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The best red carpet fashions from Met Gala 2024, 'The Garden of Time'

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The best red carpet fashions from Met Gala 2024, 'The Garden of Time'

In certain circles, the words “the first Monday in May” and “the Met Gala” have become synonymous with a parade of the most glorious, outrageous couture fashion worn by a hand-selected slice of innovators and image makers.

The event is also the annual fundraiser for New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute and signals the launch of an annual exhibition.This year’s,“Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion,” features about 250 items from the Costume Institute’s permanent collection.

The dress code for the 2024 gala is “The Garden of Time,” which is taken from a dystopian 1962 short story by J.G. Ballard that uses a garden as a metaphor for cycles of human creation and destruction. So expect some goth garden wear and lots of florals on black backgrounds.

Last year’s gala, in honor of Chanel designer Karl Lagerfeld, hauled in a reported $22 million and reams of coverage of attendees such as Doja Cat and Jared Leto, both of whom dressed as Lagerfeld’s Persian cat Choupette.

Many attribute the gala’s success to its organizer of more than two decades, the powerful Anna Wintour, who as global editorial director of Condé Nast and editor in chief of Vogue has long been a force in creating international celebrities. Wintour controls who is invited to the invitation-only event.

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The gala earns outsize interest partly because its guest list isn’t revealed until the night before and the activities inside the museum gala are also kept secret (thanks to a no cellphones policy).

Yet the event also draws attention to the exhibition, which this year highlights the importance of museum fashion collections and their conservation. “Sleeping Beauties” refers to the delicate garments that will be taken from their temperature-controlled, acid-free tissue nests to come to life in new ways in the museum galleries — but not on mannequins. Using a range of technologies such as X-rays, artificial intelligence, video animation and soundscapes, the curators are reanimating garments that will never be worn again.

Or shouldn’t be. One might consider the exhibit a subtle rebuke to Kim Kardashian, who in 2022 wore —and likely ruined —the fragile gown Marilyn Monroe wore to sing to President John F. Kennedy in 1962. If stylists, celebrities and socialites heed the message to let sleeping beauties lie, then important, historic clothing has a better chance of preservation for future generations.

Co-chair Chris Hemsworth and his wife, Elsa Pataky, coordinate in ivory and gold looks by Tom Ford. If Pataky and her golden princess look is an early indicator, the Met’s “Sleeping Beauties” exhibit title will inspire other fairy tale-themed ensembles.

(Evan Agostini / Evan Agostini/invision/ap)

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Bad Bunny

Co-chair Bad Bunny wears a suit with the tailor’s basting stitches still visible, a hallmark of Maison Margiela, now designed by John Galliano. The Puerto Rican singer carries a bouquet, a nod to the gala’s floral dress code.

(Evan Agostini / Evan Agostini/invision/ap)

Anna Wintour.

Going for the goth floral look, Anna Wintour, editor-in-chief of Vogue and a Condé Nast executive, shows how to modernize antique clothing by having Loewe designer Jonathan Anderson create a cloak with a similar tulip pattern to one in the Met’s collection. Loewe is among the sponsors for the gala and exhibit.

(Evan Agostini/invision/ap)

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Emma Chamberlain.

Emma Chamberlain, in a custom Jean Paul Gaultier gown in lacy, rich brown, looks as if vines have entwined her limbs, a sly nod to the garden theme.

(Kevin Mazur/MG24 / Getty Images for The Met Museum/Vogue)

Gwendoline Christie.

Her height and love of theatricality make Gwendoline Christie the perfect fit for a sort of evil godmother look by Maison Margiela. Her stiff, winged hairstyle is a great fantasy accompaniment to her sheer black cape over a blood red strapless gown.

(Evan Agostini / Evan Agostini/invision/ap)

Steven Yeun.

Steven Yeun’s character in “Beef” wouldn’t recognize himself on the Met’s carpet. He’s wearing a custom Thom Browne three-piece suit cut from a jacquard fabric with a pattern of ravens and roses.

(Jamie McCarthy / Getty Images)

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Lea Michele.

Lea Michele, who appeared on Broadway in “Funny Girl,” wouldn’t be out of place in the Ziegfeld Follies wearing a voluminous aqua gown and cape by the Pasadena natives behind Rodarte.

(Evan Agostini / Evan Agostini/invision/ap)

Jennifer Lopez.

Jennifer Lopez dons a silvery Shiaparelli sheer gown embellished with 2.5 million bugle beads that is vintage JLo: She practically invented the trend for wearing nude-look gowns on red carpets. But it’s the butterfly wing edging at the neckline that brings the drama.

(Evan Agostini / Evan Agostini/invision/ap)

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Mindy Kaling.

Mindy Kaling’s tawny Gaurav Gupta gown with a gazillion gathers and a ginormous back bow makes her look like the fairy godmother we always knew she could be.

(John Shearer / WireImage)

Ben Simmons of the Brooklyn Nets.

Designer Thom Browne is having a great showing at this year’s Met Gala, even dressing Ben Simmons of the Brooklyn Nets in a customized version of a look from the designer’s fall 2024 collection. The clock handbag brings home the “Garden of Time” theme.

(Evan Agostini / Evan Agostini/invision/ap)

Tyla.

Singer-songwriter Tyla took the “Garden of Time” theme to its literal extreme with her Balmain dress made of sculpted sand, accessorized with an hourglass clutch.

(Jamie McCarthy / Getty Images)

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Colman Domingo.

Actor Colman Domingo went through awards season killing it with every red carpet appearance and now he’s showing how to properly slay wearing a cape, no superhero role required. His bouquet of calla lilies brings home the garden theme.

(Evan Agostini / Evan Agostini/invision/ap)

Rebecca Ferguson.

Rebecca Ferguson goes for the spooky look in a Thom Browne couture gown and cape ensemble that reportedly needed 30 craftsmen, who worked thousands of hours to cover it with 60,000 crystals and 7,000 ravens made of raffia. The genius bit? The beading at the shoulders that looks so like feathers.

(Evan Agostini / Evan Agostini/invision/ap)

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Ayo Edebiri.

Ayo Edebiri blooms in a backless, floor-length sweep of floral embellishment, designed by Jonathan Anderson for Loewe.

(Evan Agostini / Evan Agostini/invision/ap)

Jamie Dornan.

Jamie Dornan may play sexy bad boys, but with his pinstriped trousers, knee-length tailcoat and nubby vest, he’s giving Winston Churchill vibes.

(Evan Agostini/invision/ap)

Sarah Jessica Parker.

You can count on style icon Sarah Jessica Parker to put the “costume” in costume ball. She looks royal with a Richard Quinn gown puffed to enormous volume with an internal pannier, golden fascinator, matching Victorian boots and a strand of pearls nearly twice her height.

(Kevin Mazur/MG24 / Getty Images for The Met Museum/Vogue)

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Mike Faist.

Among the many men who are adding adornment to their lapels (a trend that gained ground during recent awards shows), actor Mike Faist (“Challengers”) pins a radish-shaped brooch on his Loewe double-breasted blazer, which he paired with white trousers.

(Evan Agostini / Evan Agostini/invision/ap)

Josh O’Connor.

If you love visual puns, you’ll love how “Challengers” star Josh O’Connor wears a tailcoat with extended “tails” that drag the carpet. His low-heel, floral booties are likely the envy of every woman in heels.

(Kevin Mazur/MG24 / Getty Images for The Met Museum/Vogue)

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Director Baz Luhrmann and wife Catherine Martin.

Director Baz Luhrmann and wife Catherine Martin, an Oscar-winning costume and production designer, coordinate in custom Prada in garden shades of green.

(Evan Agostini / Evan Agostini/invision/ap)

Maleah Joi Moon.

Maleah Joi Moon, star of Broadway’s Alicia Keys musical “Hell’s Kitchen,” knows how to make an entrance with her Collina Strada gown and it’s extra-long train.

(Evan Agostini / Evan Agostini/invision/ap)

Jack Harlow.

Jack Harlow makes a convincing argument for a new tone of tuxedo — dove gray, a signature color of its maker, the house of Dior.

(Kevin Mazur/MG24 / Getty Images for The Met Museum/Vogue)

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Donald Glover.

Donald Glover shows how the colors of rich earth — peat moss brown and tan clay — work in a fluid, double-breasted ‘90s style suit with wide trouser legs and the era’s wide tie, all by Saint Laurent’s Anthony Vaccarello.

(Evan Agostini/invision/ap)

Teyana Taylor.

Teyana Taylor, the actor and singer-songwriter who contributed vocals to “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy,” wears a red-on-red look that could be described similarly.

(Evan Agostini / Evan Agostini/invision/ap)

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Uma Thurman.

Designer Tory Burch channeled the iridescent wings of butterflies for Uma Thurman’s periwinkle dress, which features a corset, intricate pleats and a profusion of the delicate (faux) insects fluttering at her shoulders.

(Kevin Mazur/MG24 / Getty Images for The Met Museum/Vogue)

Morgan Spector and Rebecca Hall.

Broadway veterans and married couple Morgan Spector and Rebecca Hall go big, really big, with the floral theme. His is an oversized Willy Chavarría suit with lapel poppies and hers an ethereal Danielle Frankel strapless silk organza gown with a train of printed and hand-painted flowers flowing yards behind her.

(Evan Agostini/invision/ap)

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Universal Music invests $80 million in Bollywood production company

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Universal Music invests  million in Bollywood production company

Universal Music Group is investing $80 million for a stake in one of India’s biggest Bollywood production companies, Excel Entertainment Pvt.

Universal Music India, a division of Universal Music Group, will acquire a 30% equity interest in the Mumbai-based movie studio. In the deal, announced Monday, the companies will work together on forthcoming films, series, music and emerging formats.

While getting involved in India’s local film industry, Universal Music will also now receive global distribution rights for all future original soundtracks attached to projects produced or owned by Excel. There are also future plans for the companies to launch an Excel-linked music label that will allow UMG and Universal Music India artists to appear in various Excel titles.

The investment underscores the rapid growth in the Indian entertainment industry.

India is the 15th-largest recorded-music market globally.

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Founded by producers Ritesh Sidhwani and Farhan Akhtar in 1999, Excel is responsible for making over 40 different films and scripted shows. Its most popular titles include “Dil Chahta Hai,” “Don” and “Talaash.” The company is currently valued at approximately $290 million.

“India’s entertainment landscape continues to grow from strength to strength, and this is the perfect moment to build meaningful global collaborations,” said Sidhwani and Akhtar in a joint statement. “Together, we aim to take culturally rooted stories to the world.”

Universal Music Group, with its corporate headquarters in the Netherlands and another office in Santa Monica, was founded in 1996. The music giant behind artists like Taylor Swift and Billie Eilish is valued at roughly $48 billion on the U.S. stock market, with shares selling around $25.80.

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UNTIL DAWN Review

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UNTIL DAWN Review
UNTIL DAWN is a horror movie based on a video game about a group of friends who find themselves trapped in a time loop, reliving the same night repeatedly with increasingly terrifying, fatal threats. One year after her sister Melanie vanished without a trace, Clover and her friends look to find more information about her disappearance. Clues lead them to an abandoned mining town implied to be in Pennsylvania. This place of unimaginable horrors traps them all in a horrifying time loop where they’re murdered again and again. They must work together to survive without losing themselves in the never-ending time loop of gruesome murder.

UNTIL DAWN is nicely shot and paced well, with believable performances. However, the movie has a strong humanist worldview featuring gruesome violence, lots of strong foul language, and excessive gore. The violence includes psychopathic killers, people spontaneously exploding, stabbings, kidnapping, demonic possession, and more. The frequent dying over and over in the plot of UNTIL DAWN puts the sanctity of life into question. It forces the characters to conduct abhorrent and unacceptable immoral actions for survival.

(HH, Pa, C, O, Ho, LLL, VVV, S, M):

Dominant Worldview and Other Worldview Content/Elements:

Strong humanist worldview that twists the concept of modern psychology into a supernatural hellscape with unexplained time loops and reoccurring nightmarish horror filled with excessive violence and gore, but with unexplained pagan supernatural elements (such as a storm circling a house, the appearance of more buildings, the time loop itself, and many more), the time loop perverts the laws of mortality and implies that the consequences of violence, murder, suicide, etc., don’t apply, the psychologist controlling the time loop discusses the situation with modern psychology in vague circles meant to confuse and disorient the nature of the reality in which the victims are trapped, religion or God is not explicitly discussed, but there’s an unexplained cross in front of a house that isn’t explained and a character references the belief that a possessed person cannot become possessed through contact but rather weakness of faith, and some occult content where one woman is a self-described psychic and is into “woo-woo” stuff as another character describes it, she tries to amplify her psychic abilities with help from the others by holding hands and meditation, and she often has strong feelings and seems to have a sense the others do not have, but no worship or symbols are shown, plus a girl dating a guy is said to have previously dated a girl as well as other men;

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Foul Language:

At least 101 obscenities (including 62 “f” words), two strong profanities mentioning the name of Jesus, and four light profanities;

Violence:

Very severe violence and gratuitous blood and gore throughout including but not limited to dead bodies, monsters, scarred masked psychopath, stabbing, beating, and people spontaneously exploding;

Sex:

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No sex shown, but a person puts on a VHS tape and a pornographic movie is heard playing briefly but not shown, and a woman is said to date a lot of people and one time dated another woman;

Nudity:

No nudity;

Alcohol Use:

No alcohol use;

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Smoking and/or Drug Use and Abuse:

No smoking or drugs; and,

Miscellaneous Immorality:

A psychologist is a callous antagonist whose motives are relatively unknown beyond having a morbid curiosity that led to awful experiments and playing games with other people, he purposely keeps people trapped for no known reason other than his sick and twisted observations that end in gruesome murder and unnecessary torture.

UNTIL DAWN is a horror movie based on a video game about a group of friends who find themselves trapped in a time loop, reliving the same night repeatedly with increasingly terrifying, fatal threats.
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One year after her sister Melanie vanished without a trace, Clover and her friends look to find more information about her disappearance. Clues lead them to an abandoned mining town. This place of unimaginable horrors traps them all in a horrifying time loop where they will be murdered again and again.

UNTIL DAWN is nicely shot and paced well, with believable performances, but it has a strong humanist worldview overall with some occult elements is filled with gruesome violence, gore, lots of strong foul language, and a time loop that leads to an increasing amount of horrific murder and unacceptable immoral actions for survival.

The movie begins with a woman named Melanie clawing her way through the dirt with an unknown monster chasing after her. Digging her way out, she looks up to a masked psychopath standing over her with a scythe. She begs him, “No! Please not again. I can’t!” He fatally stabs her without a thought. It cuts to the main title, and an hourglass is shown with a ticking clock sound and unsettling music.

Cut to a group pf people in a red car driving up a winding mountain, an obvious nod to THE SHINING. It’s been one year after Clover’s sister Melanie vanished without a trace. The group consists of Max, Nina, Megan, Abe, and Clover. Shortly after their mother died, Melanie had decided to start a new life in New York. Clover decided to stay, which created tension between the sisters before Melanie left.

Clover and her friends are looking for more information about her disappearance. Their last stop is the last place she was seen in a video message taken in front of a middle-of-nowhere gas station. Megan, a proclaimed psychic, wants to join hands outside and see if they can feel any mystical energy regarding Melanie. Their attempt is cut short when an RV blares its horn and almost hits them, scaring them all.

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Clover goes inside the gas station for a cup of coffee while the others talk outside. Clover asks the man behind the register if he worked here last year. After confirming he’s been working there for years, she shows him a picture of Melanie from the video. He asks if she was missing and clarifies saying that Clover is not the first to come asking. When she asks if many people around here go missing, he says people “get in trouble” in Glore Valley. As their only lead, the group decides to go there and stick together.

Nervously driving to the valley in an increasingly dangerous storm, the group begins to question what they are doing. Suddenly the storm stops but is still raging behind them. They park in front of a house with a “Welcome Center” sign, with the storm circling around the area but leaving the house dry. Confused, they get out of the car and look around. Nina decides to see if there’s anyone inside so they can come up with a plan. Everyone goes in except Clover, who walks up to the strange rain wall.

Inside the house, they find a dated and dusty interior. The power and water don’t work, and they conclude that they are the first people to come there in years. There is a strange hourglass with a skull on the wall. Checking the guest book, Nina finds Melanie’s name signed multiple times, with increasingly shaky handwriting. In another room, Abe finds many missing posters with faces on a bulletin board and finds poster with Melanie’s face.

Outside, Clover thinks she sees a person in the rain. She also hears Melanie’s voice and runs after it. Concerned, Max calls after her and he pulls her back in. As Nina signs the guestbook, the sun suddenly sets and the clock starts ticking.

Inside the house now with the hourglass turned over, they try to understand what’s happening. The car is out in the rain now with someone revving the engine threateningly. Some of them go to the dark basement, where the lights don’t work. There is an eerie sense of dread as Abe goes to check out a noise, and Nina finds a scarred and masked psychopath standing in a room as the top half of Abe’s body falls to the ground.

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Hearing the commotion upstairs, the others go to see what happened and Max spots the killer. They run to hide, and the apparently invincible psychopath horrifically stabs each of them as they try to fight back. The sand in the hourglass runs back, as each character returns to where they were when Nina originally signed the book (she now signs it a second time). They remember what had just taken place, and how they were all murdered. Clearly stuck in this time loop escape room situation, they will now have to figure out how to escape this terrifying hellscape as the situations get worse with every loop.

UNTIL DAWN is nicely shot and paced well, with believable performances. However, the movie has a strong humanist worldview featuring gruesome violence, lots of strong foul language, and excessive gore. The violence includes psychopathic killers, people spontaneously exploding, stabbings, kidnapping, demonic possession, and more. The frequent dying over and over in the plot puts the sanctity of life into question. It forces the characters to conduct abhorrent and unacceptable immoral actions for survival.

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