Author: NY TIMES

That said, perfection is part of what these characters strive for. For Eugénie, Tran said, “if it’s on the table, it means that you did it right at every moment.”Some food movies have inevitably resorted to compromises. In an interview, Campbell Scott recalled that during the making of “Big Night” (1996), which he directed with Stanley Tucci, a lot of the food tasted blander than it looked. “We were low-budget — not a lot of time and long days,” he said. “You want it filmable eight hours later or 12 hours later. Part of what I remember about that is…

Richard Plaud toiled over eight years to construct a nearly 24-foot model of the Eiffel Tower. Each of the 706,900 matchsticks he glued together brought the Frenchman one step closer toward his dream: achieving a world record for building the tallest matchstick sculpture.But in late January, weeks after he finished the replica, Guinness World Records officials delivered devastating news: His Eiffel Tower was disqualified for being built with the wrong type of matchsticks.“It hurt me,” he told TFI Info, a French television network, in an interview aired this week. He also expressed his discontent on Facebook. “GREAT DISAPPOINTMENT,” he wrote…

“We were living together, doing life together,” she said, and in 2020, when Covid brought their music to a halt, they continued enjoying each other’s company. Some people suspected they were a couple, but the pair maintained that they “were the bestest of friends,” Mr. Jakobsen said.In spring 2021, they even bought a house together in Murfreesboro, Tenn., surrounded by farmland.One evening as they watched TV, he spontaneously kissed her. “Are you sure?” she quickly asked, to which he replied, “Yeah.” They kissed again.In December 2021, when his parents visited, they inquired, as usual, about their relationship. “Are you guys…

Much like Blackness is not monolithic, neither is Black love. The relationships in this collection range from young passions to midlife romance, and the types of movies range from glossy studio pictures to vital queer indies. They are poetic, comedic, rapturous and politically minded films — told with soul-stirring intimacy.‘The Best Man’ (1999)Rent or buy on most major platforms.It’s been years since Harper Stewart (Taye Diggs) has seen his old college buddies. With his best friend, Lance (Morris Chestnut), a star running back, getting married to Mia (Monica Calhoun), he must travel to New York City to attend their wedding.…

The party of the imprisoned former prime minister of Pakistan, Imran Khan, won the most seats in parliamentary elections this week, delivering a strong rebuke to the country’s powerful generals and throwing the political system into chaos.While military leaders had hoped the election would put an end to the political turmoil that has consumed the country since Mr. Khan’s ouster in 2022, it has instead plunged it into an even deeper crisis, analysts said.Never before in the country’s history has a politician seen such success in an election without the backing of the generals — much less after facing their…

Divorce left me with a surprising realization about who was the love of my life. Source link

Ever since Mary Shelley wrote “Frankenstein” at age 19, it has functioned as a remarkably versatile Rorschach test, prescient in ways its author could hardly have anticipated. Usually it’s interpreted as a story about hubris, about man playing God and reaping the consequences. But you can just as easily read it as a lucid explication of Rousseau’s ideas about human nature, or as a slippery narrative told by a not-quite-reliable narrator who’s trying to get away with murder.On the other hand, Guillermo del Toro, one of our greatest contemporary horror directors, has described “Frankenstein” as “the quintessential teenage book,” full…

The president of Hungary, a loyal and largely powerless ally of the country’s authoritarian prime minister, Viktor Orban, resigned on Saturday amid a public outcry over her pardoning of a man implicated in a sex abuse scandal at a children’s home.President Katalin Novak, an outspoken champion of traditional values and Hungary’s former minister of family affairs, announced her resignation on television, the latest in a series of prominent figures in Mr. Orban’s conservative governing Fidesz party felled by sex scandals.She quit as president, a mostly ceremonial office she has held since 2022, in response to widespread outrage, including within Fidesz,…

If Valentine’s Day sneaked up on you this year, do not worry. With overnight and even same-day shipping now commonly available, last-minute givers have plenty of options.To help spark your ideas, we asked nine tastemakers around the world to offer some 11th-hour recommendations. Their replies, edited for clarity, included experiential gifts ideal for romantic partners and practical items that could easily double as birthday presents for family and friends.Some can be given instantly, while others require a bit of planning. A couple of suggestions, provided by Liesl Clark, don’t involve spending money at all.Ms. Clark is a co-founder and the…

“The Good, the Bad and the Ugly,” “Days of Heaven,” “Before the Revolution,” “1900,” “The Untouchables,” “Kill Bill,” “Django Unchained,” “The Mission,” “The Thing,” “Fists in the Pocket,” “The Battle of Algiers,” “The Bird With the Crystal Plumage,” “Bugsy,” “Bulworth,” “Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!” — if you’ve watched a movie in the last half century there’s a good chance that you’ve heard music by Ennio Morricone, the titanic Italian composer and arranger who helped define films as we know and hear them.When Morricone died at the age of 91 in 2020, it seemed almost hard to believe given…