Aurelia Butler

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    Fiona Apple’s Statement About Jailed Mothers, and 8 More New Songs

    Hear tracks by Kali Uchis, Moses Sumney and Hayley Williams, I’m With Her and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new tracks. Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes) and at Apple Music here, and sign up for The Amplifier, a twice-weekly guide to new and old songs.Fiona Apple, ‘Pretrial (Let Her Go Home)’Fiona Apple’s first solo single in five years is topical, focused on poor women who are imprisoned before trial and drawing on Apple’s time spent as a court watcher. Over a percussive track built on hand drumming, Apple sings about a single mother who can’t afford to post bail; by the time her case is dropped, she has lost her home and her family. Her voice is bitterly sympathetic; the video adds stark statistics.Moses Sumney and Hayley Williams, ‘I Like It I Like It’Hayley Williams of Paramore joins Mosey Sumney for a song he wrote with a co-producer, Graham Jonson (a.k.a. quickly, quickly) about desire thwarted by its own intensity. “I turn cactus when we touch,” Sumney moans; “My lips clutch when you open up,” Williams admits. Deep, loping, stop-start synthesizer lines and a lumpy beat underline both their hesitancy and their obsession; all they can agree on is, “I like it too much.”Billy Woods and Preservation, ‘Waterproof Mascara’The most harrowing track on “Golliwog,” the new album by the rapper Billy Woods, is “Waterproof Mascara.” A sobbing woman and an elegiac melody share the foreground of the production, by Preservation, as Woods recalls domestic abuse and suicidal thoughts and tries to numb himself with weed. Like the rest of the album, it’s bleak and uncompromising.Kali Uchis, ‘Lose My Cool,’“Sincerely,” the new album by Kali Uchis, is one long, languorous sigh of relief at finding true love, then basking in it. The production luxuriates in relaxed tempos and reverbed guitars in songs like “Lose My Cool,” a two-part song — slow and slower — that shows off her jazzy side with melodic leaps and airborne crooning. She revels in clinginess: “Whenever I’m without you babe, it don’t feel right,” she coos.Hxppier, ‘Aller’Hxppier — the 20-year-old Nigerian songwriter Ukpabi Favor Oru — lets smoldering irritation boil over in “Aller,” singing, “I can’t right now with your wishes / You try but you lie.” The bass-loving production, by ValNtino, is grounded in an earthy low drumbeat and keeps expanding — with call-and-response voices, ululations, shouts, horns, strings, organ, even a crying baby — as if Hxppier is mustering allies from all sides.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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    Judge Delays Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Jury Selection, Concerned About ‘Cold Feet’

    Judge Arun Subramanian said he feared jurors might grow uneasy over the weekend and drop off the panel before the trial begins on Monday.Jury selection for Sean Combs’s racketeering and sex-trafficking trial was delayed on Friday over worries that some jurors might get “cold feet” before the start of the high-profile case.Judge Arun Subramanian, who is overseeing the case, expressed concern that if jurors were selected before the weekend, they could grow uneasy and drop off the panel before the trial begins on Monday. The decision came after one potential juror sent an email to the court asking to be left off the panel for “issues of personal well-being,” the defense said.Twelve jurors and six alternates will be selected and sworn in on Monday at Federal District Court in Manhattan, ahead of opening statements in the case.The jury will be tasked with deciding whether the music mogul was a “swinger” with unorthodox sexual proclivities, or a predator who used his power to abuse victims in drug-dazed encounters. If convicted, Mr. Combs, who was once a roundly celebrated figure in the music industry, could spend the rest of his life in prison.The jurors will be anonymous, meaning their names will not be disclosed in public court. They will not be sequestered, however, so it is up to them to shield themselves from the media coverage and other chatter about the case.Over three days, dozens of New Yorkers took the witness stand inside the courtroom, where they were asked to describe in detail what they had seen and heard about the case against the artist and executive, who has been the subject of swirling allegations of sexual abuse over the past year and a half.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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    Wunmi Mosaku on Why ‘Sinners’ Is the ‘Greatest Love Story Ever Told’

    The British Nigerian actress’s turn as the hoodoo-practicing love interest has given her a brighter spotlight. She is trying to stay grounded through it all.“Sinners” is one of those rare modern blockbusters that fans are dissecting on a near literary level. There have been paragraphs dedicated to its symbolism, social media threads about its cultural themes, and hours of podcasts delving into lines and scenes. Wunmi Mosaku isn’t exactly seeking out the takes.“I haven’t gone searching for anything because I’m very mistrustful of the internet and I’m scared of what I might see,” Mosaku said in a video call from her Los Angeles home.Mosaku’s stirring performance as the hoodoo healer Annie is the soulful core of “Sinners.” The fact that it’s Mosaku, 38, in the role seems fitting: The film is a period horror-drama centered on romance as well as a meditation on grief and a musical. Her acting résumé reflects each element.Mosaku has played a time-space agent (“Loki”), multiple strong-willed detectives (“Luther,” “Passenger”) and an immigrant mother in mourning (“Damilola, Our Loved Boy,” which won her a BAFTA Television Award in Britain). A few of her biggest roles — like a singer fighting Jim Crow-era maledictions in the series “Lovecraft Country,” and a South Sudanese refugee battling a night witch in the film “His House,” both from 2020 — are part of the post-“Get Out” strain of popular horror that evokes racial anxieties.At times Mosaku has drawn on her own experience as a Nigerian who immigrated at a year old to Manchester, England, and felt distanced from her family’s Yoruba heritage. To play Annie, she studied how to be a woman in the Mississippi Delta, preparation that ultimately led to learning more about her ancestry because hoodoo is related to Ifa, the Yoruba religion.Mosaku’s turn as the hoodoo healer Annie is the soulful core of “Sinners.”Warner Bros., via Associated PressWe 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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    Rhiannon Giddens Reflects on Biscuits and Banjos Festival

    Not long ago, Rhiannon Giddens knew every Black string musician. The dedicated few were largely collaborators and colleagues, many of whom met a generation ago at the landmark Black Banjo Gathering in Boone, N.C.Giddens, the folk musician and recipient of all the accolades (Grammys, a Pulitzer, a MacArthur), no longer knows everyone who followed her path. That expansion, she figured, was reason to celebrate.She did so the last weekend of April at her inaugural Biscuits & Banjos Festival in Durham, N.C., a jamboree featuring twangy banjos, groovy basses, clickety bones and, yes, the devouring of many flaky, buttery biscuits.Festivalgoers dance at the Biscuits & Banjos festival in Durham, N.C.Kate Medley for The New York TimesThe festival culminated in a reunion by the Carolina Chocolate Drops, the Black string band led by Giddens, Dom Flemons and Justin Robinson. The group met at the Boone gathering, taking apprenticeship under the old-time fiddle player Joe Thompson.The Grammy-winning band resuscitated styles like Piedmont string music, presenting them to a broader audience.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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    ‘My Robot Sophia’: An Unsettling Look Into the Soul of a Machine

    This film by Jon Kasbe and Crystal Moselle skirts gimmicks to examine a creator’s drive to build a humanoid device powered by artificial intelligence.In 2017, a robot named Sophia was granted Saudi Arabian citizenship, a dubious move on many fronts. Real human women had only earned the right to drive a car in the country a month earlier, and robot citizenship was also, somewhat transparently, a publicity stunt. Sophia, which is humanoid and powered by a proprietary artificial intelligence engine created by Hanson Robotics, has participated in a number of stunts since then, including appearances on “The Tonight Show” and at a lucrative sale of its art during the 2021 NFT boom.All of these events and more appear in the new documentary “My Robot Sophia” (on digital platforms), but the film skirts gimmicks to go in a more tricky and unsettling direction. It’s an almost soulful portrait of the artist under capitalism, rather than another exposé on robotics and artificial intelligence. It’s a bit parallel to Alex Garland’s fictional film “Ex Machina.” And in the Frankensteinian tradition, the robot’s creator is not uncomplicated.The title of the film implies that Sophia belongs to someone. That someone is David Hanson, the chief executive of Hanson Robotics. A loner and an artist from a young age, he became fascinated with creating lifelike masks. His lab is crowded with them, rubber faces on little pedestals that seem, in the background of many shots, to be staring upward in open-mouthed wonder, or terror.That kind of image adds subtext, and it’s all the more astounding because it’s nonfiction. “My Robot Sophia” is littered with visual tells, and if you’re not actually watching with your eyes, you might miss what they’re saying. The two directors have experience telling these sorts of sprawling stories that require a lot of patience, time and observation — Jon Kasbe with “When Lambs Become Lions” and Crystal Moselle with “Skate Kitchen” and “The Wolfpack.” You see what they see.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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    ‘Nonnas’ Review: Oversauced

    Vince Vaughn plays a restaurant owner who hires Italian grandmothers to cook for him in this corn-filled gabagool.From the homily-stuffed script (“food is love,” “beautiful is a feeling”) to the relentlessly on-the-button soundtrack (please god, no more “Funiculì Funiculà”), “Nonnas” serves up ethnic comedy on a platter of ham and cheese.Based on a true story, this four-grannies-and-a-funeral caper tosses finely aged ingredients — Susan Sarandon, Lorraine Bracco, Brenda Vaccaro, Talia Shire — into a slurry of Italian caricature and cliché. At its center sits Joe Scaravella (an oddly anemic Vince Vaughn), a Brooklyn transportation worker who, after his mother’s death, decides to honor her by opening a restaurant on Staten Island and hiring Italian grandmothers, or nonnas, as his chefs.Each has a single, identifiable characteristic. Meet Roberta (Bracco), the salty Sicilian and erstwhile best friend of Joe’s mother; Antonella (Vaccaro), the feisty Bolognan widow whom Joe meets at an Italian market; Teresa (Shire), the retired nun with a cheeky secret; and Gia (Sarandon), the independent glamour-puss whose enviable cleavage demands commentary.“How do you bake over those things?,” Roberta inquires, not unreasonably. Sadly, this is as saucy as Liz Maccie’s screenplay allows. Even when Joe reconnects with Olivia (an ill-served Linda Cardellini), the prom date he once unceremoniously dumped, the movie stubbornly refuses to spark. The director, Stephen Chbosky, appears unaware that food can be sexy, or that young Joe — in a glowing, idyllically staged flashback to 40 years earlier — is infinitely more excited by bubbling Bolognese and sugared pastries than his adult self is by Olivia. Their belated dance to Chris de Burgh’s oft-recycled “The Lady in Red” is so lacking in chemistry they might as well be neutered.Corny and cloying, “Nonnas” struggles to gin up energy in a plot whose every roadblock (the dwindling finances, the failed building inspection, the opening-night disaster, the desperate plea for critical attention) is comfortably predictable. The movie’s real drag, though, is a main character with no identity beyond his mother’s depressing house and no personality beyond nostalgia. Joe is a void, and Vaughn — who can occasionally be riveting, as we saw in projects like “Brawl in Cell Block 99” (2017) and the unfairly maligned second season of “True Detective” (2015) — too often shuffles through his scenes as if narcotized.This muffled affect, along with Chbosky’s pedestrian direction and his reliance on overly literal needle drops (again with the Billy Joel?), forces everyone else to work twice as hard. The ladies, professionals all, are up for it, gamely selling sitcom setups and prepackaged sentiment with a gusto that suggests a better, more authentic movie might have lurked beyond the bromides. One where, when a former nun prays for a miracle, it won’t arrive before she has even dusted off her knees.NonnasRated PG. Running time: 1 hour 51 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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    ‘Summer of 69’ Review: A Crash Course in Carnal Knowledge

    Jillian Bell’s feature directorial debut centers on a nerdy teenager who hires a stripper for a sexual education, but the movie favors modesty over vulgarity.High schoolers revving up to lose their virginities by graduation are a teen comedy mainstay. The cheekily titled “Summer of 69,” directed by the comedy actress Jillian Bell, turns the trope on its head, so to speak, by centering on a nerdy young woman who pledges to master a specific sexual position. (You can venture a guess.)Abby (Sam Morelos) is a 17-year-old video game streamer with zero bedroom experience and a whopper of a crush on Max (Matt Cornett), a hunky classmate. So when she hears that he favors that particular position, she hires a local stripper named Santa Monica (Chloe Fineman) for a crash course in carnal knowledge.In her feature directorial debut, Bell conjures a mood of gentle bawdiness cut with sincerity. There’s a visit to the vibrator shop, and a running joke in which Abby misunderstands the nature of certain sex acts. But for the most part, the movie is free of the cutting loose and potty mouthing endemic to its genre. Instead of antics, the movie is powered by a feminist streak in which sexual prowess and even pleasure take a back seat to confidence, friendship and self worth.The modest tone is fitting, for while Abby is on the verge of adulthood, she still acts like a child, and her immaturity bumps up awkwardly against the movie’s ribald premise. Fortunately, “Summer of 69” is a two-hander, and Fineman brings comic chops and genuine feeling to playing the tutor with a heart of gold.Summer of 69Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. Watch on Hulu. More

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    ‘Juliet & Romeo’ Review: Tragedy Executed as Farce

    This movie musical adaptation of Shakespeare’s star-crossed lovers is no “& Juliet” — that is, it’s no fun.There have been scores (sorry) of musical adaptations of Shakespeare’s tragedy of star-crossed lovers over the centuries. Not just operas — there’s Berlioz’s dramatic symphony; Prokofiev’s ballet; the comedic jukebox musical on Broadway, “& Juliet,” in which the heroine leaves Romeo to die and chooses life for herself. “Juliet and Romeo,” from the writer-director Timothy Scott Bogart and his composer-songwriter brother, Evan Kidd Bogart, is more self-serious.The movie begins, a narrator says, “In the year 1301” when “Italy was only an idea.” In this movie’s idea of 1301, characters jumble up modern and Shakespearean language; “Romeo, where the hell art thou,” someone from the hero’s posse shouts early on. And while “& Juliet” uses pop songs, for this picture the composers Bogart and Justin Gray try to concoct tunes that sound like those of Taylor Swift and Jack Antonoff. “There’s a whole lot of wrong here but we get it right, we get it right,” goes one lyric.Veteran actors including Jason Isaacs, Derek Jacobi and Rebel Wilson add spice where they’re able; the costumes are colorful, and as Juliet, Clara Rugaard is fresh-faced and appealing. (As Romeo, on the other hand, Jamie Ward mostly looks like he’s trying to find a boy band to join.)The Bogarts are sons of Neil Bogart, the blockbuster record exec who empowered both Kiss and Donna Summer back in the day. Watching this largely misbegotten movie (which seems to fulfill all of its aspirations with an utterly tacky ending), then, sometimes brought to mind the sardonic Steely Dan tune “Show Biz Kids.”Juliet & RomeoRated PG-13 for salty non-Shakespearean language, one supposes. Running time: 2 hours 1 minute. In theaters. More