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Good morning, I’m Tim Walker with today’s essential stories.
Continue reading...Category Archives: Culture
‘No one cared because we were black girls’: is time finally up for R Kelly?
Women have accused the singer of sexual abuse for decades. So why are they only being listened to now? Blame misogyny and racism – but also the potency of his music
“Yo, Pac!” You can almost feel the spittle as Gary Oldman launches into his soliloquy. It is 2012, and he is performing in a skit on Jimmy Kimmel’s US talkshow, reciting from R Kelly’s autobiography with the plummy majesty he later brought to the role of Churchill. “What up, baby?” he utters as the audience collapses in giggles. The joke is twofold: English people are so white! But also: R Kelly is so ridiculous!
For years, Robert Kelly, now aged 52, was seen, as Kimmel put it that night, as “great and inexplicable”. He was one of the US’s most brilliant entertainers, beloved for his uproariously carnal R&B tracks and stratospheric ballads. But there was something that set him apart from his musical peers: a knowing ridiculousness, which would prompt him to cast himself in a 33-part television opera centering around a well-endowed dwarf, describe himself as a “sexasaurus”, and make Same Girl, his duet with Usher, so hammy it would inevitably be spoofed by Flight of the Conchords in a song called We’re Both in Love With a Sexy Lady. This sense of self-mockery gained him a new, white hipster audience – Pitchfork booked him to play its festival in 2013 – and also helped insulate him from criticism. Until now.
Continue reading...‘We kept the trauma to ourselves’: Christophe Honoré on the idols lost to Aids
The French writer-director talks about his highly personal new show, a ‘dance of the dead’ that pays tribute to artistic heroes including Jacques Demy
Director Christophe Honoré still looks pained at the memory of the protests against gay marriage that rocked France seven years ago. The adoption of same-sex marriage in the country, a flagship policy that President François Hollande had campaigned on, was supposed to have been a smooth process. It became law in 2013, but only after a protracted backlash that saw hundreds of thousands take to the streets – more overall than the recent gilets jaunes (yellow vests) movement.
“I realised there was still a cloud of suspicion hanging over gay citizens,” says Honoré, best known internationally for comedies and musical films including 2007’s Love Songs. “I felt hurt, but also responsible, because in my work I’d never thought that gay visibility might still be important. I felt like I’d failed, like I’d deserted the fight the generation before me had led.”
Continue reading...Fighting Fyre with Fyre: the story of two warring festival documentaries
The failed music festival has inspired two new documentaries and a war off-screen over the morality of the film-makers involved
Scandal sells, or so it’s said, but few have captured the zeitgeist with quite the velocity as the rise and fall, in April 2017, of Fyre. The luxury music festival – a Bahamas-set Coachella with villas and supermodels, it promised – collapsed into financial fraud and memes of drunk twentysomethings scrambling for Fema tents and styrofoam tray meals, all direct to our screens.
Related: 'Closer to The Hunger Games than Coachella': why Fyre festival went up in flames
Continue reading...Norway’s favourite painting to go on display in London
Winter Night in the Mountains part of first Harald Sohlberg show outside Norway
Edvard Munch’s The Scream is a classic symbol of dread that has been hailed as the ultimate icon of contemporary politics – but a very different Norwegian painting is the country’s favourite.
Continue reading...Tanzanians with albinism embrace a life beyond stigma and superstition | Lucy Lamble
In a country where myths about albinism can have deadly consequences, an organisation set up to battle discrimination is having a profound impact
Paschal Merumba has suffered prejudice from the day he was born.
His mother refused to breastfeed her “cursed” baby, the second child in the family born with albinism; the first had already died of neglect. Merumba was thought to have contaminated the community. He was made to eat apart and sleep on the floor.
Continue reading...Oyinkan Braithwaite’s serial-killer thriller: would you help your murderer sister?
The Nigerian author’s darkly comic debut novel, My Sister, the Serial Killer, has become a literary sensation. She explains her struggle with the moral ambiguity of her writing
When Oyinkan Braithwaite sent an early draft of her debut novel to a few friends, one of them told her it was the best thing she had ever written. “I was offended,” Braithwaite says, her voice heavy with irony. “I knew how I had written it.” She might not have thought much of it at the time, but this quick draft ended up unlocking deals with publishers in the UK and the US, as well as an option from the film company Working Title.
My Sister, the Serial Killer arrived in a feverish month, from a writer in a hurry and never looking back as she poured out a novel in an attempt to break a block. She shakes her head at the memory: “I was a bit mad during that period.”
Continue reading...‘Lost Michelangelo’ goes missing from Belgian church
Police called after 16th-century painting disappears days before expert due to visit
It is a storyline worthy of a Hercule Poirot whodunnit. After confiding in just 20 trusted people of his suspicion that a painting in his church was a lost masterpiece, a priest in the small Flemish town of Zele, 45 miles north of Brussels, has had to call in the local police over its sudden disappearance.
Pastor Jan Van Raemdonck, 61, turned to the detectives after two women laying flowers in the nave of the Sint-Ludgerus church last Friday morning discovered that the 16th-century painting, known as the Holy Family, had gone missing from its usual position by the altar.
Continue reading...The Rock says Daily Star fabricated ‘snowflake’ criticism
Tabloid quoted actor Dwayne Johnson as saying millennials are ‘putting us backwards’
Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson has claimed the Daily Star fabricated a front-page story in which the film star appeared to criticise millennials as “snowflakes”.
The story, which appeared on Friday’s front page under the headline “The Rock Smacks Down Snowflakes” and was billed as an exclusive, was picked up by news outlets around the world.
Continue reading...Miranda wins multiple ovations for Hamilton opening in Puerto Rico
Creator and star says he will never forget reception of musical in parents’ homeland
Lin-Manuel Miranda’s return to the stage in his musical, Hamilton, was brought to a dramatic standstill on Friday night – not by protests in his parents’ homeland of Puerto Rico, as some had feared, but by a spontaneous eruption of cheers, whoops and applause.
The brightest spotlight shone on Miranda as, reprising the title role for the first time since Broadway in July 2016, he sang his introductory line: “Alexander Hamilton”. He got no further. The audience of nearly 2,000 rose to its feet and generated a wall of joyous noise for half a minute. The music stopped and Miranda remained motionless, keeping his eyes fixed straight ahead, then finally allowing them to dart about the stage.
Continue reading...Want to transform your life? Stop chasing perfection
Give up the rat race, accept reality and have the courage to be disliked – the latest self-help trend is not about self-reinvention but finding contentment in the life you have
By tradition, this is the season for personal reinvention, but these days it’s hard not to feel cynical about the idea of a triumphant liberation from the past. In the news, Brexit provides an hourly reminder that merely wishing to bring about a glorious fresh start is no guarantee that calamity won’t be the result. Meanwhile, other dark developments – from the erosion of American democracy and the resurgence of the European far right, all the way to climate change – fuel a sense of foreboding that isn’t exactly motivational when it comes to self-improvement: the creeping fear that you might be living in the end times is a poor basis for making a new beginning. In any case, the never-ending debate on nature versus nurture seems to be drifting toward a gloomy acceptance that there’s much about ourselves we’ll never change. “DNA isn’t all that matters,” writes the geneticist Robert Plomin, whose book Blueprint epitomised this mood last year, “but it matters more than everything else put together in terms of the stable psychological traits that make us who we are.”
Continue reading...Teen crashes car after driving blindfolded for Bird Box challenge
A 17-year-old in Utah was involved in a highway collision involving another car after reportedly taking part in the social media challenge based on the Netflix horror hit
A 17-year-old has caused a highway collision after driving blindfolded as part of the Bird Box challenge.
Related: Flying high: how Bird Box became Netflix's biggest hit to date
Continue reading...Bruce Davidson photographs donated to Telfair Museums – in pictures
An anonymous donor has given hundreds of photographs by the Magnum photographer Bruce Davidson to the Telfair Museums in Savannah, Georgia. The collection spans his career from 1956 to 2008, and includes images from his most famous works including Brooklyn Gang and Circus.
Continue reading...Taiwan’s Guidebook of Marine Debris – in pictures
The environmental education association Re-Think has launched The Guidebook of Marine Debris to highlight the 101 most commonly found plastic items washed up on Taiwan’s beaches. From Hello Kitty toys to cigarette lighters from thousands of kilometres away on the Midway Islands, Re-Think photographed the items in a bid to educate young people on the extent of the problem. The project took a year to complete with the help of beach clean-up volunteers around Taiwan and the Society of Wilderness.
The oldest piece of waste was a military food pack found in Kinmen dated 1988. It still carried the slogan: “Unite against the Communists and promote love for our compatriots.”
Continue reading...Family files lawsuit after being called ‘ugly’ in Christmas movie
Setiam and Katherine Allah are suing Lifetime after their photo was used without permission in TV movie Christmas Harmony
US cable channel Lifetime is being sued by a couple after they were called “ugly” in the festive TV movie Christmas Harmony.
Setiam and Katherine Allah sent out 50 family portraits to friends and family, one of which found its way to the set of the film, which premiered in November 2018. In the offending scene, lead character Harmony attaches the picture to a wall but is told by her love interest to remove it. She protests and he responds: “They’re ugly.”
Continue reading...Street art: the mosaic maker who turns potholes into pictures
Jim Bachor beautifies the world’s streets with colourful designs ranging from chickens to Aretha Franklin
Jim Bachor makes street art – quite literally.
For the last few years the 52-year-old has been making art out of the blight on our roads.
Continue reading...Fresh abuse investigations launched after R Kelly documentary
Prosecutors in Chicago and Atlanta appeal for new information after allegations of abuse are made in documentary about R&B star, who has long denied wrongdoing
Fresh investigations have been launched into allegations of sexual and physical abuse against R Kelly by prosecutors in Chicago and Atlanta, after the airing of Surviving R Kelly, a documentary that contained claims of abuse by the R&B singer.
Chicago prosecutor Kimberly Foxx urged any potential victims of Kelly to come forward, saying: “There’s nothing that can be done to investigate these allegations without the cooperation of both victims and witnesses. We cannot seek justice without you.” Atlanta lawyer Gerald Griggs, representing a couple who claim Kelly is holding their daughter against her will, has said he was approached by the district attorney’s office regarding potential abuse by Kelly.
Continue reading...Concrete city: the beauty of Los Angeles’ most popular material – in pictures
LA is a city of concrete. From Frank Lloyd Wright’s modernist mansions to Rudolph Schindler’s tilted houses, architects working there have embraced the material. A new map by Blue Crow Media shows some lesser-known structures are just as striking
Continue reading...Bafta nominations 2019: The Favourite is queen but Steve McQueen snubbed
Offbeat period drama starring Olivia Colman scores 12 nods, while Bohemian Rhapsody, Roma, A Star is Born and First Man all trail with seven
Yorgos Lanthimos’s raucous period romp about a high-stakes love triangle in the court of Queen Anne continues its ascension to this season’s awards favourite with 12 nominations at this year’s British Academy film awards.
The film, which swept the board at the British independent film awards in December, with a record 10 wins, is a contender in all the major categories other than best actor.
Continue reading...After centuries of being written about, Indigenous people are staking claim to their own stories
After centuries of being written about, Indigenous Australians are reclaiming their own stories
Ninety-six-year-old Wes Marne has been telling stories, he says, “since Moses played fullback for Jerusalem”.
But the Aboriginal elder worries about the future of storytelling.
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