Aurelia Butler

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    Bad Bunny Looks Back on ‘Nadie Sabe Lo Que Va a Pasar Mañana’

    On his fifth solo album, “Nadie Sabe Lo Que Va a Pasar Mañana,” the Puerto Rican megastar circles back to where he started.Sure, it’s lonely at the top. But isn’t it also fun once in a while?It’s hard not to ask that question listening to Bad Bunny’s latest flood of songs, the surprise-released album “Nadie Sabe Lo Que Va a Pasar Mañana” (“Nobody Knows What Will Happen Tomorrow”). It holds 21 songs and a quick snippet. But that abundance brings little joy.With this album, Bad Bunny, a.k.a. the Puerto Rican songwriter Benito Martínez Ocasio, joins the ranks of the sullen superstars: figures like Drake and Ye, stars who have conquered the world but still feel unappreciated and beleaguered. Overwhelming commercial success — hundreds of millions of streams, sold-out arena and stadium tours, attention from every possible quarter — has only made them hunker down defensively.It doesn’t have to be that way. Look at how Taylor Swift and Beyoncé now handle megastardom, savoring every moment (at least in public) while inviting fans to share the exhilaration.Bad Bunny has a perpetually startling voice, a baritone that can sing or rap with equal power. It leaps out of radio or computer speakers; it carries weight and connects emotionally across language barriers. Throughout the 2020s, Bad Bunny has smashed expectations and sales records entirely on his own terms. He asserts his Puerto Rican and Caribbean identity and regularly praises his role models; he collaborates across borders and genres. Defying the conventional wisdom of American pop crossover, he keeps his lyrics in Spanish, making any collaborators cross over to him. His new songs proclaim that he’s well aware of his status as a trailblazer — but that it doesn’t give him much comfort.The album opens with “Nadie Sabe,” a six-minute manifesto of superstar isolation set to brooding orchestral chords, with Bad Bunny eventually joined by a full choir. He declares himself “the biggest star in the entire world”; he also warns that “No one knows, no, what it feels like to feel alone in front of 100,000 people.” And for all his well-earned self-confidence, the haters still get under his skin. “I’m not at my peak, now I’m in my prime,” he sings. “That’s why they’re praying that I crash.”Connect that, of course, to grievance-powered politics and social media algorithms that stoke conflict and encourage pointless beefs. Musicians now market themselves in that environment and have to deal, one way or another, with the comments. But musicians also have different, nonverbal outlets. They have the visceral joys of rhythm. They have the intuitive responses to a harmony or a vocal tone. They have the freedom, especially in the digital era, to make startling sonic leaps with a mouse click.Bad Bunny has embraced those possibilities, broadening his musical horizons with each of his albums. While Latin trap and reggaeton are his musical foundations, he has delved into rock, reggae, hip-hop, salsa, bomba, merengue, EDM and more, sometimes within the same song, as he did in tracks like “Después de la Playa” and “El Apagón” on his blockbuster 2022 album, “Un Verano Sin Ti.”Yet on the new album, Bad Bunny deliberately narrows his palette. “Nadie Sabe” declares that the album is for his “real fans,” and most of its songs return to the Latin trap that dominated his first album, “X 100PRE,” in 2018. Five years seems a little too soon for a nostalgia trip.As craftsman and singer, Bad Bunny is thoroughly at home with the ticking electronic drums and minor chords of Latin trap. In the new songs, he works his way through familiar topics: wealth, parties, sex, fame, autonomy. And even in well-trodden sonic territory, he can create arresting songs. He’s decisively embittered in “Gracias por Nada” (“Thanks for Nothing”), a post-breakup trap ballad that burns every bridge as it details how deeply he was betrayed.But as the album ticks and hums along, the songs that linger are the ones that break away from standard Latin trap. In “Mr. October,” Bad Bunny boasts about his achievements as looping, nervous keyboards suggest anxiety behind the proud facade. “Where She Goes,” a single released in May, uses the pounding, capacious sounds of a Jersey Club beat for a lament about a one-night stand he wishes he could repeat.“Cybertruck” seesaws between melting keyboard tones and a skeletal reggaeton beat as Bad Bunny declares “I’m not normal” and taunts, “Let those who hate me hate me/Let those who love me love me.” And the camaraderie sounds genuine as Bad Bunny joins Puerto Rican rappers he grew up hearing — Arcángel, De La Ghetto & Ñengo Flow — in “Acho PR,” which is dedicated to “the people in the barrio.”“Acho PR,” like much of the album, insists that Bad Bunny is still rooted, that international recognition hasn’t changed his deepest loyalties. But the biggest star in the world has countless options. Now that he has looked back, how can he move ahead?Bad Bunny“Nadie Sabe Lo Que Va a Pasar Mañana”(Rimas) More

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    My Haul From the WFMU Record Fair

    Rounding out a record collection with finds from the Beach Boys, Kraftwerk and Roberta Flack.Scenes from a great day album shopping in Queens.Lindsay ZoladzDear listeners,Over the weekend, I spent some time at the WFMU Record and CD Fair — a New York institution returning in person for the first time since 2019. A fund-raiser for the great, listener-supported radio station, this year’s Record Fair featured over 100 dealers hawking vinyl and other musical sundries at the Knockdown Center in Queens. I browsed for hours, and by the time I was done my back was sore from hunching over crates and my arms ached from all the records I was toting around. Who says record collecting isn’t a sport?That lingering pang in my shoulder, though, meant I left with a pretty decent record haul — which I used to create today’s playlist.Some people go to record fairs ready to drop big bucks on rare finds and coveted collectibles. That wasn’t my aim, though: I was in it for the cheap thrills and spontaneous discoveries. I found, for example, a fantastic, good-as-new-condition Ike & Tina Turner live album I’d never heard, at a stand where most records were marked down to 50 percent off in the event’s final hours. (Given that deal, I threw in a copy of Dinosaur Jr.’s scuzzy classic “You’re Living All Over Me” at the last minute, too.) For $5 or less, I acquired records by Bob Dylan and Roberta Flack.But I also learned about the perils of the discount bin. When I added a $3 copy of Waylon Jennings’s “Greatest Hits” to my pile, I thought I’d checked the condition of the LP. But apparently I hadn’t looked at the label. For when I pulled it out of its sleeve yesterday and went to play it, I found that I was actually in possession of … Neil Diamond’s “12 Greatest Hits, Volume II.” Talk about a rude awakening.Overall, though, the fair was a blast, and an opportunity to connect with record sellers in a setting way more personable than ordering something off Discogs. Each stall had its own style and personality quirks — like the one graciously offering a questionably large bowl of free “I More

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    ‘The Insurrectionist Next Door’ Review: Getting Personal

    In her latest film, the documentarian Alexandra Pelosi has disarming chats with people who participated in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.In the compulsively watchable “The Insurrectionist Next Door,” Alexandra Pelosi visits rank-and-file people arrested because of their roles in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. And then, instead of condemning, she asks them about themselves. Her brisk emotional portraits of Americans are disarming, unpredictable, funny, sad, and, yes, at times enraging.Palming her own camera, Pelosi fires away why’s and what’s-your-deal’s to her polite subjects: a genial former wrestler; a military man who shares a love of wine with his husband; a family guy with a “Proud Boy” forehead tattoo and a rabble-rousing hit rap song; and a practitioner of parkour who apparently learned about some kind of war in 1776 from a Trump speech.Some joined the mob out of anger or boredom; others plead mass hysteria or even lovesick depression. (Jan. 6 was also a popular family road trip.) Pelosi has made films about the Tea Party and wealthy donors, and her barroom directness feels sincere, while also being canny. She even asks someone about the targeting of her mother, Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, on Jan. 6, when the filmmaker too was in the Capitol.The terrifying attacks are not excused or minimized, and Pelosi acknowledges that these “normies” were very useful for the goals of militant organizations. She also presses the convicted on their blind devotion to President Trump. Yet it’s possible to feel despair despite the bluff banter: Yes, but now what?In the end, as a document, it’s undeniable: The unvarnished human detail gives the film a life of its own that escapes any particular polemic or hope.The Insurrectionist Next DoorNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 15 minutes. Watch on Max. More

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    Joan Jett Loves the New York Liberty. The Feeling Is Mutual.

    As an early fan of the W.N.B.A. team, the musician saw the squad lose four championship series. This week, she returned courtside to cheer another attempt.Joan Jett’s unmistakable voice was carrying, and she was pretty sure it was working some magic.The New York Liberty had taken a slim lead against the Las Vegas Aces in the third quarter of Game 3 of the W.N.B.A. finals on Sunday, and the Rock & Roll Hall of Famer was doing her part, bellowing along with the crowd’s “De-fense” chant from her courtside perch at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center. When the Aces started to go cold, Jett took it as a sign.“I’m hoping they recognize my voice and I’m messing up their shot,” the husky-throated musician said, using an expletive. “It’s all mental, you know what I’m saying?”It was a must-win contest for the Liberty, who were down 2-0 in the best-of-five series. As Jett kept up her boisterous chant, the Aces missed six consecutive shots. The Liberty went on an 8-0 run, and the diminutive singer and guitarist jumped up to high-five the 6-foot-3 former Liberty center Sue Wicks, a friend.Some 10 years had passed since Jett last attended a W.N.B.A. game (her summer touring schedule got in the way), but she fell quickly back into the playoff delirium she had enjoyed as a courtside fixture in the late 1990s and early ’00s, when the team made the final round of the playoffs four times but failed to win a title.The rock star said she first fell for the game in 1996 when the N.C.A.A. asked her permission to use Joan Jett and the Blackhearts’ cover of “Love Is All Around” to promote the women’s basketball tournament. The following year, the W.N.B.A. began its first season and Jett bought Liberty season tickets, often showing up to big games with a red cloth voodoo doll she used to taunt opposing players.“She’d hold it up and stab that dang thing!” Teresa Weatherspoon, the former Liberty guard, said during halftime. “When you talk about the Liberty, you have to mention Joan’s name. Any battle we had on the floor, Joan was in it with us.”Jett grew up a self-described tomboy in Rockville, Md., and became a fan of Major League Baseball’s Baltimore Orioles at age 11, after her father took her to see the pitcher Jim Palmer throw a no-hitter. Her intersection with sports continues today: She still follows the Orioles faithfully, and is known to set up livestreams on the drum riser during shows so she can follow along. The theme song for “Sunday Night Football,” is an adapted version of the Blackhearts hit “I Hate Myself for Loving You,” performed by Carrie Underwood.During her early days of W.N.B.A. fandom, Jett opted to sit directly behind the bench instead of courtside with the other celebrities. (“It just feels more inside basketball to me,” Jett said. “You can hear the coaches talking.”) The Liberty would slap her hand on their way onto the floor. Jett occasionally came to practices, and once even flew to Houston with the team for a finals game.Jett developed particularly close friendships with Weatherspoon and Wicks, who remembers being so star-struck the first time she saw Jett at Madison Square Garden, where the Liberty initially played, that she almost knocked over Rebecca Lobo, the team’s center. Wicks had a copy of “The Hit List,” Jett’s 1990 album, while playing overseas in Europe, and said it had been a “great friend” to her during lonely stretches abroad. “For me, she’s a goddess,” Wicks said.In 1999, Ray Castoldi, the Garden’s organist, asked Jett and the Blackhearts to record “Unfinished Business,” a song he had written for the Liberty after their crushing finals loss that year. Jett not only cut the track the following season, but filmed a video with the team and performed the song at halftime during a game.“It’s hard to explain the energy,” Jett said of those early years. “I was on the outside looking in, but they made me feel like I was on the inside. It was a fun, really inclusive time.”Jett feels a natural kinship with athletes, who, like longtime touring bands, travel with a tight-knit team and are expected to perform on command. And like the athletes in the W.N.B.A., who have carved out a professional place for themselves while expanding the public’s idea of what women are capable of doing, Jett broke down boundaries in music: battling to prove to record labels and crowds that she deserved to be a frontwoman despite her prodigious talent. “We’re people that could relate to what each other was doing,” she said.Crystal Robinson, a former Liberty forward with whom Jett remains close, said the recognition was mutual: “For us, it was just the fact that she supported us,” she said. “She was fighting that female battle before we started. We had this camaraderie.”Jett’s return to the Liberty on Sunday was an overdue homecoming. Before the game, she nursed a beer as she held court with Wicks and Robinson at a table in the Barclays’ V.I.P. lounge. The recently retired W.N.B.A. star Sue Bird came by to pay her respects, as did the actors Jason Sudeikis and Michael Shannon, who portrayed Kim Fowley, the manager of Jett’s band, the Runaways, in a 2010 film.As the restaurant emptied before game time, Jett got restless. “I feel like we’re missing stuff!” she said giddily, before heading toward the court to find her seat. Just before tipoff, Becky Hammon, the Aces head coach who had been a Liberty guard in her playing days, spotted Jett taking a photo of her from across the court and struck a quick pose.Once the game started, Jett was up out of her seat to cheer on nearly every Liberty point. She gleefully taunted Hammon after a Jonquel Jones bucket (“Three-pointer, Becky!”), and debated foul calls with Wicks and Robinson. When Jones blocked a shot from the Aces star A’ja Wilson in the third quarter, Jett removed her black jean jacket to cheers from the crowd. “It’s hot in here!” she shouted back.After the Aces went cold in the third quarter, the Liberty stretched their lead. “I feel good,” Jett said. “But they’ve broken my heart before.”She appeared on the Jumbotron soon after, gamely swinging a Liberty towel overhead as “I Love Rock ’n Roll” blared on the public address system. Then, she fired T-shirts into the crowd with an air cannon, with the crowd roaring for her.“I felt the love,” Jett said. But she was mainly focused on her potential as a tactical influence: “It reminds Las Vegas that I’m here, and that can make them nervous.”She needn’t have worried. The Liberty found their rhythm in the second half and defeated the Aces, 87-73, extending the series to a Game 4, which will be played in Brooklyn on Wednesday. Should the team force a Game 5, it will play for the franchise’s elusive, first-ever title.“You’ve got to be back Wednesday!” a fan told Jett as the clock wound down. “You’re clearly the good luck charm.”But Jett is prepared for any outcome. “That’s the nature of being a sports fan,” she said. “To be there through the tough times and the good times.” More

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    Madonna Kicks Off Celebration Tour in London

    After a health-related delay, the pop superstar launched her Celebration Tour in London with a performance devoted to her full catalog of hits.They wore pearls with crucifixes, lace gloves, tulle skirts and body-sculpting corsets. Some even crimped their hair and drew on fake beauty moles, while others wore simple white T-shirts with only the letter M on the back. Spanning generations, the concertgoers arriving at the O2 Arena in London used Saturday night as an opportunity to dress in their favorite Madonna era, even if that was decades before they were born.Madonna, 65, is on the road for the first time since 2020 with her global Celebration Tour, a stage spectacle touching on more than 40 of her hits across four decades. The show opened at the O2, a 20,000-capacity arena, three months after its planned first date, following a health scare for the pop icon. In June, Madonna was hospitalized shortly before the tour’s scheduled debut in Canada. At the time, her manager said she had a “serious bacterial infection” that resulted in the singer staying in an intensive care unit for several days.Madonna swore that the tour — her first devoted to her full catalog of hits, rather than to a specific album release — would go on. In recent weeks, she has filled her Instagram account with tantalizing, and very on-brand, images from rehearsals, showing her dressed in a lacy black bustier, practicing onstage steps and resting her fishnet-clad knees.Fans waited out a 30-minute delay before Madonna arrived onstage in London, opening with a medley of hits before acknowledging the challenges that had led to the moment. “How did I make it this far? Because of you,” she said, adding, “But I will take a bit of credit, too.”Fans of the pop star Madonna taking pictures in front of her posters outside the O2 Arena in London.Jeremie Souteyrat for The New York TimesIt was clear from the beginning that this concert would be as much a journey through Madonna’s career as it would a bona fide dance party. Set on an elaborate stage that jutted out into the audience, several hanging retractable screens showed images of the singer. At other times, they displayed powerful portraits, as when she launched into “Live to Tell” and the screens displayed images of Freddie Mercury, Arthur Ashe and more people who died from AIDS.For more than two hours, with the help of her dancers and some of her six children, Madonna blazed through her catalog of songs, singing several hits like “Holiday,” “Like a Prayer,” “Hung Up,” “Ray of Light” and “Bad Girl.” Her costumes were sexy, religious and futuristic.Though the show had been in the works for months, it was not without technical difficulties. Early on, Madonna paused the show so the sound could be reset. She entertained the audience during the delay by speaking at length about her rise to stardom while technicians worked behind the scenes. Later in the show, between songs, Madonna expressed concern for those affected by violence in Israel and the Gaza Strip. “It breaks my heart to see children suffering, teenagers suffering, elderly people suffering, all of it is heartbreaking,” she said. “Even though our hearts are broken, our spirits cannot be broken.”When the tour was announced in January, it immediately became one of the year’s big-ticket events. But it appears to be far from sold out.Jeremie Souteyrat for The New York TimesMadonna also reflected on her health struggles this year. “I forgot five days of my life, or my death,” she said. “I don’t really know where I was, but the angels were protecting me.“If you want to know my secret, and you want to know how I pull through and how I survive, I thought, ‘I’ve got to be there for my children. I have to survive for them,’” she said. She then led the crowd in a singalong of Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive.”The 24 performers onstage notably did not include a live band: Stuart Price, the tour’s musical director, told the BBC that “the original recordings are our stars.” The stage, which encompasses 4,400 square feet, was designed to echo Manhattan neighborhoods, as well as the wedding cake from Madonna’s 1984 MTV Video Music Awards performance of “Like a Virgin.” During the show, she is swept across the venue in a square-framed box 30 feet off the ground.Carla Nobre, 38, of Nottingham said that seeing Madonna in concert had been on her bucket list, but that she had been disappointed with the performance.“There was too much talking,” she said.Jenni Purple, 54, from the southern coast of England said the concert, which was her first time seeing Madonna live, had been “absolutely incredible.” “I loved all the medleys, I loved the costumes, I loved all the dances,” she said with a broad smile. “Everything was just mind-blowing.”In the past, Madonna’s tours have been news-making events tied as much to her latest music as to her cycle of stylistic reinventions. But Celebration is essentially the pop superstar’s Eras Tour, as Taylor Swift has styled her latest outing: a staged romp through decades of hit songs and signature looks, giving fans a chance to relive her career as a stages-of-life experience. (Seventeen of Madonna’s previous costumes were recreated for the tour, and some of the merchandise for sale includes replicas from past treks.)With her Virgin Tour in 1985, Madonna introduced herself as a punk-glam dance star whose every crucifix pendant or flap of denim was zealously adopted by fans. Who’s That Girl (1987) and Blond Ambition (1990) grew increasingly elaborate as Madonna pushed the fashion envelope with looks like Jean Paul Gaultier’s memorable cone bra and set the bar for bold, imaginative pop megatours. The Girlie Show (1993), in which Madonna appeared as a dominatrix, was the accompaniment to a period of daringly explicit material like her “Sex” book and “Justify My Love” video, which was banned from MTV.After an eight-year absence from the road, Drowned World (2001) reintroduced Madonna as a new mother, an electro-pop heroine and an acolyte of kabbalah, a form of Jewish mysticism. In more recent years, her Confessions Tour (2006) cast her in late-70s disco style, and Rebel Heart (2015-16) found her playing guitar, in addition to executing the complex choreography for which she is known. Her most recent tour, Madame X, which was cut short by the Covid-19 pandemic, saw Madonna looking to reinvent her stage performance once again in a more intimate, almost cabaret form, mostly eschewing arenas for spaces like the Brooklyn Academy of Music.For Madonna, the 78-date Celebration Tour is a chance to assert her star power in a year when live music has been dominated by Swift and Beyoncé — women who, like Madonna before them, have used talent and deep media savvy to remake pop stardom in their own image. In July, Beyoncé acknowledged the debt, when Madonna, making one of her first public appearances after her hospitalization, attended Beyoncé’s Renaissance World Tour in New Jersey. “Big shout-out to the queen,” Beyoncé called out during a performance of the “Queens Remix” of her song “Break My Soul,” which blends in Madonna’s 1990 smash “Vogue” — another hit that mined, and honored, gay dance culture of that period.Madonna returned the acknowledgment on Saturday, playing a bit of the same remix during an interstitial moment.(From left to right) Iien McNeil, Susie Petersen, Maria Belova and Suzy Burroughs posing in front of the venue before the show.Jeremie Souteyrat for The New York TimesWhen Madonna’s latest tour was announced in January, it immediately became one of the year’s big-ticket events — and yielded a micro-flood of hot takes about the singer’s age. But the tour appears to be far from sold out; Ticketmaster still shows many seats available at some major venues like Barclays Center in Brooklyn, where Madonna will start the North American leg of the tour with three shows in December.Back in 2009, Madonna’s Sticky & Sweet Tour set box-office records when it sold more than $400 million in tickets. Since then, the economics of live music have exploded; Beyoncé has already well exceeded that amount with her Renaissance shows, and Swift may well sell close to $2 billion in tickets by the time her Eras Tour is completed.Legacy has clearly been on Madonna’s mind lately. Last month, the 1989 Pepsi commercial that introduced her song “Like a Prayer” — before it was pulled amid outrage over its music video, which featured an interracial kiss and the singer dancing in front of burning crosses — was finally aired again during the MTV Video Music Awards.Maia and Aisha Letamendia Moore, 17-year-old twin sisters, wore looks that drew from the Like a Virgin and Vogue eras.Jeremie Souteyrat for The New York TimesMadonna, who had been paid $5 million for the promotion — and kept the money — said on social media: “So began my illustrious career as an artist refusing to compromise my artistic integrity.” She added, “Thank you @pepsi for finally realizing the genius of our collaboration. Artists are here to disturb the peace.”It was clearly on fans’ minds as well. Aisha and Maia Letamendia Moore, 17-year-old twins from southern England, near Brighton, wore looks that drew on the Vogue and Like a Virgin eras. “I think she’s such an influence,” Maia said. “She did so many things that were so controversial. She wasn’t scared to do it, she wasn’t scared what people would say.”Others mentioned rumors that Celebration could be Madonna’s last tour. Helen Dawson, 47, who said she first saw Madonna during the Who’s That Girl Tour in 1987, would abide no such thought. “Never, she won’t give up,” Ms. Dawson said. “This is just a new celebration, a new era.” More

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    X-Wing Model From ‘Star Wars’ Fetches $3.1 Million at Auction

    After Greg Jein, an Oscar-nominated visual effects artist, died last year, his friends discovered the prop stashed in a cardboard box in his garage.A model of an X-wing fighter, which was used to film the climactic battle scene in the 1977 “Star Wars,” sold at auction on Sunday for $3,135,000, far exceeding the opening price of $400,000 and setting a record for a prop used onscreen in a “Star Wars” movie, according to Heritage Auctions.Not bad for a model spaceship found buried in some packing peanuts in a cardboard box in a garage.Friends of Greg Jein, a Hollywood visual effects artist, discovered the X-wing stashed in his garage last year after he died at age 76.It was one of hundreds of props, scripts, costumes and other pieces of Hollywood memorabilia that Mr. Jein had collected over the decades, and had left scattered throughout two houses, two garages and two storage units in Los Angeles.Heritage Auctions said the winning bidder did not want to be publicly identified. The buyer had been bidding on the floor of the auction house in Dallas, competing with another collector who was bidding over the phone.A similar model X-wing sold last year for nearly $2.4 million.More than 500 other items from Mr. Jein’s collection also sold at the auction, for a total of $13.6 million.The two-day event was the second-highest-grossing Hollywood auction in history, after the 2011 sale of memorabilia from the actress Debbie Reynolds, which grossed $22.8 million, Heritage Auctions said.Her collection included Marilyn Monroe’s billowing “subway dress” from the 1955 movie “The Seven Year Itch,” which sold for $4.6 million.The X-wing, one of the original miniature models used for close-ups, was one of hundreds of props, scripts and other pieces of Hollywood memorabilia a visual effects artist had collected.Gene KozickiMr. Jein’s collection reflected his passion for science fiction, comic books and fantasy.It included a Stormtrooper costume from the original “Star Wars” movie, which sold for $645,000, a spacesuit from the 1968 Stanley Kubrick movie “2001: A Space Odyssey,” which sold for $447,000, and a utility belt from the 1960s “Batman” television series, starring Adam West, which sold for $36,250.Mr. Jein also collected quirkier pieces, like a lace hairpiece that had been worn by William Shatner as Captain Kirk in the original “Star Trek” television series. It sold for $13,750.But the X-wing drew by far the most attention.Heritage Auctions said the 22-inch prop was used in scenes involving X-wings flown by three pilots in the Rebel Alliance’s final assault on the Death Star. The characters’ call signs were Red Leader, Red Two and Luke Skywalker’s own Red Five.It had been built by Industrial Light & Magic, the special effects studio founded by George Lucas, with motorized wings, fiber-optic lights and other features for close-up shots.But people in the visual effects industry had not seen the model in decades, according to Gene Kozicki, a visual-effects historian and archivist who worked with Mr. Jein on “Star Trek: The Next Generation” and “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine” in the 1990s.“It was like ‘Holy cow, we found an X-wing, a real, honest-to-goodness X-wing,’” Mr. Kozicki said last month, recalling the moment he and several others pulled the X-wing out of a box in Mr. Jein’s garage. “We were carrying on like kids on Christmas.”Mr. Jein’s cousin, Jerry Chang, who attended the auction and spoke on a panel about his cousin’s life and career, said he appreciated that Heritage Auctions “made it a point to honor Greg in everything they did, not just the items up for sale.”Mr. Kozicki said the collection was a testament to Mr. Jein’s love of collecting, which started with baseball cards when he was 5 years old.As his collection spread to Hollywood memorabilia, he was drawn to props and costumes that were made by artisans and craftspeople before the advent of digital special effects, Mr. Kozicki said.Greg Jein, who died last year, in 2008. He was nominated for an Academy Award in 1978 for his work on Steven Spielberg’s “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.”Stephen Shugerman/Getty ImagesIt was an art that Mr. Jein knew well.He was nominated for an Academy Award in 1978 for his work on Steven Spielberg’s “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.” Mr. Jein led the team that built the model of the alien “mother ship” that appears in the movie. The piece is now in the collection of the National Air and Space Museum.In 1980, Mr. Jein was nominated for another Academy Award in visual effects for his work on Mr. Spielberg’s “1941,” which was filmed with model tanks, buildings and a runaway Ferris wheel.“Greg famously said ‘I have a hard time throwing anything away,’ and I think in a way he kept the collection going so the recognition of those craftspeople wouldn’t be discarded like a prop,” Mr. Kozicki said in an email on Monday. “I can only hope that the new owners keep that spirit going.” More

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    Drake Streams His Way to No. 1 Again With ‘For All the Dogs’

    The rapper’s latest album is his 13th LP to top the Billboard 200 chart. But he’s no longer music’s only streaming giant.Way back in 2016, Drake’s album “Views” shot to No. 1 on the Billboard chart with 245 million streams: a gigantic number for the time, more than double the previous record, which marked Drake as the champion of a new(ish) digital format that would transform the music industry.The rapper held that position as further boffo openings followed: “More Life” (385 million streams in 2017), “Scorpion” (746 million, 2018), “Certified Lover Boy” (744 million, 2021), the 21 Savage collaboration “Her Loss” (514 million, 2022). Now Drake has done it again with “For All the Dogs,” which opens with the equivalent of 402,000 sales in the United States, including 514 million streams, according to the tracking service Luminate. It is his 13th LP to hit No. 1.Drake remains one of the kings of streaming, a symbol of the format’s success. As Billboard notes, of the five biggest streaming weeks in history, four are held by Drake, for “Scorpion” (No. 1), “Certified Lover Boy” (No. 2), “For All the Dogs” (No. 4) and “Her Loss” (No. 5). In third place is Taylor Swift’s “Midnights,” which opened with 549 million a year ago.But as other artists have caught up, Drake’s lead may be slipping. The 514 million streams of “For All the Dogs” is the biggest weekly number this year, but only barely; Morgan Wallen’s “One Thing at a Time” started with 498 million in March, and it has since logged well over five billion clicks in the United States alone. On Friday, Bad Bunny, who catapulted to chart-topping global fame via streaming, released a surprise album, “Nadie Sabe Lo Que Va a Pasar Mañana” (“Nobody Knows What’s Going to Happen Tomorrow”), and it has already posted huge numbers, challenging Drake for the lead position on next week’s chart.Also this week, Wallen’s “One Thing” is No. 2 after notching its 16th week at the top. Rod Wave’s “Nostalgia” is No. 3, Olivia Rodrigo’s “Guts” is No. 4 and Zach Bryan’s self-titled LP is in fifth place. More

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    After ‘Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour,’ Stream These 8 Great Concert Movies

    For that live show experience, these films capture exhilarating music by Beyoncé, Shakira, A Tribe Called Quest, Talking Heads and more.If you saw “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” in a theater and enjoyed the vicarious thrill of watching a concert onscreen, here are eight more films of live shows — picked by the Culture desk writers — that will give you a taste of the same experience.Beyoncé, ‘Homecoming’Available to stream on NetflixBeyoncé just announced a new concert film, due in December. Until then there’s her 2018 performance at Coachella. It was the stuff of legends. Marching bands! A Destiny’s Child reunion! So when “Homecoming” dropped on Netflix the next year, it truly felt like a gift. The film is one of intriguing contradictions, feeling both intimate and outsize at once. You see the painstaking hard work in every stunning piece of choreography and hear it in every breathtaking vocal, yet Queen Bey makes it look effortless. Mekado MurphyTalking Heads, ‘Stop Making Sense’In theatersWhat elevates “Stop Making Sense” — and what has made its recent 40th anniversary rerelease now in theaters such a sensation — is its formal elegance. David Byrne begins alone onstage with a tape player and, as fellow musicians gradually accrue with each song, ends as the large-suited ringleader of a rock ’n’ roll circus. The director Jonathan Demme knows he doesn’t need spectacle or special effects to transfix: He just allows each frame to fill with the charisma of a great band. Lindsay Zoladz‘Summer of Soul’Available to stream on Disney+ and HuluIf 1970’s “Woodstock” is one of the defining concert documentaries, “Summer of Soul,” released in 2021, acts as a sort of complement and rejoinder to it. Questlove’s Oscar-winning film exuberantly unearths footage of the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival — which took place the same summer as Woodstock — and cuts together some of the most extraordinary performances from artists like Stevie Wonder, Sly and the Family Stone, Gladys Knight, Nina Simone and so many more. Questlove includes interviews with participants and attendees that contextualize the sets musically and historically, but the film’s power is the ability to make you feel as if you are in the crowd even if you are just sitting on your couch. Esther ZuckermanThe Rolling Stones, ‘Gimme Shelter’Available to stream on MaxThis 1970 documentary directed by the Maysles brothers and Charlotte Zwerin is known as something of a Zapruder film for the death of the ’60s, with its footage of a killing at the Rolling Stones’ free concert at Altamont Speedway a year earlier. Still, the movie’s great music gets across the promise that was lost: Mick Jagger in an Uncle Sam top hat and a long lavender scarf, hip-thrusting his way through “Jumpin’ Jack Flash.” The Flying Burrito Brothers raving up “Six Days on the Road” when it still seemed like Altamont could be “the greatest party of 1969.” And most explosively, Tina Turner, singing “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long” and giving a microphone the time of its life. David Renard‘Depeche Mode: 101’Available to stream or rent on major platformsThe Music for the Masses tour brought the British synth band’s yearning songs — reverberating like confessional hymns in a cathedral — to the Rose Bowl and beyond in 1987-88. “Depeche Mode: 101” takes in the smokily lighted shows (with lead singer Dave Gahan in a billowing white shirt) and the bright-eyed “bus kids,” fans who went along for the ride. D.A. Pennebaker tunes into the heartbeat of Depeche Mode’s electronic sound, co-directing with Chris Hegedus and David Dawkins. Nicolas Rapold‘Rage Against the Machine: The Battle of Mexico City’Available to rent or buy on most major platforms.I would wager this is the only concert film, directed by Joe DeMaio, that periodically cuts away from the performance to show documentary segments about the Zapatistas, the rebel political group of southern Mexico. Tonally, it’s a turn-of-the-century time capsule: The frenetic live footage (recorded in 1999 and released in 2001) seems to have been edited by a can of Red Bull. But the band’s knockout blend of overt leftist ideology and inventive, funky rap-over-metal holds up. Look for the guitarist Tom Morello’s rhythmic tapping of the unplugged tip of his guitar cable to make music, like somebody using the board game Operation as an instrument. Gabe Cohn‘Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest’Available to stream on the Criterion ChannelMichael Rapaport’s documentary about the groundbreaking rap group A Tribe Called Quest isn’t exactly a concert film per se, but it is bookended by a pair of critical tours: a 2008 run that rapper Q-Tip bitterly declares backstage is its last performance ever, and another in 2010 that sees the trio cautiously reuniting. In between is a vibrant tribute, particularly enhanced after Phife Dawg’s death in 2016, and a no-frills look at the story of a singular group that changed hip-hop, even as success distanced them from one another. Brandon Yu‘Shakira: Live From Paris’Available to rent or buy on most major platformsIf Shakira’s recent performance at the MTV Video Music Awards impressed you, this 2011 release will floor you. Singing in three languages (often while dancing vigorously) and playing multiple instruments, the Colombian megastar commands the stage with a magnetic intensity. There isn’t much artifice on display here, only Shakira surrendering her entire body to the vitality of her genre-defying, globally inspired music. Take as proof her sensational belly dancing during “Ojos Así” or her transition from tenderness to fury in the rock ballad “Inevitable.” Carlos Aguilar More