Aurelia Butler

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    Michael Jackson Died With $500 Million in Debt

    Jackson owed about $40 million to the tour promoter A.E.G. in 2009, his estate’s executors said in a court filing. They said all the debts have been eliminated.Michael Jackson’s debts and creditor’s claims at the time of his death in 2009 totaled more than $500 million, according to a court filing by the pop superstar’s estate that provides details of his financial woes toward the end of his life.Jackson owed about $40 million to the tour promoter A.E.G., according to the filing, which was made in Los Angeles County Superior Court this month and earlier reported by People magazine. The filing said that 65 creditors made claims against the singer after his death, some of which resulted in lawsuits, and that some of his debt had been “accruing interest at extremely high interest rates.”A representative for the Jackson estate, which is executed by John Branca and John McClain, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The estate filed the court papers as a request to authorize the payment of about $3.5 million to several legal firms for their work in the second half of 2018.In the court filing, the executors say that they have eliminated the estate’s debt and that almost all of the creditors’ claims and litigation have been resolved.Jackson earned hundreds of millions of dollars throughout the 1980s and 1990s as the creator of some of the biggest-selling albums of all time, along with dazzling concert tours that filled stadiums around the world. He bought the Beatles’ song catalog for $47.5 million in 1985 and later sold it to Sony/ATV Music in exchange for a 50 percent share in the company. Sony bought back the estate’s share for $750 million in 2016.But when Jackson died at the age of 50, shortly before he was supposed to embark on a tour called This Is It, he left behind a tangled web of assets and liabilities.Jackson was famous for his lavish lifestyle and spent money with abandon. He incurred millions of dollars in debt from his Neverland Ranch estate in Southern California and had a penchant for expensive art, jewelry and private jets. He was paying more than $30 million annually on interest payments, a forensic accountant testified during a 2013 wrongful-death trial in which A.E.G. prevailed.The Jackson estate is currently in a dispute with the I.R.S. after a tax audit. In a separate court filing this year, the estate said that the federal agency accused it of undervaluing its assets and said it owed “an additional $700 million in taxes and penalties.”Kirsten Noyes More

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    A Woman Sleeping With Her Stepson? This Director Knows It May Shock.

    The French filmmaker Catherine Breillat has been exploring relationships between girls and older men since the 1970s. Her latest, “Last Summer,” flips the script.When the French director Catherine Breillat was 40, her then-husband and the father of her first child ended their relationship to be with a much younger woman. Soon after, Breillat started dating a man 12 years her junior.“Men want to repudiate their wives of a certain age by saying they couldn’t be loved by anyone anymore,” Breillat said in a recent video interview via an interpreter. “But for me that’s not true. I want to tell other women there’s no cause for despair.” In “Last Summer,” which comes to theaters Friday, she probes at this realization through an incendiary premise.Since the 1970s, the lauded director, now 75, has repeatedly focused her unflinching gaze on the troubled sexual awakenings of girls, often in the uncaring hands of older men, but in “Last Summer,” that dynamic is inverted: A middled-aged lawyer, Anne (Léa Drucker), risks her career and marriage by having a clandestine affair with her 17-year-old stepson, Théo (Samuel Kircher).In “Last Summer,” Anne, played by Léa Drucker, risks her career, and her marriage to Pierre, played by Olivier Rabourdin, by having an affair with her stepson Théo.via Sideshow and Janus FilmsThe film, Breillat’s first in a decade, joins several recent movies concerned with the power dynamics of heterosexual couples in which the woman is older, including the lighter Anne Hathaway-vehicle “The Idea of You” and Todd Haynes’s divisive “May December.” (Haynes’s movie was inspired by the true story of a teacher who started a relationship with one of her students.)According to Breillat, this wave of films reflects a simple reality. “It’s the truth,” she said: “Young people are attracted to older women.”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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    Girl Groupers Gone (Successfully!) Solo

    With two new albums from members of Fifth Harmony out now, a look back at other pop singers who took off on their own.Diana RossJoe Castro/European Pressphoto AgencyDear listeners,This is not exactly a boom time for American girl groups*. The last high-profile one to have any chart success was Fifth Harmony, who formed on the 2012 season of “The X Factor” and went on an indefinite hiatus in 2018. I bring this up because, strikingly, two former members of Fifth Harmony have released solo albums in the past two weeks: The R&B chanteuse Normani put out her long-gestating “Dopamine” on June 14, and today the Cuban-born pop star Camila Cabello is unleashing her bold, outré fourth solo album, “C, XOXO.”In honor of this rare phenomenon in the pop cosmos, I thought it would be fun to put together a playlist of songs by former members of all-female vocal groups — past and present — who flew the coop and went solo. Yes, this mix features Beyoncé. And Kelly Rowland too! It also includes tracks from the Supreme Ms. Diana Ross, the multitalented Dawn Richard and the eternally cool Ronnie Spector, among others.Also, a programming note: I will be on vacation for the next two weeks, but as always I’ll be leaving you in good hands. Expect a fresh Amplifier written by a very special guest to arrive in your inbox each Tuesday while I’m gone, and get ready for an especially eclectic record haul playlist when I return from my travels. Til then!Respectfully I say to thee,Lindsay*The girl group is, of course, still alive and well in the K-pop world. If I had to guess, I’d predict that the next major, global, post-girl-group superstar will come from South Korea.Listen along while you read.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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    Towa Bird’s Bouncy Revenge Rock, and 10 More New Songs

    Hear tracks by Camila Cabello, Wilco, Xavi 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.Towa Bird, ‘Deep Cut’Towa Bird — a rock songwriter, guitarist and prolific TikToker who was born in Hong Kong and grew up there, in Thailand and in Britain — uses “Deep Cut” to take lucrative revenge on an ex. “I’ll take your words, turn ’em into a verse and get my check,” she announces, going on to declare, “I wish you the worst/I’ll make sure that it hurts ’cause I’m bitter.” With splashy cymbals and a nyah-nyah guitar hook, it’s victoriously spiteful.Pom Pom Squad, ‘Downhill’Mia Berrin, the singer who leads Pom Pom Squad, balances between regrets and the perverse pleasures of self-destruction in “Downhill.” Over a bouncy beat that carries punk-pop guitars and neatly stacked vocal harmonies, she sings, “All my worst traits every worst case playing in my head/Overwhelm me — heaven help me, I’m in love with it.” At least for the moment, she’s incorrigible: “I never said I was done,” she vows. “I’m coming back from the dead.”Wilco, ‘Hot Sun’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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    Stream These 9 Movies Before They Leave Netflix in July

    A bunch of major titles are leaving for U.S. subscribers this month, including films by George Lucas and Ang Lee. See them while you can.Two of the biggest movies of the 1970s and one of the biggest of the ’80s are among the movies leaving Netflix in the United States in July; other highlights include a family favorite, a comic book oddity and an unconventional biopic. (Dates indicate the final day a title is available.)‘Abducted in Plain Sight’ (July 14)Stream it here.This true-crime documentary became such a must-watch (and must-discuss) sensation on Netflix, it ended up spawning a limited series dramatization on Peacock. It’s not hard to see why: This is truly stranger-than-fiction stuff, detailing how the 12-year-old Jan Broberg was abducted by a neighbor and family friend, Robert Berchtold — and then, somehow, abducted again by the same man several years later. The internet outrage surrounding the film (and blaming Broberg’s parents) missed the point; the director Skye Borgman sensitively and intelligently explores how Berchtold used brainwashing and grooming to commit his shocking crimes.‘Big Eyes’ (July 23)Stream it here.In an era of increasingly dreary, paint-by-numbers biopics, the works of the screenwriters Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski seem like oases in the desert — witty, insightful, poignant and frequently cockeyed portraits of unconventional subjects like Larry Flynt, Andy Kaufman and Rudy Ray Moore. This 2014 effort reunited the writers with their “Ed Wood” director, Tim Burton, telling the story of the artist Margaret Keane, whose wildly popular and undeniably distinctive paintings were originally believed to be the work of her monstrous husband, Walter. Amy Adams plays Margaret with sympathy and grace, while Christoph Waltz’s turn as the egomaniacal Walter is the best work he has done outside of the Tarantino-verse.‘American Graffiti’ (July 31)Stream it here.This 1973 coming-of-age comedy-drama was a mind-boggling launchpad. First and foremost, it started a movement of ’50s nostalgia (even though it is set in 1962, it still feels like the ’50s) that continued through the decade with the likes of “Grease” and the film’s unofficial TV spinoff, “Happy Days.” It was also a big break for several members of its then-unknown cast, including Candy Clark, Richard Dreyfuss, Harrison Ford, Ron Howard, Paul Le Mat, Mackenzie Phillips, Charles Martin Smith and Cindy Williams. And perhaps most important, it was the first big hit for its co-writer and director, a quiet young California filmmaker named George Lucas, who based the picture on his own youth as a Modesto hot-rodder. Its critical and commercial success allowed him to take on his dream project, a sci-fi epic called “Star Wars,” and well, you know the rest.‘Fatal Attraction’ (July 31)Stream it here.This erotic thriller from Adrian Lyne was one of the most successful pictures of 1987 — and one of the most controversial, prompting heating conversations about its depictions of adultery and mental illness that moved from movie listings to opinion pages and magazine covers. The story is simple: Michael Douglas stars as a family man whose seemingly offhand weekend extramarital affair with Glenn Close turns into a matter of literal life and death. It is a deeply flawed picture — Close’s nuanced characterization outclasses the paper-thin caricature she’s given, and critics of the era were right to call out the cheap-thrills ending as a cop-out — but a nevertheless fascinating snapshot of the era’s sexual mores and moral paranoia.‘The Great Wall’ (July 31)Stream it 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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    Balmain’s New ‘Lion King’ Collection Marks 30th Anniversary of Disney Movie

    A new Balmain collection pays homage to the Disney film on a milestone anniversary. Plus, a preppy designer makes a comeback.For Olivier Rousteing, the creative director of Balmain, the Parisian luxury house, South Africa is a long way from home. But the country is close to his heart.“My passport is French,” said Mr. Rousteing, 38, on a phone call from Paris. “But my blood is African,” added the designer, who learned relatively late in life that he is of Somalian and Ethiopian descent.The coastal Western Cape region of South Africa provided inspiration for Mr. Rousteing’s latest style collaboration: a Balmain collection developed in partnership with Disney to promote the 30th anniversary of the “The Lion King,” which was released in June 1994.The project was a kind of spiritual homecoming for the designer, as well as the realization of a childhood fantasy. Mr. Rousteing was 9 when he first saw the film. It taught him some valuable lessons. “Take nothing for granted,” he said. “Through your journey there will be obstacles and challenges, but trust in yourself, never give up.”His limited-edition collection, influenced by artisanal African textiles, patterns and silhouettes, was conceived to reflect the movie’s characters and pervading themes. Its ready-to-wear and couture pieces — which include zebra-stripe coats and jackets, a densely fringed raffia dress and a bustier gown patterned with familiar “Lion King” characters — are showcased in a short film shot near Cape Town and featuring models from across Africa.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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    The Voices of A.I. Are Telling Us a Lot

    What does artificial intelligence sound like? Hollywood has been imagining it for decades. Now A.I. developers are cribbing from the movies, crafting voices for real machines based on dated cinematic fantasies of how machines should talk.Last month, OpenAI revealed upgrades to its artificially intelligent chatbot. ChatGPT, the company said, was learning how to hear, see and converse in a naturalistic voice — one that sounded much like the disembodied operating system voiced by Scarlett Johansson in the 2013 Spike Jonze movie “Her.”ChatGPT’s voice, called Sky, also had a husky timbre, a soothing affect and a sexy edge. She was agreeable and self-effacing; she sounded like she was game for anything. After Sky’s debut, Johansson expressed displeasure at the “eerily similar” sound, and said that she had previously declined OpenAI’s request that she voice the bot. The company protested that Sky was voiced by a “different professional actress,” but agreed to pause her voice in deference to Johansson. Bereft OpenAI users have started a petition to bring her back. More

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    A New Norman Mailer Documentary Explores His Thorny Legacy

    “How to Come Alive With Norman Mailer” hits on an ingenious structure that avoids hagiography even as it includes friends and family.Given the hagiographic bias of most celebrity documentaries, “How to Come Alive With Norman Mailer” (in theaters) sails into choppy waters. The director Jeff Zimbalist had to figure out a way to sum up one of the 20th century’s most admired, and most notorious, cultural figures. Mailer’s legacy as a novelist, speaker, filmmaker and pop culture icon — the movie reminded me how often he’s mentioned in “Gilmore Girls” — is full of bad behavior and also brilliant work, and making a film about such a person seems nearly impossible in our nuance-averse climate.The key is to play with the documentary’s structure, eschewing the usual soup-to-nuts setup. “How to Come Alive With Norman Mailer” is admittedly designed as a roughly chronological recounting of the writer’s life, covering all the highlights: six wives (one of whom he famously, horribly stabbed with a penknife), nine children, a stint in the military, best-selling novels, a fascination with brawling, combative TV appearances, opinions about God and machines and Americans’ midcentury impulse toward conformity.But Zimbalist hits on a great idea: arrange the film in terms of what Mailer’s friends, enemies and acquaintances believe his “rules for coming alive” might be. The author’s life and legacy can thus be traced through those rules, and his evolution as a person — and he did evolve, constantly, insatiably — starts to make more sense. What emerges is a portrait of a man as often at war with himself as with his family, friends and countrymen, driven relentlessly toward machismo and always spoiling for a fight. This is not a person you can present neutrally to an audience.There are seven rules, announced in intertitles, including, “Don’t Be a Nice Jewish Boy,” “Be Wrong More Than You’re Right” and “Be Willing to Die for an Idea.” It’s an appealing structure, and the many interviewees discuss the ways Mailer embodied them, supported by archival film and interviews with the man himself. There’s a lot of footage to work with. By midcareer, Mailer was ubiquitous on camera; as one person notes, he seemed to never turn down an opportunity to be interviewed or share his views publicly.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