Aurelia Butler

More stories

  • 100 Shares149 Views

    in Movies

    ‘Asphalt City’ Review: Arbiters of Life and Death

    Sean Penn plays a flinty paramedic showing a rookie the ropes in this maddening drama about emergency medical workers in New York.Two paramedics — Ollie Cross (Tye Sheridan), a wide-eyed rookie, and Gene Rutkovsky (Sean Penn), a gruff veteran of the trade — traverse the mean streets of East New York, Brooklyn, by ambulance in the solemn drama “Asphalt City.” Flooded with neon and sirens, the movie opens during Cross’s first nights on the corps, tracking his and his new partner’s efforts to provide care for an array of challenging patients.Directed by Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire — with evident inspiration from Martin Scorsese’s “Bringing Out the Dead” — this jittery drama wants viewers to appreciate the unique burdens facing emergency medical workers. Its approach to achieving this goal, however, involves a profusion of overly literal allusions to the paramedics as arbiters of life and death. “We are gods,” a colleague insists to Cross in one of several midnight symposiums on ethics and existentialism. As if those weren’t enough, our hero in training also sports a bomber jacket conspicuously embroidered with angel wings.For reasons beyond my understanding, Cross, an aspiring doctor, looks up to Rutkovsky, a flinty old timer with a propensity to aggress when he feels sad or mad or basically anything. Their dynamic is familiar at best and dull at worst, particularly for those who long ago tired of the tragedies of toxic machismo. A couple of women do inhabit “Asphalt City”: the enthralling Katherine Waterston as Rutkovsky’s nettled ex wife, and Cross’s nameless love interest, whose naked body seems to receive more screen time than her face.Asphalt CityRated R for bloody emergencies and graphic nudity. Running time: 2 hours. In theaters. More

  • 100 Shares179 Views

    in Movies

    ‘Wicked Little Letters’ Review: Prim, Proper and Profane

    Olivia Colman and Jessie Buckley elevate a comedy about a weird true tale of defamation and dirty words.“This is more true than you’d think,” handwritten text informs us at the start of “Wicked Little Letters.” I looked it up, and they weren’t kidding. The movie involves tweaks and elisions to history, of course. But at least in its major outlines, the true story matches the film, in which a dour spinster named Edith Swan (Olivia Colman) and her raucous next-door neighbor Rose Gooding (Jessie Buckley) tangle over a series of mysteriously obscene letters that started arriving at the homes of people in the English coast village of Littlehampton in 1920. As you may intuit, this movie belongs to a very particular subgenre summed up in one declaration: boy, small English towns are full of weirdos.Directed by Thea Sharrock (who has an impressive two movies out this week — the other is “The Beautiful Game”) from a screenplay by the comedy writer Jonny Sweet, “Wicked Little Letters” is a darkly funny take on the tale, leaning a lot more toward the farce than the darkness. Edith, the oldest daughter in a large and very pious family, still lives with her parents (Timothy Spall and Gemma Jones). They sleep in three twin beds in the same room. They rarely go anywhere and are constantly scandalized.Edith has been under her father’s thumb so long that any will she possessed has been wholly squashed out, which makes her exactly the ideal of feminine virtue for 1920s England. The men have returned from war — those who survived, anyhow — and retaken the jobs and roles women filled, relegating them back to the kitchen and domestic life. Edith, homely but docile, is everything a good Christian Englishwoman should be.And of course, anyone who deviates from Edith’s type is suspicious. Rose, for instance, has committed a quadruple feat of sin: living with her Black boyfriend (Malachi Kirby), having a daughter (Alisha Weir) who dares the unladylike act of picking up a guitar, enjoying a night at the pub and, most of all, being Irish. When she arrived in Littlehampton, she was a figure of affable curiosity to her neighbors, especially Edith. But by the time we meet them, Edith has accused Rose of sending elegantly written obscene letters to her and to the neighbors — letters containing marvelously inventive strings of epithets so vile that I cannot reproduce them in this newspaper. Edith endures the letters with a visage so saintly that you can practically see her halo: “We worship a Messiah who suffered, so by my suffering, do I not move closer to heaven?” she intones to her parents, eyes modestly cast down.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 Shares119 Views

    in Movies

    Steve Buscemi’s ‘The Listener’ Looks at Post-Covid Loneliness

    Tessa Thompson’s still and luminous performance makes this post-Covid drama about loneliness, directed by Steve Buscemi, worth watching.“The Listener” — directed by Steve Buscemi — opens with the sound of an unanswered phone and the thrum of a city before turning its lens on Tessa Thompson’s character, who lies in bed, staring upward, before beginning her late shift as the crisis helpline volunteer “Beth.” Written by Alessandro Camon and shot in 2021, this hushed drama takes on a pandemic many Americans experienced and continue to, even post-quarantine: loneliness.During the shift, callers we never see engage or push against Beth’s patient if practiced prompts. Even amid distress, the callers tend to maintain a frayed, respectful civility. An exception comes in the form of a guy one might call-tag as an incel if insults didn’t feel so at odds with a movie rife with compassion.While some of the characters sound too much like avatars of a cultural moment, there are memorable exchanges: Alia Shawkat voicing a woman whose anguish soars and plunges with a slam poetry lyricism and Jamie Hector portraying a veteran struggling with a recurring nightmare. For their part, Buscemi and Thompson utilize the complementary power of stillness and the close-up to create a portrait of a woman who hears so much and divulges so little.The actor Rebecca Hall brings withering and wry certainty as a college professor working through the philosophical logic and practical logistics of suicide. In a twist, she doesn’t begin with a monologue of despair but with a question that cracks open a mystery that has hung over “The Listener” from the start.The ListenerNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 36 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on most major platforms. More

  • 150 Shares99 Views

    in Movies

    Rebecca Hall on ‘Godzilla x Kong’ and Finding Her Way in Hollywood

    Rebecca Hall stood in front of an easel, her face contemplative. She moved a paintbrush gently on a palette, then applied the paint to the canvas. This was in her studio, a converted barn next door to where Ms. Hall lives in upstate New York with her husband, the actor Morgan Spector, and their 5-year-old daughter, Ida.When she’s not acting, Ms. Hall paints as a way of channeling her creativity. Her father, Sir Peter Hall — who founded the Royal Shakespeare Company — once warned her about dividing her talents. “He said that it’s very hard to do more than one thing, which really haunted me for a really long time,” Ms. Hall said. “Increasingly, though, I refuse to stay in one lane.”This, in many ways, is Ms. Hall in a nutshell: unwilling to be boxed in, an artist at heart. At 41, Ms. Hall is considered by some to be one of her generation’s most talented actresses. She possesses an unnerving maturity and an unparalleled capacity for versatility. She can so thoroughly embody a character that, as the New York Times film critic Manohla Dargis once wrote, “she becomes your way into the movie as well as the reason you keep watching.” But her career choices reveal a circuitous route toward stardom, a push and pull between projects with famous directors and actors and those on a much smaller scale, including independent films and stage productions.Most recently, she appears in this month’s “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire,” a big-budget monster film. In it, she plays Dr. Ilene Andrews, an anthropological linguist, who serves as a maternal Jane Goodall-type figure for Kong. It’s the type of heavily marketed blockbuster that a younger Rebecca Hall might have objected to altogether. So why did she choose to do it?“The cynical answer is you don’t get to be an artist in this day and age without doing some of those,” she replied. “But I’m also a straight-up lover of cinema, and that involves all kinds of cinema. I don’t have the mentality of, ‘Oh, I’ve got to do one for them, and then I can do one for me.’ There’s also a huge amount of fun in it, and I’m proud of the end result.”Ms. Hall in this month’s big-budget film “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire.” She is “a straight-up lover of cinema, and that involves all kinds of cinema,” she said.Dan McFadden/Warner Bros. PicturesWe 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 Shares179 Views

    in Music

    Lil Jon: The Popcast (Deluxe) Interview

    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, features an interview with the hip-hop and EDM legend Lil Jon in conversation about:Behind the scenes at Usher’s 2024 Super Bowl halftime show, in which Lil Jon was the musical director and a performerThe peak of Lil Jon’s pop fame in the early to mid-2000s, with hits as a performer and producer and sketches on “Chappelle’s Show”The making of the song “Lovers & Friends”Lil Jon’s early days as a D.J., and stories about concerts by the Notorious B.I.G. and Ol’ Dirty BastardAtlanta bass music and “So So Def Bass All-Stars”Early Atlanta punk and skateboarding scenesThe connections between crunk and EDM and drillHis connection to PitbullLil Jon’s introduction to the EDM scene, including Steve Aoki and the Electric Daisy CarnivalGetting healthy later in life and learning about meditationThe fate of his Crunk Ain’t Dead chainSnack of the week: Lil Jon rates Girl Scout cookiesConnect 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

  • 138 Shares169 Views

    in Music

    What We Know About Sean Combs Lawsuits, Raids and Federal Investigation

    Federal agents executed search warrants at his homes in Los Angeles and Miami Beach, and he faces several civil lawsuits accusing him of rape and sexual assault.Since federal agents raided two of Sean Combs’s homes in Los Angeles and the Miami area this week, the investigation into the hip-hop mogul has become the subject of intense public interest and speculation.The raids were conducted by Homeland Security Investigations, which has said very little about the focus of its inquiry. No criminal charges have been filed against Mr. Combs in relation to the case.But the footage of federal officers brandishing weapons while entering Mr. Combs’s sprawling Los Angeles mansion, where they confiscated computers and other devices, has raised questions about the nature of the investigation and how it might relate to a series of civil sexual assault lawsuits filed against Mr. Combs in recent months.Mr. Combs — a high-profile music producer and artist for decades who has been lauded as one of the architects of hip-hop’s commercial rise — has vehemently denied all the accusations, and his lawyer called the raids a “witch hunt based on meritless accusations made in civil lawsuits.”As details about the federal investigation gradually emerge, here is what we know about Mr. Combs’s legal troubles.Homeland Security Investigation agents putting boxes into a van after searching Mr. Combs’s home in Miami Beach.Giorgio Viera/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWe 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 Shares179 Views

    in Music

    Stephen Adams, Who Made Yale Music School Tuition-Free, Dies at 86

    A billionaire businessman and a late-blooming piano aficionado, he set a record with the anonymous $100 million gift that he and his wife gave the school.Stephen Adams, a billionaire whose anonymous $100 million gift to the Yale School of Music granted a tuition-free education to talented students embarking on careers in a capricious profession, died on March 14 at his home in Roxbury, Conn. He was 86.His death was confirmed by his wife, Denise (Rhea) Adams.Mr. Adams, who graduated from Yale College in 1959, was not a musician himself. But after he turned 55 and was already a prosperous business executive and wine collector, he became an amateur piano player.In 1999, he marked his class’s 40th-anniversary reunion by donating $10 million to the music school — the largest contribution it had ever received. Six years later, he and his wife surpassed that record when they made their $100 million gift, anonymously.They did not publicly reveal their identity as the donors until 2008, when Mr. Adams was asked to confirm their contribution by an interviewer from Wine Spectator magazine. He agreed to do so then, he said, to spur other contributors as his 50th-anniversary class reunion approached.“My wife and I are Christians, and the Bible speaks of giving in secret,” Mr. Adams told The Yale Daily News in 2009.In that same article, Michael Friedmann, a professor of theory and chamber music, said, “Musicians, as opposed to doctors or lawyers, are not in a position to repay educational loans easily, and the profession has a capricious opportunity structure.” He added, “The new financial conditions at the school, however, put musicians in a very different position in relation to their post-Yale careers.”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