Category Archives: Culture

Klaus Schulze, German electronic music pioneer, dies aged 74

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Multi-instrumentalist who played with Tangerine Dream and Ash Ra Tempel before admired solo career is hailed for his ‘innovative spirit’

Klaus Schulze, the German multi-instrumentalist whose work with drones, pulses and synthesisers was hugely influential on generations of electronic music makers, has died aged 74.

Frank Uhle, managing director of Schulze’s label SVP, wrote: “We lose and will miss a good personal friend – one of the most influential and important composers of electronic music – a man of conviction and an exceptional artist. Our thoughts in this hour are with his wife, sons and family. His always cheerful nature, his innovative spirit and his impressive body of work remain indelibly rooted in our memories.”

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RSC to stage adaptation of animated fantasy film My Neighbour Totoro

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Royal Shakespeare Company’s version of celebrated Studio Ghibli movie will be first opening ‘of this scale’ in nearly 40 years

The Royal Shakespeare Company is to stage an adaptation of the celebrated Japanese animation feature film, My Neighbour Totoro, in a production it promises will be ambitious and spectacular.

The 1988 film became a global success after Netflix acquired the rights to 21 movies from Studio Ghibli, the Japanese animation giant, in 2020. The world premiere of the stage adaptation, directed by Phelim McDermott and featuring puppets created by Basil Twist, will have a limited run of 15 weeks at the Barbican from October until January.

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Viola Davis says ‘critics absolutely serve no purpose’

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Oscar-winning actor hits back at critics over negative reviews of her performance as Michelle Obama in drama series The First Lady

Viola Davis has responded to widespread criticism of her latest performance by stating that critics “serve no purpose”.

The Oscar-winning actor has received negative feedback from both critics and on social media for playing Michelle Obama in the Showtime series The First Lady. In an interview with the BBC, Davis called the response “incredibly hurtful”.

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Disney is refusing to cut LGBTQ scene in Doctor Strange 2, Saudi Arabia says

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Official denies Marvel film is banned but says kingdom ‘still trying’ to get Disney to cut 12 seconds referring to lesbian character with two mothers

Saudi Arabia has asked Disney to cut “LGBTQ references” from Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness before it can be screened in the kingdom, an official said on Monday – but denied earlier reports that the film has been banned.

Disney has so far declined the requested edits to the Doctor Strange sequel, slated for release around the world next week. The cuts amount to “barely 12 seconds” in which a lesbian character, America Chavez, played by the actor Xochitl Gomez, refers to her “two moms”, according to Nawaf Alsabhan, Saudi Arabia’s general supervisor of cinema classification.

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Investigation opened into claims of abuse on Dutch version of The Voice

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Accusations of ‘sexually transgressive behaviour’ and abuse of power cast shadow over original version of popular talent show

Dutch prosecutors have opened a criminal investigation into sexual abuse allegations around the talent show The Voice of Holland, saying four suspects are under investigation.

Accusations of “sexually transgressive behaviour” and abuse of power rocked the Netherlands in January, in the country’s first major #MeToo scandal.

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Gold box stolen in 2003 Waddesdon Manor heist is returned home

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18th-century bonbonniere was identified after coming up for auction last year and will now go on display

It was an audacious and highly professional heist. At 2am on a June night in 2003, five men wearing balaclavas and blue boilersuits smashed their way through a window at Waddesdon Manor, the extravagant French-style chateau built in Buckinghamshire by the Rothschild banking dynasty.

Despite high security, they grabbed more than 100 gold boxes and other precious objects worth several million pounds – and four minutes later they were gone. Almost all disappeared without trace.

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Crimes against history: mapping the destruction of Ukraine’s culture

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US-based lab documents destruction of churches and theatres

Satellite scrutiny of Ukraine is not just focused on military hardware. Thousands of miles away from the fighting, an international group of archaeologists, historians and technicians are quietly coordinating another high-stakes monitoring effort: the tracking of the mounting losses to Ukraine’s cultural landscape.

Now an impact summary, released this month from their lab at a museum in the US state of Virginia, has revealed the bleak truth.

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South Korea split in row over military service for BTS

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The K-pop superstars add billions to the economy, so should they be exempt from conscription?

They generate billions for the South Korean economy and have helped turned the country into a cultural superpower, but must Jin, Jimin, V, RM, J-Hope, Suga and Jungkook – the seven members of the K-pop phenomenon BTS – start swapping their stage outfits for military uniforms?

Less than three weeks before South Korea’s new president, Yoon Suk-yeol, takes office, the country is gripped by a debate over who, if anyone, should be exempt from compulsory national service – long seen as essential preparation for a potential conflict with its volatile neighbour, North Korea.

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Venice Biennale: women outnumber male artists in main halls for first time

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Black women occupy prominent pavilions with some venues showing work from non-binary, disabled and trans artists

There is no shortage of art’s big beasts in Venice, as the world’s most prestigious international art event, the city’s biennale, opens to the public.

Georg Baselitz has made works to hang in the 18th-century stucco frames that once held portraits of the Grimani family in their palazzo. Marc Quinn is showing in the National Archaeological Museum. Anselm Kiefer has covered the walls of a colossal room in the Palazzo Ducale with paintings encrusted with shoes, clothing, metal, and even a ladder.

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Solar system recreated in Derry sculpture trail

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Our Place in Space is part of £120m government-backed Unboxed festival spanning UK over coming months

A glowing silicone sun measuring 2.3 metres in diameter and a pinhead-size Pluto have been brought down to earth in an extraordinary scale model of the solar system aimed at giving the public a true sense of the huge size of space.

The six-mile (10km) riverside sculpture trail opens in Derry on Friday as part of Unboxed, the £120m government-backed celebration of creativity that spans the UK over the coming months.

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Rust fined maximum amount by New Mexico for failures that led to gun death

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State officials deliver highest level of rebuke and say production demonstrated ‘plain indifference’ to employee safety

The state of New Mexico on Wednesday issued its maximum citation against the producers of the western movie Rust for safety lapses before what the authorities called the “avoidable” shooting death of the cinematographer Halyna Hutchins during filming last autumn.

An investigation into Hutchins’ death found the company, Rust Movie Productions, knew firearm safety procedures were not being followed on set and demonstrated “plain indifference” to employee safety, the New Mexico environment department said in a statement.

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A$AP Rocky arrested at Los Angeles airport in connection to 2021 shooting

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Rapper was detained at LAX in connection to a November 2021 shooting not previously reported in the media

A$AP Rocky was detained at Los Angeles international airport on Wednesday in connection to a November 2021 shooting, NBC News reported.

The 33-year-old rapper, legal name Rakim Mayers, was returning from vacation in Barbados with his girlfriend, Rihanna, when he was arrested by the Los Angeles police department with assistance from Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s homeland security investigations team. The couple are expecting a child this spring.

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Play about ‘great escape’ from German prison camp to be staged at Alexandra Palace

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The story of the real-life escape from Stalag Luft III in 1944 is to be told at the London venue used as an internment camp for ‘enemy aliens’ during the first world war

The story behind the audacious 1944 escape from the Luftwaffe’s Stalag Luft III prison camp is to be retold in a new play at London’s Alexandra Palace, which was itself used as an internment camp for German, Austrian and Hungarian “enemy aliens” during the first world war.

Tom, Dick and Harry will recount the breakout of 76 allied airmen from the camp at Sagan in Germany (now Żagań in Poland) which inspired the 1963 film The Great Escape, featuring an all-star cast and a thrilling though fictitious motorbike exploit for Steve McQueen. The play is written by Theresa Heskins, Andrew Pollard and Michael Hugo with Heskins also directing.

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Johnny Depp testifies that alleged abuse of Amber Heard ‘never happened’

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Actor takes stand in defamation trial and denies Heard’s domestic abuse claims, saying ‘I have never struck any woman in my life’

Taking the stand in his libel lawsuit against his ex-wife Amber Heard, Johnny Depp said her domestic abuse allegations against him were disturbing, heinous and “not based in any species of truth”.

“Nothing of the kind ever happened,” Depp said in court on Tuesday. “Never did I myself reach the point of striking Ms Heard in any way. Nor have I ever struck any woman in my life.”

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Hip-hop pioneer DJ Kay Slay dies of Covid aged 55

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Keith Grayson’s death was confirmed in a statement released through Hot 97, the radio station where he hosted The Drama Hour

The pioneering hip-hop artist Keith Grayson, who performed as DJ Kay Slay and worked with top stars, has died of complications from Covid-19.

Grayson’s death at 55 on Sunday was confirmed by his family in a statement released through New York radio station Hot 97, where he hosted The Drama Hour for more than two decades.

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Barcelona honours Gabriel García Márquez with new library

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The Colombian Nobel laureate, who lived in the city from 1967-75, is to have a €12m building specialising in Latin American literature named after him

In the digital age, building a new library filled with old-fashioned printed books seems idealistic, almost quixotic.Not so in Barcelona. The city council is about to open a new €12m (£10m) library next month, the latest instalment in a programme that dates back 20 years.

The library, in the working-class district of Sant Martí de Provençals, has been named in honour of the Colombian Nobel laureate Gabriel García Márquez.

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Dutch golden age painting worth up to $5m discovered at Blue Mountains property

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Experts say 400-year-old work is likely collaboration between Dutch master Willem Claesz Heda and his son

A 400-year-old “one in a million” Dutch painting worth up to $5m has been found at a property in the New South Wales Blue Mountains.

Called Still Life, the work was recently located at the National Trust of Australia-managed Woodford Academy during a restoration project.

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Iraq’s ancient buildings are being destroyed by climate change

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Water shortages leading to rising salt concentrations and sandstorms are eroding world’s ancient sites

Some of the world’s most ancient buildings are being destroyed by climate change, as rising concentrations of salt in Iraq eat away at mud brick and more frequent sandstorms erode ancient wonders.

Iraq is known as the cradle of civilisation. It was here that agriculture was born, some of the world’s oldest cities were built, such as the Sumerian capital Ur, and one of the first writing systems was developed – cuneiform. The country has “tens of thousands of sites from the Palaeolithic through Islamic eras”, explained Augusta McMahon, professor of Mesopotamian archaeology at the University of Cambridge.

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Coachella 2022: big stars head to the desert with safety concerns looming

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After a two-year pause, Harry Styles, Billie Eilish and The Weeknd will be headlining at a festival with no Covid-19 restrictions

Harry Styles, Billie Eilish and The Weeknd are headed to Coachella this weekend for the first edition of the mega-festival in three years.

The California-based festival, which takes place over two weekends, is expected to draw more than 125,000 people a day. In February, the festival announced that there would be no rules regarding mask-wearing, testing and vaccination proof “in accordance with local guidelines”.

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Derry to mark 25 years of Good Friday agreement with John Hume musical

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Playhouse to stage Beyond Belief in 2023 to ‘say a proper goodbye’ to late SDLP leader who helped persuade IRA to give up arms

A musical drama about the life of John Hume, one of the main forces behind the Good Friday agreement, will be staged next year to mark the 25th anniversary of the historic deal that helped end 30 years of violence in Northern Ireland.

Beyond Belief, written by Damian Gorman with music by Brian O’Doherty, is the second part of a “peace-building trilogy” at the Playhouse in Hume’s home town, Derry, after The White Handkerchief, a play about the events of Bloody Sunday, earlier this year.

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