Aurelia Butler

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    ‘Música’ Review: Rudy Mancuso’s Debut Feature

    Rudy Mancuso stars in and directs an inventive debut feature about a man with synesthesia who tries to manage his complicated life and relationships.The artist Rudy Mancuso has a prolific career that’s hard to define. He sings, shoots puppet skits and films wistful live action shorts set to his own piano tunes. Mancuso uploads most of his output online; however, he opened for Justin Bieber in Brazil, where he once lived. “Música,” Mancuso’s phenomenal feature debut, is a comic trip inside a mind that’s forever feverishly creating — even against his will. In the first scene, Rudy (Mancuso), his semi-autobiographical lead, gets dumped at a diner because his synesthesia won’t allow him to focus on a serious talk about the future. His brain can’t ignore a knife chopping, a broom sweeping, a spatula clanking. The percussion swells, the clatter harmonizes and his romance collapses, leaving Rudy alone in his bedroom with a lamp attached to — oh dear — a Clapper.Mancuso crams all of his passions into the movie, including the puppets (which, with his cartoonish coif, he resembles). He’s playing a character who is occasionally too passive. Yet, he’s made a film that’s confidently, intentionally overwhelming. In Newark, where the movie is set, there’s always life, noise, inspiration banging away in the background. Rudy can’t control his distractions, but he can conduct the cacophony. An interlude involving a boisterous park of people playing checkers, basketball and double Dutch lets him do just that.As balance, the script, written by Mancuso and Dan Lagana, is a tidy coming-of-age tale. Rudy bounces between the needs of three women: his college girlfriend, Haley (Francesca Reale), a charismatic fishmonger named Isabella (Camila Mendes) and his bossy Brazilian mother, Maria (played by his real mother, Maria Mancuso), who turns their living room into a singles bar for potential daughters-in-law. (She serves caipirinhas with paper umbrellas.) Occasionally, Rudy ventures out for advice from a shawarma truck operator (J.B. Smoove), who, when drunk, acts like a trickster sprite.Mancuso, 32, is part of a digital generation that treated the internet like a self-taught film school. Eyeballs were his pass/fail grade. A low-budget, high-imagination director, he’s learned to delight viewers with practical effects and sharp physical timing, citing Charlie Chaplin as his inspiration. (Come to think of it, they have the same hair, too.)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 a Violin Maker’s Dreams Came True in Cremona, Italy

    Art of Craft is a series about craftspeople whose work rises to the level of art.When Ayoung An was 8, her parents bought her a violin. She slept with the instrument on the pillow next to her every night.Two years later, a shop selling musical instruments opened in Pyeongtaek, South Korea, her hometown, and An became a fixture there, pelting the owner with questions. “I think I bothered him a lot,” An, now 32, said.As a teenager, she decided she would become a violin maker. Eventually, a journey with twists and turns took her to Cremona in northern Italy — a famed hub for violin makers, including masters like Antonio Stradivari, since the 16th century. There, An, a rising star in the violin-making world with international awards under her belt, runs her own workshop.Ayoung An, a rising star in the violin-making world, at her studio in Cremona, Italy, home to famed masters like Antonio Stradivari. Set on a quiet cobblestone street, An’s studio is bathed in natural light and filled with books and piles of wood chunks that must air dry for five to 10 years before becoming instruments or risk warping. She shares the two-room studio with her husband, Wangsoo Han, who’s also a violin maker.On a recent Monday, An was hunched over a thick 20-inch piece of wood held in place by two metal clamps. Pressing her body down for leverage, she scraped the wood with a gouge, removing layers, her hands steady and firm. She was forming a curving neck called a “scroll,” one of the later steps of making a violin or cello. On this day, the violin maker was immersed on a commission for a cello, which shares a similar crafting process.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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    Popcast (Deluxe): Listening to Beyoncé & Future (and the Discourse)

    Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | YouTubeThis week’s episode of Popcast (Deluxe), the weekly culture roundup show on YouTube hosted by Jon Caramanica and Joe Coscarelli, includes segments on:Beyoncé’s new album, “Cowboy Carter,” and how it faces the genre battle head-on by playing with decades of country and rock signifiers, plus how the conversation about its specifics can obscure the conversation about its qualityThe new album by Future & Metro Boomin, “We Don’t Trust You,” which marks a return to form for Future and includes a verse from Kendrick Lamar (and some lyrics from the host) seemingly aimed at Drake, potentially reigniting a hip-hop cold warSongs of the week from Camila Cabello featuring Playboi Carti and Oliver Anthony MusicSnack of the weekConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica. More

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    #MeToo Stalled in France. Judith Godrèche Might Be Changing That.

    Judith Godrèche did not set out to relaunch the #MeToo movement in France’s movie industry.She came back to Paris from Los Angeles in 2022 to work on “Icon of French Cinema,” a TV series she wrote, directed and starred in — a satirical poke at her acting career that also recounts how, at the age of 14, she entered into an abusive relationship with a film director 25 years older.Then, a week after the show aired, in late December, a viewer’s message alerted her to a 2011 documentary that she says made her throw up and start shaking as if she were “naked in the snow.”There was the same film director, admitting that their relationship had been a “transgression” but arguing that “making films is a kind of cover” for forms of “illicit traffic.”She went to the police unit specialized in crimes against children — its waiting room was filled with toys and a giant teddy bear, she recalls — to file a report for rape of a minor.“There I was,” said Ms. Godrèche, now 52, “at the right place, where I’ve been waiting to be since I was 14.”Since then, Ms. Godrèche has been on a campaign to expose the abuse of children and women that she believes is stitched into the fabric of French cinema. Barely a week has gone by without her appearance on television and radio, in magazines and newspapers, and even before the French Parliament, where she demanded an inquiry into sexual violence in the industry and protective measures for children.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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    Eli Noyes, Animator Who Turned Clay and Sand Into Art, Dies at 81

    His innovative stop-motion animation influenced a generation of filmmakers, including the creators of Wallace and Gromit.Eli Noyes, a filmmaker whose use of clay and sand in stop-motion animation garnered an Oscar nomination and shaped the aesthetic of Nickelodeon and MTV during the early days of cable television, died on March 23 at his home in San Francisco. He was 81.His wife, the artist Augusta Talbot, said the cause was prostate cancer.Mr. Noyes made his first film, “Clay or the Origin of Species,” in 1965 as an undergraduate student at Harvard. To the accompaniment of a jazz quartet, clay model animals whimsically portray evolution in the movie, which lasts just under nine minutes.Though stop-motion filmmaking had existed for decades and clay was used in the 1950s to create animated characters like Gumby, directors and cinephiles credited Mr. Noyes’s rookie effort with reviving interest in the technique at a time when hand-drawn characters were more popular.“Clay or the Origin of the Species” (1965), Mr. Noyes’s first film, was nominated for an Academy Award.via Noyes familyThe film was nominated for an Academy Award for best animated short subject.“This recognition served as a tremendous boost to the credibility of clay as an animation medium, bulldozing a path for even greater works,” Rick Cooper, a former production manager for Will Vinton Productions, a Claymation film company, wrote in the journal Design for Arts in Education.Peter Lord, a founder of Aardman Animations, the English studio that used clay in the production of the “Wallace and Gromit” films, “Chicken Run” and other popular animated features, recalled seeing “Clay or the Origin of Species” on British television when he was getting started as a filmmaker.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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    Lizzo Says She Is Not Leaving Music Industry After ‘I Quit’ Post

    Lizzo clarified that she was not quitting music after writing on Instagram last week that she was “starting to feel like the world doesn’t want me in it.”Lizzo, the Grammy Award-winning singer, clarified on Tuesday that she was not quitting the music industry, days after her social media post saying “I QUIT” led some fans to speculate that she was ending her music career.In a video posted on social media, Lizzo said she was not leaving the music business and instead was quitting “giving any negative energy attention.”“What I’m not going to quit is the joy of my life, which is making music, which is connecting to people, cause I know I’m not alone,” she said in the video. “In no way shape or form am I the only person who is experiencing that negative voice that seems to be louder than the positive.”She continued: “If I can just give one person the inspiration or motivation to stand up for themselves, and say they quit letting negative people win, negative comments win, then I’ve done even more than I could’ve hoped for.”Speculation that Lizzo was leaving the industry arose after she posted a message on Instagram on March 30 that ended with the words: “I QUIT.”“I’m getting tired of putting up with being dragged by everyone in my life and on the internet,” she wrote in the initial post. “All I want is to make music and make people happy and help the world be a little better than how I found it. But I’m starting to feel like the world doesn’t want me in 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

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    Why Beyoncé Sends Flowers to Celebrities Like Jack White and Nicki Minaj

    In recent weeks, Beyoncé has sent elaborate all-white arrangements to musicians including Jack White, K. Michelle and Nicki Minaj.The expression “to give someone their flowers” means to praise a person and show them care.Beyoncé has taken that literally.The pop superstar recently sent elaborate all-white floral arrangements, along with personalized notes — some handwritten — to artists she admires, or who she says have inspired her work, including Jack White, SZA and K. Michelle.As the artists have shared photos of the bouquets on social media, Beyoncé’s fans have shared their excitement and expressed their jealousy as they parsed the list of recipients for clues about what her next musical project might be.Beyoncé has been known to send surprise, and often monochromatic, floral arrangements for years, but the recent activity has drawn outsize attention since the release last week of “Cowboy Carter,” Act II in an expected trilogy of genre-bending albums.This week, Jack White, the singer-guitarist and former White Stripes frontman, shared a picture on Instagram of an arrangement that Beyoncé had sent him. Attached was a handwritten note: “Jack, I hope you are well. I just wanted you to know how much you inspired me on this record. Sending you my love, Beyoncé.”He offered her praise in response. “Much love and respect to you Madam,” he wrote, adding, “Nobody sings like you.” (Fans were quick to speculate that Act III might be a rock album, and hoped Mr. White would be part of 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

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    Met Opera Chooses Tilman Michael as Next Chorus Master

    Tilman Michael, who leads the Frankfurt Opera’s chorus, will succeed the veteran conductor Donald Palumbo, who steps down this season after 17 years.The chorus master at the Metropolitan Opera has one of the company’s most demanding jobs. There are singers to corral, notes to correct and centuries-old scores to pore over.Donald Palumbo, who brought the chorus to new heights during his 17-year tenure as chorus master, announced last fall that he would step down in June. And on Wednesday, the Met announced his successor: the German conductor Tilman Michael, who has served as chorus master of the Frankfurt Opera for the past decade.Michael, 49, who will join the company at the start of the 2024-25 season in the role of chorus director, said in an interview that he was eager for a “new and exciting” challenge, describing the Met as “one of the most important opera houses in the world.”“Choral singing and choral conducting is my life — it’s what I’ve done since I was a child,” he said. “I’ve loved this work from the very first day.”Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the Met’s music director, who selected Michael, said in a statement that he was a “longtime collaborator and friend whose work I deeply respect.”“I welcome him wholeheartedly to the Met family,” he said. “He has an innate understanding of the complexity of the voice and draws out the best in the choruses he works with.”Under Palumbo, 75, the Met chorus, with 74 regular members and 85 extras, has become an equal partner with the company’s world-class orchestra.Michael, who has also led the chorus at the National Theater in Mannheim, Germany, and served as an assistant chorus master at the Bayreuth Festival and the Hamburg State Opera, said he hoped to build on Palumbo’s legacy. He said he felt a special connection to the choristers when he traveled to New York in February to meet them and try out some repertoire. They worked together on Offenbach’s “Les Contes d’Hoffmann,” Puccini’s “La Rondine” and Kevin Puts and Greg Pierce’s “The Hours.”“The Met Opera chorus is a fantastic chorus,” he said. “But I think we can of course every day improve and search for new colors and search for new abilities.”Michael said he was looking forward to a production of Richard Strauss’s fairy-tale opera “Die Frau Ohne Schatten” next season, as well as to new operas by John Adams, Jeanine Tesori and other composers.“When choral music is done well, it’s magic,” he said. “It is just about listening to each other and creating a unique sound together — to feel this energy from your body, from your ears, in your heart.” More