Aurelia Butler

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    ‘Ennio’ Review: Morricone and His Mastery of Film Scores

    A lively, absorbing documentary about the Italian composer whose music is featured in hundreds of movies, from “A Fistful of Dollars” to “Kill Bill.”“The Good, the Bad and the Ugly,” “Days of Heaven,” “Before the Revolution,” “1900,” “The Untouchables,” “Kill Bill,” “Django Unchained,” “The Mission,” “The Thing,” “Fists in the Pocket,” “The Battle of Algiers,” “The Bird With the Crystal Plumage,” “Bugsy,” “Bulworth,” “Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!” — if you’ve watched a movie in the last half century there’s a good chance that you’ve heard music by Ennio Morricone, the titanic Italian composer and arranger who helped define films as we know and hear them.When Morricone died at the age of 91 in 2020, it seemed almost hard to believe given how expansive his reach had been and, well, how long he’d been part of my movie life. (His death was announced with a statement he titled: “I, Ennio Morricone, am dead.”) When I was a kid, we had an LP of his soundtrack for Gillo Pontecorvo’s “Burn!” (1970), a period epic about a British intelligence officer (Marlon Brando) who’s sent to a fictional Portuguese colony to stir up trouble. A audiocassette of the soundtrack is stashed somewhere in my house; every so often, I listen to it on Spotify and am again transported by Morricone’s soaring music.In “Ennio,” a lively, absorbing documentary about the composer, Morricone discusses his work on “Burn!” and so many other films. Written and directed by Giuseppe Tornatore, it is a crowded, hyperventilated portrait stuffed with archival and original material, including interviews with Morricone shot in 2015 and 2016. Like several other filmmakers, Tornatore worked repeatedly with Morricone, a partnership that began with “Cinema Paradiso” (1990), the director’s soppy heart-tugger about a friendship between a theater projectionist and the boy he schools who becomes a filmmaker. It’s perhaps no surprise that “Ennio” is another cinephilic paean.With help from Morricone, whose interviews anchor the documentary, Tornatore ably fills in the composer’s family history, though the details become sketchier as the musician’s fame steadily grows. Morricone’s father, Mario, was a trumpet player, and soon Ennio was playing it, too. He began composing music as a child and studied it formally at a conservatory in Rome, where one of his teachers was the composer Goffredo Petrassi. A force in Italian modernist music, Petrassi became a towering figure for his student, the embodiment of a serious patrimony that seemed (to some) at odds with Morricone’s commercial work.One of the movie’s nice surprises is that Morricone turns out to be a total charmer, a low-key showman with a demure gaze that he works like a vamp and an impish smile that routinely punctuates one of his anecdotes. The movie opens with him speed walking in a circle inside a spacious, elegantly shambolic apartment before pausing to execute some calisthenics. It’s an amusing introduction that suggests Morricone’s vitality and determination, as if he were preparing for another leg in the extraordinary marathon of his life. Or maybe he was warming up for this movie, which runs 2 hours and 36 minutes, though never feels like a slog, even with its frustratingly unmodulated pacing. There’s much to see and to hear, most of it delightful.Among the most engaging sections are those involving Morricone’s work with Sergio Leone. They first collaborated on Leone’s “A Fistful of Dollars,” a western set in Mexico, shot in Spain and starring a television actor on hiatus, straight from Hollywood, named Clint Eastwood. Although Morricone and Leone shared some history, they were not initially on the same wavelength when they started work on the film. Leone was reinventing the genre and drawing liberally from many of his adored influences. He lifted the story from Akira Kurosawa’s “Yojimbo” (Kurosawa later sued), and Leone told Morricone that he wanted to use some music from Howard Hawks’s “Rio Bravo” for the climatic duel in “Dollars.”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 Taste of Things’ Review: Love, Loss and Loins of Veal

    Juliette Binoche stars in an instant culinary classic that exquisitely captures the kitchen’s bittersweet blessing.At the center of everything good in the world is a bittersweet kernel: All things pass away. The grandest cathedral, the most vibrant painting, a beautiful harmony, a perfect aperitif — none of it will last forever. And all great love stories end, one way or another, in sadness.This will break your heart if you think about it very long, as much with grief as joy. Yet somehow it’s also what makes life worth living. This conundrum lies at the heart of “The Taste of Things,” a magnificent culinary romance from the French-Cambodian director Tran Anh Hung. The couple living the conundrum are Eugénie (Juliette Binoche), a brilliant cook, and the well-known gourmand she works for, Dodin Bouffant (Benoît Magimel). It is the late 19th century, and they live in an idyllic house in the French countryside, where Dodin entertains friends and visitors. The kitchen is the beating heart of the house.Nothing matters more to Eugénie and Dodin than crafting exceptional meals, from simple omelets to the kinds of feasts that linger in memory for a lifetime. Nothing except, maybe, each other. They aren’t married, despite Dodin’s pleas over the past 20 years. Eugénie smiles enigmatically and shakes her head; she doesn’t wish to change anything. But it’s inevitable, in the end, that the autumn comes.The film premiered at Cannes with the title “The Pot-au-Feu,” named after one of its central dishes, a rustic meal of boiled meat and vegetables. In French, however, the title is “La Passion de Dodin Bouffant,” which is also the title of the 1920s novel on which it is loosely based (published in English under the name “The Passionate Epicure”). That novel features one of the most indelible characters in culinary fiction, a gourmand whom the author Marcel Rouff loosely based on the French culinary writer Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, born in 1755. (Yes, the cheese is named for him.)Brillat-Savarin is perhaps best known for his book “The Physiology of Taste: Or Meditations on Transcendental Gastronomy,” which tells you a little bit about him, as well as about the protagonist of “The Taste of Things.” His book has recipes, but really it’s an often funny rhapsody of awe at the joy allowed humans in the simple act of eating. Brillat-Savarin famously quipped, “Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are,” an aphorism it’s easy to imagine Dodin trading with his friends around the dining table. In the eyes of men like these, food reveals character. For a host, a meal carefully constructed is evidence of his care for the guest as well as his self-image: Is he boasting? Pleading? Displaying his insecurities? Or inviting others to taste the divine? A guest’s willingness to dive with gusto into a meal prepared before them shows not just care for the host, but for the bounty the earth serves up.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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    Taylor Swift Heading to Disney+ and ‘Moana’ Sequel to Theaters

    The pop star’s hit “Eras Tour” concert film hits the streaming service next month, part of the company’s attempt to revitalize its entertainment lineup.Disney is deploying Taylor Swift and Moana as part of a campaign to revitalize its entertainment lineup.The company said on Wednesday that it had reached a deal with Ms. Swift to bring her blockbuster “Eras Tour” concert movie to streaming for the first time. “The Eras Tour (Taylor’s Version)” will include five additional performed songs, including the fan favorite “Cardigan,” and exclusively arrive on Disney+ on March 15.The “Eras Tour” movie has sold more than $260 million in tickets at cinemas worldwide. In a statement, Robert A. Iger, Disney’s chief executive, called it “electrifying” and “a true phenomenon.”Separately, Disney said it would release a big-screen sequel to “Moana” in theaters on Nov. 27. The first “Moana” was released in 2016 and took in $687 million against a production budget of roughly $150 million. But streaming is where the characters have really taken off. “Moana” was the No. 1 streaming movie of last year on any service, according to Nielsen, with 11.6 billion viewing minutes. Nielsen said streaming customers have watched almost 80 billion minutes of “Moana” over the last four years.Auli’i Cravalho (the Polynesian princess Moana) and Dwayne Johnson (the tattooed demigod Maui) are expected to reprise their vocal roles in “Moana 2.” The sequel is a musical directed by Dave Derrick Jr., whose credits include “Raya and the Last Dragon” and “Encanto.” The story line for “Moana 2” involves an unexpected call from Moana’s ancestors, which prompts her to travel “to the far seas of Oceania and into dangerous, long-lost waters.”Disney struggled at the box office last year. Its animated “Wish,” the superhero sequel “The Marvels” and the ultraexpensive “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” were all box office failures, prompting concerns about the vitality of various Disney studios. Pixar’s “Elemental” had a disastrous opening, but was ultimately able to generate a decent $496 million worldwide.The generally poor performance — in stark contrast with prior years, when Disney released one billion-dollar-grossing movie after another — has contributed to attacks on the company by activist investors. Trian Fund Management, for instance, is waging a proxy battle for multiple board seats. Disney is trying to fight off such attempts.“Moana 2,” initially conceived as an animated Disney+ series, joins a theatrical lineup for the year that Walt Disney Studios believes will mark a dramatic turnaround. Other planned releases include “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes,” “Deadpool 3,” “Inside Out 2” and “Mufasa,” a spinoff from “The Lion King.” More

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    Review: Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys Show ‘Giants’ in Brooklyn

    Right in the middle of the exhibition “Giants: Art from the Dean Collection of Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys,” which opens Saturday at the Brooklyn Museum, is Kehinde Wiley’s 25-foot-long 2008 painting “Femme Piquée par un Serpent.” Showing a Black man in snappy but casual dress reclined in a distinctively twisted position, with a background of Wiley’s signature flowers, it borrows both title and pose from an 1847 marble sculpture by Auguste Clésinger. What you think of it really depends on what you’re asking for.If you view the painting as a Venti-size iteration of Wiley’s ongoing project, his decades-long attack on the paucity of Black faces in Western museums and art history, it’s one-note but hard to argue with. Brightly colored and thoughtfully composed, it’s visually appealing, and even today, when it’s no longer so uncommon to see Black figures on museum walls, catching sight of one this big still elicits a thrill.On the other hand, considered strictly as a painting, “Femme Piquée par un Serpent” (“Woman Bitten by a Serpent”) doesn’t offer that much. There are no details that you’d miss in a jpeg reproduction, no visible evidence of human hands at play, no sensual pleasure to be found in the surface, nothing surprising, mysterious or engrossing. It’s simply the adept illustration of an idea.Of course, you could also ask for both — for a clear conceptual work about painting (and the historical exclusion of Black subjects and artists) that is also a good painting. If you do, you’re likely to respond to “Femme Piquée par un Serpent” with ambivalence and frustration.Swizz Beatz, in turquoise at left, and Alicia Keys, at right, greet guests at the opening of “Giants,” in front of Kehinde Wiley’s 25-foot-long “Femme Piquée par un Serpent,” from 2008.Rebecca Smeyne for The New York TimesI was thinking about this — about artistic endeavors that succeed and fail at the same time — as I walked through “Giants,” the latest celebrity tie-in exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum. (“Spike Lee: Creative Sources” closes on Sunday; a show of photographs by Paul McCartney opens in May.) “Giants” draws on the extensive art collection of the married musical superstars Keys and Beatz (Kasseem Dean), bringing together 98 works — many oversized and of recent vintage — by 37 artists. Most of them are American, but they also come from several countries in Europe and half a dozen in Africa, and they range in generation from Ernie Barnes, who died at 70 in 2009, to Qualeasha Wood, born in 1996.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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    Should Taylor Swift’s ‘Tortured Poets Department’ Have an Apostrophe?

    Grammarians wonder: Should there be an apostrophe in “The Tortured Poets Department”?When Taylor Swift announced at the Grammys that the title of her new album would be “The Tortured Poets Department,” what was your reaction?Maybe it was: “My gosh! Her first new album in more than a year. I can’t wait!”Maybe it was: “Ho-hum. I’d rather listen to Shostakovich/Metallica/Baby Shark.”Or, just possibly, it could have been:“Shouldn’t there be an apostrophe in that title?”Yes, plenty of people, upon hearing the biggest music announcement of the year, started thinking about diacritical marks and then talking about them on social media.“I ruined this album release for my students by making it a lesson on apostrophe usage,” wrote Erin Weinberg, an instructor in the department of English, theater, film and media at the University of Manitoba, on X. (Others opined via Reddit, TikTok and elsewhere.)If you do insist on adding an apostrophe, there are two potential places. It could be before the “S”: The Tortured Poet’s Department. That means the department belongs to just one poet.“Is it a department just for a single tortured poet, where they can sit alone and write tortured poetry?” Weinberg asked.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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    Aston Barrett, 77, Bass-Playing Force With Bob Marley and Wailers, Dies

    Known by his nickname, Family Man, he was the group’s musical director, crafting the hypnotic rhythms and melodies that elevated reggae to global acclaim.Aston Barrett, who as the bass player and musical director for the Wailers — both with Bob Marley and for decades after the singer’s death in 1981 — crafted the hypnotic rhythms and complex melodies that helped elevate reggae to international acclaim, died on Saturday in Miami. He was 77.The cause of death, at a hospital, was heart failure after a series of strokes, according to his son Aston Barrett Jr., a drummer who took over the Wailers from his father in 2016.Mr. Barrett was already well known around Jamaica as a session musician when, in 1969, Mr. Marley asked him and his brother, Carlton, a drummer, to join the Wailers as the band’s rhythm section.More than anyone else, the collaboration between Mr. Marley and his bassist turned both the Wailers and reggae itself into a global phenomenon during the 1970s.Mr. Barrett with Mr. Marley in 1977. He kept the Wailers going after Mr. Marley died in 1981, playing an evolving sound rooted in his musical innovations.Kate SimonMr. Marley wrote and sang the songs and was the band’s soulfully charismatic frontman. Mr. Barrett arranged and often produced the music. He also kept the band organized during its constant touring, earning him the nickname Family Man — or, to his close friends, Fams.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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    A Radio Station’s Call Letters Announce Its Purpose: KGAY

    KGAY in Palm Springs is geared toward Gen X and older gay men who enjoy Rihanna but still worship Donna Summer.Fog clouded the San Jacinto Mountains recently as Brad Fuhr approached the headquarters of KGAY, a radio station in an undistinguished Palm Springs, California, strip mall. Fuhr, the station’s chief executive, was tuned to KGAY in his all-electric Volvo, and the morning’s soundtrack included “Bad of the Heart,” George Lamond’s 1990 freestyle cri de coeur about getting dumped, and “Lucky Star,” Madonna’s 1983 dance hit of bouncy adoration.KGAY’s call letters aren’t a fluke but a savvy marketing tool. While there are streaming stations devoted to gay audiences (like iHeart’s Pride Radio and Gaydio out of Britain) and gay-themed talk shows and dance formats have thrived on commercial and nonprofit radio for decades, KGAY is still one of a kind. It’s the only terrestrial radio station in America geared toward L.G.B.T.Q. listeners and their allies, where gay personalities broadcast in person, “WKRP in Cincinnati”-style, at least part time. (There’s WGAY, a “party station” in the Florida Keys, but it doesn’t market itself as gay.)KGAY covers the Coachella Valley with its FM signal at 106.5 and is simulcast with KGAY AM 1270; it can be streamed globally at KGAYPalmSprings.com. Its two full-time D.J.s are Chris Shebel, the old-school, no-nonsense program director and weekday afternoon personality, and the wisecracking John Taylor, who covers mornings. Three other D.J.s — Eric Ornelas, Galaxy and ModGirl — provide the station with homemade mix shows that play around the clock.Born on Dec. 25, 2018, KGAY replaced KVGH, an oldies station, with a playlist that rotates over 900 pop songs, disco anthems and dance remixes from the ’70s through the latest releases.“It’s an entertaining, mass-appeal radio station first,” said Fuhr, 65.Shebel at work as a D.J. at KGAY.Michelle Groskopf for The New York TimesKGAY serves primarily the clubby slice of the queer music pie. There’s no Barbra or Bikini Kill, no American songbook showstoppers or lesbian breakup ballads. There’s no rap or country, although it does play Lil Nas X and dance versions of songs by Dolly Parton, Tammy Wynette and other country divas.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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    Lincoln Center’s Leader, Henry Timms, to Depart After Five Years

    After guiding the arts organization through the pandemic and completing the renovation of David Geffen Hall, he is leaving to lead the Brunswick Group.Henry Timms, who guided Lincoln Center through the turmoil of the pandemic and helped complete the $550 million renovation of David Geffen Hall, will step down as its leader this summer after five years, he announced on Wednesday.Timms will become chief executive of the Brunswick Group, a global public relations firm. He said he had always intended to stay at Lincoln Center for five to seven years, and that the Brunswick Group, which advises top companies and cultural groups, had approached him about a position there at the end of last year.“I feel proud of what we’ve done,” he said in an interview in his office above the Lincoln Center campus. “But I also always believe that change is a good thing.”Steven R. Swartz, the chairman of Lincoln Center’s board, said in an interview that Timms had been a “transformational leader” who had helped drive innovation and played a critical role in accelerating the renovation of Geffen Hall, home to the New York Philharmonic, during the pandemic.“In our perfect world, we’d have him continue to do the job,” Swartz said. “But we certainly understand that he sees this opportunity as his next step and obviously wish him all the best.”Timms, 47, arrived at Lincoln Center in 2019 with a mandate to restore stability to the organization, which was grappling with financial woes and years of leadership churn. He was also tasked with resetting Lincoln Center’s fraught relationship with its constituent organizations, including the Metropolitan Opera, New York City Ballet and the Philharmonic. The center acts as landlord to those groups but has little power over them, since each has its own leadership, board and budget. The center also presents its own work, sometimes putting it in competition with its constituents.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