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    • 125 Shares139 Views

      in Music

      Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Trial Draws Long Lines and Limited Seating

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      Without any livestreaming of the often graphic testimony, securing space inside the federal courtroom has meant long lines and long waits.Hours before sunset, the line begins to form outside the Daniel Patrick Moynihan United States Courthouse in Lower Manhattan. By the time the sun has risen again, some 13 hours later, the sidewalk is quite full.Queue psychologists, who study things like how to keep the hordes happy in lines at Disney World, would have a field day at the trial of Sean Combs.Since the trial started two weeks ago, folks have been showing up at ungodly hours to wait for a seat in the room where the music mogul is facing racketeering conspiracy and sex-trafficking charges, to which he has pleaded not guilty.News reporters assigned to cover the trial are joined in equal numbers by vloggers who have made the case their subject of the moment and members of the public who are simply interested in hearing the courtroom testimony.During the first two days of the trial, when the crowds were bigger, one YouTuber, Mel Smith, said he would leave his house in Beacon, N.Y., at about 3:30 p.m. to get a seat for the next morning’s testimony. When he arrived at about 5 p.m., he said, there were already a half-dozen people waiting in front of him.“Everybody knows P. Diddy — he’s a household brand — and everybody’s clicking all day to see what’s the latest updates,” he said.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

    • 163 Shares189 Views

      in Music

      If You Want a Seat at the Trial of Sean Combs, Leave Yesterday

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      Without any livestreaming of the often graphic testimony, securing space inside the federal courtroom has meant long lines and long waits.Hours before sunset, the line begins to form outside the Daniel Patrick Moynihan United States Courthouse in Lower Manhattan. By the time the sun has risen again, some 13 hours later, the sidewalk is quite full.Queue psychologists, who study things like how to keep the hordes happy in lines at Disney World, would have a field day at the trial of Sean Combs.Since the trial started two weeks ago, folks have been showing up at ungodly hours to wait for a seat in the room where the music mogul is facing racketeering conspiracy and sex-trafficking charges, to which he has pleaded not guilty.News reporters assigned to cover the trial are joined in equal numbers by vloggers who have made the case their subject of the moment and members of the public who are simply interested in hearing the courtroom testimony.During the first two days of the trial, when the crowds were bigger, one YouTuber, Mel Smith, said he would leave his house in Beacon, N.Y., at about 3:30 p.m. to get a seat for the next morning’s testimony. When he arrived at about 5 p.m., he said, there were already a half-dozen people waiting in front of him.“Everybody knows P. Diddy — he’s a household brand — and everybody’s clicking all day to see what’s the latest updates,” he said.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

    • 75 Shares159 Views

      in Music

      On TikTok, ‘Propaganda’ Lists Go Viral

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      TikTok users are building eye-catching lists of their dislikes and are labeling them as propaganda that they’re “not falling for.”Lip filler, people who aren’t cat people, the societal expectation for women to shave their legs, working a 9-to-5 job. On TikTok, users have recently begun lining up their dislikes and branding them with an eye-catching term: propaganda.In thousands of videos, many of which are set to a snippet of Charli XCX’s “I think about it all the time featuring bon iver,” users present a list of things they have deemed “propaganda I’m not falling for.” With the context of only a few words of text on a screen, the topics span across genres, with common examples including milk (both plant-based and from cows), Labubus, artificial intelligence, politics, run clubs and the male loneliness epidemic.Delaney Denton, 22, said when she first saw one of the videos she thought it was “kind of iconic” and was inspired to make her own, which now has nearly a million views.“I think it’s putting a spin on things that just feel a little off in our society but aren’t necessarily propaganda,” Ms. Denton said of the trend.

      @delaneydenton #fyp ♬ I think about it all the time featuring bon iver – Charli xcx & Bon Iver The concept isn’t exactly new. Social media aficionados will probably remember the “in” and “out” lists that were an inescapable start to 2024. And people are often looking for new ways to classify their opinions, as is the case with the recent rise of “coded” language online.

      @maya81802 I could make so many of these I have 10,000 opinions (they’re all right) #fyp #propoganda ♬ I think about it all the time featuring bon iver – Charli xcx & Bon Iver 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

    • 125 Shares179 Views

      in Movies

      Timothee Chalamet Was a Knicks Superfan Before He Was Famous

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      Tim Chalamet, an unknown teenager, was with the Knicks in the hard times. Timothée Chalamet, the famous actor, is loving every second of the team’s deep playoff run.Timothée Chalamet, the Academy Award-nominated actor, has been impossible to miss during the New York Knicks’ feisty run through the N.B.A. playoffs. A courtside staple at Madison Square Garden, Mr. Chalamet seemed to get nearly as much screen time as Jalen Brunson, the team’s star guard.Mr. Chalamet, 29, was particularly animated as the Knicks eliminated the Boston Celtics in their second-round series. He embraced Bad Bunny. He dapped up Karl-Anthony Towns, the Knicks’ starting center. He posed for the cameras with Spike Lee, the self-appointed dean of Knicks fandom. He leaned out the window of a sport utility vehicle on Friday to celebrate with other fans in the shadow of the Garden after the Knicks’ series-clinching win.He even earned praise on X for getting Kylie and Kendall Jenner, both famous Angelenos, to cheer alongside him at the Garden, in a post that has been viewed more than 23 million times. (That he is dating Kylie undoubtedly helped win them over.)A focus on celebrities at N.B.A. games is nothing new. For years, the Knicks have pushed the concept of the Garden’s Celebrity Row — their answer to the star-studded floor seats at Los Angeles Lakers games. But while Jack Nicholson spent decades holding court at Lakers games, and Drake has been a sideline fixture for the Toronto Raptors, the Knicks of Mr. Chalamet’s childhood often filled out the floor seats with lower-rung celebrities and entertainers who just happened to be in town. And Mr. Lee, of course.These days, Celebrity Row at the Garden delivers on its name. And in that group of A-listers, Mr. Chalamet has the fan credentials to hang with any of them.Evidence of Mr. Chalamet’s longstanding loyalty is apparent in social media posts from November 2010, around the time that Mr. Chalamet, then 14, was attending LaGuardia High School in Manhattan. He was not yet a star. His breakout role in the Showtime series “Homeland” was a couple of years away.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

    • 138 Shares99 Views

      in Theater

      ‘Sinners’ and Shows like ‘Severance’ Give an Old Form New Life

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      Online, onstage and onscreen, performers are playing multiple parts. The effect of watching someone shape-shift can be both thrilling and unnerving.The much-anticipated season finale of one of my favorite sitcoms was recently derailed when its creator, Shawna Lander, ran into a few snags. In the story I’ve been following for months, a peppy if scatterbrained woman named Jennifer McCallister has gone into labor after a pregnancy that’s transformed her relationship with her sister-in-law (also named Shawna) from antagonistic to amiable. Meanwhile, Jennifer’s mother, Barb — passive-aggressive to a comically villainous degree — is getting drunk on margaritas at a local Mexican restaurant and terrorizing the wait staff when she gets a call to meet Jennifer at the hospital.But just as Jennifer was about to give birth, the story stopped. Lander announced that due to technical difficulties and illness, the audience would have to wait a few days to see what shenanigans Barb got up to, and whether this birth would help her and her son, Jennifer’s brother John, smooth over their rocky relationship. Illness foils shooting days all the time, but typically one creator’s bout of fever wouldn’t force audiences to wait well past the target air date to find out what happens. The difference with Lander’s show, which chronicles the ever-sprawling antics of the McCallister family — most sketches are actually stealth explorations of relationship dynamics — is that Lander is the show. She writes it. She produces and distributes it. She directs and shoots it.Michael B. Jordan as the twins Smoke and Stack in “Sinners.” He’s one of many performers this season playing multiple parts in a production.Warner Bros. PicturesAnd, most important, like several actors in hit TV shows, big-budget films and Tony-nominated Broadway productions this season, she plays every single character: Jennifer, Barb, Shawna, John, other male partners, assorted friends, the waitress, even Shawna’s two small children. They’re all Lander in wigs and different shirts, shot in close-cropped vertical framing for platforms like TikTok and Instagram, where she posts under the handle @shawnathemom. Her performances are so funny and specific that it’s shockingly easy to forget it’s all just her.The McCallister family saga boasts considerable viewership. The chronicles are followed by two million TikTok users, with nearly a million more on Instagram. Add it up, and that’s a bigger audience than watched the Season 3 premiere of “The White Lotus.”Lander’s format — playing every part herself, with shots framed and edited so the characters seem to be conversing with each other — involves a visual vocabulary familiar to comedians on vertical video platforms, who often post satirical sketches about corporate life or marriage. Just recently, a creator who goes by Sydney Jo posted the multi-episode “Group Chat” series, in which she played the multitudinous members of a friend group experiencing mounting drama over one girl’s boyfriend, culminating in a “Real Housewives”-style reunion episode. The series was such a viral hit that Sydney Jo was invited onto the “Today” show to talk about 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

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Music

      AriAtHome Walks the Streets, Making Beats (and New Friends)

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      On the SoHo corner where Prince and Elizabeth Streets meet, dog walkers, errand runners and lunch breakers squinted through the April sun at the part man, part beat-emanating automaton approaching them.Ari Miller, 25, known by his artist name AriAtHome, is a New York-based wayfaring musician who turns heads with his mobile beat-making rig. Donning a get-up that looks like a cross between a Ghostbusters proton pack and a ballpark-vendor tray, he dishes out on-the-spot hip-hop, neo-soul, funk and house beats throughout the city’s streets, all created entirely from scratch without breaking stride.“I built the rig with New York City in mind,” Miller said. “When you make a good song with a stranger in the street it’s like, ‘Whoa, did we just become best friends?’”Ari Miller (a.k.a. AriAtHome) at work, with his videographer Dylan Goucher capturing the scene and livestreaming. Miller making his way up subway stairs wearing 55 pounds of gear.The guts of the machinery Miller and a friend assembled for his mobile music project.Crammed with keyboards, a looper, six speakers and a controller with dozens of knobs and faders, Miller’s Frankenstein instrument offers a buffet of drum, keyboard and bass sounds, interfaced through the music software Ableton. In the back, a mess of cables hides a Mac Mini M4, a modem and the hot-swappable camera batteries that power it all.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

    • 150 Shares189 Views

      in Television

      ‘Black Mirror’ Showed Us a Future. Some of It Is Here Now.

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      The long-running tech drama always felt as if it took place in a dystopian near future. How much of that future has come to pass?Since “Black Mirror” debuted in 2011, the dystopian sci-fi anthology series has taken seeds of nascent technology and expanded them to absurd and disturbing proportions.In doing so, it has become a commentary on defining issues of the 21st-century: surveillance, consumerism, artificial intelligence, social media, data privacy, virtual reality and more. Every episode serves in part as a warning about how technological advancement run rampant will lead us, often willingly, toward a lonely, disorienting and dangerous future.Season 7, newly available on Netflix (the streamer acquired the show from Britain’s Channel 4 after its first two seasons), explores ideas around memory alteration, the fickleness of subscription services and, per usual, the validity of A.I. consciousness.Here’s a look back at a few themes from past episodes that seemed futuristic at the time but are now upon us, in some form or another. Down the rabbit hole we go:‘Be Right Back’Season 2, Episode 1Not long after “Be Right Back” came out, services that digitally resurrect people via recordings and social feeds began to be introduced.NetflixA.I. imitations, companion chatbots and humanoid robotsWhen Martha’s partner, Ash, dies in a car accident, she’s plunged into grief. At his funeral, she hears about an online service that can help soften the blow by essentially creating an A.I. imitation of him built from his social media posts, online communications, videos and voice messages.At first she’s skeptical, but when she finds out she’s pregnant, she goes through with it. She enjoys the companionship she finds by talking with “him” on the phone and starts neglecting her real-life relationships. She soon decides to take the next step: having a physical android of Ash created in his likeness. But as she gets to know “him,” a sense of uncanny valley quickly sets in.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

    • 175 Shares169 Views

      in Movies

      The ‘Pride & Prejudice’ Hand Flex: One Gesture and the Web Is Still Swooning

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      Say “hand flex” to a fan of the 2005 adaptation of Jane Austen’s “Pride & Prejudice” and they will know exactly what you mean.The gesture comes early in the director Joe Wright’s sumptuous version of the story. Keira Knightley’s bold Elizabeth Bennet is leaving Netherfield Park after picking up her ill sister Jane (Rosamund Pike). The reserved Mr. Darcy, played by Matthew Macfadyen, helps Elizabeth into a carriage. She had previously overheard Darcy insult her, calling her “tolerable,” and the tension between them is palpable. But when he touches her, something happens. She looks down, her gaze lingering on his gesture. As he walks away, the camera captures Darcy’s hand. His fingers stretch outward like an impulsive, unconscious tic. Her touch is almost too intense for him to handle.In the nearly 20 years since the film came out, the hand flex has become perhaps the defining beat from Wright’s take on the novel. It’s the subject of countless social-media posts, critical essays and TikTok dissertations. Search “hand flex” on TikTok or X and you’ll find the term even being applied to scenes from other films and TV shows. “This is my equivalent of the hand flex” is shorthand for “this tiny gesture gives me butterflies.”The word I kept encountering when talking to people and reading about the hand flex is “yearning.” Darcy, in the early phases of the story, keeps up a mask around Elizabeth, but his subconscious actions reveal just how much he desires her. To many, it’s devastatingly hot. And now, for the anniversary rerelease of “Pride & Prejudice” on April 20, the hand flex is commemorated with official merchandise.

      @lassoedmoon My first enamel pin design dedicated to our true Roman Empire The Hand Flex™️ #prideandprejudice #enamelpins #ethicallymade #smallbusiness ♬ Marianelli: Dawn – From “Pride & Prejudice” Soundtrack – Jean-Yves Thibaudet

      @mimiharlowrobinson Reply to @yahaira.corona THE HAND FLEX 2! #EnvisionGreatness #OverShareInYourUnderwear #prideandprejudice #prideandprejudice2005 #mrdarcy #janeausten ♬ Once Upon a December by Alexander Joseph – Alexander Joseph 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