Aurelia Butler

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    ‘Dangerous Animals’ Review: Here, Sharky Sharky!

    The Australian director Sean Byrne combines the serial killer and shark movie subgenres into a trashy good time.The horror movie owes sharks an apology. Despite what countless scenes of ominous blue fins cutting through the water have led us to believe, humans are much more of a threat to sharks than they are to us. The “Hostel” director Eli Roth even made a nonfiction movie making this argument, but no documentary can compete with a suspenseful cinematic blood bath.Enter Sean Byrne, an Australian director with a taste for the unhinged, whose viscerally violent debut, “The Loved Ones,” conflated the prom-night revenge of “Carrie” with the family dinner of “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.” His new effort, “Dangerous Animals,” is another 1970s horror mash-up, this time combining the serial killer and shark movie subgenres into a trashy good time. Byrne is at his most articulate with visual language, flipping the script on a famous Spielberg shot of dangling legs underwater. Early on, he takes us out with tourists to the sea and shows us that underwater perspective, but this time we’re looking at sharks, not humans, who, this movie suggests, are the real predators.It’s hardly the only nod to “Jaws.” Even the maniac at its center, the roguish tour guide Captain Tucker, played with charismatic gusto by Jai Courtney, looks a little like Richard Dreyfuss from that movie if he were on a steady diet of steroids. After a traumatic event in childhood, Tucker has taken to abducting tourists, locking them up on his boat and theatrically feeding them to sharks, all while filming these set pieces, beefing up an impressive collection of VHS snuff films. At one point, this maniac/indie director tells us he likes horror movies, but he didn’t need to.It’s an outlandish premise that inevitably leads to some dopey, implausible places. Byrne’s previous movies got down in the grimy muck. This one is glossier. Everyone speaks in quips and movie quotes. And no one has an ounce of flab. This is a horror movie about horror movies made by people who seem to have spent more time observing horror movies than the real world. Making this work requires wit, the right tone and a ruthless sense of pace. Byrne manages all three with a sure hand.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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    ‘Ballerina’ Review: Ana de Armas Twirls Into ‘John Wick’ Franchise

    Ana de Armas twirls into the franchise as a ballerina-assassin with vengeance on her mind in this by-the-numbers cash grab.With a title as cumbersome as its germinating mythology, “From the World of John Wick: Ballerina” is a stone-cold, self-infatuated effort to couple another boxcar to the franchise money train. I regret to report that Keanu Reeves’s titular assassin does not appear in a tutu.He does pop in, though, ever so briefly, lest we lose interest before the promised fifth installment. Set during the events of “John Wick: Chapter 3 — Parabellum” (2019), “Ballerina” is besotted with Eve Macarro (Ana de Armas), a lithe and lovely orphan who saw her father murdered and is obsessed with revenge. Inducted into the Ruska Roma, a cultlike clan whose ballet school fronts a contract-killer training facility, Eve practices pirouettes and punches with equal enthusiasm. Her toes are bloody, but her resolve is undimmed.A luxe orgy of mass murder, “Ballerina” dances from one bloody melee to another, its back-of-a-matchbook plot (by Shay Hatton) driven solely by arterial motives. As Eve defies the ballet school’s director (Anjelica Huston, more formidable than a roomful of Baryshnikovs) to pursue the well-protected head of a rival clan, the movie tends the franchise flame with a Wick-world checklist of familiar tropes. Like the impossibly creative, perfectly executed, utterly ridiculous fight sequences, which include Eve’s father single-handedly overcoming a literal boatload of would-be assassins, or Eve laying waste to the lethal residents of an entire Austrian village. Outlandish weaponry is a given, and “Ballerina” delights in deploying everything from expensive cookware to ice skates. There’s even a hulking, Dolph Lundgren type wielding a flamethrower.From time to time, the feverish slaughter pauses respectfully to allow English and Irish acting legends to inject brief moments of gravitas. Ian McShane’s menacingly dapper Winston is around to offer foster-fatherly advice and drop murky hints about Eve’s true parentage, and Gabriel Byrne appears as the mysterious head of the rival family and the bearer of further familial secrets. It’s all a bit much for Eve, who seems more relieved than scared when Wick himself shows up with a contract to stop her one-woman rampage. I suspect the audience will be equally thankful.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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    They Led the 2000s Indie-Rock Boom. Now They’re Vying for Oscars.

    As Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross continue to spotlight film music, members of Dirty Projectors, Grizzly Bear, Interpol and Animal Collective have been joining the field.When Daniel Blumberg ascended the stage at the Oscars this year to accept his best original score trophy for “The Brutalist,” the bald, mild-mannered Englishman in the all-black suit read nervously from notes. “I’ve been an artist for 20 years now, since I was a teenager,” he said, perhaps jogging some music fans’ memories: This was the once curly-mopped singer and guitarist from the 2010s indie-rock band Yuck.His Academy Award put him in good company. Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross of Nine Inch Nails have won the category twice, while Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood is a two-time nominee. And bubbling up beside Blumberg are a crop of artists from New York’s early 2000s indie boom, when idiosyncratic and ambitious bands made their careers on blog love, critically acclaimed albums, relentless touring schedules and the occasional lucrative sync deal.Two decades later, entering their midlife years, an increasing number of their members are turning to film scoring as a new creative outlet — one they can pursue from home studios — rather than rely on the millennial nostalgia industry.A scene from “Sister Midnight.” Paul Banks, the frontman of the band Interpol, recorded its propulsive score.MagnoliaDavid Longstreth, the central figure of Dirty Projectors, created the imaginative and sprawling score for the fantasy journey “The Legend of Ochi,” which A24 released in theaters this year. Paul Banks, Interpol’s frontman, recorded propulsive music for Magnolia Pictures’ deadpan satire “Sister Midnight,” which opened in New York in May and will soon expand nationally. Various permutations of Animal Collective have provided haunting sounds for small-budget projects, including the stripped-down sci-fi tale “Obex,” which Oscilloscope Laboratories will distribute later this year.“The creative conversations I find really interesting,” said Christopher Bear of Grizzly Bear, who is now a prolific film and TV composer. “You’re not necessarily talking about music references. Often it’s more interesting if you’re not, because then it’s about story and picture and just more aesthetic questions. I find myself doing creative things that I probably wouldn’t if I was just left to my own devices in my studio.”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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    Morten Harket, a-ha’s Lead Singer, Has Parkinson’s Disease

    Harket, best known for his band’s infectious 1985 synth-pop hit “Take on Me,” revealed his illness in an interview on a-ha’s website.Morten Harket, the lead singer of the Norwegian synth-pop band a-ha, best known for its 1985 hit single “Take on Me,” said Wednesday that he had Parkinson’s disease.Harket, 65, revealed his illness in an interview with Jan Omdahl, a-ha’s biographer, on the band’s website. Harket did not say when he received the diagnosis.“I’ve got no problem accepting the diagnosis,” he said. “With time I’ve taken to heart my 94-year-old father’s attitude to the way the organism gradually surrenders: ‘I use whatever works.’”His announcement comes days after the 40th anniversary of the release of a-ha’s first album, “Hunting High and Low,” on June 1, 1985. The first single from the album, “Take on Me,” became a global hit that year, reaching No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the United States on the basis of the song’s infectious synthesizer hook and innovative video that mixed animation with live action.In the interview, Harket said he took medicine to manage his symptoms. Last June, he traveled to the United States, where surgeons at the Mayo Clinic implanted, inside the left side of his brain, electrodes that receive electrical impulses from a small pacemaker-like device in his upper chest. He underwent the same procedure in December for the right side of his brain.The treatment, known as deep brain simulation, is an established treatment for Parkinson’s. Omdahl writes that the treatment has helped keep Harket’s symptoms in check.Still, problems with his voice “are one of many grounds for uncertainty about my creative future,” he said. The dopamine supplements that he takes affect his voice, but his underlying symptoms become more pronounced if he doesn’t take them, he said.Parkinson’s is a progressive and incurable disease that affects the central nervous system and causes tremors, muscle stiffness, impaired balance and other symptoms. More than 10 million people worldwide are estimated to be living with Parkinson’s, according to the Parkinson’s Foundation.Harket, who has released six solo albums, said he has worked on songs in recent years.A-ha formed in Oslo in 1982. Harket and his two bandmates, Paul Waaktaar-Savoy and Magne Furuholmen, spent their early days playing in London before they eventually landed a contract with Warner Bros.Though a-ha is largely known as a one-hit wonder in the United States for “Take On Me,” its second single, “The Sun Always Shines on TV,” cracked the Top 20 of the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart in 1985. The band went on to sell millions of copies of its albums worldwide, and has performed before audiences in 38 countries. Its most recent studio album, “True North,” was issued in 2022. More

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    Sacha Jenkins, Filmmaker Who Mined the Black Experience, Dies at 53

    Shaped by early hip-hop culture, his documentaries put race in the foreground, whether the topic was hip-hop fashion, the Capitol riots or Louis Armstrong.Sacha Jenkins, a fiery journalist and documentary filmmaker who strove to tell the story of Black American culture from within, whether in incisive prose explorations of rap and graffiti art or in screen meditations on Louis Armstrong, the Wu-Tang Clan or Rick James, died on May 23 at his home in the Inwood section of Manhattan. He was 53.The death was confirmed by his wife, the journalist and filmmaker Raquel Cepeda-Jenkins, who said the cause was complications of multiple system atrophy, a neurodegenerative disorder.Whatever the medium — zines, documentaries, satirical television shows — Mr. Jenkins was unflinching on the topic of race as he sought to reflect the depths and nuances of the Black experience as only Black Americans understood it.He was “an embodiment of ‘for us, by us,’” the journalist Stereo Williams wrote in a recent appreciation on Okayplayer, a music and culture site. “He was one of hip-hop’s greatest journalistic voices because he didn’t just write about the art: He lived it.”And he lived it from early on. Mr. Jenkins, raised primarily in the Astoria section of Queens, was a graffiti artist as a youth, and sought to bring an insider’s perspective to the culture surrounding it with his zine Graphic Scenes X-Plicit Language, which he started at 16. He later co-founded Beat-Down newspaper, which covered hip-hop; and the feisty and irreverent magazine Ego Trip, which billed itself as “the arrogant voice of musical truth.”Nas on the cover of the first issue of Ego Trip magazine, which billed itself as “the arrogant voice of musical truth.”Ego TripWe 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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    Alf Clausen, Who Gave ‘The Simpsons’ Its Musical Identity, Dies at 84

    He created the music for hundreds of episodes over 27 seasons, spanning jazz, rock, blues and musicals. He won two Emmys and was nominated for 28 more.Alf Clausen, a composer and arranger whose songs, interludes and closing credits for hundreds of episodes of “The Simpsons” were so central to the animated sitcom’s success that its creator, Matt Groening, often called him the show’s “secret weapon,” died on Thursday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 84.His daughter, Kaarin Clausen, said the cause was progressive supranuclear palsy, a brain disorder similar to Parkinson’s disease.Mr. Clausen worked on every episode of “The Simpsons” across 27 seasons, from 1990 to 2017.He did not compose the show’s memorable opening theme — that was Danny Elfman — but he was responsible for everything else, including classic musical numbers like “Who Needs the Kwik-E Mart,” “We Do (The Stonecutters’ Song),” “We Put the Spring in Springfield” and “You’re Checking In.”Mr. Clausen won Emmys for the last two songs, in 1997 and 1998. He was nominated for 19 more awards for “The Simpsons,” and was nominated nine other times for earlier work.When Mr. Groening first approached Mr. Clausen to work on the show, he demurred. He wanted to work on dramas; cartoons and comedy did not interest him.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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    Haley Joel Osment Ordered to Attend A.A. After Ski Resort Arrest

    The actor was charged in April with public intoxication and possession of cocaine and was recorded using the word “Nazi” and an antisemitic slur during his arrest. He later apologized.A judge has ordered the actor Haley Joel Osment to attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and therapy sessions for the next six months as part of a deal to dispose of charges of public intoxication and cocaine possession after he insulted the police.Mr. Osment, who rose to fame as the child actor of “Sixth Sense” in 1999, was arrested in April at a ski resort in Mono County, Calif. Police footage of the arrest showed Mr. Osment refusing to answer questions from officers. He also asserted that he was being tortured and kidnapped by a “Nazi” and used an antisemitic slur while addressing an officer. Later he apologized for his words and said he had experienced a blackout.At a court appearance on Monday, a judge granted Mr. Osment’s request for a one-year diversion from prosecution, saying he would dismiss the charges if over the next six months the actor obeys all laws, attends three A.A. meetings a week and meets with his therapist twice a week.Diversion is an alternative procedure in criminal cases in many states that allows certain defendants to avoid prosecution and a criminal record by agreeing to complete a rehabilitation program and a period of probation.David Anderson, the Mono County district attorney, said in a statement that his office disagreed with the judge’s decision. “Based on Mr. Osment’s prior D.U.I. conviction, as well as his slurs toward the arresting officer, my office did not believe diversion was appropriate,” Mr. Anderson said.A representative for Mr. Osment did not respond to a request for comment on Wednesday. He is scheduled to reappear in court in January, when the court will review his compliance with the orders. If he does not complete the diversion program, criminal proceedings will be restarted.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 Combs, Defendant: Gestures to His Family, Sticky Notes to His Lawyers

    With no cameras in the courtroom, few have glimpsed the music mogul as he helps direct his defense, facing charges that could put him in prison for the rest of his life.He shakes his head and fidgets in his seat during testimony, passes notes to his lawyers and blows kisses to his mother in the courtroom gallery. Sometimes Sean Combs pulls out chairs for the women on his legal team.His federal trial has drawn worldwide attention, with minute-by-minute coverage from the press and social media influencers who broadcast live updates from the street outside U.S. District Court in Lower Manhattan.But since federal courts bar cameras, Mr. Combs’s demeanor during the most critical eight weeks of his life — Does he smile? Does he seem mad, nervous, sad? — has been largely outside public view, captured only by the sketches of courtroom artists.For weeks now, Mr. Combs, who is facing sex-trafficking and racketeering conspiracy charges that could put him in prison for the rest of his life, has been an attentive and largely easygoing presence in the courtroom. His expressions of disagreement with witnesses have been subdued, showing no inkling of the volcanic, violent temper often described in testimony.When George Kaplan, a former assistant, described the pace of working for Mr. Combs as “almost like drinking from a fire hose,” the mogul nodded in approval. When another assistant, using the pseudonym Mia, said she would be punished if she did not do “everything that he told me to do,” he just scoffed and shook his head.It is an understated posture for a man whose profile as a chart-topping producer, rapper, reality-TV star and gossip-page fixture was larger than life, giving rise to the multitude of nicknames — Puff Daddy, Diddy and Love — by which he has been known.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