Aurelia Butler

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    How the Agushto Papa Podcast Chronicles Musica Mexicana

    The Agushto Papa podcast has become the go-to media outlet for the rising stars of música mexicana.When the four hosts of the Agushto Papa podcast — all Mexican Americans in their early to mid 20s — were teenagers, they wrestled with, as all young people do, the music of their parents’ generation. The varying styles that are termed, broadly, regional Mexican music, have remained emphatically traditional in presentation and sound for decades. For young men growing up very differently from their parents, listening to it was a complicated proposition.“In middle school, I was kind of scared to tell people that I would listen to it, because back then, it wasn’t cool,” said Diego Mondragon, one of the show’s founders. Angel Lopez, one of his co-hosts, echoed the sentiment: “I feel like there was a negative stigma toward it.”Much has changed in the last five years, however, thanks to an influx of new talent with wide-ranging musical references, gestures borrowed from hip-hop, and increased global attention on Spanish-language music thanks to the rise of streaming. As a result, Mexican music is evolving quickly and being heard more broadly than ever. This movement, broadly referred to as música mexicana, has minted a whole new generation of stars in short order: Peso Pluma, Natanael Cano, Grupo Frontera, Ivan Cornejo, Fuerza Regida, DannyLux, Yahritza y Su Esencia, Eslabon Armado, Junior H and more.Agushto Papa, which released its first episode on YouTube in March 2021, and has since amassed over 270,000 subscribers on the platform, has become the most reliable and visible chronicler of this wave — showcasing new releases, hosting intimate performances, reporting news about established stars and rookies alike, chit-chatting about gossip and keeping an eye on tensions that have been developing between some of the movement’s biggest names.“As first-generation immigrants, we always felt, like it or not, a little bit out of place or a little bit like we’re intruding into something,” Lopez, left, said.Alex Welsh for The New York TimesFour months ago, the hosts — Lopez, 23; Mondragon, 23; Diego (Keko) Erazo, 24; and Jason Nuñez, 23 — each moved out of their respective families’ homes into a shared house in Stanton, Calif., after a long stretch filming the show largely in Nuñez’s family garage, in order to create a more focused environment for making their content. (Erazo, Mondragon and Nuñez grew up nearby, in Westminster, Calif., and played soccer together as children. They met Lopez in high school.)“As first-generation immigrants, we always felt, like it or not, a little bit out of place or a little bit like we’re intruding into something,” Lopez said. “And now, with the music, we heard people our age talking about issues that we have living here in the United States as Mexicans. So we really fell in love with that.” (For a time, Mondragon and Nuñez were in a band, Grupo Activo, managed by Erazo — the podcast’s title is from an inside joke from that era, riffing on the term “a gusto,” or relaxed.)Most of the show’s interview subjects are of a similar age and cultural background as the hosts, creating a built-in ease. “A lot of the new artists that are coming out, they’re Mexican American. They speak both Spanish and English,” Erazo said. Mondragon estimated that about 75 percent of the podcast’s interviews are conducted in English.Erazo added that the casualness of the setting contributes to the hosts’ ability to get unvarnished conversation from their subjects: “They needed somewhere where they could be themselves, be who they are, express their feelings, let it all out instead of going in and being like, ‘Yes sir, no sir.’” Many interviews are booked directly, over text or direct message, bypassing traditional intermediaries.Mondragon also emphasized that it’s not just the musicmakers who are changing, but the music as well, a far cry from what was on offer in his parents’ era. “Back then music was very strict with their rules. Like, ‘you need to dress like this, You need to sing like Vicente Fernández. You need to have this beautiful voice,’” he said. But the introduction of technology and techniques from other genres meant more stylistic entry points for artists.“I think a big reason why the younger generation fell in love with this music is you didn’t really have to have a singer’s voice to participate,” Nuñez said. “If you had like a regular monotone voice, you could still cultivate and create the new style of music.”As the scene has become more popular, there have been more internecine squabbles between artists — a primary one is between Peso Pluma and Jesus Ortiz Paz, the singer of Fuerza Regida — tensions that persist despite the fact that the genre’s rising tide is likely to lift all boats.The podcast’s casual setting is key to the hosts’ ability to get unvarnished conversation from their subjects.Alex Welsh for The New York Times“I think we just try to stay neutral and let the people decide,” Nuñez said. “Just give them the facts.” On the show, discussions about the artists’ barbs at each other are dissected with childlike awe and a layer of concern. (Occasionally the podcasters have tried to capitalize on the spats: They briefly sold “Make JOP and Peso Friends Again” shirts and hats.)Very quickly, the hosts themselves have become figures in the world they document. Occasionally, they’ll share videos which show them getting acknowledged at concerts by the artists they cover and admire. They have started a record label, which they hope to use to elevate new talent, and view the long-running radio and television personality Pepe Garza, and his interview and performance show “Pepe’s Office,” as a model for what Agushto Papa might develop into.There have been some hiccups in the crew’s quick ascent. Recently the show was demonetized by YouTube over a technical issue. And in a recent video, Lopez frankly discussed how the sudden success of the show had led to some disruptive life decisions, which prompted a group decision to stop drinking. “The whole honeymoon phase is over,” he said. When they began the podcast, Lopez said he had been happy just to receive invitations to artists’ parties. “But you’ve got to learn to say no and just to get to work.”Perhaps most crucially, though, not only have they fully reconciled their relationship with the music of their parents’ generation, but they’ve been able to convince their parents that the music of the current generation is valid, too.“A lot of older people were saying, ‘Oh, what is this? Turn it off. That’s not real Mexican music,’” Erazo said.Mondragon recalled his mother’s initial resistance to Cano, one of his favorite artists and a central figure in the movement’s increased visibility. “She would be like, ‘Why does he dress like that? Why does he talk like that? The tattoos are ugly,’” he recalled.She’s opened her mind, and her ears, though. “Now she understands that we need a Nata, we need a Peso — to put Mexico out there to the world, for us.” More

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    Do We Need Album Reviews Anymore?

    Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicIt is an increasingly fraught environment for music journalism and criticism. Recently, on Twitter, a conversation was initiated by the writer and musician Jamie Brooks about whether music journalism was too concerned with reviewing individual albums, and thereby focused less on more holistic, bigger-umbrella approaches to covering artists and scenes.Given the diminishing number of decently-paying options for journalists — particularly young ones — the question of how to deploy limited resources feels pointed and urgent.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about the history of album reviews as a unit of music criticism, and the ways in which the growth of streaming have perhaps permanently altered how single-artist albums are made, and what they’re intended to achieve.Guest:Jamie Brooks, a musician and a columnist at The New InquiryConnect 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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    In Debut, Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla Gets the Philharmonic

    The New York Philharmonic’s renovated hall is a proving ground for guests to balance the orchestra. Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla did so with assurance.Welcome to Season 2 of the New York Philharmonic in its renovated David Geffen Hall. If there is one story line that has carried over from Season 1, it’s the sound.The new Geffen Hall’s acoustics are clearer, if chillier than before. Because every detail in the orchestral playing is more easily audible, so too is every choice about balance — making the hall a tough proving ground for conductors. Guests can find themselves neatly sifted into one of two categories: those who intuitively grasp how to steer the Philharmonic in this space, and those who don’t.Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, who made her Philharmonic debut on Wednesday night, gets it.This Lithuanian conductor led her first program at Geffen with assurance across varied styles — a feat that hasn’t been easily matched by some of her peers in the hall. Sometimes, modern or contemporary works can sound admirably chiseled, while 19th-century ones stint on warmth, and thus charm.The evening, which the Philharmonic dedicated “to those impacted by the conflict and humanitarian crisis in Israel and the Gaza Strip,” included music from a living composer, Raminta Serksnytė’s “De Profundis”; a repertory war horse, Robert Schumann’s Piano Concerto; and a rarity from Sibelius, excerpts from the “Lemminkainen Suite.” But no era or style felt shortchanged on Wednesday. The strings in particular were hard-edged when they needed to be (in the Serksnyte), then icy and glinting (in the Sibelius).Schumann’s concerto was the lush highlight of the program. In the first movement, low strings and percussion had their forceful say, as expected. But subtler delicacies were plentiful: Winds collaborated on heavenly blends; trumpet notes came across as peppery without blaring; violins swooned alongside the soloist.That soloist was Daniil Trifonov, an artist constitutionally incapable of a wan take. He offered a personal, thrilling, at times idiosyncratic approach to Schumann’s famed binary of contrasting alter egos: Florestan and Eusebius. There was plenty of thrusting force in opening chords, representing Florestan and played with abandon reminiscent of Martha Argerich’s style in this concerto. Elsewhere, he delivered winning grace, embodying the moods of Eusebius.But Trifonov did more than run between those bases — he brought them into extended, unexpected dialogue. In quiet stretches, he practically halted his momentum, putting confrontational, 20th-century concepts of space and negation into the flow of the beautiful writing. Likewise, amid fierce tutti passages for piano and orchestra, the fine mechanisms of his playing reached a state of meditative delirium normally associated with Schumann’s dreamy, Eusebian side.Gražinytė-Tyla was alert to each new blend, and matched the orchestra to Trifonov’s prismatic turns. At the close of the first movement, she seemed to use the quick cutoff of Geffen’s acoustic to underline new rhythmic patterning in the score, helping familiar music feel sparkling and alive.Serksnyte’s “De Profundis,” an early work from 1998, opened with motivic boldness and some quickly roving ideas about rhythmic fragmentation, but spun its wheels a bit before a rousing-then-hissing finale. And the three sections of Sibelius’s suite had charm — including a mellow English horn solo from Ryan Roberts in “The Swan of Tuonela” — though it’s hardly material from this composer’s top drawer.And yet the orchestra, heard in its best form on Wednesday, found joy and merit throughout the program. For Gražinytė-Tyla, this was the kind of debut that immediately has you thinking about her future with the Philharmonic. She’s famously happy with freelancing. And, well, New York is a freelancer’s kind of town.New York PhilharmonicThis program continues through Saturday at David Geffen Hall, Manhattan; nyphil.org. More

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    Review: Arca Struts the Catwalk Between Diva and Meta Diva

    In “Mutant;Destrudo,” her show at the Park Avenue Armory, the experimental musician delivers what is essentially a traditional concert.Amid the boundaries that the musician Arca has explored over the past decade — between technology and nature, male and female, vulnerability and aggression — another has arisen recently: the line between a pop diva and an artist commenting on pop divas.As with those other binaries, Arca hovers somewhere in the blurry, ever-evolving middle of this one: a Schrödinger’s diva, simultaneously performing stardom and deconstructing it.“Mutant;Destrudo,” her four-performance show that opened on Wednesday at the Park Avenue Armory in Manhattan, is essentially a traditional concert. There is a stage, a large screen behind it that shows a mixture of live and premade video, and a catwalk protruding into the crowd.Regularly during the two-hour show, a camera at the end of the runway relays a thighs-down view of Arca strutting in spike heels as she sings, à la Beyoncé. There’s a piano on one side of the stage, at which she sits for some quieter moments, à la Lady Gaga or Taylor Swift. There are reggaeton beats overlaid with flowing, easygoing raps, à la Rosalía or Bad Bunny. She takes selfies with phones handed up to her.If you squint, this is pop.That is a world in which Arca, the pseudonym of the Venezuelan-born Alejandra Ghersi, has spent time. She started as a producer for Kanye West, FKA twigs, Björk and others as she built a following for her own music, including the kaleidoscopic five-album cycle “Kick,” released in a flurry in 2020 and 2021.But if parts of “Kick” and “Mutant;Destrudo” seem like plays for mainstream eyes and ears, Arca stubbornly resists being too digestible. The Armory show, like Swift’s touring behemoth, picks and chooses from a catalog that is, after only 10 or so years, widely varied. But unlike Swift, Arca’s eras are spiky and hard to define; she doesn’t do anthems. “Destrudo” is billed as being structured in three acts, but the divisions between them are murky.This is restless, unsettled music, evoking both exhilaration and anxiety that a single person can produce — and can be — so many different things. Wednesday’s set began with murmured lullaby torch songs, in the airy yet sultry, prayerful, sometimes crooning voice of “Arca” (2017) and the fifth “Kick” album. The evening’s climax — long, seething, groaning, grinding synthesizer instrumentals — could hardly have been more different.Arca at the synthesizer where she made the kinds of sounds she specialized in at the beginning of her career: glitches, explosions, video-game-style machine-gun rounds, spacily stretched tones.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesBetween those extremes were hip-swaying bits of reggaeton, from the second “Kick,” and explosive electronics; in one number, smooth vocals and a low-slung beat were disrupted by metallic squeals. Songs seemed to end almost arbitrarily, as if Arca were simply ready to move on to something else. The mood was twitchy, fractured, a perpetual transformation.For all the arresting high-tech video imagery — psychedelic layers superimposed until they took on hologram-like pseudoreality — there was a studiedly rough, decidedly non-stadium aspect to the show.Arca’s first costume change — out of a slinky, shimmering black dress into a plastic breastplate with lights at the nipples and a patchwork miniskirt — took place in full view of the audience, without much rushing or showmanship. The awkwardness of how long it took, the lack of spectacle, seemed intentional: This, she seemed to be saying, is the glamorous drudgery we put female artists through. We sometimes saw Arca on video as she lay on an examining chair, as if our perspective was that of her surgeon.Her piano — unlike Swift’s or Lady Gaga’s — is prepared with magnets that turn it into an electroacoustic machine of woozy, otherworldly lyricism, tinged with buzz. And unlike most pop divas, Arca had a synthesizer setup on the other side of the stage, at which she grinned maniacally and made the kind of noise that she specialized in at the beginning of her career: harsh shards in wet earth, glitches, explosions, video-game-style machine-gun rounds, roars, spacily stretched tones.It was the kind of soundscape that fit the show’s title: “Destrudo” is a term relating to the Freudian death drive, a theme in keeping with Arca’s gothy-cyborg self-styling. But while the music occasionally got loud on Wednesday, there was little of the heavy, disorienting, oozingly morphing melancholy of her early work. Lacking the encompassing (if changeable) moods of the albums, this was a performance more endearing than emotional; even the dancey parts were too brief to build up much joy.“Destrudo” follows “Mutant;Faith,” her 2019 production at the Shed. In that period, when she began identifying as a nonbinary trans woman, pre-“Kick,” it landed more squarely on the side of experimental performance art. Arca did the show in a dirt pit, wore hoofed stilts, used a stripper-pole synthesizer and rode a mechanical bull.Now, trying more than ever to have it both pop and not, she is still fascinating, but — maybe inevitably — not fully satisfying.At the Armory, she was charming, game, sweetly grateful to the crowd. “This is fun, right?” she said, sincerely, as she paused to correct something wrong with the technology in her high heels that seemed meant to translate her steps into sounds. And it was fun — sort of.ArcaThrough Sunday at the Park Avenue Armory, Manhattan; armoryonpark.org More

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    Taylor Swift ‘Eras Tour’ Movie: 4 Takeaways

    There’s something in the singer’s highly anticipated new concert documentary for newcomers and superfans alike.As she greeted the audience at the premiere of her new movie, Taylor Swift sounded a bit sheepish.“You’re stuck with me, because I’m going to sit with you and watch this thing,” she told the crowd at the packed premiere of “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour,” held at the sprawling Grove shopping complex on Wednesday night. Well, one of the crowds, anyway: Thirteen of the theaters at the Grove’s AMC multiplex were filled with eager fans, and Swift stopped by all of them to give a special introduction, eventually settling into an auditorium’s audience that included stars like Adam Sandler and Julia Garner.Regular moviegoers can only hope that an apologetic Swift shows up for more house calls as her concert documentary makes its way into theaters this week. Though it was originally set for release on Friday, Swift just announced that the film will begin screening one day early because of fan demand.Still, even if they can’t watch “The Eras Tour” alongside the singer herself — who came to the premiere in a pale blue Oscar de la Renta gown and danced in her seat for most of its running time — the movie is poised to deliver in a major way.For theatrical exhibitors, whose business has been in jeopardy since the actors strike scuttled plans to release tentpole movies like “Dune” this fall, “The Eras Tour” is being likened to the second coming of Barbenheimer: It’s got the grab-your-besties-and-go appeal of “Barbie,” the shock-and-awe soundscape of “Oppenheimer” and the box-office tracking to rival them both. Bullish film analysts expect an opening weekend between $150 to $200 million, meaning “The Eras Tour” has a shot at taking this year’s box-office tiara from “Barbie,” which notched a $162 million debut.In the meantime, here are four of the takeaways from the premiere.Expect no extras, though you’ll get a front-row seatIf fans are looking for insight into how Swift put her show together, or what was going on in her life behind the scenes, they won’t find it in “The Eras Tour”: There is no additional embroidering in this concert documentary, which was culled from Swift’s six-night August stint at the SoFi stadium in Inglewood, a suburb of Los Angeles. For those who caught one of the 53 shows Swift played in North American this past year, or for the fans hoping to see Swift in her remaining American dates (an international tour begins in February), this film is more or less the same thing as buying a concert ticket.Swift stopped by all 13 screens in the multiplex of them to give each audience a special introduction.Valerie Macon/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThere’s one crucial difference, of course: No stadium seat could offer as close a look at Swift’s performance as this documentary, which is vigorously shot and directed by Sam Wrench. And since the 33-year-old singer designed “The Eras Tour” as a journey through the shifting musical genres of her past 10 albums — from the country-pop “Fearless” all the way up to the recent, stripped-down records “Folklore,” “Evermore” and “Midnights” — this film is the closest thing that exists to a definitive document of one of the world’s biggest performers.In that way, it’s perfect viewing for newcomers and superfans alike: Curious people who were unwilling to shell out for tour prices can now check out Swift at a reduced rate, while Swifties who’ve already attended the concert can relive it in a compelling close-up. My teenage niece, who went to one of the SoFi shows, accompanied me to the premiere and was thrilled by the better look at Swift’s facial expressions and choreography. I noticed that hardly a song goes by without some big smiles from Swift and her backup singers: There’s enough joy on these faces to power entire blocks of Barbie Land.Only a few songs get snipped“The Eras Tour” runs a robust two hours and forty-eight minutes, and though that’s nearly as long as “Oppenheimer,” Swift’s real-life concerts during this tour were even more mammoth, typically clocking in just shy of three and a half hours. Do fans have reason to fear there have been major cuts to the set list?By my count, only a handful of her regular songs go missing on the way to the big screen, including “The Archer,” “Cardigan,” “Wildest Dreams,” and “no body no crime,” which Swift performed at SoFi with the band Haim.Taylor Swift fans Karen Boncan, left, and Petrushka Seville at the premiere on Wednesday.Chris Pizzello/Invision, via Associated PressStill, fans will get plenty of bang for their buck, since Swift performs nearly 40 songs during the movie, including a 10-minute version of “All Too Well” and two other bonus tunes, “Our Song” and “You’re On Your Own, Kid,” that Swift plucked from a rotating selection of surprise songs during her tour. And another trim is sure to be appreciated: Swift now moves between the different eras and costume changes in the blink of an eye onscreen, eliding all the time those segues took onstage.In Hollywood, everyone is a SwiftieBlockbuster premieres have been hard to come by since the actors strike began, and an eclectic cross-section of celebrities turned out for the “Eras Tour” premiere, including Sandler, Mariska Hargitay and the singers Maren Morris and Hayley Kiyoko. Fashion choices ran the gamut from silver sequins to cowgirl fringe, and Alex Atallah, a co-founder of the NFT marketplace OpenSea, entered the theater lobby sporting the colorful, tie-dyed “I Am Kenough” hoodie seen on Ryan Gosling in “Barbie.”“I have very few shirts with this many pastel colors,” Atallah told me before posing for a photo with the “Barbie” co-star Simu Liu.Nearby, I caught Flavor Flav deep in conversation with Swift’s father, Scott. Though they made for an unlikely duo, the 64-year-old rap icon is no fly-by-night fan: He said that he’d seen the “awesome” Swift on two previous tours.“I’ve been a Swiftie for the longest, bro,” Flav insisted.“I’ve been a Swiftie for the longest, bro,” said the rapper Flavor Flav.Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty ImagesBut Swift’s biggest invite was reserved for another A-lister (and no, it wasn’t her new beau Travis Kelce, busy with a football game the next day): Before the premiere began, Swift dined and posed for pictures with Beyoncé, who has her own concert movie “Renaissance: A Film By Beyoncé” due for release on Dec. 1. Like “The Eras Tour,” Beyoncé’s film bypassed traditional Hollywood studios and will be distributed by AMC Theaters.Finally, Swift will enjoy some big-screen successThough she’s a superstar in the music industry, Swift’s forays into film haven’t been as well-received. Her last three movie credits as an actress include the minor young-adult drama “The Giver,” the memorably cataclysmic adaptation of “Cats,” and last year’s David O. Russell-directed “Amsterdam,” which coaxed Swift to pop in for a quick cameo and then promptly ran her over.Unlike Lady Gaga, who has lately toggled between music and movies in equal measure, Swift has treated Hollywood as more of a side hustle, only committing to the occasional supporting role. But last year, after she signed a deal with Searchlight to write and direct an upcoming original film, eyebrows were raised all over town: Was Swift ready to take her movie career a bit more seriously?Bullish film analysts expect opening weekend box office takings between $150 to $200 million for the movie.Valerie Macon/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIt remains to be seen whether Swift will star in her feature directorial debut, but “The Eras Tour” still supplies her with some much-needed big-screen juice. A fun presence in her biggest numbers, like the bouncy “Shake It Off” and rocking “Look What You Made Me Do,” Swift is even more appealing in acoustic numbers that trade busy choreography for simple guitar playing. And in the centerpiece song “Tolerate It,” she shows acting chops during a well-choreographed routine about a dinner date gone wrong: It begins with her beseeching an inexpressive lover and ends with her swatting a vase of roses off the table.Her real talent, though, is selling humility with a megawatt charisma that few celebrities can muster. Introducing one song, Swift insists she had to invent an outsized version of herself in order to write it: “In my fantasy, I’m not a lonely millennial woman covered in cat hair,” the singer says, even though she’s spent the whole film looking impossibly glamorous in sky-high Christian Louboutin heelsAnd yet, you’re still tempted to believe her. What is that, if not a movie star? More

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    Talks Between Striking Actors and Studios Are Suspended

    The sides said they remained far apart on the most significant issues, dealing a blow to hopes that the entertainment industry could soon fully roar back to life.Negotiations between the major entertainment studios and the union representing tens of thousands of actors have collapsed, with both sides saying on Thursday morning that they remained far apart on the most significant issues.The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which bargains on behalf of the studios, said that it was suspending talks because they were “no longer moving us in a productive direction” after a session on Wednesday. SAG-AFTRA, the actors’ union, which has been on strike since July, accused studio executives of “bully tactics,” and said the studios recently presented an offer “that was, shockingly, worth less than they proposed before the strike began.”The collapse of the negotiations is a significant setback for the entertainment industry, which has essentially been at a standstill for months because of dual strikes by actors and screenwriters. On Monday, more than 8,000 screenwriters ratified a new three-year contract with the studio alliance, formally ending their monthslong labor dispute. There was optimism that a deal with the actors would follow and that Hollywood could soon fully roar back to life.But with actors continuing to strike, most television and movie production remains suspended. The financial fallout has been significant. The California economy has lost an estimated $5 billion. Tens of thousands of behind-the-scenes workers have been out of work for months. Share prices for many major media companies have dropped, and now there is a further threat to next year’s box office results.Like their counterparts in the screenwriters guild, leaders of the actors’ union have called this moment “existential.” They are seeking wage increases, as well as protections around the use of artificial intelligence. Actors have now been on strike for 91 days; screenwriters recently returned to work after a 148-day walkout. The last time both unions had been on strike at the same time was 1960.When negotiations between the actors’ union and the studios resumed last week — just days after the studios and screenwriters had reached a tentative agreement — it represented the first time that the sides had met since the actors went on strike on July 14. There were five bargaining sessions, and many industry observers believed that the talks would soon lead to a deal.In a statement released early Thursday morning, the studio alliance said it had offered wage increases, met “nearly all of the union’s demands on casting” and proposed further protections around the use of A.I. The alliance also said it offered “the same terms that were ratified” by both the writers’ and directors’ unions regarding wage increases and streaming royalties.The alliance also said, however, that the actors’ union wanted a viewership bonus that “would cost more than $800 million per year, which would create an untenable economic burden.”Union leaders accused studio executives of walking away from the bargaining table “after refusing to counter our latest offer.”“These companies refuse to protect performers from being replaced by artificial intelligence, they refuse to increase your wages to keep up with inflation, and they refuse to share a tiny portion of the immense revenue YOUR work generates for them,” union officials said in a statement addressed to members. “Our resolve is unwavering,” the statement continued. “Join us on picket lines and at solidarity events around the country and let your voices be heard.” More

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    ‘The Road Dance’ Review: A World War I Weepie

    Based on a Scottish best seller, the movie is a standard period drama that arrives at hard truths with a hammy delivery.Set in the Outer Hebrides, a verdant archipelago to the west of mainland Scotland, “The Road Dance” is a standard period drama that arrives at hard truths with a hammy delivery.Kirsty (Hermione Corfield) is a restless beauty living with her sister and mother in a remote crofting (small tenant farming) community. It’s the years around World War I, and forced conscriptions are sweeping the nation — including Kirsty’s beau, a poetry-reading softy named Murdo (Will Fletcher).Before Murdo and three other local men are shipped off to the Western Front, the village honors them with a night of dance and drink. It’s here that Kirsty will be violently raped, an assault which the director, Richie Adams, depicts blurrily, unfolding in darkness.Adapted from the 2002 Scottish best seller by John MacKay, this run-of-the-mill weepie spends the bulk of its time detailing the aftermath of the attack. Kirsty becomes pregnant, and she’s forced to conceal not just her physical state but her mental trauma from the snooping members of her ultrareligious town. Cryptic sermon scenes about sinners and Satan play throughout Kirsty’s ordeal, raising the stakes — though Kirsty’s not the only one who has gone through hell and back in these parts, as evidenced by a whisper network of wizened women who band together to pull her through.The culprit remains unknown until the bitter end, a revelation served with a bland sort of twist — that any man is capable of such violence. It’s an uninspired take, along with the use of rape as a plot device.Shifting between stagy sincerity and startling realism (the labor scene is particularly colorful), “The Road Dance” is a vividly rendered, if ultimately schematic portrait of feminine resilience.The Road DanceNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 56 minutes. In theaters. More

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    ‘Reality Winner’ Review: Caught in the Cross Hairs

    Sonia Kennebeck’s documentary unpacks the circumstances surrounding its subject, but fails to crack her complexity.It is not always fruitful to compare a documentary about an event with a narrative film portraying that event. Yet “Reality Winner,” Sonia Kennebeck’s hazy nonfiction chronicle of Reality Winner — a National Security Agency contractor who was sentenced under the Espionage Act in 2018 when she was 26 — and this year’s film “Reality,” a searing dramatization of her interrogation, form a tidy double feature. The latter eschews context to paint an evocative real-time picture of a young woman in the F.B.I.’s cross hairs; the former painstakingly maps out the state of affairs surrounding Winner, only to see her personhood trickle away, like water cupped in one’s palms.Rotating among a handful of timelines, Kennebeck’s documentary spends the most time with Winner’s parents and sister as they push for Winner to receive a fair trial. These scenes are interspersed with blurred re-enactments (not unlike those starring Sydney Sweeney in “Reality”) and actual field-recording audio, as well as an interview with Winner, who orates directly into the camera à la Errol Morris’s Interrotron technique.One of the more troubling aspects of this complex case was The Intercept’s mishandling of the leaked document, and “Reality Winner” unpacks how The Intercept’s actions contributed to exposing Winner’s identity to the N.S.A. Indeed, the documentary’s most valuable testimonies come from other whistle-blowers (including Edward Snowden) who come across as extraordinarily well equipped to analyze the story’s knottier details.Despite this access, “Reality Winner” fails to decode its ideologically heterodox subject. The film is clear in showing how the media put her into boxes: a traitor, a terrorist, a progressive, an innocent, a lost cause. But who is Reality Winner? This documentary doesn’t dig deeper than her patently well-meaning exterior.Reality WinnerNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 33 minutes. In theaters. More