Aurelia Butler

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    Andrea Nevins, Who Made Touching Films on Quirky Topics, Dies at 63

    Her documentaries, one of which received an Oscar nomination, explored subjects like punk-rock dads and Barbie dolls.Andrea Nevins, a documentary filmmaker who brought sensitivity and depth to seemingly lighthearted stories about underdogs and unlikely heroes, including punk-rock dads and Barbie dolls, died on April 12 at her home in Los Angeles. She was 63.Her daughter, Clara, said the cause was breast cancer.Ms. Nevins received an Academy Award nomination in 1998 for her first independent project as a producer, the short film “Still Kicking: The Fabulous Palm Springs Follies,” about a cabaret group made up of retirees in the Southern California desert city.The film bears all the hallmarks of her later work: offbeat characters in unconventional circumstances who, through their struggles, say something meaningful about life and how to live it.Her first full-length project, “The Other F Word” (2011), was based on the 2007 memoir “Punk Rock Dad: No Rules, Just Real Life,” by Jim Lindberg, the lead singer of the band Pennywise.In some ways the opposite of the performers in Palm Springs, Mr. Lindberg was known for his aggressive stage presence and profane lyrics, even as he navigated the everyday challenges of raising three daughters.In a clip from the documentary “The Other F Word,” Fat Mike, the lead singer of NOFX, tends to his second job, parenting his daughter.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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    ‘Havoc’ Review: Tom Hardy Is Primed for a Fight

    Tom Hardy is a crooked cop looking to make amends in Gareth Evans’s action-packed film.Brimming with action archetypes — the grizzled hero, the upstart deputy, renegade police, a crooked politician and young lovers on the run — the writer-director Gareth Evans’s gritty crime movie “Havoc” makes it hard to find anyone in it who feels like a real person.The clichés commence with Walker (Tom Hardy), a sadder, more deflated John McClane type estranged from his wife and daughter at Christmastime. In the film’s opening, Walker, speaking with a low grumble similar to the one Hardy uses for playing Venom, laments his unscrupulous life. “You live in this world, you make choices,” he says. “And for a while it works. Until you make a choice that renders you worthless.”A cop-turned-fixer for the mayoral candidate Lawrence Beaumont (Forest Whitaker), Walker is called into service when Beaumont’s troubled son, Charlie (Justin Cornwell), and his girlfriend, Mia (Quelin Sepulveda), are implicated in a high-speed chase that put a cop in the hospital. They’re also tied to the murder of a high-ranking Yakuza gangster. Beaumont needs Walker to retrieve Charlie before vindictive cops like Vincent (Timothy Olyphant) or the vengeful mother (Yeo Yann Yann) of the slain hoodlum find him. In return, Beaumont will release Walker from any further debts.Following the one-last-job path, “Havoc” offers few surprises, taking nearly an hour to map its huge web of characters. In the meantime, Walker leans on paid informants and his upstart partner, Ellie (Jessie Mei Li), to provide him with witnesses, such as Mia’s resourceful uncle (a scene-stealing Luis Guzmán). The gritty rendering of this crime-riddled city, aesthetically recalling “Sin City,” but in color, provides some additional background stimulation. Still, “Havoc” is mostly shifting around characters to bide time until its gory set pieces.Because what “Havoc” lacks in characters and story, it delivers in two audacious waves of indiscriminate killing that are so bruising and relentless they make the “John Wick” movies look like “Sesame Street.” In the first blood-soaked brawl, Walker finds Mia and Charlie at a club. Unfortunately, so do Vincent and the Japanese gangsters. The four parties collide. With his background as an action choreographer, Evans, who directed the “Raid” films, can artfully craft long elaborate action while maintaining coherency. Walker swings a metal pipe, Mia (Sepulveda’s physicality is impressive) wields a cleaver and others blanket the neon-lit party space with bursts of gunfire.The film’s final skirmish, this time with Walker, Charlie and Mia holed up in a woodland cabin, is equally exhilarating. There are goons crashing through windows and coming up through the floorboards, harpoons and hooks used as weapons. Whip pans instill some moments with a crazed franticness, while slow motion in other instances gives the vicious violence an intoxicating glow. Though the characters in “Havoc” are forgettable, the carnage is gripping.HavocNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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    Masahiro Shinoda, Leading Light of Japan’s New Wave Cinema, Dies at 94

    His films tapped into the fantasies of disgruntled youth by embracing brazen sexuality and countercultural politics. But unlike his peers, he did not shun tradition.Masahiro Shinoda, a leading director of the postwar Japanese New Wave whose films, notably “Pale Flower” and “Double Suicide,” fused pictorial beauty and fetishistic violence, died on March 25. He was 94.His production company, Hyogensha, said in a statement that the cause was pneumonia. It did not say where he died.In the 1960s and ’70s, Japanese New Wave cinema, like its French predecessor, tapped into the fantasies of disgruntled youth by embracing brazen sexuality and countercultural politics, with a tinge of nihilism. But unlike his peers, Mr. Shinoda refused to shun tradition. Instead, he used feudal-era theatrical forms like Noh, Bunraku and Kabuki to recount how cycles of violence have persisted since imperial Japan. His films were wrought with poetic imagery — hooded puppeteers, striking femmes fatales (including his wife, the actress Shima Iwashita) — but for all their sensuality, they espoused the idea that nothing really matters.“Culture is nothing but the expression of violence,” Mr. Shinoda said in an interview with Joan Mellen for her book “Voices From the Japanese Cinema” (1975), adding that “human tenderness is unthinkable without violence.”From left, Ryo Ikebe, Mariko Kaga and Takashi Fujiki in “Pale Flower” (1964), Mr. Shinoda’s best-known film.ShochikuWe 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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    Yale Will Teach a Course on Bad Bunny’s Cultural Impact

    With a new fall offering, Yale becomes the latest university to offer a course on the cultural impact of the Puerto Rican star.Beyoncé, Taylor Swift and Lady Gaga are among a handful of living pop artists who have amassed enough cultural clout to result in college classes being taught about them. At 31, the global superstar Bad Bunny is about to have (at least) his third, as Yale University plans to offer a course about him this fall.The Yale course, “Bad Bunny: Musical Aesthetics and Politics,” was conceived by Albert Laguna, an associate professor of American studies and ethnicity, race and migration. The Yale Daily News was the first to report on the new course, saying that Professor Laguna was inspired to create the class by Bad Bunny’s latest album, “Debí Tirar Más Fotos,” which the artist has described as his “most Puerto Rican album ever.”Bad Bunny was raised in the coastal town of Vega Baja, Puerto Rico, and has risen over the past decade to become a megastar of reggaeton and Latin trap, helping launch Spanish-language music into the contemporary pop mainstream. He has since netted three chart-topping Billboard albums, headlined at Coachella and become one of the most streamed artists in the world. But his new album, which was recorded in Puerto Rico, is a soulful ode to his roots and homeland, where he was born as Benito Martínez Ocasio.The Yale course intends to use the album to study the Puerto Rican diaspora, Caribbean politics and culture, colonialism and musical genres that Bad Bunny has experimented with, such as salsa, bomba and plena.In a phone interview, Professor Laguna described an experience with Bad Bunny’s new album during a trip to New Orleans, which inspired him to design the class.“I was walking around New Orleans listening to it, connecting with the Caribbean feel of the city in neighborhoods like the French Quarter, which can feel a bit like San Juan, and I just became struck by everything this album is doing,” Professor Laguna said. “You have all these creative ways he’s addressing Puerto Rico’s colonial past and present in it and the current challenges the island faces. It’s all over the album. And he’s engaging these issues in music that’s joyful.”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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    Juilliard Plans $550 Million Drive to Go Tuition Free

    The goal is to make the school’s programs more accessible and to ease the burden on graduates pursuing careers in the arts.The Juilliard School, one of the world’s most prestigious conservatories, plans to go tuition free for all of its students, the school announced on Thursday, and has begun a $550 million fund-raising drive to finance the effort.The tuition-free policy is meant to make Juilliard accessible to a broader range of students and to ease the burden on graduates hoping to pursue careers in the arts, where salaries can be meager. The fund-raising campaign will be one of the largest in Juilliard’s 120-year history.“If a student can get into Juilliard — and it’s hard to get into Juilliard — it can’t be about the money,” said Damian Woetzel, the school’s president. “Money can’t be the determining factor of having the opportunity to come to Juilliard, to be in New York City at Lincoln Center, and to fulfill that dream that empowers art itself.”Juilliard officials did not provide a timeline for putting the new policy in place, saying only that it would be a multiyear effort. The school said it has received about $180 million in early commitments, including a pledge of $130 million from Juilliard’s board.Woetzel, who has made affordability a priority since becoming Juilliard’s president in 2018, said the school would push “as fast as we possibly can” to make the tuition-free policy a reality. He said he was confident that Juilliard could meet its fund-raising target, though he acknowledged it would be challenging.“I am optimistic, even as I am realistic that it’s going to take a tremendous amount of energy and work,” he said. “I think this is a worthy goal, and I think people will understand that.”Juilliard’s tuition, for both undergraduates and graduate students, is $55,500 per year. More than 95 percent of students receive some financial aid. This school year, 29 percent of all Juilliard students pay no tuition. That number is expected to rise to 40 percent for the new school year in the fall.Juilliard already offers some tuition-free programs; since last fall, for example, it has not charged tuition for its graduate acting track. School officials said they now want to extend that policy across Juilliard’s music, dance and drama divisions, which collectively serve some 900 students.The cost of attending Juilliard has at times been a point of contention between administrators and students. In 2021, students led protests against a planned tuition increase, demanding that the school freeze its tuition.Juilliard would not be the only conservatory to go tuition free: The renowned Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, which is much smaller than Juilliard, with about 160 students, has not charged tuition since 1928, four years after it opened its doors. More

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    A New Requirement for Oscar Voters: They Must Actually Watch the Films

    The new rule, announced this week by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, was greeted with laughter and disbelief that it had not been required all along.It has not always been necessary to read the book in order to write a book report, as many a devious middle schooler familiar with CliffsNotes or A.I. can attest. And it turns out that Oscar voters have not always had to watch all the films they passed judgment on.But now the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is trying to change that.The academy announced a new rule this week that most filmgoers could be forgiven for assuming was already in place: From now on, members of the academy will be required to actually watch all the nominated films in each category they vote in.Cue the collective side eye.“Like ‘Casablanca,’ I am shocked, shocked to discover that there are academy members who don’t watch all the movies,” said Bruce Vilanch, a comedian who has written for 25 Oscar shows, who added that the new rule was “kind of hysterical.”Skyler Higley, a comedy writer who was on Conan O’Brien’s writing team when he hosted the Oscars last month, called the new requirement “un-American.”“What we do in this country is we sort of vote based on vibes and preferences and biases,” he said. “So to suddenly require that these guys know what they’re talking about when they’re voting, it’s just not what we do in this nation.”Doug Benson, a stand-up comedian and host of the podcast “Doug Loves Movies,” said the rule was “crazy” because most voters were too busy making movies to watch them. “This sucks for academy members,” he said. “But the upside for moviegoers? Maybe award-bait movies will start clocking in at a more reasonable 88 minutes. If they implemented the rule this year, ‘The Brutalist’ would have won squat.”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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    ‘Until Dawn’ Review: They Keep Dying, You’ll Keep Shrugging

    Based on a video game, this movie is done in by mediocre monsters and muddled time loops.Watching someone play a video game that they never let you play is a singular kind of boring. A similar “why am I here?” dullness arrives early and stays late in “Until Dawn,” the new supernatural slasher film based on the popular horror video game of the same name.The game, about the eerie goings-on that happen after sisters go missing from a remote mountain resort, is played in a choose-your-own-adventure style. With interactivity off the table, the film relies on a traditional slasher formula: Clover (Ella Rubin) and a group of her friends make the terrible decision to visit a remote valley’s welcome center seeking answers about the strange disappearance of Clover’s sister.Inside, a masked killer starts slaughtering the characters one by one. But here’s the “Happy Death Day”-style twist: Each night the characters’ lives, and deaths, get reset by an hourglass clock. It turns out there’s a deus ex machina madman at work in this uncanny valley, and as part of his diabolical project to learn more about the mechanics of fear, he reboots days and forces his victims to survive (they don’t) until (you guessed it) dawn.The director, David F. Sandberg (“Annabelle: Creation”) does an exhausting job moving along a script, written by Gary Dauberman and Blair Butler, that’s made slack by mediocre monsters, muddled time loop stuff and underdeveloped characters who seem straight out of a lesser “Goosebumps” episode. The spectacular and repulsively funny deaths by spontaneous combustion deserve their own, better movie.Until DawnRated R for face bashing, gut busting and exploding torso jump scares. Running time: 1 hour 43 minutes. In theaters. More

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    ‘The Trouble with Jessica’ Review: Dinner Party or Crime Scene?

    This British black comedy, starring Indira Varma, centers on a group of wealthy middle-aged friends with fraught histories.There’s a lot not to like about Jessica (Indira Varma), a smug bachelorette with a thing for married men and a new memoir that’s earning raves. Her book’s title is “The Trouble with Jessica,” which takes on new layers when, early on in the film by the same name, she kills herself during a gathering with her longtime friends.If my tone here sounds caustic, that’s because the film, a British black comedy directed by Matt Winn, runs on gallows humor. Unfolding almost entirely in a single setting — a stylish London home — that underscores its Pinteresque theatricality, it uses Jessica’s corpse as a comic prop during the mad scramble that ensues after her death.Before then, the film lays out her friend group’s dynamics, closely tracking the prickly matriarch Sarah (Shirley Henderson) and her guileless husband, Tom (Alan Tudyk). Sarah, more a frenemy to Jessica than a real pal, is peeved when Jessica invites herself to the dinner party she’s hosting — a last hurrah before finalizing the sale of her cherished abode. Joining them is Richard (Rufus Sewell), a louche defense attorney, and his antsy wife Beth (Olivia Williams), who mix up the film’s game of finger-pointing and blackmailing.Tom and the guests are appalled (and eventually complicit) when Sarah — desperate not to jeopardize the sale — suggests moving Jessica’s body to her own apartment. Impromptu appearances from confused cops and an elite buyer ramp up the pressure, while a cheeky jazz score accentuates the sense of chaos and mischief.The problem is that Jessica’s death only serves as a mirror through which the four central characters come to terms with their own flaws, which aren’t all that interesting or revelatory. A critique about the hypocrisies of the righteous upper middle class unfolds halfheartedly, leaving us with performances that might’ve worked better in a sketch comedy scene.The Trouble with JessicaNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 29 minutes. In theaters. More