Aurelia Butler

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    ‘Road House’ Review: This Remake Amps Up the Action

    Jake Gyllenhaal stars as a pro fighter turned bouncer at a juke joint in the Florida Keys, taking on Patrick Swayze’s role in the original.The 1989 blockbuster “Road House,” was something of a pastiche. It delivered disreputable B-picture thrills with big-picture production value. The lead actor Patrick Swayze, playing a philosophizing roughneck, smirked with unshakable confidence while breaking arms and jaws, as cars and buildings blew up real good around him. The action was served up with glossy studio polish.Hence, a remake of the film, some might argue, is destined to be a pastiche of a pastiche. But as we move further into the 21st century, we find the notion of authenticity ever more devalued. And who needs it when you’ve got Doug Liman directing the whole thing? He is, after all, the J. Robert Oppenheimer of lunatic action set pieces (“The Bourne Identity,” “Mr. & Mrs. Smith,” “Edge of Tomorrow” to name a few).Taking on Swayze’s role, Jake Gyllenhaal plays the pro fighter turned bouncer Elwood Dalton, here protecting a juke joint that sits on a valuable piece of real estate in the Florida Keys. At his most winning despite his character’s lethal nature, Gyllenhaal keeps up the one-liners and drollery. In lieu of Swayze’s Zenlike musings, he gives us dry inquiries about whether his challengers have medical insurance before pummeling and delivering them to a hospital.This movie delivers a lot of the same kicks as the first, but with contemporary tuneups like a villain played by Conor McGregor, the Ultimate Fighting Championship star who’s first seen stark naked, except for shoes and socks (so he can carry his phone). Though two hours long, the movie moves as swiftly as a greased ferret through a Habitrail and delivers hallucinatory action highs for its extended climax.All this and a pretty funny “The Third Man” reference too.Road HouseRated R for violence and language. Running time: 2 hours 1 minute. Watch on Prime Video. More

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    7 Songs From My L.A. Record Haul

    Hear tracks from Cass Elliot, the Pretenders, Sam Cooke and more from the Record Parlour in Hollywood.Lindsay ZoladzDear listeners,Anytime I’m in Los Angeles — as I was last week, reporting a story I can’t tell you about just yet, but that you will get to read soon — I try to swing by the Record Parlour, a small but stuffed-to-the-gills shop off Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. I almost always spend more time there than I intend to, and I invariably leave ready to test the limits of how many records I can fit in my luggage.A good used record store will always make me grateful that I took my allergy pill that morning, and by that metric, the Record Parlour is a very good used record store. Dusty crates of kitschy bargain-bin finds line the floors, while robust sections organized by genre snake around the store. (According to the shop’s Instagram, their inventory includes “200,000+ Records,” and I’d believe it.) The prices have certainly gone up in the eight or so years since I’ve been stopping by, but there are still deals to be had. Just when I thought I’d perused all the pricier “New Releases” — record store lingo for used records recently stocked — I saw an entire section of “$7.98 New Releases” and let out an audible groan, because of course I was going to have to leaf through every single one of those, too.I picked up a fun, eclectic mix of rock, pop, gospel and one coveted original soundtrack you will read about below. My finds included records by Bryan Ferry, the Pretenders, Sam Cooke and more — most of which were in that $7.98 bin, and all of which made it safely back to New York in my carry-on bag. Another successful transcontinental record haul!Also, one last bit of news: Yesterday marked one year since the Amplifier launched! What a year it’s been. Thanks to each and every one of you who has read, subscribed, listened, forwarded an installment to a friend, recommended a song for a playlist, sent me an email (I try to respond personally to as many as I possibly can, but please forgive me when I fall behind!), shaken a fist at the sky because I forgot to include a song you love, or taken a chance on an artist that we’ve featured and discovered a new favorite in the process.It truly feels like we’ve built a robust community of music lovers here, and I can’t wait to see where Year 2 takes us. Again: Thank you, thank you, thank you.Burnin’ down the interbelt, from Jacuzzi to Jacuzzi,LindsayWe 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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    Joni Mitchell, Following Neil Young, Returns to Spotify After Protest

    Her music has quietly reappeared on the streaming service, two years after a departure over what she called “lies” about Covid-19 vaccines in podcasts.Joni Mitchell’s music has quietly returned to Spotify, more than two years after she followed Neil Young in protest of what she called “lies” about Covid-19 vaccines being spread on the streaming platform.There was no official announcement of Mitchell’s decision, but on Thursday fans on social media began to note with excitement the reappearance of some of her albums on Spotify. By Friday morning, most if not all of Mitchell’s original albums had returned, including classics like “Blue” (1971), “Court and Spark” (1974) and “Mingus” (1979).Representatives of the singer-songwriter, her record labels and Spotify either did not answer or had no comment when asked on Thursday and Friday about the apparent return of Mitchell’s albums.In January 2022, with a post on her website titled “I Stand With Neil Young!,” Mitchell said she would be removing all of her music from Spotify. Young had done so after criticizing the service for its support of Joe Rogan, the podcast star whose show had come under fire from doctors and public health officials who said that some of Rogan’s guests promoted misinformation about Covid vaccines.“Irresponsible people are spreading lies that are costing people their lives,” Mitchell wrote.Young returned his music to Spotify last week, saying: “My decision comes as music services Apple and Amazon have started serving the same disinformation podcast features I had opposed at Spotify.” Rogan previously had an exclusive deal with Spotify, which has since been renewed — for a reported $250 million — to allow distribution of his show on other platforms.Mitchell, 80, has become more active in recent years after suffering an aneurysm in 2015 that initially left her unable to speak. She has given several performances, including at the Newport Folk Festival in 2022 and at the Grammy Awards in February, and is set to play two “Joni Jam” shows at the Hollywood Bowl in October, joined by Brandi Carlile and others. More

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    Tyla Avoids a Bad Romance, and 9 More New Songs

    Hear tracks by Olivia Rodrigo, Gary Clark Jr. featuring Stevie Wonder, Four Tet and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new tracks. Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes) and at Apple Music here, and sign up for The Amplifier, a twice-weekly guide to new and old songs.Tyla, ‘Safer’Following her worldwide 2023 hit “Water,” the South African songwriter Tyla has now released her self-titled debut album, merging African rhythms with English lyrics and R&B delivery. The album’s songs toggle between approach — like “Water” — and avoidance. In “Safer,” Tyla pulls away from temptation. The song harnesses the log-drum beat and sparse, subterranean bass lines of South African amapiano as Tyla worries that “This feels too good to be true” and decides, “As bad as I want you, I know that it’s danger.” Choral call-and-response vocals carry South African tradition into the electronic wilderness of 21st-century romance. JON PARELESOlivia Rodrigo, ‘So American’Olivia Rodrigo knows all too well how susceptible a young woman can be to physical attraction and a good line. With the speedy, pumping new wave rock and breathless vocals of “So American” — from the extended version of her 2023 album, “Guts (Spilled)” — she sums up a guy with “hands that make hell seem cold” who “laughs at all my jokes and says I’m so American.” For three frantic minutes, self-consciousness is no match for pheromones. PARELESRemi Wolf, ‘Cinderella’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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    N.Y. Philharmonic Adds 2 Premieres to a Diet of Classics

    Jaap van Zweden, the orchestra’s music director, led new works by Joel Thompson and Tan Dun amid pieces by Mozart, Beethoven and Mendelssohn.When Jaap van Zweden, the music director of the New York Philharmonic, led the orchestra at the beginning of the year, the program featured repertory hits: a Wagner prelude, a Beethoven piano concerto and a Brahms symphony. Last week he returned with more of the same: a Mendelssohn overture, a Mozart piano concerto and a Beethoven symphony.This felt a little like “let Jaap be Jaap,” with van Zweden — whose short Philharmonic tenure ends in a few months — finally freed of the burden of presenting new works and past rarities, and able to focus wholly on the standards that have been at the center of his conducting career.But on Thursday at David Geffen Hall, he — or at least the administrators who have encouraged more adventure in his choices — offered a reminder that his time in New York had not been entirely without variety. In fact, the concert offered something unusual in the orchestral field: In a mixed program that will be repeated on Saturday and Sunday, the two (two!) premieres on the first half together lasted longer than the Mendelssohn symphony (yes, more Mendelssohn) after intermission.It was too bad that neither of those new pieces made a positive impression and that performing them together worked against both.First came Joel Thompson’s “To See the Sky,” obscurely subtitled “an exegesis for orchestra.” Two years ago, the Philharmonic premiered Thompson’s sumptuously moody song cycle “The Places We Leave.” Now 35, he has largely specialized in vocal music, and the 20-minute “To See the Sky,” heard for the first time on Thursday, is his longest instrumental work; you got the sense of a young composer trying to figure out how to fill such a substantial span.The titles of the piece’s three sections together form a quotation from the musician Cécile McLorin Salvant: “Sometimes/you have to gaze into a well/to see the sky.” From its beginning, with a series of soft rumbles that explode into violent bursts, much of the work alternates sections of loud and bumptious rhythms, like a parody of hip-hop beats, with periods of subdued lyricism. But these repetitive assertive-then-reticent cycles don’t accumulate interest or tension — though there are nice touches, like the sound of a trumpet flecked with harp.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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    ‘Art Talent Show’: A Documentary Celebration and Sendup

    “Art Talent Show” follows students applying to a prestigious Czech academy. The film is both a tribute to the contemporary scene and a sendup.Have you ever stood in an art gallery, contemplating a vacuum, wondering if it’s art or if the maintenance staff just forgot to put it away? I love this feeling. To me, art is supposed to leave us re-evaluating everything we think we know about the world. But it does underline how knotty and capricious judging art can be — a matter also taken up by “Art Talent Show.”Directed by Tomas Bojar and Adela Komrzy, “Art Talent Show” (opening this week in theaters) follows hopeful applicants to Prague’s Academy of Fine Arts, the oldest art college in the Czech Republic. When the film was on the festival circuit, it garnered comparisons to the movies of Frederick Wiseman: patient, witty observational portraits of institutions that coax audiences to draw conclusions about their ultimate theses. In this case, the subjects are the young artists in the process of grueling entrance exams. That includes being grilled by faculty who sometimes seem bent on messing with them just a little, whether it’s prodding a student into saying smoking might be good for the environment because it kills humans, or challenging their views of the art market.The teachers are hardly rigid traditionalists, but they are of a different generation from the students. That means conversations about gender and sexuality, as well as commodification and what truly counts as provocative, are all part of the film. But the movie smartly situates the whole process inside the larger institution, with the receptionist in the lobby providing a riotous counterbalance to all the artiness therein.“Art Talent Show” is itself provocative but also hilarious, both a sendup and a tribute to the complexity of contemporary art. It reminded me of another favorite documentary: Claire Simon’s “The Competition” (2016, streaming on Metrograph at Home), which follows would-be filmmakers hoping to be admitted to the prestigious Parisian school La Fémis. They also face panels of faculty grilling them about their views and aspirations, and the results are equally revealing.Admittedly, both of these films made me very happy to have finished school long ago. But what I loved most was how they spotlight complex attitudes about the relationship between identity, craft and art, even in highly progressive contexts — and how fun they are to watch while they do it. More

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    ‘West Indies’: The Slave Ship Musical You Didn’t Know Existed

    “West Indies: The Fugitive Slaves of Liberty,” a 1979 African movie musical, has quietly built a devoted fan base. Now, it’s back in a restoration.It’s safe to say that the Mauritanian French director Med Hondo’s “West Indies: The Fugitive Slaves of Liberty” is a unique film. That might be the only safe thing about it.The first African movie musical, it traces nearly four centuries of French colonialism with unsparing clarity and relentless creativity, shot entirely on a replica of a slave ship built within an abandoned Citroën factory in Paris.Since its wonky release in 1979, it has quietly built a group of devoted fans, including the Oscar-winning filmmaker Barry Jenkins, who placed it at the top of his list of the greatest films of all time for Sight & Sound magazine in 2022. But a new 4K restoration and a weeklong run at Film Forum might finally land it in the wider canon.That lack of recognition has been neither accidental nor surprising. When Hondo’s feature debut, “Soleil Ô,” a docudrama about Black immigrant life, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 1970, it landed him at the vanguard of the still-nascent African cinema, but its subject matter made future financing difficult to secure. He raised money for “West Indies,” an adaptation of Daniel Boukman’s play “The Slavers,” through African private investors and a loan from Algeria’s public broadcasting organization; many cast members were his friends and worked without pay.“When you watch his films, which speak truth to power in a very direct, albeit extremely artful, way, you can see why this is not a filmmaker who was widely accepted by the mainstream,” said Ashley Clark, the curatorial director of the Criterion Collection, a sister company of Janus Films, which is distributing the touring restoration.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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    LSU’s Flau’Jae Johnson Drops New Song With NLE Choppa As NCAA Tournament Starts

    The sophomore guard is prepping collaborations with hip-hop heavyweights like Lil Wayne and NLE Choppa as she helps L.S.U. defend its basketball title in the N.C.A.A. tournament.When Flau’jae Johnson helped lead the Louisiana State University women’s basketball team to a national championship last April, in her first season on the squad, she ascended to the top of the sport. The win, the school’s first title, also vaulted her as a hip-hop artist, lifting a career that has found her teaming up with rap royalty.At least twice in the past year, Johnson staged rap performances within 24 hours of a game or a practice, in one instance opening for the chart-topping rapper and singer Rod Wave in Atlanta after traveling from Louisiana on a day off from the court. She walked offstage to body cramps after another performance in November; she had scored 17 points in a game hours before her show.“I know this is what I’m supposed to be doing,” said Johnson, 20, a sophomore guard who averages 14.2 points per game and over 62,000 monthly listeners on Spotify. “If you want to be a legend at something, you’ve got to do something nobody has done before and execute it at a high level.”Johnson’s two careers went into overdrive over the past year, and she’s balancing both as L.S.U. prepares to defend its title in the N.C.A.A. tournament, starting with its first-round game on Friday. The same day, Johnson plans to release “AMF (Ain’t My Fault),” her new song with the rapper NLE Choppa, who last year asked her and her L.S.U. teammate Angel Reese to appear in the video for his single “Champions”; they made cameos alongside other top athletes including the boxers Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Mike Tyson. Johnson then asked NLE Choppa to collaborate on “AMF,” which will premiere on Snapchat through a partnership with the social media platform.Johnson often composes lyrics during flights to away games and records songs in between basketball practices.Carly Mackler/Getty Images“She’s redefining and showcasing the renaissance and the revolution that is possible in women’s sports,” said Ketra Armstrong, a professor of sports management at the University of Michigan. “She’s showing not only how you do it, but how you do it masterfully without compromising one for the other.”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