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...Alfonso Cuarón’s 70s set drama and the period comedy starring Olivia Colman head the list of nominees, with A Star Is Born and Vice on 8 each
Roma and The Favourite will go head to head at the Oscars after they received 10 Academy Award nominations each.
Roma, Alfonso Cuarón’s memoir of childhood in 1970s Mexico City, topped many critics’ lists of 2018 (including the Guardian’s) and has scored 10 nominations, including best film and best director for Cuarón. Roma’s success demonstrates the Oscars’ acceptance of streaming giant Netflix, which it had had hitherto treated with suspicion. Netflix has launched an expensive awards campaign which appears to be have paid off.
Continue reading...Twenty-nine-year-old in custody with two others after woman files complaint
The American singer Chris Brown and two other people were held in custody in Paris after a woman filed a rape complaint.
Brown was detained on Monday on potential charges of aggravated rape and drug infractions, a French judicial official said. Investigators have two days to decide whether to let him go or file preliminary charges.
Continue reading...Workers producing tops sold to raise money for Comic Relief receive far below a living wage
Spice Girls T-shirts sold to raise money for Comic Relief’s “gender justice” campaign were made at a factory in Bangladesh where women earn the equivalent of 35p an hour during shifts in which they claim to be verbally abused and harassed, a Guardian investigation has found.
The charity tops, bearing the message “#IWannaBeASpiceGirl”, were produced by mostly female machinists who said they were forced to work up to 16 hours a day and called “daughters of prostitutes” by managers for not hitting targets.
Continue reading...Organisers will have to apply for a specific liquor licence, similar to those for pubs and clubs, in bid to keep young people safe
Music festivals will have to be licensed in New South Wales under new regulations following a string of tragedies.
Five people have now died after attending music festivals, including 23-year-old Joseph Pham and 21-year-old Diana Nguyen, who both died of suspected drug overdoses after attending the Defqon.1 festival in September.
Continue reading...How the president’s two years in power have changed key US policies ... North Korean envoy to meet Pompeo ... Democrat takes charge of Flint water crisis investigation
Good morning, I’m Tim Walker with today’s essential stories.
Continue reading...Band manager criticised for silence after Maho Yamaguchi, a singer with NGT48, said she was attacked at her home
Japan’s harsh treatment of its female celebrities has again come under scrutiny following outcry over the music industry’s handling of an alleged assault on a member of a popular girl band.
Social media users and TV commentators have joined the barrage of criticism targeting AKS, a music management agency, after Maho Yamaguchi, a singer with NGT48, went public this month with allegations she had been assaulted by two obsessive fans at the end of last year.
Continue reading...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...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...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...Rapper has become embroiled in the fallout over the CEO’s controversial tweet about taking Tesla private
It’s back on.
The fierce and very public feud between Elon Musk and the rapper Azealia Banks was reignited on Friday after the tech billionaire’s lawyers attacked the rappers’ credibility in a filing in a shareholder lawsuit.
Continue reading...Representatives of the band are suing the brand over a logo in its Redux Grunge collection
Nirvana are suing designer Marc Jacobs for copyright infringement. The brand’s recent Redux Grunge collection features several items that resemble the Seattle grunge band’s black-and-yellow iconography, Forbes reports.
Representatives for the group, which split in 1994 following the death of frontman Kurt Cobain, claim that Marc Jacobs’ unauthorised use of “Nirvana’s copyrighted image on and to promote its products is intentional”. The suit claims that the use of Nirvana’s iconography, which the group has used since 1992, is to “make the ‘Grunge’ association with the collection more authentic”.
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