Aurelia Butler

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    ‘Giants of the Earth’ Opera Returns at Last in South Dakota

    The South Dakota Symphony Orchestra is making a fresh case for Douglas Moore’s “Giants in the Earth,” a Pulitzer Prize-winning but long obscure opera.After the mayor issued a musical proclamation, and after Norway’s ambassador to the United States gave a speech about her country’s far-reaching history in the Midwest, Jennifer Teisinger, the executive director of the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra, came out with a look of pleasant surprise, and more than a little pride.“How many orchestras,” she asked from the stage of Mary W. Sommervold Hall in Sioux Falls, “have the mayor and the ambassador of Norway onstage for the same concert?”True, orchestral concerts don’t usually get that kind of attention. But on a recent Saturday evening, the South Dakota Symphony was offering something extraordinary enough to warrant it: the first performance of Douglas Moore’s opera “Giants in the Earth” in over 50 years.An adaptation of O.E. Rolvaag’s novel, a Midwestern classic about Norwegian immigrants who settle near present-day Sioux Falls in the late 19th century, Moore’s opera premiered in 1951, quickly won the Pulitzer Prize for music, then practically disappeared. It was never recorded, and the full score was never published. A revised version was performed at the University of North Dakota a couple of decades later. But that, too, came and went with little notice or consequence.Before the South Dakota Symphony’s concerts last month, “Giants” hadn’t been heard since then. In Sioux Falls, it has been painstakingly restored, with a recording on the way and its manuscript score engraved at last, ready for publication. Delta David Gier, the orchestra’s transformative music director, has referred to the opera as “a diamond on the side of the road.” Now, it’s more like a gemstone on display.Even so, will people notice it? “Giants” is far from perfect, but in style and subject matter is American opera in its essence: a grand, dramatic treatment of the promise and agony of this country’s melting-pot identity, as precarious and unresolved for immigrants in the 19th century as it is now.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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    Milestone Films Will Be Given Away to Maya Cade of the Black Film Archive

    The distributor’s owners, Amy Heller and Dennis Doros, made the unusual choice to give it away. Their successor is Maya Cade of the Black Film Archive.Milestone Films is a small but mighty distribution company dedicated to discovering works that have been lost to history, restoring them and reintroducing them to anyone willing to watch. It has been run out of the New Jersey home of Amy Heller and Dennis Doros for the last 25 years, but now both are preparing to retire.“One of the things we’ve come to realize is that we are not immortal,” Heller said. As the company’s sole workers, “we are it. It’s the two of us and we want it to continue.”How to keep it going after they step down is something they’ve been discussing for a decade, and now they’ve hit on a novel solution. They’re giving the company away, to Maya Cade, the noted programmer behind the Black Film Archive.Heller and Doros said that last summer they had discussed with Cade, who volunteered herself, the idea of simply handing over their company.“When we met Maya, we just thought, ‘Oh, well, we found her,’” Heller said. “We found the person who we really love and trust and can enthusiastically make this move.”Heller and Doros started Milestone Films in 1990 in their one-bedroom New York apartment shortly after marrying. Since then, it has grown into an internationally recognized distributor that helps bring lost or little-seen films back to prominence. For the last 18 years, the company has been focused on work by and about directors who are Black, Native Americans, L.G.B.T.Q. or women — artists from segments of the population that are underrepresented in the canon.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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    Turnstile, Hardcore Punk’s Breakout Band, Can’t Be Contained

    On a nostalgic drive through Turnstile’s Baltimore hometown last month, the band’s workaholic frontman, Brendan Yates, pointed out an empty lot that looked like the eroded remnants of a loading dock where the band once played a show. A few days later, on a giant stage in the California desert, Charli XCX proclaimed it would be a “Turnstile Summer” on a huge screen during her Coachella set.Over the past 15 years, Turnstile has blown up from local hardcore heroes to one of the most popular punk bands of its era. Though the group emerged from a world of aggressive music, it cycles through genres — dream-pop, alternative rock — often over the course of one song. That chaos, along with a striking emotional depth, is in its ethos.“There is something exciting about being able to make music in a way where there’s no formula, there’s no expectation,” Yates, 36, said. The band’s 2021 album, “Glow On,” propelled it from the upper echelons of the underground into a dramatically larger landscape that included TV commercials, Grammy nominations and a spot opening for Blink-182’s arena tour. With a new album, “Never Enough,” due June 6, Turnstile is pushing its sound further, and the stages are set to get even bigger, leading to an inevitable question: Can the group retain its magic (and its mission) as it grows?In the late afternoon, four of the band’s five members jammed into the guitarist Pat McCrory’s car for a drive soundtracked by a Robert Palmer deep cut and a lot of sighs about the ongoing gentrification of Baltimore. They stopped at Red Thorn Tattoo, and were surprised to find it closed. Yates, McCrory, the drummer Daniel Fang and the bassist Franz Lyons, outfitted in a selection of hoodies and baseball caps, peered through the window. (Meg Mills, a new addition who plays guitar, was back home in the United Kingdom.)Fang, 35, whose soft-spoken, slight presence belies his ferocity as a drummer, explained that over a decade ago, the storefront was a music venue known as the Charm City Art Space that hosted hardcore shows. When he was in high school, he was inadvertently shoved to the ground while moshing there, leaving him bloody and with a chipped tooth. In spite of that — or possibly because of it — he had a great time. His mother panicked when she picked him up, then was “overjoyed” that he’d found his people. Fang relayed this origin story as though he were a pastor outlining the moment he found religion. For him, the seeds that would grow into Turnstile had been sown.Hardcore, an outgrowth of 1980s punk rock with screamed vocals and screeching guitars, is an apt mirror for young adulthood — a limbo stage that is fertile ground for creative expression. The genre’s overarching ethos is one of self-determination, and its underground nature breeds a do-it-yourself mind-set that often follows hardcore fans well into their adult lives.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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    Book Review: ‘The Director,’ by Daniel Kehlmann

    A new novel considers the perplexing life and times of G.W. Pabst, the Austrian filmmaker who worked in the shadow of the Reich.THE DIRECTOR, by Daniel Kehlmann; translated by Ross BenjaminMovie stars and Nazis are irresistible ingredients in any book. “The Director,” Daniel Kehlmann’s smartly entertaining new novel about the great Austrian filmmaker G.W. Pabst, offers both, detailing their once intimate, often symbiotic ties. Here, Greta Garbo and Joseph Goebbels have just two degrees of separation between them.Pabst (1885-1967), along with Fritz Lang and F.W. Murnau, was one of Weimar cinema’s big three — the most cosmopolitan as well as politically engaged of the trio. Considered a leftist, Pabst achieved renown for a series of socially conscious and sexually frank silent movies, including “Secrets of a Soul” (1926), which fiddled with Freud, and “Pandora’s Box” (1929), the film that established its star Louise Brooks as the era’s most devastating flapper.Red Pabst, as he was called early in his career, made a brilliant adjustment to sound with the antiwar film “Westfront 1918” (1930) and “The Threepenny Opera” (1931). But he was a bad fit in Hollywood, where, speaking little English, he arrived by way of France after the Nazis came to power. He then haplessly returned to Austria, now part of the Reich, perhaps to visit his ailing mother. Trapped by the outbreak of war, he remained there, making several apolitical “prestige” films for the Nazis and forever compromising his reputation.Pabst was “a precise and exacting artist,” according to the film scholar Eric Rentschler, as well as “an extremely private person who did not readily divulge his thoughts.” Kehlmann’s Pabst is a gifted psychologist when it comes to directing actors but a stranger to himself in all other matters, a genius who thinks in motion pictures but is unable to direct the flow of his own life.The novel’s German title, “Lichtspiel” (“light play,” a term for movies), evokes its fluid phantasmagoria: “The Director” is a book of dreams and of dreams within dreams. Indeed, beginning with a chapter in which Pabst’s fictional assistant director is hustled into a disastrous TV interview to reminisce about his former boss, the novel careens from nightmare to nightmare. Some, like the opener, are absurd. Others, like Pabst’s complete inability to navigate a Hollywood party, are painfully comic. Still others, once Pabst and his family return to the Reich, are terrifying.Was Pabst an opportunist, a victim of circumstance, a cowardly practitioner of anticipatory obedience or simply a solipsistic accommodationist? Although he failed to comprehend Hollywood, he learns the rules of the Reich when summoned to the office of propaganda, led in the novel by the unnamed “Minister.” (Suave, menacing and hideously self-assured, Goebbels handily directs the director.)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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    Trump Called for Movie Tariffs After a Meeting With Jon Voight

    The president’s call for tariffs caused confusion in Hollywood, which has seen a steep drop-off in local film and television production.President Trump’s call to impose steep tariffs on movies “produced in Foreign Lands” came after he met at Mar-a-Lago over the weekend with the actor Jon Voight, whom he named a “special ambassador” to Hollywood this year.The president’s social media post on Sunday that called for a 100 percent tariff on films produced outside the United States caused confusion in Hollywood, which has lost a great deal of local film and television production to states and nations that offer rich tax credits and cheaper labor. While few in the industry said that they understood Mr. Trump’s proposal, some worried that tariffs could cause more harm than good and called instead for federal help in the form of tax credits.Mr. Voight and Steven Paul, his longtime manager, met with Mr. Trump over the weekend and shared their plans to increase domestic film production, according to a statement from SP Media Group, Mr. Paul’s firm. They suggested federal tax incentives, changes to the tax code, co-production treaties with other nations and infrastructure subsidies, the statement said.The proposal also included “tariffs in certain limited circumstances,” the statement said, adding that it was under review.Mr. Voight made the rounds of Hollywood last week, meeting with the Motion Picture Association, Hollywood’s top lobbying group; various unions; and the state representatives who are pushing bills to increase state tax credits for the film and television industries. State Senator Ben Allen, a Democrat whose district includes Hollywood, met with the actor to discuss how to increase production in the state, a representative said.Mr. Voight emerged from those meetings with two one-page documents drafted by the M.P.A. One letter encourages lawmakers in Washington to adopt a manufacturing and production incentive to encourage more domestic employment. The other asks Congress to extend a section of the tax code that expires at the end of 2025 and allows certain film and television expenses to be deducted in the year they are incurred.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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    Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs’s Sex Trafficking Trial Begins Jury Selection

    Mr. Combs has pleaded not guilty to charges of racketeering and sex trafficking. Potential jurors were asked about their exposure to details of the accusations.Jury selection started on Monday in the federal trial of Sean Combs, which is expected to last well into the summer.The judge overseeing the case, Arun Subramanian, questioned potential jurors gathered at Federal District Court in Manhattan about what they have seen and read about the accusations against the high-profile defendant, whose alleged misdeeds have been nearly inescapable in the news and on social media for the past year and a half. He has pleaded not guilty to charges of racketeering and sex trafficking.Many of the potential jurors said they had been exposed to the case: on a television at the gym, through “water-cooler talk” among co-workers, via a comedian making jokes on Instagram. That exposure was not necessarily disqualifying as long as the potential jurors — who are not being identified by name — said they could decide the case based only on the evidence they saw in court.“You understand that Mr. Combs is presumed innocent?” Judge Subramanian asked one potential juror, who said she had heard about the case on the radio and had been aware of Mr. Combs’s music and celebrity since the 1990s.“Absolutely,” she replied.Mr. Combs has been accused by the government of running a criminal enterprise that is responsible for facilitating a pattern of crimes over two decades, including sex trafficking, kidnapping, arson and drug violations. Prosecutors have accused Mr. Combs of coercing four women into sex, including his former girlfriend Casandra Ventura, who is expected to be a star witness in the trial.The music mogul’s lawyers have said that the sex at the center of the government’s case was consensual.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 50 Best Movies on Max Right Now

    In addition to new Warner and HBO films, the streamer has a treasure trove of Golden Age classics, indie flicks and foreign films. Start with these.When HBO Max debuted in May 2020, subscribers rightfully expected (and got) the formidable catalog of prestige television associated with the HBO brand. But its movie library drew from a much deeper well. Warner Bros. Discovery, which owns HBO, is a huge conglomerate, and its premiere streaming service comprises decades of titles from Warner Bros., Turner Classic Movies, Studio Ghibli and more. Viewed in that light, its recent rebranding as Max seems fitting.That means a lot of large-scale fantasy series and selections from the DC extended universe. Max is also an education in Golden Age Hollywood classics and in independent and foreign auteurs like Federico Fellini, Satyajit Ray and John Cassavetes. The list below is an effort to recommend a diverse range of movies — old and new, foreign and domestic, all-ages and adults-only — that cross genres and cultures while appealing to casual and serious movie-watchers alike. (Note: Streaming services sometimes remove titles or change starting dates without notice.)Here are our lists of the best movies and TV shows on Netflix, the best movies on Amazon Prime Video and the best of everything on Hulu and Disney+.A24‘Aftersun’ (2022)Memory pieces about childhood are nearly always touched by nostalgia, however bittersweet, but Charlotte Wells’s gorgeous, semi-autobiographical debut feature is graced instead by perspective. The memory in “Aftersun” encapsulates a few days in 1999 at a downscale Turkish resort, where an 11-year-old (Frankie Corio) went on her last vacation with her 30-something father (Paul Mescal), who did a credible job at the time of masking his personal anguish in order to make her happy. The MiniDV camera footage the girl captured of the trip tells a different story about him, and the film seizes on it subtly and beautifully. A.O. Scott admired Wells for directing with “the unaffected precision of a lyric poet.”Stream it on Max‘Logan’ (2017)Superhero franchises like the MCU and the DCEU have developed such a predictable template that each new entry can feel at least partially like a paint-by-numbers exercise. Though it extends from the popular “X-Men” series featuring Hugh Jackman as Wolverine and Patrick Stewart as Professor X, James Mangold’s “Logan” has the somber tone and feel of an old-school Western, emphasizing the exhaustion of an aging, battered hero dragged reluctantly to another mission. Having retired to Mexico to look after a sick Professor X, Jackman’s Logan is tasked with protecting a vulnerable young girl (Dafne Keen) whose powers (and history) overlap mysteriously with his own. Manohla Dargis called the film “a strong argument for bringing the comic-book movie down to earth.”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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    ‘Thunderbolts*’ Axes the Asterisk for Surprise Title Reveal

    A plot twist that comes in the movie’s final moments will now be front and center on billboards. The director Jake Schreier explains the rebrand.If you wondered why there’s an asterisk attached to the title of the new movie “Thunderbolts*,” you won’t have to wait any longer to find out.Sure, you could have satisfied your curiosity the old-fashioned way by seeing the movie in theaters over the weekend, where it claimed the No. 1 spot at the box office. But as of Monday morning, the big reveal teased by that symbol will now be front and center on the movie’s billboards, which have switched from “Thunderbolts*” to the surprising title introduced in the film’s closing credits.(If you would like to remain unspoiled, read no further and avert your eyes from billboards for the time being.)So long, Thunderbolts: This team of misfits, headed by Florence Pugh’s weary assassin, Yelena Belova, ends the film rebranded as “The New Avengers.” And now, on billboards, the movie itself will follow suit.The name change happens in the final scene of the Jake Schreier-directed film: The wily C.I.A. director Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) tricks the newly assembled superteam into storming a news conference at which she introduces them to the world as the New Avengers. Then, as the end credits begin, the title “Thunderbolts*” is ripped away like a comic-book page, revealing the new moniker.After three days in theaters, that rebrand has now made its way to billboards. “It felt like, if Val is also trying to pull a switcheroo and sell the New Avengers to the world, we could do that, too,” Schreier said in an interview with The Times on Saturday. “Especially given that the asterisk has been on the movie for a year, hopefully it doesn’t feel sweaty — it feels like this was a plan and we built up to it.”Incorporating the new moniker into the marketing may also be an acknowledgment that keeping a movie secret is harder than ever these days, when surprises can be splashed across social media within milliseconds of release. Schreier, who pitched the asterisk during his initial meetings on the movie, credits Marvel Studios and its president, Kevin Feige, for a willingness to experiment with the title switch.“It’s very fun that they were open to embracing that,” Schreier said. He acknowledged that clips containing the spoiler have already made their way online, so why not make it work in their favor?“It’s so interesting in this world, and Kevin talks about it sometimes, where sometimes they wanted things to leak and they don’t,” Schreier said. “I think we all assumed that it would be a bigger part of the conversation already, so it’ll be interesting to see what happens.” More