Aurelia Butler

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    Molly Nilsson’s Synth-Pop Puts Politics Front and Center

    She is her own manager, books her own tours and has never had a publicist. And her latest album features a song about communism in the style of Madonna’s “Vogue.”Nothing in this world is certain except death and taxes, and Molly Nilsson writes songs about both.The Swedish-born singer began her career making hazy synth-pop tracks, with titles like “More Certain Than Death” and “I Hope You Die,” that suggested love and mortality were always intertwined. But, over the past decade, politics has increasingly shaded her work: A Nilsson record might be the only place where references to late capitalism and the trickle-down economy feel perfectly at home in a pop song. Her latest album “Un-American Activities” features a song about communism that’s also a hommage to Madonna’s “Vogue.”“I’m writing the kind of music that I want to listen to myself,” Nilsson said recently in a video interview from Berlin, where she lives.Over her 16-year career, Nilsson, 39, has established a cult following while working outside the music industry’s norms. She is her own manager, books her own tours and has never hired a publicist. For years, she pressed her own records and hawked them around record stores herself.“The industry needs you a lot more than you need it,” she said. “I’m kind of bulletproof,” she added, “because even if I fail at what I’m doing, at least I did it.”In Berlin, Nilsson said she felt “liberated by the fact that you didn’t have to be a musician to make music, you didn’t have to be living off your paintings to call yourself an artist.”Gordon Welters for The New York Times“Un-American Activities,” released this month, is Nilsson’s most nakedly political record yet: an album-length exploration of McCarthyist blacklisting that draws lines between what Nilsson called “the persecution of leftists and socialists” in the ’40s and ’50s and the rise of the far-right today.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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    John Mayall, Pioneer of British Blues, Is Dead at 90

    Mr. Mayall was best known for recruiting and polishing the talents of one gifted young lead guitarist after another, starting with Eric Clapton.John Mayall, the pioneering British bandleader whose mid-1960s blues ensembles served as incubators for some of the biggest stars of rock’s golden era, died on Monday. He was 90. The death was confirmed in a statement on Mr. Mayall’s official Facebook page. The statement did not give a cause or specify where he died, saying only that he died “in his California home.”Though he played piano, organ, guitar and harmonica and sang lead vocals in his own bands with a high, reedy tenor, Mr. Mayall earned his reputation as “the godfather of British blues” not for his own playing or singing but for recruiting and polishing the talents of one gifted young lead guitarist after another.“Blues Breakers,” colloquially known as The “Beano” album, featuring Eric Clapton was the debut studio album by the English blues rock band John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers, was released in 1966.DeccaIn his most fertile period, between 1965 and 1969, those budding stars included Eric Clapton, who left to form the band Cream and eventually became a hugely successful solo artist; Peter Green, who left to found Fleetwood Mac; and Mick Taylor, who was snatched from the Mayall band by the Rolling Stones.A more complete list of the alumni of Mr. Mayall’s band of that era, known as the Bluesbreakers, reads like a Who’s Who of British pop royalty. The drummer Mick Fleetwood and the bassist John McVie were also founding members of Fleetwood Mac. The bassist Jack Bruce joined Mr. Clapton in Cream. The bassist Andy Fraser was an original member of Free. Aynsley Dunbar would go on to play drums for Frank Zappa, Journey and Jefferson Starship.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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    ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’ Review: Reynolds and Jackman Return

    The wisecracking semi-hero is back, but now he’s part of a bigger universe.“Disney’s so stupid,” Deadpool declares trollishly at the beginning of “Deadpool & Wolverine.” It’s the sort of jab — in this case, at the studio distributing the film we’re watching — that we’ve grown used to from this dude, a potty-mouthed exterminator in a face-obscuring suit vaguely reminiscent of Spider-Man. Not quite a hero, not quite anything else, Deadpool is an answer to the conflicted but upstanding superheroes of 21st-century Hollywood. He kills messily, he makes a lot of inappropriate jokes and, in an industry that practically decrees a profit-boosting PG-13 rating, his movies are always rated R.Despite first appearing in Marvel comics, Deadpool (played by Ryan Reynolds), a.k.a. Wade Wilson, also used to stand slightly outside of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But in the six years since his last big-screen appearance in “Deadpool 2,” the Merc with the Mouth has been shoehorned into the M.C.U., along with the X-Men, for reasons involving Disney’s 2019 acquisition of 20th Century Fox. (Which was promptly renamed 20th Century Studios, and you can be sure Deadpool will joke about that too.)Deadpool explains all this very quickly at the beginning of “Deadpool & Wolverine,” just to catch us up. He has a lot of expositional ground to cover, since he also has to clarify how this movie will avoid desecrating the memory of Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), a.k.a. Logan, who was laid to rest in the excellent eponymous swan song from 2017. “We’re not,” Deadpool announces. Deal with it.The first two Deadpool movies set out to skewer the conventions of superhero cinema, with “Deadpool” (2016) scrapping conventional opening credits for alternate text jabbing at tropes: “A British Villain,” “A Hot Chick,” “A Moody Teen,” “A C.G.I. Character” and also some words we can’t print here. Deadpool broke the fourth wall constantly, remarking to the audience about what was happening or about to happen, as well as the paltry budget of the film and the silliness of him, a minor and ridiculous character, being in a movie at all.But times sure have changed, and not just because those movies made a whole lot of money. Yes, “Deadpool & Wolverine” still features quips about residuals and digs at characters in DC’s rival comics universe, and a bunch of them made me chuckle. It still features Reynolds making fun of himself; it has some fun set pieces, clever sight gags, amusing surprises, left-field references and adoring pauses to admire Jackman’s biceps and abs.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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    30 Classic Horror Movies to Stream

    From silent monsters to digital-age demons, these scary-movie cornerstones are available to scream — sorry, stream.The horror movies that endure understand that panic and peril are best served through universal stories and singular monsters. That can be a child on a tricycle, a masked figure standing still across the street or a knock from down the hall at midnight.Here’s a streaming guide to some of the best and most beloved scary movies that will knock both socks and pants off, whether for the first or umpteenth time.‘The Shining’ (1980)Stream it on Shudder.Jack Nicholson stars in Stanley Kubrick’s masterful psychodrama as a struggling writer who takes a job as a grand hotel’s off-season caretaker. (The film is based on Stephen King’s 1977 novel of the same name.) A snowstorm cuts him and his wife (Shelley Duvall) and son (Danny Lloyd) off from the world, and with that disruption comes spectral twins, a blood tidal wave and other horrific happenings that turn the hotel into a hellscape. Duvall gives an indelible, visceral final-girl performance — one of horror’s best — most memorably in that scene when Nicholson comes at her with an ax through the door and births horror’s unforgettable epigram: “Here’s Johnny!”‘The Omen’ (1976)Stream it on Hulu.Richard Donner’s supernatural thriller is fueled by one of my favorite kinds of horror movie villains: the evil kiddo. The moppet here is Damien (Harvey Spencer Stephens), the naughty church-hating son of a wealthy American couple (Gregory Peck and Lee Remick). After a series of deathly happenings including a suicide, the well-meaning parents come to realize that their terrorizing little one might be the Antichrist. The film was a box office hit that kicked off a franchise actually worth completing. It also turned Damien into a synonym for a devil child.‘Hellraiser’ (1987)Stream it on Amazon Prime Video.A magic puzzle box, skin-ripping hooks and a monstrous entity named Pinhead: These are just some of the ominous and oddball elements in Clive Barker’s fantasy-forward, supernatural melodrama. Based on one of Barker’s own novellas, the film draws a joyously kinky sensibility around a darkly romantic story that asks this central question: What’s the difference between pleasure and pain? While not as much of a household name as Michael or Jason, Pinhead is a one-of-a-kind villain: grandiose, sensuous, sinister and, for some horror fans, decidedly queer.Donald Sutherland in the 1978 remake of “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.”United Artists, via Everett CollectionWe 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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    Robert Gottlieb’s Books Go Up for Sale

    Robert Gottlieb didn’t just edit books. He voraciously read and collected them.On Saturday, a portion of his personal library — his books on show business — were sold at a fair in the lobby of the Metrograph theater on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.When Mr. Gottlieb, who died last June at 92, wasn’t heartlessly lancing thousands of words out of Robert Caro’s biographical volumes or marking up the manuscripts of Toni Morrison and Salman Rushdie, he loved watching movies. Along the course of his career, he built a vast collection of books on Hollywood’s golden age.His family was unsure what to do with the collection until earlier this year, when they started talking with Metrograph, a two-screen cinema that is a pillar of the downtown art house scene.Visitors lined up to buy “My Life with Chaplin,” “Fasten Your Seat Belts: The Passionate Life of Bette Davis,” “Little Girl Lost: The Life & Hard Times of Judy Garland” and hundreds of other books. When they opened them, they found a stamped seal reading “From the Library of Robert Gottlieb.” The books were priced around $15 to $40.Reinaldo Buitron, 28, a documentary filmmaker, flipped through a book about the Italian director Roberto Rossellini.“Being able to touch the same books Gottlieb had in his own home is surreal,” he said. “I see we admired the same films, and that makes me think we might have gotten along. That we could have sat for dinner and talked cinema and about his opinions on semicolons.”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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    ‘Joker: Folie à Deux’ to Compete at Venice Film Festival

    Pedro Almodóvar’s first English-language feature and new movies from Luca Guadagnino and Pablo Larraín will also debut at this year’s event.“Joker: Folie à Deux,” Todd Phillips’s comic-book sequel starring Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga, will compete for the Golden Lion at this year’s Venice International Film Festival.The movie’s participation, which festival organizers announced during a news conference on Tuesday to reveal the lineup, comes five years after Phillips’s “Joker” — which told the Batman villain’s origin story — won the same prize at Venice’s 76th edition, paving the way for its two Oscar wins.Phillips’s movie will face starry competition for the Golden Lion, including from Pedro Almodóvar’s first English-language feature, “The Room Next Door,” starring Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton, and Pablo Larraín’s “Maria,” a biopic of the opera singer Maria Callas with Angelina Jolie in the lead.Also in competition will be Luca Guadagnino’s “Queer,” an adaptation of a short novel by William S. Burroughs that follows a drug addict (Daniel Craig) as he undergoes withdrawal in Mexico City and becomes infatuated with an American drifter (Drew Starkey); Halina Reijn’s erotic thriller “Babygirl” starring Nicole Kidman as a manager who starts an affair; and Justin Kurzel’s “The Order,” with Jude Law as an F.B.I. agent investigating a white supremacist terrorist organization.Altogether, 21 movies will compete for the top prize at Venice’s 81st edition, which is scheduled to run Aug. 28 through Sep. 7. A nine-person jury led by Isabelle Huppert, the French actor, will choose the Golden Lion winner, which is announced on the festival’s final day.This year’s competition will include, from top left, “The Room Next Door,” “Maria,” “The Order,” and “Queer.”Iglesias Más; Michelle Faye; Yannis DrakoulidisThis year’s star-studded lineup suggests the impact of last year’s Hollywood strikes on the movie industry’s schedules is waning. Those strikes wrought havoc at last year’s festival, with the MGM studio pulling Guadagnino’s tennis drama “Challengers” from the lineup, and many actors and directors staying away to avoid breaking strike terms.At Tuesday’s news conference, Alberto Barbera, the festival’s artistic director, said that “Joker: Folie à Deux” showed Phoenix and Lady Gaga’s characters stuck in an asylum awaiting trial.“Nobody can imagine what Todd and his screenwriters have imagined,” Barbera said, adding that Phoenix’s performance was “incredible.”Venice’s organizers had announced some of this year’s lineup before Tuesday’s news conference, including this year’s opening movie, which won’t compete for the Golden Lion: “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” Tim Burton’s sequel to his 1988 comedy horror. The new movie has Michael Keaton return to play the title role, and also stars Winona Ryder and Catherine O’Hara.Another high-profile movie appearing out of competition is Jon Watts’s comedic thriller “Wolfs,” starring George Clooney and Brad Pitt as professional fixers who are hired to cover up the same crime. There are also movies by directors less familiar to Western audiences, including the Japanese director Kiyoshi Kurosawa, with “Cloud,” and the Georgian filmmaker Dea Kulumbegashvili, who is showing “April.”In recent years, the Venice Film Festival has gained a reputation for debuting Oscar contenders. Last year, Yorgos Lanthimos’s “Poor Things,” starring Emma Stone, won the Golden Lion for best film and Stone went on to win best actress at this year’s Academy Awards. More

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    Serge Koussevitzky Bent Music History to His Will

    There is a passage in Serge Koussevitzky’s final recording of Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony that some listeners might hear in horror, but others with a degree of awe.He recorded the piece in 1949 with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, during the last weeks of his 25 years as its music director. About two minutes from the end of the first movement, the symphony is doing its best to keep calm. Flutes and clarinets arc gently, then oboes and horns; the cellos and basses stay constant beneath the nervous skittering of the other strings.But then the bass begins to pull down. Suddenly the higher strings start to dominate, as anxiety takes hold; that sinking bass becomes inescapable. Tchaikovsky asks for a crescendo. Koussevitzky gives him that, but he also accelerates dramatically into the darkness, as fateful motifs blare. A few seconds later, just as the music seems ready to meet its destiny, Koussevitzky decides to make us wait. Fanfares blaze, entirely out of tempo, only to announce an unwritten silence. And then, savagery. As Tchaikovsky himself described this coda, “no haven exists.”Tchaikovsky: Symphony No.4, first movementBoston Symphony Orchestra (Pristine)This is the kind of moment that, in the wrong hands, gives Tchaikovsky a bad name. Koussevitzky was hardly alone in taking liberties with the composer, but many other conductors have at least tried to contain the drama here, rather than let hysteria hang out. Even Wilhelm Furtwängler, who like Koussevitzky sought to follow the spirit implied in a score as much as its explicit text, stayed truer to what Tchaikovsky actually wrote.But in Koussevitzky’s hands, the effect is shattering. This Tchaikovsky Fourth is irresistible evidence of just how much he and the Boston Symphony achieved in their quarter of a century together. Conviction resounds. The playing is virtuosic, yet not for the sake of display. Every phrase sings. There is formidable power and intensity, but also enough elegance that it feels apt for the writer Harris Goldsmith to have described the Boston strings as “one of the hedonistic delights of Western civilization.” In 1944, the New York Times critic Olin Downes said that Koussevitzky had refined his orchestra into “the most highly perfected and sensitized symphony ensemble in the world.”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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    ‘Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar’ Deserves a Second Chance

    “Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar” has been woefully neglected. Maybe it was the culottes? But it will fill the “Barbie”-size hole in your summer.Three years ago, deep in the bleak pandemic winter, we were blessed with a strange, movie-shaped gift. Starring and written by two of our most talented comedians, it was at once satirical, sincere, good-hearted and neon-colored. It took place mostly on a Florida beach. There were some dance numbers, a remix of “My Heart Will Go On,” a bunch of colorful sugar-bomb cocktails and an obsessive attention to culottes. The jokes came fast and furiously. A crab talked in a voice that sounded like Morgan Freeman. It was, in a word, perfect.I’m writing, of course, of “Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar,” one of the more criminally underrated films in recent years. That fate was mostly inevitable; theaters weren’t open in many markets in February 2021, and matters like “time” and “release schedules” were nebulous, mushy concepts. The fact that “Barb and Star” was written by its leads, Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo, the same pair of friends who wrote the paradigm-shifting “Bridesmaids” 10 years earlier, somehow didn’t propel it into the spotlight. (We were all too busy obsessing over “WandaVision.”)But I’ve found myself thinking about “Barb and Star” (available to buy or rent on most major platforms) in the years since, in part because of last year’s megahit “Barbie.” That movie’s greatest pleasure was its tone: zany, bright, heightened, self-aware, a little meta and very sweet. It had winking jokes and magical realism and a heartfelt message, and that made it feel fresh and unusual which, indeed, it was.Crank up the “Barbie” tone by a factor of five, toss in a bag of glitter and a blue cocktail in a huge fishbowl, add just a tiny touch of raunch, and you get “Barb and Star.” The tale concerns the titular middle-aged Midwesterners, played by Mumolo and Wiig, best friends who live in Soft Rock, Neb., and work at Jennifer Convertibles — the couch store. Barb is a widow, and Star (short for “Starbara”) is divorced. They have identical poofy haircuts and they sleep in twin beds; they belong to a Talking Club run by an imperious woman (Vanessa Bayer) and have never really left their hometown.A transcendent Jamie Dornan stars alongside Wiig and Mumolo.LionsgateBut after an unfortunate layoff at Jennifer Convertibles, Barb and Star are inspired to do something unexpected to get their shimmer back. A chance encounter with a tanned acquaintance leads in one direction: a week in Vista Del Mar, Fla. What they don’t know is that Edgar (Jamie Dornan, transcendent) will be there too, at the behest of a villainess named Sharon Gordon Fisherman, also played by Wiig. He worships her; she barely tolerates him, but has promised that if they can pull off her evil plot, they can be an “official couple.” Which is all he wants in all the world.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