Author: NY TIMES

The Covid-19 public health emergency officially expired in the United States in May, and it seemed the celebrations were nonstop.Night after night, a cohort of shiny and (and often deep-pocketed) city dwellers escaped into lavish, invite-only parties, galas and benefits that gleamed like 2019. These elaborate fever dreams were made all the more feverish and dreamy by looks often spun from the runways: fire-engine reds, overblown silhouettes, yards of tulle and a grab bag of bijoux.Whether at a Fashion Week party at Gracie Mansion or a benefit for Elmhurst Hospital at the American Museum of Natural History, guests swanned around…

Hollywood’s movie factories run on conventional wisdom — entrenched notions, based on experience, about what types of films are likely to pop at the global box office.This year, audiences turned many of those so-called rules on their heads.Superheroes have long been seen as the most reliable way to fill seats. But characters like Captain Marvel, the Flash, Ant-Man, Shazam and Blue Beetle failed to excite moviegoers. Over the weekend, “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom,” which cost more than $200 million to make and tens of millions more to market, arrived to a disastrous $28 million in ticket sales in the…

In the tech industry, 2023 was a year of transformation.Spurred by the success of last year’s breakout tech star, ChatGPT, Silicon Valley’s giants rushed to turn themselves into artificial intelligence companies, jamming generative A.I. features into their products and racing to build their own, more powerful A.I. models. They did so while navigating an uncertain tech economy, with layoffs and pivots galore, and while trying to keep their aging business models aloft.Not everything went smoothly. There were misbehaving chatbots, crypto foibles and bank failures. And then in November, ChatGPT’s maker, OpenAI, melted down (and quickly reconstituted itself) over a failed…

On a recent evening at the Vienna State Opera, the robust, singing tone of the violinist Albena Danailova shadowed the melodies of the character Rodolfo in a signature aria from Puccini’s “La Bohème.” Between numbers, she casually chatted with fellow members of the house orchestra before angling her bow and steering the ensemble.It was just another night on duty. Except that Ms. Danailova, 48, is the first female concertmaster in the history of the Vienna Philharmonic.She assumed the role in 2011, three years after beginning as a player in the orchestra of the State Opera. (Philharmonic musicians play in the…

When Iranian-backed militias repeatedly targeted U.S. troops in Syria and Iraq this fall, the Biden administration struck back with force. Action was needed, officials said, to deter the groups from turning Israel’s conflict with Hamas into a wider war.But the United States has not yet retaliated against one Iranian-backed group: the Houthis of Yemen.In the past month alone, the Houthis have launched more than 100 attacks against commercial vessels in the Red Sea, crippling traffic there.So why has the United States taken a different approach with the Houthis? The reasons are many.What does the Gaza conflict have to do with…

It is an Indian film without song and dance. The lovers don’t share a word, their main interaction a fleeting moment of eye contact in the monsoon rain. There are no car chases and no action stunts. The men are vulnerable. They cry.And yet when “Kaathal — The Core,” a film in the Malayalam language about a closeted middle-aged politician, was released last month, it became a commercial success as well as a critical one. Cinemas in the southern state of Kerala, home to the Malayalam film industry and about 35 million people, sold out. That one of South India’s…