Aurelia Butler

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    Olivia Rodrigo’s Haunting ‘Hunger Games’ Tune, and More New Songs

    Hear tracks by Megan Thee Stallion, Torres, Mount Kimbie and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new tracks. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at theplaylist@nytimes.com and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once-a-week blast of our pop music coverage, and The Amplifier, a twice-weekly guide to new and old songs.Olivia Rodrigo, ‘Can’t Catch Me Now’A latticework of acoustic guitar and a building intensity drive “Can’t Catch Me Now,” Olivia Rodrigo’s brooding new song from soundtrack for (deep breath) “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes.” “You think that you got away,” Rodrigo sings through gritted teeth, adding an eerily pastoral feel to another of her signature tales of heartbreak and revenge. “But I’m in the trees, I’m in the breeze.” LINDSAY ZOLADZMegan Thee Stallion, ‘Cobra’Megan Thee Stallion’s raps have constructed a persona that’s carnal, competitive and invincible even on bad days. But on “Cobra” — her first self-released single after leaving her old label — she hits “rock bottom,” admitting, “Yes, I’m very depressed/How can someone so blessed wanna slit they wrist?” The video shows Megan shedding her skin, but the song itself doesn’t declare victory; instead, a rock-guitar outro summons the bitterness of grunge. JON PARELESTorres, ‘I Got the Fear’Torres — the stage name of the singer-songwriter Mackenzie Scott — sullies organic folk sounds with a mechanized, industrial crunch on “I Got the Fear,” the second single from her sixth album, “What an Enormous Room,” due in January. Images of panic attacks and climate catastrophe haunt the song, but love provides a sliver of hope: “The dread doesn’t pay any rent money,” Torres sings, “But as long as it doesn’t get ahold of my honey, think I’ll be all right.” ZOLADZMount Kimbie, ‘Dumb Guitar’The English group Mount Kimbie keeps figuring out different ways to fuse meditation, confession and snarl. Its latest single, “Dumb Guitar,” promising a new album, taps through three chords with ever-evolving loops and waves of synthesizers, keyboards and guitars. As it churns ahead, Dominic Maker and Kai Campos sing lines like “Find a suit to wear out/Take the selfish side out,” “Another day I’ll kill myself” and “Lose it all in silence/Dig a hole in my mind.” The estrangement keeps growing, even as the music ebbs into a calm coda. PARELESWillow, ‘Alone’A shuffle rhythm, usually the sound of jaunty confidence, gets pushed and pulled into nervous, angular permutations in Willow’s “Alone,” a seething and then explosive two-minute distillation of a relationship full of need, betrayal and confusion. “I’m so tired of being a liar, it’s true,” Willow sings, well before the final rupture. PARELESEl Búho & Nita, ‘Cenizas de Agua’Robin Perkins, who records as El Búho (the Owl), is an English electronic producer who has devoted himself to Latin American rhythms, natural sounds and environmental activism. He collaborated with the flamenco-influenced Spanish singer and songwriter Nita (Cristina Manjón), from the group Fuel Fandango, on “Cenizas de Agua” (“Ashes of Water”). The track smolders with suppressed agitation about the fate of the planet. Over a subdued cumbia beat, surrounded by glimmering, time-reversed sounds, Nita’s lyrics contrast cherished memories with dire expectations: “I open my chest,” she sings. “I break the silence.” PARELESMajid Jordan, ‘Slip’Majid Jordan — the Canadian duo of the singer Majid Al-Maskati and the producer Jordan Ullman — makes hypnotically self-effacing R&B: pondering, contemplating, doubting, never raising its voice. In “Slip,” from the new album “Good People,” the beat is muffled and the keyboards are like distant radar blips as Al-Maskati struggles to stave off a temptation, though it’s clear he longs to succumb. PARELESJames Elkington, ‘A Round, a Bout’James Elkington, an English guitarist based in Chicago who has worked with Jeff Tweedy and Eleventh Dream Day, made his new instrumental album, “Me Neither (LP 1)” — the first of two parts — on his own, mostly with folky acoustic guitars but not ruling out electronics. In “A Round, a Bout,” melodies slowly materialize above, and then below, a serene picking pattern, sounding reticent but somehow inevitable. PARELESPeter Evans, ‘The Cell’On “The Cell,” Nick Jozwiak’s bass and Michael Shekwoaga Ode’s drums buckle in together, creating a pulpy beat for the trumpeter Peter Evans to dive beneath and around. Joel Ross finds the open space that’s left and lets his vibraphone ring there, one or two notes at a time. Ross and Evans are both dexterous players who can blow your hair back: The vibraphonist is known for his prolix soloing, and Evans for his extended technique. On “Ars Memoria,” the second album from the quartet that Evans calls Being & Becoming, both simmer down and submit themselves to the group imperative. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOAnthony Pirog featuring Wendy Eisenberg, ‘Night Winds’If you know Anthony Pirog, it’s probably as a fearless guitar slasher with a rack of effects pedals that let him encase himself in a turbulent cocoon. But on his newest album, “The Nepenthe Series, Vol. 1,” Pirog invites others to control the environment. During the pandemic, he asked peers and mentors to record one track each that they considered “ambient,” then he would play his way into the sound. The list of collaborators is impressive: Andy Summers, Nels Cline, John Frusciante. He made “Night Winds” with Wendy Eisenberg, another youngish guitar innovator; it is the album’s most cluttered and inclement-sounding track, and the most absorbing. Eisenberg’s growling, pseudo-industrial backdrop adds a high contrast to Pirog’s twinkly long tones, which pile up gradually until it all washes out into silence. RUSSONELLO More

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    Review: Ligeti’s Fascinating Polyrhythm at the New York Phil

    The conductor Susanna Mälkki led a program centered on Ligeti’s Piano Concerto, propelled by the soloist Pierre-Laurent Aimard.On Thursday, the conductor Susanna Mälkki led the New York Philharmonic at David Geffen Hall in an unusually cohesive program built around the bizarro sound world of Ligeti’s Piano Concerto. It was part of the orchestra’s centennial celebrations of the composer.Written in the 1980s, the piece draws its lifeblood from Ligeti’s remarkable rhythmic sense. The piano soloist works out asymmetrical accents from interlocking metrical units while also maintaining composure in scales and running 16th notes. On the surface, there’s a high degree of independence among the wailing strings, fluorescent woodwinds and intricate percussion, but as Pierre-Laurent Aimard, the Philharmonic’s soloist, recently told The New York Times: “It’s a work that renews polyphony through fascinating polyrhythm.” The chaos has a way of coming together if a listener stops resisting it.The concerto seems frozen between states, its harmonic center melting away without ever evaporating, but in Mälkki’s expert hands, it could sound almost traditional in structure. In the first movement, she lined up emphatic pizzicati with the accents that Aimard plucked out of the solo part. In the second, a siren crescendoed into a blaring signal whistle to herald the piano’s violent re-entry — a satisfying climax built from unusual means. The music seemed to levitate with the centrifugal force of rampaging bongos. The strange postludes that close out the second movement (scored for Chromonica) and the fifth (a duet for xylophone and piano) were gripping afterthoughts.The crisp acoustic of the recently renovated hall enhanced Ligeti’s rhythmic vivacity. The orchestra sounded warm and precise, with a tone that was full but not fatty. In the Lento e deserto, the work’s only slow movement, the lonely yowlings of piccolo, bassoon and slide whistle formed a tender yet humorous trio.Mälkki folded the piano into the texture like a firing engine, enabling Aimard, a longtime friend and champion of the composer, to propel the piece. Aimard, something of an elegant mathematician, handled polyrhythms with a through line and sense of ease. Pianistic effects, like scales, crunchy chord clusters and running 16th notes with multiple voicings, had unfussy finesse. The “leggiero, non legato” (“light, but not connected”) passage in the Presto luminoso had a discrete, glockenspiel-like tone that didn’t turn percussive. Aimard and Mälkki were unable to reach the finish line in the Presto in three minutes or less, as Ligeti requests in the score, but it was nonetheless a bravura performance.The Ligeti crowned the first half of the program, which was themed around Hungarian composers. The Budapest-born musician Jeno Lisztes opened the concert with a dazzling solo arrangement of Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 for cimbalom, a traditional Hungarian instrument in the dulcimer family that utilizes a pedal mechanism and mallets that resemble cotton-padded bar spoons. His performance had melancholy grace and a rollicking climax that left me wondering where this symphony of notes was coming from. In Bartók’s brief Romanian Folk Dances, the orchestra sounded sturdy and grounded.After intermission, Mälkki and the orchestra leaned heavily into the grotesquerie that characterizes half of the images that Mussorgsky depicts in “Pictures at an Exhibition.” “Gnomus” had a dangerous agility, both aggressive and surprising, and “Bydlo” was moody and theatrical. The brasses, summoning deep, forbidding power, made a meal of “Catacombae.” The penultimate movement, “The Hut on Hen’s Legs” — and not Mälkki’s muscular take on the magnificent “The Great Gate of Kiev” — provided the piece’s true finale. The hut, which houses a witch of Russian folklore, lurched in gleeful, monstrous ways as its inhabitant sniffed out young children to devour.Mälkki and the players dug into the fantastical elements of “Pictures” as if possessed, almost as though they couldn’t shake off the Ligeti — and after such a tremendous performance, neither could I.New York Philharmonic, conducted by Susanna MälkkiThrough Saturday at David Geffen Hall; nyphil.org More

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    In ‘Subject,’ Documentary Stars Look Back

    A talk with the directors Jennifer Tiexiera and Camilla Hall about their film that checks in on the subjects of high-profile documentaries.Being a documentary subject can be a thankless kind of stardom, without much control over how your life story is told. In “Subject,” Jennifer Tiexiera and Camilla Hall went back to five famous documentaries and asked their stars about their experiences: “Hoop Dreams,” “The Staircase,” “Capturing the Friedmans,” “The Square” and “The Wolfpack.”Rather than a “where are they now” update, Tiexiera and Hall investigate the unexpected personal ramifications and ethical quandaries that arise. Arthur Agee of “Hoop Dreams,” for example, speaks of earning around $500,000 through profit-sharing.I spoke with the filmmakers about what they learned, and their dauntingly extensive efforts at making “Subject” a full collaboration with their subjects. Below are edited excerpts from the conversation.Whose documentary experience surprised you most?JENNIFER TIEXIERA: I would say Margie’s [as the daughter of a man tried for murder, Michael Peterson]. When you watch “The Staircase,” you’re caught up in the story and you’re not thinking about this young girl whose face is now everywhere. She’s truly been defined by that series for the last 20-some years now. Her story has been told and sold over and over and over again.CAMILLA HALL: I think Margie got a comment saying the acting was better on the HBO show [the true-crime mini-series starring Colin Firth and Toni Collette] than the Netflix show [the documentary series]. I think Ahmed’s journey in “The Square” is also so dramatic. Where Ahmed [Hassan] comes from in Cairo is a very underprivileged neighborhood. And he became the face of the Egyptian revolution!Jennifer TiexieraNoam GalaiCamilla HallRita BaghdadiWere there positive effects to participating in a documentary?HALL: Susanne [Reisenbichler, the mother of the nearly housebound family in “The Wolfpack”] talks of how letting somebody in from the outside was the first time she fully understood her level of despair. I think she had just been living in this bubble for so long. That intervention had an enormously positive impact on her life and has led to her total independence. Now she’s a domestic abuse support adviser.Arthur was able to use the “Hoop Dreams” brand and has his own line of merchandise. Ahmed is an Emmy-winning cinematographer as a result of “The Square,” and we were able to get him a visa to move to America because of that award.How did you get people to open up?HALL: I think we created a platform where their voice was the most important at the end of the day. They had final say over how they would be presented in “Subject.” They were able to watch the rough cut of the film and give feedback. And there wasn’t much coaxing. They knew exactly what they were doing — it was almost like Margie directed her own scenes.TIEXIERA: And they’re co-producers, by D.P.A. [Documentary Producers Alliance] standards. When it came to what was very important to them, we adjusted their agreements to reflect that. Jesse [the son in “Capturing the Friedmans” who served 13 years in prison on child sexual abuse charges] wanted to be aware of the distribution: where this is going to go and who’s going to see it.We did reach out to a few people for “Subject” who weren’t ready to go back into that place but still loved the idea. For example, Carole and Howard from “Tiger King” became supporters of “Subject.” And Mark Borchardt [of “American Movie”] was a great sounding board.Did you cut anything from “Subject” based on feedback from participants?TIEXIERA: The biggest hurdle was when Susanne and [one of her sons] Mukunda agreed to be part of “Subject,” and Mukunda’s brothers did not want to be. They had had a different relationship and experience and didn’t want to be on camera. I want to say it was a couple of weeks before our premiere, it came back that they did not want to be part of the archival [material]. So we had to re-cut the entire “Wolfpack” section and keep them out, except for one of the brothers who was OK with it. Legally, sure, we could have kept that. But it’s just not what we were doing.We also feature 112 films and series [in montages], and people have been able to see it and say, I don’t like where my film is placed. We’ve been able to go back and take it out or move it to a different location.Would you ever participate in a documentary about your life?HALL: So, we are considering that in the series that we’re developing at the moment.TIEXIERA: If you would ask me this last year, I would say absolutely not. But as we develop the series with Time Studios, it’s come up a few times. In the spirit of “Subject,” the series would be a collaboration between the participants [in documentaries], and we would have the time to bring the directors’ voices into it, and then we also reflect on the process while we’re making it. It’s very meta! More

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    Noah Kahan’s Rootsy Rock Revival

    Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon MusicNoah Kahan’s song “Stick Season” currently sits at No. 43 on the Billboard Hot 100. On its own, that’s a moderately impressive feat. But it’s more remarkable because “Stick Season” is the title track of an album released just over a year ago. Via diligent touring and an instinctual grip on how to leverage TikTok, Kahan has squeezed a fan favorite so hard it became a hit.That success arrives a few years into Kahan’s career, which began with more straight-ahead pop and shifted into rootsier territory during the pandemic. He inflects his songs with bits of Vermont attitude and lore, and has collaborated with Zach Bryan and Kacey Musgraves.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about how Kahan’s niche stardom has given way to pop acclaim, how Vermont figures into his songwriting and sound, and how he revisits the rustic mainstream rock of the early 2010s.Guests:Rebecca Jennings, a senior correspondent at VoxJason Lipshutz, executive director, music at BillboardConnect 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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    What the Suburbs Did for Billy Joel and Bruce Springsteen

    A new book by the author Jim Cullen explores the uncanny parallels between the careers of these two musicians, and how they were products of their time and place.It was the 25th anniversary concert celebrating the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame at Madison Square Garden in 2009 when Bruce Springsteen bellowed to the crowd: “Are you ready for the bridge-and-tunnel summit meeting right here, right now? Because Long Island is about to meet New Jersey on the neutral ground of New York City!”Out came Billy Joel, and the two performed a set together of their greatest hits. Springsteen crooned on Joel’s “New York State of Mind,” while Joel returned the favor on Springsteen’s “Born to Run.” The two had crossed paths occasionally in their hit-making careers, but never in such a high profile way.In retrospect, it was surprising it had taken so long. The author Jim Cullen argues in his new book released in October, “Bridge and Tunnel Boys: Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel, and the Metropolitan Sound of the American Century,” that Springsteen and Joel’s careers had more uncanny parallels than most realize, and that their rise was a product of socioeconomic conditions of the era, particularly the growth of the suburbs. In fact, the author argues, it’s likely that Joel and Springsteen could only have become famous at the time they did.Both were born within months of each other. Both are intrinsically identified with their home states — Springsteen with New Jersey, Joel with New York. They both came from the suburbs — Freehold, N.J., for Springsteen, and Hicksville, N.Y., for Joel. Both were signed to Columbia Records and released their first albums the same year. Their careers started off slow — and almost sputtered completely — but broke through around the same time with records that would make them famous — Springsteen’s “Born To Run” (1975) and Joel’s “The Stranger” (1977).Mr. Cullen, a historian who has written several academic books about pop culture, discussed the connection between the two that formed the thesis of his latest book.These are edited excerpts from the conversation.What does the rise of Billy Joel and Bruce Springsteen in the 1970s say about the era they were living in?They lived in what you might call the golden age of the American dream. This was the period when the American dream was most realizable on a mass basis. As products of suburbia, they were sort of in the cockpit of this.One of the things I found interesting when I started to look into their lives was that they were actually products of downward mobility. Their immediate families had suffered reverses in the generation before they were born. And then, of course, they caught the wind of this massive economic and social current in the aftermath of World War II.Mr. Cullen, a historian, has written several academic books about pop culture.Frances F. Denny for The New York TimesWhat were the conditions in the music industry that helped make someone like Joel or Springsteen such a success?The record business had been immensely profitable in the years prior to these guys making it. And so there was just a lot of money floating around to invest in new acts in a way that there really hadn’t been before or after this.Another is that the business was designed at that point to reward the thing that these two guys did really well, which was to perform live. This was an era when touring supported records — rather than the age we live in, which is the other way around.The last thing I would say is that the industry was much more tolerant of failure than it had been before or since. So both of these guys could literally afford to make a couple of records that stiffed before they built up enough of a head of steam to really take off commercially.People might argue that when we talk about the rise of the suburbs, we’re really talking about the rise of a white middle class. I don’t think there’s any question that these guys were beneficiaries of their racial identity. Broadly, their relative affluence gave them a leg up. That’s inarguable.I will say that both of these people had a very strong vision of integration as sort of the aesthetic basis of their work.Are there modern-day equivalents to Joel and Springsteen?One of the ways in which they were also really beneficiaries of their time is that they were products of what I’ll call generally an age of broadcasting. And I mean that not just in terms of television, but especially in terms of radio. There was a kind of shared national audience.I did a book on “All in the Family,” a television show [in the 1970s] that got 50 million viewers a week. The finale of “Game of Thrones,” people got excited because it got 10 million viewers. It’s just a different world. So it’s not easy for anybody to continue to do what Billy Joel and Bruce Springsteen did. Not because Springsteen or Joel were sort of Promethean artists, but because they were beneficiaries of a media infrastructure that was very rewarding to them.Having said all that, I do think that there are figures who approach what they did. Beyoncé comes to mind as someone who’s built a very large, broad audience over a long period of time and inspires a level of commitment and engagement that I think is comparable. The obvious other example is Taylor Swift, who in commercial terms, has probably exceeded them. More

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    Gen Z Beatles Fans Come Together on TikTok

    “Can’t believe it’s 2023 and I get the joy of hearing a new Beatles song for the first time ever,” a 23-year-old says in a video post.Eloise Smith, 23, posted a reaction video on TikTok immediately after listening to “Now and Then,” the Beatles song released on Thursday.“Can’t believe it’s 2023 and I get the joy of hearing a new Beatles song for the first time ever,” Ms. Smith, who has a forearm tattoo rendering of the band’s “Abbey Road” album cover, wrote in the video’s caption.In an interview, she added that she was a third-generation fan: Her grandmother introduced her father to the Beatles, and her father introduced them to her.“I was 1 when George Harrison died,” Ms. Smith said.Ms. Smith, a civil servant who lives in Manchester, England, said she was “thrilled” weeks ago when she heard about “Now and Then.” The ability to immediately react and connect with other fans of the band through social media has made the experience of hearing a new Beatles song richer, she added.“Rather than just being in the kind of bubble of your friends, you can speak to people all over the world about it,” she said.The Beatles came late to digital media. The group did not sell downloads of its songs at Apple’s iTunes store until 2010, seven years after it had opened for business. When streaming became the main medium for music fans, the Beatles held out once more, waiting until 2015 before making the band’s work available on Spotify, Apple Music and other platforms.The decision to go digital allowed new generations of listeners to more easily discover a group that had won the adoration of mobs of screaming fans in the 1960s. Now, Gen Z listeners regularly post Beatles-related videos on social media platforms.

    @earlgreylou i am having a big ol’ emotional moment rn #nowandthen #thebeatles ♬ Now And Then – 2023 Mix – The Beatles “This song is my Roman Empire,” one listener wrote in a TikTok post, referring to a meme claiming that men think about the Roman Empire at least once a day. In the comments of the video, several people replied that the video was making them teary. “Sobbing,” they wrote. Others said that they were excited to listen to the song with their grandparents.Skylar Moody, 24, said she spent most of Thursday trying to avoid “Now and Then” spoilers. A superfan whose social media presence is almost entirely devoted to all things Beatles, she wanted to record her reaction to her first listen, which meant waiting until she was finished with work. She kept her phone on silent all day, lest she accidentally hear a snippet of “Now and Then” while scrolling online.Ms. Moody, who lives in New Jersey and goes, fittingly, by @lucyinthesky.lar on TikTok, said she became a Beatles fan after watching “A Hard Day’s Night,” the group’s 1964 film, during a music history class in high school. She described the Beatles’ online fandom as “very diverse and also unified.”“No matter what age or demographic you’re in,” she said, “we can all come together in one agreement that we love the Beatles.”She continued: “This is where we find our people now. It’s so easy to go on social media and find a fan community of people to talk to that will understand you.”Late on Thursday afternoon, she made a reaction video of herself listening to “Now and Then” in her car. “I’m listening to the Beatles! In 2023!” she exclaimed, clutching her face through a two-minute clip in which she describes what she’s hearing.The Beatles’ company, Apple Corps, has billed “Now and Then” as the group’s “last song.” It’s the third Beatles release since John Lennon’s death in 1980, after “Free as a Bird” and “Real Love” in the mid-1990s. All three were built on home demo recordings made by Mr. Lennon.“My heart feels so heavy right now, but in a good way,” Ms. Moody said in another TikTok video, adding, “We are experiencing their last song together, and this is going to go down in history. I’m so happy that we get to share it all together and that we’re able to share our thoughts like this online with people who get it.”Ms. Smith, the civil servant in England, said that she would try not to wear out “Now and Then” in the coming days. “I’ve been kind of listening to it every once in a while, to savor it,” she said, “because it’s such a big deal.” More

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    Leonardo DiCaprio Plays Dim in ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’

    Leonardo DiCaprio’s Ernest is unlike any Scorsese protagonist because, well, he’s dumb as rocks. And that changes the film in a fundamental way.The demimondes depicted by the American master Martin Scorsese vary widely — his New York stories alone span three centuries — but they have one common requirement: It takes intelligence, of one kind or another, to navigate them. His protagonists are smart, street smart, shrewd, skillful or some combination of those qualities as a rule.That rule is broken in “Killers of the Flower Moon.” Normally, a character like Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio) — a World War I veteran turned henchman in a plot to murder Osage people for their oil profits in 1920s Oklahoma — would either rise to the top of his uncle Bill Hale’s organization, or wise up and fight to stop it on his own. Ernest does neither, precisely because he lacks the qualities Scorsese has spent a lifetime depicting.Henry Hill (Ray Liotta with Lorraine Bracco) serves as our guide to the Mafia in “Goodfellas.”Warner Bros.The quintessential Scorsese protagonist, Henry Hill (Ray Liotta) also serves as the narrator of “Goodfellas.” It’s not just that he is a canny operator who helps plan a fictional version of the most lucrative heist in American history — his voice and his street smarts guide us through the Mafia’s underground society. It’s difficult to imagine Ernest having the know-how to pull off either task.DiCaprio in “Gangs of New York.” To survive, his character has to think fast.Ernest is not the first DiCaprio character to live a double life in Scorsese’s world. Amsterdam Vallon and Billy Costigan, his characters in “Gangs of New York” and “The Departed,” are undercover agents embedded in sophisticated crime organizations. They must think on their feet much faster than a man whose only task is to swindle a sick woman.DiCaprio in “The Aviator” as Howard Hughes, a leader more typical of a Scorsese protagonist.Miramax FilmsIn his more antiheroic roles for Scorsese, DiCaprio has played leaders like the tycoon Howard Hughes (“The Aviator”) and the stock scammer Jordan Belfort (“The Wolf of Wall Street”), rather than stooges like Ernest.“Ace” Rothstein (Robert De Niro with Sharon Stone) dealt with various risks in “Casino.”Universal PicturesSam Rothstein, a.k.a. Ace (Robert De Niro), the mob-associated gambling executive in “Casino,” and Jesus of Nazareth (Willem Dafoe) in “The Last Temptation of Christ” are also leaders, ones who operate under great personal physical risk at that. Their very different lives routinely present them with challenges the likes of Ernest could never surmount.Daniel Day-Lewis and Michelle Pfeiffer as a couple figuring out their position in a stratified society.Philip Caruso/Columbia PicturesThe same goes for Newland Archer (Daniel Day-Lewis) and Countess Ellen Olenska (Michelle Pfeiffer) from “The Age of Innocence.” Their doomed romance forces them to navigate the societal mores of wealth and status, with no all-powerful figure like King Hale (De Niro) to back them up.De Niro as Travis Bickle in “Taxi Driver.” He was expert with weapons, if not social cues.Sony PicturesNo one would mistake Travis Bickle or Jake LaMotta, the iconic De Niro characters from “Taxi Driver” and “Raging Bull,” for geniuses, but each was brilliant in his own way at the application of violence.As a comedian, Rupert Pupkin (De Niro, with Jerry Lewis) isn’t too sharp but he has other skills.20th Century FoxUnlike Bickle or LaMotta, Rupert Pupkin, the painfully unfunny would-be comedian played by De Niro in “The King of Comedy,” is no good at all at his chosen field. However, he successfully carries out a plan to kidnap the talk-show host Jerry Langford (Jerry Lewis) and ransom him for a turn in the spotlight.Paul Hackett (Griffin Dunne) has seen better days in “After Hours.”Warner BrosPerhaps the closest a Scorsese character gets to Ernest is Paul Hackett (Griffin Dunne) in the black comedy “After Hours.” Like Ernest, Paul is a man in over his head (Hackett can’t hack it). But he’s an otherwise normal and competent person having one crazy night in downtown Manhattan, not a murderer.Ernest is not an average Joe suffering a series of mishaps, like Hackett. Nor is he able to serve as a Henry Hill-esque narrator-navigator for the criminality of King Hale. He barely seems aware of what’s happening with his own small stake in the wider conspiracy, much less able to explain the entire thing to others. With even the mean success of a normal Scorsese criminal out of reach, Ernest is good for little more than relaying messages about murdering unarmed sick people — a task at which he fails as often as he succeeds — and occasionally chipping in by poisoning his own wife.Indeed, Ernest is too thick — intellectually, emotionally morally — to do much of anything but allow his hand to be forced, first by King, then by the federal agents tasked with taking him down. He never really learns, never really comes clean, never really grasps the monstrousness of what’s happening until it’s too late. He’s just not sharp enough to see it, or to allow himself to be shown. The man is a zero — the mental and moral void into which King Hale’s Osage targets and their allies disappear.The Scorsese movie we get out of him is very different as a result. A sharper character would have implied that it takes some canniness, cunning or charisma to plunder a land and its people. Instead, Ernest shows us that the bigotry and greed that fueled the genocidal campaign against the Osage are ultimately stupid, and the resulting tragedy all the sadder for it. More

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    Britney Spears escribió sus memorias con otros autores. Entérate aquí

    El libro de la estrella del pop es una obra colectiva. Otros tres autores participaron.“Si me sigues en Instagram, pensabas que este libro iba a estar escrito con emojis, ¿no?”, escribe Britney Spears al final de su libro de memorias, La mujer que soy.Britney Spears ha declarado que completar el libro publicado hace poco —un relato de su periplo desde Luisiana hasta la cima de las listas de éxitos del pop y una tutela que le negó el control de su carrera y sus finanzas— requirió una enorme cantidad de terapia. Y para llevar la historia al papel, contó con la ayuda de “colaboradores”, como ella los llama en los agradecimientos del libro.“Ustedes saben quiénes son”, escribe sin dar nombres.Según dos personas cercanas al proyecto, que hablaron bajo condición de mantener su anonimato porque no estaban autorizadas a declarar públicamente, tres escritores —todos autores de éxito por derecho propio— colaboraron de manera significativa con el libro de memorias de Spears.Ada Calhoun, autora de cuatro libros de no ficción, entre ellos Also a Poet: Frank O’Hara, My Father, and Me, ayudó a crear el primer borrador, dijeron las dos personas. Sam Lansky, exeditor de la revista Time, autor del libro de memorias The Gilded Razor y de la novela Broken People, fue el siguiente en unirse al proyecto. El libro se completó con la ayuda de Luke Dempsey, un escritor fantasma y editor que ha publicado libros bajo su propio nombre y trabajó con Priscilla y Lisa Marie Presley en Elvis by the Presleys.Ada Calhoun fue parte del equipo que le brindó ayuda a Spears con sus memorias.Laurel Golio para The New York TimesEs práctica habitual que los famosos colaboren de cerca con autores de probada valía cuando deciden contar su vida, afirmó David Kuhn, codirector ejecutivo de la agencia literaria Aevitas Creative Management.“¿Cuánta gente crees que trabaja en un libro de memorias presidenciales, o en uno de los libros de Michelle Obama?”, preguntó Kuhn, que ha representado al autor ganador del premio Pulitzer Liaquat Ahamed y a la comediante Amy Schumer. “Porque si eres Michelle Obama, parte de lo que creo que pedirás de tu colaborador o de tus editores son diferentes perspectivas de diferentes lectores”.“Podrías querer la opinión de una persona de 30 años”, añadió, “porque quieres que los de la generación milénial se sientan identificados con el libro. Puede que quieras que un editor masculino ofrezca su perspectiva, porque quieres que atraiga en la medida de lo posible a un público masculino, además del público femenino más obvio”.Así pues, la creación de La mujer que soy no fue muy distinta de la de éxitos pop contemporáneos, que suelen contar con aportes de numerosos colaboradores.La columna Page Six del New York Post fue la primera en informar, en febrero de 2022, la noticia del “gran acuerdo” para el libro de memorias de Spears. Fue adquirido por Gallery Publishing Group, un sello de Simon & Schuster que ha llevado a muchos artistas y personalidades a las listas de los más vendidos, entre ellos Chelsea Handler, Tiffany Haddish, Olivia Newton-John y Omarosa Manigault Newman.Spears agradeció a “colaboradores” en sus memorias sin aportar nombres. Gallery Books, vía Associated PressUna de las principales personas implicadas en la adquisición, según tres personas con conocimiento de la operación, fue Cait Hoyt, agente literaria de CAA, quien es mencionada en los agradecimientos del libro. Otra figura clave fue el abogado Mathew Rosengart, socio del bufete Greenberg Traurig, que ayudó a Spears a librarse de la tutela en 2021. (Hoyt y Rosengart no hicieron comentarios).Tras la firma del acuerdo, Spears viajó a Maui, un viaje que documentó en Instagram. Mientras estaba allí, escribió extensamente sobre su vida en cuadernos y se reunió con Calhoun para una serie de entrevistas largas, dijeron las dos personas cercanas al proyecto. El borrador que Calhoun ayudó a elaborar se completó en primavera, poco antes de que Spears se casara con el actor y entrenador personal Sam Asghari en una ceremonia en su casa de Los Ángeles. (Calhoun no respondió a las peticiones de comentarios).A Spears le pareció en un momento que la voz del libro no se parecía lo suficiente a la suya, según una persona cercana al proyecto. Entonces apareció Lansky, cliente de Hoyt, cuyos dos libros fueron publicados por Gallery.Los antecedentes de Lansky parecen haberlo hecho idóneo para el proyecto. Hace una década, escribía para el sitio web musical Idolator, donde ejercía de “apologista residente de Taylor Swift, entusiasta de las divas y monstruo del sarcasmo”. En su libro de memorias, The Gilded Razor, dice sentirse “atrapado en algún lugar entre un niño y un adulto: lo bastante adulto como para hacer las cosas bien de vez en cuando, pero lo bastante joven como para no saber que eso no siempre sería suficiente”.Esas palabras también podrían describir a Spears, que empezó a trabajar en el mundo del espectáculo a los 10 años y lanzó la canción “I’m Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman” a los 20. Antes de sumergirse en el proyecto, Lansky hizo otra ronda de entrevistas con ella a través de Zoom y por teléfono, dijeron las dos personas. (Lansky no hizo comentarios). Sam Lansky, autor de dos libros, trabajó en las memorias el verano pasado. Jeff Spicer/Getty Images para Atlantis The RoyalEn otoño, Dempsey se unió al proyecto, aseguraron las personas. Una colaboradora constante durante todo el proceso fue Lauren Spiegel, editora de Gallery que fue responsable del libro éxito en ventas de Anna Kendrick, Scrappy Little Nobody. (Dempsey y Spiegel no hicieron comentarios).Spears solo ha concedido una entrevista a la revista People con motivo de la publicación de La mujer que soy. No describe los pormenores de ser autora por primera vez, pero tiene claro por qué decidió contar su historia.“Por fin llegó la hora de alzar la voz y hablar claro, y mis seguidores merecen oírlo directamente de mí”, señaló. “No más conspiraciones, no más mentiras: solo yo como dueña de mi pasado, presente y futuro”.Jacob Bernstein es reportero de la sección Styles. Además de escribir perfiles de diseñadores de moda, artistas y celebridades, ha centrado gran parte de su atención en temáticas LGBT, la filantropía y el mundo del diseño de muebles. Más de Jacob Bernstein More