Aurelia Butler

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    Geoffrey Rush Lives for the Roar of the Crowd

    “If you sit at home, you are not sharing your own private experience of what the general pulse of the world is,” said the actor, who stars in the horror film “The Rule of Jenny Pen.”Geoffrey Rush has rarely met a physical task he didn’t want to attempt, be it sword fighting for “Pirates of the Caribbean” or playing the piano for his Oscar-winning role in “Shine.”The new horror movie “The Rule of Jenny Pen,” starring Rush as a supercilious former judge living in a nursing home, required yet another unfamiliar skill set: He had to use a motorized wheelchair.“I got very good at getting up to speed, but in narrow corridors, it was not the same story,” Rush, 73, said of the feature directed by James Ashcroft and also starring John Lithgow as a psychopathic fellow resident. A lot of the final day’s goof reel “was punctuated by me running into staircases or James leaping over furniture because I went, ‘It’s just not responding.’”In a video call from his native Australia, Rush discussed his cultural essentials, many of them — to his surprise — from his childhood and early professional life. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.The TreniersThey were the first band to use the words “rock” and “roll” in lyrics, way back in the late ’40s and early ’50s, when they were a blues band hovering between swing and boogie-woogie. Their energy was definitely sexy and audacious. They beat Bill Haley by about a half decade. My mum was a great jiver during my childhood, and she loved Little Richard. She used to dive onto the dance floor.Silent Film ClownsBob Monkhouse, who was an English comedian, had a show that I used to watch every Saturday night called “Mad Movies.” I got introduced to silent film and not necessarily the big guns. He looked at a lot of the minor characters, and I became obsessed by that.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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    Bruno Mars Is Pop’s Most Reliable Male Star. Who Is He, Really?

    A schmaltzy ballad. A bubble-gum pop song. A raunchy rap anthem. All three Hot 100 hits feature Mars, a blockbuster singer and songwriter who is largely a cipher.It’s a free-for-all on the Hot 100 chart right now. “Die With a Smile,” a slick, sappy Lady Gaga ballad destined for oldies radio rotation in about 20 years, has been hovering around No. 1 since summer. “Apt.,” a peppy new wave-inspired cut by Blackpink’s Rosé that speaks the rhythmic, hyperactive language of TikTok, is also in the Top 10. And a little further down, there’s Sexyy Red’s “Fat, Juicy and Wet,” the kind of raunchy, would-be strip club anthem that seems to float into the mainstream every few years. Nothing really links these songs — except for the fact that Bruno Mars appears on all three.Mars checks many of the boxes of an A-list pop star. But unlike those who usually occupy the top slot of Spotify’s most-streamed artist ranking — which the 39-year-old musician has for the bulk of 2025 — it’s not always easy to discern his specific viewpoint, or even a favored niche. Pop has long rewarded shape-shifters like Madonna, whose careers are marked by bold artistic reconfigurations, but Mars is a different beast: a performer with such a malleable identity at one moment that his name stands for little except its association with hits.Depending on your vintage, you might best remember Mars as a sappy adult contemporary crooner, thanks to his early No. 1s like “Grenade” and “Just the Way You Are.” On “Locked Out of Heaven,” certified diamond for 10 million sales, he was in full Sting drag, belting over shimmery new wave. Silk Sonic, his collaboration with Anderson .Paak that yielded a 2021 album, reveled in a kind of throwback sleaze, perhaps in tribute to his semi-adoptive hometown, Las Vegas, where he has held down a residency at the Park MGM for an astonishing near-decade.In one of his early guises, Mars was an adult contemporary-style crooner.Chad Batka for The New York TimesRather than try to distill his essence into one sound, Mars has remained stubbornly chameleonic — though rooted in old-fashioned music-making, the kind that employs acoustic instruments and appeals to Grammy voters (he has 33 nominations and 16 wins). “Die With a Smile” hearkens back to his days as a Jason Mraz-esque wedding song maestro; despite its title, the song is pure soft-rock schmaltz, finding both singers indulging their worst impulses toward lounge act cosplay. “Apt.” taps into the new wave pep of his 2012 “Unorthodox Jukebox” album, this time cribbing familiar elements of hits by the Go-Go’s, Blondie and Bananarama.Both songs came with their own distinct visual aesthetic — ’60s Americana, and a shambolic, pseudo-punk look — and were colossal hits on TikTok, radio and beyond. While “Apt.” was always intended for Rosé’s December 2024 debut album, “Rosie,” Gaga initially said that “Die With a Smile” was a one-off, and had nothing to do with her forthcoming album, “Mayhem.” Six months later, fans noticed the song had been tacked on at the end of the “Mayhem” track list; it’s hard to argue with some two billion extra streams.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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    These Films See People the Way They See Themselves

    RaMell Ross subverts our gaze, breaking the conventional frame in “Nickel Boys” as he did in his documentary “Hale County This Morning, This Evening.”It’s incredibly rare — in fact, I don’t think it’s ever happened before this year — for a filmmaker to get an Oscar-nomination for a documentary and then land a best picture nomination for their next feature film. (A few have come close, though, and Ava DuVernay pulled it off, but in the opposite order.) Part of the blame lies with the Academy, which has somehow never nominated a documentary for Best Picture. It’s also just difficult, though by no means impossible, to excel in both fiction and nonfiction in a way that captures voter attention.Yet with “Nickel Boys,” nominated this year for both best picture and best adapted screenplay, the photographer and filmmaker RaMell Ross has done just that. His previous film, the groundbreaking, lyrical documentary “Hale County This Morning, This Evening,” was nominated for best documentary in 2019. “Hale County” may be less well-known than its fictional sibling, but it’s a vital companion piece. In fact, revisiting it now in the light of “Nickel Boys” illuminates Ross’s bigger project, and what makes his work so disruptive and his images so indelible.Much has been written — including here in The New York Times — about “Nickel Boys,” which topped my own list of 2024’s best movies. In reimagining Colson Whitehead’s novel, Ross and Joslyn Barnes shifted the book’s third-person narration to first person perspective, so we spend nearly the entire film looking through the eyes of two teenage boys, Elwood and Turner.That kind of perspective isn’t alien to storytelling. Movies have used it (including Steven Soderbergh’s recent thriller “Presence”), and it’s common in video games. But in “Nickel Boys” it feels fresh and radical. Ross, along with the cinematographer Jomo Fray and the camera operator Sam Ellison, positioned themselves and their equipment incredibly close to the actors so that their perspectives would follow their performances. The effect is remarkable: While Whitehead’s novel is about how we remember history, individually and collectively, Ross’s film is about how we see history.Wilson as Turner, left, and Ethan Herisse as Elwood. We spend nearly the entire film looking through the eyes of two teenage boys. Orion PicturesThat “we” includes the audience — in fact, it might be more accurate to say it implicates the audience. “Nickel Boys” insistently shakes the viewer out of the habits audiences have developed when watching fiction films. The action sometimes cuts away to documentary footage, historical images of Black Americans, without a narratively obvious motivation to do so. The camera acts like a person with their own subjective view in the scene, not the ostensibly impartial eye watching drama unfold that fiction films traditionally employ. Characters look straight into the lens, seemingly directly into our eyes, dragging us into the story.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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    Why Japanese Oscar Contender ‘Black Box Diaries’ Isn’t Being Shown in Japan

    Shiori Ito’s searing indictment of Japan’s justice system in handling sexual assault cases is nominated for best documentary feature at Sunday’s Academy Awards.A film by a Japanese woman about her search for justice from uncooperative authorities after she reported being raped is a contender at Sunday’s Academy Awards. Yet, despite being the first full-length documentary made by a Japanese director ever nominated for an Oscar, the movie cannot be seen in her home country.In the film, “Black Box Diaries,” the journalist Shiori Ito tells the story of what happened to her after she reported being raped at a hotel by a prominent television journalist and the ordeal she says she experienced with Japan’s justice system.The film, which is up for best documentary feature, premiered in January 2024 at the Sundance Film Festival. It was released in U.S. theaters in October and can currently be seen or is slated to be shown in over 30 countries. However, those do not include Japan.The Japanese subsidiary of a major streaming service declined to distribute the film in early 2024, the filmmakers said, and theaters have so far displayed little interest in showing it. The prospects for the film’s release grew even murkier in October when Ms. Ito’s former lawyers and other previous supporters, including fellow journalists, spoke up against her, saying she had used footage without the consent of people in it.Ms. Ito with the producers of “Black Box Diaries,” Hannah Aqvilin and Eric Nyari, at the Oscars nominees dinner in Los Angeles on Tuesday.Frazer Harrison/Getty ImagesThis is not the first time that Japan has balked at showing unflattering films that were well received in Hollywood. “The Cove,” a documentary about a dolphin hunt in the town of Taiji, and “Unbroken,” a feature film about cruel treatment of Allied prisoners during World War II, both opened at least a year after their U.S. premieres. “The Cove,” which was made by an American director, won the Oscar for best documentary feature in 2010.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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    Maria Tipo, Italian Pianist Who Beguiled Critics, Dies at 93

    Admired by fellow musicians like Arthur Rubinstein as well as by the critics, she created what came to be known as an Italian school of piano playing.Maria Tipo, a connoisseur’s pianist whose flawless technique and songlike sonorities earned her the admiration of fellow musicians and critics, though she was less well known to the public, died on Feb. 10 at her home in Florence, Italy. She was 93.Her death was announced by the Scuola di Musica di Fiesole, where she taught for more than 20 years before her retirement in 2009.Ms. Tipo’s career began in spectacular fashion, with triumphs in several major European competitions, a strong endorsement from the piano titan Arthur Rubinstein, and exhausting tours of the United States throughout the 1950s. But then she largely faded from public view, apart from occasionally releasing recordings, which usually drew high praise from music critics and a brief return to touring in the 1990s.From the 1960s on, she devoted herself mostly to teaching. She once explained to the Italian newspaper La Repubblica that the loneliness of concert life had worn her down: “There is the concert, yes, but it only lasts a couple of hours, and then you are alone with yourself again.”Her fellow star pianists cherished her. Martha Argerich considered Ms. Tipo one of the greats and sent her Argentine compatriot Nelson Goerner for lessons. Hundreds of students passed through Ms. Tipo’s courses at conservatories in Bolzano, Florence, Geneva and Fiesole, and she created what critics described as an Italian school of piano playing. Teaching, she told the newspaper Il Corriere della Sera in 2016, was “like a duty, to stay close to the young as they develop.”Ms. Tipo in 1987. She created a renaissance for the neglected piano sonatas of the early-19th-century Anglo-Italian virtuoso Muzio Clementi and was also known for her recording of Ferruccio Busoni’s piano transcriptions of Bach organ works.Jacques Sarrat/Sygma, via Getty ImagesWe 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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    I’m Obsessed With the Italo Disco Song in ‘The Brutalist’

    Get ready for the Oscars with a deep dive into the duo behind the track, La Bionda, and others.The brothers of La Bionda.Angelo Deligio/Mondadori, via Getty ImagesDear listeners,The Oscars are this Sunday, and my personal pick for best picture is Brady Corbet’s gloriously ambitious, utterly unpredictable epic “The Brutalist.” Corbet and his co-writer, Mona Fastvold, take some wild risks in the movie, and while I don’t think every one of them connects, I’m still awed by the film’s vision and scope. One risk that “The Brutalist” definitely pulls off, though, is the unforgettable, out-of-nowhere song that plays over the closing credits: “One for You, One for Me,” the ecstatic 1978 disco hit by the Italian duo La Bionda.I was certainly not expecting a three-and-a-half-hour drama about an architect who survived the Holocaust to send audiences dancing out of the theater — but the surprising and strangely satisfying La Bionda needle drop is in keeping with the film’s spirit of subverting convention. “It’s quite cheeky,” Fastvold said of the song choice in an interview with USA Today. “I really enjoy leaving the audience with that jolt of energy.”I confess I wasn’t familiar with this song, or La Bionda, before seeing the movie last month, but the first thing I did upon exiting the theater was Google “what is the disco song at the end of ‘The Brutalist’?” The answer led me down a rabbit hole of musical discovery — one that I’m sharing with you on today’s playlist. (I didn’t believe La Bionda could possibly have a song as catchy and transcendently ridiculous as “One for You, One for Me,” and then I heard “I Wanna Be Your Lover,” their retrofuturistic 1980 hit about a sexy alien.)La Bionda were a duo of Sicilian brothers, Carmelo and Michelangelo, who in the late 1970s pioneered a sound that would later come to be called Italo disco: think glistening synths, four-on-the-floor percussion and semi-absurdist lyrics. Italo disco’s production sound and overall sense of theatricality influenced a lot of later new wave artists, and every decade or so a new generation of music fans seems to discover its charms and make it subculturally cool again. But, as Michelangelo clarified in a recent interview with Vulture, he and Carmelo (who died in 2022) weren’t consciously making “Italo disco,” a term he considers an afterthought “to put a label on the shelves.”Regardless of how you classify them, La Bionda are worthy of rediscovery — especially if you like your dance music fun, over-the-top and magnificently gauche. Enjoy this brief introduction to their sound, featuring some of their biggest hits (both as La Bionda and D.D. Sound), alongside music they produced for another Italian pop duo, Righeira.And if you’re looking for something with a bit more grandeur, I highly recommend Daniel Blumberg’s excellent original motion picture soundtrack for “The Brutalist,” which I’ll also be rooting for on Sunday night in the best original score category.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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    Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Faces Four New Sex Abuse Lawsuits, Filed in One Day

    The suits cite the Victims of Gender-Motivated Violence Protection Law, which opened a look-back window for alleged assaults and is expiring soon.Four new sex abuse lawsuits have been filed against Sean Combs, including one from a woman who says she was assaulted while a contestant on a VH1 reality show in which people vied to be hired as the hip-hop mogul’s personal assistant.The new cases, which were filed on Thursday in New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan, join the dozens of civil lawsuits that have been filed against Mr. Combs since Casandra Ventura, his former girlfriend, made bombshell allegations against him in November 2023. Ms. Ventura’s suit was quickly settled, though at least 50 civil suits have followed hers with various accusations of sexual misconduct or violence. He has denied the allegations.In September, Mr. Combs was also indicted on federal charges of sex trafficking, racketeering conspiracy and transportation to engage in prostitution. He has denied those accusations and pleaded not guilty, and his trial is scheduled to begin in May.In one of the new suits, Kendra Haffoney says that she was raped by Mr. Combs around 2008, while she was a contestant on VH1’s “I Want to Work for Diddy,” which ran on the cable channel starting that year. On the show, various aspiring assistants tried to impress the demanding and mercurial Mr. Combs to earn a place as his right hand. Ms. Haffoney is credited with appearances on two episodes.In her suit, she alleges that she was handed a spiked drink at an after-party in the SoHo area of Manhattan, where Mr. Combs and others were partying and “many sexual situations” were underway, making her uncomfortable. She became delirious, the suit says, and Mr. Combs “guided her head down” to perform oral sex on him. She passed out and awoke later at the cast house, and “knew that she had been sexually assaulted, raped” by him, according to the court papers.Another suit was filed by Justin Gooch, who said that in 1999, when he was 16, he met Mr. Combs at the Tunnel, then a popular dance club in Manhattan. The suit says that Mr. Combs gave him ecstasy and alcohol, and they then went to a bathroom, where Mr. Combs gave Mr. Gooch more drugs and “anally penetrated” him without his consent. According to the court papers, when he finished, Mr. Combs said to him, “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”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