Aurelia Butler

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    Russell Brand Is Granted Bail in U.K. Court Hearing on Rape Charges

    The comedian, actor and YouTuber appeared before a London courtroom for the first stage of what could be lengthy criminal proceedings.The comedian and actor Russell Brand appeared before a London court on Friday on multiple charges of sexual assault, including two counts of rape.His 14-minute appearance at the court, Westminster Magistrates’, was the first, largely procedural step in what are likely to be lengthy criminal proceedings. It came a month after British prosecutors charged Mr. Brand with one count of rape, one of oral rape, two counts of sexual assault and another of indecent assault.As the brief hearing began, Mr. Brand, 49, stood inside a plexiglass box in the courtroom, wearing a shirt opened to show his chest and holding a pair of gold-rimmed sunglasses. Mr. Brand confirmed his name, date of birth and British address, then listened, without showing any visible emotion, to details of the charges.Suki Dhadda, the lead lawyer for the prosecution, said that one woman had accused Mr. Brand of raping her in a hotel room during a British Labour Party conference in 1999. Ms. Dhabba said that another woman had accused Mr. Brand of orally raping her in a bathroom stall at a party.Another woman, Ms. Dhabba said, accused Mr. Brand of kissing her without her consent while grabbing her breasts and buttocks. The final charge concerned a woman who said Mr. Brand had tried to pull her into a bathroom.Mr. Brand has denied all of the charges. In a video posted to his social media accounts in April, he said that he had “never engaged in nonconsensual activity” and that he looked forward to defending himself in court.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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    Sinners’ Director Ryan Coogler Narrates Musical Scene

    The writer and director Ryan Coogler narrates a sequence from his film.In “Anatomy of a Scene,” we ask directors to reveal the secrets that go into making key scenes in their movies. See new episodes in the series on Fridays. You can also watch our collection of more than 150 videos on YouTube and subscribe to our YouTube channel.Viewers might not expect to see a DJ at a turntable in Ryan Coogler’s 1930s-set horror movie “Sinners,” but in this sequence, the history and future of music collide.This sequence takes place in a juke joint opened by the twins Smoke and Stack (both played by Michael B. Jordan). Playing for the crowd is Sammie Moore (Miles Caton), performing a song that was written by Raphael Saadiq and the film’s composer, Ludwig Goransson.“Rafael is from Oakland, kind of a local legend where I’m from,” Coogler said, narrating the moment.The scene starts with Caton’s impressive vocals, while cutting to shots of both Smoke and Stack, as well as other characters in the sequence. “We wanted to use Michael Shawver’s editing skills to establish where everybody is and what their stakes are,” Coogler said.Once all is laid out, the scene flashes back to a conversation between Sammie and another musician, Delta Slim (Delroy Lindo), who explains Sammie’s skill for the blues and the responsibility that comes with his talent.“Blues, it wasn’t forced on us like that religion,” Delta says. “No, son. We brought this with us from home. It’s magic, what we do. It’s sacred and big.”As the scene returns to the juke joint, we hear a voice-over from Annie (Wunmi Mosaku), a conjure woman. She says that some musicians have the gift to make music so powerful, it can conjure spirits from the past and the future. At this point, in an ambitious tracking shot, various eras of musicians appear in the frame, including an electric guitarist and the D.J. at the turntable.“We wanted to do it in a fluid, continuous take,” Coogler said. New music elements continue to be introduced along with new forms of dance.“Aakomon Jones, our choreographer, is changing choreography ever so slightly so that folks still feel like they’re in their time, but also outside of it as we get more and more heightened in this moment,” Coogler said.Read the “Sinners” review.Read an interview with Michael B. Jordan and Coogler.Hear from Buddy Guy, a musician who appears in the post-credits sequence.Find out about the symbolism in “Sinners.”See how “Sinners” and other movies multiply one actor.Sign up for the Movies Update newsletter and get a roundup of reviews, news, Critics’ Picks and more. More

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    After ‘Another Simple Favor,’ Watch These Female-Centered Movies

    The filmmaker behind “Another Simple Favor” likes when things get “really, really extra” onscreen.Across outrageous, often scatological comedies like “Bridesmaids,” “Spy” and “A Simple Favor,” the director Paul Feig, 62, has cemented his unlikely cinematic reputation as a girl’s guy.“I hate to say ‘strong female characters,’ because I don’t like that term,” he said in a video call from Los Angeles. “I just love seeing men and women as equals on the screen, so that’s what I’m always trying to do.”Feig, a Royal Oak, Mich., native whose latest film, “Another Simple Favor,” is streaming on Amazon Prime Video, reflected on some of his favorite moments in movie parity.‘Bringing Up Baby’ (1938)Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn in “Bringing Up Baby.”John Springer Collection/Corbis, via Getty ImagesIn Howard Hawks’s classic screwball comedy, Cary Grant plays a fussy paleontologist and Katharine Hepburn a madcap heiress with a pet leopard (the titular “Baby”) and a penchant for trouble. (Rent or buy it on major platforms.)“Honestly, I didn’t really discover these movies until I went to film school at USC. But over the years of watching comedy I had seen it become completely male-dominated, where women were just sort of props around the men to make fun of or to get in their way.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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    ‘Pavements’: A Sly Ode to the Last Band You’d Give the Biopic Treatment

    Part spoof and part serious, the film is about mythmaking as much as it is about music. The result is delightfully destabilizing.Everybody thinks they know their favorite musicians or bands inside and out: what the lyrics mean, when their style changed, which fabled event made or broke their careers. Filmmakers have always been willing participants in the process, from concert movies to intimate documentaries to glossy biopics. We crave the results, because the myth-weaving is collaborative. And sometimes it involves bending reality a bit to get a better story.Nominally, the subject of the eccentric new documentary “Pavements” (in theaters) is, well, Pavement — but in truth, it’s about the whole ecosystem that creates the legend. The 1990s indie-rock band reached moderate fame in its prime, broke up in 1999, and reunited for tours in 2010 and 2022, which is where “Pavements” begins. The band has a lot of lasting fans, mostly people old enough to have gone to shows or listened on their local college station during Pavement’s original run. There are also a lot of people who’ve never heard of it.That makes the band an unlikely subject for a documentary, which is kind of the joke — and which lends “Pavements” its bigger theme, too. Directed by Alex Ross Perry and edited by the documentarian Robert Greene, it’s a hard film to describe. Part spoof and part serious, its vibe is very much in keeping with its subjects. There’s the documentary part, about the band’s formation and various albums, with archival footage and interviews, a format familiar to anyone who watches documentaries these days.But there are at least three other things going on inside this movie, shot by the cinematographer Robert Kolodny in a variety of visual styles designed to recall genres we’ve seen before. We watch the creation and rehearsal process for “Slanted! Enchanted!,” a Pavement jukebox musical that culminated in two workshop performances in New York in 2022 (one of which I attended). We see the opening of a museum-style show with memorabilia.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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    Nicolas Cage’s Best Performances Onscreen

    We’ve reached the point in Nicolas Cage’s career when it’s easiest to refer to every new movie he’s in by just describing his antics in them. Dracula Cage, terrible boss — that’s “Renfield.” Moody chef Cage, retriever of beloved animal — that’s “Pig.” Serial killer Cage, servant of Satan — that’s “Longlegs.”The tactic works because it’s easy to imagine Cage donning any of those guises, and a thousand more besides. Many a commenter has noted Cage’s propensity for roles that can be described only as crazy, but the actor’s career is too expansive, and often more nuanced, to be reduced to his unhinged characters. Tell me he’s going to play, I don’t know, a ballet master or a mob boss or an enraged father (as in his latest movie, “The Surfer”) and I’ll believe you, because Cage has proved that he contains multitudes, over and over again. Sometimes he even plays more than one guy in the same movie — as in my favorite of his films, “Adaptation,” in which he appears as twins.That means the best way to get a grip on Cage as an artist is to consider him through his many faces. Even when he occasionally takes that face, um, off.‘Moonstruck’ (1987)The Sincere Love InterestEarly on, Cage worked to establish a career apart from his family name. (The “Godfather” director Francis Ford Coppola is his uncle, and the directors Roman and Sofia Coppola and the actor Jason Schwartzman are his cousins.) He managed it swiftly in a string of movies that included many performances as a tousled, passionate, somewhat unpredictable young man. What shines through each is a full-bodied commitment to whatever the character’s emotional reality is — all the roiling desires, the suffering, the ecstasy.A great representative performance from this era is his turn as the lovelorn hothead Ronny, who’s smitten with his brother’s fiancée (Cher) in the 1987 romantic comedy “Moonstruck.” Ronny may be missing a hand thanks to a freak bread-slicer accident, but he’s not missing any gallantry, rough-hewn as it is. It’s a charming, uncouth, amorous role, and versions of that Cage show up in the Coen brothers’ “Raising Arizona” (1987) and David Lynch’s “Wild at Heart” (1990).(Stream “Moonstruck” on the Roku Channel and the Criterion Channel, or rent it on most major platforms.)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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    Jill Sobule, Singer of ‘I Kissed a Girl,’ Dies in House Fire

    Ms. Sobule, 66, died Thursday morning in Woodbury, Minn., her publicist said. She had been scheduled to perform songs from her musical later in the week.Jill Sobule, the singer and songwriter whose hit “Supermodel” and gay anthem “I Kissed a Girl” were followed by three decades of touring, advocacy and a one-woman musical, died on Thursday morning in a house fire in Woodbury, Minn., according to her publicist. She was 66.The Public Safety Department in Woodbury, a Minneapolis suburb, said that firefighters had responded at 5:30 a.m. to a house that was engulfed in flames. The homeowners said one person was possibly still inside. Firefighters found the body of a woman in her 60s inside the house, the department said.The cause of the fire was not immediately clear.Ms. Sobule was scheduled to perform songs from her one-woman musical, “F*ck7thGrade,” on Friday at the Swallow Hill Music venue in her hometown, Denver, according to her publicist. She was staying with friends in Minnesota while she rehearsed for the musical, the publicist said.A free, informal gathering will be held in Ms. Sobule’s honor instead.On her 1995 self-titled album, Ms. Sobule, who was bisexual, featured “I Kissed a Girl,” which tells the story of a woman kissing her female friend. The song came out when it was “dicey” to be a queer musician, Ms. Sobule recalled. But it broke into the mainstream, making its way onto the Billboard charts.“Supermodel,” a rebellious rock song from the same album, was included on the soundtrack of the romantic comedy “Clueless” and further cemented Ms. Sobule’s popularity.“People call me a one-hit wonder,” Ms. Sobule said in a 2022 interview with The New York Times. “And I say, ‘Wait a second, I’m a two-hit wonder!’”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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    When Taxpayers Fund Shows Like ‘Blue Bloods’ and ‘S.N.L.,’ Does It Pay Off?

    Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York has proposed an increase in the film tax credit to stay competitive with New Jersey and other states.New Yorkers — and residents of many other states — have paid more for entertainment in recent years than just their Netflix or Hulu subscriptions.Each New York household has also contributed about $16 in taxes, on average, toward producing the drama series “Billions” since 2017. Over that period, each household has also paid roughly $14.50 in production incentives for “Saturday Night Live” and $4.60 for “The Irishman,” among many other shows and movies.Add it all up, and New York has spent more than $5.5 billion in incentives since 2017, the earliest year for which data is readily available. Now, as a new state budget agreement nears, Gov. Kathy Hochul has said she wants to add $100 million in credits for independent productions that would bring total film subsidies to $800 million a year, almost double the amount from 2022.Other states also pay out tens or hundreds of millions each year in a bidding war for Hollywood productions, under the theory that these tax credits spur the economy. One question for voters and lawmakers is whether a state recoups more than its investment in these movies and shows — or gets back only pennies on the dollar.New York has one of the largest tax credit programs and makes most of its data public, so we totaled its spending to see which productions benefited the most. More