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New York Times
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
At Cannes, Sneaky Period Pieces and Film Lovers' Delights Rule the Screen
On Thursday, a few minutes after 10 p.m. on the 10th day of the Cannes Film Festival, a multitude of exhausted attendees — critics, programmers, industry types — abruptly woke up. The Chinese movie 'Resurrection' had started, sending an immediate jolt through the theater. It was electric, dramatic, fantastic. People shifted in their seats to lean closer to the screen in the 1,068-seat auditorium. Experiencing awe can transform brains and bodies, and we were lit. A deliriously inventive, elegiac, self-reflexive fantasy written and directed by Bi Gan, 'Resurrection' tracks a tragic mystery being, an entity known as a Fantasmer (Jackson Yee), across cinema history. A dreamer who clings to illusions, the Fantasmer's journey effectively mirrors that of film itself, from its beginnings to its uneasy present. What makes the film especially delectable is that Bi Gan changes visual styles and narrative techniques throughout this movie odyssey. The opening section seems to take place around the time that the 19th century gives way to the 20th, but more precisely looks like — and heavily references — films from the art's first few decades. Sometime later, a guy out of a Hollywood noir or a Jean-Pierre Melville thriller shows up. Chockablock with nods to other films and filmmakers, 'Resurrection' is a cinephile's delight. It was especially pleasurable to watch Bi Gan's references to the pioneering Lumière brothers in a festival that showcases its award ceremony in a theater that bears their name. 'Resurrection' may be wreathed in melancholy, but Bi Gan's own journey through cinema is enlivening and encouraging. It was another reminder that great movies continue to be made despite the industry's continuing agonies, which only deepened when, the week before the festival opened, President Trump threatened to impose a crushing 100 percent tariff on movies that were produced in 'foreign lands,' though the White House has said no final decision had been made. The threat cast a lingering pall. The world's largest film marketplace — where an estimated 15,000 industry professionals meet, great and make deals — takes place simultaneously with the festival. And the news out of the market was less than happy. 'Did Trump's tariffs hijack the world's busiest film market?' read a headline on the France 24 news site. 'Strong Festival, Soft Market' is how The Hollywood Reporter characterized the event's final stretch. Whatever that means for our moviegoing future, this year's festival was gratifyingly strong, the finest in a long time. The selections in the main competition — which vie for the Palme d'Or — can be a mixed bag, the product of programming taste, yes, but also favoritism, backroom politicking and other considerations. The festival functions as a vital showcase for European cinema, but it also relies on celebrity-driven movies to attract the news media that promotes it. That's one reason the event is so protective of its red carpet and helps explains some of its much-derided rules, like no selfies on the steps leading to the Lumière. It's easy to mock Cannes, but festivals like this one offer much-needed alternatives to big-studio dominance and equally necessary proof of life for the art. This year's edition offered a bounty of evidence. Top among the many such offerings was 'Magellan,' from the Filipino director Lav Diaz, which elliptically and hauntingly revisits the brutal path that the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan (Gael García Bernal) cut through the world during his expeditions in the 16th century. With deep feeling, scant dialogue and images that can make you gasp — the lush beauty of the lands is continually in play with the horrors of men — Diaz shows what was lost when the ostensibly old world discovered everyone else. One of the biggest shocks at this year's event wasn't onscreen: The Iranian director Jafar Panahi was here in person. A longtime favorite of the festival, Panahi has had numerous movies presented here but hasn't been able to attend for some time because of continual issues with the Iranian government, which banned him from filmmaking in 2010. The following year, prohibited from traveling abroad, he managed to show 'This Is Not a Film' by having it smuggled out. His latest, 'Un Simple Accident,' follows a group of everyday people who confront a revolutionary guard, a man who may be the same one who tortured them in prison. It's a blistering, beautifully directed movie, although it is ultimately Panahi's decency and humanity that has stayed with me for days. On Wednesday, I talked to Panahi and asked how he had managed to make his latest movie. Speaking through a translator, he explained that he was no longer banned from filmmaking but that the process requires him to submit a script to the Ministry of Islamic Guidance, which will ask for changes before approving it. 'Of course, it is something that I cannot do given the type of stories that I tell,' he told me, adding, 'Not only wouldn't they give me the authorization, but they would prevent me from making it.' So he still works clandestinely with a very small team in a short period of time, and he keeps 'backups of all the rushes that I shoot in case they come and arrest us.' In reality, he said, 'nothing has changed in my situation' except that he can now travel, and it was so good to have him at Cannes. I can't want to revisit Kleber Mendonça Filho's singular, funny-tragic adventure 'The Secret Agent.' Set during the Brazilian dictatorship in 1977, it centers on Marcelo (Wagner Moura), who's fleeing for safety during 'a time of great mischief,' as the movie puts in. A pleasurably non-formulaic mixture of tones, moods and genres (romantic, dramatic, the pulpiest of fictions), 'The Secret Agent' blends the personal with the political as it zigs and zags, takes cinephile detours, tracks back to the past and looks toward the future. Dead bodies turn up on dusty roads alongside ravenous stray dogs, and the world shudders with violence. At one point, a severed leg goes on the run and hops into a park, kicking people in the rear, much as life generally does. It's too bad that severed leg didn't hop into Ari Aster's 'Eddington' and start whacking everyone responsible for this self-amused, characteristically violent mess. Set in a New Mexico town shortly after the onset of the Covid pandemic, it stars Joaquin Phoenix as the local sheriff, an outwardly friendly, putatively regular guy who chafes at wearing a mask and decides to run for mayor against Pedro Pascal's liberal incumbent. Emma Stone, whose skimpy role suggests that she was brought in only to increase the movie's budget, plays his conspiracy-addled wife; Austin Butler shows up as a religious nut. The movie's big laughs are about masks and young white people interrogating their whiteness. Aster knows how to grab your attention, but if he thinks he's saying something about America, the joke is on him. Aster sucks up a lot of attention that would be better given to movies like 'The Mastermind,' Kelly Reichardt's quiet, emotionally sneaky period piece about a family man turned art thief named JB Mooney (a very fine Josh O'Connor). Reichardt doesn't tip her hand as to where she's going or why. JB's comically amateurish crime (he's planning to rob the world's sleepiest museum) gives Reichardt the opportunity to show off her eye for fine detail and talent for precisely calibrated slow burns. As the story continues, though, she discreetly sets JB's plans against the Vietnam War, a catastrophe that appears in news clips on TV screens and in snippets of conversations that are anything but casual. As of my deadline, companies were apparently fighting over who will be lucky enough to distribute Richard Linklater's 'Nouvelle Vague' in the United States. An affectionately funny look at the French new wave set in 1959 and shot in incandescent black-and-white, it follows the young Jean-Luc Godard (Guillaume Marbeck) as he struggles — financially, logistically, collectively — to make his first feature, that earth-shaker 'Breathless.' Linklater doesn't try to explain Godard, which is unnecessary. His movie is a testament of film love at its deepest, an ode to cinema and its immortals. A fictionalized François Truffaut pops up as does a fictionalized Agnès Varda, who drew applause from the audience when she appeared onscreen and tears from at least one sentimental viewer.
The Guardian
19-05-2025
- Health
- The Guardian
Why do I get car sick and my boyfriend doesn't? I asked experts
The other day, I tried to read an email on my phone while in the backseat of a moving car. Almost immediately, I was overwhelmed with nausea. Next to me, my boyfriend was happily scrolling through news articles. He tried to show me a headline, but I was too busy staring out the window, breathing deeply and trying not to vomit. This happens basically any time I am in a moving vehicle that I am not personally piloting. It's a little embarrassing. But I'm in good company: approximately one in three people are considered 'highly susceptible to motion sickness'. What exactly is motion sickness, and why do some people experience it so much more than others? We asked experts. Motion sickness is a generic term that encompasses all sorts of travel sickness, including sea sickness, air sickness and car sickness, says Dr John Golding, professor of applied psychology at the University of Westminster, in London. But you don't need to travel to experience its unpleasant symptoms, which can include nausea, vomiting, burping, drowsiness, dizziness, headaches and blurred vision. When the Lumière brothers first screened a motion picture for the public in 1895, some people in the audience started feeling dizzy and sick, says Golding. This is known as 'visually induced motion sickness'. Science isn't entirely sure what causes motion sickness, experts say, but the most widely agreed-upon explanation is the 'sensory conflict theory'. Your body uses visual stimuli, proprioception (the body's ability to perceive itself in space) and the vestibular system (structures inside the inner ear that help you maintain a sense of balance) to sense where your body is and how it is moving. Usually, these three mechanisms are in sync. But when one of them isn't – say, you're reading a static page in the car, but your vestibular system still senses that you're moving – this sensory conflict confuses the brain. 'This neurological tension is what triggers common symptoms such as nausea, dizziness and vomiting,' explains Dr Safia Debar, a general practitioner and executive health physician at Mayo Clinic Healthcare in London. In the case of the Lumière brothers' first audiences, their vestibular systems and senses of proprioception told them they were still, but their eyes told them they were moving. Today, many people experience this sort of visually induced motion sickness when using virtual-reality headsets. One of the most common misconceptions about motion sickness is that the strength of the movement determines the severity of the reaction, says Golding. But people don't tend to get motion sickness when they're bouncing up and down on horseback; that is a 'higher frequency' movement, says Golding. Slower-frequency movements, like the rocking of a ship at sea, or the swaying of a bus, are more likely to result in motion sickness. So why can one person read endlessly in a car while even a quick glimpse at a phone turns another person green? A number of factors seem to influence one's proneness to motion sickness, says Dr Behrang Keshavarz, senior scientist at the Kite Research Institute and professor in the department of psychology at Toronto Metropolitan University. One is age: motion sickness tends to peak in children between the ages of 8 and 12. 'Adults are usually better than kids with motion sickness,' says Keshavarz. But that's not true for everyone, he clarifies. Research suggests people assigned female at birth are more likely to experience motion sickness than those assigned male at birth, says Keshavarz, though no one's quite sure why. Genetics may also play a role, says Golding, adding that studies indicate motion sickness might be 50-70% heritable. Some individuals may also be better at adapting to strange new motions than others, suggests Dr Thomas A Stoffregen, emeritus professor of kinesiology at the University of Minnesota. 'Some people are 'naturally coordinated' and can learn new motor skills quickly,' he says over email. 'Others (like me) are klutzes and take forever to learn new movements.' The latter are more at risk for motion sickness, he argues. Sign up to Well Actually Practical advice, expert insights and answers to your questions about how to live a good life after newsletter promotion One thing is certain: motion sickness is not a sign of weak character. (I would like to see this printed on the little airplane vomit bags I so often end up breathing into during landings.) 'It's not about being delicate or anxious,' says Debar. 'Some people are simply more sensitive to motion.' About half of novice astronauts get space sick during training, Golding adds. 'They're very fit, very highly motivated and not weak-willed,' he says. I nod. Sitting in the back of a Kia Sorento is a lot like going into space, I tell myself. There are two approaches to dealing with motion sickness: behavioral and pharmacological. Behaviorally, a number of easy measures can help. Sit in the front seat of a car when you can, keep your eyes on the horizon, and avoid reading and screens, says Debar. She also notes that ginger has some natural anti-nausea effects. Pleasant music, fresh air, nice smells and a generally pleasant ambiance may be able to distract you, says Keshavarz. He also suggests car passengers copy the movements of the driver. Drivers rarely get motion sickness because they can anticipate the movements of the car and lean into turns, for example. 'If you mimic what the driver does, that helps,' Keshavarz says. Unfortunately, the most effective way to combat motion sickness is also the least pleasant: habituation. In other words, doing the activity over and over again until it doesn't give you motion sickness anymore. 'This is by far the most effective countermeasure,' says Golding, who used it to help desensitize Royal Air Force pilots to air sickness. 'It doesn't have side effects, but it's very time consuming and can be stimulus specific,' he says – meaning that habituating to car sickness won't necessarily help you with sea sickness. Over-the-counter anti-nausea medication can be effective, experts say, but they often cause drowsiness. Transdermal patches such as Scopolamine are also helpful for up to three days, but can take six to 10 hours to take effect. Timing is important for such medications, says Golding. Even pills might take 30 minutes to an hour to take effect. And you must take them before you start to feel sick, because once you start to experience motion sickness, your stomach goes into gastric stasis, meaning it is no longer emptying its contents into the gut. 'That means you might have taken the pill, but it's not going anywhere,' says Golding. Finally, you can always 'vote with your feet', says Golding. 'Avoid situations where you get sick.'
Times
09-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
Tennis, trinkets and tailoring: luxury books for summer 2025
Is beauty ephemeral or is it transience itself that we find beautiful, something that is there one moment, gone the next, like youth, blossom or a sunset? It is this notion that these books explore, how an overgrown tennis court can evoke powerful sense memories of games past, how a pioneering photographic technique was able to capture colours and textures in fashion and fabrics which will themselves now have faded or been lost, the permanence of jewellery — solid and precious — but somehow holding within it all the people that have worn it, all the parties it has been to. Beauty and ephemerality are also addressed in a monumental monograph on the American Abstract Impressionist, Helen Frankenthaler, who was painting, experimenting, transforming, until her death at 83, her vivid essence still available to us via her transcendently beautiful canvases. By Cally Blackman, £75, Thames and Hudson The Lumière Brothers launched the autochrome photography process in 1907, offering an accessible means to capture colour images. The historian Cally Blackman uses this as a lens to examine how fashion changed over the 30 years that autochromes were in use. The book offers about 370 rarely seen photographs, such as sumptuous images of Fortuny's yellow Delphos dress, a coral satin boudoir gown, cerise embroidered stockings and ivory-coloured lace. We see how fashion evolved from the blouses and extravagant hats of the corseted Edwardian era, via the exotic fringing of the Roaring Twenties, to the unstructured silhouettes and dropped waistlines that emerged later that decade. One of the benefits of the process was the accuracy of its colour representation and its immutability — the image was captured on a glass plate inside the camera and could not be enhanced. But for all their clarity of tone, autochromes possess a gauzy quality, which has influenced our nostalgic vision of the belle époque, Gilded Age and Twenties, when in fact these decades were 'characterised by rupture, speed, industrialisation, mechanisation, modernisation, conflict and change'.To order a copy go to Free UK standard P&P on orders over £25. Special discount available for Times+ members • How one night in Paris changed the face of fashion for ever By Laura Bailey and Mark Arrigo, £50, Rizzoli Tennis courts are rectangles of paradise that can be found around the world — or in this book. It's a passion project for Laura Bailey and the photographer Mark Arrigo, who travelled Europe seeking out its most benignly located courts: alongside the Tiber in Rome, beneath the mountains of Switzerland, secluded by woodlands in Sweden. There are modest inner-city courts and grand competition courts — all shown empty, which will make players long to get out on them. The second half of the book has archive shots of famous tennis lovers (Mick Jagger, Audrey Hepburn, Brooke Shields), and testimonials from the game's heroes such as Billie Jean King. Christiane Amanpour writes about the Imperial Country Club in pre-revolutionary Tehran. Bella Pollen recalls the court at her family home in the Cotswolds, overlooked by an encroaching weeping willow, where her father would play in cowboy boots and flared jeans. Sam Taylor-Johnson explains the importance of colour-coordinated socks: 'Jump in the air and feel alive,' she exhorts. A tenth of proceeds go to the LTA Tennis order a copy go to Free UK standard P&P on orders over £25. Special discount available for Times+ members • Super-watches loved by the world's best tennis players Edited by Helen Molesworth and Rachel Garrahan, £40, V&A Publishing Maison Cartier has long had an affinity with England, its royals, aristocrats and arrivistes. The story of these interactions form some of the most interesting elements of this book accompanying a show at the V&A. Cartier opened its first London boutique in 1902. A year later the Dowager Duchess of Manchester, a Cuban-American heiress who had married a British aristocrat, commissioned the Manchester Tiara, with 1,000 brilliant-cut diamonds that exemplified the appeal of Cartier jewels to a new social set. The book includes drawings, essays and glittering images of the jewels — the diamond and onyx panthers, the 1940 Flamingo brooch worn by the Duchess of Windsor, the Williamson Diamond brooch with its rare 23.6ct pink diamond, given to Elizabeth II as a wedding gift. By the late Sixties and early Seventies the centre of aesthetic gravity had moved to New York, where Aldo Cipullo created his classic Love bangle with its screw motif and the Juste un Clou nail design. Come for the tiaras, stay for the nail bracelet. To order a copy go to Free UK standard P&P on orders over £25. Special discount available for Times+ members • Kings of bling — why royals and pop stars all bow down before Cartier By John Elderfield, £115, Gagosian/Helen Frankenthaler Foundation This is a vastly expanded update of the MoMA curator and former Princeton lecturer's substantial study of the groundbreaking American abstract expressionist Helen Frankenthaler, first published in 1989. Frankenthaler (1928-2011) created art for six decades, and this learned book spanning nearly 500 pages covers her career with a focus on her artistic progression, 'the processes of her pictorial imagination'. • The women who prove abstract expressionism was more than just a man's game Her grand canvases explode with colour and ambiguous meaning and she pioneered new techniques and movements, such as colour field painting. Frankenthaler and Elderfield were friends, and she spent hours talking to him for the book about how she sought to create 'something that looks as if it was born all at once'. Some of the most fascinating paintings here are those inspired by old masters, with the original shown side by side with Frankenthaler's response. But for all their richness, the many colour plates featured can only hint at the extraordinary experience of standing in front of one of the original order a copy go to Free UK standard P&P on orders over £25. Special discount available for Times+ members
