By MANOHLA DARGIS When I pulled up to Kathryn Bigelow’s house in upstate New York last month, I couldn’t figure out where she was. Some years back, Bigelow moved from Los Angeles after enduring one too many fires. She has been riding horses since childhood, and whenever a fire broke out, she would rush to where she had stabled hers, load them in a trailer and drive off, trying to keep ahead of the flames. She now owns a sweeping estate, where she keeps a few bays and some oth

By SHAAD D’SOUZA Last week, Taylor Swift did something highly unusual, in the context of the past decade of her career: She responded, however obliquely, to her critics. And it wasn’t in a song. Asked by Apple Music radio host Zane Lowe how she felt about the reaction to her 12th original album, “The Life of a Showgirl,” Swift seemed to acknowledge that her latest work hadn’t been universally praised, or invariably defended by her loyal fans. “I have a lot of respect for peop

By ERIK PIEPENBURG Just in time for Halloween comes killer cola, a creeping phantasm and death from the commode. ‘V/H/S/Halloween’ In recent years, the “V/H/S” found-footage anthologies have offered diminishing returns, mostly because of bloated run times and seen-it-before scripts — a far cry from the knockout first “V/H/S” film in 2012. So consider me as tickled as a kid on Halloween night when I say that the latest collection is (mostly) a big fat treat. Things kick off sp

“28 Years Later” (Sony Pictures) By ELISABETH VINCENTELLI In this month’s picks, the latest in the “28 Days Later” franchise, an aerial phenomenon, and a samurai lost in time. ‘28 Years Later’ Spike (Alfie Williams) is 12 and growing up in a Britain that is overrun by hostile, zombie-like wretches, turned into monsters by a highly contagious virus. A rite of passage involves going out and killing one with a bow and arrow — the country, which is sealed off from the rest of the

Cecilia Beaven, an artist and muralist originally from Mexico City and a co-designer of “Aquí en Chicago,” at the Chicago History Museum in Chicago, Sept. 25, 2025. “I started by creating a palette that is used throughout the exhibition,” she said, inspired by colors used all over Latin America for millenniums. “They used colors coming from natural pigments, like seeds and flowers.” (Lucy Hewett/The New York Times) By TANYA MOHN A sturdy kettle to make coffee for early-rising

Richard Holm, the co-founder of the Museo de los Santos y Arte Nacional, at the museum in San Juan, Sept. 24, 2025. In San Juan, the Museo de los Santos y Arte Nacional is helping to revive interest in santos, small wooden statues of saints that artists have made for centuries. (Erika P. Rodríguez/The New York Times) By CHRISTINE NEGRONI San Juan shared the common space with a display of wooden saints carved in the past by Puerto Rican artists. Some of the pint-size statues,

Ace Frehley, center, accepts an award with his Kiss bandmates during the 29th annual Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony in New York, April 10, 2014. Richard Perry/The New York Times) By GAVIN EDWARDS Ace Frehley, the original lead guitarist of the hard-rock band Kiss, died Thursday in Morristown, New Jersey. He was 74. A statement from his family said the cause of his death, in a hospital, was a recent fall at his home Frehley, who often performed in white-and-silver

Cellist Luis Rojas By PEGGY ANN BLISS Special to The STAR Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra (PRSO) principal cellist Luis Rojas, a product of the famous Venezuelan “El Sistema,” has been quietly getting back to his Numero Uno cello seat. On Saturday, he’ll be playing his fourth regular season after several months of illness. The concert will feature the guiding wand of Puerto Rican conductor Guillermo Figueroa, who preceded the present resident conductor Maximiano Valdés. He’s b