Aurelia Butler

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    Sandra Milo, Who Had Star Turns in Fellini Films, Dies at 90

    She was called Fellini’s muse. She claimed she was his lover. In a long career, she was best known for her performances in his movies “8 ½” and “Juliet of the Spirits.”Sandra Milo, who was best known internationally for her roles in Federico Fellini’s movies “8 ½” and “Juliet of the Spirits” — and whose tumultuous love life churned headlines in Italy — died on Monday at her home in Rome. She was 90.Her children announced the death on her official Facebook page. No cause was given.Ms. Milo’s screen debut, alongside the comic actor Alberto Sordi in “Lo Scapolo” (“The Bachelor”) in 1955, coincided with the golden age of Italian cinema. She went on to work alongside some of Italy’s most famous leading men, including Marcello Mastroianni, Vittorio Gassman and Vittorio De Sica, and for some of the country’s most renowned directors, including Roberto Rossellini, Dino Risi and later Pupi Avati and Gabriele Salvatores.But her primary claim to stardom was the two films she made with Fellini, with whom, she claimed in a 1982 book, “Caro Federico,” she had an offscreen romance that lasted nearly two decades. Fellini, who died in 1993, never spoke publicly about that claim. The Italian media called her Fellini’s muse.Ms. Milo and Fellini on the set of “Juliet of the Spirits” in 1965. She played the free-spirited next-door neighbor of the film’s protagonist, played by Fellini’s wife, Giulietta Masina.Pierluigi Praturlon/Reporters Associati & Archivi, via Mondadori Portfolio, via Getty ImagesFellini, who fondly called Ms. Milo “Sandrocchia,” had also wanted her to play the role of the glamorous Gradisca in his semi-autobiographical 1973 film, “Amarcord,” but, she told interviewers, her husband at the time had objected because he knew she was fond of Fellini.“He knew I loved him,” she said in a 2019 documentary about her life.She also said she knew that the production would take her away from her children. “Am I first a woman, or first a mother?” she mused in the documentary. “Maybe I am first a mother, so I didn’t do it.”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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    Meet the 2024 Grammys’ Best New Artist Nominees

    Listen to songs by Ice Spice, Jelly Roll, Victoria Monét and five more competitors for one of the show’s big four awards.Ice Spice.Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesDear listeners,Some people swear there’s a curse that comes with winning the Grammy for best new artist, but it’s difficult to believe that when you remember who has actually taken home the trophy.In the past five years, the award has gone to quite a few bona fide superstars-in-the-making, including Billie Eilish, Dua Lipa and Olivia Rodrigo — all of whom are currently nominated for song of the year. Toggle the winners list back another decade and you’ll see some established industry power players like John Legend (best new artist 2006), Carrie Underwood (2007) and Adele (2009). The Grammys even got it right as far back as 1965, when the award went to a group of worthy Liverpudlian newcomers called the Beatles.Today’s playlist is an introduction to the eight artists who stand a chance to join their ranks at this Sunday’s Grammys. They include some names you might already be familiar with, like the overnight rap sensation Ice Spice and the gravel-throated country crooner Jelly Roll, and a few you might not be, like the married Americana duo the War and Treaty and the R&B stylist Coco Jones.The current betting favorite is Victoria Monét, a trusted pop songwriter who has garnered previous Grammy nominations for her work on hits recorded by Ariana Grande and Chloe x Halle. Monét has a total of seven nominations as a solo artist this year, including two for her breakout album “Jaguar II” and one for a collaboration with Earth, Wind and Fire. Personally, I’d be happy to see the 34-year-old mom take home best new artist; I love when someone who’s been toiling in semi-obscurity for years finally gets her moment in the spotlight.But, as you’ll see below, Monét isn’t the category’s elder — one of these artists turns 40 this year, and stands a chance to become the oldest solo act ever to be crowned best new artist.As the Justin Bieber fans who unleashed unnecessary wrath on Esperanza Spalding will tell you, though, the category always holds the potential for an upset. For that reason, I wouldn’t be shocked to see the rootsy 27-year-old singer-songwriter Noah Kahan accept the award, even if his yelpy emotionalism isn’t exactly my thing. Still, best new artist is a rare Grammy category that skews female, which means that if Kahan wins he’d be the first male artist to do so since Chance the Rapper in 2017.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’s Fans React to Right Wing Attacks on Star

    Some commentators have taken an aggressive interest in Taylor Swift’s motivations for being around the N.F.L. Her fans remain unswayed.Taylor Swift often encourages her fans to devise fanciful theories about her music, but this week a very different type of wild speculation sprung up around her: political conspiracy theories being peddled by Fox News, Trump surrogates and the extended MAGA universe.The theories range widely, but include outlandish claims that Ms. Swift is secretly working for the United States government and that her relationship with Travis Kelce, a tight end for the Kansas City Chiefs, is part of a lengthy political scheme. In this theory, her dalliance with Mr. Kelce and the N.F.L. ends with the Chiefs winning the Super Bowl and Ms. Swift announcing her support for President Biden in the forthcoming election.The attacks may be intended to embolden a right wing base, and perhaps change a few minds in other parts of the political universe, but Swifties, predictably, remain indifferent. Several said the attacks have only motivated them to be more politically engaged.“When I see an uptick in hate toward her or, like, conservative men saying she needs to stay in her place, it makes me go ‘wait a minute, you can’t box a woman in,’” said Raven Mosley, a mental health professional and Swift fan from Vancouver, Wash.“It makes me want to be like, ‘Hey, let’s pay attention to what’s going on out here!’” Ms. Mosley, 31, added. “They’re getting mad. They’re getting angry. There’s a reason for that.”Theories about Ms. Swift are prevalent online, but suggestions about what her political motivations are, in terms of her relationship with the N.F.L., were promoted last month by the Fox News political commentator Jesse Watters.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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    Two Concerts Reveal a Dramatic Shift Between Mahler Symphonies

    Over consecutive evenings, the New York Philharmonic and the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra performed Mahler’s works on programs with star sopranos.Gustav Mahler had a near-death experience between the composition of his Fourth and Fifth symphonies. They were separated by a gulf that listeners could plunge into this week in consecutive concerts by the New York Philharmonic and the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra.The Fourth was the third in a trilogy of symphonies that featured vocal settings of poetry from “Des Knaben Wunderhorn,” a folk collection that inspired Mahler, and it ends with a vision of heaven articulated by a soprano with childlike purity. The Fifth — which followed a hemorrhage that left Mahler bleeding out and on the verge of death — is a huge, bifurcated work, magnificently twisted in the Funeral March that opens it and cosmically buoyant in the finale.At David Geffen Hall on Wednesday, Gianandrea Noseda led the Philharmonic in a performance of the Fourth that sidestepped its intriguing, hectoring mystery and embraced the more conventional aspects of its Romanticism. The cellos were broad and sinuous, and the violins sighed and shone in big, roomy gestures. The abrasive sound of a scordatura violin colors the second movement, but the concertmaster, Frank Huang, slyly played it straight, letting the instrument’s fiendish, squirrelly sound speak for itself.The work’s emotional catharsis comes in the second half, and here Noseda jarred his audience awake with the Mahlerian climaxes that have a way of shaking listeners out of a daze — a shock, but an affirming one. Golda Schultz’s sparkly soprano was beautifully suited to the vocal solo in the final movement. Her absolute optimism was seemingly untouched by earthly matters. Noseda didn’t exactly reconcile the solo and the jangly orchestral interludes that separate its verses, but the Fourth can be impenetrable in that way.Golda Schultz, left, as the soprano soloist with the New York Philharmonic and the conductor Gianandrea Noseda.Chris LeeDespite its elaborate structure of five movements in three sections and its prodigious length of 70 minutes, the Fifth is in some ways the more accessible piece, with its subjects of mortality and the good pain that comes with making oneself vulnerable to love. With the Fifth, Mahler moved away from programmatic or narrative conceptions of his work, but it’s incredibly tempting to map his autobiography to the piece: a macabre dream of his own death in the funeral march, and a love letter to his future wife, Alma, in the aching loveliness of the slow movement, the famous Adagietto.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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    André 3000 Brings His Solo Album ‘New Blue Sun’ to the Stage

    Performing live for the first time with musicians from his solo LP, the onetime Outkast rapper played various flutes, said little and tried to change perceptions.Toward the end of his late set Wednesday night at the Blue Note in Manhattan, André 3000 said he and members of his band had gone to an instrument shop earlier in the day and picked up some new toys. He showed off his haul: something he’d thought was a flute, but turned out to be part of a bagpipe.Nevertheless, he persisted. He blew through it, and what came out was sonorous and weird. A kind of sexy skronk. He looked at the long, thin tube with a nod of admiration. “This got something serious in it,” he remarked, before chuckling just a bit, and blowing even harder.This is how André 3000 — one of the most gifted rappers of all time, and one of the true pop pathbreakers of the 2000s — communicates now. In November, he released “New Blue Sun,” an improvised album of experimental music on which he plays a variety of flutes. It reached No. 34 on the Billboard album chart, demonstrating what happens when decades of pent-up curiosity about a reluctant star meets art that demands curiosity, close attention and perhaps the benefit of the doubt. For fans, it reinforced the idea of André as a mystic beyond the pull of ego.“I think I’m blessed with being oblivious,” he said Monday night at Crown Hill Theater in Brooklyn, performing his first show under his name alone. “It kind of keeps you pure.”“New Blue Sun” is sometimes entrancing, sometimes frustrating. It is perhaps less a purely musical project than a philosophical or emotional proposition expressed through music. In many sections, you hardly hear André or his flute at all. Its arrival was greeted with awe and relief, and also conversations about the virtues of amateurism, and the right of a celebrity to recalibrate the terms of his fame.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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    Billy Joel’s Long-Awaited Return to Pop, and 8 More New Songs

    Hear tracks by Camera Obscura, Yaya Bey, Paramore 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 sign up for The Amplifier, a twice-weekly guide to new and old songs.Billy Joel, ‘Turn the Lights Back On’In his first new rock song in nearly two decades, Billy Joel sings about striving to rekindle a romance that has faded to indifference or worse. He blames himself; he longs for forgiveness; he wonders if there’s a second chance; he vows not to give up on “trying to find the magic that we lost somehow.” It’s a stately piano ballad, an heir to “Piano Man,” with Joel’s forthright, unmistakable voice and an orchestral buildup to match the narrator’s rising heartache. JON PARELESCamera Obscura, ‘Big Love’“It was a big love, she said,” Tracyanne Campbell sings on Camera Obscura’s new single. “That’s why it took 10 years to get her out of your head.” It’s been 11 years, actually, since the beloved Scottish indie-pop band released its last album, “Desire Lines,” but Camera Obscura is back in fine form here, combining foot-stomping percussion, electric guitar embroidery, and the clarion tone of Campbell’s voice into a lightly country-tinged sound. A new album, “Look to the East, Look to the West,” will follow on May 3. LINDSAY ZOLADZParamore, ‘Burning Down the House’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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    Grammys 2024: How to Watch, Time and Streaming

    A guide to everything you need to know for the 66th annual awards on Sunday night.The 66th annual Grammy Awards, taking place on Sunday at the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles, is poised to be a big night for young women.SZA is the top nominee, with nine nods for her album “SOS,” which topped the Billboard 200 for 10 straight weeks. Taylor Swift, who rocked the entertainment world with her record-breaking Eras Tour, and Olivia Rodrigo, the 20-year-old singer-songwriter with a proclivity for rock, are both competing with SZA for the three major all-genre categories: best album, record and song. Joining them are a host of other female artists, including boygenius, Miley Cyrus, Billie Eilish and Victoria Monét. The sole male performer contending for the top three competitions? Jon Batiste.But the biggest winner of the night could be the musicians behind “Barbie,” Greta Gerwig’s meditation on what it means to be a woman today. The film’s soundtrack garnered 11 nominations across seven categories, with a mix of artists that includes Eilish, Dua Lipa, Nicki Minaj and Sam Smith.This emphasis on female representation is notable because the Recording Academy, the organization behind the Grammys, has been criticized in the past for failing to adequately recognize women. In recent years, the Grammys have worked to bring in a younger, more diverse membership, with the goal of making the voting process more transparent and fair.The awards show on Sunday will honor recordings released from Oct. 1, 2022 through Sept. 15, 2023. Here’s how to watch and what to expect.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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    3 Celebrity Documentaries Worth Your Time

    The typical star biography avoids warts. But there are films that combine critical takes with a better understanding of their subjects’ cultural import.Pop open the “documentaries” section of your friendly local streaming service, and a bevy of movies about celebrities will greet you. Rockers, politicians, artists, authors, athletes — increasingly everyone you’ve heard of has a documentary, and probably served as a producer on it, too. The appeal of such films is obvious: If you like someone already, you get to hear them talk about themselves. If you know you should like someone, then you’ve got a quick introduction to set you on your way to fandom.That’s the appeal of two documentaries released this week, “The Greatest Night in Pop” (Netflix) and “Dario Argento Panico” (Shudder). The first is a lighthearted look at the recording of “We Are the World,” full of archival footage from the actual recording in 1985 and reminiscences by figures like Bruce Springsteen and Lionel Richie. The movie sidesteps any real contemplation of the song itself or its cultural import, but if you want to hear famous people talk about a real weird night, then you won’t be disappointed. (Here’s our critic’s review.) Similarly, “Dario Argento Panico” functions best as a primer on the Italian horror master (director, most famously, of “Suspiria”), supplemented by commentary from figures like the director Guillermo del Toro; it’s not breaking any ground, but you’ll learn a thing or two. (Here’s our review.)Watching these films got me thinking about celebrity-focused documentaries that go above and beyond the usual fare. The best of these movies tend to do more than tell us about the subject — they tell us what the subject means, in a cultural sense. Celebrities, after all, are not just people. They’re products, packaged for us to consume in some manner, and their stories say something about the world writ large.There are plenty of examples in the history of nonfiction film, but as celebrities, and their teams of publicists and managers, have increased control over their images, it’s rarer and rarer to find a documentary that feels as if it’s more revealing than concealing. One enjoyable recent example is “Judy Blume Forever” (Prime Video), which locates the YA author’s importance in, among other things, her fearless attitude toward censorship and book banning.One of the best recent films in this genre is “Listening to Kenny G” (Max), which weaves together interviews with the smooth jazz saxophonist and discussions with fans, haters and critics to consider what his popularity really means — and, more broadly, why we like art in the first place.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