Aurelia Butler

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    Looking for Quality Indie Cinema? Try Ovid.

    The streaming service is a great place for independent films off the beaten path.Over the past several months, we’ve examined and recommended several streaming services for the discriminating movie lover — sites and apps for those whose tastes run toward titles a bit more esoteric than the likes of Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. Our latest entry spotlights a terrific subscription streamer for independent film fans.When the streaming service Ovid launched in March 2019, it aimed to fill a gaping hole in the online cinematic landscape. An initiative of Docuseek, L.L.C., Ovid’s founding distributing partners (Bullfrog Films, First Run Features, The dGenerate Films Collection, Distrib Films US, Grasshopper Film, Icarus Films, KimStim, and Women Make Movies) had watched services like Netflix, which were initially happy to host independent movies, turn away from smaller films in favor of splashier mainstream fare and their own, in-house offerings. At Ovid (and a few other streamers we’ve spotlighted in this column), those titles could find a home for viewers with an interest in cinema from the fringes.The service initially housed 350 titles, most of them from the nonfiction space. It now boasts 2,282 titles, and has expanded from those initial eight distribution partners to over 60 from around the world. The library remains heavy on documentary, with films helpfully curated into categories of (among others) biography, arts and culture, politics, the environment, L.G.B.T.Q.+ issues, civil rights and, of course, movies about movies. The service also curates specialized collections, including films about basketball, journalism, the Vietnam conflict, jazz music and “dead French philosophers.”Ovid isn’t merely for doc-heads, however; the service has also grown its library of narrative films, primarily from the worlds of independent and international cinema. Their offerings include contemporary award-winners like Gaspar Noé’s “Vortex,” Jem Cohen’s “Museum Hours” and Sophia Takal’s “Always Shine,” as well as recently rediscovered and restored gems like “The Strangler,” “Delta Space Mission” and “The Tune.” And bingers will find an assortment of fine television shows as well, from the docuseries likes of “The Story of Film: An Odyssey,” “With God on Our Side” and “Reporters Against Power,” along with some less-expected titles (such as the BBC series “Do Not Adjust Your Set” and “At Last the 1948 Show,” which featured various members of Monty Python before they teamed up for that troupe).The interface is smooth and intuitive, and picture quality is sharp, even for older, presumably long-neglected titles. And the service is priced quite competitively — a great deal at $6.99 per month, or at a discounted rate of $69.99 for a full year, one of the most competitively-priced specialty streamers.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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    Mark Duplass Reprises a Killer Role in ‘The Creep Tapes’

    The murderer with the unnerving smile from the “Creep” movies is back, this time in a found-footage-style series on Shudder. Keep the camera rolling.It has been almost 10 years since Mark Duplass put on a monstrous smile in “Creep,” a found-footage horror movie about a serial killer named Josef who lures videographers to his home and slaughters them mercilessly on camera.It’s a universe removed from his Emmy-nominated performance as the high-strung Chip in “The Morning Show” — but it’s a role he seems to relish. Following a “Creep” sequel from 2017, Josef is back again in Shudder’s “The Creep Tapes,” a TV rarity in that the entire series was done in the found-footage style. Not that Duplass knew that he was doing anything particularly new going in.“If there’s anything fresh about what we’re doing it’s because there is an ignorance to the form,” he said in a recent video interview from his home in Los Angeles. “It didn’t strike me that it would be groundbreaking.”Patrick Brice, who with Duplass created the series and wrote and starred in the original “Creep,” directed all six half-hour episodes of “The Creep Tapes.” (The first two episodes debuted on Shudder and AMC+ Nov. 15; new ones arrive on Fridays through Dec. 13.) In a separate interview, he said that he had drawn inspiration for the “Creep” franchise from Jim McBride’s proto-found-footage horror film, “David Holzman’s Diary” (1967), and from the 1980s anthology series “Tales From the Darkside.”“The Creep Tapes” itself is based on an anthological concept: Every episode is purported to be footage from one of the many videotapes that Josef, as revealed in the first movie, has been amassing in his closet, each labeled with a victim’s name.Basing the show on a depraved VHS library, Brice said, allowed him and Duplass to explore more “Creep” but “not have to fully commit to a third film.” But there was another benefit.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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    Peggy Caserta, Who Wrote a Tell-All About Janis Joplin, Dies at 84

    Her Haight-Ashbury clothing store was ground zero for the counterculture. But she was best known for a tawdry book — which she later disavowed — published after Ms. Joplin’s death.Peggy Caserta, whose funky Haight-Ashbury clothing boutique was a magnet for young bohemians and musicians, and who exploited her relationship with Janis Joplin in a much-panned 1973 memoir that she later disavowed, died on Nov. 21 at her home in Tillamook, Ore. She was 84.Her partner and only immediate survivor, Jackie Mendelson, confirmed the death but did not specify a cause.The Louisiana-born Ms. Caserta was 23 and working at a Delta Air Lines office in San Francisco when she decided to open a clothing store for her cohort, the lesbians in her neighborhood. She found an empty storefront on Haight Street, near the corner of Ashbury, which she rented for $87.50 a month.At first Ms. Caserta sold jeans, sweatshirts and double-breasted denim blazers that her mother made. Then she added Levi’s pants, which a friend turned into flares by inserting a triangle of denim into the side seams. When the friend couldn’t keep up with the orders, Ms. Caserta persuaded Levi Strauss & Company to make them.She named the place Mnasidika (pronounced na-SID-ek-ah), after a character in a poem by Sappho. “It’s a Greek girls’ name,” Ms. Caserta told The San Francisco Examiner in 1965, for an article about the “new bohemians” colonizing the Haight-Ashbury district.Ms. Caserta was 23 when she opened a clothing store, Mnasidika, in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco.via Wyatt MackenzieWe 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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    Yunchan Lim Plays Chopin With the New York Philharmonic

    Performing with the New York Philharmonic and Kazuki Yamada, Lim played Chopin’s F minor Concerto with imperturbable calm and eloquence.David Geffen Hall is very nearly sold out for the New York Philharmonic’s performances this Friday, Saturday and Sunday. So jump, if you can, at the vanishing chance to hear Yunchan Lim play Chopin’s Piano Concerto in F minor.In the spirit of the season, let’s give thanks for this 20-year-old pianist from South Korea. On Wednesday at Geffen Hall, Lim played in the spotlight as if he’d been doing it for decades, with such imperturbable calm and eloquence that it was hard to believe that two and a half years ago he was essentially unknown.It was June 2022 when he burst onto the international scene as the youngest ever winner of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition with a rendition of Rachmaninoff’s Third Concerto that became a YouTube sensation. The two blockbuster Rachmaninoff concertos have been early calling cards for Lim, but this year has included a lot of Chopin, including an astonishing traversal of all 24 études at Carnegie Hall and on a new recording.Chopin, with his restrained refinement, is an even more natural fit for Lim than Romantic warhorses like Rachmaninoff. Lim’s playing never feels seething or sweaty; he seems like he has all the time in the world, without ever giving a sense of showboating or indulgence.In the first movement of the concerto on Wednesday, he was dreamily flexible in his phrasing without ever losing the music’s pulse. The slow central Larghetto was achingly poised, its 10 minutes framed by two perfect notes, both A flats: the first deep and softly buttery, the last a pinprick of starlight.This movement is an opera aria without voices and, like a great bel canto singer, Lim understands that coloratura ornaments mustn’t distract from, but actually emphasize, the long, sustained central line of the music. In the finale, he exuded graciousness, attentive to details of touch, as in a passage whose texture moved swiftly from silvery to steely without ever losing smoothness.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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    Kendrick Lamar’s Never-Ending Battles

    Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon MusicLast week, Kendrick Lamar released his sixth album, “GNX,” with no advance notice, unless you count the heavy anticipation that has been hovering around him since the apex of his battle with Drake earlier this year. A squabble over hip-hop ethics became a cultural touchstone, leaving Lamar with a No. 1 hit and Drake with spiritual and professional bruises.“GNX” extends the tension but doesn’t necessarily deepen it. Mostly, Lamar wants to get back to business as usual: making concept songs and albums that are musically complex and lyrically dense. The beef elevated him even higher into the stratosphere, but he doesn’t want it to define him or his career.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about Lamar’s long wrestle with saviorhood, how his new album showcases both his loosest and stiffest tendencies, and the ways in which Drake is still grappling with the fallout of their battle.Guest:Joe Coscarelli, The New York Times’s pop music reporterConnect 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.Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. More

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    Jim Abrahams Brought Timeless Gags to “Airplane!” and More

    With the death of Jim Abrahams, one third of the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker writing and directing trio, a looks at some of the funniest moments from their key films.It’s almost hard to believe that at one point Leslie Nielsen was thought of as a serious actor who was an odd choice to play a comic role like the deadpan doctor in the disaster movie spoof “Airplane!”But casting the unflappable Nielsen to deliver lines like “I am serious, and don’t call me Shirley” in response to the completely reasonable phrase, “Surely you can’t be serious,” was part of the brilliance of Jim Abrahams, who died Tuesday at the age of 80. Along with David and Jerry Zucker, his pals from his youth in Wisconsin, Abrahams was a pioneer of some of the most beloved, gleefully over-the-top comedies in cinema history.Nielsen delivering his “don’t call me Shirley” line in “Airplane!”Paramount Pictures, via Everett CollectionThe Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker movies took their extreme silliness extremely seriously. Their actors, like Nielsen, were as committed to the bit as they were. With a few exceptions — like the kidnapping comedy “Ruthless People” (1986) — the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker mode was parody, taking genres that audiences loved and deliciously skewering them. But their humor was so undeniable that even if you didn’t know what they were making fun of you could lose your breath laughing.When my parents sat me down at a young age to watch “Airplane!,” I had never seen any of the flicks it was riffing on, like “Airport” (1970) or “The Poseidon Adventure” (1972), the latter of which also featured Nielsen. Instead, I was captivated by the sheer absurdity and sometimes perplexing strangeness. The quotable lines are legion, but the bizarrely funny images are also why “Airplane!” lingers so large in the cultural memory.For me, it’s the eggs. During the flight where nothing can seem to go right, Nielsen’s Dr. Rumack attends to a woman who is feeling ill. With ominous music in the background he starts gently, but firmly extracting a series of eggs from her mouth. After the third one comes out, he cracks it against the side of a cup. A little bird flies out. The tension that exists in the scene is real and almost frightening, the woman’s face contorting like something out of a horror film, but the end result is just so ridiculous.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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    ‘Sweethearts’ Review: Friends Without Benefits

    Two college freshmen conspire to simultaneously dump their exes in Jordan Weiss’s unremarkable debut feature.Bright, breezy and requiring little in the way of close attention, the teen rom-com “Sweethearts” is perfect for those who prefer their movies to be barely more than background noise. Otherwise, the lame plotting (by Dan Brier and Jordan Weiss, who also directs) and lack of jokes soon become painfully obvious.Even so, this direct-to-streaming bauble benefits from two leads whose charm effortlessly outshines the material. Kiernan Shipka and Nico Hiraga play Jamie and Ben, friends since childhood and now freshmen at the same college. Both are feeling hobbled by their high-school sweethearts, whose incessant sexting is ruining their enjoyment of college life. Deciding to dump these millstones, Ben and Jamie head home to Ohio for Thanksgiving and a spectacularly convoluted plan to free themselves from their romantic pasts.Though embodying a rather sweet message about finding community and healing the scars of high school, “Sweethearts” is more often vulgar than funny. A gentle but unnecessary subplot involving the public coming-out of a close friend (Caleb Hearon) at least allows the fine Tramell Tillman to low-key capture some scenes as a gay football coach. Likewise the talented comedian Sophie Zucker, who makes the most of her too-brief appearances as Jamie’s mouthy hometown nemesis.Like so many movies these days, “Sweethearts” languishes for the want of a decent screenplay. You can’t just shoehorn in clips from “When Harry Met Sally” (1989) and hope some of that film’s magic rubs off.SweetheartsRated R for flying urine and a flaccid full-frontal. Running time: 1 hour 38 minutes. Watch on Max. More

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    ‘Reinas’ Review: Memories of Lima

    The political turmoil of Peru in the 1990s serves as the backdrop for this intimate domestic drama about growing up and learning to let go.To this day, political violence continues to be an issue in Peru, though the ‘80s and ’90s — when the Maoist guerrilla movement Shining Path waged bloody conflicts against the Peruvian government before being crushed by President Alberto Fujimori — are considered the country’s rock-bottom.“Reinas,” by the Swiss-Peruvian filmmaker Klaudia Reynicke, takes place during this tumultuous period. For most of the running time, it keeps politics on the margins, like a phantom presence looming over the members of one bourgeois family’s everyday lives.The principal characters are two sisters, the teenage Aurora (Luana Vega) and her younger sister, Lucia (Abril Gjurinovic), both of whom can’t entirely wrap their heads around why their mother, Elena (Jimena Lindo), wants so desperately to leave Lima.Preventing their departure is the girls’ estranged father Carlos (Gonzalo Molina), a taxi driver who decides to reconnect with his daughters on hearing that Elena might soon whisk them away to the United States. Both parents must sign a notarized form for their children to leave the country, but Carlos stalls, and his renewed interest in the family gives Aurora (whose world seems to revolve around her friends and the beach) hope that she might be able to stay behind with him.More compelling than this somewhat unconvincing family dynamic, structured around the coming-of-age arc and the trite theme of learning to let go, is the film’s intimate sense of time and place, and the subtly effective manner by which the grim social context is made known (such as a citywide curfew and sugar shortage). Seemingly inconsequential moments — like a cozy house party scene — shine with loving specificity, making the perpetual return to the Carlos drama feel dutiful. In this case, thematic focus is bit of a buzz kill, pulling an otherwise unique portrait onto generic grounds.ReinasNot rated. In Spanish, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 44 minutes. In theaters. More