Aurelia Butler

More stories

  • 200 Shares199 Views

    in Movies

    Leslie Uggams of ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’ Is a Fan of Nat King Cole and Billie Eilish

    The actress, nominated for an Emmy and Golden Globe for her performance in “Roots,” is still going strong with appearances in the TV series “Fallout” and the upcoming movie “Deadpool & Wolverine.”The veteran singer and actress Leslie Uggams likes to be busy.“Even when I’m home and I get to relax,” she said in a phone interview from her home in New York, “I have to be doing something — cooking, doing a puzzle — something.”The 81-year-old has kept busy since she made her debut at age 6 as Ethel Waters’s niece in the 1950s sitcom “Beulah.” The career that followed included an adolescence spent singing and dancing at the Apollo Theater; hosting her own televised variety show in 1969 (Sammy Davis Jr. and Dick Van Dyke were among her guests); winning a lead actress Tony in 1968 for the musical “Hallelujah, Baby!”; and earning an Emmy and Golden Globe nomination for portraying Kizzy in the 1977 mini-series “Roots.”Keeping ever current, Uggams appeared in the 2023 film “American Fiction,” performed in “Jelly’s Last Jam” at New York City Center last winter, then did a cabaret run at 54 Below.”After seven decades, I am still going strong,” she said.Uggams’s latest role, as the Vault official Betty Pearson on the TV series “Fallout,” has attracted a new wave of sci-fi devotees. (“I’m getting a lot of fan mail about Betty.”) And she’s returning as the feisty, foul-mouthed Blind Al in “Deadpool & Wolverine,” opening July 26.“I am still riding the wave,” Uggams said, while reminiscing about her family, the author of “Roots” and the way the Apollo toughened her up as a performer. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1Alex Haley, ‘Roots’ AuthorHe changed my life, not just because of being cast in “Roots.” He gave me and the world an understanding of ancestry and the importance of knowing our true history, not just what’s taught (or not taught) in schools.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

  • 163 Shares169 Views

    in Music

    Bernice Johnson Reagon, a Musical Voice for Civil Rights, Is Dead at 81

    A singer, composer, curator and founder of the vocal group Sweet Honey in the Rock, she provided a gospel soundtrack for the civil rights movement.Bernice Johnson Reagon, whose stirring gospel voice helped provide the soundtrack of the civil rights movement, then went on to become a cultural historian, a curator at the Smithsonian Institution and the founder of the women’s a cappella group Sweet Honey in the Rock, died on Tuesday in Washington. She was 81.Her death, in a hospital, was confirmed by her daughter, Toshi Reagon, who did not give a cause.Bernice Reagon, the daughter of a Baptist preacher in Albany, Ga., grew up in a church without a piano, and the first music she absorbed, rooted in spirituals and hymns, was performed by human voices to the accompaniment of clapping and foot stomping.She was an original member in 1962 of the Freedom Singers, a vocal quartet that provided anthems of defiance for civil rights protesters preparing to confront the police or as they were hauled away to jail. The Freedom Singers were associated with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which sent them across the South as well as to the Newport Folk Festival in Rhode Island in 1963.Ms. Reagon once wrote, “I sang and heard the freedom songs and saw them pull together sections of the Black community at times when other means of communication were ineffective.”She went on to earn a doctorate in American history from Howard University in 1975 and to direct the Black American Culture Program at the Smithsonian. There, she amassed a collection of blues, gospel and spiritual music and presented that heritage to the public.During one gospel music presentation, in the 1980s, Ms. Reagon encouraged the audience to hum and sing along with the performers. “And if you can’t do that, grunt or sigh a little,” she instructed.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 Shares99 Views

    in Music

    Happy Traum, Mainstay of the Folk Music World, Dies at 86

    A noted guitarist and banjo player, he emerged from the same Greenwich Village folk-revival scene as his friend and sometime collaborator Bob Dylan.Happy Traum, a celebrated folk singer, guitarist and banjo player who was a mainstay of the Greenwich Village coffeehouse scene of the early 1960s, recorded with Bob Dylan and had an influential career as a music instructor, died on Wednesday in Manhattan. He was 86.His wife, Jane Traum, said he died of pancreatic cancer in a physical rehabilitation facility after undergoing surgery for the disease. He lived in Woodstock, N.Y.Known for his easy vocal approach and his prowess as a finger-style guitarist and five-string banjo player, the Bronx-bred Mr. Traum was an enduring presence in the folk world for more than six decades.“Revered by most in the musical know, he is easily one of the most significant acoustic-roots musicians and guitar pickers of his — and many other — generations,” Blues magazine observed in the introduction to a 2016 interview with Mr. Traum.Will Hermes of Rolling Stone described him as a “folk revivalist straight out of ‘Inside Llewyn Davis,’” a reference to the Coen brothers’ 2013 folk-world odyssey, in a four-star review of Mr. Traum’s album “Just for the Love of It.” It was the seventh of eight albums he released as a leader, starting with “Relax Your Mind” in 1975.In the late 1960s, Mr. Traum performed in a highly regarded duo with his younger brother, Artie Traum. The brothers performed at the Newport Folk Festival in Rhode Island in 1969, toured the world and released five albums, starting with “Happy and Artie Traum” in 1970. Artie Traum died of liver cancer in 2008.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

  • 63 Shares169 Views

    in Music

    10 Outstanding Brian Eno Productions

    Inspired by an ever-changing new documentary about the musician and producer, listen to songs he helped construct by David Bowie, Talking Heads, U2 and more.Just four versions of Brian Eno.Kalpesh Lathigra for The New York TimesDear listeners,This week, I saw Gary Hustwit’s lively documentary “Eno,” about the musician, artist and producer Brian Eno. I’d recommend it to you — but it’s highly unlikely that you will see the same version of the film that I did.Formally inspired by Eno’s longtime fascination with generative art, “Eno” is essentially created anew each time it’s screened. A computer program called Brain One (a playful anagram of “Brian Eno”) selects from 30 hours of interviews with Eno that Hustwit conducted and 500 hours of archival footage, fitting it into a structure that lasts about 90 minutes. According to the Brain One programmer Brendan Dawes, 52 quintillion possible versions of the movie exist. I did not even know, before seeing this film, that “52 quintillion” was a real number.Some of my favorite parts of the version of “Eno” that I saw concerned his work as a producer. He’s certainly been a prolific one, working with traditional rock bands (Coldplay, U2), avant-garde composers (Harold Budd) and a whole lot of legends in between (David Bowie, Peter Gabriel, Talking Heads). Eno is neither a classically trained musician nor a conventional technician, and his role in the studio can be hard to define — maddeningly so, to certain record-label executives over the years. Admitted Bowie, in a clip from the film I saw, “I don’t really know what he does.” He meant that as a compliment.The most interesting parts of “Eno,” for me, shed a little more light on that elusive “what.” As a producer, he is equal parts agitator and sage. When he and Bowie were hitting a wall during the making of Bowie’s 1977 landmark “‘Heroes,’” they each pulled cards from Eno’s deck of Oblique Strategies cards, which provide creative jumping-off points; the result was the hypnotic ambient composition “Moss Garden.” When Bono was struggling to complete a soon-to-be classic U2 track, Eno showed patience. When Talking Heads were looking for a new musical direction before making “Remain in Light,” Eno played them one of his all-time favorite musicians, Fela Kuti. The rest — in so many clips of Eno in the studio — is history.Inspired by “Eno,” today’s playlist is a collection of songs produced by the man himself. Eno the Producer is merely one side of this multifaceted artist, but I appreciated that the sense of multiplicity baked into the structure of “Eno” speaks to how difficult it is to define him with a single identity. There are probably nearly 52 quintillion possible Brian Eno playlists I could have made — Jon Pareles made another in 2020, selecting 15 of Eno’s best ambient compositions — but here is the one I chose. It flows well from start to finish, but if you’re feeling inspired by Hustwit’s generative approach, you’re certainly welcome to put it on shuffle.Line my eyes and call me pretty,LindsayWe 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 Shares99 Views

    in Movies

    Sundance Institute Announces Six Finalists for Its New Home

    The organization, and its influential film festival, may stay in Park City, Utah, or move to another location like Atlanta or Cincinnati.The Sundance Institute announced on Friday that its search for a home has been narrowed to six finalists: Atlanta; Cincinnati; Boulder, Colo.; Louisville, Ky.; Santa Fe, N.M.; and its current locale, Park City, Utah, which would team up with the city down the mountain, Salt Lake City.Sundance, whose annual influential film festival has made the organization synonymous with the snowy mountain town of Park City for the past 40 years, announced in April that it was reviewing whether it should move when its current contract with the city ended after the 2026 event, which traditionally takes place in January. (The timing of the festival will remain the same no matter where it is held.)The 10-day event often pushes Park City to its limits, with snarled traffic and exorbitant rental prices.When evaluating the individual locations, Sundance said it focused on logistical concerns, infrastructure issues and a city’s commitment to artistic endeavors and its ability to capitalize on its local film community.“Each of these cities has a vibrant creative ecosystem, either expanding or established, and has enabled creativity to flourish in their cities through their support of the arts,” Eugene Hernandez, Sundance’s festival director and director of public programming, said in a statement.Sundance, which was founded by Robert Redford in 1981 and moved to Park City in 1985, continues to be the dominant festival for independent film. When Steven Soderbergh’s film “Sex, Lies and Videotape” debuted there in 1989, it was seen as a transformational moment for independent moviemakers. For the 2024 edition, the festival received a record number of submissions, over 17,000 from 153 countries. More

  • 113 Shares189 Views

    in Music

    Kim Deal Goes Solo, and 7 More New Songs

    Hear tracks by Alan Sparhawk, Joy Oladokun, Ivan Cornejo and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new tracks. Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes) and at Apple Music here, and sign up for The Amplifier, a twice-weekly guide to new and old songs.Kim Deal, ‘Coast’“Coast,” a delightfully woozy solo single from the eternally cool Breeders frontwoman Kim Deal, begins with a kind of self-deprecating punchline: “I’ve had a hard, hard landing/I really should duck and roll out,” she sings in her inimitable voice, pausing to add with great comic timing, “Out of my life.” Deal has said that the song was inspired by a wedding band she saw cover “Margaritaville,” but part of the track’s charm is that despite its surf-rock lilt and buoyant horn section, she is never quite able to tap into those blissful vacation vibes. Instead, it is a song about shrugging and carrying on in spite of what bums you out; the fact that it was produced by Steve Albini, who died in May, adds an extra note of elegiac bittersweetness. LINDSAY ZOLADZJoy Oladokun, ‘Drugs’What seems like an idle complaint — “The drugs don’t work/Oh I can’t get high”— expands into a cry from the heart, as Joy Oladokun sings about no longer being able to numb herself from rage, loneliness and “running on empty and calling it strength.” Luckily, she has a bluesy backbeat and gospel-choir harmonies to lift her spirits. JON PARELESWe 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

  • 88 Shares179 Views

    in Movies

    How Accurate Is the Science in ‘Twisters’?

    Sean Waugh holds a laptop with green, red and yellow weather radar looping as his driver rumbles down an Oklahoma highway in their government-issued truck. The vehicle holds 50 gallons of fuel, so they can chase storms all day. A rectangular cage with metal mesh covers the truck in an attempt to protect the team from hail. Hanging off the front of the hail cage are weather instruments that look like the horn of a rhinoceros charging into a storm.The truck, called Probe One, points in one direction, and a companion, Probe Two, points in another. Tall grass flows like ocean waves, and the stop sign at a crossroads wobbles. The sky is dark gray with a hint of green. Lightning flashes on all sides.The radio cracks. “Probe One, you want us to go?”“Yes, go now,” says Dr. Waugh, a researcher with the National Severe Storms Laboratory.As they disappear into the mist, another storm chaser emerges: Reed Timmer, who has a large social media following, pulls in front in one of his tank-like trucks, called the Dominator.It’s just the scientist, the YouTube star and a lonely farmhouse.Sean Waugh’s job is to get close to storms. He’s lately become a Hollywood movie consultant in his spare time.Reto Sterchi for The New York TimesReto Sterchi for The New York TimesWe 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 Shares119 Views

    in Movies

    Will ‘Fly Me to the Moon’ Propel Debunked Moon Landing Conspiracies?

    The screenwriters of “Fly Me to the Moon” say they emphasized the facts of the Apollo 11 landing, but experts worry that clips can be misused.The new Scarlett Johansson-Channing Tatum vehicle “Fly Me to the Moon” uses a long-debunked conspiracy theory as the jumping-off point for a space-race romantic comedy. At the end of the 1960s, a wary NASA recognizes the need for better public relations during the Vietnam War. The resulting campaign leads to a faked version of the Apollo 11 mission being shot on a sound stage even as the real mission is unfolding. Shenanigans, and romance, ensue.“Fly Me to the Moon” isn’t the first movie based on the mistaken belief that the moon landing was a hoax, a conspiracy theory that first arose in the 1970s. “Capricorn One” (1978), about a faked mission to Mars, taps into Watergate-era institutional distrust, and more recently, “Moonwalkers” (2015) pairs a C.I.A. agent with a rock band manager to fake the Apollo 11 landing.What sets “Fly Me to the Moon” apart is its insistence on the truth. The movie’s writers say they hope it will reinforce the real story of the moon landing. But is that possible in a post-Covid age when conspiracy theories are amplified on social media?The screenplay, written by Rose Gilroy and based on a story by Keenan Flynn and Bill Kirstein, plays with the theory, including a joke on some conspiracists’ belief that the director Stanley Kubrick supposedly had a hand in faking the historic event. (He did not.) But ultimately the film emphasizes that the Apollo 11 landing did take place.Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum in “Fly Me to the Moon.”Dan McFadden/Sony PicturesFlynn said the initial idea for the movie came in 2016. As the nation wrangled with questions about truth during a presidential campaign in which Donald J. Trump frequently castigated the “lying” media, the moon landing made for a perfect setting.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