Aurelia Butler

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    ‘Emilia Pérez’ Tops Golden Globe Nominations

    The movie received 10 nominations, the most of any movie. “Conclave,” “Wicked” and “Anora” will be among the other films contending for the top prizes.The point of the Golden Globes has become clearer in recent years: It’s a cash register masquerading as an awards show — an opportunity to sell advertising, promote winter movies and flog designer gowns.Celebrity attendance makes the whole thing run, of course, and so trophies are dangled as bait. On Monday, the companies behind the Globes announced the 2025 list of nominees, and — ka-ching! — there are a ton of stars on it, including Angelina Jolie, Timothée Chalamet, Zoe Saldaña, Nicole Kidman, Jamie Foxx, Jake Gyllenhaal, Ariana Grande, Keira Knightley, Pamela Anderson, Zendaya, Demi Moore, Glen Powell, Selena Gomez, Daniel Craig, Kate Winslet, Miley Cyrus and Denzel Washington.Netflix’s “Emilia Pérez,” a Spanish-language musical exploring trans identity, received 10 nominations, the most of any movie, including one for best comedy or musical. “The Brutalist,” “Conclave,” “Wicked” and “Anora” will be among the other films contending for the top prizes, with “The Bear,” “Shogun,” “Only Murders in the Building” and “Baby Reindeer” among the programs vying for the TV equivalents.[Read the full list of nominees.]Notable nominations included Winslet, a surprise nominee for best actress in a drama for her performance in “Lee,” a little-seen biographical drama with mediocre reviews. The best director category included Coralie Fargeat for her satirical body horror film “The Substance.”Some nominees are Globes warhorses. Kidman, nominated for best actress in a drama for her performance in “Babygirl,” an erotic thriller, has been nominated 18 times before. (She’s a six-time winner.) The comedian Nikki Glaser will host the 2025 Globes, which CBS and Paramount+ will broadcast live on Jan. 5.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

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    Crowds Throng to Syria’s Sednaya Prison to Find Relatives and Friends

    Crowds descended on a prison on the outskirts of Damascus, the Syrian capital, on Monday, desperate to learn the fate of friends and relatives detained at a place that symbolized terror and death under the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.Some hailed taxis or waited for buses from the city to the prison, Sednaya, which opened over the weekend as Mr. al-Assad fell. Others packed into cars, inching through traffic. Many appeared conflicted by hope and dread amid the euphoria that has gripped Damascus since Mr. al-Assad fled to Russia.“Seizing the city is a joy — we are joyous,” said one rebel fighter, Mohammad Bakir, who sat in the back of a mud-caked car en route to the prison, his rifle tucked between his knees. He said he had not heard from his mother, brother and cousin since they disappeared in 2012 after they protested against the government and were presumably detained.“But the real victory will be when I find my family,” Mr. Bakir, 42, said above the din of car horns.Prisons were central to Mr. al-Assad’s ability to crush the civilian uprising that began in 2011 and the rebellion that followed. He set up an industrial-scale system of arbitrary arrests and torture prisons, according to reports by human rights groups.More than 130,000 people were subjected to arbitrary arrest and detention by the government, according to a report in August by the Syrian Network for Human Rights, a nonprofit, which began its count when the conflict started in 2011. The network said that more than 15,000 people had died “due to torture” by government forces from 2011 to July this year.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

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    Matea Gold Named Washington Editor of The New York Times

    Ms. Gold, a managing editor at The Washington Post, is the latest in a series of high-profile departures from the paper.Matea Gold, a managing editor at The Washington Post who until recently was a contender for the newspaper’s top editing role, is joining The New York Times as a senior editor in its Washington bureau.Ms. Gold will be Washington editor for The Times, reporting to its newly appointed Washington bureau chief, Dick Stevenson, the company said on Monday. She starts in January.Since May 2023, Ms. Gold, 50, has been a managing editor overseeing The Post’s political, local and investigative coverage. She was previously the newspaper’s national editor, leading a staff of 150 journalists. Ms. Gold joined The Post more than a decade ago from The Los Angeles Times and has served in a variety of roles, covering politics as a reporter and shepherding ambitious political investigations.Under Ms. Gold’s supervision, The Post’s national staff contributed to Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. The Post’s national staff also won a Pulitzer for a feature article on the impact of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and end the constitutionally protected right to abortion.Her departure is the latest in a series of high-profile exits from The Post news and opinion departments in recent months.The newsroom has been in turmoil since Will Lewis, the company’s chief executive, abruptly forced out the paper’s top editor, Sally Buzbee, in June. Matt Murray, the former top editor of The Wall Street Journal, has led the newsroom on an interim basis since then. Several journalists from the opinion section stepped down from their positions after Jeff Bezos, the paper’s owner, decided shortly before the U.S. presidential election that the paper would not endorse a candidate for president.The Post is searching for a permanent top editor for its news department. Ms. Gold had been considered a candidate for executive editor of The Post, according to two people familiar with the search process. Other candidates include Clifford Levy, a former deputy managing editor of The Times and now the deputy publisher of Wirecutter, The Times’s product recommendation site, and The Athletic, its sports site, the people said. Mr. Murray is also a candidate, the people said.One of the final hurdles is an interview with Mr. Bezos, the billionaire founder of Amazon, who weighs in on hiring decisions for top positions.Ms. Gold joins The Times amid changes in the top ranks of its Washington bureau. The Times announced in November that Elisabeth Bumiller, who had led the bureau since 2015, would be stepping down from that role and returning to reporting. Mr. Stevenson, who has worked at The Times in various reporting and editing jobs for nearly 40 years, will be taking over for her in January. More

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    Explosion at Fuel Depot Near Florence Kills at Least Two

    Officials said it would take time to determine the cause of the explosion. At least nine people were injured in the blast.At least two people were killed and another nine injured Monday in an explosion at a fuel depot on the outskirts of Florence, according to city officials and the company that ran the facility. The cause of the explosion had not yet been determined, the company said.The death toll could rise, as three workers at the depot in the town of Calenzano remained unaccounted for, the officials said. The explosion occurred around 10:20 a.m. Television images showed a huge plume of black smoke rising from the site.ENI, the Italian energy company that owns the depot, said in a statement that the explosion had been confined to a loading area and a resulting fire had not spread to nearby tanks.Italy’s minister for civil protection, Nello Musumeci, said on social media that rescue workers were deployed immediately after the explosion. Local hospitals were put on high alert.Teams of firefighters arrived from Florence and surrounding towns, as well as units from nearby airports, and they managed to put out the fire “quickly, given the situation,” said Luca Cari, a spokesman for Italy’s firefighters.Italy’s national civil protection agency issued an SMS text alert to residents within about three miles of the site, advising them to remain indoors and stay clear of the facility.Officials in Calenzano urged citizens to close their windows and limit outdoor activities. Two days of mourning were announced for Monday and Tuesday. All municipal events were canceled for both days.The mayor of Florence, Sara Funaro, described the situation as “very, very bad,” and said in a statement that the city would offer psychological assistance to the families of the victims.“In these moments,” she said, “we must think of the families who are the first to be affected; we have to be close to them.”Luca Tescaroli, the chief prosecutor of the nearby city of Prato, said in a statement that his office would open a case to determine the causes of the explosion and whether anyone should be held accountable, Italian media reported. More

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    Oil Markets Shrug Off Overthrow of Syria’s al-Assad

    Oil markets have shown little reaction to the collapse of the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad, as traders most likely calculated that Syria was only a modest producer and that events there did not immediately threaten exports from the wider region.In trading on Monday, Brent crude oil, the international benchmark, rose about 1 percent, to $71.80 a barrel.Syria has modest oil reserves, and President-elect Donald J. Trump said during his first presidency that they should be secured, but markets were largely shrugging off the risk that conflict in the Middle East could lead to disruption of supplies. There are about 900 U.S. troops in Syria.In more than a year since Hamas-led militants stormed into Israel from Gaza, there has been little interruption to flows of oil and natural gas, beyond rerouting tanker traffic to avoid attacks by Houthi fighters in Yemen.The markets have instead focused on the tepid growth of global demand that can probably be met by new supplies from the United States, Brazil, Canada and other producers not bound by the agreements of the OPEC Plus cartel.On Thursday, OPEC Plus pushed back plans to increase output to at least the second quarter of next year, the third delay in recent months.Richard Bronze, head of geopolitics at Energy Aspects, a research firm, said, “There’s still a residual view that the oil market will be oversupplied next year.” He added that traders were worried that Mr. Trump’s policies would push oil prices lower “whether due to higher U.S. production or tariffs disrupting economic activity.”Mr. Bronze said he thought that those theories would prove incorrect, but “the market will have to see it to believe it.”Syria is in the neighborhood of large oil producers such as Iraq and Saudi Arabia, but its own production has been sharply curtailed by a decade of civil war.In 2023, Syria produced 40,000 barrels of oil a day — a trickle relative to major oil producers, according to the Statistical Review of World Energy, published by the Energy Institute, a London-based nonprofit.In the early 2000s, Syria pumped more than 600,000 barrels a day, comparable to midsize producers like Azerbaijan or Egypt. That performance gives hope that with a stable political environment and improved management, oil sales could be an important source of revenue for a future Syrian government. More

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    How Syria’s Rebels Took Damascus, Captured on Video

    A brazen nighttime prison release. Presidential posters set on fire. Children playing in the halls of a building once controlled by the former regime.The fall of Damascus, Syria’s capital, happened quickly and dramatically, and much of what we know about the end of Bashar al-Assad’s reign in the country was captured on people’s phones for the world to see. Footage began emerging on social media at 4 a.m. local time on Sunday. It showed the rapid advance of a rebel army that took control of Damascus in just a few hours.Despite reports that government forces were preparing to defend the capital, the Syrian army was nowhere to be found. One video from Damascus showed a military checkpoint that had been abandoned. Inside, what looked like army uniforms littered the floor of the building, which was plastered with large posters of Mr. al-Assad.Associated PressOn the northern outskirts of the city, rebel forces moved swiftly to take control of Sednaya prison, a notorious government complex known for torturing and executing political prisoners. Videos showed groups of men walking through city streets at night, reportedly after being freed from the prison.Other videos posted online showed scenes of joy and disbelief as dozens of people were released from the prison complex. On social media, Syrians posted photos of loved ones who had been detained at the prison, hoping someone might identify them and confirm that they were free.Operations Room to Conquer Damascus, via ReutersAs news began to circulate that the rebels had arrived in the capital, residents began streaming into Umayyad Square in central Damascus. Men gathered around a tank and climbed on top of it, raising their hands in the air as a group of onlookers clapped and played music. The square was soon packed with dozens of cars, and sounds of celebratory gunfire filled the air.By dawn, many were speculating that Syria’s president had fled the country. Crowds outside the Dar al-Assad Center for Culture and Arts stomped on burning images of Mr. al-Assad and tried to topple a statue of his father, Hafez al-Assad. Unsuccessful in taking down the statue, they left a trash can on its head.Hours later, inside Mr. al-Assad’s former seat of power, families wandered through the presidential palace as if they were visiting a museum, smiling and posing for photographs in the halls. Some even collected furniture and dishes as souvenirs.Associated PressBy Sunday afternoon, videos shared on social media showed the rebel leader Abu Mohammad al-Jolani entering the Umayyad mosque in Damascus. Masked security guards escorted him through the crowd as residents battled to try to get a photo with him.In a statement, Mr. al-Jolani described the rebel takeover as a victory for the entire nation.“The future is ours,” he said. More

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    ‘Dune: Prophecy’: Travis Fimmel on His Character’s Fiery Rise to the Top

    Desmond Hart has been a wild card since he burned a young prince alive with his mind. The actor who plays him talked about what motivates Desmond’s drive for power.This interview contains mild spoilers for Season 1, Episode 4 of “Dune: Prophecy.”His character has used his supernatural powers to murder a child prince in the shadows and massacre an emperor’s enemies in public. But the “Dune: Prophecy” star Travis Fimmel doesn’t know if people hate him for it.“No idea,” said Fimmel, an Australian actor, whose friendly speech in an interview last week was sprinkled liberally with the word “mate.” “I’m on a little ranch, so I haven’t been anywhere, really. People could be hating on me. Wouldn’t be the first time, buddy.”Fimmel has portrayed men of great destiny and dubious morality before entering the Dune-iverse: a grasping young king in the historical epic “Vikings,” a mad messiah in the sci-fi mind-bender “Raised by Wolves.” Here, Fimmel stars as Desmond Hart, an ex-soldier returned from a near-fatal tour of duty on the resource-rich desert planet of Arrakis. Seemingly swallowed alive by one of the planet’s massive sandworms, he emerged supernaturally augmented — and wildly ambitious.Now an imperial adviser with deadly telepathic abilities, Desmond is a wild card in this highly structured fictional universe, which is set some 10,000 years before the events of the original “Dune” book by Frank Herbert and the two “Dune” films by Denis Villeneuve. As Fimmel put it, Desmond likes to mess with people’s heads.“Desmond acts like he knows what’s going on and what’s going to happen,” Fimmel said, “but he is unsure of himself, and he is unsure what the power he has can do to him.”Attila Szvacsek/HBO“I’m not in a position of power,” he said, speaking from Desmond’s point of view. “I’m not rich. I’ve got nothing. I’m from the other side of the tracks. Messing with people’s heads is the only power I can get.”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

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    ‘Dune: Prophecy’ Season 1, Episode 4 Recap: Ol’ Blue Eyes

    The sisters have a terrifying vision. Desmond gives a terrifying display of his power and loyalty. Any connection?Season 1, Episode 4: ‘Twice Born’Two blue lights shine in the darkness, like the eyes of an insectoid machine. Guttural sounds, like speech in a language not yet invented, accompany them, but only for a second.Throughout “Dune: Prophecy,” this menacing pairing of sight and sound has recurred in dreams and visions. Are they the eyes of God, judging the Sisterhood, as Sister Emeline argues? Are they the eyes of the tyrannical force that Raquella, the Sisterhood’s first Mother Superior, warned about with her dying breaths? Are they the eyes of whatever entity gives Desmond Hart his “beautiful, terrible” power to burn people alive with his mind? Are all these things one and the same?I suspect we’ll get the answer eventually, but part of me thinks that’s a shame. Right now, the blue lights and the garbled grunts are the most Lynchian thing this franchise has served up since the director David Lynch himself was in charge of it 40 years ago. And as Lynch has demonstrated time and again, sometimes the mystery is its own reward.Not that the Sisterhood would agree. From Emeline on down, all of them — with the alleged exception of Sister Jen — experience simultaneous nightmares one night. They each begin differently, but they end in the same place: in the sands of Arrakis, standing before a sandworm’s maw, ready to fall in and meet that pitiless blue-eyed gaze. Mother Tula’s experiment with automatic drawing to uncover the meaning of the dreams almost ends in disaster when she completely loses control of the trance into which she places the acolytes, leaving them in the clutches of whatever force sent the dream in the first place.In a time of apocalypse, cults of personality spring up like fungus. So it is in the Sisterhood: Emeline revives the teachings of Valya’s rival, Mother Dorotea, whose death, we learn, was labeled a suicide by the Harkonnen sisters and their cronies. (In reality, Valya used the Voice to command Dorotea to kill herself.) In what appears to be a nightmare or a vision — though by the end of the episode, that distinction is slim indeed — Emeline confronts Tula with the truth, vowing to inform the Imperium; then Tula slits her throat. (This is the same fate Emeline met in her own nightmare, though in the dream it was she who wielded the blade against herself.)But the next thing Tula knows, she is sitting placidly by the side of Sister Lila’s stasis chamber once again, where Emeline found and confronted her. There’s no evidence Emeline has been there. But Lila is gone, broken free of her chamber; she emerges from the shadows, her eyes bright blue from overexposure to the psychoactive spice. Are those the eyes everyone is so afraid of?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