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The demands of achieving both one-day shipping and a satisfying orgasm collide in Halina Reijn’s “Babygirl,” a kinky and darkly comic erotic thriller about sex in the Amazon era. Nicole Kidman stars as Romy Mathis, the chief executive of Tensile, a robotics business that pioneered automotive warehouses. In the movie’s opening credits, a maze of conveyor belts and bots shuttle boxes this way and that without a human in sight. Romy, too, is a little robotic. She intensely presides over the company. Her eyes are glued to her phone. She gets Botox injections, practices corporate-speak presentations (“Look up, smile and never show your weakness”) and maintains a floor-through New York apartment, along with a mansion in the suburbs that she shares with her theater-director husband ( Antonio Banderas ) and two teenage daughters (Esther McGregor and Vaughan Reilly). But the veneer of control is only that in “Babygirl,” a sometimes campy, frequently entertaining modern update to the erotically charged movies of the 1990s, like “Basic Instinct” and “9 1⁄2 Weeks.” Reijn, the Dutch director of “Bodies Bodies Bodies” has critically made her film from a more female point of view, resulting in ever-shifting gender and power dynamics that make “Babygirl” seldom predictable — even if the film is never quite as daring as it seems to thinks it is. The opening moments of “Babygirl,” which A24 releases Wednesday, are of Kidman in close-up and apparent climax. But moments after she and her husband finish and say “I love you,” she retreats down the hall to writhe on the floor while watching cheap, transgressive internet pornography. The breathy soundtrack, by the composer Cristobal Tapia de Veer, heaves and puffs along with the film's main character. One day while walking into the office, Romy is taken by a scene on the street. A violent dog gets loose but a young man, with remarkable calmness, calls to the dog and settles it. She seems infatuated. The man turns out to be Samuel (Harris Dickinson), one of the interns just starting at Tensile. When they meet inside the building, his manner with her is disarmingly frank. Samuel arranges for a brief meeting with Romy, during which he tells her, point blank, “I think you like to be told what to do.” She doesn't disagree. Some of the same dynamic seen on the sidewalk, of animalistic urges and submission to them, ensues between Samuel and Romy. A great deal of the pleasure in “Babygirl” comes in watching Kidman, who so indelibly depicted uncompromised female desire in Stanley Kubrick’s “Eyes Wide Shut,” again wade into the mysteries of sexual hunger. “Babygirl,” which Reijn also wrote, is sometimes a bit much. (In one scene, Samuel feeds Romy saucers of milk while George Michael’s “Father Figure” blares.) But its two lead actors are never anything but completely magnetic. Kidman deftly portrays Romy as a woman falling helplessly into an affair; she both knows what she’s doing and doesn’t. Dickinson exudes a disarming intensity; his chemistry with Kidman, despite their quickly forgotten age gap, is visceral. As their affair evolves, Samuel’s sense of control expands and he begins to threaten a call to HR. That he could destroy her doesn’t necessarily make Romy any less interested in seeing him, though there are some delicious post-#MeToo ironies in their clandestine CEO-intern relationship. Also in the mix is Romy’s executive assistant, Esme (Sophie Wilde, also very good), who's eager for her own promotion. Where “Babygirl” heads from here, I won’t say. But the movie is less interested in workplace politics than it is in acknowledging authentic desires, even if they’re a little ludicrous. There’s genuine tenderness in their meetings, no matter the games that are played. Late in the film, Samuel describes it as “two children playing.” As a kind of erotic parable of control, “Babygirl” is also, either fittingly or ironically, shot in the very New York headquarters of its distributor, A24. For a studio that’s sometimes been accused of having a “house style,” here’s a movie that goes one step further by literally moving in. What about that automation stuff earlier? Well, our collective submission to digital overloads might have been a compelling jumping-off point for the film, but along the way, not every thread gets unraveled in the easily distracted “Babygirl.” Saucers of milk will do that. “Babygirl,” an A24 release, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for “strong sexual content, nudity and language.” Running time: 114 minutes. Three stars out of four.
George Norcross III, right, and lawyer Michael Critchley speak to reporters in Trenton on June 17, 2024, after hearing Norcross has been indicted by the state Attorney General's Office. (Photo by Hal Brown for New Jersey Monitor) State prosecutors have urged a judge to deny Democratic power broker George Norcross III’s motion to dismiss his racketeering indictment , accusing defense attorneys of trashing their investigation to “indoctrinate the press, the public, and, worst of all, the prospective jury pool.” In a new filing, state prosecutors implored Judge Peter E. Warshaw Jr. to reject Norcross’ argument that he and five co-defendants were engaged in “hard-bargaining,” not extortion, conspiracy, and other crimes, in deals since 2012 to secure land, easements, and tax incentives along the Camden waterfront. “Defendants resist any further scrutiny of their actions, claiming that this is all just ‘garden-variety politics,’ ‘how deals get done,’ and even ‘a feature of democratic self-government.’ But the grand jury did not think so, and nothing about its view is manifestly or palpably wrong,” prosecutors wrote. In a letter Friday, Attorney General Matt Platkin also asked Warshaw to reject a separate motion defense attorneys filed last Wednesday to compel prosecutors to produce the applications and other documents authorizing the federal wiretaps. The defense plans to press Warshaw to suppress the wiretapping evidence but needs the underlying documents to do so, they wrote. The wiretaps initially were approved for a federal investigation into John “Johnny Doc” Dougherty, the disgraced labor leader in Philadelphia who went to prison this year for embezzling from the labor union he had headed. Investigators listening to conversations in that probe shifted their focus in 2016 to Norcross — but they did so without a fresh wiretap order, defense attorneys said. “These circumstances raise obvious red flags as to whether prosecutors and agents followed Department of Justice policies, the letter of the federal wiretap laws, and truly established probable cause as to Mr. Norcross,” defense attorneys wrote in their motion. The documents prosecutors did provide were so heavily redacted that defense attorneys accused them of “playing a cynical game of hide-the-ball.” The defense also accused Platkin of overreach by taking on a case that investigators had first “shopped” around unsuccessfully to U.S. attorney offices in New Jersey and the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. Federal prosecutors in those offices closed the case because they “saw no crime,” the defense alleges. “There is just one conclusion to be drawn — that the Attorney General prizes headlines over prosecution standards,” defense attorneys Jeffrey S. Chiesa and Lee Vartan said in a statement. The two represent William M. Tambussi, Norcross’ personal attorney and co-defendant. Platkin bristled at defense attorneys’ claims that his office shirked their legal duty to turn over such documents during discovery. “So far, the State has turned over to the defense more than 4.3 million files ranging in length from one-page documents to documents that are thousands of pages long,” Platkin wrote. “The State has also given the defense more than 6,000 wiretap recordings and at least 700 hours of audio recordings, which include the interviews of about 100 people.” Defense attorneys sought additional documents his office doesn’t have, and the office requested them accordingly from federal prosecutors, Platkin added. He dismissed defense attorneys’ claims that his office improperly picked up an investigation the feds abandoned. “That the U.S. Attorney’s Office on the Pennsylvania side of the Delaware River used wiretap materials that federal officials alone generated to prosecute a Norcross associate while declining to pursue Norcross and his codefendants for different criminal schemes in New Jersey is no barrier to this prosecution,” he wrote. New Jersey will “safeguard its residents from corruption — even if it invites the wrath of powerful people like George Norcross or less powerful people like Tambussi,” Platkin added. Federal prosecutors did not pass on prosecuting Norcross and his associates because they saw no crime, Platkin said. Instead, prosecutors close cases without taking them to court for all sorts of discretionary reasons that have nothing to do with guilt or innocence, such as whether their office has the bandwidth to handle such a prosecution, he said. Defense attorneys in the Norcross case say federal prosecutors in New Jersey who closed the probe without charges in 2018 cited “a review of the applicable law and evidence obtained during the investigation,” while federal prosecutors in Pennsylvania gave up last year “based upon review of the available admissible evidence, the applicable law, the probability of a successful trial and the prosecution standards of the office.” Platkin attributed defense attorneys’ “distorted” claims to “their months-long effort to barrage the media with inflammatory rhetoric designed to sway the jury pool.” Norcross was charged in June in a 13-count indictment along with Tambussi and four others — Norcross’ brother Philip A. Norcross, an attorney with Parker McKay; former Camden mayor Dana Redd; Sidney Brown, the head of trucking company NFI and a Norcross business partner; and John J. O’Donnell, a real estate developer and president of The Michaels Organization. Norcross is accused of overseeing a criminal enterprise, using direct threats and intimidation to win development rights along the waterfront and then benefiting from millions of dollars in state-issued tax credits. Norcross and his co-defendants have denied the charges against them. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOXNEW YORK (AP) — The man accused of burning a woman to death inside a New York City subway train used a shirt to fan the flames, causing her to become engulfed in fire, a prosecutor said Tuesday at his arraignment on murder charges that could put him in prison for life. Sebastian Zapeta, 33, who federal immigration officials said is a Guatemalan citizen who entered the U.S. illegally, was not required to enter a plea and did not speak at the hearing in Brooklyn criminal court. Zapeta, wearing a white jumpsuit over a weathered black hooded sweatshirt, will remain jailed and is due back in court on Friday. His lawyer did not ask for bail. Zapeta is charged with two counts of murder, accusing him of intentionally killing the woman and killing her while committing arson. He is also charged with one count of arson. The top charge carries a maximum sentence of life in prison without parole. Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez called the attack a “gruesome and senseless act of violence” and said it would be “met with the most serious consequences.” The apparently random attack occurred Sunday morning on an F train that was stopped at the Coney Island station. Police said Tuesday the victim's identification is still pending. Authorities say Zapeta approached the woman, who may have been sleeping in the train, and set her clothing on fire with a lighter. Zapeta then fanned the flames with a shirt, engulfing her in fire, Assistant District Attorney Ari Rottenberg said in court Tuesday. Zapeta then sat on a bench on the subway platform and watched, police said. According to Rottenberg, Zapeta told detectives that he didn’t know what happened but identified himself in images of the attack. Zapeta's lawyer, Ed Friedman, did not speak to reporters after the arraignment. Video on social media appears to show some people looking on from the platform and at least one police officer walking by while the woman is on fire inside the train. NYPD Transit Chief Joseph Gulotta said Sunday that several officers responded to the fire and one stayed to keep the crime scene “the way it’s supposed to be" while the others went to get fire extinguishers and transit workers. “Officers who were on patrol on an upper level of that station smelled and saw smoke and went to investigate. What they saw was a person standing inside the train car fully engulfed in flames,” Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said. They eventually put the fire out, but “unfortunately, it was too late,” Tisch said, and the woman was pronounced dead at the scene. Zapeta was taken into custody Sunday afternoon while riding a train on the same subway line after teenagers recognized him from images circulated by the police. A Brooklyn address for Zapeta released by police matches a shelter that provides housing and substance abuse support. The shelter did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Federal immigration officials said Zapeta was deported in 2018 but later reentered the U.S. illegally. The crime deepened a growing sense of unease among some New Yorkers about the safety of the subway system, amplified by graphic video of the attack that ricocheted across social media. Overall, crime is down in the transit system compared to last year. Major felonies declined 6% between January and November compared to the same time period last year, according to data from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. But murders are up, with nine killings this year through November compared to five during the same period last year. Earlier this month, a Manhattan jury acquitted former Marine Daniel Penny in the chokehold death last year of an agitated subway rider. The case became a flashpoint in debates over safety, homelessness and mental illness on the system. Policing the subway is difficult, given the vast network of trains moving between 472 stations. Each stop contains multiple entry points and, in many stations, multiple floors and platforms.
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By ADRIANA GOMEZ LICON FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump promised on Tuesday to “vigorously pursue” capital punishment after President Joe Biden commuted the sentences of most people on federal death row partly to stop Trump from pushing forward their executions. Related Articles National Politics | Elon Musk’s preschool is the next step in his anti-woke education dreams National Politics | Trump’s picks for top health jobs not just team of rivals but ‘team of opponents’ National Politics | Biden will decide on US Steel acquisition after influential panel fails to reach consensus National Politics | Biden vetoes once-bipartisan effort to add 66 federal judgeships, citing ‘hurried’ House action National Politics | A history of the Panama Canal — and why Trump can’t take it back on his own Trump criticized Biden’s decision on Monday to change the sentences of 37 of the 40 condemned people to life in prison without parole, arguing that it was senseless and insulted the families of their victims. Biden said converting their punishments to life imprisonment was consistent with the moratorium imposed on federal executions in cases other than terrorism and hate-motivated mass murder. “Joe Biden just commuted the Death Sentence on 37 of the worst killers in our Country,” he wrote on his social media site. “When you hear the acts of each, you won’t believe that he did this. Makes no sense. Relatives and friends are further devastated. They can’t believe this is happening!” Presidents historically have no involvement in dictating or recommending the punishments that federal prosecutors seek for defendants in criminal cases, though Trump has long sought more direct control over the Justice Department’s operations. The president-elect wrote that he would direct the department to pursue the death penalty “as soon as I am inaugurated,” but was vague on what specific actions he may take and said they would be in cases of “violent rapists, murderers, and monsters.” He highlighted the cases of two men who were on federal death row for slaying a woman and a girl, had admitted to killing more and had their sentences commuted by Biden. On the campaign trail, Trump often called for expanding the federal death penalty — including for those who kill police officers, those convicted of drug and human trafficking, and migrants who kill U.S. citizens. “Trump has been fairly consistent in wanting to sort of say that he thinks the death penalty is an important tool and he wants to use it,” said Douglas Berman, an expert on sentencing at Ohio State University’s law school. “But whether practically any of that can happen, either under existing law or other laws, is a heavy lift.” Berman said Trump’s statement at this point seems to be just a response to Biden’s commutation. “I’m inclined to think it’s still in sort of more the rhetoric phase. Just, ‘don’t worry. The new sheriff is coming. I like the death penalty,’” he said. Most Americans have historically supported the death penalty for people convicted of murder, according to decades of annual polling by Gallup, but support has declined over the past few decades. About half of Americans were in favor in an October poll, while roughly 7 in 10 Americans backed capital punishment for murderers in 2007. Before Biden’s commutation, there were 40 federal death row inmates compared with more than 2,000 who have been sentenced to death by states. “The reality is all of these crimes are typically handled by the states,” Berman said. A question is whether the Trump administration would try to take over some state murder cases, such as those related to drug trafficking or smuggling. He could also attempt to take cases from states that have abolished the death penalty. Berman said Trump’s statement, along with some recent actions by states, may present an effort to get the Supreme Court to reconsider a precedent that considers the death penalty disproportionate punishment for rape. “That would literally take decades to unfold. It’s not something that is going to happen overnight,” Berman said. Before one of Trump’s rallies on Aug. 20, his prepared remarks released to the media said he would announce he would ask for the death penalty for child rapists and child traffickers. But Trump never delivered the line. One of the men Trump highlighted on Tuesday was ex-Marine Jorge Avila Torrez, who was sentenced to death for killing a sailor in Virginia and later pleaded guilty to the fatal stabbing of an 8-year-old and a 9-year-old girl in a suburban Chicago park several years before. The other man, Thomas Steven Sanders, was sentenced to death for the kidnapping and slaying of a 12-year-old girl in Louisiana, days after shooting the girl’s mother in a wildlife park in Arizona. Court records show he admitted to both killings. Some families of victims expressed anger with Biden’s decision, but the president had faced pressure from advocacy groups urging him to make it more difficult for Trump to increase the use of capital punishment for federal inmates. The ACLU and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops were some of the groups that applauded the decision. Biden left three federal inmates to face execution. They are Dylann Roof, who carried out the 2015 racist slayings of nine Black members of Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina; 2013 Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev ; and Robert Bowers, who fatally shot 11 congregants at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue in 2018 , the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S history. Associated Press writers Jill Colvin, Michelle L. Price and Eric Tucker contributed to this report.Michigan aims to cap lost season by beating Ohio StateOur community members are treated to special offers, promotions and adverts from us and our partners. You can check out at any time. More info Rob Cross says Scots manager Rab Bain saved his career. But the Leith supremo has warned showman stablemate Scott Williams to ditch his respect for the 2018 champ in tonight’s World Championship crunch. Cross needed Bain’s guidance after the Londoner’s form dropped following being crowned King of the Palace on debut seven years ago. He admitted: “Rab’s one of the best in the game. He’s no nonsense, he tells you as it is. No b***shit. I lost my way a bit, but Rab’s a genius at working out what a player needs. He’s been around the game for years and proper saved me. Listen, I’ve had some tough times. There were moments during the pandemic and a year after where I had really lost my love for the game. “But Rab dragged me up by the b***s. He just found a way off kicking me up the backside in a good way. He made me enjoy the game again. I’m not saying I would have ever quit, but there were times when I didn’t feel it at all. It was all about finding the right structure in my life with darts. “I’d gone from being a normal worker nine-to-five to suddenly being away from my wife and kids, sometimes six days a week. I know that Josh [Rock] and Scott [Williams] feel the same. The only thing is that I’ve got to stop Scott this year. “It’s the nightmare draw for all of us, to be fair. We played a couple of years ago at the Ally Pally and it was a shocker. I think both of us were a bit psyched out by playing each other. “We definitely won’t be mates this year. It’s business. He’ll want to bash me up. This is how you’ve got to be these days, it’s dog eat dog.” Follow Record Sport on Twitter , Facebook and Instagram for all of the up-to-the minute breaking news, video and audio on the SPFL, the Scotland national team and beyond. You can also follow our dedicated Rangers and Celtic podcast pages and sign up to our newsletters to make sure you never miss a beat throughout the season. We've also entered the world of WhatsApp with our Rangers community and Celtic community up and running. Follow NOW to get your club's latest breaking news and transfer gossip directly to your phone.
Dropbox director Lisa Campbell sells $168,665 in stock
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