Aurelia Butler

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    Martin Scorsese Interviews Pope Francis in Upcoming Documentary ‘Aldeas’

    The project will highlight scripted short films from international communities along with snippets of a conversation between the director and the pontiff, who died last month.Martin Scorsese will produce a new documentary featuring an on-camera interview with Pope Francis that was recorded at Vatican City in December, a few months before the pope died at the age of 88.The film, “Aldeas — A New Story,” is about the worldwide cultural project developed by Scholas Occurrentes, a global educational movement founded by Francis in 2013, the same year he was elected pope. Communities around the world will create scripts for short films that highlight their identities, histories and values.Snippets of the conversation between the pope and Scorsese will be interwoven into the film, which does not have a release date.In a statement on Wednesday, Scorsese said it was important to Francis for “people across the globe to exchange ideas with respect while also preserving their cultural identity, and cinema is the best medium to do that.” Before the pope’s death, Francis called “Aldeas” a poetic project because it “goes to the roots of what human life is.”The project punctuates a long relationship between the pope and Scorsese, whose work has sometimes been religious in nature. When “The Last Temptation of Christ” was released in 1988, it drew protests and outrage from religious groups.In 2016, Scorsese met with Francis to discuss his movie “Silence,” a drama about a Portuguese Jesuit priest who heads to 17th-century Japan, where Christians are persecuted. They met again in 2023, when Scorsese announced he would make another film about Jesus. The director’s most recent project, “Martin Scorsese Presents: The Saints,” dramatizes the lives of eight Catholic saints.Before his death, Francis called “Aldeas” a poetic project because it “goes to the roots of what human life is.”Aldeas Scholas Films, via Associated PressWhen Francis died, Scorsese said in a statement to Variety that he was lucky to have known him and that his loss for the world was immense.“He had an ironclad commitment to the good,” Scorsese said. “He knew in his soul that ignorance was a terrible plague on humanity. So he never stopped learning. And he never stopped enlightening.” More

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    ‘Rust’ Review: Alec Baldwin Western Hit by Tragedy Is a Hard Watch

    During every scene of this western, I couldn’t stop thinking about the film’s cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins, who was killed on set in an entirely preventable tragedy.It’s impossible to watch “Rust,” a period western steeped in death, without thinking about the catastrophe that occurred on set while it was being filmed in New Mexico on Oct. 21, 2021. During a rehearsal, a gun that the star Alec Baldwin was handling discharged a live bullet, fatally wounding the cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins, and injuring the director, Joel Souza. Hutchins was 42; she is survived by a son and her husband, Matthew Hutchins.In March 2024, the movie’s armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, was convicted of involuntary manslaughter; she received an 18-month sentence. In July 2024, a case against Baldwin was dismissed after a judge determined that some of the evidence had been mishandled.“There is no way for the court to right this wrong,” the judge said.Those words haunt “Rust,” which is now being released simultaneously in theaters and on streaming. The fact that it is now available to the viewing public isn’t enough to justify a review. And, in truth, this is no longer an ordinary movie; it is, rather, a deeply depressing coda to an appalling and entirely preventable tragedy. In general, live ammunition should never be on any film set, per industry standards. Gutierrez-Reed, who was 24 at the time and an inexperienced armorer, was supposed to load the revolver that Baldwin was holding with dummy rounds. But one of the rounds she loaded into the gun was live.This wasn’t the first time that someone died in a preventable accident while making a movie. In 2014, Sarah Jones, 27, was struck by a train while working as a camera assistant on the drama “Midnight Rider.” The project was never finished, and crews began putting Jones’s name on clapboards as part of a campaign known as “Safety for Sarah.” As the cinematographer Haskell Wexler, who had started another safety initiative for more humane working hours, said: “We are making entertainment, and there’s no reason to risk our lives and our health to get a shot.” His words should have been seared into the minds of everyone in the industry, and anyone who flouts safety protocols should be banned.Three and a half years after Hutchins’s death, the only question that seems worth asking about “Rust,” I think, is what does its release mean to her family. In 2022, some members reached a settlement in a wrongful-death lawsuit against the movie’s producers a few months before production resumed. Hutchins was named as one of the movie’s executive producers, and “Rust,” somewhat queasily, has been dedicated to her. A release from the “Rust” representatives states that its original producers will not gain financially from the movie. The terms of Matthew Hutchins’s settlement were sealed, the release said, but it has been confirmed that he and the couple’s son, Andros, will receive profits from the film.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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    Stan Love, Athlete and Father of Heat’s Kevin Love, Dies at 76

    A former N.B.A. player and the father of the All-Star Kevin Love, he was also the brother of the pop group’s Mike Love and a caretaker for its troubled leader, Brian Wilson.Stan Love, a former professional basketball player who was the brother of the singer Mike Love of the Beach Boys and a onetime bodyguard and caretaker of the band’s brilliant but troubled leader, Brian Wilson, has died at 76.His death was announced on Sunday on Instagram by his son Kevin Love, the five-time N.B.A. All-Star who plays for the Miami Heat. He did not say when his father died or specify the cause or location, although he did say that Mr. Love died after a long illness and that his longtime wish was to die at home. He was known to live in Lake Oswego, Ore.Stan Love, a 6-foot-9 forward who had been a star player for the University of Oregon, was selected ninth overall in the 1971 National Basketball Association draft by the Baltimore Bullets, the predecessors of the Washington Wizards. He averaged 6.6 points and 3.9 rebounds a game with modest playing time over four seasons with the Bullets and the Los Angeles Lakers of the N.B.A. and the San Antonio Spurs, then of the American Basketball Association.Mr. Love, then with the Los Angeles Lakers, being guarded by Steve Mix of the Philadelphia 76ers in a game in Philadelphia in 1975.Rusty Kennedy/Associated PressAs his basketball career ended, Mr. Love became Brian Wilson’s caretaker in the 1970s and ’80s, during a turbulent period for Mr. Wilson, his cousin, whose innovative songwriting and flair for sophisticated harmonies were complicated by drug use and mental illness.Mr. Love said he toured with the Beach Boys for roughly five years. He described that period to The Portland Tribune in 2019 as chaotic.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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    At Jazz at Lincoln Center, Dave Chappelle Rallies to Keep ‘Tradition Alive’

    Outside the Rose Theater at Jazz at Lincoln Center on Wednesday night, hundreds of people in shimmering gowns and velvet tuxes waited for the program to begin. They snacked on popcorn from gold pinstriped bags and sipped cocktails in front of a wall lined with giant black-and-white photos of the jazz pianist and composer Duke Ellington.“I love coming here,” said Alec Baldwin, as he posed with his wife, Hilaria Baldwin, who was wearing a plunging lilac gown and a cross necklace, on the red carpet at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s annual fund-raising gala, which celebrated Ellington’s 125th birthday.The couple, who married in 2012, star in a TLC reality TV show, “The Baldwins.” Filmed as Mr. Baldwin faced trial for involuntary manslaughter, it focuses on their hectic family life with seven children, all age 11 and under, and eight pets. A judge dismissed the case in July.“The kids aren’t necessarily into the music I appreciate,” said Mr. Baldwin, 67, who wore a navy suit and a burgundy button-down. “I like a lot of classical. I love Japanese jazz, too.” (Ms. Baldwin, 41, a fitness expert and podcast host, said she played a lot of Billie Eilish.)Alec and Hilaria Baldwin. Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesVictoria and Michael Imperioli.Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesDuke Ellington’s granddaughter, Mercedes Ellington.Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesWe 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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    Best Movies and Shows Streaming in May: ‘Poker Face,’ ‘Murderbot’ and More

    “Duster,” “Summer of 69,” “Overcompensating,” “‘Deaf President Now!” and more are arriving, and “Poker Face” returns.Every month, streaming services add movies and TV shows to their libraries. Here are our picks for some of May’s most promising new titles. (Note: Streaming services occasionally change schedules without giving notice. For more recommendations on what to stream, sign up for our Watching newsletter here.)New to Amazon Prime Video‘Overcompensating’ Season 1Starts streaming: May 15The comedian and social media content creator Benito Skinner both created and stars in this raunchy campus comedy, about freshmen trying desperately to fit in with their peers — while hiding their actual personalities and desires. Skinner plays Benny, a former high school athlete who does not want his family or his classmates (or maybe even himself) to realize he’s gay. On the first day of college, Benny meets Carmen (Wally Baram), who is recovering — poorly — from a bad breakup. The two bond immediately, but while Carmen thinks she just met her next boyfriend, Benny thinks he has found someone who can pretend to be his girlfriend. “Overcompensating” is set in a broadly comic version of university life, where everyone is sex- and status-obsessed. But Skinner also sincerely explores what it’s like for young people to use a new environment to reinvent themselves.‘The Better Sister’Starts streaming: May 29This twisty mini-series stars Jessica Biel as Chloe, a rich and successful New York City media mogul who calls the cops from her family’s summer house after her husband, Adam (Corey Stoll), is found murdered. While the homicide detectives Nancy (Kim Dickens) and Matt (Bobby Naderi) investigate the crime, Chloe seems unusually interested in keeping them from learning about certain aspects of her life — like her strained relationship with her sister Nicky (Elizabeth Banks). Nicky, a reckless free spirit, is also Adam’s ex and the biological mother of Adam and Chloe’s teenage son, Ethan (Maxwell Acee Donovan). Cocreated by Olivia Milch and Regina Corrado, “The Better Sister” (based on an Alafair Burke novel) is both a mystery with lots of red herrings and the study of a sad sibling rivalry.Also arriving:May 1“Another Simple Favor”May 6“David Spade: Dandelion”May 8“Octopus!”May 20“Motorheads” Season 1May 22“Earnhardt”May 27“The Second Best Hospital in the Galaxy” Season 2From left, Tim Rarus, Bridgetta Bourne-Firl, Greg Hlibok and Jerry Covell in “Deaf President Now!,” a documentary film directed by Nyle DiMarco and Davis Guggenheim.Apple TV+New to Apple TV+‘Deaf President Now!’Starts streaming: May 16Back in 1988, Gallaudet University’s students drew international headlines when they shut the college down for a week, angrily rejecting the appointment of yet another hearing president — at a time when the institution had never had a deaf one. For the documentary “Deaf President Now!,” the Oscar-winning filmmaker Davis Guggenheim (“An Inconvenient Truth”) and co-director Nyle DiMarco (a Gallaudet alum) have collected rarely seen student-shot footage of those protests, and combined them with news clips, re-creations and fiery new interviews with the campus leaders. The film delivers a fascinating look back at a pivotal moment in civil rights history that doubles as a gripping political thriller, piecing together the details of the demonstration and how, day by day, these courageous young adults turned the tide of public opinion.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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    Ronan the Sea Lion Is Probably Better Than You at Keeping a Beat

    This is Ronan. She’s a California sea lion and she probably has better rhythm than you.Scientists earlier showed that Ronan, a resident of the Long Marine Laboratory at the University of California, Santa Cruz, was the first nonhuman mammal who could be trained to keep a beat, including moving in time with music. That was in 2013 when Ronan was young. Researchers recently decided to test the 15-year-old sea lion’s skills again and showed that not only had she improved her ability to bob her head in sync with beats, but she is even better than most humans at doing so.“I think that it demonstrates conclusively that humans are not the only mammals able to keep a beat,” said Tecumseh Fitch, a cognitive biologist who studies biomusicology at the University of Vienna and wasn’t involved in the new study, which was published Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports.Parrots are known to be able to keep a beat by moving their bodies. And recent studies have highlighted the beat-keeping capabilities of other mammals, such as monkeys and rats. But after more than a decade, “Ronan the sea lion’s rhythmic entrainment is clearly the best known in nonhuman vertebrates,” Dr. Fitch said.The researchers trained Ronan for a few months, focusing on enhancing her precision with the old tempos on which she was trained in the past. Then, they looked at how good Ronan was at keeping a beat compared with when she was 3 years old — showing that she improved her skills as she matured.Then, the team tested Ronan’s ability to move her head in time with tempos of 112, 120 and 128 beats per minute and compared it with the ability of 10 people aged 18 to 23 to move their arm in time with those same tempos. “The hand is like the sea lion’s head, and the arm is like the sea lion’s neck, and it’s about the same size, so they can move through the same amount of space and do the task,” said Peter Cook, a cognitive neuroscientist with a specialization in marine mammals at New College of Florida.Human participants and Ronan performed comparable rhythmic tasks at 112 beats per minute.University of California Santa Cruz, NMFS 23554We 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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    ‘Vulcanizadora’ Review: Guilt Trip

    Two midlife losers reckon with past mistakes on a despairing and oddly haunting trip into the woods and out of their heads.Midway through “Vulcanizadora,” the fifth feature from the eccentric indie actor and filmmaker Joel Potrykus, his character, Derek, asks his best friend, Marty (Joshua Burge), to consider that hell might be no more than never-ending anxiety.“Can you imagine that? Being nervous forever?” The two are hiking through a Michigan forest en route to a terrible, as yet unrevealed destination, and viewers familiar with Potrykus’s work will feel a stab of amusement: Perpetual unease is a state he has always imagined with exquisite precision.Revisiting the losers we met a decade ago in “Buzzard,” “Vulcanizadora” wonders where slackers go when their adolescent behaviors no longer serve. Nowhere good, is the answer, as these pitiable, middle-aged misfits gradually reveal lives that are likely unsalvageable. Marty, a small-time crook, is facing a second stint in prison and living in his childhood basement. Derek is divorced, estranged from his young son (played by Potrykus’s real son, Solo) and unreliably medicated. Both are depleted from past mistakes and on the verge of making one of the worst imaginable. When everyone thinks you’re a no-count, then nothing you do can ever count.Potrykus, though — an inveterate hand-to-mouth practitioner — persists in treating the lost and the left-behind as if they matter, and his signature empathy is pronounced here. As is his fascination with fire as an arbiter of emotional disturbance: Like the pyromaniac of “Ape” (2014), Marty may be an arsonist, and his emphatic wretchedness finds expression in a lingering, hauntingly surreal close-up of black snake fireworks slowly uncoiling.Spasmodically funny, though hardly a comedy, “Vulcanizadora” is raw, moving and, briefly, horrifying. In the press notes, Potrykus admits to having worried that becoming a father would cause him to soften and “start telling stories of hope and inspiration.” That may be the funniest joke of all.VulcanizadoraNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 25 minutes. In theaters. More

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    ‘Words of War’ Review: Portrait of a Fearless Reporter

    The Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya is the subject of a film that honors her bravery.The sort of movie in which a story’s inherent power is enough to oil otherwise creaky biopic machinery, “Words of War” dramatizes the life of Anna Politkovskaya, the Russian journalist who became known for her tenacious reporting on the second Chechen war and for her undaunted criticism of Vladimir V. Putin. The movie opens with an apparent attempt on her life — a poisoning on an airplane — and ends with her death in 2006, when she was murdered in her Moscow apartment building.In between, it recounts the tremendous risks that Politkovskaya (played by Maxine Peake) faced in finding and persuading people to talk. When she travels to Grozny, she has difficulty earning the confidence of Chechens, who believe that no Russian reporter can be trusted. One says that she is trying to illuminate “the black hole of the world.” The Russian military eyes her warily, too (a major threatens to slit her throat), and soon an agent (Ian Hart) visits her while she is getting coffee and a croissant in Moscow — to make it clear he’s keeping watch.The closing credits acknowledge that the filmmakers (James Strong directed a screenplay by Eric Poppen) have taken some dramaturgical liberties, including inventing the Hart character. Politkovskaya’s own description of serving as a hostage negotiator at a Moscow theater in 2002 differs in tenor from the portrayal of events onscreen. Some deviations are inevitable, but the expository dialogue — and the convention of having Russian characters speak English, with British accents — are distractions. Even so, Politkovskaya’s bravery, and Peake’s commitment to honoring it, is enough.Words of WarRated R for violence and descriptions of brutality. Running time: 1 hour 57 minutes. In theaters. More