Aurelia Butler

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    An Ambient Playlist to Create a Bubble of Tranquillity

    Listen to 8 airy, cumulous songs (keeping in mind that not all ambient music sounds like this).Never miss a chance to experience Laraaji’s sonic opalescence.Balarama Heller for The New York TimesDear listeners,In times when I need to tune out the busy exterior world and tune into my own subconscious, I turn to ambient music.I have read entire novels — on rush-hour subway commutes, no less! — thanks to the dulcet tones of Laraaji. I retained (most of) my sanity when a new apartment building was going up across the street because of the textured, hypnotic drones of Bitchin Bajas. I have written more articles to the placid soundtrack of Brian Eno’s “Music for Airports” than I can possibly count.Ambient music — a vast and nebulous genre that I’d very loosely define as wordless music that focuses more on atmosphere and tone than on rhythm and melody — has had a surprising and somewhat controversial uptick in popularity in the past decade. It became a common method for quelling anxiety during lockdown, but even before the pandemic it had become something of an ever-present millennial commodity, in the form of endless streaming playlists advertised to help one study, work or just chill.The Canadian experimental musician Tim Hecker called ambient music “the great wellspring — but also the bane of my existence,” in a recent Times profile by Grayson Haver Currin. His reason? “It’s this superficial form of panacea weaponized by digital platforms, shortcuts for the stress of our world,” he said. “They serve a simple function: to ‘chill out.’ How does it differ from Muzak 2.0, from elevator music?”Hecker is definitely on to something. In the streaming era, ambient music has too often been branded as yet another tool for hyper-capitalist optimization — either a way of focusing more deeply at work or relaxing more deeply in order to return to work recharged and ready to be more productive. The actual artistry involved in composing such music, at least according to this viewpoint, is woefully beside the point.In fall 2020, when I had the delight of interviewing the ambient pioneer and perpetual crossword answer Eno, he recalled composing his earliest works of what he called “Discreet Music” in the late 1970s, and voiced reservations similar to Hecker’s. “When I started making ambient music,” he said, “I was very conscious that I wanted to make functional music. At that time, functional music was almost exclusively identified with Muzak — it had a very bad rap. Artists weren’t supposed to make functional music. So, I thought, ‘Why shouldn’t they?’”I appreciate Eno’s challenge that artistry and functionality don’t have to be mutually exclusive. When he considered how he used music in his own life, he realized, “Well, I use it to make a space that I want to live in.” Sometimes that desired atmosphere was kinetic and upbeat, so he’d listen to Fela Kuti all day. Other times, he preferred slow orchestral music. “I started to think, I imagine a lot of other people are doing this as well,” he said. “Ambient was really a way of saying, ‘I’m now designing musical experiences.’ The emphasis was on saying, ‘Here is a space, an atmosphere, that you can enter and leave as you wish.’”In that spirit, today’s playlist is a space that you can enter and leave as you wish. I designed it to be airy, tranquil and cumulous, like a house of drifting clouds illuminated by slashes of sunbeams. Of course, not all ambient music sounds like this. (I love Hecker’s music, for example, but much of it features evocatively woolly textures and a general sense of foreboding that would have felt out of place here.) I tried to find a unifying harmony in the feelings and tones that all of these songs conjure, and, though they’re all very different artists, I found that Julianna Barwick’s heavenly vocal tapestries, Laraaji’s sonic opalescence and Hiroshi Yoshimura’s burbling electronics worked exceptionally well together.Many of these songs have existed in my own life as “functional music,” as Eno calls it, but not just in the soulless “Music for Productivity” sense that Hecker rightly bemoans. I have used some of these songs, time and again, to slow down and daydream. I used a few of them on a playlist at a friend’s wedding that I D.J.ed, for those liminal but still sacred moments when the guests were arriving. I tested this exact playlist earlier this week on a noisy New Jersey Transit train, and it gave me enough mental elbow room to get lost in Annie Ernaux’s gorgeous and immersive novel “The Years.” May this music find its own unique and gloriously unproductive function in your life.Listen along on Spotify as you read.1. Laraaji: “Trance Celestial — Movement 3”A gently luminous slice of bliss from the prolific New Age legend and laughter enthusiast’s 1983 composition “Trance Celestial.” (Listen on YouTube)2. Julianna Barwick: “Envelop”To create the songs on her magnificent 2011 album, “The Magic Place,” Barwick wove layer upon layer of ethereal vocal loops into intricate symphonies of breath. (Listen on YouTube)3. Harold Budd and Brian Eno: “An Arc of Doves”In 1980, for the second album in his Ambient series, Eno teamed up with the Minimalist composer Harold Budd for the evocative “The Plateaux of Mirror.” On “An Arc of Doves,” Budd’s improvised clusters of piano notes glide along the marbled surfaces of Eno’s electronics. (Listen on YouTube)4. Hiroshi Yoshimura: “Feel”A pioneer of Japanese ambient music, Yoshimura’s “Feel,” from his landmark 1986 album “Green,” uses synthetic sounds to construct an otherworldly landscape. (Listen on YouTube)5. Laraaji: “Trance Celestial — Movement 4”Back to the celestial trance already in progress. I love the rippling effect Laraaji achieves here. (Listen on YouTube)6. Mary Lattimore and Paul Sukeena: “Hundred Dollar Hoagie”Though its title is charmingly down-to-earth, the harpist (and, here, synth wizard) Mary Lattimore’s 2022 collaboration with the guitarist Paul Sukeena sounds like a warped transmission from a distant galaxy. (Listen on YouTube)7. Bitchin Bajas: “Pieces of Tape”The adventurous Chicago group Bitchin Bajas create soundscapes of all sorts of tones and textures, but here, on a nearly 10-minute composition from their 2014 self-titled album, they sound like warm-blooded aliens. (Listen on YouTube)8. Brian Eno: “2/2”I just had to include something from “Music for Airports.” Ken Emerson’s 1979 New York Times review of the album is an illuminating time capsule, too. As he concludes, “if it were ever actually piped over the p.a. system at LaGuardia, travelers would either ignore it — or miss their flights.” (Listen on YouTube)Wordlessly,LindsayThe Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“An Ambient Playlist to Create a Bubble of Tranquillity” track listTrack 1: Laraaji, “Trance Celestial — Movement 3”Track 2: Julianna Barwick, “Envelop”Track 3: Harold Budd and Brian Eno, “An Arc of Doves”Track 4: Hiroshi Yoshimura, “Feel”Track 5: Laraaji, “Trance Celestial — Movement 4”Track 6: Mary Lattimore and Paul Sukeena, “Hundred Dollar Hoagie”Track 7: Bitchin Bajas, “Pieces of Tape”Track 8: Brian Eno, “2/2”Bonus tracksJon Pareles’s radiant profile of the 79-year-old Laraaji, from earlier this year, is a must-read.So is Isabelia Herrera’s poignant and beautifully descriptive essay from last year, about how ambient music helped her relinquish control after her mother had a stroke. “In its call to suspend time,” she writes, “the music carries the potential to press pause on the punishing velocity that attends disaster, that robs our attention and predetermines a fixed future.”And I cannot mention Annie Ernaux without also pointing you toward the great Rachel Cusk’s definitive piece on the recent Nobel Laureate.Plus, as always, check out the Playlist for the latest song recommendations. This week, we have new tracks from Blur, Bad Bunny, Anohni and the Johnsons, and more. More

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    Jimmy Buffett, Hospitalized After Bahamas Trip, Cancels Show

    The 76-year-old performer canceled a Saturday performance in Charleston, S.C., for unspecified health reasons. He had resumed touring this year after canceling a series of shows in October.Jimmy Buffett, the singer-songwriter who has built a lucrative lifestyle empire on the basis of beach-bum anthems like “Margaritaville” and “It’s 5 O’Clock Somewhere,” canceled a show scheduled for Saturday in Charleston, S.C., after he was hospitalized for an unspecified illness.Mr. Buffett, 76, said in a statement on Thursday that he had a “sudden change of plans this week” after returning from a trip to the Bahamas.“I had to stop in Boston for a checkup but wound up back in the hospital to address some issues that needed immediate attention,” he said. “Growing old is not for sissies, I promise you.”Mr. Buffett said that he would perform again when he is “well enough.”A representative for Mr. Buffett responded to a request for information about his condition by referring to his statement and declined to comment further.It was unclear on Friday how long Mr. Buffett would refrain from performing. There were no events listed on his tour page, which told Parrotheads, as Mr. Buffett’s fans call themselves, to “stay tuned” for upcoming show announcements.Nick Pezzorello, the president of a Charleston-based Jimmy Buffett fan club, said that the Lowcountry Parrothead Club wished Mr. Buffett a “speedy recovery” so that his fans “may enjoy and celebrate his music and lifestyle for many more years to come.”“We will anxiously await his return to the Holy City,” Mr. Pezzorello said, referring to Charleston.It was the second time in seven months that Mr. Buffett has had to reschedule shows because of his health. Citing “health issues and brief hospitalization” in September, Mr. Buffett canceled five shows that had been planned in Las Vegas, San Diego, Salt Lake City and Nampa, Idaho, in October.“On doctor’s orders, he must take this time to recuperate and heal,” an announcement on Mr. Buffett’s website said in September.Mr. Buffett was soon back on the road, performing monthly since February. He rescheduled and performed two shows in Las Vegas in March and one in San Diego in early May. He also played in Key West, Fla., and Phoenix.Last month, his hit “Margaritaville” from the 1977 album, “Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes,” was among 25 recordings that were added to the National Recording Registry.The registry, which is part of the Library of Congress, designates recordings that are “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant” and “worthy of preservation for all time.”When “Margaritaville” was released, the song stayed on the sales charts for months, “scoring with pop and country audiences alike, as well as teenagers and adults,” the Library of Congress said in a statement in April.The song celebrates a life of sunny leisure and frozen drinks, from the opening lines, “nibblin’ on sponge cake, watchin’ the sun bake,” to its earworm refrain, “wastin’ away in Margaritaville, searchin’ for my lost shaker of salt.”“Today, its lyrics are as memorized as any song in history,” the Library of Congress said, adding that the song is “as well known and omnipresent as ever — a regular component of bars, beach parties, karaoke and any place cool vibes are required.” More

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    At Cannes, Harrison Ford Bids a Teary Goodbye to Indiana Jones

    The star was happy with the new film’s de-aging effect but “I don’t look back and say I wish I was that guy again, because I don’t. I’m real happy with age.”Harrison Ford was beginning to tear up and the movie hadn’t even started yet.It all went down Thursday night at the Cannes Film Festival premiere of “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” part of the five-film adventure franchise that Ford kicked off when he was 37 years old and now, at 80, is bringing to a conclusion. After Ford took his seat in the Grand Théâtre Lumière, the festival director, Thierry Frémaux, addressed him from the stage. “We have something special for you,” he said.Ford raised his eyebrows. A surprise? Well, a clip reel — or as Frémaux put it, an “hommage.” And as Frémaux continued to speak, Ford’s lower lip began to quiver.As an actor, Ford can be beguilingly vulnerable — watch the way his eyes widen when he takes an onscreen sucker punch — but as a public figure, he has a reputation as a curmudgeon. This is a man who says no more than he has to in interviews, and attempts to probe his emotional state are typically swatted away.But something is different this time around. As Frémaux cued the clip reel, Ford pressed his hands together, brought them to his lips and blew Frémaux an appreciative kiss. A montage followed that tracked Ford’s career from its humble beginnings through the explosive superstardom of “Star Wars” and “Indiana Jones,” and when he was brought up to the stage afterward to receive an honorary Palme d’Or, Ford’s voice trembled. “I just saw my life flash before my eyes,” he joked.He was even more emotional two and a half hours later when “Dial of Destiny” ended, the lights came up and a cameraman scurried back over to capture Ford’s reaction. The actor’s eyes were wet with tears that he made no effort to brush away, and asked about it the next day at a news conference for the film, Ford had to collect himself.“It was indescribable. I felt …” He paused, then chuckled softly. “I can’t even tell you,” he said. “It’s just extraordinary to see a kind of relic of your life as it passes by. But the warmth of this place, the sense of community, the welcome is unimaginable. It makes me feel good.”In its initial bow on the Croisette, “Dial of Destiny” has so far received mixed reviews. It’s the first in the series to be directed by someone other than Steven Spielberg — this time, it’s James Mangold (“Walk the Line,” “Logan”) — and the changeover is noticeable: “Dial of Destiny” is missing Spielberg’s sense of humor and the giddy pleasure that’s conjured just from the inventive way he blocks a scene.But Ford holds the whole thing together as its star. Though he’s introduced in a prologue that digitally de-ages him, by the time the movie arrives in 1969, Ford’s Indiana seems every bit as weathered as the artifacts he searches for. Gray-haired, estranged from his wife, Marion (Karen Allen), and out of step with the times, this is a more beaten-down Indiana Jones then we’re used to seeing, and Ford leans all the way in. An adventure ensues that brings back his sense of derring-do, but it’s clear throughout the film that Indiana is preparing to hang up his hat.So is Ford: Though he is busier than ever, with roles on the shows “Shrinking” and “1923,” he has said that this will be the last time he plays his most iconic character. When asked why at the news conference, Ford gestured to himself in disbelief.“Is it not evident?” he said. “I need to sit down and rest a little bit.”An Australian reporter begged to differ. “I still think you’re very hot,” she said. “I was stunned to see you take your shirt off in the second scene. And you’ve still got it!”Replied Ford with mock-grandeur, “Look, I’ve been blessed with this body. Thanks for noticing.”With Ford successfully de-aged in the film’s prologue, and Lucasfilm willing to use body doubles and CGI to create a young Luke Skywalker on “The Mandalorian,” is there any chance we could see that technology used to put a young Indiana Jones in future movies that don’t physically star Ford?“No,” replied the producer Kathleen Kennedy.“You got the answer from the right person,” Ford said.Still, he confessed that it was unusual to watch himself as a young man in the film’s prologue. At a time when Ford is contemplating his life’s full span, it provided a reminder that he’s content exactly where he is.“I’m very happy with it, but I don’t look back and say I wish I was that guy again, because I don’t,” he said. “I’m real happy with age, I love being older. It was great to be young.”Ford grinned. “I could be dead! But I’m still working. Go figure.” More

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    Why the Original ‘White Men Can’t Jump’ Is Timeless

    Unlike most sports films, the original tale of streetball adversaries, played by Woody Harrelson and Wesley Snipes, wasn’t about winning or losing.“White Men Can’t Jump” was released on March 27, 1992. On the morning of March 28 — according to a wonderful if apocryphal sports legend — Michael Jordan rolled up to the Sunset Ridge Country Club in the suburbs of Chicago, drank around 10 bottles of Coors Light and played two rounds of golf. He had a game that night. Brimming with beer, Jordan posted 44 points, six assists and three steals to help the Bulls beat the visiting Cavaliers 126 to 102.The writer-director Ron Shelton’s brisk, lighthearted basketball comedy isn’t about the N.B.A., and the only time Jordan is mentioned, it’s somewhat disparagingly: Sidney Deane, the stylish, loudmouthed streetball virtuoso played by Wesley Snipes, brags that Jordan was impressed with his skills and advised him to join the summer league, an offer he declined. (Professional training, Sidney balks, “might mess up my game.”) But there is something of Jordan’s brazen, bravura post-beer performance in “White Men Can’t Jump,” which fairly thrums with cocksure athletic swagger. It’s not, like many sports movies, about what it takes to win. It’s about what it takes to win with panache.A hit with audiences and critics back then — in The Times, Janet Maslin praised its “raucous wit” — the movie’s reputation has swelled enormously in the intervening three decades. “White Men Can’t Jump” has since emerged as a bona fide classic, adored by basketball fans and cherished for its loving depiction of streetball. On Friday, Hulu will release a remake starring Sinqua Walls and the rapper Jack Harlow, though it hardly seems likely to recapture the singular magic of the original (which is also streaming on Hulu).Sinqua Walls, left, and Jack Harlow in the Hulu remake of the film.Peter Lovino/20th Century Studios, via Associated PressPart of the appeal is in how grounded the movie seems in its time and place. Billy Hoyle (Woody Harrelson) is a gifted hooper who makes a precarious living for himself and his girlfriend, Gloria (Rosie Perez), by hustling Black streetball players who underestimate him because he’s white. When he shows up to the courts of Venice Beach, Shelton shoots our entree into this world with a local’s eye for color. We see sand being combed, people performing tai chi, bodybuilders curling dumbbells: the rich sense of detail establishes us firmly in this community. And what we appreciate immediately is that we are far, far away from the world of professional basketball: this is real Venice Beach streetball, and it’s basketball as a fixture of everyday life.Billy is there to take Sidney’s money. But other than a few cracks about race — Sidney and his friends mock the uncool-looking Billy as a geek — it’s clear that he fits right in. What Billy understands, and what the movie so beautifully expresses, is that streetball is about more than merely who is the most accomplished player. Streetball is about attitude and verve, about bombast and braggadocio. When Billy drains a three-pointer in a shootout, Sidney nonetheless derides his style: “No aesthetic beauty whatsoever,” he jeers. Or as one of Sidney’s friend puts it, after Sidney’s more elegant three in reply: “A thing of beauty is a joy forever. My man John Keats said that!”Other sports movies have captured the power of victory. Only “White Men Can’t Jump” has captured the power of talking smack. The movie is a master class in mockery and ridicule. On the court, Sidney and Billy eloquently extol the virtues of the incisive barb or well-timed insult, demonstrating the degree to which winning and losing in streetball comes down to disturbing an adversary’s concentration and preserving one’s own clarity of mind. “It’s different than your country club,” Sidney teases Billy, insinuating that he won’t be able to cut it on a real streetball court, where mental toughness more than simple proficiency is the name of the game. But Billy can malign with the best of them. “Let’s stop and gather all these bricks. Let’s build a homeless shelter,” he snickers, “so maybe your mother has a place to live!”Billy thinks he has Sidney’s number. “You’d rather look good and lose,” he tells him, “than look bad and win.” It’s an apt diagnosis, but it cuts both ways. Billy’s game is wrapped up in his ego and pride, too — a fact made clear when he later takes an ill-advised bet to prove that he can dunk, simply because he can’t stand to be insulted. Billy and Sidney both strive for what the Italian courtier and writer Baldassare Castiglione called “sprezzatura”: studied carelessness, “which conceals all artistry and makes whatever one says or does seem uncontrived and effortless.” They want to dominate, but more to the point, they want to make dominating look easy.It’s not that the movie endorses this point of view. In fact, it wisely complicates the idea, later making Billy pay for his hubris when Gloria leaves him over his obsession with the game. “Sometimes when you win, you really lose,” Gloria cautions Billy, in the film’s most memorable monologue, and perhaps the closest thing it has to a thesis statement. But the film understands the driving force that keeps Billy and Sidney in the game even when they should quit, and it’s one of the few movies of its kind to depict that pure streetball attitude with real wisdom. For these guys, ball is life. They can turn down a challenge about as easily as they can stop breathing.“White Men Can’t Jump” opens and closes on the same court on the same beach, with the same a cappella trio, the Venice Beach Boys. The circular structure is fitting for a movie about what is in essence an endless pastime — and we can well imagine Billy and Sidney remaining there, draining shots back and forth until the end of time. That may account for why the movie has endured for more than 30 years, and why its appeal seems timeless. It’s not just about a few games of basketball in the summer of 1992. It’s about the magic of streetball — and that magic is forever. More

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    ‘Movie Theaters Are the Marketplace of Free Ideas’

    John Fithian saw a lot during his nearly three decades as the president and chief executive of the National Association of Theater Owners, the top lobbyist for movie theaters, a tenure that ended on May 1.He grappled with the transition from film projection to digital cinema and engaged in multiple battles over the studios’ desire to shorten the amount of time newly released movies can exclusively be shown in theaters amid the rise of streaming services. Yet it wasn’t until spring 2020, at the start of the pandemic, when Mr. Fithian actually wondered whether his business was going to survive.Mr. Fithian said he was receiving calls “multiple times a day, from people saying, my third-, fourth-generation family business will be gone in a couple of months if you don’t get something for us,” he said with a nervous laugh. “That was that was when the crisis was very, very real to us.”He helped secure more than $2 billion in tax relief for the industry, allowing most of the country’s theater chains to stay afloat. In the end, only 2,000 screens were closed down.Mr. Fithian, 61, was raised in Washington, D.C., the son of former Representative Floyd Fithian of Indiana. He began his career as an outside counsel for clients that included the Major League Baseball players’ union and the theater owners’ association.“Hearing theater owners talk about why they went into business or why their grandparents went into the business was completely inspiring,” he said. “It sounds silly, but movie theaters are the marketplace of free ideas.”This interview, which was condensed and edited for clarity, was conducted during CinemaCon, an annual industry trade event, in Las Vegas.When was the moment when you felt like the movie theater business was going to be OK?About a month ago. (Laughs.) In 2022, we knew that people were coming back on a per-film basis at prepandemic rates so that kind of gave us the inkling that everything would be fine if the movies kept coming back. But, to be completely confident that this business will now grow to higher levels, that was only within the last few months, with pronouncements from the leaders of the major studios about their release slates going forward, by Amazon and Apple jumping into the theatrical business.Do you now see some silver linings to the pandemic?The so-called streaming wars that had started before the pandemic had the companies who owned streaming services, and Wall Street and its financial backers, believe that the only thing that mattered as a competitive business model was the number of subscribers to streaming services. We had heard from several studio leaders prepandemic that they really wanted to experiment with the elimination of a theatrical window.Eliminate it completely?“Some executives thought that. Others thought it should be dramatically shorter. There was a lot of pressure coming into the pandemic and during the pandemic. And release models totally changed. A lot of movies went only to streaming services. A lot of movies went simultaneously to theaters and streaming services. At the time, these were thought of as crisis moments for the creative community and for theater owners.But what happened is that a whole bunch of data came out of the pandemic about these theories of the theatrical window. One, it was quite clear when you compare the movies during the pandemic, the ones that had an exclusive theatrical window did much better theatrically, but then also did better when it got to the home. Two, we learned that piracy is exacerbated by shrinking the theatrical window. If movies are only in cinemas, the only way you can pirate a movie is with a recording device. And the quality level is not great. When a movie gets released to the home, a pristine digital, easily replicable, easy-to-distribute-around-the-world copy becomes available. So you’re literally cannibalizing movie theater sales from the very first day.Netflix is the last holdout when it comes to the theatrical space. Now that you have Amazon and Apple demonstrating a much greater interest in theatrical, does Netflix’s position matter as much?I’m just stoked that one of my goals before retirement was to get two out of three of the streamers to go theatrical. We got two out of three. I just didn’t think those would be the two.Do you believe you’ve permanently lost moviegoers because of changing habits developed during the pandemic?We don’t think so. We were very nervous about that right when we started coming out of the pandemic, and there was data early in the reopening that suggested that two demographics, seniors and families with small children, weren’t prepared to come back to cinemas. Then it became a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy, because studios wouldn’t theatrically distribute movies that appealed primarily to seniors, or to families with young children. Now the data is clear that movies released targeting those demographics are performing similar or better than they did in 2019, just like the movies targeted to other demographics. It was not a big surprise to us that the “Super Mario Bros. Movie” was going to do an extraordinary amount of business.People love to criticize the moviegoing experience: It’s too loud, and people talk, use their phones, and you have to sit through 30 minutes of ads before the movie starts. Is there an awareness that there are issues with going to the movie theater?We surveyed lots of theater owners about their plans coming out of the pandemic about adding premium large format screens, about replacing their sound systems, about adding alcohol service, about continuing to replace their seats. And the numbers are really strong. Now that the business is coming back, the theater owners have already started to continue to innovate and improve the experience so that it’s always better than the home.In both Los Angeles and New York, quite a few prime theaters that catered to independent film have shut down. Do you think independent film is struggling for a home nowadays?There’s a fascinating thing to me that I’ve noticed throughout my 30 years of representing theater owners, and that is what happens in Los Angeles or New York suggest to the creative community, the moviemakers, the reporters who cover our business, and the financial community, that is the movie experience. There’s a lot more out there. One company, Pacific Theaters, which ran the ArcLight, is the only company in the country who filed Chapter Seven bankruptcy. They went out of business entirely. There were a couple Chapter 11 reorganizations, but the only one that said, “Eh, I’m done” was Pacific. It does not mean that the art houses across the country closed down.What is a misconception people have about the movie theater business that you’ve tried to correct but didn’t succeed?Ticket prices. Even through all the innovations and improvements in the technology, and the sound systems and the premium screens — all the ways that we’ve improved the cinema experience over the last decade or two, it’s still the case that the average price of a ticket today on a cost-of-living basis is less than it was in the 1970s. And yet people always say movie tickets are too expensive.What are the biggest challenges facing the theatrical exhibition business going forward?I think the existential challenges — the pandemic, the streaming wars — are gone. I’m really the most optimistic I’ve been in 30 years about the future of the business. The biggest immediate challenge is it’s going to take a while to fix the balance sheets.Long term, it’s still about two things: the creation and distribution of really good movies that appeal to all demographics in all different genres, with diverse casts and diverse themes, and really good operational experiences at theaters that also offer diversity and different value-based judgments. If the studio partners keep making really good movies that appeal to diverse audiences, and we keep innovating and upgrading cinema experiences, I’m very bullish on the long-term health of the industry.Were you a movie lover before you took this job?I like movies. But I was principally a First Amendment lover, and a First Amendment lawyer in Washington. Our members will play everything: the most radical, left-wing anarchist film, the most conservative religious film, and we get protests on both sides. To me it was always like, “Bring it on.” Movie theaters are the town halls of modern society. It’s where people go to experience something collectively, and then debate the issues of the day.What is the thing you are going to miss the least?I don’t know who I’m going to miss the least, the really aggressive know-it-alls in Hollywood or the really aggressive know-it-alls in Washington, D.C. A lot of these people are my really good friends, and I’ll have some lasting relationships with both creatives and studio executives, but, you know, sometimes just because you run a big studio or you’re a United States senator doesn’t mean you know everything. I will not miss that. More

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    A Look at the ‘Fast and Furious’ Franchise Feuds

    As “Fast X” races into theaters, here’s a look at the conflicts — star vs. star, star vs. director and more — that have kept this franchise in high gear.Over the course of more than 20 years of the “Fast and Furious” — the 10th in the franchise, “Fast X,” arrives this weekend — battles have been fought, villains have been overcome, friends have become foes and lovers have been reunited. (There was even a case of alignment-altering amnesia.)Behind the scenes, though, the conflicts have been no less fractious, with stars variously attacking the producers, their castmates and the franchise itself. With so much drama onscreen and off, it can be difficult to keep track of who has feuded and who is still feuding. So in honor of “Fast X,” here’s a guide to the beefs of the “Fast and the Furious.”Brian vs. DomThe series of explosive, high-octane blockbusters involving international espionage and elaborate multimillion-dollar heists began with “The Fast and the Furious,” a relatively straightforward 2001 crime thriller about an undercover cop trying to bust a Los Angeles street racing ring. The cop was Brian O’Conner (Paul Walker), and his quarry was the brawny, mysterious Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel). The pair faced off on the road, as uneasy friends turned enemies on opposite sides of the law, until their reconciling in an extravagant show of mutual respect. In the aftermath, Brian and Dom teamed up, stealing supercars and helping the feds as demanded by various plot turns.Paul Walker and Vin Diesel vs. the ProducersAfter the success of “The Fast and the Furious,” Diesel turned down at least $20 million to appear in the 2003 sequel, leaving Walker to reprise his role in “2 Fast 2 Furious” without his co-star. A third film, “The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift,” starred neither, which Walker attributed to “politics, studio stuff, a regime decision” (though Diesel did make a cameo appearance). By the time a fourth film was proposed, Walker felt he was finished with the franchise: He told The Los Angeles Times that he found the material “stale” and questioned “if there was even an audience anymore” for another movie. It took Diesel to persuade him to put his reservations aside and sign on. “I thought, ‘Why not?’” Walker said.Dom and Brian vs. HobbsWith “Fast Five” (2011), the street-racing franchise transformed into a heist flick: Brian, Dom and the rest of their fast-driving crew head to Rio de Janeiro to steal a safe full of cash from a nefarious drug kingpin. In hot pursuit is the big-biceped Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson), an agent with the Diplomatic Security Service whose motor skills rival Brian and Dom’s. They have no choice but to put up a fight — a conflict resolved in later films when Hobbs joins their team.Dwayne Johnson vs. Vin DieselIn summer 2016, toward the end of production on the eighth installment, “The Fate of the Furious,” Johnson surprised fans when he appeared to criticize the cast: “My female co-stars are amazing and I love ’em. My male co-stars however are a different story,” he wrote in a now-deleted caption on Instagram. “Some conduct themselves as stand up men and true professionals, while others don’t,” adding some colorful expletives denigrating the men. Many assumed he was calling out Diesel — a hunch later confirmed by both actors, who said they did not share any scenes together. Johnson has since slammed Diesel as “manipulative,” and he did not appear in “F9” or “Fast X.”Letty vs. the CrewDom’s wife, Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), died in the fourth entry, “Fast & Furious” (2009), at the hands of a drug lord and his right-hand man during an undercover bust gone wrong. But she made a dramatic — if somewhat far-fetched — return two films later, revealed to have survived the explosion that seemed to kill her but suffering from amnesia. She spends the bulk of “Fast & Furious 6” (2013) on the villains’ side, fighting Dom and the crew without remembering who they are, until she’s won over by the sight of a precious heirloom. Dom works to restore Letty’s memory throughout “Furious 7.”Shaw (and Shaw) vs. the CrewThe antagonist of “Furious 6” is the nefarious British agent Owen Shaw (Luke Evans), a hardened, elite soldier ultimately defeated by Dom and his crew. “Furious 7” (2015) introduces a brother out for revenge: one Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham), the more ruthless sibling, who wants blood after our heroes landed Owen in a coma. Deckard has had wavering allegiances throughout the films, occasionally teaming up with Dom and company and, in the spinoff “Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw,” partnering with Johnson’s Shaw in a classic buddy action scenario.Tyrese Gibson vs Dwayne JohnsonAfter the public remarks by Johnson about his male co-stars, Tyrese Gibson — who has appeared in seven “Fast and Furious” movies as the fan favorite Roman Pearce — seemed to turn on his fellow actor. On Instagram, he appeared to object to Johnson making the 2019 spinoff “Hobbs & Shaw,” claiming that Johnson “purposely ignored the heart-to-heart” they had by moving forward with it, and that by refusing to appear in subsequent “Fast” films with Diesel and others, he “really broke up the #FastFamily.” Johnson never responded, and in late 2020, Gibson said that the two had “peaced up” and resolved the dispute.Michelle Rodriguez vs. the Franchise2001: After signing on to play the female lead in the original “Fast and the Furious,” Rodriguez vociferously objected to her character’s intended role as the trophy girlfriend, demanding that the filmmakers rewrite Letty to be more independent-minded. She particularly took issue with a story line that put her in a love triangle with Dom and Brian: “I basically cried and said I’m going to quit,” she told The Daily Beast in 2015. Her objections were taken seriously, and ultimately the love triangle was scrapped and the character changed.2017: In an Instagram post to mark the digital release of “Fate of the Furious,” Rodriguez made the surprising announcement that she “just might have to say goodbye to a loved franchise,” unless “they decide to show some love to the women of the franchise on the next one.” Happily, Rodriguez committed to reprising her role in “F9” (2021) and beyond after reaching an agreement with Universal that brought on a female screenwriter.Justin Lin vs. Vin DieselThe director Justin Lin, who had previously helmed five of the “Fast” movies, was set to direct the latest entry, “Fast X,” but dramatically quit after shooting began. According to The Hollywood Reporter, heavy-handed studio notes, changing locations and near-constant updates to the screenplay contributed to the creative conflicts that sent Lin packing, but the final straw was a meeting with Diesel, who had some notes of his own. The meeting is alleged to have ended with a slammed door and Lin’s stepping down. Diesel obliquely acknowledged the conflict in an interview with Total Film, saying, “It wasn’t an easy time,” and adding, “Nothing but love for Justin, and nothing but gratitude for the work that he did to get us to that first week of filming.” The replacement director, Louis Leterrier, said in that interview that when he took over, he asked, “‘OK, what did Justin do? Can I see storyboards? Can I see shot lists?’ I took it all in. And then you find your bearings, and it becomes yours.” More

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    Why Do We Listen to Sad Songs?

    When Joshua Knobe was younger, he knew an indie rock musician who sang sorrowful, “heart-rending things that made people feel terrible,” he recalled recently. At one point he came across a YouTube video, set to her music, that had a suicidal motif. “That was the theme of her music,” he said, adding, “So I had this sense of puzzlement by it, because I also felt like it had this tremendous value.”Listen to This ArticleFor more audio journalism and storytelling, More

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    ‘Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny’ Premieres at Cannes

    After paying tribute to an emotional Harrison Ford, the festival unspooled the newest sequel to decidedly mixed results. On Thursday, Harrison Ford stood before a rapturous crowd at the Cannes Film Festival and reminded us that Tom Cruise isn’t the last movie star.Ford, here with the latest “Indiana Jones” sequel, didn’t arrive at his premiere with a retinue of fighter jets, as Cruise did last year for “Top Gun: Maverick.” Instead Ford, now 80, gave the festival and the volubly appreciative audience exactly what it wanted and needed: glamour, yes, but also soul, emotion, that familiar crinkly smile and a lot of great history.That history was on display in a snappy, coherently edited homage that got the evening started. The salute took off with a clip from Agnès Varda’s “The World of Jacques Demy” (1995), itself a feature-length tribute to her husband that’s a reminder of Ford’s French connections. In the late 1960s, Demy had wanted to cast the then-unknown Ford in “Model Shop” but couldn’t convince the studio to hire him. Demy settled for another actor, but he and Varda remained friends with Ford. It’s a blast when the actor, looking at the camera, says with a smile, “I’m told that the studio said to forget me, that I had no future in this business.”After racing through other career touchstones like “Blade Runner” and “Star Wars,” the homage culminated with a title card that proclaimed Ford “one of the greatest stars in the history of cinema.” It’s no wonder that when Ford took to the stage of the Lumière theater, which with some 2,000 seats is imposingly large, he looked so visibly moved. By his side was the festival’s director, Thierry Frémaux, who, speaking in English, gushed about Ford as giddily as a kid who’s still high after seeing Indy onscreen for the first time. Rather anticlimactically, Frémaux also presented Ford an honorary Palme d’Or.“I’m very touched, I’m very moved by this,” Ford said. “They say that when you’re about to die, you see your life flash before your eyes. And I just saw my life flash before my eyes — a great part of my life, but not all of my life. My life has been enabled by my lovely wife,” he continued, looking out into the audience at Calista Flockhart. He then told the attendees that he loved them — people shouted, “We love you!” in return — and after a few more sweetly gruff words, Ford reminded the room that “I have a movie you ought to see.”That movie, “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” — oops, I mean “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” — was, alas, a disappointment and not just because a funny, misty-eyed and charming Harrison Ford proclaiming his love in the flesh to fans is a tough act to follow. One problem is that the movie itself plays like a greatest-hits reel. It’s stuffed with Nazis, chase sequences, explosions, crashes and what seems like almost every adventure-film cliché that the series has deployed and recycled since it began, though unlike the Cannes reel, there’s nothing snappy about this 154-minute slog.It’s too bad. Ford certainly deserves better, and the director James Mangold can do better. (He shares script credit with Jez Butterworth, John-Henry Butterworth and David Koepp.) Mangold has toggled between Hollywood and indiewood throughout his career, with credits that include “Cop Land,” an indie crime drama with Sylvester Stallone, and “Logan,” one of the finest Marvel-superhero movies. “Logan” was especially striking simply because Mangold managed to put his own stamp on material that all too often is so deliberately generic and industrial that the results could have come off an assembly line.“The Dial of Destiny” — the title alone didn’t bode well — isn’t terrible. It’s at once overstuffed and anemic, both too much and not nearly enough. It’s also wildly unmodulated for roughly the first half. It opens in 1944 Europe with Indy being manhandled by Nazis amid a lot of choreographed chaos, his head covered in a cloth bag. When the bag comes off, it reveals a distractingly digitally de-aged Ford, looking kind-of-but-not-really like he looked in the first couple of films. A lot happens and happens again, mostly character introductions, explanations and stuff whirring rapidly.The movie improves in the second half, slowing and quieting down enough for the actors to do more than run, grimace and shout. By then, the casting of Fleabag, a.k.a. Phoebe Waller-Bridge, as Indy’s latest partner-in-adventure makes sense, whether she’s quipping or flexing her action-chick muscles. She’s fun to watch, as are Mads Mikkelsen, Toby Jones and Antonio Banderas, who exit and enter with winks and sneers. Of course the real attraction here is Ford, who holds your attention when the movie doesn’t and whose every wisecrack, flirty gaze and slow burn make it clear that he didn’t have to be de-aged because — as everyone in that vibrating room at Cannes knew — he’s immortal. More