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      in Movies

      ‘We Live in Time’ Inspires a Thousand Crying Selfies

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      After seeing “We Live in Time,” social media users filmed themselves sobbing, creating a loop of people seeking an emotional release and then sharing it with the world.When they came across videos on TikTok of people crying after they watched “We Live in Time,” a new romantic drama starring Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield, Carmen Wells and her five roommates decided to watch the film.After the screening, “We were the last ones in the movie theater, sitting on the floor, sobbing,” said Ms. Wells, 19, a student at the University of North Carolina Wilmington.Thinking that their reactions were amusing, and wanting to encourage others to see the movie, Ms. Wells made her own video.“This is me before ‘We Live in Time,’” Ms. Well says in the video, looking composed and casual in a hoodie and glasses. A few seconds later, a shaky hand captures Ms. Wells walking on the street, sobbing as she cries out, “He loves her so much!” Another few seconds pass, and Ms. Wells is holding the camera again. She turns it toward herself. “This is me,” she says through tears.The video, which she posted last week, joined a wave of “crying selfies” that fans of “We Live in Time” have created in response to the film’s heart-wrenching story about love and loss. Crying selfies, which have gained traction in recent years thanks to posts by celebrities like Justin Bieber and Bella Hadid, are photos or videos usually shot in response to overwhelming stress or to an emotional crisis like a breakup. But in this new iteration, the videos are endorsing an experience: Go see this movie if you want a good cry.The TikTok call has been heard: Eighty-five percent of the people who saw “We Live in Time” were under 35 years old, according to Deadline. A24, the film’s production company, has leaned in, distributing branded tissue packs at select screenings on opening weekend.

      @_catman0 straight blubbering (everyone needs to see this movie) #weliveintime #andrewgarfield #sobbing @Maeve @brie @Mary Cooper @Danielle ♬ original sound – carmone

      @brianna.kearney We Live In Time is just wow. #weliveintime #florencepugh #andrewgarfield #movie #movies #moviestowatch ♬ QKThr – Aphex Twin

      @cameliacgarcia this is what happens when you don’t watch the trailer and go in blind @We Live In Time so good tho 🥹 #weliveintime #weliveintimemovie #andrewgarfield #florencepugh #paratii #fypシ ♬ Fine line – Instrumental – Kapa Boy 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 Shares199 Views

      in Music

      Their Songs Blew Up on TikTok, So These Musicians Tweaked Their Sets

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      Social media platforms and streaming services are leading younger listeners to new (and old) music. Artists are making sure they feel at home at live shows.DJ Paul, a founder of the Oscar-winning Memphis hip-hop group Three 6 Mafia, was enjoying some tequila at a pool party in the Hollywood Hills two years ago when a friend shoved a cellphone in front of him. The rapper was surprised to see TikTok videos uploaded by “young white girls” dancing and rhyming along to one of the coarser moments from “Half on a Sack,” a slightly menacing song the group released 17 years earlier. The lyrics described sex and drug use on a tour bus.“I’m like, ‘Whoa,’” he remembered in an interview, laughing. “And when I do my concerts, you see the same kind of girls out there singing that line. They go crazy.”Paul said that “Half on a Sack” had long been a staple of the group’s live set lists, but the crowd response has been more uproarious in the wake of its viral moment.The rapper Project Pat, who has been touring with Three 6 Mafia this year, said he regularly performed “Life We Live,” his 23-year-old song that’s been used in almost three million TikTok videos. It’s seen a 130 percent increase in Spotify streams, as well.Project Pat has seen “Life We Live,” a song he released in 2001, gain a new life on TikTok.Aaron J. Thornton/FilmMagic, via Getty Images“I always looked at the rap game as a business,” Pat said. “I didn’t never look at it like I’m putting my pain and all that” into the art. “If you gon’ pay for this, I’m gonna tell you what you want to hear,” he added in his distinctive Memphis accent.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

    • 100 Shares189 Views

      in Television

      Danny Amendola’s ‘DWTS’ Lift Inspires TikTok Dance Trend

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      Danny Amendola’s smooth lift on “Dancing With the Stars” spawned numerous imitators (with varying results). TikTok cautions users that it can be dangerous.Katie Fraser and her fiancé, Amandeep Sandhu, woke up the other day feeling sore and experiencing mild pain. They hadn’t fallen out of bed or exercised vigorously, though it felt that way. Rather, they had tried to recreate a move done by Danny Amendola on the ABC show “Dancing With the Stars.”On an episode that aired on Oct. 15, Mr. Amendola, 38, a former N.F.L. player, and his partner, Witney Carson, a dancer and choreographer, performed a sexy routine set to the song “Unsteady” by X Ambassadors. At around the 45-second mark, Mr. Amendola lifted Ms. Carson, who was laying on the ground, by pulling her up by her ankle.The pair, who performed the move seamlessly, drew immediate cheers from the studio audience. They also unwittingly created a trend on TikTok as others have tried to recreate the move, which apparently is so difficult that TikTok added a disclaimer to some of the videos. “Participating in this activity could result in you or others getting hurt,” it reads.“I had seen their dance posted online and I thought it was absolutely beautiful,” Ms. Fraser, 28, wrote in an email. “Then I saw the TikTok trend going around of other couples trying and begged my fiancé to try it with me.”Like Johnny’s iconic lift of Baby in the movie “Dirty Dancing,” Mr. Amendola’s lift of Ms. Carson has proved appealing for many, but is considerably harder than it looks.

      @mollythemom @Dancing with the Stars #DWTS HERE WE COME! Dance by @Witney Carson ♬ original sound – Walmart Amy Adams

      @madismellie Why is this all I want to do now😂💃🙈 @Dancing with the Stars #DWTS @Witney Carson #leglift #husband #witneycarson #dannyamendola #mykindofdatenight ♬ Unsteady – X Ambassadors 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 Shares99 Views

      in Music

      6 Social Media Accounts That Changed How I Rediscover Music

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      Hear songs surfaced by Ryley Walker, Drumeo and other feeds from Bring Me the Horizon, Lil Tecca and more.Ryley Walker’s X account is filled with wild (true) stories and a pure love of rock.Astrida Valigorsky/Getty ImagesDear listeners,Sometimes, to listen to music, you have to do something more than just listen.Personally, I spend a significant — disproportionate? unhealthy? — amount of time on social media, and I find myself drawn to accounts that are music-adjacent, or perhaps music-enhancing. They’re not criticism or reporting, but through a hammered-home gimmick (all great accounts have them) they serve up extremely engaging information about certain styles and scenes that you might otherwise allow to float on by.Here’s a list of some of the accounts that fill my screen, along with a song that each one either brought me back to or introduced into my life.Get your scroll on,JonListen along while you read.1. Drumeo (TikTok, YouTube)Drumeo’s videos are created as an extension of a drumming-education platform. The clips feature drummers talking about their craft, and the account’s most intriguing recurring series forces well-established drummers to invent a part for a song they’ve never heard and which is outside of their usual style. The results can be chaotic: Dennis Chambers, a jazz fusion and funk legend, treats a Tool song like an unwelcome pop quiz that he then casually rewrites; Dirk Verbeuren from Megadeth takes a surprisingly patient approach to “Mr. Brightside,” perhaps finding the Killers not quite muscular enough; and Liberty DeVitto, who played for decades with Billy Joel, takes a wry joy in pounding along to Deftones, as if unleashing a lifetime’s worth of backlogged pugnacity.A rediscovered song: Bring Me the Horizon, “Can You Feel My Heart”▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTubeWe 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

    • 100 Shares149 Views

      in Music

      The Viral Choreographer Changing the Way Women Move

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      In February 2023, Rihanna took the field during the Super Bowl LVII halftime show for her first performance in five years. As the opening notes of “Rude Boy” played, a group of dancers in identical puffy white suits and sunglasses gathered in the middle of the stage, moving with forceful precision, gathering speed as the […] More

    • 113 Shares199 Views

      in Music

      The Quick-Witted, Self-Lacerating James Blunt Would Like a Word

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      Twenty years after his hit “You’re Beautiful” turned him into an overnight star, the British singer and songwriter takes his music — and his haters — to task.Twenty years ago this month, James Blunt was an unknown singer releasing his first album. The song that rapidly elevated him out of obscurity was “You’re Beautiful,” a lovelorn rhapsody about falling for a stranger on the subway while high on drugs, which hit No. 1 in 15 countries, including the United States. The smash helped turn his 2004 LP “Back to Bedlam” into a triple-platinum success.As Blunt moved from unknown to highly known, there was a surprise reveal: The slight, diminutive man who wrote “You’re Beautiful” had been a captain in the British army, and served in Kosovo. Interviewers soon learned he also had an acid tongue and a quick wit. And in recent years, with evident zest, he’s turned it on people who troll him on social media; his retorts make him sound like a skilled standup comic who specializes in crowd work. (When someone posted on X, “My mom hates James Blunt,” he retorted, “Because I won’t pay the child support?” At this point, only masochists post @ Blunt.)Blunt has released seven studio albums; the most recent, “Who We Used to Be,” arrived in 2023. Later this year, he’s touring Australia, Asia and Europe, with a return to the United States planned for June 2025. An irreverent documentary about him, “One Brit Wonder,” premiered on Netflix UK in June, with distribution in the U.S. still pending.In a recent video interview, he reflected on the 20th anniversary of “Back to Bedlam” from a tiny office in the London pub he owns, the Fox & Pheasant. (The tavern plays his music five minutes before closing, he joked, so people will leave as quickly as possible.) These are edited excerpts from the conversation.In the documentary, there are lots of instances of people insulting you. Your tour manager calls you “a narcissistic psychopath.” Your mother describes you as “politely ruthless.” And you are likened to Marmite.I like Marmite.You’re aware that most people don’t?It’s a highly lucrative company, so they must be doing something right.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 Shares159 Views

      in Music

      Chappell Roan Seeks the Line Between IRL and URL

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      For Chappell Roan, who has been toiling in the pop music trenches for several years now, the recent burst of acclaim she’s received has been overdue, affirming and more than a little disorienting. Perhaps the most energizing breakout star of this year, she has songs that center queer romance, a robust aesthetic gift and, most striking of all, an unusually moral sense of how a famous person should be treated.As she’s being embraced, she’s also being tested. The last couple of weeks especially have provided Roan a case study in the difference between IRL and URL fandom — the people who show up to commune with you, and the people who make you the object of their study and chatter online — and which to stake her future on.Last Tuesday in Franklin, Tenn., she took a mid-show breather to survey the 7,500 people who’d come to see her perform at the FirstBank Amphitheater.“I know how hard it is to be queer in the Midwest and the South,” she said. She grew up around seven hours west, in Willard, Mo., chafing against her conservative surroundings. As a young person, she continued, “I really needed a place where people weren’t going to make fun of me for how I dressed or who I liked.”For the night, the amphitheater just outside of Nashville had become such a place. Carved into a rock quarry, the open-to-the-sky venue felt cloistered, protected. A place for intimate but very loud conversation out of view of prying ears and eyes.Fans came to the show in costume: Realtree camouflage, pink cowboy hats, Western boots, frilly dresses, hand-drawn shirts with Roan references. Amy Harris/Invision, 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

    • 100 Shares169 Views

      in Television

      When the Devoted Wife Becomes a Winning Brand

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      “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives,” the new Hulu reality show, centers on a clique of influencers in Provo, Utah. In their community, they are steered at young ages into marriages and pregnancies. But on TikTok, they converge into a #MomTok squad, executing coordinated dances in crop tops amid beige McMansions as they rack up followers and brand deals. Now they’ve been upgraded to reality television stars, a cast of frenemies who act out mean-girl scenes and hunt for loopholes in the strict codes of their church.It’s significant that the show identifies these women first as wives, not as influencers. They are professional content creators and, in some cases, family breadwinners. It is their social media popularity that landed them the show, not their unexceptional husbands. Several cast members are actually divorced.The “Mormon Wives” join an extended wife universe — see also: Bravo’s chaotic “Real Housewives” and Instagram’s ethereal tradwives — where the term “wife” no longer strictly refers to a woman’s marital status. “Wife” is a brand. In “Mormon Wives,” it suggests a woman whose public identity is defined by her relationship to the home. A woman whose worth is still measured by her proximity to the patriarchy, even as she claims that her profitable TikTok presence challenges it.These wife-themed shows and tradwife social-media accounts might qualify as simple brain-bleaching distractions, were they not proliferating during this particular presidential election season. The Trump campaign and some of its allies have repeatedly suggested that a woman’s domestic contributions are her highest calling — so much so that they have cast motherhood as a prerequisite for her participation in work outside the home. If a woman hopes to claim a role in public life, she must play the wife and mother everywhere that she goes.In comments from three years ago that resurfaced recently, Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, complained of “childless cat ladies” in business and politics, and railed against the “leaders of the left,” like the American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten, whom he called “people without kids trying to brainwash the minds of our children.” (Like Kamala Harris, Weingarten is a stepmother.) Last week, Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders of Arkansas appeared alongside Donald J. Trump and suggested that because Harris has not birthed children, she has acquired a character defect unbecoming of a leader: “My kids keep me humble,” Sanders said. “Unfortunately, Kamala Harris doesn’t have anything keeping her humble.”Meanwhile, since Elon Musk took over Twitter, rebranded it X and transformed it into what Charlie Warzel of The Atlantic has called “a right-wing echo chamber,” my feed has featured commentary about how infant formula is poison, day care causes mental illness and children ought to be home schooled or “unschooled” by devoted mothers. Instagram and TikTok supply montages of fantasy housewives: white women in pastoral settings, wearing aprons and kerchiefs, kissing their husbands, rubbing their baby bumps and proselytizing about the benefits of beef tallow.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