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

A crew member at work on the SS Wilfred Sykes on Lake Michigan on Aug. 29, 2025. The Sykes, which turned 75 last year, is one of only a half-dozen steam-powered lake freighters remaining. (Erinn Springer/The New York Times) By JENNIFER SCHUESSLER On a perfect blue-sky day in late July, the SS Wilfred Sykes was on northern Lake Michigan, approaching the pristine shore of Wisconsin’s Door County peninsula. It gave a horn blast, shimmied through a narrow canal and soon was glidi

D’Angelo performs at the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival in Manchester, Tenn. on June 9, 2012 D’Angelo, the acclaimed neo-soul singer who found fame in the 1990s and early 2000s with an innovative and sensuous take on 1970s R&B, as well as with a risqué music video that briefly made him a pop culture phenomenon but drove him into nearly a decade of seclusion, died on Oct. 14, 2025 after a battle with cancer. He was 51. (Chad Batka/The New York Times) By BEN SISARIO ’Angelo,

Diane Keaton in a press photo for “Looking for Mr. Goodbar” (1977) (Wikipedia via Paramount Pictures/ABC - Ebay) By MANOHLA DARGIS It has often been quipped about the on-screen pairing of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers that he gave her class and she gave him sex. With his romantic comedy “Annie Hall” (1977), Woody Allen gave Diane Keaton one of the defining roles of her career while she, for better and, yes, for worse, helped establish him as a credible-enough romantic lead.