Author: Ohart

Former FBI Director James Comey has a book deal.

Flatiron Books told The Associated Press on Wednesday that Comey is writing a book about leadership and decision making that will draw upon his career in government. Comey will write about experiences that made him the FBI’s best-known and most controversial FBI head in recent times, from his handling of the bureau’s probe into Hillary Clinton’s private email server to allegations of ties between Russia and Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. Trump fired Comey in May and soon after told NBC News that he was angered by the FBI’s investigation into “this Russia thing with Trump and Russia,” which he called a fake story. Comey has since testified before Congress that Trump asked him to end an investigation into former National Security Adviser Michael T. Flynn and kept memos about his meetings with the president.

According to Flatiron, Comey will cite “examples from some of the highest-stakes situations in the past two decades of American government” and “share yet-unheard anecdotes from his long and distinguished career.”

The book is currently untitled and scheduled for next spring.

“Throughout his career, James Comey has had to face one difficult decision after another as he has served the leaders of our country,” Flatiron Publisher and President Bob Miller said in a statement. “His book promises to take us inside those extraordinary moments in our history, showing us how these leaders have behaved under pressure. By doing so, Director Comey will give us unprecedented entry into the corridors of power, and a remarkable lesson in leadership itself.”

Comey was represented by Matt Latimer and Keith Urbahn of Javelin. Financial terms were not disclosed, but several publishers bid for the book and three officials with knowledge of the negotiations said the auction topped $2 million. The officials asked not to be identified because were not authorized to discuss the book.

Comey was appointed as FBI director by President Barack Obama in 2013. On Tuesday, the Senate confirmed his successor, Christopher Wray, a former high-ranking official in President George W. Bush’s Justice Department who oversaw investigations into corporate fraud.
…

Just in the unlikely case that the world of athletics did not know what they will be missing once Usain Bolt walks away in less than two weeks, the Jamaican superstar’s final eve-of-race news conference rammed home the message on Tuesday.

These events have become part and parcel of every global championship and though Tuesday’s version in east London lacked the dancing girl razzmatazz of his Rio welcome last year, it scored heavily on nostalgia as every aspect of his stellar career was raked over anew.

As always, journalists and TV crews, around 400 of them, from every corner of the world packed every available space and strained their arms in desperation to get their question answered by the great man, who playfully castigated one half of the auditorium for not giving him an enthusiastic enough welcome.

Bolt is an old hand of course and rolled out all the familiar answers, but always with grace.

His proudest moment was winning the world junior title on home soil as a 15-year-old while his most satisfying performance was his 200 meters world record run in the 2008 Beijing Olympics, where he poured all his concentration into getting the mark he had always wanted, having earlier danced over the line when winning the 100m.

He explained how his motivation to keep putting his body through such a punishing regime was renewed each year by resetting his goals – with one often created for him by a casually “disrespectful” remark from one of his opponents.

His target in London is clear — to sign off with a fourth 100m title and a fifth 4x100m relay gold — taking his world haul to 13 to add to his eight Olympic golds – and then head off to play football with his friends and have fun.

“I’m ready,” he said. “If I show up at a championships you know I’m fully confident and ready to go.

“I ran 9.95 in Monaco so it shows I’m going in the right direction. Going through the rounds always helps me and it’s then about who can keep their nerve. “It’s go time, so let’s go.”

The London Stadium, where he successfully defended his sprint double in the 2012 Olympics, will rise to acclaim him when he settles into his blocks for the last time on Saturday night.

Then, other than the relay a week later, he will be gone, leaving the sport without the man who has been its focal point for a decade.

Tuesday’s event included big screen “farewell and thanks” messages from the likes of actors Samuel L. Jackson and Idris Elba, former France footballer Thierry Henry, model Cara Delevingne and India cricket captain Virat Kohli, underlining his status as probably the world’s most famous and arguably most admired sportsman.

Bolt, who turns 31 later this month, looked moved by the images, saying: “It’s just brilliant that people in other disciplines respect what you do as they know the work you have to do.”

British TV had screened his “I am Bolt” film on Monday night, which opened a window on the rarely seen battles he has had to go through to overcome so many injuries and was a testament to his willingness to work himself back into shape year after year.

That is one thing he will not miss, and although he thrives on the pressure of the big race, he says he is looking forward to watching the next one from the sidelines. “Oh yeah, sitting down, talking about it, no pressure,” he said. “The next championship should be fun.

“It’s going to be hard, as track and field has been everything for me since I was 10 and it’s been a rush — but we’ll see where life takes me.”

He intends to stay close to athletics and is eyeing some sort of roving ambassadorial role, inspiring the world’s youth to get involved in a sport he says is on the up after reaching “rock bottom” with the Russian doping crisis of two years ago.

While fans and the sport’s administrators will miss Bolt enormously, those lamenting his departure most of all will probably be his chief sponsor Puma, the German sportswear manufacturer which has shod him and ridden his glory for a decade while the rest of the sport has largely been dominated by rivals Adidas and Nike.

Bolt’s parents were on hand on Tuesday to present him with his final pair of spikes — a combination of gold to mark his career highs and the purple of his school, William Knibb Memorial, where it all started after his cricket coach suggested he try out for the track team.

“I didn’t know I would be a world record holder growing up, I had no idea,” he said. “So all I’ll say now is, if you work hard, that anything is possible.”
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The Pennsylvania childhood home of author John Updike is nearing its transformation into a museum and literary center.

The future of the Shillington home had been uncertain until The John Updike Society purchased it in 2012. Since then, the society has worked to re-create the 1930’s vibe of the late Pulitzer Prize winner’s home, based on old photographs and Updike’s writings.

Updike spent the first 13 years of his life in the Shillington house, about 60 miles (96 kilometers) northwest of Philadelphia. The Reading Eagle reports Updike’s daughter is donating furniture from his childhood to the museum.

The Updike Society says restoration should be finished by the end of summer.

Updike won Pulitzers for the novels Rabbit Is Rich and Rabbit at Rest. He died in 2009 at age 76.
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The war in Syria destroyed more than its cities. It destroyed its soul, says American drummer and photographer Jason Hamacher, who has recorded a large collection of Syrian religious music in an effort to preserve it. Arman Tarjimanyan reports.
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Angelina Jolie responded to growing backlash over the casting process for her latest film, saying she was “upset” that an improvised scene during auditions had been misconstrued as taking real money away from impoverished children.

In a Vanity Fair interview published last week about her film “First They Killed My Father,” Jolie described a game played by the casting directors with the young Cambodian children auditioning for the lead role of Loung Ung.

Jolie, a special envoy for the United Nations refugee agency, told Vanity Fair she looked for her lead star in orphanages, circuses and slum schools.

Jolie defends casting process

In the casting, a child was placed in front of money on a table, asked to think of what they needed it for and to snatch it away. Jolie would then pretend to catch them, and the child would have to lie about why they stole the money.

“I am upset that a pretend exercise in an improvisation, from an actual scene in the film, has been written about as if it was a real scenario,” Jolie, who directed the film, said in a statement on Sunday.

“The suggestion that real money was taken from a child during an audition is false and upsetting. I would be outraged myself if this had happened.”

Users on social media slammed Jolie’s casting game as cruel and exploiting impoverished children. Vanity Fair reporter Evgenia Peretz called the casting game “disturbing in its realism” in the profile, while Kayla Cobb at pop culture website Decider.com compared the game to a psychological thriller.

“Everyone should know better than to literally dangle money in front of impoverished children … no movie is worth psychologically traumatizing multiple children,” Cobb wrote.

Movie set during Khmer Rouge regime

“First They Killed My Father” is about the 1970s Khmer Rouge regime under which more than 1 million people died. It is due to be released globally and on Netflix in September.

Jolie said the young girl who won the part, Srey Moch, was chosen after “she became overwhelmed with emotion” when forced to give the money back, saying she needed the money to pay for her grandfather’s funeral.

“The children were not tricked or entrapped, as some have suggested,” Rithy Panh, a Cambodian producer on the film, said in a statement. “They understood very well that this was acting, and make believe.”

 
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Sam Shepard, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, Oscar-nominated actor and celebrated author whose plays chronicled the explosive fault lines of family and masculinity in the American West, has died. He was 73.

 

Family spokesman Chris Boneau said Monday that Shepard died Thursday at his home in Kentucky from complications related to Lou Gehrig’s disease, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

 

The taciturn Shepard, who grew up on a California ranch, was a man of few words who nevertheless produced 44 plays and numerous books, memoirs and short stories. He was one of the most influential playwrights of his generation: a plain-spoken poet of the modern frontier, both lyrical and rugged.

 

In his 1971 one-act “Cowboy Mouth, which he wrote with his then-girlfriend, musician and poet Patti Smith, one character says, “People want a street angel. They want a saint but with a cowboy mouth” — a role the tall and handsome Shepard fulfilled for many.

 

“I was writing basically for actors,” Shepard told The Associated Press in a 2011 interview. “And actors immediately seemed to have a handle on it, on the rhythm of it, the sound of it, the characters. I started to understand there was this possibility of conversation between actors and that’s how it all started.”

Shepard’s Western drawl and laconic presence made him a reluctant movie star, too. He appeared in dozens of films — many of them Westerns — including Terrence Malick’s “Days of Heaven,” “Steel Magnolias,” “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford” and 2012’s Mud.” He was nominated for an Oscar for his performance as pilot Chuck Yeager in 1983’s “The Right Stuff.” Among his most recent roles was the Florida Keys patriarch of the Netflix series “Bloodline.”

But Shepard was best remembered for his influential plays and his prominent role in the Off-Off-Broadway movement. His 1979 play “Buried Child” won the Pulitzer for drama. Two other plays — “True West,” about two warring brothers, and “Fool for Love,” about a man who fears he’s turning into his father — were nominated for the Pulitzers as well. All are frequently revived.

 

“I always felt like playwriting was the thread through all of it,” Shepard said in 2011. “Theater really when you think about it contains everything. It can contain film. Film can’t contain theater. Music. Dance. Painting. Acting. It’s the whole deal. And it’s the most ancient. It goes back to the Druids. It was way pre-Christ. It’s the form that I feel most at home in, because of that, because of its ability to usurp everything.”

 

Samuel Shepard Rogers VII was born in Fort Sheridan, Illinois, in 1943. He grew up on an avocado ranch in Duarte, California. His father was an alcoholic schoolteacher and former Army pilot. Shepard would later write frequently of the damage done by drunks. He had his own struggles, too; long stretches of sobriety were interrupted by drunk driving arrests, in 2009 and 2015.

 

Shepard arrived in New York in 1963 with no connections, little money and vague aspirations to act, write or make music.

“I just dropped in out of nowhere,” he told the New Yorker in 2010. But Shepard quickly became part of the off-off-Broadway movement at downtown hangouts like Caffe Cino and La MaMa. “As far as I’m concerned, Broadway just does not exist,” Shepard told Playboy in 1970 — though many of his later plays would end up there.

 

His early plays — fiery, surreal verbal assaults — pushed American theater in an energized, frenzied direction that matched the times. A drummer himself, Shepard found his own rock ‘n roll rhythm. Seeking spontaneity, he initially refused to rewrite his drafts, a strategy he later dismissed as “just plain stupid.”

 

As Shepard grew as a playwright, he returned again and again to meditations on violence, masculinity and family. His collection “Seven Plays,” which includes many of his best plays, including “Buried Child” and “The Tooth of Crime,” was dedicated to his father.

 

“There’s some hidden, deeply rooted thing in the Anglo male American that has to do with inferiority, that has to do with not being a man, and always, continually having to act out some idea of manhood that invariably is violent,” he told The New York Times in 1984. “This sense of failure runs very deep — maybe it has to do with the frontier being systematically taken away, with the guilt of having gotten this country by wiping out a native race of people, with the whole Protestant work ethic. I can’t put my finger on it, but it’s the source of a lot of intrigue for me.”

 

Shepard was married from 1969 to 1984 to actress O-Lan Jones, with whom he had son Jesse Mojo Shepard.

 

His connection to music was constant. He joined Bob Dylan on the 1975 Rolling Thunder Revue tour of 1975, and co-wrote the song “Brownsville Girl” with him. Shepard and Patti Smith were one-time lovers but lifetime friends.

“We’re just the same,” Smith once said. “When Sam and I are together, it’s like no particular time.”

Shepard’s movie career began in the late ’70s. While making the 1982 Frances Farmer biopic “Frances,” he met Jessica Lange and the two remained together for nearly 30 years. They had two children, Hannah Jane and Samuel Walker. They separated in 2009. Lange once said of Shepard: “No man I’ve ever met compares to Sam in terms of maleness.”

 

Shepard worked occasionally in movies (among other things, he wrote Wim Wenders’ 1984 Texas brothers drama “Paris, Texas”) but took acting gigs more frequently as he grew older. One movie, he said, could pay for 16 plays.

 

Besides his plays, Shepard wrote short stories and a full-length work of fiction, “The One Inside,” which came out earlier this year. “The One Inside” is a highly personal narrative about a man looking back on his life and taking in what has been lost, including control over his own body as the symptoms of ALS advance.

 

“Something in the body refuses to get up. Something in the lower back. He stares at the walls,” Shepard writes. “The appendages don’t seem connected to the motor — whatever that is — driving this thing. They won’t take direction _ won’t be dictated to — the arms, legs, feet, hands. Nothing moves. Nothing even wants to.”

Shepard’s longtime editor at Alfred A. Knopf, LuAnn Walther, said Shepard’s language was “quite poetic, and very intimate, but also very direct and plainspoken.” She said that when people asked her what Shepard was really like, she would respond, “Just read the fiction.”

 

In Shepard’s 1982 book “Motel Chronicles,” he said that he felt like he never had a home. That feeling, he later, acknowledged, always remained.

 

“I basically live out of my truck,” Shepard said in 2011. “I feel more at home in my truck than just about anywhere, which is a sad thing to say. But it’s true.”
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Los Angeles reached an agreement Monday with international Olympic leaders that will open the way for the city to host the 2028 Summer Games, while ceding the 2024 Games to rival Paris, officials announced Monday.

 

The arrangement would make LA a three-time Olympic city, after hosting the 1932 and 1984 Games.

 

With the agreement, the city is taking “a major step toward bringing the Games back to our city for the first time in a generation,” Mayor Eric Garcetti said in a statement.

 

He called it a “historic day for Los Angeles, for the United States” and the Olympic movement.

 

The agreement follows a vote earlier this month by the International Olympic Committee to seek a deal to award the 2024 and 2028 Games.

aris is the only city left to host the 2024 Games.

The Los Angeles City Council and U.S. Olympic Committee board of directors will consider the agreement for approval in August. If approved, the IOC, LA and Paris may enter a three-part agreement, clearing the way for the IOC to simultaneously award the 2024 Games to Paris, and the 2028 Games to LA. The IOC vote is scheduled for September, in Lima, Peru.

 

In embracing what amounted to the second-place prize and an 11-year wait, LA will receive a financial sweetener.

 

Under the terms of the deal, the IOC will advance funds to the Los Angeles organizing committee to recognize the extended planning period and to increase youth sports programs leading up to the Games. The IOC contribution could exceed $2 billion, according to LA officials. That figure takes into account the estimated value of existing sponsor agreements that would be renewed, as well as potential new marketing deals.

 

LA and Paris were the last two bids remaining after a tumultuous process that exposed the unwillingness of cities to bear the financial burden of hosting an event that has become synonymous with cost overruns.

LA was not even the first American entrant in the contest. Boston withdrew two years ago as public support for its bid collapsed over concerns about use of taxpayer cash. The U.S. bid switched from the east to the West Coast as LA entered the race.

 

But the same apprehensions that spooked politicians and the local population in Boston soon became evident in Europe where three cities pulled out.

 

Uncomfortably for IOC President Thomas Bach, whose much-vaunted Agenda 2020 reforms were designed to make hosting more streamlined and less costly after the lavish 2014 Sochi Games, the first withdrawal came from his homeland of Germany.

 

The lack of political unity for a bid in Hamburg was mirrored in Rome and Budapest as support for bids waned among local authorities and the population. It was clear they did not want to be saddled with skyrocketing bills for hosting the Olympics without reaping many of the economic benefits anticipated.

 

Just like in the depleted field for the 2022 Winter Games which saw Beijing defeat Almaty, the IOC was left with only two candidates again.

 

With two powerful cities left vying for 2024, Bach realized France or the U.S. could be deterred from going through another contest for 2028 if they lost. Bach floated the idea in December of making revisions to the bidding process to prevent it producing “too many losers,” building support that led to LA and Paris being able to figure out themselves how to share the 2024 and 2028 Games.

 

The dual award of the games relieves the IOC of having to test the global interest in hosting the Summer Olympics for several years until the 2032 Games are up for grabs.

 

Los Angeles City Council President Herb Wesson called the agreement a “win-win-win scenario.”

 

The opportunity to host the Games “is a golden occasion further strengthening Los Angeles — not just through bricks and mortar, but through new opportunities for our communities to watch, play and benefit from sport,” Wesson said.
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John Morris, a celebrated American photo editor who brought some of the most iconic photographs of World War II and the Vietnam War to the world’s attention, has died at 100.

His longtime friend, Robert Pledge, president and editorial director of the Contact Press Images photo agency, told The Associated Press that Morris died Friday at a hospital in Paris, the city where he had been living for decades.

Among his proudest achievements, Morris edited the historic pictures of the D-Day invasion in Normandy taken by famed war photographer Robert Capa in 1944 for Life magazine. In addition, as picture editor for The New York Times, he helped grant front-page display to two of the most striking pictures of Vietnam War by Associated Press photographers Nick Ut Cong Huynh and Eddie Adams.

During a career spanning more than half a century, Morris played a crucial role in helping to craft a noble role for photojournalism. He also worked for The Washington Post, National Geographic and the renowned Magnum photo agency.

His job as a photo editor included sending photographers to war zones or other reporting sites, advising them on the angles of their photographs, choosing the best shots in the stream of images transmitted and staging the selected images for the news outlets.

Describing himself as a Quaker and a pacifist, Morris was also known for his political commitment, backing the Democratic Party and being an early support for Barack Obama. Even at his advanced age, Morris had closely followed the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign and had been “appalled” by the election of Donald Trump, his friend Pledge said.

Morris felt his fierce anti-war convictions did not contradict his work with photographers covering war zones.

“He believed that photography could change things,” Pledge said in a phone interview from his New York office. “Morris was convinced that images of horrors, devastations, damage to minds and bodies could prompt a movement of hostility to war in the public and eventually help make the world wiser.”

Born in New Jersey in 1916 and raised in Chicago, John Godfrey Morris described himself as a journalist. His first major assignment in 1943, as picture editor for Life magazine in London, made him responsible for getting to the world the 11 famous, grainy black-and-white photos of the Allied invasion taken by Capa on Omaha Beach, June 6, 1944.

In a 2014 interview with The Associated Press for D-Day’s 70th anniversary, Morris recalled that Capa sent four rolls of negatives via couriers to his editors in London. But, because of an alleged mistake by a young dark-room assistant, three of the rolls were ruined.

“The first three, there was nothing just pea soup, but on the fourth there were eleven frames, which had discernible images, so I ordered prints of all of those,” he recounted.

For years, Morris blamed himself.

“I used to go around with a sad face saying I am the guy who lost Capa’s D-Day coverage. Now I say I am the one who saved it! It was, needless to say, an awkward moment,” he told the AP.

Years later during the Vietnam War, as a photo editor for The New York Times, Morris insisted that difficult pictures be published because they showed the horrors of the war.

On at least two memorable occasions, he got disturbing pictures published on the front page of the renowned paper.

The first one, by AP photographer Eddie Adams, showed a Saigon police chief executing a Vietcong prisoner at point-blank range in 1968 during the opening stages of the Tet Offensive. The second one, by AP photographer Nick Ut Cong Huynh, depicted a naked 9-year-old girl and other children fleeing a napalm bombing in 1972. Both photographs won Pulitzer Prizes.

Morris, who was married three times, is survived by his partner, Patricia Trocme, four children and four grandchildren, Pledge said. He was awarded the Legion of Honor, France’s highest award, in 2009.
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The Vatican’s Sistine Chapel Choir is embarking on its first U.S. tour in 30 years, hoping to show audiences in New York, Washington and Detroit that it has abandoned the habits that earned it a reputation as the “Sistine Screamers.” 

 

The group of 20 adults and 30 boys, colloquially known as the “Pope’s Choir,” is the world’s oldest choir. It started singing for pontiffs about 500 years ago. Today, the choir performs regularly in the Sistine Chapel below Michelangelo’s masterpieces, at Masses the pope celebrates in St. Peter’s Basilica and for international concert appearances.

Return to early glory

 

Hearing the singers’ dulcet tones today, it’s hard to imagine they earned the nickname the “Sistine Screamers” a few years ago for their habit of belting out their numbers operatically, relying on volume instead of technique.

“Truly, they were singing in a manner that had no relation to the old music,” choir master Monsignor Massimo Palombella said.

 

To return the choir to its early glory in the 16th century, when the group attracted the best singers in Europe, Palombella did extensive research. He sifted through the Vatican archives, studying music manuscripts and analyzing the handwriting of Renaissance composers. 

Members from many countries

 

These days, the choir once again is drawing talent. Its current members include singers from Poland, Britain, Brazil and Argentina. Diegogaston Zamediom says being the first Argentine singer in the choir of the first Argentine pope is the “maximum of the maximum.”

 

Palombella, who was named choir master in 2010 and was recently reconfirmed, hopes the concerts in the U.S. will effectively “communicate the image of God and spirituality that this music brings with it.”

 

Enrico Torre, a 27-year-old alto, said he is looking forward to visiting New York so he can catch a Broadway musical.
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Jessica Williams says it’s a great time to be an actress of color, and applauds Netflix for leading the way in promoting diversity.

 

Williams, who cut her teeth as a correspondent on “The Daily Show,” takes on her first starring role in the streaming network’s original film, “The Incredible Jessica James.”

 

The actress feels Netflix helped shape stories about people of color, citing original programming like “Master of None” and “Orange is the New Black” that are able to “showcase people of color in an amazing way.”

 

While inclusion continues to improve, especially on Netflix, Williams says the struggle for racial equality is far from over.

 

“I think it’s a difficult time in some ways to be a person of color, and I think the same for actors of color, but I also think it’s a great a time. Because I think now … there’s so much more room, I think, for us to be seen, and there’s room for us to create our own stories,” Williams said.

 

Williams feels great pride that she’s part of movement toward greater diversity on screen, calling it something that makes her heart warm and sing. She said she remains mindful of the actresses who paved the way.

 

“It’s like so many black actresses that came before me and my generation. They came before and they did not necessarily have this opportunity that I feel like I have now, and so I’m really grateful for that, and I really do think it’s a really great time to be an actress that is black, in a way,” she said.

 

But that doesn’t make shifting gears from a comedy news show to a feature film an easy choice. Williams certainly felt some trepidation with the move.

 

“I was really nervous because this movie does have comedy in it. It also has a lot of heart, and some sweet moments. So I was worried whether I would be able to portray that or not. But I had a lot of fun doing it, and I found out that I could,” she said.

 

Written and directed by Jim Strouse – who previously directed Williams in his 2015 film, “People Places Things” – the story was written with Williams in mind. Her desire was to correctly depict the “life of a modern, young black woman,” and took it a step further by also taking on the role as an executive producer.

 

“Just in case I had things to say creatively,” Williams said.

 

Strouse called Williams a comedy ninja and the right actress to portray the ever-changing nature of romantic relationships.

 

“I remember when a relationship goes astray or whatever, you break up, you don’t talk and in like maybe months down the road you have coffee,” he said. “Now it’s like, you ghost and maybe a couple months down the road you start liking each other’s photos again. It’s a weird time.”

 

He called the dynamic interesting, then with a knowing smile said, “I don’t know if it’s healthy.”

 

As for her previous gig, Williams has the distinction of being the youngest correspondent hired for “The Daily Show.” Now she’s hoping to join the list of the show’s alumni who have moved on to bigger and better things.

 

“To be mentioned among people like Samantha Bee or Hassan Minaj and Steve Carrell and Steve Colbert is insane,” she said. “It’s, it’s very surreal and I think – I packed up everything to move and be on the ‘Daily Show’ and I was nervous because I was 22. I was, umm, I had a lot of big shoes to fill working with Jon Stewart. I felt like in the beginning I had a lot to prove, and it’s really an honor to be among those people.”
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A collection of yawing mouths and extracted teeth, booming stereo speakers and colorful hookah pipes adorn shop fronts in Somalia, a colorful contrast to the airbrushed artworks of big business.

Somali mural artist Muawiye Hussein Sidow, also known as “Shik Shik,” is the man responsible for the art that features on more than 100 shops, including barbers, tea shops and supermarkets across Mogadishu.

Sidow’s work has a hand-drawn simplicity, usually involving bright, eye-catching colors. Some pieces stretch over several meters.

Sidow’s father was a commercial artist, who passed his knowledge and skills on to his son.

Sidow, 31, took on his father’s business in 1998 and his painting supports not only his own family, but helps sustain his dad as well as many others.

“I make the pictures to get daily food for my wife and three kids,” he told Reuters. “I also give daily food to [my] retired old father. Now I have become an art teacher there are many artists whom I taught how to make pictures, and they also get their daily food.”

Sidow said he never duplicated murals and that inspiration came from Somali daily life.

Aside from feeding his family and brightening up the urban landscape, Sidow still has ambitions to do more with his art.

“God willing, I hope I will also make pictures in the neighboring countries.”
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Models endured waits of up to six hours in their quest to become elaborate human canvases in an Austrian town this weekend, as the 2017 World Bodypainting Festival and world championships got under way.

The event sees participants decorated not just in paint, but in elaborate latex makeup, creating appearances that would not be out of place in a science fiction film.

On Friday, some of the human exhibits included a scaly-skinned woman with an animal skeleton headdress, another with multiple sets of horns, while the more reserved were semi-naked, painted with butterflies, apes and flowers.

“My painting is called ‘Utopia’ and stands for a world in which all dreams come true,” said artist and third-time participant Karen Dinger from Germany.

Her painting and costume, which took six hours to create, features heart-shaped red and white wings that stretch from the model’s head to knee-level and a painted moon on the leg.

The three-day festival, which is in its 19th year, sees 60 artists from over 50 countries take part, and competitions in 13 separate categories including special effects bodypainting, brush and sponge painting and ultraviolet effects.
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In the rubble of Nepal’s 2015 earthquake, a team of dedicated woodworkers is finding inspiration to re-create what was lost.

The centuries-old Char Narayan and Hari Shankara temples were destroyed by the massive April 2015 earthquake that shook the Himalayan nation, killing nearly 9,000 people. The temples were the jewel of Patan Durbar Square, which is thronged by thousands of tourists and local visitors every day. The structures were crumpled by the force of the tremor, and the carved doors, roof and brick structure lie in ruins.

A team of dedicated woodworkers is now trying to restore Nepal’s heritage. They have been working six days a week, for nearly two years, repairing the beautifully hand-carved wooden doors and windows.

The broken wooden beams are being replaced by new ones, but the workers are trying to use the salvaged portions as much as possible.

The “Silpakars” — as woodworkers from the Newar ethnic community are known — have passed down their craft and skills for generations.

“I am proud to continue my ancestral trade and help restore a big part of Nepal’s history that was destroyed by the earthquake,” said Shyam Krishna, chiseling away the wood pieces.

He and his fellow workers are paid only about $15 a day each, which is much less than they would earn as building furnishers.

“It is not about the money. We might make less money, but this is a moment of pride for us to be able to restore the heritage of our country,” he said.

Already two years at work, they will likely need another year to just get the windows, doors and beams ready.

Nepal faces criticism from the international community for slow progress in reconstruction work despite a $4.1 billion international pledge.
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Cheery Hi-5, a snobbish Poop and a conflicted Meh have starring roles in the animated The Emoji Movie, which imagines a world inside cellphones where emojis rebel against portraying just one emotion all their lives.

Yet the dozen or so people who select and release the tiny, ubiquitous characters globally are far removed from the glitz of Hollywood, where the Sony Pictures movie, which begins its global rollout Friday, was developed.

The humans who toil in obscurity to shape and approve new emojis are part of the Unicode Consortium, a Silicon Valley-based group of computer and software corporations and individual volunteers with backgrounds in technology, encoding and linguistics.

2,600-plus emojis

From smiley faces to thumbs up, there are now more than 2,600 emojis worldwide and, according to a July Facebook report, more than 60 million a day are sent on the No. 1 social media network alone.

The consortium approves about 50-100 new emojis every year, not counting the different skin tones for people emoji, after a rigorous application and review process, said Mark Davis, president and co-founder of the group.

The latest batch, released in June and reaching phones and other devices in coming months, include a star-struck emoji, an exploding head, a group of wizards, mermaids and a woman wearing a hijab.

​Submissions from everywhere

“We get submissions from all over the world,” Davis said in an interview. “The hijab emoji came from a Saudi Arabian young woman who is living in Germany who made a very compelling proposal. I’m looking forward to the exploding head — I think that’s going to be very popular.

“People need to make a case as to why they think their emoji is going to be frequently used, how it breaks new ground, how it is different from other emojis that have already been encoded.”

Logos, brands and emojis tied to specific companies are not accepted. “We also don’t accept specific people. We did encode a cowboy but we wouldn’t encode John Wayne,” Davis said.

Some concepts just do not translate as emoji.

LOL emoji most popular

“Anything that needs a lot of detail to explain or understand is trouble. It’s also hard to make an emoji for something abstract — like good governance, or a responsible president,” Davis said.

Davis said there are 2,666 emojis worldwide. The LOL emoji with tears of laughter is the most popular, according to a July Facebook survey of its 2 billion monthly users, followed by the heart eyes emoji. Italians and Spaniards favor the kissing emoji.

The consortium played no part in the making of The Emoji Movie, Davis said, because all of its work is open-source, available to all, and no permission was needed.

Nevertheless, he never imagined that the computer-generated punctuation marks that originated in Japan in the 1980s would become Hollywood stars.

“That’s something that never really crossed our minds,” Davis said.

 
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Mick Jagger has released two songs which he says are urgent responses to the “confusion and frustration with the times we live in.”

 

The Rolling Stones leader released the songs and music videos Thursday. He’s calling “Gotta Get a Grip” and “England Lost ” an audio-visual project.

 

Jagger said the songs were a result of the “anxiety [and] unknowability of the changing political situation.” In a quote via email, the 74-year-old says of the world’s current political climate: “We obviously have a lot of problems. So am I politically optimistic? No.”

 

Jagger said he started writing the songs in April and that he wanted to release them immediately.

 

“Doing a whole album often takes a long time even after finishing it with all the record company preparations and global release set up. It’s always refreshing to get creative in a different fashion and I feel a slight throwback to a time when you could be a bit more free and easy by recording on the hoof and putting it out there immediately,” he said. “I didn’t want to wait until next year when these two tracks might lose any impact and mean nothing.”

 

British rapper Skepta is featured on “England Lost.” Jagger said when he was writing it, he knew he wanted a rap act on the track.

 

“It’s about a feeling that we are in a difficult moment in our history. It’s about the unknowability about where you are and the feeling of insecurity,” he said of the song. “That’s how I was feeling when I was writing.”

 

Of “Gotta Get a Grip,” Jagger said: “The message I suppose is — despite all those things that are happening, you gotta get on with your own life, be yourself and attempt to create your own destiny.”

 

The Rolling Stones’ most recent album was the blues effort, “Blue & Lonesome,” released in December. The band is also working on an album of new material.

 

Jagger also commented on the most recent artists he’s been listening to, which includes Skepta, Mozart, Howlin’ Wolf, Tame Impala, “obscure Prince tracks and classic soul stuff from The Valentine Brothers.”

 

“I really like Kendrick Lamar — he’s also talking about discontent and he really nailed it,” Jagger added.
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There have been many quotable quotes over the ages, and most of them were said by men. Quotabelle.com features quotes by women and the stories behind the words.

Pauline Weger, the woman behind the website, has now compiled 110 of the quotes and stories into a book, Beautifully Said: Quotes by Remarkable Women and Girls, Designed to Make You Think. She says making you think is what the most powerful quotes have done for centuries.

“People would collect snippets in order to spark their interest in a concept or innovate an idea,” Weger says. “So quotations actually have a wonderful legacy of being a spark for writing. In today’s modern world, it’s fueled even further by how they’re spread through social media.”

The quotes in Beautifully Said come from women around the world, and across the centuries, commenting on all aspects of life.

It includes a quote from Iraqi-British architect, Zaha Hadid, who passed away last year: “There are 360 degrees, why stick to one?” “She’s saying bring dimension to what you’re doing,” Weger explains. “I think she’s a good example of someone who really had to pave the way in a challenging world for women to succeed.”

Pakistani activist for girls’ education, Malala Yousafzai, the youngest Nobel Prize laureate, said, “One child, one teacher, one book and one pen can change the world.”

Weger includes a quote from chef and cookbook author Grace Young: “Preserve your culinary legacy, some day those recipes could be the one link we have to reach our loved ones.”

“We found that quotation through a blog post that she wrote about two years ago right before the Chinese New Year,” Weger says. “The story was that her mother would always for years prepare this traditional Chinese meal. And yet now her mother was dealing with dementia, so could not remember how to prepare a meal or anything really, frankly, about the Chinese New Year. So what Grace found was that when she prepared this meal, it created connections with her mother.”

Survivor, not a victim

Weger says many of the most powerful quotations in the book reflect women’s thoughts when facing challenges, such as this one from dancer Adrianne Haslet: “I’m not a victim defined by what happened in my life, I’m a survivor defined by how I live my life.”

Haslet lost part of her leg in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, but a year later, was dancing again on a bionic leg. The quote is from a TV interview after the attack.

“One of the producers or someone said, ‘The victim in this’ and I said, ‘I’m not a victim,” she recalls. “A victim means that I belong to someone.’ Then I said, ‘I’m not a victim defined by what happened in my life, I’m a survivor defined by how I live my life.’ So, I refused to be called a victim. So they said, ‘Wait, say that again.’ And I said, ‘What did I say?’ Because I was so in the moment. When I wrote it down that time, it became a mantra in my life.”

 Going backward to move forward

Climbing mountains is the inspiration behind the quote from Alison Levine, the team captain for the first American women’s Everest expedition: “Sometimes you have to go backwards in order to eventually get to where you want to be.”

“People mistakenly think that we need to climb straight up the mountain, from base camp to Camp 2 to Camp 3 to Camp 4 then to the summit. That’s not how it works,” Levine says. The climber has to repeatedly come down to base camp to let the body slowly get used to the altitude.

“This process is called acclimatization,” she explains. “When you’re high on a mountain, your muscles are starting to deteriorate, and your body is getting weaker. So you need to spend some time up to get used to the altitude, but you have to keep coming back down low so you can eat, sleep, hydrate and regain some strength. So you have to actually climb back down the mountain in order to get to the summit.”

Levine says that’s also a wise approach to life.

“Sometimes when people don’t get a job they wanted or they don’t get a promotion that they want, or get transferred to another division in their company, they feel like it’s not a step forward. They feel like it’s a step back,” she said. “You have to look at these things differently. Look at it as an opportunity to regain some strength so you’re going to be even better in the future.”

Author Weger says she hopes Beautifully Said will inspire women and girls to create their own quotable quotes.
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We’re off and running with the five most popular songs in the Billboard Hot 100 Pop Singles chart, for the week ending July 29, 2017.

The deck gets shuffled this week, but my friends…the cards remain the same.

Number 5: Ed Sheeran “Shape of You”

Ed Sheeran is still your man in fifth place with his former title-holder “Shape Of You.”

Ed created controversy with his cameo role on the season premiere of “Game Of Thrones” – many viewers seemed to hate it. Sophie Turner, who portrays Sansa Stark on the series, accidentally told her friend and co-star Maisie Williams that Ed would be on the show. Maisie is a Sheeran superfan, and the show’s creators arranged his appearance as a surprise for her.

Number 4: Bruno Mars “That’s What I Like”

No real surprises in fourth place: Bruno Mars slips a slot with “That’s What I Like.” This song is now the longest-running champion single in the history of Billboard Magazine’s Hot R & B Songs chart. It’s no longer number one – but it held the title for 20 consecutive weeks. The chart has only been around since 2012, but still…well done, Bruno.

…and well done, Justin Bieber, who turns up in not one but two songs this week.

Number 3: DJ Khaled Featuring Justin Bieber, Quavo, Chance The Rapper and Lil Wayne “I’m The One”

DJ Khaled steps back a slot to third place with “I’m The One,” featuring Justin Bieber, Quavo, Chance The Rapper and Lil Wayne.

This week, Justin cancelled the remaining dates of his Purpose world tour. His management cited “unforeseen circumstances,” while manager Scooter Braun mentioned concerns over Justin’s “soul and well-being.” Justin Bieber has been on the road for most of the past 16 months.

Number 2: DJ Khaled Featuring Rihanna & Bryson Tiller “Wild Thoughts”

DJ Khaled jumps two notches to second place with “Wild Thoughts,” featuring Rihanna and Bryson Tiller. It just went number one in the United Kingdom, becoming Khaled’s second U.K. chart champ after “I’m The One.” It’s Bryson Tiller’s first trip to number one, but Rihanna has been here before: this is her ninth career U.K. pop singles title.

Number 1: Luis Fonsi & Daddy Yankee Featuring Justin Bieber “Despacito”

Here in the States, Luis Fonsi, Daddy Yankee and Justin Bieber still rule the roost with “Despacito.” 

Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee have criticized Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro for using “Despacito” at a political rally. Both Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee went on social media to denounce his use of the song.

That’s it for this week…join us in seven days for another star-packed lineup.
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Angelina Jolie says she developed high blood pressure and Bell’s palsy last year.

The actor-director told Vanity Fair that she credited acupuncture for her full recovery from the paralysis, which was caused by nerve damage and led one side of her face to droop.

Jolie also opened up about her divorce from Brad Pitt in the magazine’s September cover story, which was released online Wednesday. Jolie filed for divorce in September 2016.

She said they care for each other and for their family and are “both working toward the same goal.” She said she does not want her six children to worry about her and that “it’s very important to cry in the shower and not in front of them.”
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The lead singer of a Lebanese rock band, which has courted controversy for its songs dealing with homophobia and sexism, has urged more men to champion women’s rights in the Middle East.

Hamed Sinno, the openly gay frontman of Mashrou’ Leila, also called for more women in politics and for discriminatory laws to be repealed.

“No one is saying that we should arbitrarily just get rid of all men in power and substitute them with women, but there is a question about … why it is that we still have this many issues with women’s representation, with women in government and other rights,” he said.

Mashrou’ Leila, which is on a world tour, has made headlines for singing about subjects that are largely taboo in the Arabic pop scene, including politics, religion, social justice, and sexual freedom.

The group has garnered a loyal following in the Middle East, but has also received death threats on social media and was banned from playing in Jordan last month.

Jordanian parliamentarian Dima Tahboub suggested in media interviews that the ban was linked to Sinno’s homosexuality.

In a statement on Facebook, Mashrou’ Leila said the ban was symptomatic of “the fanatical conservatism that has contributed in making the region increasingly toxic over the last decade”.

Speaking by phone from New York, Sinno told the Thomson Reuters Foundation there was a lot of work to be done in the struggle for gender equality in the Middle East.

He criticized the lack of female representation in government in the region, wage inequality, women’s right to govern their own bodies, and Lebanon’s rape laws, which include a provision that allows a rapist to avoid punishment by marrying his victim.

The 29-year-old American-Lebanese singer said men should celebrate the achievements of leading women in the Middle East and he praised Muslim feminists, including the writers Mona Eltahawy and Maya Mikdashi, for “disturbing patriarchal codes”.

Sinno, who has described his all-male band as “extremely vocal feminists”, also said he was fed up of western stereotyping of Middle Eastern women as “passive”.

The band’s new music video by female Lebanese director Jessy Moussallem – released last week with their song “Roman” – is intended to challenge the way Muslim and Arab women are portrayed, he said.

The video shows dozens of women wearing traditional Islamic dress uniting around a powerful central figure who performs a striking contemporary dance wearing an abaya (loose-fitting robe) and hijab. Sinno said the video was a celebration of Muslim women’s ability to empower each other.

The male members of the band take a backseat in the video. “Having men there not doing anything was basically what the point was,” Sinno added.

 
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In 2016, an Iraqi-American artist sat down with Bahjat Abdulwahed — the so-called “Walter Cronkite of Baghdad” — with the idea of launching a radio project that would be part documentary, part radio play and part variety show.

 

Abdulwahed was the voice of Iraqi radio from the late 1950s to the early 1990s, but came to Philadelphia as a refugee in 2009 after receiving death threats from insurgents.

 

“He represented authority and respectability in relationship to the news through many different political changes,” said Elizabeth Thomas, curator of “Radio Silence,” a public art piece that resulted from the meeting with Abdulwahed.

 

Thomas had invited artist Michael Rakowitz to Philadelphia to create a project for Mural Arts Philadelphia, which has been expanding its public art reach from murals into new and innovative spaces.

 

After nearly five years of research, Rakowitz distilled his project into a radio broadcast that would involve putting the vivacious and caramel-voiced Abdulwahed back on the air, and using Philadelphia-area Iraqi refugees and local Iraq war veterans as his field reporters. It would feature Iraqi music, remembrances of the country and vintage weather reports from a happier time in Iraq.

 

“One of the many initial titles was “Desert Home Companion,” Rakowitz said, riffing on “A Prairie Home Companion,” the radio variety show created by Garrison Keillor.

Rakowitz recorded an initial and very informal session with Abdulwahed in his living room in January 2016. Two weeks later, Abdulwahed collapsed. He had to have an emergency tracheostomy and was on life support until he died seven months later.

 

At Abdulwahed’s funeral, his friends urged Rakowitz to continue with the project, to show how much of the country they left behind was slipping away and to help fight cultural amnesia.

 

Rakowitz recalibrated the project, which became “Radio Silence,” a 10-part radio broadcast with each episode focusing on a synonym of silence, in homage to Abdulwahed.

 

“The voice of Baghdad had lost his voice,” Rakowitz said, calling him a “narrator of Iraq’s history.”

 

It will be hosted by Rakowitz and features fragments of that first recording session with Abdulwahed, as well as interviews with his wife and other Iraqi refugees living in Philadelphia.

 

Rakowitz and Thomas also worked with Warrior Writers, a nonprofit based in Philadelphia that helps war veterans work through their experiences using writing and art.

 

The first episode, on speechlessness, will launch Aug. 6. It will be broadcast on community radio stations across the country through Prometheus Radio Project.

One participant is Jawad Al Amiri, an Iraqi refugee who came to the United States in the 1980s. He said silence in Iraq has been a way of life for many decades.

 

“Silence is a way of survival. Silence is a decree by the Baath regime, not to tell what you see in front of your eyes. Silence is synonymous with fear. If you tell, you will be put through agony,” he said at a preview Tuesday of the live broadcast. He said he saw his own sister poisoned and die and wasn’t allowed to speak of it.

 

When he came to the U.S. in 1981, his father told him: “We send you here for education and to speak for the millions of Iraqis in the land where freedom of speech is practiced.”

 

Lawrence Davidson is an Army veteran who served during the Iraq War and works with Warrior Writers also contributed to the project. He said the project is a place to exchange ideas and honestly share feelings with refugees and other veterans.

 

The project kicks off on July 29 with a live broadcast performance on Philadelphia’s Independence Mall — what Rakowitz calls the symbolic home of American democracy. It will feature storytelling, food from refugees and discussions from the veterans with Warrior Writers.
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Stories of survival in turbulent times, including David Gordon Green’s world premiere of Stronger about a victim of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, are among the highlights in store at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival.

Angelina Jolie’s First They Killed My Father, set in Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge reign, and horror mystery Mother! by Darren Aronofsky, starring Jennifer Lawrence and Javier Bardem, were also among the films announced Tuesday in the first look at the festival’s lineup for 2017.

Audiences can also catch social satire Downsizing, directed by Alexander Payne and starring Matt Damon, and George Clooney-directed crime-comedy Suburbicon. Guillermo del Toro’s fantastical The Shape of Water will also screen.

The Toronto event, which kicks off September 7, has become one of the world’s largest film festivals, known for debuting critically acclaimed films that have later won Academy Awards for best picture.

Stronger stars Jake Gyllenhaal as Jeff Bauman, who lost both his legs during the Boston Marathon, and Tatiana Maslany as his girlfriend.

“It’s a moment of incredible transformation, disruption, change, challenge, so I think you’ll see that reflected in the films we’re showing,” said Piers Handling, chief executive and director of the film festival, now in its 42nd year.

“One of the ideas that struck me is the whole notion of survival,” he said about the films announced so far. “It seems to be a topic that a lot of people are thinking about.”

Hany Abu-Assad’s The Mountain Between Us, starring Idris Elba and Kate Winslet, is about two strangers stranded on a mountain after surviving a plane crash.

Jennifer Baichwal and Nicholas de Pencier’s Long Time Running is a documentary about the 2016 tour of The Tragically Hip, a Canadian rock band, as frontman Gord Downie battles terminal brain cancer.

Organizers did not announce which film would kick off the 10-day festival, but said the world premiere of C’est La Vie! by Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano, the duo behind The Intouchables, would close.

Women will also grab the festival spotlight, with Haifaa Al Mansour’s Mary Shelley and Angela Robinson’s Professor Marston & the Wonder Women having their world premieres in Toronto.

“We don’t program for themes, but as you begin to step back … and you look at the films that you’ve chosen, some things begin to emerge,” Cameron Bailey, the festival’s artistic director, said in an interview.

The festival will run until September 17.
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Kathryn Bigelow hasn’t forgotten the out-of-body experience she felt when she won the best director Academy Award for her 2009 The Hurt Locker. At that moment, she became the first woman to win the award. None have been nominated since.

“The gender inequity that exists in the industry, I thought it would maybe be the beginning of that inequity not being quite so pronounced,” said Bigelow in a recent interview. “Sadly, that doesn’t seem to be the case. And I don’t know why that is. I just don’t know. But I sort of feel like on behalf of all the women who might yearn to tell challenging, relevant, topical, entertaining stories, that I was standing there for them. And that emboldened me.”

Boldness is not a fleeting quality for Bigelow. Since The Hurt Locker, she has, with the reporter-turned-screenwriter Mark Boal, continued to craft an ambitious, intrepid kind of cinema that marries visceral big-screen immersion with deeply researched journalism. Their previous collaboration, the Osama bin Laden-hunt thriller Zero Dark Thirty, proved an unparalleled flashpoint in both Hollywood and Washington, prompting debates over its representation of the role torture played in the manhunt.

“I’m the messenger. I didn’t invent the message,” she said. “I’m just compelled to make these challenging pieces. And I’m compelled by stories that are informational, that tell you what you didn’t know going in — that I didn’t know going in.”

Incident amid 1967 riots

Her latest film, Detroit, is a no less challenging dive into the violent soul of America, but this time, she’s on the home front. The film, also from a script from Boal, is about the Algiers Motel incident, a relatively little-remembered event that took place amid the 1967 Detroit riots — an uprising sparked by a police raid of an after-hours club — and a reaction to a long history of oppression of the city’s African-Americans. The riots, among the largest in U.S. history, left 43 dead and led to the deployment of thousands of national guardsmen to a Detroit that raged in fire and fury.

Detroit seeks to show the historical context and individual reality of the riots, which many say should be called a “rebellion.” Within the chaos was the particularly heinous act at the Algiers Motel. Three unarmed black males were killed in an encounter with police, and nine others (seven of them black) were beaten and terrorized. Three officers were charged with murder, as well as other crimes, but found not guilty.

Boal approached Bigelow about making a film about the incident shortly after a St. Louis County grand jury decided not to indict Officer Darren Wilson, whose fatal shooting of Michael Brown in August 2014 prompted the protests in Ferguson, Missouri. The relevance of the Detroit tale, Bigelow said, fueled her motivation for making it.

“There was something sadly, tragically contemporaneous about this story,” Bigelow said. ” ‘How can this conversation happen in a meaningful way?’ is what I walk away asking. I’m just telling this story in as authentic and truthful and honest a way as we could, given the information that is out there.”

Swept into a nightmare

The story for Boal began with Cleveland Larry Reed. During the riots, Reed (played by Algee Smith in the film) was an 18-year-old singer in the Dramatics, an up-and-coming Motown group whose concert was canceled that night. He and another bandmate hunkered down at the Algiers, only to find themselves swept into a nightmare. Reed, who met with Boal and later with Smith, never recovered from the ordeal; he gave up professional music, singing instead in church choirs.

“In the summer of 2014, I was drawn to this story after meeting Larry Reed and hearing him recount what had happened to him 50 years ago, and then, later on, hearing from other survivors of the Algiers,” Boal wrote in an email. “My idea for the movie was driven from the start by real people, being moved by the fine-grained particulars of what they went through.”

Smith, a 22-year-old actor from Saginaw, Michigan, described the set as a profoundly emotional one where the cast merely needed to “log on to our social medias for inspiration.” 

“We were shooting a movie about history but it felt like today,” he said.

He and other actors playing the terrorized victims weren’t given scripts for much of the production so that their reactions of shock and horror were more genuine.

“She wanted us to have a tomorrow’s-not-promised type of mindset,” Smith said. “We just got there and then the first day it was just total chaos. It was: ‘Put your hands on the wall.’ Screaming. I’m getting lightheaded because I’m breathing so hard in between takes. It was emotionally and physically draining every day for those first two weeks. Will Poulter (who plays the ringleader officer) broke down on set. In the middle of a scene, he just started crying. The whole set just stopped. Everyone stopped. Will went outside and I put my arm around him, but I just started crying, too.”

Not the perfect storyteller

Some may say Detroit is a story that ought to have been told by black filmmakers. Bigelow, who has spent her career either ignoring or exploding gender stereotypes, understands such criticism.

“Am I the perfect person to tell that story? Absolutely not,” Bigelow said. “But I felt honored to tell this story. It’s a story that’s been out of circulation for 50 years. And if it can encourage a conversation about race in this country, I would find that extremely encouraging and important.”

Her films, she said, are about creating empathy and, she hopes, dialogue. Earlier this year, she co-directed an eight-minute virtual reality film about park rangers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, The Protectors: Walk in the Rangers’ Shoes.

“Institutionalized racism is at the heart of the piece,” Bigelow said of Detroit. “I think the purpose of art is to agitate for change. But you can’t change anything unless you’re aware of it.”
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Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro’s attempt to use Latin hit “Despacito” – which means ‘slowly’ – to inject some cool into his controversial new congress has backfired quickly.

Maduro’s unpopular leftist government on Sunday promoted a remixed version of “Despacito” to encourage Venezuelans to vote for the Constituent Assembly, which will have powers to rewrite the national charter and supersede other institutions.

“Our call to the ‘Constituent Assembly’ only seeks to unite the country … Despacito!” goes the Socialist Party-sanctioned remix of the catchy dance song, which was played during Maduro’s weekly televised show.

“What do you think, eh? Is this video approved?” a grinning and clapping Maduro called out to the crowd, which roared back in approval.

But Puerto Rican singers Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee on Monday said they do not approve at all.

“At no point was I asked, nor did I authorize, the use or the change in lyrics of “Despacito” for political ambitions, and much less in the middle of a deplorable situation that Venezuela, a country I love so much, is living,” Fonsi said in a message posted on Twitter.

Daddy Yankee, meanwhile, posted a picture of Maduro with a big red cross over it on Instagram.

“That you illegally appropriate a song (Despacito) does not compare with the crimes you commit and have committed in Venezuela. Your dictatorial regime is a joke, not only for my Venezuelan brothers, but for the entire world,” he said. “With this nefarious marketing plan, you only highlight your fascist ideal.”

Millions of Venezuelans have been staging months of protests against Maduro, a former bus driver and union leader narrowly elected to replace the late Hugo Chavez in 2013.

Some 100 people have died in the unrest, which has further hammered an imploding economy that is running short of food and medicine.

Critics say Maduro is trying to cement a dictatorship by pushing forward with the Constituent Assembly this Sunday. He says it is the only way to bring peace back to the convulsed nation.
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Author George R.R. Martin has hinted at the possibility of not one but two new “Game of Thrones” books in 2018, whetting the appetites of fans who have been waiting for the next installment of the epic saga since 2011.

Martin, whose “A Song of Ice and Fire” novels were adapted into HBO’s hit medieval fantasy series “Game of Thrones,” currently is working on the sixth installment, “Winds of Winter,” continuing the story from 2011’s “A Dance With Dragons.”

“I am still working on it, I am still months away (how many? good question), I still have good days and bad days, and that’s all I care to say,” Martin wrote on his blog, grrm.livejournal.com, during the weekend.

“I do think you will have a Westeros book from me in 2018… and who knows, maybe two. A boy can dream…,” he said.

The seventh season of the television show, which premiered this month, already has advanced beyond the events of Martin’s published books.

There have been recent contradictory reports about “Winds of Winter” – that Martin had not even been started it or that he had finished it but was holding it back – and the author dismissed those as “equally false and equally moronic.”

“Game of Thrones” follows the epic story of warring families in a multi-generational struggle for control of the Iron Throne, which rules over the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros.

Martin has come under fire from avid “Game of Thrones” fans for taking so long to finish “Winds of Winter” and starting work on other projects. The author said in his blog post that he was working on a two-part history of Westeros’ Targaryen kings called “Fire and Blood,” with the first part to be released sometime late 2018 or early 2019.

A trailer for the HBO show, released last week, shows a brewing battle between Cersei Lannister, who currently sits on the Iron Throne, and Daenerys Targaryen, who has traveled with her army and dragons to reclaim her ancestral home.

The series will conclude next year with the eighth season, which will reveal who will sit on the Iron Throne. A series of spin-offs is being developed at HBO.
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James Bond is returning to movie theaters in November 2019, producers said Monday, but they did not say who will play Britain’s most famous fictional spy.

Eon Productions and MGM studios said in a statement that the 25th Bond film will be released in U.S. theaters on Nov. 8, 2019, with a slightly earlier release in Britain.

They gave no title, casting or other details.

Britain’s Daniel Craig has played Bond in the last four films, including 2012’s Skyfall and 2015’s Spectre. The 2015 film took some $880 million at the global box office, according to film tracker BoxOfficeMojo.com.

His reprisal of the role for a fifth time has been the subject of much speculation after the actor said in 2015 that he would rather slash his wrists than play Bond again.

Callum McDougall, the executive producer of the Bond film franchise, told Britain’s BBC Radio last year that Craig, 49, was “absolutely the first choice. … We would love Daniel to return as Bond.”

Meanwhile, actors such as Idris Elba, Tom Hiddleston and Tom Hardy have all been named as potential candidates to step into the fast cars and sharply tailored suits of Bond, MI6’s secret agent 007.

With its futuristic gadgets, menacing super villains and larger-than-life explosions, the Bond series is the longest-running film franchise in history, with actors such as Sean Connery, Roger Moore and Pierce Brosnan inhabiting the role of the leading man.

The new film will be written by Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, who wrote the last four movies in the franchise.
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Linkin Park said their hearts are broken following the death of lead singer Chester Bennington, who died by hanging last week.

The rock band said Monday that the “shock waves of grief and denial are still sweeping through our family as we come to grips with what has happened.”

 

Bennington, who was 41, hanged himself from a bedroom door in his home near Los Angeles.

 

The band said Bennington “touched so many lives, maybe even more than you realized.”

 

Linkin Park had planned to launch a tour this week, but canceled it following Bennington’s death. Their hits include “In the End” and “Numb.”

 

 
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