Cultural News Today

Former opioid addict Dmitry Markov posts evocative images of everyday Russian life on Instagram. Addiction, he says, ‘might be very useful for a photographer’ Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian http://bit.ly/2GPJo9v

Emma Cline joins Deborah Treisman to read and discuss “The Metal Bowl,” by Miranda July, from a 2017 issue of The New Yorker. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews http://bit.ly/2V7cR92

From Mad Men to The Crown, the actor is used to big exits. As new disaster drama Chernobyl launches, he talks about cover-ups, climate change shame – and his hellraising dad Richard Jared Harris says that if only he had played Lane Pryce as he was meant to, he would have probably lasted the duration of Mad Men . Pryce, the financial executive at the TV drama’s advertising agency, was supposed to be a right bastard – and the show’s creator Matthew Weiner famously said baddies don’t get written out. But Harris doesn’t do bastards. He will always find a way to humanise a character – a sprinkling of vulnerability here, a dash of tenderness there. And sure enough, three seasons down the line, Lane hanged himself. Harris is getting used to being bumped off. His quietly dignified George VI in The Crown was inevitably done for by a coronary thrombosis. In his latest TV drama, Chernobyl , Harris’s investigative scientist has died before the opening sequence is done and dusted. (Don’t worry, ...

3.5/5 starsBollywood launches into the superhero arena with Vasan Bala’s The Man Who Feels No Pain, a gleefully big-hearted homage, not to the blockbuster comic-book franchises of today, but the golden era of VHS action cinema.Genre superstars from Hollywood to Hong Kong are held aloft and idolised by the film’s young protagonist, a man born with a congenital insensitivity to pain, who sets out to rid the world – or at least his neighbourhood – of criminals and wrongdoers.Newcomer Abhimanyu… from South China Morning Post http://bit.ly/2ULQIrO

Yuuka Hasumi put high school in Japan on hold and flew to South Korea in February to try her chances at becoming a K-pop star, even if that means long hours of vocal and dance training, no privacy, no boyfriend, and even no phone.Hasumi, 17, joined Acopia School in Seoul, a prep school offering young Japanese a shot at K-pop stardom, teaching them the dance moves, the songs and also the language.She is one of an estimated 1 million other K-pop star wannabes, from South Korea and abroad, hoping… from South China Morning Post http://bit.ly/2WiwXcX

Doreen St. Félix writes about the recent passing and career of the filmmaker John Singleton, who was famous for such films as “Boyz n the Hood,” “Poetic Justice,” and “Baby Boy.” from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews http://bit.ly/2ZVuk38

Amy Davidson Sorkin writes on the Deputy Attorney General, Rod Rosenstein, and his resignation letter, which lauded President Trump. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews http://bit.ly/2DFl6hH

Masha Gessen attended a conversation between Kiron Skinner and Anne-Marie Slaughter—the current and former directors of policy planning at the State Department. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews http://bit.ly/2GLe1Nv

Bob Moser writes on a Joe Biden campaign rally in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and the Presidential candidate’s ability to make an emotional connection with Democratic voters. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews http://bit.ly/2ITp3Uy

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Theatre 503, London The peaceful behind-the-counter romance of two young women is disturbed by the arrival of an outsider The shelves are crammed with wine bottles, colourful tins, cereal boxes and washing powders. It’s a bit of a mess but there’s something about this ramshackle shop, designed withcareful carelessness by Jasmine S wan , that feels like home. Katie and Hope, who both work here, kissed for the first time by the counter. It’s where they fell in love. But the safety of the shop is about to be compromised and the outside world, and all the danger and confusion it entails, is about to be let in. Little happens in the shop – but it’s a lovely kind of inactivity. Katie (Olivia Rose Smith) and Hope (Fanta Barrie, burning with energy) occasionally wipe a surface but they also juggle tangerines, steal kisses and gently tease shop owner Jo (Jenny Bolt). Nineties love songs play on the radio, although the play’s precise setting remains unclear. Lucy Adams’s lighting soothes ever...

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Ali Fitzgerald humorously illustrates imagined tips for making picnics joyless and all-American, from Vice-President Mike Pence. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews http://bit.ly/2V7rPvy

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Chinese film-goers are set to enjoy more home-grown films shot with IMAX cameras – just like one used to shoot the Marvel Comics superhero film Avengers: Endgame . Megan Colligan, the new president of IMAX Entertainment, the Canadian company that patented wide-format film, says the spectacular performance of Avengers: Endgame in IMAX cinemas across the China has given the company more impetus to work with Chinese filmmakers on Chinese-language productions in the future. “You are going to see a… from South China Morning Post http://bit.ly/2PINEfi

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Is it possible to unsee a movie trailer? To longtime fans, this first look at the forthcoming film points to it being the worst video game tie-in of all time For someone who has spent the better part of their adult life arguing the merits of Sonic the Hedgehog, the platforming hero of the Sega Mega Drive era, the trailer for the character’s forthcoming movie is like a 200mph slap in the face. What is so bad about the three-minute teaser unleashed on Tuesday afternoon by Paramount Studios? Where to begin? Is it that Sonic resembles a cheap knock-off Sonic toy your child might win at a fairground stand and then be terrified of (“Daddy, please get it out of my room!”)? Is it that Jim Carey as Dr Robotnik looks like Hercule Poirot crossed with Neo from The Matrix? Is it the laboured idiocy of the whole “save Sonic, save the world” set-up, in which the ratty-looking hedgehog arrives on Earth, sends the US government into a panic, and is befriended by a San Francisco cop played by X-Men a...

Hadestown musical lands 14 nominations after Broadway transfer from London Jez Butterworth’s Troubles-set family drama The Ferryman has soared high in the US’s most important theatre awards, picking up nine Tony nominations. The play, directed by Sam Mendes, opened two years ago at London’s Royal Court, becoming its fastest-selling show ever and attracting stellar reviews . After a sold-out year in the West End it transferred to Broadway with much of the same cast and has gone down a storm. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian http://bit.ly/2PAByEK

Nick Frisch writes about the Chinese poet and photographer Liu Xia, the wife of the dissident and Nobel Prize-winning academic Liu Xiaobo, who is living in exile in Berlin after spending years under house arrest. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews http://bit.ly/2V3XP40

Ian Crouch reviews the new Netflix sketch show “I Think You Should Leave,” created by Tim Robinson and Zach Kanin and directed by Akiva Schaffer and Alice Mathias. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews http://bit.ly/2vspo7B

With a refreshing embrace of both experimental plays and difficult themes, this year’s nominations offer up an interesting, hard-to-predict race What does it say about Broadway that a play about a troubled belief in the American experiment was not nominated for a Tony award and a play about a pile of corpses with waggling genitalia was? Welcome to the nominations for the 73rd Tony awards, announced on Tuesday morning by Bebe Neuwirth, in a frilly blouse, and Brandon Victor Dixon, in a powder blue suit. Although many of the nominations went as expected, there were a few surprises – some of them very welcome. Related: What the Constitution Means to Me review – a five-star Broadway triumph Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian http://bit.ly/2vs4INj

Poland's national art gallery has removed a video installation featuring a human interaction with a banana on moral grounds. People took to the streets with bananas to protest what they call censorship. from Deutsche Welle: DW.com - Culture & Lifestyle http://bit.ly/2XRaXGk

Fresh from the success of Bandersnatch, the minds behind the twisted series will be answering readers’ questions. What would you like to ask them? Keeping up with the frenetic pace of modern life is a tall order for any show, but one that Black Mirror has never struggled with. Since its launch in 2011, Charlie Brooker and Annabel Jones’s twisted anthology series has gained a reputation as TV’s most timely programme, a Twilight Zone for our tech-addled age. Related: Charlie Brooker: ‘The more horrible an idea, the funnier I find it’ Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian http://bit.ly/2PEonCS

Few months in the year can boast as many traditional celebrations in Germany as the merry month of May. Temperatures rise and with them, so does everybody's mood. The celebrations vary from region to region. from Deutsche Welle: DW.com - Culture & Lifestyle http://bit.ly/2GLjAvg

Natalia LL’s 1973 artwork of a model sucking on a banana has been taken down by Poland’s rightwing government. But bananas aren’t just suggestive – they can be subversive, too Bananas are not the only fruit but in art they are the most outrageous. The rightwing government of Poland has taken such exception to a 1973 video and photowork of a model sucking on a banana by Natalia LL that last week it was removed from display at Warsaw’s National Museum . But Natalia LL is not alone. Artists have been aroused and even troubled by this suggestively shaped fruit for more than a century. The real question here is: why has a woman been censored for getting off on bananas when men have been at it so long? Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian http://bit.ly/2vriAY0

Katy Waldman reviews “Afternoon of a Faun,” by James Lasdun, which blends autofiction and psychological thriller in a story about rape that takes place not long before the #MeToo movement. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews http://bit.ly/2ISVOB9

Minerva, Chichester James Nesbitt and Sheila Hancock star in Tim Firth’s touching comedy about a dysfunctional group of relatives Musicals head inexorably towards big ensemble numbers, a convention underlining the genre’s default moral of redemptive togetherness. So This Is My Family is striking in having no choral singing at all. Even when several of the six characters sing together, they hold their own lines contrapuntally. This device sonically illustrates the show’s subject of family life, a dynamic in which the best hope of harmony is that stubborn solos occasionally coincide. Daughter Nicky, 13, wins a children’s competition for an essay about relatives. But the account that touches the judges glosses over the communication gulf between mum and dad, gran’s developing dementia, big brother’s goth-related catatonia, and auntie’s heat-seeking libido. The prize is a family holiday anywhere, but the location chosen seeds a surprising change of set and mood in the second act. Contin...

Contending with the TV series spoiling his books every week, can we really blame GRRM for tantalising his diehard fans – with unicorns? How surreal must it be for George RR Martin right now, to see Game of Thrones viewers cavorting with exultation about this week’s epic battle of Winterfell while his own version of the story of the Starks , Lannisters and Targaryens continues to stagnate in plotlines the TV show covered three seasons ago. However, Martin – who has frequently admitted that he is finding the sixth and penultimate novel in his fantasy series The Winds of Winter “ challenging ” to write – is keeping us hanging on for his final two books with promises that his version of the story will have its own surprises. And in an interview with Neil DeGrasse Tyson this week, he revealed that he’s bringing in unicorns. Related: Top that! Game of Thrones pulls off biggest spectacle in TV history Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian http://bit.ly/2vvkAhY

Truth about Charley Toorop’s Working Class Woman revealed after its sitter was misidentified It has been described by the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam as one of its most popular paintings but the cause of its sitter’s anxious gaze has remained a mystery. Standing in front of a crumbling wall under a menacing sky, Charley Toorop’s Working Class Woman stares ahead, her thoughts elsewhere. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian http://bit.ly/2GNVZKl

Frieze Sculpture, on view for just a couple of months, sparks a conversation between works created more than 80 years apart from Arts & Culture | Smithsonian http://bit.ly/2DD5Pyc

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“Having seen how the sausage is made,” she says, “I feel less worried about it.” from Culture - ELLE http://bit.ly/2LfpMkD

"You Will Be Safe Here" is haunted by voices from South Africa's past, yet Damian Barr tells us how he was drawn to the country by a very recent, very harrowing true story. Juxtaposing characters from the second Boer War and 21st-century Johannesburg, Barr's novel explores the legacy of empire and oppression. from http://bit.ly/2PAkLlc

Isaac Chotiner interviews Eric Kaufmann, a professor of politics at Birkbeck College, University of London, on racism, Donald Trump, and Kaufmann’s new book, “Whiteshift: Populism, Immigration, and the Future of White Majorities.” from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews http://bit.ly/2LfOoKj

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The last decade has seen genre films, which used to be ignored by academia, become the subject of intellectual inquiry and film-festival retrospectives. That is good news, as every film says something about the times in which it was made. But it has meant that some of the fun has gone out of martial arts films and action films.Fun is exactly what the New York-based Subway Cinema organisation is bringing back with its Old School Kung Fu Fest.The two-day festival, which takes place in New York on… from South China Morning Post http://bit.ly/2DDCKTa

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Deal reached to house Season’s Greetings in former police station in Welsh steel town The future of a Banksy that appeared in a south Wales steel town is more certain after the local authority announced that an agreement had been reached to house it in a former police station a mile from where it appeared. The artwork, Season’s Greetings, has attracted thousands of Banksy fans to a formerly nondescript garage in Port Talbot since it was created just before Christmas last year. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian http://bit.ly/2XW11M4

Marine Tanguy thinks our eyes deserve more than narcissistic soft porn – so she’s building a stable of talents to rival Kim Kardashian One day Marine Tanguy decided to do a test. She posted a picture of her bottom in a bikini to her 24,000 Instagram followers . The post received 75% more views than usual – and most of the viewers were other women. “I’m a grown woman,” says the 29-year-old French founder of arts talent agency MT Art . “But imagine if I was a 16-year-old girl. What would this tell me? It would tell me that my body is more valued than anything I could say, more valuable than, say, posting my exam results. Quite possibly it would mean I would put up more photos of my body to increase my profile.” Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian http://bit.ly/2WeDCoD

The Garage, London With their abrasive anthems, the New Jersey duo could be the spiritual successors to the Prodigy’s Keith Flint Ho99o9’s punk-rap provocations are made for performing live. The New Jersey duo’s 2017 debut, United States of Horror, full of sandpaper-throated vocals spilt over Bad Brains-ish guitars and electronic carnage, was compelling but essentially a vessel for their stage show, the pair’s calling card since emerging in 2012. The duo (pronounced “horror”) still have the energy of those early days, if not quite the same destructive streak. They make this much clear across a set at breakneck pace. Tag-teaming vocalists Eaddy and theOGM don’t emerge in wedding dresses, smashing all equipment in sight like they did on 2015’s Warped Tour, causing their removal. But they still pogo around the stage like misfiring pneumatic drills, as abrasive anthems erupt around them: Mega City Nine from November’s Cyber Cop EP is a molotov cocktail of slasher-movie screams that send...

US magazines "Ebony" and "Jet" have influenced generations of Afro-Americans. Former president Barack Obama is no exception. An exhibition in Berlin shows treasures from the archive of magazine publisher John H. Johnson. from Deutsche Welle: DW.com - Culture & Lifestyle http://bit.ly/2PC0jR2

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Patty Terhune and Johnathan Appel offer a humorous list of classic movie lines reimagined in the jargon of corporate communications. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews http://bit.ly/2V2QhOO

Milton Court, London Robert Hollingworth’s vocal ensemble joined forces with an art historian to set the Mona Lisa to Monteverdi and Vitruvian Man to Bach Part multimedia lecture, part concert, I Fagiolini and their director Robert Hollingworth have joined forces with Prof Martin Kemp for Leonardo da Vinci: Shaping the Invisible to mark the 500th anniversary of Leonardo ’s death. Leonardo expert Kemp talks about the artist’s work in often fascinating detail, and Hollingworth and his singers perform music suggested by the art that we see displayed on a screen at the back of the platform. The links between sound and image are sometimes clearcut, sometimes more oblique. Salvator Mundi is accompanied by motets of the same name by Tallis and Herbert Howells, and The Annunciation by Victoria ’s Alma Redemptoris Mater. Hollingworth chose the latter, he tells us, not so much because of its associations with the Virgin Mary, but because he found its overlapping phrases suggestive of the fol...

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Arctic Monkeys’ old haunt in Sheffield becomes latest casualty of spiralling costs that threaten to reshape UK’s music landscape The Harley in Sheffield has earned its place in history as one of the pubs where a pre-fame Arctic Monkeys cut their teeth. But the 200-capacity venue and pub, which also hosted early gigs by the xx and Royal Blood , closed without warning earlier this month. In a statement that has since been deleted, the owners said “mounting financial pressures” had made it impossible to continue with the business. For promoters like Hayley Woods, founder of drum’n’bass fundraising night Rave and Raise, the Harley offered a vital first chance to put on an event. “Everyone’s feeling a bit lost,” she told the Guardian. “It was a pivotal part of the Sheffield music scene and a big place for the whole community to come together and meet. It’s just an irreplaceable venue.” Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian http://bit.ly/2LfTO7V

Lead investor pulls funding but organisers say event will go ahead and will be ‘a blast’ There are conflicting reports as to whether a planned three-day concert to mark the 50th anniversary of the Woodstock festival has been cancelled or not. Woodstock 50 was scheduled to take place on 16 to 18 August in Watkins Glen in upstate New York state with a lineup including the rapper Jay-Z, the singer Miley Cyrus and the rockers the Killers. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian http://bit.ly/2vyRv53

Singleton, who was the first African American to be nominated for the best director Oscar, led a resurgence in mainstream black film-making in the 1990s Boyz n the Hood director John Singleton , who became both the first African American and the youngest-ever film-maker to be nominated for the best director Oscar, has died aged 51. Singleton had been hospitalised following a stroke on 17 April. Earlier on Monday, Singleton’s family announced that he would be taken off life support. “It is with heavy hearts we announce that our beloved son, father and friend, John Daniel Singleton will be taken off of life support today,” a spokesperson for the family said in a statement to Deadline . “This was an agonising decision, one that our family made, over a number of days, with the careful counsel of John’s doctors.” Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian http://bit.ly/2DCmAJE

Xbox One, PC, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch; NetherRealm Studios/Warner Bros Interactive The extreme violence will deter some, but this over-the-top fighter has brains as well as shock value I never expected Mortal Kombat to show this much heart – at least, not in the metaphorical sense. In the 90s, Mortal Kombat made its name with its infamously grisly fighting, particularly its absurdly violent “Fatality” finishers, where just about every vital organ could be punched, ripped, cleaved or shot out of a character’s body as if it were a meaty piñata. In Mortal Kombat 11, these gory finishing moves are more creative and more depraved than ever, to the point where shooting an opponent into a helicopter’s whirling rotors seems tame. Yet amid all that spilled viscera, Mortal Kombat 11 also displays a cunning fighting brain and a surprising amount of soul. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian http://bit.ly/2WdTDv5

As the city mourned the rapper, local gang members saw an opportunity to unite longstanding rivals. But some fear any truce will be short-lived Days after Nipsey Hussle’s murder, his friend Shamond Bennett was unexpectedly feeling “on top of the world”. Bennett, who is 39 and goes by the name Lil AD, was like an older brother to Hussle, and part of the same Los Angeles gang. He was suffering through intense grief when something unprecedented happened: South LA’s rival gangs came together and, for the first time in decades, talked to each other about stopping the violence. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian http://bit.ly/2ZKfBYF

Bells and Spells casts the French star as a kleptomaniac in a performance that leaves the audience guessing In her mystifying shows, Aurélia Thierrée has crossed the stage in an upside-down sedan, blown cigarette smoke through her ears and poured wine while trapped in a chest, her limbs spilling out of drawers. So it’s disarming to find this saucer-eyed queen of the uncanny sitting on a simple folding chair, sipping a can of Coke, in her attic room at Montmartre’s Théâtre de l’Atelier . You half expect the contents of the dressing table to disappear or the pictures to come alive as they do in her new show, Bells and Spells, staged several twisting flights of stairs below. But the only disruption comes from her cat, who stretches out on a yoga mat by our feet, scratches around in the litter tray and eventually hops into Thierrée’s lap. He is as sleek and mischievous a presence as his owner is on stage. Bells and Spells, which comes to the UK in May, is the dreamlike odyssey of a woma...

Pair to star in two-hander Lungs as theatre also reveals a Beckett double bill with Daniel Radcliffe and Alan Cumming Claire Foy and Matt Smith, who starred as the Queen and Prince Philip in the first two series of Netflix’s addictive hit The Crown , are to be reunited on stage in a strikingly different setting: Ikea. On Tuesday, the Old Vic announced a new production of Duncan Macmillan ’s two-hander Lungs , which starts with a man catching his partner off guard in the Ikea queue by suggesting they have a baby. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian http://bit.ly/2vzjce1

Was the first jazz album recorded in New York or in Berlin? For International Jazz Day, expert Bert Noglik discusses the role of technology for pioneers of the genre, from the Original Dixieland Jazz Band to Miles Davis. from Deutsche Welle: DW.com - Culture & Lifestyle http://bit.ly/2J102Wq

Bryan Washington writes about making bread pudding, with his neighbors and for his family, in Houston, and provides his recipe for the dessert. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews http://bit.ly/2V2ErUW

M. R. O’Connor writes about the Human Driving Association, which opposes the creation of fully autonomous vehicles and advocates for a constitutional amendment that would protect people’s freedom of movement and their right to drive their own cars. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews http://bit.ly/2GK4DK8

David Sipress’s Daily Cartoon contemplates the Democratic field. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews http://bit.ly/2GE0YNC

The Icelandic-born musician’s fresh approach to Bach has won him rave reviews and a record of the year award. Why is he now mixing the baroque composer with electronic music? ‘We’re in a golden age for classical music,” says Víkingur Ólafsson. Spend time in the 35-year-old’s musical company and you might well agree. His album, Bach, has just been named recording of the year in the BBC Music Magazine awards – no surprise given the five-star raves it received on its release in September. “ Ravishing … a miracle of delicate control ”, “ Ólafsson’s Bach will quench your thirst ”, “ infectiously joyous energy … he is a remarkable musician” said the critics. The collection of 35 short pieces features original Bach works for keyboard interspersed with a variety of transcriptions that, from Stradal to Ólafsson himself via Kempff, Busoni, and Rachmaninov, traverse the last 150 years of Bach readings. In a world hardly short of Bach recordings, his does feel genuinely revelatory. I’ve been ...

Serena Katt’s attempt to make sense of her Polish grandfather’s ties to the Hitler Youth is extraordinary In Sunday’s Child , Serena Katt pieces together the story of what her German grandfather did during the war using some of his words, a few of her own and, most powerfully of all, her magnificently unsettling, largely monochrome illustrations. The result brings to mind an old photograph album, except that even the most seemingly innocent images on its pages come with a strong historical resonance. A family crowded around a radio. A crowd gazing at posters pasted on a wall. A group of teenagers marching with their backpacks through a forest. In some other book, these things would not be out of the ordinary. Here, though, they tell, with utmost concision and great eloquence, a story of war, propaganda and collective blindness. Katt’s grandfather, Günter, came originally from Polish aristocratic stock, and perhaps it was this that fuelled his fervent desire always to belong: his par...

Leonardo da Vinci, the polymath from Tuscany, died 500 years ago this year. He was both an artist and natural scientist, who, despite his lowly origins, kept company with the most powerful men of the Renaissance. from Deutsche Welle: DW.com - Culture & Lifestyle http://bit.ly/2MOm26N

His first gig at the Milan court was not to paint but to play his skull-shaped violin. A new project explores a lesser known side of Leonardo – his music Just when you think you’ve got the measure of Leonardo da Vinci – painter, anatomist, pioneer of flight, animal-rights prophet – he turns out to have one more talent up his sleeve. On the 500th anniversary of his death on 2 May, art historian Martin Kemp has collaborated with early music singers I Fagiolini to create a tour and album centred on an aspect of Leonardo’s polymathy we can’t directly know – his musicianship. Leonardo himself hinted why his talent as a musician would end up being the least-known of his abilities, point out Kemp and I Fagiolini’s director Robert Hollingworth, during a rehearsal at the Barbican. The trouble with music, he said in his notebooks, is that it is ephemeral – a fleeting beauty. Not even Leonardo dreamed recorded music could exist. He played a kind of fat violin called the lira da braccio, for wh...

3/5 starsA war movie loosely based on real events, Girls of the Sun from French film director Eva Husson deals with an all-female battalion in the Kurdish army who fought against the Islamic extremists of ISIS. In reality, these stories stem from experiences of Yazidi women, although Husson never makes explicit reference to them. Why? It’s never clear in what is one of several missteps in an otherwise rousing film.Set primarily in November 2015 and offering a Western perspective on this complex… from South China Morning Post http://bit.ly/2XUokpq

The US actor discusses his controversial new role, playing a notorious serial killer. It’s not a glamorisation, he says When Zac Efron first heard about a chance to play Ted Bundy, he was wary. This was a few years before he signed on for the new film about the serial killer, and it involved a different script. “I didn’t want to jump in too early to what could have potentially been the wrong version of this movie,” he says. “I was very hesitant to go into a darker genre in what could be perceived as an effort to change my perceived image.” The script for his new film Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile felt, to him, like the right version: “A movie that could have been procedural and boring now explores a brand-new perspective, and is told through the eyes of Liz, the girl closest to Ted.” It is the morning after the London premiere, and Efron is with the film’s director, Joe Berlinger, in a hotel room. He’s drinking from a large pitcher of green juice – celery, cucumber, avo...

Boyz N the Hood sent audiences reeling and marked the start of an uneven career for a writer-director whose films were rooted in lived experience Hollywood wasn’t ready for John Singleton when he exploded on to the movie scene at the age of 23 – and maybe it’s been unready ever since. When Singleton was nominated for the best director Oscar for his sensational 1991 debut Boyz N the Hood (for which he also wrote the original screenplay), he was the first African American film-maker to have been entered for the category – and the youngest person ever. He didn’t win. But as Singleton sent audiences reeling out of theatres with Ice Cube’s How to Survive in South Central over the closing credits, it seemed to many that here was a young master, with a compelling film about young men growing up in South Central Los Angeles, something to be compared to Scorsese’s Mean Streets or Fellini’s I Vitelloni . Yet despite the respect and affection for him, despite a strong professional work rate...

Science and romance collide in Robert Macfarlane’s latest journey through nature, as he examines the world below Last Christmas, perhaps wishing to get rid of an unwanted appendage to the family, my mother-in-law bought me a potholing experience in, or rather under, Snowdonia. I was led down an abandoned mine shaft which opened out on to a narrow ledge overlooking an apparently bottomless chasm. I experienced what my instructor would later tell me was “perceptual narrowing” – the way that, at times of pure terror, our field of vision dramatically constricts. At that moment, I was whisked back to the pages of my favourite childhood book, Alan Garner’s The Weirdstone of Brisingamen , which is about the hope and horror of underground places. Robert Macfarlane quotes a long passage from Garner’s novel early on in Underland , his masterly and mesmerising exploration of the world below us. But, instead of perceptual narrowing, what this book is about is the broadening of perspective that c...

Using a fat person as a punchline is cheap and lazy. So why was everyone in the cinema audience laughing except me? WARNING: contains spoilers! At 30 years of age I really should be used seeing how fat bodies are depicted in the media. I should be used to fat bodies being the easy go-to for depicting sad, angry characters. I should be used to the introduction of a fat body to provide some comedic relief. But here I am, the morning after seeing Avengers: Endgame, and I am still shocked, angry and hurt. I am an avid Marvel nerd and while the movie itself was brilliant in many ways, I had seriously conflicted emotions about the physical appearance of Thor. When we see Thor at the beginning of the film he is his svelte Asgardian god self on the outside but is clearly battling some pretty heavy stuff on the inside. This is a man who has been to war. He is struggling to come to terms with the loss of his brother, to comprehend his inability to defeat Thanos in Avengers: Infinity War and ...

Stephen Fry, Marina Abramović and Sharon Osbourne among stars describing the boycott movement as ‘an affront to both Palestinians and Israelis’ Public figures including Stephen Fry , Sharon Osbourne, Marina Abramović and pop mogul Scooter Braun have signed a letter speaking out against a proposed boycott of this year’s Eurovision song contest, which is to be held in Tel Aviv in May. Their letter states that Eurovision’s “spirit of togetherness” across the continent is “under attack by those calling to boycott Eurovision 2019 because it is being held in Israel, subverting the spirit of the contest and turning it from a tool of unity into a weapon of division”. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian http://bit.ly/2XUTX2g

Director John Singleton, who made one of Hollywood’s most memorable debuts with the Oscar-nominated Boyz N the Hood and continued over the following decades to probe the lives of black communities, has died. He was 51.Singleton’s family said on Monday he died in Los Angeles, surrounded by family and friends, after being taken off life support. Earlier this month, the director suffered a major stroke.Singleton was in his early 20s, just out of the University of Southern California’s School of… from South China Morning Post http://bit.ly/2IPHZDC

Commemorations for Leonardo da Vinci’s 500th anniversary begin this week in Amboise, in the Loire Valley, with France and Italy setting aside recent tensions to honour the memory of the Renaissance genius in the town where he spent his final years. from http://bit.ly/2GSp2xH

Rubén Martín de Lucas pokes fun at the arbitrary nature of borders – by creating small geometric shapes and then living in them Minimal Republics is part of Circulation(s) European young photography festival, Paris , until 30 June Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian http://bit.ly/2Y1RDGP

‘I was tired and wanted to go home, so I put on this crazy affected voice. Quincy Jones promised he wouldn’t use it – but he did!’ Quincy Jones was looking for artists for his new label, Qwest Records. I’d started to cross over from jazz and Quincy asked: “Do you want to make the world’s greatest jazz record – or go for the throat?” I laughed and said: “Go for the throat!” I’d seen what he’d done with Michael Jackson ’s Off the Wall. He said: “George, put yourself in my hands. I know more about you than you do yourself.” I was insulted at first, but calmed down, and things started happening. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian http://bit.ly/2UO4qur

Robin Wright writes about the reëmergence of the Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who made his first semi-public appearance in nearly five years in an ISIS-affiliated video message. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews http://bit.ly/2UPVl42

John Singleton, director of the groundbreaking 1991 movie about US inner city life "Boyz n the Hood," died Monday at the age of 51, his family announced, triggering a flood of tributes hailing him as an "inspiration." from http://bit.ly/2GRrLrh

US actress Elle Fanning and Serb-born French comic book writer Enki Bilal will join the jury for this year's Cannes festival alongside Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos and French counterpart Robin Campillo, organisers said Monday. from http://bit.ly/2GHgSqK

The Democratic Presidential candidate is eager to talk about Trump’s signature issue: immigration. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews http://bit.ly/2GN2yNt

Amy Davidson Sorkin on the Democratic candidates running against Donald Trump in the 2020 Presidential election. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews http://bit.ly/2V7Ojwz

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Hair tagged as polymath’s in US collection to be tested against remains in French grave Two Italian experts are set to perform a DNA test on a lock of hair that they say might have belonged to Leonardo da Vinci. The hair strand was found in a private collection in the US and will go on display for the first time at the Ideale Leonardo da Vinci museum in Vinci (the Tuscan town where the artist was born), from 2 May, the 500th anniversary of the artist’s death. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian http://bit.ly/2vqE0nZ

Mother alarmed after anti-vaccination propaganda found inside book bought for son, who is about to receive the HPV jab Concerns have been raised that the anti-vaccination movement is targeting children via Amazon warehouses, after a Hampshire mother found a leaflet condemning the HPV vaccine tucked inside a children’s book she had purchased from the online retailer. Lucy Boyle bought Ali Sparkes’ Night Speakers along with several other novels as a birthday present for her 12-year-old son at the start of April. He began reading the novel last week, “got a few pages in, turned over the page and there was the leaflet,” she told the Guardian. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian http://bit.ly/2WbQDPz

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Andrew Marantz writes about a post on the message board 8chan before the shooting at a synagogue in Poway, California. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews http://bit.ly/2UOLuvg

Roz Chase humorously transforms text from “Therapeutic Uses of Adhesive Tape,” published by Johnson & Johnson, to create a collage comic about bizarre daily uses for adhesive tape. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews http://bit.ly/2IPKSnD

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Hannah Goldfield on the café’s seasonal bowls, which may include Senegalese, Ghanaian, and Ivorian flavors and are as satisfying as many more formal meals in town. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews http://bit.ly/2IXKdQA

In her lush ballads and powerhouse anthems, the pliable singer-songwriter mingles the bliss of romance with calls for equality and claims to independence. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews http://bit.ly/2DyhFcQ

In “Revolutionaries,” Joshua Furst depicts a counterculture hero from the perspective of his disaffected kid, Thomas Mallon writes. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews http://bit.ly/2Vwxgnu

The Swedish novelist exposes the cruelty and the comedy of romantic obsession, Alexandra Schwartz writes. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews http://bit.ly/2Vw7hwu

Anthony Lane reviews Ralph Fiennes’s “The White Crow,” starring Oleg Ivenko, and Joe and Anthony Russo’s “Avengers: Endgame,” featuring Scarlett Johansson and Chris Hemsworth. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews http://bit.ly/2IIW4T9

Briana Younger on go-go music; its significance to Washington, D.C., and the city’s black community; and how the music became a rallying call to resist gentrification. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews http://bit.ly/2ISKpk0

On the New Yorker Radio Hour, the Presidential candidate doesn’t shy away from immigration, and the New Yorker staff writer Larissa MacFarquhar reports on a radical shift in treatment for dementia patients. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews http://bit.ly/2GzlXkO

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Naomi Fry writes about the r/RoastMe subreddit forum of Reddit, where posters invite fellow-users to brutally and honestly mock their appearance. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews http://bit.ly/2PCrkns

More than a thousand architects, conservationists and academics from around the world urged French President Emmanuel Macron on Monday to exercise caution as he moves forward with plans to rapidly rebuild Paris's Notre-Dame cathedral. from http://bit.ly/2IQZKCb

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Andy Borowitz writes that Americans have become fascinated with the fitness and vigor of President Donald Trump. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews http://bit.ly/2GNlZFF

At this year’s Tribeca film festival, Francis Ford Coppola used the 40th anniversary of his Vietnam masterpiece to unveil a new version Everyone in the house at the Beacon Theatre last night already knew the legend of Apocalypse Now. The troubled production of Francis Ford Coppola’s psychedelic Vietnam war epic has already calcified into the stuff of industry myth: leading man Martin Sheen was nearly felled by a heart attack, second lead Marlon Brando showed up to set too overweight to believably portray a Green Beret, a monsoon seemingly sent by God destroyed thousands of dollars in equipment. The behind-the-scenes documentary Hearts of Darkness tracks Coppola’s descent towards madness during the unending shoot in the Filipino jungle, the money and pressure and humid South Pacific air all getting to him. (The film-maker joked, “It could’ve easily been called Watch Francis Suffer.”) Related: This Is Spinal Tap at 35: the faux-rockers reunite at Tribeca film festival Continue readin...

St Luke’s, London With a dissonant soprano and lyrics about benevolence and old-time faith, Foster expertly weaves ancient and modern If you’ve heard her records, you could be forgiven for thinking that Josephine Foster’s quavering, sepia-tinted voice is something beamed in from another age. It conjures up images of an older southern woman, sitting on the porch of a clapboard shack in the years before the civil war, absent-mindedly singing ancient folksongs while accompanying herself on a flood-damaged upright piano, as other instruments creak and drone around her. However, seeing this Colorado-born oddball and her band recreate the remarkable, ghostly music from her latest album, Faithful Fairy Harmony , is an even weirder experience, especially witnessing Foster’s delightful frailties. Her delicate, feathery soprano seems to have an uncontrolled vibrato that sounds as if it’s been recorded on decaying tape. Her acoustic guitar playing is endearingly clunky, and when she strums an ...

Artem Tkachuk, 18, of Piranhas film is believed to have been attacked by a ‘baby gang’ in city An actor who appeared in an award-winning film about child criminals in Naples has been stabbed by an alleged member of one of the Italian city’s “baby gangs”. Artem Tkachuk, 18, originally from Ukraine, played a young mobster in The Piranhas , which told the story of the phenomenon of baby gangs, criminal groups led by youngsters, in Naples. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian http://bit.ly/2XR163x

London Palladium This chatshow canter through the career and comedy loves of Humphries proved he is an unrepentant controversialist The television chatshow spread to theatre as a way of getting stars on stage without the burden of rehearsal or line-learning. John Cleese and Joan Collins are among those who have tried this form of sit-down comedy, now followed by Barry Humphries, who talked to Rob Brydon for two hours on Sunday night at the London Palladium. The giving of top billing to Brydon suggested an attempt to draw the younger Welshman’s audience to the Australian elder. On visual evidence, most of those present had been following Humphries since Dame Edna Everage, his greatest character, was a plain Melbourne Mrs. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian http://bit.ly/2VwRgGA

It was a piece of black and white magic, a perfect fusion of sound and music boasting Dizzy Gillespie, Duke Ellington – and lots of smoke. Can the landmark TV show now bewitch a new generation of fans? The camera holds its close-up on the pianist’s hands, his long fingers adding delicate inner voicings to the familiar melody of Come Rain or Come Shine. Then, very slowly, the camera tracks along the player’s arms and up his body until it reaches his head, which is lowered far enough to be virtually parallel with the keyboard. Nothing is intrusive, nothing is hurried, everything is keyed to the mood of rapt intensity. Captured in black and white because that’s all there was, the shot perfectly complements this music, the jazz of the 1960s. It’s a rare example of television finding a visual language to match a sound. Bill Evans was that pianist, and Jazz 625 was the programme. The hour of music he recorded for the BBC in London on that day in 1965 survives as a priceless document of o...

Richard Brody on the series “Cutting My Mother,” in which the director Nathan Silver, which is both a moving tribute to his mother and an ingeniously crafted work of first-person meta-cinema. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews http://bit.ly/2LcJzRJ

Seattle-based musician Brian Fennell, aka SYML, scored big on YouTube and Spotify with his single "Where's My Love". He talks to Eve Jackson about his debut album, his Welsh roots and writing songs for his children. from http://bit.ly/2VqC1Pt

Cybersecurity firm investigates voting after landslide win for pop star’s daughter Russian state television has ordered an investigation into possible vote-rigging in a cherished institution of direct democracy: the popular singing competition The Voice Kids. The final of the show’s sixth season ended in scandal at the weekend after the daughter of a Russian pop star won a landslide victory, igniting claims on social media that the vote had been manipulated. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian http://bit.ly/2vqyZfg

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"Shakespeare and Translation" was the subject of this year's conference of the Weimar-based German Shakespeare Society. Researchers from around the world discussed the challenges of translating the literary genius. from Deutsche Welle: DW.com - Culture & Lifestyle http://bit.ly/2ZI39Zs

Sarah Larson writes about the great battle of Winterfell in “Game of Thrones” Season 8, Episode 3. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews http://bit.ly/2PAnNWG

Benjamin Wallace-Wells writes about the columnist David Brooks’s new book about spiritual awakening, “The Second Mountain.” from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews http://bit.ly/2Wc8Wo3

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It may have required some intense squinting, but with this feature-length flurry of limbs, Game of Thrones is back to sticking them with the pointy end Game of Thrones episode three recap – The Long Night Warning: this article contains spoilers for season eight, episode three of Game of Thrones. Thwack! The time for talking is over. Here was the ultimate rebuttal to any complaints about the chat-heavy nostalgia-fest of this final season’s first two episodes, a clonking great feature-length instalment that flew by in a flurry of limbs and severed heads. Game of Thrones is back to sticking them with the pointy end. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian http://bit.ly/2ZF73Ct

Our April selection features springtime sounds by TTB, Rimarimba and Lucinda Chua alongside a thrilling DJ Taye mix PPGMIX048: GiGi FM Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian http://bit.ly/2LcXt6D

Festivalgoers discard drugs after testing alerts them that pills contain dangerous ingredients The lives of seven young people were potentially saved at the weekend when a second pill testing trial at the Groovin the Moo festival in Canberra identified lethal substances. Patrons discarded their drugs after testing alerted them that their pills contained dangerous n-ethylpentylone. MDMA was the most common substance identified followed by cocaine, ketamine and methamphetamines. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian http://bit.ly/2UJlAt6

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In Long Shot, Seth Rogan’s goofy loser bags the refined Charlize Theron, following in the footsteps of too many romantic comedies Long Shot stretches the romcom concept of “opposites attract” to breaking point. In one corner we have Charlize Theron: smart, beautiful, powerful, cultivated. In the other, Seth Rogen, in a teal cagoule. She is US secretary of state; he is an unemployed journalist. What can he possibly bring to the party? They meet at a glitzy Manhattan fundraiser, to which Rogen rocks up in his cagoule, then falls down a flight of stairs. But still she employs him as her speechwriter and romance inexplicably kindles. He doesn’t even change out of the cagoule until halfway through the film, when one of Theron’s aides asks if he has any “grownup clothes”. This glaring mismatch is the whole point of Long Shot, of course. It is supposedly an up-to-date gender reversal of that tired old fairytale whereby female beauty meets male wealth and they happily affirm the patriarchy e...

This orchestra has given a platform to talented young musicians for half a century now, and under conductors like Karajan, Petrenko and Rattle, most of them have gone on to professional careers in music. from Deutsche Welle: DW.com - Culture & Lifestyle http://bit.ly/2ZJYUg0

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Perth theatre Morna Young’s personal tale of trawlermen risking their lives for pay evokes the romance and brutal realism of the sea Margaret Thatcher’s greed-is-good ethos left its mark on everyone in the 1980s, from the high-rolling arrivistes of the stock exchange to Harry Enfield’s Loadsamoney . It even found its way to the North Sea, where the creed of individualism was not just unethical, suggests playwright Morna Young, but potentially lethal. Somewhere near the troubled heart of Lost at Sea lies the story of Kevin, a trawlerman, played with angry resolve by Andy Clark, who is brutalised by his quest for money. Where once a crew would stand together, their camaraderie a tool of survival against the elements, now a fisherman would risk going it alone, ever more indifferent to the welfare of his workmates. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian http://bit.ly/2GSL17W

Quo Vadis? by Massimiliano Pironti among four works competing for £35,000 prize A professional dancer who has painted his 95-year-old grandmother as “an example of strength, dignity and authority” is one of four artists shortlisted for the art world’s most prestigious portrait prize. The National Portrait Gallery , organisers of the BP portrait award , has revealed the names and portraits of the artists who will this year compete for the £35,000 prize. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian http://bit.ly/2W87Vx4

Becoming a successful ballet dancer while growing up in a refugee camp wasn't easy. DW caught up with the Netherlands-based dancer on World Dance Day to learn about his form of artistic resistance. from Deutsche Welle: DW.com - Culture & Lifestyle http://bit.ly/2WezMvw

Françoise Mouly talks to John Cuneo about “To Fetch or Not to Fetch,” his cover for the May 6, 2019, issue of The New Yorker. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews http://bit.ly/2Lbwqsl

Luci Gutiérrez illustrates proposals the city is considering to save the promenade above the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews http://bit.ly/2VAcxz8

Poetry by Matthew Zapruder: “we made so / many plans.” from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews http://bit.ly/2Lem6zI

Daily Cartoon Slide Show. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews http://bit.ly/2xaSyqE

The Attorney General’s role in the City of Washington Pipe Band, which included Secret Service and F.B.I. agents, may be the best evidence we have of a “deep state,” Tyler Foggatt writes. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews http://bit.ly/2VqcQwr