Aurelia Butler

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    Best Movies and Shows Streaming in November: ‘Bad Sisters,’ ‘Cruel Intentions’ and More

    “Cruel Intentions,” “Music by John Williams” and “Dune: The Prophecy” arrive, along with “Bad Sisters” Season 2.Every month, streaming services add movies and TV shows to their libraries. Here are our picks for some of November’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‘Cruel Intentions’ Season 1Starts streaming: Nov. 21The 1999 movie melodrama “Cruel Intentions” became a box office hit and inspired multiple sequels, thanks to its twisty plot and sexual frankness, all borrowed from the novel, play and film “Dangerous Liaisons.” The new TV version carries on the tone of the films, following the bed-hopping and betrayals among a group of rich young men and women. Set at a prestigious college, the “Cruel Intentions” series is mainly about two stepsiblings, Caroline (Sarah Catherine Hook) and Lucien (Zac Burgess), who are adept at seducing and manipulating their classmates. The pair never seems to care how many enemies they make, so long as everyone fears them.Also arriving:Nov. 1“Libre”Nov. 7“Citadel: Honey Bunny”“Look Back”“My Old Ass”Nov. 8“Every Minute Counts”Nov. 14“Cross” Season 2Nov. 19“Abigail”“Jeff Dunham’s Scrooged-Up Holiday Special”Nov. 20“Wish List Games”Nov. 21“Dinner Club”Nov. 26“It’s in the Game”Nov. 28“Oshi No Ko”Nov. 29“The World According to Kaleb: On Tour”A scene from “The Creep Tapes,” new to AMC+.ShudderNew to AMC+‘The Creep Tapes’ Season 1Starts streaming: Nov. 15The “Creep” franchise of found footage horror films features Mark Duplass (who also co-wrote the series with the director, Patrick Brice) as a serial killer who hires aspiring filmmakers to help him make movies, which inevitably end in actual murders. “The Creep Tapes” offers bite-size versions of this premise, with episodes running under a half an hour and featuring a variety of scenarios. Duplass is back as the villain, who changes his name from victim to victim. His vibe rarely changes, though. He is overly friendly and pushy, to the point of being unpleasant; and yet he also seems pretty harmless, right up to when his shtick turns deadly.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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    4 Surprising Things We Learned From the John Williams Documentary

    A new Disney+ film about the prolific film composer chronicles his life and career, with a focus on his famous music for movies including “Jaws” and “Star Wars.”The composer John Williams is responsible for some of the most recognizable music in film history: the epic fanfares in “Star Wars,” the two-note dread of “Jaws” and too many other examples to name without sounding like an IMDb tour of popular American cinema.A new documentary, “Music by John Williams” (streaming on Disney+), introduces audiences to the man behind all of that music, featuring extensive interviews with Williams and glowing interviews with filmmakers he has worked with, including Steven Spielberg (also a producer of the movie), George Lucas and J.J. Abrams.Laurent Bouzereau, the documentary’s director, first met Williams while directing making-of features for the home video releases of Spielberg movies, including “Jaws,” “Jurassic Park” and “Raiders of the Lost Ark.”In a phone interview, he said the project started as part of Williams’s 90th birthday celebration, but it became clear it would be a waste to not do a full documentary combining his interviews with Spielberg’s archival footage of Williams, now 92, scoring his films. “I wanted people to understand his dedication to an art form,” Bouzereau said. “John is an eternal student.”Here are some takeaways from the film.When he first heard the ‘Jaws’ theme, Spielberg thought Williams was joking.Early in the documentary, Williams recounts the first time he played the opening music to “Jaws” for Spielberg.The director thought he was joking. “I was expecting something just tremendously complex, and it’s almost like ‘Chopsticks,’” he says.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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    Tom Hanks and Robin Wright on ‘Forrest Gump,’ ‘Here’ and De-aging

    It’s not exactly a “Forrest Gump” sequel, but the new movie “Here” does reunite the stars Tom Hanks and Robin Wright, and the filmmakers — the director Robert Zemeckis, screenwriter Eric Roth, composer Alan Silvestri — of that 1994 Oscar-winning favorite. Like the earlier film, the new one also travels across decades, with an unheard-of perspective.In this case, though, the viewpoint is the camera’s: “Here” is filmed almost entirely from one locked-off shot, with a camera positioned in what becomes the living room of a century-old New England home. There are no cutaways or traditional close-ups; no montages or wide-angle transitions. It’s an experiment in cinematic formalism, inspired by Richard McGuire’s ambitious, genre-expanding 2014 graphic novel of the same name.Though the story starts with the dinosaurs and travels all the way through the present day with different characters, it focuses mostly on Hanks and Wright’s boomer couple, Richard and Margaret, whose lives are, by turns, mundane and historicized in that single setting. The furniture and styles change, and with the help of A.I., the stars were also digitally de-aged.“It really is about, why do we remember the moments that we remember?” Wright said.In a video interview this week from New York, she and Hanks spoke about what attracted them to the film (the answer was largely Zemeckis), the enduring appeal of “Forrest Gump,” and what drives their choices now. The technical challenges of “Here” also energized them: There was no crafting — or saving — a performance in the edit; no way to cut around a missed mark except to redo a whole scene. “Tom and I, we’re so spoiled, we don’t ever want to shoot conventional format again,” Wright said of typical cinematography.Early reviews have been mixed, with some critics balking at the visual conceit, and the de-aging. Wright, 58, was having none of it. “It is so simple and beautiful and real and human,” she said. “We all have experienced something in this movie.”Hanks, 68, pondered why cynicism has become, as he said, “the default.”“I remain driven by this never-ending curiosity I have, about how it is true that good things happen to bad people and bad things happen to good people,” he said. The response could be cynicism, he said, but only if you’re seeking “the lowest common denominator.”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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    Yeat’s Chart Topper and Rage Rap’s New Wave

    Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music“Lyfestyle,” the latest album from the 24-year-old rapper Yeat, recently debuted at the top of the Billboard album chart. It was the biggest success yet for an artist who’s been gaining popularity while studiously avoiding the spotlight, and whose music is legible to his most devoted fans and students, but maybe not far outside that tent.Yeat is one of the most visible exponents of this generation of rage rap — music that’s almost industrial in texture and inscrutable in lyrics, but inspires fervent fandom and dynamic live shows. (Others include Ken Carson and Destroy Lonely, both protégés of the Atlanta psych-punk star Playboi Carti.) This generation writ large is indebted to Future, Young Thug, Lil Uzi Vert and the rock-star hip-hop surrealists of the 2010s. And coming up now is a post-Yeat generation of genre-breakers including Nettspend, 2hollis, Lazer Dim 700 and more.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about how hip-hop’s splintering has helped popularize its less lyrical wings, how the pandemic was a boon for artists who wanted to lean in to personal mystery, and whether in a few years, all rap will be rage rap.Guest:Joe Coscarelli, The New York Times’s pop music reporterConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica.Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. More

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    How Robert Smith of the Cure Became Rock’s Most Dogged Activist

    At Brighton Electric, a warren of rock rehearsal spaces in an old brick tram depot in this English seaside town, young guitar luggers stream in and out while the thudding jams of baby bands reverberate throughout the building.But a corridor in the back leads to a spacious, gear-crammed private studio occupied by the Cure — the multiplatinum band that defined a gloomy strand of British post-punk, and scored international hits with spiky confections like “Friday I’m in Love.” On a recent Sunday evening, the band was gathered to prepare for promotional gigs supporting “Songs of a Lost World,” its first studio album in 16 years, due Friday.Seated beside his guitar rig was Robert Smith, the group’s leader, explaining his reluctance in recent years do an interview. “I don’t really want my head to be drawn back into this idea that I’m ‘Robert Smith of the Cure,’” he said, raising a blue-shadowed brow. “It just doesn’t suit me anymore.”Robert Smith onstage in 1989. The Cure’s latest release, “Songs of a Lost World,” is its first studio album in 16 years.Pete Still/Redferns, via Getty ImagesYet at 65, he is still unmistakable as Robert Smith of the Cure, dressed all in black, with a smear of lipstick and his signature tangled mop of dark hair, now a shade of ash. At the Cure’s commercial peak in the 1980s and ’90s, he was a dandy prince of the alternative scene, his disheveled haystack inspiring not just a look but also an entire indie-kid personality type — the lovesick goth — while the band charted a path through melancholic angst (“Boys Don’t Cry”), danceable ear candy (“Just Like Heaven”) and an expansive, moody neo-psychedelia (“Pictures of You”) that made it a model for generations of artists.Inducting the Cure into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2019, Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails said that Smith had used his “singular vision to create that rarest of things — a completely self-contained world with its own sound, its own look, its own vibe, its own aesthetic, its own rules.”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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    What if A.I. Is Actually Good for Hollywood?

    The Los Angeles headquarters of Metaphysic, a Hollywood visual-effects start-up that uses artificial intelligence to create digital renderings of the human face, were much cooler in my imagination, if I’m being honest. I came here to get my mind blown by A.I., and this dim three-room warren overlooking Sunset Boulevard felt more like the slouchy offices of a middling law firm. Ed Ulbrich, Metaphysic’s chief content officer, steered me into a room that looked set to host a deposition, then sat me down in a leather desk chair with a camera pointed at it. I stared at myself on a large flat-screen TV, waiting to be sworn in.But then Ulbrich clickety-clicked on his laptop for a moment, and my face on the screen was transmogrified. “Smile,” he said to me. “Do you recognize that face?” I did, right away, but I can’t disclose its owner, because the actor’s project won’t come out until 2025, and the role is still top secret. Suffice it to say that the face belonged to a major star with fantastic teeth. “Smile again,” Ulbrich said. I complied. “Those aren’t your teeth.” Indeed, the teeth belonged to Famous Actor. The synthesis was seamless and immediate, as if a digital mask had been pulled over my face that matched my expressions, with almost no lag time.Ulbrich is the former chief executive of Digital Domain, James Cameron’s visual-effects company, and over the course of his three-decade career he has led the VFX teams on several movies that are considered milestones in the field of computer-generated imagery, including “Titanic,” “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” and “Top Gun: Maverick.” But in Ulbrich’s line of work, in the quest for photorealism, the face is the final frontier. “I’ve spent so much time in Uncanny Valley,” he likes to joke, “that I own real estate there.”In the spring of 2023, Ulbrich had a series of meetings with the founders of Metaphysic. One of them, Chris Ume, was the visual-effects artist behind a series of deepfake Tom Cruise videos that went viral on TikTok in early 2021, a moment many in Hollywood cite as the warning shot that A.I.’s hostile takeover had commenced. But in parts of the VFX industry, those deepfake videos were greeted with far less misgiving. They hinted tantalizingly at what A.I. could soon accomplish at IMAX resolutions, and at a fraction of the production cost. That’s what Metaphysic wanted to do, and its founders wanted Ulbrich’s help. So when they met him, they showed him an early version of the demonstration I was getting.Ulbrich’s own career began during the previous seismic shift in the visual-effects field, from practical effects to C.G.I., and it was plain to him that another disruption was underway. “I saw my career flash before my eyes,” Ulbrich recalled. “I could take my entire team from my former places of employment, I could put them on for eternity using the best C.G.I. tools money can buy, and you can’t deliver what we’re showing you here. And it’s happening in milliseconds.” He knew it was time to leave C.G.I. behind. As he put it: “How could I go back in good conscience and use horses and buggies and rocks and sticks to make images when this exists in the world?”Back on Sunset Boulevard, Ulbrich pecked some more at his laptop. Now I was Tom Hanks — specifically, a young Tom Hanks, he of the bulging green eyes and the look of gathering alarm on his face in “Splash” when he first discovers that Daryl Hannah’s character is a mermaid. I can divulge Hanks’s name because his A.I. debut arrived in theaters nationally on Nov. 1, in a movie called “Here.” Directed by Robert Zemeckis, written by Zemeckis and Eric Roth — a reunion of the creative team behind “Forrest Gump” — and co-starring Robin Wright, “Here” is based on a 2014 graphic novel that takes place at a single spot in the world, primarily a suburban New Jersey living room, over several centuries. The story skips back and forth through time but focuses on a baby-boomer couple played by Hanks and Wright at various stages of their lives, from age 18 into their 80s, from post-World War II to the present day.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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    Luther Vandross Is Transformational in the Documentary ‘Never Too Much’

    He was hounded by a fat-phobic press, but as Dawn Porter’s new documentary shows, he was a transformational presence from the start.Beginning in the late 1970s, while making the transition from background singer to phenomenal solo act, Luther Vandross shaped the sound of commercialism as much as he shaped the sound of modern American music. He recorded lucrative jingles for Juicy Fruit, Miller beer and even Gino’s pizza. During the Gino’s session, he was asked to personify a sizzling hot pie coming from the oven, and he improvised by quickly dropping his tenor into the hadal zone of his body and retrieving it, like a free diver collecting pearls.“I could see the control room just jumping up and clapping,” he says in one of the interviews laced throughout “Luther: Never Too Much,” a new documentary by Dawn Porter (in theaters).It was a genius stroke. He developed a signature as recognizable as Whitney Houston’s record-length notes or Mariah Carey’s fluted crystalline range. Vandross’s musical intelligence predated what is obvious in the era of TikTok: A distinct sound is worth the price of gold.Vandross left a full, rich archive, yet there’s still an emptiness at the heart of it that manages to come through in Porter’s engrossing work. She starts her chronology with Vandross’s second birth. In an interview clip early in the film, Oprah asks Vandross when he knew he could sing. He answers that he decided to sing after seeing Dionne Warwick perform in 1963 in Brooklyn. “I wanted to be able to affect people the way she affected me that day,” he explains. Notice how he didn’t specify a date. Notice how he knew the voice was always there. He just chose the way he wanted to use it.Vandross with Dionne Warwick. He saw her sing in 1963 and decided he should sing as well. Jim Smeal/Ron Galella Collection, via Getty ImagesIn the film, a white interviewer asks Vandross, who grew up in the Alfred E. Smith Houses on the Lower East Side, if he was poor then. His response is earnest if not amused. “My impression of life growing up was great.” He knew something that she did not: Money is only one kind of wealth.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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    Prickly Martha Stewart Makes for a Bracing Netflix Documentary

    “Martha,” from R.J. Cutler, argues that she was ahead of her time. But though she sits for a lengthy interview, this isn’t hagiography.The re-evaluation of maligned celebrities — especially women who reached the height of fame in the 1990s — has become its own mini-genre of pop culture. Often the story tells a bigger tale: a culture bent on taking down successful women, or beautiful ones, or just ones who accidentally strayed into the spotlight.So I wasn’t surprised to see a documentary about Martha Stewart on Netflix’s docket. Titled “Martha” — from that one name, you know instantly who it’s about — and directed by R.J. Cutler, it makes a simple enough case: that Martha Stewart was in nearly every way ahead of her time. She was a stockbroker in the late 1960s, then started a catering company that became the impetus for her books about entertaining and homemaking. Eventually she became a media mogul, considered both the first self-made female billionaire and the original influencer. Then, the movie argues, she was also unfairly prosecuted as a result of her fame and the prosecutors’ need to make a name for themselves. But look, “Martha” says: her road back to influence in recent years on TV and on social media has been remarkable.All of this follows the traditional arc: success, fall from grace, eventual salvation. What I didn’t expect, though, was how Cutler would go about filling in the details. Stewart, who is 83, sat down for a lengthy interview — often an indicator of a pure public relations piece, only telling the story the subject wants told. Usually those are surface-level and hagiographical takes, just part of the overall brand-building package.That’s definitely present in “Martha,” which in its final section chronicles the past decade of Stewart’s life in very rosy terms, beginning with her participation in a 2015 Comedy Central roast of Justin Bieber, which began both her “cool grandma” era and her unlikely friendship with Snoop Dogg.But for most of the film, there’s more fruitful tension than blind celebration. Stewart makes for a prickly interviewee, especially when she’s talking about something she’s not interested in discussing in depth — her first marriage, for instance, or the subject of feelings in relationships. She argues a bit with Cutler. He occasionally lets a statement hang in the air or keeps the camera running, giving us a glimpse of something that feels not totally intended on her part.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