Aurelia Butler

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    With Church Bells and Hashtags, the Netherlands Backs Its Eurovision Act

    The details of an incident that led to the singer’s disqualification remain elusive. But many Dutch fans have already made up their minds.At noon on Tuesday, some church bells and carillons in the Netherlands didn’t sound like they usually do. Rather than solemnly tolling, they played the melody of “Europapa,” the song that was supposed to be the Dutch entry in the Eurovision Song Contest final this past Saturday.Dutch radio stations are also regularly playing the three-minute pop song, and some fans have added the hashtag “JusticeforJoost” to their social media accounts.Support is strong in the Netherlands for Joost Klein, the singer behind “Europapa,” who was a preshow favorite among Eurovision fans and bookmakers until he was disqualified just hours before the final in Malmo, Sweden.Eurovision’s organizer, the European Broadcasting Union, barred Klein from taking part after an “incident” during which he showed “threatening behavior directed at a female member of the production crew,” it said in a statement.The E.B.U. called in the Swedish police to investigate, although details of the incident remain elusive. But support for Klein seemed to get only stronger in the Netherlands since Saturday’s bombshell announcement, thanks to a general belief, promoted by the Dutch public broadcaster, that Klein did not commit an offense large enough to justify the disqualification.AVROTROS, the broadcaster that had picked Klein to represent the Netherlands, responded to the E.B.U.’s decision on Saturday with a statement calling it “very heavy and disproportionate.”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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    ‘How to Have Sex,’ ‘Miller’s Girl’ and More Streaming Gems

    Provocative debuts from two exciting new female filmmakers lead off this month’s roundup of recommendations from your subscription streaming services.‘How to Have Sex’ (2024)Stream it on Mubi.The title is provocative, but this is no how-to manual; instead, the writer and director Molly Manning Walker tells a contemporary coming-of-age story that will reverberate with viewers of all ages and sexes. Her focus is on Tara (Mia McKenna-Bruce), a 16-year-old British girl on a post-exams holiday in Crete with her friends. They plan to party, drink and hook up, and the latter is of particular import to Tara, who is keen to lose her virginity — less out of desire or romanticism than to simply get it over with. Manning is a cinematographer making her feature directing debut, and she deftly uses compositions, color and sound to convey Tara’s isolation, desperation and disappointment. She gets a big assist from McKenna-Bruce, a charismatic and empathetic lead who can whisper, in a throwaway line or discreet gesture, everything you need to know about this young woman’s past and present.‘Miller’s Girl’ (2024)Stream it on Netflix.The first-time writer and director Jade Halley Bartlett makes occasional rookie errors in this psychosexual drama. But she has a knack with actors, particularly Jenna Ortega, who plays the lead role of a brainy teen seductress with wit and verve. Bartlett photographs Ortega like a movie star, and she comes off like one; she has a particular way of chewing on a line of loaded dialogue, and she and Martin Freeman (as the creative writing professor whose professional interest becomes personal) create a specific, uneasy but undeniable chemistry that smooths over the script’s rougher stretches. The third-act turn into a 21st century “Oleanna” is effective, with Bartlett inventively intermingling her levels of fiction and cleanly visualizing the inevitable he said/she said conflicts. The moment when Ortega decisively takes the upper hand is screen acting of the highest order.‘Men’ (2022)Stream it on Max.The writer and director Alex Garland narrates a sequence from his film starring Jessie Buckley.Kevin Baker/A24We 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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    Barbara Hannigan, Daring Singer and Maestro, to Lead Iceland Symphony

    Hannigan, the rare artist to have a career as a soprano and a conductor, will assume a full-time conducting post for the first time.Barbara Hannigan, a daring singer and maestro who has built a reputation for innovative programming, will become the chief conductor and artistic director of the Iceland Symphony Orchestra in 2026, the ensemble announced on Wednesday.It will be the first full-time conducting post for Hannigan, 53, a rare artist who began her career as a soprano but in recent years has made a name as a conductor.Hannigan said in an interview that she was drawn to the inventiveness of the Iceland Symphony, which she first conducted in 2022 in a program of Ives, Schoenberg, Berg and Gershwin.“These people are working in a kind of shimmering creative realm that resonates very much with my own,” she said. “I realized I could do things with them and ask things of them that they took so naturally.”Lara Soley Johannsdottir, the Iceland Symphony’s managing director, called Hannigan a “one-of-a-kind” artist. In a statement, Johannsdottir said, “Experiencing the trust between her and the musicians and how they create and go on an adventure together is extremely inspiring.”Hannigan will lead the ensemble for an initial three-year term, succeeding Eva Ollikainen, a Finnish conductor whose tenure began in 2020. The Iceland Symphony announced last month that Ollikainen had decided to leave her post when her contract expires at the end of the 2025-26 season.Hannigan, who was born in Canada, emerged on the cultural scene as a soprano. But in 2011, when she was 40, she began a career as a conductor, appearing with top ensembles like the London Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France and the Cleveland Orchestra. Since 2019, she has served as principal guest conductor of the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra in Sweden.She has become known for virtuosic performances in which she both sings and conducts from the podium. In April, for example, she led the Iceland Symphony in a performance of Poulenc’s one-act opera for soprano and orchestra “La Voix Humaine,” singing the soprano part.Hannigan said she was eager to record and tour with the Iceland Symphony and that she would work to champion Icelandic composers. She said the orchestra would also commission works that would allow her to sing and conduct on occasion.“The orchestra is very adventurous,” she said, “and so is the audience.”Hannigan, who is currently at work on a recital program featuring Scriabin, Messiaen and Zorn, said that she would continue to perform widely as a soprano. She said that she never envisioned taking a full-time conducting post but felt a special connection to the Iceland Symphony, calling it “one of the most creative orchestras out there.”“I know they are going to enrich my life a lot,” she said, “and I hope that I am enriching the artistic life in Iceland.” More

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    In Lorelei and the Laser Eyes, Puzzles Retrace the Past

    In addition to its gaming influences, Lorelei and the Laser Eyes contains traces of postmodern novels and the French New Wave.The puzzle game Lorelei and the Laser Eyes opens with the protagonist — a well-dressed woman with the solemnity of a catwalk model — inside a forest where boreal owls roam. Ahead looms a secluded hotel whose secrets include art exhibits, mathematical puzzles and a pettable Labrador.That mysterious estate, which has its roots in horror games like Resident Evil, is a place shaped as much by its own architecture as by character psychology and surrealism.In addition to reflections about the medium itself, Lorelei contains traces of postmodern novels and the cinema of the French New Wave. The video game is “like wandering in memories and dreams,” said Simon Flesser, one of the founders of the game’s developer, Simogo.Simogo has acknowledged an eclectic list of inspirations, including “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari,” “Twin Peaks: The Return,” The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening and John Fowles’s 1965 novel, “The Magus.”Other references include the parallel realities in Paul Auster’s fiction and the enigmas of “Last Year at Marienbad,” an Alain Resnais film from the early 1960s in which characters explore palatial spaces and contemplate the past. (The name of the game’s hotel is Letztes Jahr, which is German for “Last Year.”)The minigames within Lorelei almost included Nim, an ancient combinatorial game that appears in “Last Year at Marienbad.” In the film, memories intrude and elude; interpersonal dynamics shift unpredictably, like Nim’s matchsticks. Yesterday’s pastime is tomorrow’s existential crisis.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 Power of the ‘Planet of the Apes’

    Why is this long-running film series so gripping and effective? Because it doesn’t monkey around.When the very first “Planet of the Apes” movie opened in 1968, the movie critic at The Times, Renata Adler, found it unremarkable. “It is no good at all, but fun, at moments, to watch,” she wrote, deeming it an “anti-war film and a science-fiction liberal tract,” with the apes representing “militarism, fascism and police brutality.” It’s probably safe to say she wasn’t expecting it to become one of the longest-running science-fiction franchises in Hollywood history.I cannot quite blame her — and not just because endless sequels weren’t as ubiquitous as they are today. Watching the 1968 film, you see how close it could have veered toward a quick extinction. At times the whole thing has the quality of a skit. Actors wear monkey suits and masks (“wonderful anthropoid masks,” as Adler put it), and the attempt to draw a parallel between the apes’ civilization and the viewers’ can feel a little clumsy. It’s 1968, so there are winking catchphrases like “you can’t trust the older generation” and “never trust anyone over 30,” slogans that had been adopted by the counterculture. Had I been the reviewer back then, I might have called it “sometimes hamfisted.”Yet with regrets to Adler, the movie does work on its own terms, and it has held up extraordinarily well over the past 56 years. Charlton Heston stars as the captain of a four-person space crew that crash-lands on a planet that feels unfamiliar, where talking apes rule and humans, such as they are, have been enslaved. (One member of the crew is female, which I suppose was meant to suggest something futuristic; the first American woman didn’t go into space until 25 years after “Planet of the Apes” premiered.)Charlton Heston, far left, starred in the first “Planet of the Apes” film, from 1968.APJAC ProductionsThe movie was based on a 1963 satirical novel by the French author Pierre Boulle, who also wrote the novel “The Bridge on the River Kwai.” Rod Serling, the creator of the wildly popular science-fiction TV show “The Twilight Zone,” was brought on to adapt the book for the screen. Serling’s influence is obvious from the first moments, which involve Heston in monologue about philosophical matters. More time has passed on Earth than in the spacecraft, since they’re moving at the speed of light. “Seen from out here, everything seems different,” he says. “Time bends. Space is boundless. It squashes a man’s ego. I feel lonely.”“Tell me, though,” he continues. “Does man, that marvel of the universe, that glorious paradox who has sent me to the stars, still make war against his brother, keep his neighbor’s children starving?”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 Barbata, Turtles and C.S.N.Y. Drummer, Dies at 79

    Barbata belonged to marquee bands of the late ’60s and ’70s, drumming on smash hits such as “Happy Together,” the first song he recorded with the Turtles.John Barbata, the drummer for the Turtles, Jefferson Airplane, and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, who walked away from rock music at the height of his career, has died. He was 79.His death was announced in a social media post by Jefferson Airplane on Monday. A cause of death was not given and a list of survivors was not immediately available.Mr. Barbata joined the Turtles after leaving his high school band and enjoyed success almost immediately, drumming on the band’s best-known track, “Happy Together,” released in 1967.“I heard that the Turtles were looking for a drummer, they called me down to the studio to try me out on some session work, the first song we recorded was ‘Happy Together,’” Mr. Barbata wrote on his now defunct website, archived by web.archive.org.“We got it in one take,” he said.The song spent three weeks at No. 1 and became a pop classic. It’s been performed by acts as varied as Mel Tormé, Weezer, Miley Cyrus and the punk band Simple Plan.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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    Cannes Film Festival: Red Carpet Roundup

    Jane Birkin pairing her beaded dress with a basket. Madonna in a Jean-Paul Gaultier cone bra and a garter set. Kristen Stewart barefoot in Chanel chain mail. Spike Lee in a sunset-inspired suit.The Cannes Film Festival, with its sheer preponderance of red carpets and boardwalk photo ops, its blockbusters and art house flicks, has given the world more indelible fashion moments than any other festival. In 2002, Sharon Stone made so many dramatic red carpet entrances as a member of the Cannes jury that she managed to revive her flagging career through the power of clothes alone.Even before the start of this year’s festival, which officially takes place from May 14 through May 25 on the French Riviera, attendees began throwing down the fashion gauntlet.The actress Anya Taylor-Joy, who is in Cannes to promote “Furiosa,” the latest “Mad Max” movie, made waves by stepping out in a Jacquemus straw hat so large it doubled as a portable sunshade. The filmmaker Greta Gerwig, whose job as president of the festival’s competition jury means packing 10 days’ worth of outfits, stopped by a photo call wearing an hourglass-effect, blue-and-white-striped milkmaid dress straight from the latest Maison Margiela couture collection.Also hopping on the seaside stripes trend were the actor Chris Hemsworth, fresh off co-hosting the Met Gala, who stepped out in a blue-and-white-striped Etro suit, and Meryl Streep, who posed in a white Michael Kors pantsuit and a navy-and-white-striped shirt.Indeed, what makes the festival such irresistible eye candy is that it’s not only a parade of grand gowns and tuxedos, but also a panoply of accessible sunshine style.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 Best of Cass Elliot

    Hear her extraordinary range in 10 tracks.Michael Ochs Archives/Getty ImagesDear listeners,First of all, I’d like to thank the guest playlisters who filled in for me last week, Caryn Ganz and Ben Sisario. Caryn paid tribute to Madonna’s Celebration Tour (she’s seen it live seven times, which officially makes her an expert) and Ben supplemented his great profile of Mdou Moctar with a thorough primer on African guitar greats. That’s what I call something for everyone.I’m especially grateful to Caryn and Ben for taking over last week because it allowed me to finish a longer piece I’ve been wanting to write for some time: an essay about the life, legacy and music of Cass Elliot. This year marks the 50th anniversary of Elliot’s untimely death, which thwarted a brilliant career that could have branched out in so many directions. But it also spawned a frustratingly persistent and cruel myth about a certain ham sandwich, which Elliot’s daughter hopes to squash once and for all in her lovely new memoir, “My Mama, Cass.” I wanted to contribute to dispelling it, too, and bring the focus back to her charismatic artistry.Though Elliot died at 32, she left behind a robust and eclectic body of work that is ripe for rediscovery. And since I did not have time to delve too deeply into her discography in my article, I figured an Amplifier playlist was in order.Elliot has one of those voices that just puts a smile on my face, plain and simple. But there’s also nothing plain or simple about the particular type of joy her voice conveys. Hers is a hard-won happiness, as heard on perhaps her most beloved solo single, “Make Your Own Kind of Music,” a song of self that stays true in the face of opposition.An endlessly adaptable vocalist, Elliot could sing in a staggering number of styles, and I tried to highlight her range on this playlist. It pulls from pop (her indelible work with the Mamas & the Papas, the group that made her famous), rock (her collaboration with Traffic’s Dave Mason) and even some cabaret. Like watching old interview clips of her on YouTube (an activity I highly recommend; she was an uncommonly sharp talk-show guest), listening to Elliot’s music is a bittersweet experience, because it gets you imagining all the possible futures that could have been.Might she have become a star on Broadway or fronted a hard rock band? Anything seems possible. But there’s also plenty of enjoyment to be found in the bounty of music she left us. So clear your throat, throw on your most colorful caftan and get ready to sing along.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