Aurelia Butler

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    The Oscars Carpet Color Goes Back to Red

    Following the surprise of last year’s champagne-hued rug, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences unveiled a bright red one on Wednesday at the Dolby Theater.After a red carpet reveal last year that upended the foundations of Hollywood’s staid tradition — it was champagne-colored — the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences revealed on Wednesday that, this year, it would be returning to the traditional red.The actress Hong Chau on the champagne-hued carpet last year. Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesRihanna stops for photographs at the Oscar’s last year.Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesLast year’s departure from tradition was prompted by the introduction of an orange — sorry, sienna — tent over the carpet that offered the couture-clad arrivals shelter from a forecast rainstorm, which Lisa Love, a red-carpet creative consultant for the Oscars, told The New York Times necessitated the color change to prevent a color clash.After initially considering a chocolate brown carpet, she said, they settled on the champagne color, which, next to the sienna tent, “was inspired by watching the sunset on a white-sand beach at the ‘golden hour’ with a glass of champagne in hand, evoking calm and peacefulness,” she told The Times.Ms. Love acknowledged in the interview that the 50,000-square-foot-rug, which was very much giving “Shoes-off house!” vibes, might be a challenge to keep clean.“It will probably get dirty — maybe it wasn’t the best choice,” Ms. Love said at the time. “We’ll see!” (Heavy rain indeed arrived, and online commentators also questioned the decision.)Last year’s champagne carpet — the first time in more than six decades that the academy’s arrival rug was not red — was part of a trend of colorful carpets that have swept premieres, galas and award ceremonies across the country in recent years. See the Emmys (gray) and the world premiere of “Barbie” in Los Angeles in July (pink, obviously).Red carpets have been a staple at premieres and galas since 1922, when the showman Sid Grauman rolled one out for the 1922 premiere of “Robin Hood,” which starred Douglas Fairbanks, at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood. The Oscars adopted it beginning with the 1961 ceremony, and, ever since, the special shade — known as Academy Red — has been instantly recognizable in photos.But the attention-grabbing rugs have historically presented a challenge for stylists. Red is often not flattering, Mindi Weiss, an event planner who has worked with the Kardashians, Justin Bieber and Ellen DeGeneres, told The Times last year.“The color of red carpets has changed because of fashion,” she said. “It has to match the dresses, and the red clashed.” More

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    Christopher Walken’s Hidden ‘Dune’ Connection

    The actor who plays the malevolent emperor in the new film actually brought an element of the saga to life once before. Remember “Weapon of Choice”?If you turned on MTV for any length of time in 2001, you almost certainly saw Christopher Walken flying around the lobby of a Marriott in Los Angeles. Even in an era when music videos were far more hotly discussed than they are now, it was a weird sight. Walken’s trim shock of gray hair matched his gray suit, punctuated by a red tie; he looked less like the movie star he was than some guy on a long layover.The music was Fatboy Slim’s “Weapon of Choice,” a weird little ditty that did make you want to dance. Having trained as a dancer in his youth — and done a great deal of tap and more in “Pennies From Heaven” (1981) — Walken was well equipped for the concept that the video’s director, Spike Jonze, had cooked up: Normal-looking man hanging out in a hotel lobby hears the song, starts dancing, then flies off a mezzanine before, eventually, returning to his seat. The video was a hit, winning several MTV Video Music Awards and a Grammy.The lyrics to “Weapon of Choice” (sung by Bootsy Collins) are heavily distorted — the point isn’t the words so much as the hypnotic beat. But if you listen closely, you can pick up the line “Walk without rhythm/and it won’t attract the worm.”Yes, it’s a reference to “Dune.”In Frank Herbert’s 1965 novel, giant ancient sandworms that live beneath the desert on the planet Arrakis are hugely dangerous to humans, though their power can be harnessed for travel and other purposes. They’re one of the most famous elements of the story, so instantly identifiable that they were made into a dubiously conceived popcorn bucket for the release of Denis Villeneuve’s new “Dune: Part Two.” And they’re attracted to rhythmic thumps on the surface, so the Fremen — people who live in the Arrakis desert — walk in strange, loping, arrhythmic steps to avoid accidental detection.In the video, Walken even seems to be imitating those steps:These lyrics also appear. They could mean anything, of course.Don’t be shockedby the tone of my voiceCheck out my new weaponweapon of choiceBut it certainly would make sense if it was a reference to “the voice” (or is it THE VOICE?), a powerful vocal distortion that the mystical sisterhood Bene Gesserit use to control people in “Dune.”This was all a funny reference in 2021, when the first installment in Villeneuve’s adaptation of “Dune” appeared in theaters. But it got much funnier in “Dune: Part Two.” In the new film, the role of Emperor Shaddam — who engineered the extinction, or so he thought, of the House Atreides, making him technically the baddest of the bad guys — is played by Walken himself.Coincidence? Maybe. Delightful? Absolutely. More

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    girl in red: 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 Norwegian indie-pop star girl in red (Marie Ulven) — whose second album, “I’m Doing It Again Baby!,” is out April 12 — in conversation about:Her early self-released songs that went viral in the late 2010sThe invention of the girl in red “character”Why she’s pursuing music in 2024 in a more powerful way than during earlier phases of her careerOpening for Taylor Swift last year on The Eras TourCollaborating with Sabrina CarpenterDeveloping a taste for fashion and watchesBuilding relationships with fans through social mediaTumblrHer teenage fingerboarding careerWriting about her current romantic relationship on her new albumHow the climate for queer pop performers has changed in the past five yearsEmbracing ambition and joy in her new musicMeeting the TikTok stars Pookie & JettBuying a car (and contending with capitalism)The difference between Norwegian success and American successSnack 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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    Onstage, Zach Bryan Howled, and the Crowd Found Its Voice

    The singer and songwriter has become one of pop’s least expected new stars. On opening night of his arena tour, he showcased the bond with his fans that brought him there.The first two songs Zach Bryan played at the United Center on Tuesday night were from the more muscular end of his catalog. They landed hard and quick — Bryan was singing with a rugged howl, guitars were churning, the fiddle poked through the top like a squeal. This was opening night of The Quittin Time Tour, and the first of three sold-out shows here, and he was wasting no time pumping the audience into a frenzy.Then he needed them to breathe — maybe he needed to breathe — and so next came “God Speed,” one of the most delicate and precise entries in Bryan’s catalog. It’s a song about surrender and, most importantly, hope, that rests entirely on his strummed acoustic guitar and determined, dusty voice. Bryan pulled his vocals back to let the words sink in, but somehow the crowd got louder and more committed, turning the song into a hymn. In a room of over 20,000 people, everyone was singing, yet somehow it was eerily quiet — the loudest hush imaginable.Bryan, 27, is a singer whose hollers feel like hugs and whose laments land with a roar. For the past few years, his country-rock-adjacent rumbles have been inspiring a level of fevered devotion that has made him one of music’s most popular and least expected new stars. “Zach Bryan,” his second major-label album, debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard album chart last year, and its lead single, “I Remember Everything,” a duet with Kacey Musgraves, reached the top of the Hot 100. Half a year later, the song remains in the Top 10.Songs like “God Speed,” from his self-released 2019 album “DeAnn,” heralded Bryan’s arrival as a singer and writer of uncommon vigor.Evan Jenkins for The New York TimesA Bryan live show is rooted in his sandpapered voice, his modest affect and his band’s surprisingly jubilant musical arrangements. But just as crucial is the crowd shout-along. It is something slightly different than a regular singalong; the harmony it suggests veers past musical to the emotional.A couple of years ago, Bryan’s audience was packed with young men who sang his scraped-up songs unselfconsciously back to him. It all had the eau de Springsteen — deploying the magic of seeing a tough, resilient man confess to something much more wounded and ambiguous. But while that’s still part of the appeal, his crowd has expanded. There are more women now, and loads of teenagers, too, an indication of Bryan’s reach even if he has yet to become a traditional radio presence, and even if his allegiance to country music — which he toys with, and which the crowd’s outfits suggested an affinity for — is fickle.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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    ‘Ricky Stanicky’ Review: Best Fiends Forever

    In this slapdash, off-color comedy directed by Peter Farrelly, three buddies use the same imaginary friend as an excuse to get them out of binds.“Ricky Stanicky,” a sloppy shock comedy by the director Peter Farrelly (of the Oscar-winning “Green Book”), is named for an imaginary friend conjured up by three childhood pals (Zac Efron, Jermaine Fowler and Andrew Santino). As kids, the lads made their fictional buddy take the fall for a Halloween prank gone wrong.Decades later, they’ve rebranded Ricky as a heroic figure who lives in Nairobi, returning to the States only when the guys want an excuse to ditch their significant others for a bros-only vacation. After one weekend trip goes awry, the longtime liars are forced to prove that Ricky exists.That’s the film’s premise. But the only person invested in it is John Cena as Rod, a broke and salacious nightclub performer hired to embody Ricky for a weekend. Playing this filthy-minded, flop-sweating boozehound, Cena barges into the plot with the get-it-while-you-can gusto of a raccoon upending a trash bin. The joke is that Rod takes his paid acting gig seriously, and he boasts a hustler’s gift for sensing what people want him to say. While the high jinks are too haphazard to give him a credible — or heck, even coherent — character arc, Cena is here and there able to seize moments to show us the fissures in his layered personas, a fragile construction of confidence, ego, vulnerability and need.Pity the script itself suffers from a hopeless identity crisis. Since “Ricky Stanicky” made its debut on the 2010 Black List of the best unproduced screenplays, the project has been circled by three other potential Rickys (James Franco, Joaquin Phoenix and Jim Carrey) and passed through too many hands. It now boasts six credited screenwriters yet feels like a jumble of ideas sticky-noted together during a single lunch break. (Kudos to whoever came up with the dig at how little the friends actually know about Nairobi.)When an investment banker (William H. Macy, whose gameness extends through the end credits) offers Ricky a job, the loosey goosey slapstick momentarily aspires to become a social mobility farce. It’s also, briefly and unconvincingly, about traumatic childhoods, stunted relationships, corporate do-gooderism and vapid local news. In a moment of astonishing chutzpah, Rod-as-Ricky also advises people to be their authentic selves.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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    ‘As Living as Opera Can Get’: John Cage’s Anarchic Anti-Canon

    In his “Europeras,” Cage dismantled centuries of tradition and expectations, for musicians and audiences alike. A rare revival is coming to Detroit.The start was typical: Oper Frankfurt in Germany asked John Cage to write an opera.But the premiere, in 1987, was unlike anything in opera up to that point. Cage, an American maverick whose philosophical, socially conscious works at the time were based on chance, mapped out an elaborate scheme for a show that would bring the entirety of European opera onto the same stage — at the same time.It was called “Europeras 1 & 2,” an enormous undertaking of controlled chaos, engineered with an eye toward history and populist reclamation, hence the title that implies both “Euro operas” and “your operas.” Each element, its rollout determined by the I Ching, unfolded independently from all others: Singers performed arias unrelated to the instrumental accompaniment, which was unrelated to the scenic and lighting design, as well as stage directions. (Audience members also received varied plot synopses that read like opera Mad Libs.)The public wasn’t exactly equipped to receive what Cage had served them. Laura Kuhn, who runs the John Cage Trust and worked with him as he prepared “Europeras 1 & 2,” wrote in her dissertation on the piece that the reception in Frankfurt varied from “overt enthusiasm to no less overt bewilderment or disdain.”But Cage kept going. At the Almeida Festival in 1990, he premiered “Europeras 3 & 4,” which will receive a rare revival this week at Detroit Opera, in a production directed by Yuval Sharon. In Cage’s series of works, which concluded with “Europera 5” in 1991, the whole became greater than its parts, with affection alongside the anarchy, and the feeling, Sharon said, that “this is as living as opera can get.”Yuval Sharon, left, the director of “Europeras 3 & 4” in Detroit, with the associate director, Alexander Gedeon.Brittany Greeson for The New York TimesIn Cage’s time, there were those who appreciated what Cage was doing. As “Europeras 1 & 2” was arriving in the United States, the artist and critic Richard Kostelanetz wrote that “by running innocently amok in European culture, Cage has come as close as anyone to writing the Great American Opera, which is to say, a great opera that only an American could make.”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 Much Say Should Families Have in Biopics?

    The Oscars slate this year is packed with films rooted in historical events and biographies. How much influence should the subjects have?When Walter Naegle was first approached over a decade ago by producers who wanted to make a feature about his late partner, the civil rights leader Bayard Rustin, Naegle needed to be talked into it.Rustin, who had been the main organizer of the 1963 March on Washington — and an openly gay public figure at a time when few were — had already been the subject of the nonfiction “Brother Outsider” (2003). Naegle remembers saying to the producers, “What do I need you guys for? We have a very good documentary.”But Naegle was persuaded, in part by knowing that a vast audience could be reached with a fictionalized feature, and he gave his blessing, starting a yearslong process of consultation with filmmakers that culminated in “Rustin,” directed by George C. Wolfe and starring Colman Domingo, who has been nominated for an Oscar for his performance.When Naegle saw the film for the first time, he felt overwhelming relief. “Colman’s performance had really captured this person who I cared about,” he said.At Sunday’s Academy Awards, Rustin is one of several historical figures who are the focus of nominated films. Other real-life subjects include the father of the atomic bomb, a lauded American conductor and the victims and perpetrators of the Reign of Terror in the Osage Nation in 1920s Oklahoma.JaNae Collins, left, Lily Gladstone, Cara Jade Myers and Jillian Dion in “Killers of the Flower Moon,” which was refocused after a meeting with relatives of the real-life Osage subjects.Melinda Sue Gordon/Apple Original FilmsWe 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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    5 Minutes That Will Make You Love Don Cherry

    Listen to favorite songs by an adventurous musician who pushed the boundaries of jazz, selected by writers and musicians including Nailah Hunter, Kieran Hebden and the artist’s son Eagle-Eye Cherry.Of all the musicians we’ve featured in this series, Don Cherry might be the most adventurous. From his early days in the late 1950s playing with the saxophonist Ornette Coleman to his tinkering with electronic funk and R&B in the ’80s, Cherry proved himself a worthy anarchist, broadening the depth of his art through the wind of his pocket cornet, an instrument he popularized. Though with Cherry, there was a sense that he didn’t want to shift the genre as a whole. Instead, his music felt innocent and voyeuristic, like he colored outside the lines just because.Cherry grew up in a musical family; his grandmother played piano for silent films, and his mother played piano at home. His father owned a jazz club in Tulsa, Okla., then worked as a bartender at the Plantation Club, a jazz venue in the Watts section of Los Angeles. Cherry met Coleman around the mid-50s and started working with the bandleader; it was a creative partnership that spanned several albums. Coleman’s sound was so jarring that some called it “alien music.” But Cherry identified with Coleman’s atonality and dissonance, even if he himself played tight, expressive notes that didn’t inflict much chaos. When paired with Coleman’s saxophone, the whole thing felt tumultuous. “Some people loved it and some people hated it, didn’t like it, and there would be arguments and fights,” he once told NPR’s Terry Gross, referencing a famed 1959 show at the Five Spot Cafe that drew Leonard Bernstein and Thelonious Monk to the venue.Though Cherry earned favor as a member of Coleman’s band and a featured player on the albums “Something Else!!!!” and “The Shape of Jazz to Come,” he soon established himself as a formidable bandleader or co-leader. In 1960, he and John Coltrane recorded a number of Coleman’s compositions as a homage to their peer. Six years later, Atlantic Records released this collaborative LP under the title “The Avant-Garde.” As the ’60s became the ’70s, Cherry turned his attention to funk and other cosmic soundscapes, much like other jazz musicians of the time.In 1975, he released what might be the high-water mark of his solo discography, “Brown Rice,” a slight yet exhilarating blend of Indian raga and African rhythm with subtle electronic flourishes. Cherry spent the ’70s in Sweden with his partner, Moki, where the two would create what they called “organic music” with like-minded local artists. Then, on the 1985 album “Home Boy (Sister Out),” Cherry turned his attention to Paris. A downtown funk record influenced by that city’s sound, it achieved cult status there until the label WeWantSounds released it more widely in 2018.By the time of Cherry’s death in 1995, he was considered a torchbearer for avant-garde jazz. Here, we spotlight his work with 13 selections that tell the story of his free-spirited brilliance. You can find a playlist at the bottom of the article, and be sure to leave your own favorites in the comments.◆ ◆ ◆Joy Guidry, musician“Hope”When thinking about Don Cherry’s music, his album “Organic Music Society” is always the first to come to mind. I often come back to this entire album for how it can always slow my breathing and open my soul to the other side. The colors he uses in this album paint a picture of many different forms of praise and worship, especially in the seventh track, “Hope.” There’s so much warmth and comfort throughout this entire song. I always see a ton of deep oranges, purples and yellows when listening to “Hope.” The singing, different percussion instruments, and the rhythm of the piano and flute come together to make an oasis of sounds for dancing, screaming or giving thanks and praise. “Hope” is a song that brings a lot of my deep emotions to the surface, and I come back to it a lot when I need to have a big release or when I’m feeling spiritually blocked up. “Organic Music Society” is one of the best master classes in improvisation I’ve ever run across.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