between heavy and light. Enid Blyton, Jane Austen, Jackie Collins, Thomas Hardy — I loved them all. Ironically, the joy was dampened when I went to university to read English. I’d worked as an au pair in France all summer and somehow failed to tackle the reading list. I ended up trying to read the entire works of Dickens in three days. I lost my reading mojo for some years.Have you ever gotten in trouble for reading a book?I’ve got into trouble for not reading a book: “Bleak House.”What books are you embarrassed not to have read yet?“Bleak House.” And I’ve got into terrible trouble for giving quotes for book covers. My quote once got a bad review: “There is only one thing wrong with this novel — the cover quote from Helen Fielding. Whilst it is true, it is also trite.”What’s your favorite book no one else has heard of?“Ernest Hemingway on Writing.” It’s a brilliant collection of quotes about writing from his letters. I don’t know what I’d do without it.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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    Trump Made Chair of Kennedy Center as Its President Is Fired

    President Trump was made chairman of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, he announced on Wednesday, cementing his grip on an institution that he recently purged of Biden appointees.The center’s longtime president, Deborah F. Rutter, was then fired from her position, the center said. Richard Grenell, a Trump loyalist who was ambassador to Germany during the first Trump administration, was appointed the center’s interim president.Mr. Trump posted on social media: “It is a Great Honor to be Chairman of The Kennedy Center, especially with this amazing Board of Trustees. We will make The Kennedy Center a very special and exciting place!”Mr. Grenell visited the center on Wednesday, according to an official at the center.The center announced on Wednesday a new slate of board members — all appointed by Mr. Trump — and said in a statement that the new board elected Mr. Trump chairman and “terminated” Ms. Rutter’s contract.Mr. Trump’s actions prompted an outcry in the cultural world.The superstar soprano Renée Fleming said on Wednesday that she would step down as an artistic adviser to the center. She praised the center’s departing leaders and said that “out of respect, I think it right to depart as well.”“I’ve treasured the bipartisan support for this institution as a beacon of America at our best,” Ms. Fleming said in a statement. “I hope the Kennedy Center continues to flourish and serve the passionate and diverse audience in our nation’s capital and across the country.”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