The rapper 21 Savage was arrested in Atlanta early on Sunday morning by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice).
Related: 'I'm the gay Tupac': Jussie Smollett plays first concert since alleged attack
Continue reading...From Bond girl to Gone Girl, Rosamund Pike’s versatility has seen her star in some massive blockbusters. Here, she talks about Syria, sleeping under the stars, and the perils of social media…
Rosamund Pike has an intoxicating effect on me. She is so mesmerisingly self-possessed, speaking gently, thoughtfully, in her own time, entirely unafraid of the silences, that it is only after I’ve replayed the interview tape at home and transcribed her soft voice that I realise how wildly luvvieish her claims are. It’s almost delicious. For example, the star of Gone Girl and the new film A Private War says that when, as a child, she sat watching her opera singer parents in their rehearsal room: “All I was really looking at was, do I believe it, do I not believe it? Whether I believed the performance, whether I believed that this was something that was real and human and true. I think all I’ve ever been interested in is truth.” Which she immediately follows with the claim that hers was not a highbrow family, thereby suggesting the existence of a whole raft of brows higher than a childhood spent searching for la verité in your mum and dad’s arias.
We have met up because she plays the war reporter Marie Colvin in A Private War, a film whose American release has gained an average score of 89% on rottentomatoes.com (ie very good reviews) and which is about to open in British cinemas. It is a breathtaking, stop-you-in-your-tracks movie with a lot of the action set during the current Syrian war and it is directed by the documentarist Matthew Heineman who blurs the lines between reportage and feature film.
Continue reading...At Hay Cartagena festival author questions role of social media in policing personal development
The writer Zadie Smith laid into identity politics in a headline session at the 14th Hay Cartagena festival, insisting that novelists had not only a right, but a duty to be free.
Asked how she felt about cultural appropriation, she told an audience of nearly 2,000 at the festival in Colombia on Friday: “If someone says to me: ‘A black girl would never say that,’ I’m saying: ‘How can you possibly know?’ The problem with that argument is it assumes the possibility of total knowledge of humans. The only thing that identifies people in their entirety is their name: I’m a Zadie.”
Continue reading...Cardi B turned down an offer to perform at the Super Bowl, she said, in order to “stand behind” the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who “stood up” for minorities by kneeling down during playings of the pre-game anthem.
Related: Super Bowl half-time show won’t reflect Atlanta’s music industry
Continue reading...Louvre blockbuster marking 500 years since artist’s death may end up a casualty
He was a Renaissance master – painter, scientist, engineer and inventor – who was hailed as one of the greatest artists who ever lived.
But as Europe stages a year-long frenzy of events to mark 500 years since Leonardo da Vinci’s death, Italy and France are engaged in a diplomatic tussle over him that threatens a blockbuster exhibition at the Louvre in Paris.
Continue reading...Brooklyn star with huge social media following says he helped others try to kill a rival in the gang
The Brooklyn rapper Tekashi 6ix9ine is cooperating with federal prosecutors after pleading guilty to nine crimes and saying he joined a violent New York City gang and helped others try to kill a rival gang member.
The plea was entered last week by the 22-year-old rapper, whose legal name is Daniel Hernandez. Information about it was unsealed Friday in Manhattan federal court.
Continue reading...Exclusive: The Catcher in the Rye author’s son tells the Guardian estate will publish ‘all of what he wrote’ over next decade
JD Salinger’s son has confirmed for the first time that the late author of The Catcher in the Rye wrote a significant amount of work that has never been seen, and that he and his father’s widow are “going as fast as we freaking can” to get it ready for publication.
Salinger died in 2010, leaving behind a small but perfectly formed body of published work that has not been added to since 1965’s New Yorker story, Hapworth 16, 1924. Rumours have circulated for years that the creator of one of the 20th century’s most enduring characters, Holden Caulfield, continued to write over the ensuing decades he spent in the New Hampshire village of Cornish, far from public view.
Continue reading...Singer was hoping for a Japanese translation of the title of her hit 7 Rings. Instead she ended up with a tattoo which means ‘small charcoal grill’
Too bad pop star Ariana Grande is vegan – she just tattooed an accidental homage to a Japanese barbeque grill on her palm.
The US singer’s attempt to ink an ode to her hit single 7 Rings backfired Wednesday after social media quickly chimed in to tell her the characters actually translated to “shichirin”: a small charcoal grill.
Continue reading...Temple Quarter’s rich past includes housing squatters, Royal Mail, a factory and cattle market
Demolition work is under way at Bristol’s most famous eyesore, bringing an end to a sprawling, derelict building that became a playground for squatters, illegal ravers and graffiti artists.
The former Royal Mail sorting office, which was once reportedly likened by the former prime minister David Cameron to the “entrance to a war zone”, is to be brought down to make way for a new university campus.
Continue reading...Actor says $3.1m lawsuit filed in Utah alleging she injured another skier in a 2016 crash is ‘without merit’
Actor Gwyneth Paltrow has been accused in a lawsuit of breaking a man’s ribs and leaving him with a concussion when she smashed into him while skiing at a Utah ski resort in 2016.
Terry Sanderson, 72, claimed during a news conference in Salt Lake City that he heard a “hysterical scream” and was then struck between his shoulder blades on a beginner run at Deer Valley Resort on 26 February 2016. He remembers being thrown forward and losing control of his body before losing consciousness. An acquaintance, Craig Ramon, who witnessed the event, claimed he saw Paltrow hit him squarely in the back.
Continue reading...A museum in New York claims to be the only collection focusing on the KGB’s espionage operations in the world. The newly opened exhibition hall, housed in a former warehouse on 14th Street, is home to 3,500 original period objects, which the designer of the museum, Julius Urbaitis, has gathered after 30 years of research around the world
Continue reading...Subpoenas for financial information likely include Jenner and firms representing 25 models who starred in promotional video
Supermodels including Kendall Jenner, Bella Hadid, Elsa Hosk and Emily Ratajkowski, are potentially steps away from facing demands to return sizeable payments they received for helping to promote the ill-fated Fyre Festival.
On Monday, a New York bankruptcy judge signed off on subpoenas submitted by the trustee overseeing the bankruptcy of the Bahamas music festival, which collapsed in chaos and discord before it had even got under way last April, requesting “information regarding the [Fyre Media’s] financial affairs from third parties”.
Continue reading...The next 15 megacities #11: As Hyderabad heads towards megacity status, its film industry is going from strength to strength. Its secret? Cutting-edge VFX and filming in multiple languages
It is rush hour on Monday morning in Hyderabad, but the city’s usual deafening soundtrack of revving engines and blaring horns is absent. The only noise comes from a woman gently sweeping the veranda of one of the large, pastel-coloured mansions nearby. The silence is even more disconcerting when you see the airport near the end of the street, and, just beyond that, a railway station. New York’s Statue of Liberty is a short walk away, as is the splendour of the ancient city of Mahishmati. In fact, Mahishmati is the first place here where I encounter any real noise – the blue special effects screens around the fibreglass throne area are rather flimsy, and a buzz from power tools carries from the adjoining parking lot, where workers are building a pirate ship.
We are in Ramoji Film City, the largest film studio in the world and the beating heart of Tollywood, India’s Telugu-language film industry. And although Ramoji is technically part of Hyderabad, in reality – with its (real) hotels, workshops, soundstages, gardens, post office, banks and restaurants – it is a metropolis in and of itself.
Continue reading...Ofcom says ex-MP breached impartiality guidelines on radio show when casting doubt on Russian role
George Galloway breached broadcasting impartiality rules when he used his radio show to cast doubt on Russian involvement in the poisoning of Yulia and Sergei Skripal in Salisbury last year, according to media regulator Ofcom.
The former MP used his weekly programme on TalkRadio to repeatedly criticise claims of Russian involvement in the incident. He mocked those who agreed with the UK government that the Kremlin was behind the novichok nerve agent attack on the former Russian security agent and his daughter.
Continue reading...Wartime aircraft will fly in 6 June event commemorating day that turned tide of war
The skies over the UK and Normandy will be filled with wartime Dakota aircraft as hundreds of parachutists take part in a mass airdrop to mark the 75th anniversary of the D-day landings in June.
The plans, unveiled by Imperial War Museums (IWM), are part of a programme on an “unprecedented scale” for the commemoration of the greatest seaborne invasion in history, to liberate Europe from Nazi occupation, on 6 June 1944.
Continue reading...Screen Actors Guild awards are generally considered one of the most reliable bellwethers of the Academy Awards
Black Panther has won the top film award in at the 25th Screen Actors Guild Awards in Los Angeles on Sunday, putting it in strong contention for an Oscars win this February.
In a nomination pool that largely eschewed heavyweight Oscar contenders, Black Panther beat A Star is Born, Bohemian Rhapsody, Crazy Rich Asians and BlacKkKlansman to receive the award for outstanding performance by a cast in a motion picture. It also took out the award for best stunt ensemble, announced prior to the awards telecast, which was hosted by Megan Mullally in Los Angeles on Sunday.
Continue reading...The author’s young adult novel became a publishing sensation and an acclaimed film. Here, she answers questions from readers and famous fans on activism, social media and coping with rejection
In book publishing, it seems, they still do fairytales. Really not very long ago, Angie Thomas was a secretary to a bishop at a megachurch in Jackson, Mississippi. At nights – and during quiet periods in the day, she furtively admits – she worked on a young adult novel inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement. She had previously written a children’s book, but hadn’t had any interest from agents. “Yeah, I had more than 150 rejections for that one,” says Thomas matter-of-factly.Thomas’s break came when she cold-contacted a literary agent who was doing a Twitter Q&A. The story speeds up now: the novel became The Hate U Give (THUG), a YA sensation about a 16-year-old girl called Starr who witnesses her friend Khalil being shot by the police and turns to activism. THUG, published in early 2017, went straight into the bestseller chart in the US and stayed there for a year. It was a hit here too, and named overall winner of the 2018 Waterstones children’s book prize. It has now sold more than 2m copies globally. Last year, a film adaptation was released, which has been a critical and commercial success.
“Oh, it’s definitely surreal,” says the 31-year-old Thomas, on the phone from Jackson. “I still can’t believe it. It does feel like a dream I’m going to wake up from.” Her agent now is one of the 150-plus who turned down her first book. “So I hold that over his head,” she says, and giggles.
Continue reading...Artwork thought to be homage to the 90 people who died in an Islamist attack on Paris venue
A mural by British street artist Banksy on a fire-exit door at Paris’ Bataclan theatre, where Islamist militants killed 90 people three years ago, has been stolen, the venue has said.
The work, one of a series of murals painted last June in the French capital and attributed to Banksy, showed a veiled female figure in a mournful pose.
Continue reading...French composer won three Academy Awards, including for The Windmills of Your Mind
The French composer Michel Legrand, who won three Oscars during a career spanning more than half a century, has died aged 86, his spokesman said.
Related: Soundtrack legend Michel Legrand: 'I've been an adventurer!'
Continue reading...Her short story was read by millions online – then things got weird. The writer talks about viral fame, power games and her new collection of twisted tales
Kristen Roupenian’s short story Cat Person was published by the New Yorker in December 2017 and, to the author’s best recollection, it went up online on a Monday. The 37-year-old was living in Ann Arbor, Michigan, while completing a fellowship in writing, and for three or four days after the story came out, enjoyed the world’s customary reaction to most fiction, and all short stories – complete indifference – while basking in the achievement of it having been published at all. “I was thinking, ‘Wow: that was the greatest thing to ever happen, and now it’s over.’” She smiles. “Then it was Friday.”
By the standards of true global celebrity, there is only so far a piece of fiction can go; as David Foster Wallace used to say, the most famous writer in the world is about as famous as a local TV weatherman. Still, what happened with Cat Person remains singular to the extent that, for what seemed like the first time in publishing history, it slammed together two alien worlds, social media and serious fiction, in a way that stretched the boundaries of literary fame.
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