Aurelia Butler

More stories

  • 100 Shares129 Views

    in Music

    Avril Lavigne Is Back. If You Believe That.

    The Canadian singer, with a new album and a tour, this week addressed a bizarre conspiracy theory that she has been replaced with a doppelgänger.Goodbye, online conspiracy theory. Welcome back, Avril Lavigne.Lavigne — the Canadian singer whose hits like “Sk8er Boi” and “Complicated” made her a mainstay of the early 2000s — appeared on the “Call Her Daddy” podcast this week to promote a greatest hits album out next month, a new tour and a performance at Glastonbury, Britain’s biggest music festival.She also used the appearance to tell fans that she is alive and herself.And that she was most definitely not replaced by a body double named Melissa Vandella after dying more than 20 years ago.The power of the internetThe bizarre conspiracy theory has popped up occasionally, yet consistently, around the internet for much of Lavigne’s career, and the publicity around her new tour has ignited another round of attention.Many online explainers have traced its origin to Brazil, and a 2011 blog post that uses Lavigne’s lyrics and photos of her to make an argument that “Melissa” took Lavigne’s place after the success of her debut album “Let Go.”After a BuzzFeed News report drew attention to the theory, it appeared in mainstream press roundups of conspiracy theories, from the Guardian, to Rolling Stone, to the BBC. It also has its own Wikipedia entry.For the record: There is no proof for this conspiracy theory.‘So. Your name is Avril Lavigne.’On “Call Her Daddy,” hosted by Alex Cooper — herself an icon of the 2020s who said she grew up listening to Lavigne’s music — the singer said she didn’t think the conspiracy theory was that bad in the grand scheme of things.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

  • 175 Shares109 Views

    in Music

    Billie Eilish Dares to Write (Twisted) Love Songs on ‘Hit Me Hard and Soft’

    “Hit Me Hard and Soft,” her third album, is both concise and far-reaching.“Twenty-one took a lifetime,” Billie Eilish, 22, sings in “Skinny,” the song that opens her third album, “Hit Me Hard and Soft.”Any woman her age could say that; it’s just math. But even before she was old enough to vote, Eilish had packed a lifetime of accomplishments into a career that she began in 2015 as a teenager uploading songs to SoundCloud. Since then, Eilish has racked up billions of streams, an armload of Grammy Awards, two Oscars and a full-length documentary. On “Hit Me Hard and Soft,” she deliberately tamps down some pop expectations while she warily embraces others.Eilish has both the time-honored musicianship that awards shows admire and the metanarrative savvy of her digital-era generation. Countless imitators have learned from — and been emboldened by — her blend of raw revelations, graceful melodies and wily productions, abetted by her brother and songwriting partner, Finneas.Their historically grounded pop recombines musical theater, parlor songs, punk, folk, electronica, soundtracks, bossa nova, industrial rock and more. Eilish brings to all of them the poise of a vintage crooner: the capacity to float above beats and jolts, to treat a microphone as a confidant. Her voice can be breathy and intimate or eye-rolling and sardonic; at very strategic moments, she reveals her power to belt.Eilish’s 2019 debut album, “When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?,” mapped gothic nightmares, adolescent obsessions and lingering traumas along with an occasional giggle. Her second, “Happier Than Ever” in 2021, reacted directly to the attention, shock, exploitation, stalking, exhaustion and newfound power that success brought her.“Skinny” is a hushed update on Eilish’s superstardom. “Am I acting my age now?/Am I already on the way out?,” she sings, along with thoughts on her body shape, finding nontoxic love, her sense of isolation and a resigned reaction to social media: “The internet is hungry for the meanest kind of funny/and somebody’s gotta feed 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

  • 100 Shares169 Views

    in Movies

    From ‘IF,’ to ‘Imaginary,’ Exploring Imaginary Friends Onscreen

    Multiple films this year, including the new family comedy “IF,” explore the concept of imaginary friends on the big screen.In the new family comedy “IF,” Ryan Reynolds plays a frazzled matchmaker who, with help from a young girl (Cailey Fleming), unites humans with imaginary friends.John Krasinski, who wrote and directed the film, said the idea took shape as he watched his daughters’ lights dim during the pandemic.“They were playing fewer and fewer imaginary games and I could see they were letting the fears of the real world in and I thought, this is the definition of growing up,” he explained in an email.He said he decided to make the movie, now in theaters, to show his kids that the “magical world they’ve created, that place of such joy and hope and magic, exists. And you can always go back.”Krasinski isn’t alone in bringing imaginary friendships to life this year. “IF” is one of five new movies that explore imaginary friends, in a variety of genres: supernatural horror (“Imaginary”), adult comedy (“Ricky Stanicky”), children’s animated fantasy (“The Imaginary”) and documentary (“My Secret Country”).Why the convergence? Marjorie Taylor, professor emerita of psychology at the University of Oregon and an expert on imaginary friends, wasn’t sure. But she said she wasn’t surprised, considering that pretend friends, as she calls them, have long been artistic catnip.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

  • 150 Shares169 Views

    in Movies

    ‘Taking Venice’ Offers a Glimpse at Conspiracy Theories Around the 1964 Biennale

    The documentary offers a glimpse of how the arts were treated very differently in midcentury America.Something about “Taking Venice,” Amei Wallach’s new documentary about the 1964 Venice Biennale (in theaters), feels almost like science fiction, or maybe fantasy. Imagine the U.S. government taking such a keen interest in the fine arts that there may or may not have been an attempt to rig a major international prize for an American artist. A painter, no less!History buffs already know that during the Cold War, American intelligence agencies were heavily involved in literature, music and the fine arts, seeing them as a way to export soft power around the world and prove U.S. dominance over the Soviet Union. “Taking Venice” tells one slice of that story: a long-rumored conspiracy between the State Department and art dealers to ensure that the young painter Robert Rauschenberg would win the grand prize at the event sometimes called the “Olympics of art” — and a “fiesta of nationalism.”So … did they conspire? “Taking Venice” does not exactly answer that question, though various people who were involved give their versions of the story. But that question is far from what makes the documentary so interesting. Instead, it’s a tale of Americans crashing what had been a European party in a moment when American optimism was at its height. Artists like Rauschenberg, Jim Dine, Frank Stella, John Chamberlain and Jasper Johns were making work that exploded ideas about what a painting should be and do. As one expert notes, they dared to make art that suggested the present was important, not just the past.And they had support from their government in ways that were weird and complicated. In a 1963 speech a month before his assassination, President John F. Kennedy declared, “I see little of more importance to the future of our country and our civilization than full recognition of the place of the artist.” Then again, as several people note, the freedom of expression that American art was supposed to illustrate on the world stage — often without the artists’ full realization of the government’s involvement — was subject to its own kind of censorship. Government entities like the House Un-American Activities Committee and intelligence agencies decided who was allowed to represent the country and whose voices were unwelcome.Yet it’s still fascinating to imagine a time, not all that long ago, in which painting, sculpture, jazz, literature and more were considered keys to the exporting of American influence around the world. It’s a cultural attitude that’s shifted tremendously in the years since, at least on the broader scale, away from seeing art as embodying a culture’s hopes and dreams and toward something more crass.But with this year’s edition of the Biennale underway, the question of what it means to be an American artist (or an artist from any country) is still one worth wrestling with, and something “Taking Venice” explores, too. “Art is not only about art,” Christine Macel, the curator of the 2017 Biennale, says at the start of the film. “It’s about power and politics. When you have the power, you show it through art.”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 Shares129 Views

    in Movies

    Are We in a New Golden Age for the Movie Soundtrack?

    Between “Barbie,” “Across the Spider-Verse” and now “I Saw the TV Glow,” directors are making the case for the film album experience.After watching “I Saw the TV Glow,” the new film from the director Jane Schoenbrun, I felt a sensation I hadn’t felt in a while: I need this soundtrack.The genre-defying movie is a surreal story about two high schoolers in the 1990s who become obsessed with a “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”-like show called “The Pink Opaque.” It’s a rich film that draws on horror, ’90s television and Schoenbrun’s experience coming out as transgender. But it also boasts some incredible tunes, like a hypnotic cover of Broken Social Scene’s “Anthems for a Seventeen Year-Old Girl” by the artist yeule and performances from King Woman, Sloppy Jane and Phoebe Bridgers, who appear onscreen as musicians at a club the characters visit.The full soundtrack has more to love: The swelling emotion of Caroline Polachek’s “Starburned and Unkissed” and the throwback rock of Proper’s “The 90s,” with lyrics about the TV show “Xena: Warrior Princess.” Listening, I felt like a kid again.That was just Schoenbrun’s intention. The director thought the film needed a “great teen angst soundtrack.” But they were also nostalgic for the idea of soundtracks in general. They remembered thinking, “‘Wait, where did those go?’ You know, because the soundtracks of my youth were such a huge part of what brought me to movies,’” they said in a video call.Citing soundtrack “canon picks” like “Donnie Darko,” “The Royal Tenenbaums” and “Garden State,” which turns 20 this year, they admit these are “pretty obvious slash perhaps a little embarrassing” choices. I relate. I also had an iPod in the early 2000s filled with soundtracks, and one of the most frequently played was “Garden State.” The accompaniment to Zach Braff’s indie breakout — about a man in the midst of a quarter-life crisis who goes home for his mother’s funeral — was as much a cultural moment as the actual film, going platinum and elevating bands like Frou Frou and the Shins.Indeed, the beginning of the aughts felt like the last great heyday for the soundtrack. Think of the indie vibes of “Garden State,” the bluegrass foot-stompers of “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” or even the pop rock of “Shrek.” (If you want embarrassment, just ask me how much I loved that soundtrack.)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

  • 75 Shares149 Views

    in Movies

    ‘Megalopolis’ Premieres at Cannes: First Reaction

    Francis Ford Coppola’s first movie in more than a decade reveals a filmmaker not content to rest on his laurels.Late in “Megalopolis,” Francis Ford Coppola’s plaintively hopeful movie about — well, everything under the sun — a character speaks to the power of love. It’s a wistful moment in a fascinating film aswirl with wild visions, lofty ideals, cinematic allusions, literary references, historical footnotes and self-reflexive asides, all of which Coppola has funneled into a fairly straightforward story about a man with a plan. It is a great big plan from a great big man in a great big movie, one whose sincerity is finally as moving as its unbounded artistic ambition.“Megalopolis,” which had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival on Thursday, is Coppola’s first movie since “Twixt” (2011), a little-seen, small-scale horror fantasy. “Megalopolis” is far larger in every respect, though at this point it’s an open question whether it will reach an audience of any kind. The industry, never a welcoming place for free-ranging and -thinking artists, is in the midst of another of its cyclical freakouts. Business is terrible and the sky is definitely, absolutely falling. Fear, panic and timidity rule the day, as they generally do.And then there is a recent report in The Guardian with anonymous sources alleging that Coppola tried to kiss female extras. The executive producer Darren Demetre has said, “I was never aware of any complaints of harassment or ill behavior during the course of the project” and described the contact as “kind hugs and kisses on the cheek to the cast and background players.”I thought about these allegations every so often while watching “Megalopolis,” particularly during one of the bacchanals that punctuate the story and especially when yet another semi-covered breast waggled onscreen. I didn’t find the breasts scandalous or remotely offensive; for one thing, the movie is a speculative fiction about a city that more or less looks like New York, if one modeled on ancient Rome. There the city’s wealthy citizens scheme, the poor suffer and a visionary architect, Cesar Catilina (Adam Driver), dreams of a “perfect school-city” in which everyone can become who they were meant to be.The movie follows Catilina pondering his mortality atop what looks like the Chrysler Building. After gingerly crawling outside on a ledge, he gazes over the city and raises a foot in the air, then freezes as if contemplating the abyss. This apparent to-be-or-not-to-be moment initiates a story that finds him wrestling with imponderables, having anguished meltdowns and trying to realize his utopian project using a building material he has invented as he navigates assorted hurdles. Among the most persistent is the imperious mayor, Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), who has a beautiful daughter, Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel), a party girl who can quote the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius by heart.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

  • 125 Shares119 Views

    in Movies

    Francis Ford Coppola’s ‘Megalopolis’ Debut at Cannes: What to Know

    After its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, we can answer your many questions, though some details still puzzle us.“Megalopolis,” the first film from the director Francis Ford Coppola in 13 years, premiered Thursday at the Cannes Film Festival. Self-financed by Coppola, the $120 million passion project has earned headlines about a reportedly chaotic shoot, allegations of misconduct and questions about the film’s commercial prospects.But what exactly are we dealing with here? Now that I’ve seen “Megalopolis,” let me try to answer the questions you might be asking.What is “Megalopolis” about?Any attempt to sum up “Megalopolis” will impose more narrative onto this movie than it actually contains, but here goes. Adam Driver plays Cesar Catalina, a visionary architect who dares to ask: What if a major city looked like an Iris Van Herpen dress? Like so many great men in movies, he is Haunted by Visions of a Dead Wife, but still finds himself falling for Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel), the daughter of Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), mayor of the city that is sometimes called New Rome but that resembles New York.Cicero, who despises Catalina for his reckless idealism, is one of many characters trying to bring the architect to heel. Other rivals include Clodio (Shia LaBeouf), a party boy turned politician, and Wow Platinum (Aubrey Plaza), a financial reporter determined to bed or plot against every powerful man in her orbit.Wait, her name is Wow Platinum?Yes, you read that correctly.What exactly is the tone of this movie?Despite the big budget, huge sets and scenes soaked in special effects, “Megalopolis” finds Coppola in the same experimental-filmmaker mode he employed for his two most recent movies, the indies “Tetro” (2009) and “Twixt” (2011). Few scenes are shot or edited in a conventional manner: Coppola employs split screen, projection techniques and artsy montage at will, and the pacing of any given sequence can change on a whim.Sometimes, that anything-could-happen approach is beguiling: Midway through the Cannes press screening, a spotlight shone on a man in the front of the theater who asked questions that Driver’s Caesar would answer onscreen. At other times, though, it feels like the filmmaker is just throwing things at the wall and hoping that something will stick.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

  • 113 Shares119 Views

    in Music

    After Outcry, Concertgebouw Will Allow Jerusalem Quartet to Perform

    The Dutch concert hall reversed course after facing criticism for canceling performances by the Israeli ensemble because of security concerns.The Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, one of the world’s most prestigious concert halls, said Thursday that it would allow the Jerusalem Quartet to perform, two days after it had canceled the ensemble’s concerts amid security concerns related to threatened protests.The Concertgebouw said in a statement that the Jerusalem Quartet would be allowed to perform on Saturday after all, with expanded security measures and a more robust police presence. The ensemble had originally been scheduled to perform on Thursday and Saturday, but the Concertgebouw canceled the engagement, saying it could not ensure the safety of audience members, musicians and employees because of the threat of protests related to the Israel-Gaza war. The cancellation prompted an outcry from musicians.Simon Reinink, general manager of the Concertgebouw, said in an interview that the hall had reversed course after securing commitments from the police.“Now we have enough confidence to go ahead with it,” he said. “It has everything to do with security. We were forced to crack the dilemma of security on the one hand and freedom on the other.”Reinink defended the hall’s handling of the situation, saying that the cancellation “had nothing to do with antisemitism.”“We fight and we fought we like hell to keep these concerts,” he added.The Jerusalem Quartet said in a statement that it had been “moved to tears by the outpouring of support worldwide from musicians of all profiles, from internationally famous names to anonymous amateurs.”“Every single voice has uplifted us,” it said. “It is overwhelming to experience this extraordinary community help remind the world of humanitarian values and artistic expression which underlie everything we do and believe in.”The controversy was the latest example of the Israel-Hamas war’s impact on the performing arts. Since the start of the war, cultural institutions have faced heavy scrutiny over artists, programming and funding.The Concertgebouw’s decision to cancel the concerts drew criticism from leading artists. A group of prominent musicians, including the conductor Simon Rattle, the pianist Martha Argerich and the violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter published a statement on Thursday condemning the hall, saying it was capitulating to protesters.“It is not the Jerusalem String Quartet’s performances that put our freedom in danger, but those who threaten public order unless their demands are met,” the musicians wrote. “Surrendering to those threats is not only an act of weakness, but a clear signal that we are not willing or prepared to defend our democratic values and our way of life.”Reinink said that the decision to call off the concerts was made in part because of recent pro-Palestinian demonstrations at the University of Amsterdam that had turned violent.“That was, for us, the game changer,” he said. “The risk was simply too high. As long as the police could not guarantee that they could handle this situation, we made the decision it was not a good idea to go ahead.” More