A little over two days after being born at the Houston Zoo, a new baby elephant named Baylor was able to stand up on its own today and tentatively walk. The 348-pound male calf was born Tuesday morning at the zoo's McNair Asian Elephant Habitat. Zoo officials had delayed releasing news of the birth to make sure that the elephant was healthy.
"He's doing well and is with his mother," Zoo President and CEO Deborah Cannon told CultureMap. "He's a little unsure, which is normal. But he is getting up on his own and laying down. He's got a lot to get control of after 48 hours."
Baylor's mother, Shanti, a 19-year-old Asian elephant, is also doing fine after a pregnancy of almost 23 months. Zoo officials said the delivery was "quick and easy." The elephant was in labor for abour 11 hours before delivering the calf at 9:32 a.m. Tuesday morning. The baby started nursing around three hours later.
The Zoo named the calf in recognition of Baylor College of Medicine’s research team, which has worked to significantly reduce the threat of a potentially lethal elephant herpes virus. Animal rights groups have criticized the Houston Zoo's breeding efforts because all 14 elephants bred in captivity in the last 25 years have died at birth or soon afterwards.
If all goes well, they plan to reopen the elephant house next week, so the public can view Shanti and Baylor. "We want them to have some time together before we exhibit him," Cannon said.
Check out the first video of Baylor below. And let us know if you'll be going out to see the zoo's newest star or not.
Many filmmakers have taken their stab at making a great American epic, although few have truly succeeded. One of the best in recent memory came just last year with Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, which wrestled with the world-changing consequences of one man’s unique vision. Writer/director Brady Corbet attempts something similar, albeit with less of a broad impact, in the new film The Brutalist.
Adrien Brody plays the fictional László Tóth, a Hungarian architect who immigrates to the United States in the late 1940s to seek a better life for himself and his family. Working initially with his friend Attila (Alessandro Nivola) at a furniture business, a job redoing the library of the wealthy Harrison Lee Van Buren, Sr. (Guy Pearce) turns into his big break. Impressed with Tóth’s modern style — aka brutalism — Van Buren hires him to design a huge multi-purpose building to honor Van Buren’s late wife.
Tóth’s vision, however, is soon confronted with the reality of financial limitations, interference from Van Buren and others, and, for good measure, good old fashioned bigotry. The long-awaited arrival of his wife, Erzsebet (Felicity Jones), brings added stress, as years of suffering back in Hungary have left her in a wheelchair. As months and years roll by, Tóth’s dream becomes his nightmare.
Corbet, along with co-writer Mona Fastvold, signals his intentions to have the film be a throwback at multiple turns. The film was shot using VistaVision, a format created in 1954 but not used in America since 1961. It also clocks in at a whopping three-and-a-half hours and includes an intermission, a break in the middle of a movie that’s rarely been seen in the past 50 years. With the story spanning decades and the mid-century focus on a very particular style of architecture, much about the film is designed to take the viewer back in time.
In the first half of the film, Corbet intrigues with Tóth’s immigrant experience, which shows that even a man with his talents could only get so far without the help of others. The building of the narrative befits the grand scale that Corbet seems to be going for, the occasional odd detour notwithstanding. The production design, the score by Daniel Blumberg, and the acting all combine to set up what seems destined for an epic second act.
Instead, Corbet almost completely wastes the momentum he had built up. Even as he impresses with the looming building on a hilltop, he includes weird sojourns into Tóth’s drug use, throws in the occasional explicit sex scene for no good reason, and creates conflict out of thin air. The title gradually becomes less literal and more metaphorical, although arguments could be made as to which character it is actually referring.
Brody hasn’t had many notable starring film roles in the past 10 years, but he makes the most of this opportunity. Using a highly credible accent, he takes Tóth through big emotional swings while still remaining relatively subtle in his performance. Pearce is given the bombastic role, and he works extremely well while still giving the role a lot of nuance. Jones seems miscast in her role, though, while supporting actors like Joe Alwyn, Raffey Cassidy, and Stacy Martin are hit-and-miss in their parts.
Corbet, making only his third feature film, has an ambition with The Brutalist that is unmistakable. While there are elements of it that match his lofty goals, he too often veers off into territory that makes little storytelling sense. It may look like the latest “great American film,” but he’s mostly just using older techniques to make it feel more impressive than it actually is.
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The Brutalist opens wide in theaters on January 17.
