| | | K-pop supergroup BTS discuss anti-Asian hate at White House press briefing – video | | Jun 1, 2022 | | BTS visited the White House to discuss hate crimes targeting Asians with the US president.
The band members J-Hope, RM, Suga, Jungkook, V, Jin, and Jimin joined the White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, at her briefing with reporters before their meeting with Joe Biden. Jimin said the group had been 'devastated by the recent surge' of hate crime and intolerance against Asian Americans and others that has persisted since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. 'It's not wrong to be different,' Suga said through an interpreter. 'Equality begins when we open up and embrace all of our differences' Continue reading... | | | | | I Am Zlatan review – compelling insight into the making of a football superstar | | by Cath Clarke Jun 1, 2022 | | Jens Sjögren’s sympathetic film avoids the cliched sport movie formula of triumph over adversity by focusing on what happens off the pitch That’s Zlatan as in Zlatan Ibrahimović, the superstar Swedish striker whose troubled childhood in a tough working-class neighbourhood of Malmö is dramatised here. The cocky underprivileged kid saved from (possibly) a life of crime by football; it sounds like the cheesiest sports movie ever. And yet director Jens Sjögren, more interested in what happens off the pitch, dodges the dull cliches. His sympathetic, realist film is a compelling watch. The film is based on Ibrahimović’s autobiography, co-authored with the Swedish writer David Lagercrantz. Dominic Andersson Bajraktati plays 11-year-old Zlatan, who is disruptive in school and bad-tempered on the pitch. What soon becomes clear is that all this behaviour is the communication of a kid who feels inadequate, alone and often hungry. He’s playing football with middle-class boys who wear the right football boots, their dads cheering from the sidelines. Zlatan’s parents divorced when he was little. His dad, Bosnian caretaker Šefik (Cedomir Glisovic), is a brooder who drinks heavily, and his exhausted mum Jurka (Merima Dizdarevic) is emotionally unavailable; both characters are written with real emotional generosity. Continue reading... | | | | | Happy-Go-Lucky by David Sedaris – lockdown, loss and dentistry | | by Houman Barekat Jun 1, 2022 | | The comic’s wry self-deprecation and affable misanthropy are on show in these whimsical reflections on life David Sedaris lives in West Sussex – where he has attained local treasure status thanks to his proclivity for late-night litter-picking – but spent the Covid lockdowns in New York. As a self-confessed attention junkie, the enforced hiatus hit him hard. Of the live audiences he misses, he writes: “It’s not just their laughter I pay attention to but also the quality of their silence” – and you can’t replicate that over Zoom. In this new memoir, Sedaris recounts his lockdown experience with his customary blend of wry self-deprecation and affable misanthropy. He recalls how the pandemic prompted an outbreak of competitive piety – a “new spirit of one-downmanship” – among ordinary Americans: “It was a golden era … for the self-righteous.” Happy-Go-Lucky is made up of 18 short essays, several of them set in the very recent past, others reminiscing about earlier times: a late-90s sojourn in Normandy; amusing exchanges with taxi drivers in eastern Europe; a visit to a shooting range in his native North Carolina with his sister, Amy. At a graduation address to students of Oberlin college in Ohio he urges the assembled youngsters to reject priggish philistinism: “The goal is to have less in common with the Taliban, not more.” Continue reading... | | | | | 'I want to capture love': the intimacy of Jamel Shabazz's photographs | | by Veronica Esposito Jun 1, 2022 | | In a new retrospective of his work, the New York-based photographer looks back on his illustrious career and the connections he’s made along the way For decades, photographer Jamel Shabazz has used his camera to connect with New York City’s diverse communities, producing iconic images of subjects as various as the emergence of hip-hop culture, Black incarceration, the innocence of children playing in the streets, and gay pride celebrations. Through 4 September, The Bronx Museum of the Arts celebrates Shabazz with Eyes on the Streets, a retrospective coving over 40 years of the photographer’s work. Shabazz’s photographs are powerful for their intimacy. Unlike many street photographers, Shabazz tends to photograph his subjects looking directly into the camera’s lens, their eyes beckoning, their postures and facial expressions forming an instant connection with viewers. This intimacy comes from the lengthy encounters that often precede the photo itself, Shabazz approaching his subjects on the street and striking up a conversation before photographing them. “It takes time to make people feel comfortable and to get them to that point,” he said to the Guardian. “And then, the photographs become evidence of the conversation. The key is really the communication. When you approach somebody with good intentions, they feel it.” Continue reading... | | | | | The Men by Sandra Newman review – vision of a world without men | | by Alex Clark Jun 1, 2022 | | Half of humanity disappears in this disturbing study of loss, grief and moral sacrifice In Sandra Newman’s fifth novel, all human beings and foetuses with a Y chromosome disappear in an instant, leaving the XXs to celebrate, grieve or organise in a radically altered world. To create a work of fiction with such a stark premise – as Newman also did in her previous high-concept novel, The Heavens, a time-travelling tale set between a reconfigured present-day New York and 16th-century England – runs the risk of confronting the reader with a task of reimagining that is hard to see beyond. But although it’s true that The Men never allows us to forget its dramatic first principle, numerous other strands and themes emerge: the long aftermath of trauma and coercive control; various manifestations of charisma and complicity; the insidious, dehumanising effects of a society in thrall to screen representations of reality. It is also a novel about the lengths to which we might all go to assuage individual loss and grief; if the world turned out to be a better place without your loved one, would you sacrifice the greater good to turn the clock back? Continue reading... | | | | | Amanda Lear: the androgynous muse to Dalí who made disco intellectual | | by Angelica Frey Jun 1, 2022 | | The subject of a new documentary, who is also portrayed in an upcoming Dalí biopic, scorned modelling as ‘immoral and stupid’, turning instead to a lifetime of underrated, high-minded pop At the peak of the disco era in the late 1970s, Amanda Lear, who had established herself as a singer after 15 years of being a Vogue model and muse to everyone from Salvador Dalí to Bryan Ferry, had a bone to pick. “Disco music is a fantastic medium, and it’s a pity not to use it intelligently: we used rock to communicate with youth,” she said in 1979. “What shocks me is seeing my colleagues, who sing well, sing idiocies. The music is good, the production is good, the singer is good. The lyrics are aberrant.” Taking issue with the “love” and “baby”-heavy lyrics, her solution was to intellectualise disco. “I want to be the Juliette Gréco of the 1980s,” she used to say – someone bohemian and erudite who would deepen pop culture. With more than 20m records sold globally, she is praised as an icon who made her life a work of art, but her artistic output is on a par with her life. It is all now retold in a new documentary, Queen Lear, as well as a biopic, Dalíland, directed by Mary Harron, in which Andreja Pejić plays Lear alongside Ben Kingsley and Ezra Miller as old and young versions of the painter. Continue reading... | | | | | L Morgan Lee on making Broadway history: 'I could not stop crying' | | by Gloria Oladipo Jun 1, 2022 | | The actor has become the first openly trans performer to receive a Tony nomination for her role in the Pulitzer prize-winning musical A Strange Loop L Morgan Lee, the first openly trans person to be nominated for a Tony Award, is just trying to put one foot in front of the other. The award-winning actor is having a bit of a whirlwind year, after all. Following her Broadway debut in Michael R Jackson’s Pulitzer prize-winning musical A Strange Loop, Lee received her first ever Tony nomination, an accolade she has hoped for since childhood, when she “[dreamed] about being one of these beautiful women in these beautiful gowns” who grace the red carpet. Continue reading... | | | | | Disney and Ewan McGregor condemn 'horrendous' racism sent to Obi-Wan Kenobi star Moses Ingram | | by Sian Cain Jun 1, 2022 | | Ingram has revealed some of the ‘hundreds’ of abusive messages she’s received after debuting in the Star Wars show, saying ‘there’s nothing anybody can do to stop this hate’ Obi-Wan Kenobi actor Moses Ingram has revealed she has received “hundreds” of racist messages since appearing in the new Star Wars show, with her co-star Ewan McGregor issuing a strong statement condemning abusive fans, saying “if you’re sending her bullying messages, you’re no Star Wars fan”. In the new Disney+ series, Ingram plays the Third Sister, Reva Sevander, who is tasked by Darth Vader to hunt McGregor’s Kenobi. On Tuesday on Instagram she shared just a few examples of the racist abuse directed at her on social media since the show began. Continue reading... | | | | | |
No comments:
Post a Comment