Month: November 2019

His TV neighborhood, was, of course, a realm of make believe — a child’s-eye view of community summoned into being by an oddly understanding adult, cobbled together from a patchwork of stage sets, model houses and pure, unsullied love.Visiting it each day, with Mister Rogers as guide, you’d learn certain lessons: Believe you’re special. Regulate your emotions. Have a sense of yourself. Be kind.And one more. It was always there, always implied: Respect and understand the people and places around you so you can become a contributing, productive member of YOUR neighborhood.Fred Rogers’ ministry of neighboring is global now, and the Tom Hanks movie premiering this week only amplifies his ideals. But at home, in Pittsburgh, Mister Rogers moved through real neighborhoods — the landscape of his life, the places he visited to show children what daily life meant.Once, during one of his programs (he disliked calling it a “show”), he said this: “That’s what loving people is all about — making a safe place to live and move and play and sing.”In western Pennsylvania, where his actual neighbors were, the ripples he left behind reveal a strong sense of faith — not merely the religious faith that shaped his ideals but a deep, nonsectarian commitment to the impressive, imperfect, always striving patch of the world where he chose to make both his program and his home.You believed.If you were a Pittsburgh kid watching him in his 1970s and 1980s heyday, you believed that his neighborhood was in our midst, and that he was in there somewhere. By extension, you could believe in the neighborhoods around you just a little bit more.And in words that came from Mister Rogers, from parents, from teachers, from Pittsburgh’s beloved mayor Richard Caliguiri, you could believe this, too: that in a region beleaguered by industrial transition, a hopeful path might be found in the patchwork neighborhoods that dotted western Pennsylvania’s hillsides. Ones that, for so many here, felt like those tiny houses at the beginning of his program.“To the world at large, he plays the role of a philosopher,” says Bill Peduto, Pittsburgh’s current mayor and a native of this area, who was 3 when “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” first aired. “But to Pittsburgh, he was a neighbor.”Why? Partially because Mister Rogers — calling him “Rogers” on second reference seems wrong — deliberately worked to eradicate the magical membrane between television and reality. That was designed to draw in his audience, wherever it was. But for this area’s children, it had the dizzying effect of amplifying the belief in his TV world.You believed because of the Hotel Saxonburg, the restaurant north of the city where he once popped in to order a cheese sandwich and show viewers how the kitchen worked. You believed because of Wagner’s Market, where they handed him a pricing gun and let him price a few jars — and because he built a toy version of the grocery for his fictional neighborhood and matched up the exterior shots.You believed because of visits to the Heinz plant on the North Side to see soup made, to the trolley museum to learn about mass transit, to Jewart’s Gymnastics to watch a workout, to Pittsburgh optometrist Bernard “Pepper” Mallinger for an eye exam.“Fred Rogers recognized the wisdom in everyone: the person next to you on the bus. The baker. The restaurant owner. The recognition that there’s something better about the people next to you,” says Gregg Behr, who runs the Grable Foundation, a Pittsburgh philanthropy aimed at improving children’s lives. He is working on a book about what Mister Rogers can teach kids today.And you believed because when the little boy from somewhere else asked him, “Mister Rogers, where do you live?” the answer was, thrillingly: “I live in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.”It was real. He was real — a non-practicing Presbyterian minister from Latrobe, 40 miles east, a town that also gave the world Arnold Palmer and Rolling Rock beer. A guy people saw around town with his wife, Joanne. Who sat in the same pew, four rows from the back, most Sundays at Sixth Presbyterian in the heart of Squirrel Hill, his off-camera neighborhood. Who swam in the Pittsburgh Athletic Association pool.Who always found the time to talk to the children who couldn’t square the fact that the reassuring man from inside the TV set was suddenly standing right in front of them.Says Joanne Rogers, now 91: “He got his ideas about community here.”In this geography of tiny acolytes and their adults, he was not yet the metal statue that now graces the bank of the Ohio River, keeping watch upon the skyline. He was simply someone who found value not only in who they were but in their home itself, a place of possibility even when reality sometimes said otherwise.“He used Pittsburgh to show the world how the world worked,” says Jeff Suzik, director of the Falk Laboratory School, a progressive school in the city’s Oakland section that one of Mister Rogers’ sons attended — and that teaches to many of his ideals.“This is a city that makes things,” Suzik says. “Children learn better by doing and making. He knew that. He understood that instinctively. And that mattered here.”The zippered red cardigans came out in force last week. They showed up on tables at WQED-TV, his old studio, to be donned by visitors for “World Kindness Day.” As the film’s premiere approached, they were zipped onto newborns at UPMC Magee-Women’s Hospital as Joanne Rogers grinned.Across Pittsburgh, Mister Rogers reverberates in sometimes un-Rogerslike ways. But as obvious as some of them are — cardigan as quasi-religious icon — the true ripples of his work reveal themselves more quietly, percolating beneath the collective consciousness.Consider Judy Tredway, a fifth-grade teacher in Keystone Oaks, a school district south of the city. After the shootings last year at Tree of Life synagogue, in the neighborhood where Mister Rogers had lived, she attended a vigil in part because “that would be something he would have encouraged.” Sometimes, she invokes his tenets in class.“We were always seen as a joke — the dirty mills,’” says Tredway, a Pittsburgh native. “So it was,Well, we can’t be just that. Look what we have. How bad could Pittsburgh be if we’re bringing the world Fred Rogers?’”“Pittsburghers of a particular generation feel a responsibility,” she says. “He was one of us, and we have to carry out our end of the bargain.”“Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” unfolded at an opportune time not only in the history of modern child development, where his ideas were firmly grounded, but the history of western Pennsylvania and modern Protestantism as well.In the 1970s and 1980s, the region was pivoting away from a manufacturing-focused economy as the steel industry cracked and the region started hemorrhaging jobs. The service and technology resurgence that now typifies Pittsburgh had yet to take hold.From the middle of that, Mister Rogers, in his quiet way, elevated the people who made things — and showed children the inner workings of manufacturing in simple, never simplistic ways. It was perfect for any young audience, but particularly apt around here at that moment.What’s more, it was grounded in what Paula Kane, a professor of religious studies at the University of Pittsburgh, calls “a mid-20th-century Protestant liberalism that made itself accessible — essentially using New Testament principles to give children an ethos to live by.”“Fred was mitigating some bad circumstances for the region — the sense people had that they weren’t in control of their lives,” Kane says. “Fred was promoting a noncompetitive ethos. I do think, in steel-era Pittsburgh, that the results of a competitive ethos were pretty evident.”Pittsburghers often joke about crossing rivers — or the lack thereof. Even with all the bridges, it’s said, people from the North Hills stay out of the South Hills and vice versa. And some of the hill-and-valley neighborhoods are so isolated that it’s easy to miss them unless you’re trying to get there.Behind the joke, though, some say that despite Pittsburgh’s neighborliness and its commitment to being one of America’s “most livable cities,” a divide remains between sections of the community, particularly when it comes to race.“Mister Rogers had all these honest and hard conversations. Pittsburgh doesn’t have honest and hard conversations,” says Tereneh Idia, a fashion designer and activist who grew up in Pittsburgh and appeared on his program more than once as a child.She cites refrains echoed by others: schools re-segregating, population drifting, gentrification, cuts in the public transportation that once drew people — and neighborhoods — together.“We have created a city that works for some people and not others,” Idia says. “People think we are living his legacy. And that’s what the problem is.”But, she allows: “If he created it here, he must have seen it here.”Peduto, the mayor, has generated impassioned debate with more progressive stands that align with Mister Rogers-style thinking. Last week, the mayor named a new urban-redevelopment czar. Part of his brief: to oversee ground-up improvement of 17,000 vacant or blighted Pittsburgh properties. Not coincidentally, the term Peduto chose was “rebuilding neighborhoods.”And Behr, head of the children-focused philanthropy, sees a way forward using something Mister Rogers long advocated: honest conversation without rancor.“We have to confront ourselves,” he says. “There has to be an honesty about where we live.”This is, perhaps, where Mister Rogers was at his most valuable — to the world, sure, but more particularly to his own community. His “honesty about where we live,” tailored to children, was a gentle honesty, direct but not confrontational.Could he have had a vocabulary about community that we still haven’t mastered? In the most polarized moment of our era, where sincerity is often scorned or badly imitated, could there still be something to learn from a television personality now gone 16 years?Fred Rogers, a minister whose sermons weren’t religious, offered children what was in essence a secular version of his faith: the notion that our community was our hallowed ground, and that, as we grew, it would be up to us to turn to our neighbors now and then and say, “Peace be with you.”Celebrity always sat a bit uneasily upon his head. Now, perhaps it is instructive to point out that he was not merely a cardigan. Or a statue, impressive as it may be. Or even a Tom Hanks movie.For Pittsburgh, Mister Rogers’ work and life and faith offered a message: If this was his chosen community — his safe place to live and move and play and sing — then there was always the possibility for something good here. And perhaps, with honest conversations, it could be that for everyone.The path contains obstacles and obstructions and trepidations. There is anger, sometimes. It’s a bit like being a child, casting about to do the right thing. And occasionally we might need some quiet time along the way.But Fred Rogers, Pittsburgher, had a way forward there, too, a message from yesterday for his neighborhood today. “If it’s mentionable,” he’d say, “it’s manageable.”
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A sculptor known for trying to redress history through her art is creating the first statue of real-life women for New York’s Central Park, where the only females so honored until now have been fictional characters.Meredith Bergmann’s vision for the sculpture, chosen from 91 submissions, features three women’s rights pioneers — Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Sojourner Truth. While honoring their specific efforts on behalf of women’s suffrage, women’s civil rights and the abolition of slavery, Bergmann hopes her latest work will also make a statement about the need to recognize the contributions ofWax statues at at the Occoquan Workhouse Museum in Lorton, Virginia, show the 1917 force-feeding of suffragist Lucy Burns, an American women’s rights advocate who was on hunger strike. (Photo by Diaa Bekheet).“This monument has a very focused message,” she said in an interview at her studio in Ridgefield, Connecticut. “The fact of the monument itself, that it exists at all, that it will be where it is, is the message.”Of the 23 statues of historical figures in the 840-acre, 166-year-old public park, none honors actual women. There are statues of three female fictional characters: Alice in Wonderland, Mother Goose and William Shakespeare’s Juliet, who appears with Romeo.There had been a moratorium on erecting any new statues in Central Park. But in 2014, a volunteer, nonprofit group called Monumental Women, made up of women’s rights advocates, historians and community leaders, set out to break what they’ve called the “bronze ceiling” and develop a statue depicting real women. With the help of the Girl Scouts, private foundations and others, they raised $1.5 million in private funding for the 14-foot-tall monument, to be located on the park’s famed Literary Walk. It’s scheduled to be unveiled on Aug. 26, 2020, marking the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which enshrined the right for women to vote.“It’s fitting that the first statue of real women in Central Park depicts three New York women who dedicated their lives to fighting for women’s rights,” said Pam Elam, president of Monumental Women, in a written statement last month after the project received approval from a city commission. “This statue conveys the power of women working together to bring about revolutionary change in our society. It invites people to reflect not just on these women and their work for equality and justice, but on all the monumental women who came before us.”Women’s Suffrage MovementTeaser DescriptionThe Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery looks back at the women’s suffrage movement – one of the longest reform movements in U.S. history – with an exhibition called, “Votes for Women: A Portrait of Persistence.”  Curator Kate Clarke Lemay shows us some of the art and artifacts from that era and how creating visual displays for their cause created a different understanding about women’s freedom and voting rights.  
Reporter:  Julie Taboh, Camera: Adam Greenbaum; Adapted by:  Martin SecrestMidway into the massive and multi-faceted project, Bergmann and her assistants have nearly finished sculpting from foam and clay an imagined scene of the three women having a conversation at a table. Truth is speaking, Anthony is organizing and Stanton is writing, which Bergman describes as the three essential elements of activism.The current design is the result of a long process that involved various changes, including the late addition of Sojourner Truth, an African-American abolitionist and women’s rights activist who was born into slavery but escaped to freedom in 1826. It originally included Anthony, a writer, lecturer and abolitionist who fought for the rights of women to vote and own property; Stanton, another leading figure in the women’s voting rights movement, and an abolitionist and author; and a scroll with a list of 17 other women involved in the women’s movement from 1848 to 1920.New Zealand Celebrates Women’s Suffrage Anniversary

        New Zealand has marked the 125th anniversary of a historic move to give women the vote. It was the first country in the world to enact suffrage for women.

Jacinda Ardern, New Zealand’s third female prime minister said the nation’s 19th century fight for economic independence and equal rights was still continuing.

The gender pay gap in the South Pacific nation is, on average, 10 percent, although for working mothers it is about 17 percent — a pay difference known as the “motherhood penalty.” Women…
Once the sculpting work is done, likely in the coming weeks, Bergmann said molds will be taken and they will eventually be cast in bronze at a foundry in New York. Detailed work will need to be performed, such as making sure the women’s heads are at the right tilt and the ends of the granite base are curved perfectly.It has become a labor of love for Bergmann, albeit a challenging one.“I haven’t had a project on this scale, with this ferocious of a deadline. And it is, it is nerve-wracking. And I’m working harder than I’ve ever worked,” said Bergmann. “All summer, all fall, this is what I’m doing. And it’s thrilling.”
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Susan Choi’s novel “Trust Exercise,” in which a high school romance is spun out into a web of memories and perspectives, has won the National Book Award for fiction.Sarah M. Broom’s family memoir “The Yellow House” won in nonfiction and Martin W. Sandler’s “1919 The Year That Changed America” for young people’s literature. The winner for best translated book was Laszlo Krasznahorkai’s “Baron Wenckheim’s Homecoming,” translated from Hungarian by Ottilie Mulzet. In poetry, the winner was Arthur Sze’s “Sight Lines.”The 70th annual National Book Awards were presented Wednesday night at a dinner benefit gala in downtown Manhattan, with winners each receiving $10,000. Finalists were chosen by panels of authors, critics, booksellers and others in the literary community. Publishers submitted more than 1,700 books for consideration.Choi expressed gratitude not just for the award, but for the writing life, saying that writing and teaching showed her that the word was “its own reward.” Her other books include the Pulitzer Prize finalist “American Woman” and the PEN/Faulkner finalist “A Person of Interest.”Other speakers offered emotional tributes to loved ones and cited the written word as a source of healing, action and community in an unsettling world. Kraszahorkai praised his translator, Muzlet, and marveled how the change from one language to another could make one “feel at home in the United States of America.”Broom singled out her mother for awe and gratitude, remembering how she raised 12 children and absorbed words everywhere from the grocery store to package labels, “always wolfing down words. Insatiable.”The prolific Sandler is an Emmy-winning television writer who has written dozens of books, and vows to write 60 more. Sze called poetry an “essential language,” helping us all to “slow down, see clearly, feel deeply” and understand what “truly matters.”Honorary awards were given to Oren Teicher, longtime head of the American Booksellers Association, and Edmund White, the pioneering gay writer. Each celebrated the literary life in their own fashion.Teicher, introduced warmly by author-bookseller Ann Patchett, spoke of his ever-renewing joy in helping bookstores commit a sacred, timeless “act of magic”: placing the “right book in a reader’s hands.” Teicher will soon step down after a decade as CEO of the independent sellers trade group and quoted W.B. Yeats: “Think where man’s glory most begins and ends; and say my glory was I had such friends.”White was introduced, mischievously, by the filmmaker-author John Waters, who celebrated his longtime friend with dirty jokes, entendres that mean one thing only and high praise for a man who “pissed off” both Gore Vidal and Susan Sontag.White’s medal is for “Distinguished Contribution to American Letters,” but he was here to dish, joking that a writer’s typical 8-hour “work” day was maybe a half hour of actual writing and otherwise a well-met schedule of gossip, “too many emails,” cooking, pornography and drinking.“So many writers are alcoholic because they can get away with it,” he said.
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The Grammys are screaming “Cuz I Love You” to Lizzo: The breakthrough singer-rapper scored a whopping eight nominations, including bids for the top four awards, making her the show’s top-nominated act.Lizzo picked up nominations for album of the year with her major-label debut, “Cuz I Love You”; song and record of the year with her anthemic No. 1 hit, “Truth Hurts”; and best new artist.Like Lizzo, other new artists dominated with Grammy nominations on Wednesday: Billie Eilish and Lil Nas X earned six nominations apiece.Eilish also scored nominations in the top four categories, making the 17-year-old the youngest artist in the history of the Grammys to achieve the feat. Lil Nas X, 20, is up for three of the top four awards, including album and record of the year for “Old Town Road,” featuring Billy Ray Cyrus.Lizzo’s “Cuz I Love You,” Eilish’s “When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?” and Lil Nas X’s “ – an 8-song EP – will compete for album of the year along with Ariana Grande’s “Thank U, Next,” Bon Iver’s “I,I,” Vampire Weekend’s “Father of the Bride,” H.E.R.’s “I Used to Know Her” and Lana Del Rey’s “Norman (Expletive) Rockwell!”Nominees for record of the year include songs that hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart this year, including Old Town Road,'' “Truth Hurts,” Eilish's “Bad Guy,” Grande's “7 Rings” and Post Malone and Swae Lee's “Sunflower.” H.E.R.'s “Hard Place,” Bon Iver's “Hey, Ma” and Khalid's “Talk,” which peaked at No. 3 on the Hot 100, round out the eight nominees.While Taylor Swift was shut out of album of the year withLover,” the album’s title track earned a nomination for song of the year, a songwriter’s award. It will compete with “Truth Hurts,” “Bad Guy,” “Hard Place,” Lady Gaga’s “Always Remember Us This Way’” from “A Star Is Born,” Lewis Capaldi’s” “Someone You Loved,” Lana Del Rey’s “Norman (Expletive) Rockwell” and Tanya Tucker’s “Bring My Flowers Now,” co-written by Brandi Carlile.Swift earned three nominations, while Beyonce, who was shut out of the top three categories, scored four. While her groundbreaking “Homecoming” documentary earned a nomination for best music film, its album version didn’t pick up any nominations. Instead her “The Lion King: The Gift” project, which features songs inspired by “The Lion King,” for which she voiced the character Nala is up for best pop vocal album, competing with projects from Ed Sheeran, Swift, Eilish and Grande. Beyonce’s “Spirit,” from The Lion King'' which is being pushed for Oscar consideration, is up for best pop solo performance along with Swift'sYou Need to Calm Down,” “Truth Hurts,” “Bad Guy” and “7 Rings.”Overall, female acts out-performed their male counterparts in the top four categories: Five of the eight album-of-the-year contenders are women, while seven of the eight song-of-the-year nominees are by women. Female musicians also rule in the best new artist category, though record of the year is evenly split.Grande, who won her first Grammy earlier this year, scored five nominations, as did H.E.R. and Finneas, Eilish’s older brother who co-wrote, co-produced and engineered her debut album. Finneas’ nominations include producer of the year (non-classical) and best engineered album (non-classical).Several acts picked up four nominations, including J. Cole, Gary Clark Jr., Lucky Daye, Thom Yorke, Bob Ludwig and Tanya Tucker, who in August released her first album of new songs in 17 years.British country-soul performer Yola also scored four bids, including best new artist, pitting her against Lizzo, Lil Nas X, Eilish, pop singer Maggie Rogers, New Orleans group Tank and the Bangas, the Austin-based duo Black Pumas and Spanish singer Rosalia, who won album of the year at last week’s Latin Grammys.Lizzo’s road to the Grammys has been a long one: The 31-year-old, who performed with Prince on his “Plectrumelectrum” album, grinded as an independent and touring artist for years before signing a major-label deal, releasing her first album in 2013. But this year marked her major breakthrough: Her song Truth Hurts'' topped the charts for seven weeks; she's wowed audiences with her live performances _ including her twerking while playing the flute. She's also graced several magazine covers, earning praise for promoting body positivity and denouncing fat shaming.But Lizzo has also had her fair share of critics: Some felt she shouldn't qualify for best new artist at the Grammys since she's been on the music scene for years. Others thought since “Truth Hurts” was originally released in 2017, it shouldn't qualify for the 2020 Grammys. The Recording Academy said “Truth Hurts” qualified because the song was never submitted for contention in the Grammys process and it appears on an album released during the eligibility period for the upcoming show.“Truth Hurts” was co-written by Tele, Jesse Saint John and Ricky Reed, who is nominated for producer of the year (non-classical). Mina Lioness, the British singer who Lizzo gave writing credit to after using some of her viral tweet in the hit song, didn't appear on the list of writers nominated for song of the year for “Truth Hurts.” Lizzo's label, Atlantic Records, told The Associated Press last week it was in the process of adding Lioness to the song's credits.Lizzo's other nominations include best urban contemporary album, best pop solo performance for “Truth Hurts,” best traditional R&B performance for “Jerome” and best R&B performance for “Exactly How I Am,” which features Gucci Mane and marks the rapper's first Grammy nomination.Another first-time nominee: former first lady Michelle Obama, who is nominated for best spoken word album forBecoming” (Barack Obama has won two Grammys in the same category).Nipsey Hussle, who died in March and was nominated for best rap album earlier this year, scored three nominations: His song “Racks In the Middle” is up for best rap performance and best rap song, while “Higher”, a collaboration with DJ Khaled and John Legend that was one of the last songs Hussle recorded, is nominated for best rap/sung performance.The Cranberries picked up a nomination for best rock album for their eighth and final album, “In the End,” which the surviving members of the Irish band created using unfinished vocals from singer Dolores O’Riordan, who died last year.The 2020 Grammys will hand out awards in its 84 categories live from the Staples Center in Los Angeles on January 26. Nominees were selected from more than 20,000 submissions, and the final round of voting runs from Dec. 9 until Jan. 3.
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Tom Hanks has never played a superhero. But when the actor recently donned a very simple cardigan sweater, and the slacks to go with it, he felt like one.“I felt like Batman. It felt like I was wearing the cape and the cowl of the Dark Knight detective,” Hanks says. “There’s only one person you can be when you put those things on, and that’s Fred Rogers.”Since it was first announced, Hanks’ casting as the beloved children’s television host in “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” has had the feeling of kismet. Here was an actor nearly synonymous with affability, with “niceness,” playing one of the friendliest faces to ever flicker across a TV screen. Hanks might as well have been answering a Bat Signal in the sky.But as inevitable as Hanks playing Mr. Rogers may have seemed, it never would have happened without Marielle Heller, the filmmaker of the literary forger drama “Can You Ever Forgive Me?” and the 70s coming of age tale “The Diary of a Teenage Girl.” The film's script, by Noah Harpster and Micah Fitzerman-Blue, had been floating around for years before Heller got attached. Hanks had already passed on it, more than once.“I didn't pass on you,” Hanks said in an interview alongside Heller. “I just passed on a thing.”It would probably please Mr. Rogers that the first big-screen fiction film about him was based, from the start, on a newfound friendship. Hanks and Heller met at a backyard birthday party for Hanks' son Colin. Hanks had just read a New York Times article about female filmmakers and mentioned it to Heller after learning she was a director.“And she said,I’m in it,”’ recalls Hanks. “And I said, Well, of course you are and I have to remove my shoe from my mouth.”Hanks, newly resolved to work more with female directors, promised to watch “Diary of a Teenage Girl.”“I thought,Sure, Tom Hanks. I’m sure you’ll run right out and watch my movie,”’ says Heller. “And you did!”Within days, Hanks called to set up a meeting, and that led to “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.” Sony Pictures releases it in theaters this weekend. Based loosely on an Esquire Magazine article by Tom Junod, the film’s protagonist is a New York journalist named Lloyd Vogel (Matthew Rhys) assigned to profile Rogers. Heller and Hanks view Rogers as the movie’s antagonist — the agent of change in Lloyd’s life, whose sincerity and caring disarm the cynical reporter.Actor Matthew Rhys attends a special screening of “A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood,” at the Henry R. Luce Auditorium, Nov. 17, 2019, in New York.Getting close to Rogers also altered Hanks and Heller. The production had the blessing of Joanne Rogers, Fred’s widow, and much of it was shot on location in Pittsburgh. Hanks wore Rogers’ old ties. He swam the same laps in a local pool. They collectively tried to live the kindness preached by Rogers, an ordained Presbyterian minister. The movie impresses the point that Rogers wasn’t a saint; he had to work at being good.“At one point early on, Tom said to me, I get the feeling none of us are going to be the same after making this movie,''' Heller says.That meant trying to slow down not just the tempo of the scenes but the entire workings of a movie set. Heller's son, 2-years-old when they started, was often on set, and occasionally in the director's chair. Heller shortened the day-to-day schedule so that everyone, including herself, could be home by their children's bedtime on most nights.“For me, as a mom of a little kid, that's the difference between being able to keep making movies or not being able to keep making movies,'' says Heller. “How do we think about our humanity while making movies? Would Fred Rogers have wanted us to make a movie about him where we all abandoned our kids in order to make the movie? I don't think so.”Both were relatively new disciples to Rogers. As a kid, the 40-year-old Marin County-raised Heller dismissed him as too schmaltzy. But now a parent, she found herself gravitating toward Mr. Rogers as a guide to explaining the world to her son. Hanks, 63, hadn't raised his four now-grown children watching “Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood,” so the dozens of hours he spent watching it to prepare for the role was eye-opening.“I almost feel silly talking about it,” says Hanks. “This movie has actually made me think a lot about myself as a man and a father. When I saw Mari, I said,Hey, thanks putting me in this movie, because you kind of changed my life, boss.”’For Hanks, the greatest lesson from playing Rogers has to do with listening. As an actor and a celebrity, it’s part of his job to be entertaining, to be glib. And he is extraordinarily good at it. Few people in person live up to their reputation more than Hanks does, who began the interview delighted at the idea of drinking from “a box of water.” Quietude doesn’t exactly come naturally, nor would most around Hanks want it to.“There is a thing that I do: W-A-I-T. It stands for Why Am I Talking?''' explains Hanks. “I wrote that down in a notebook that I keep to remind myself that listening, for me anyway, is a disciplinary art. I have to force myself to listen because I love the sound of my own voice and because I'm a movie star I've been infantilized by everybody I come across who says I'm just wonderful.Look at you! You can stand up so good and you can eat with a fork! What a special, special, special movie star you are!”’Slowing down took effort for Hanks, and for Rhys. At one point, they met to rehearse a lengthy scene at Rhys’ New York apartment. “I said, Are you as exhausted by this as I am?''' says Hanks. “He said,Tom, I’m confounded by how much silence we have to have in this movie.”’The movie called on Hanks to learn how to earnestly — not out of habit — ask questions like “How are you?” Heller would tell Hanks to thank Lloyd, “but this time mean it.” In her three richly textured films, Heller has shown an uncommon talent for coaxing three-dimensional performances out of her actors, including Melissa McCarthy and Bel Powley, that radiate humanity and humor while omitting sentimentality.“I’m sort of like the authenticity police,” says Heller. “I’m there to make sure what we’re capturing is true. So much of my job is to be the one on set going, Did I feel that? Did it feel true?'''In Hanks' Mr. Rogers, Heller wasn't interested in an impression. A wig and some eyebrows were OK, but that was it. And, of course, the cardigan. The first time Hanks stepped onto set at WQED's Fred Rogers Studio in character, sweater-to-sneakers, Heller says, “the room gasped.''“It was like coming in as Elvis into Graceland,'' says Hanks, a little sheepishly. “I had no sense of self. I really felt like I was having an out-of-body experience of watching this other guy be Fred Rogers.”Having recently explained death to her now 5-year-old son, Heller was concerned he'd be confused. She didn't have to worry.“He said,Mom, I know that’s Tom Hanks,”’ says Heller, laughing.Hanks smiles. “Hip kid, man.”On their way out of the interview, Heller leans against Hanks and says how much she enjoys talking about the film with him. He’s preoccupied with Heller’s batting average as a director. “Mari `three-for-three Heller,” he says, liking the sound of it. He turns to her. “You know” Hanks says, “none of these movies should have worked.” They walk out arm in arm.
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Country vocal group Lady Antebellum know how to move people to tears with their songs and their newest record feels as vulnerable and honest as a therapy session.The trio of Charles Kelley, Hillary Scott and Dave Haywood are known for their heartfelt harmonies and emotional resonance on songs like the Grammy-winning “Need You Now,” but on their new album, “Ocean,” they looked inward at their own relationships.”It’s been inspiring to watch that honesty come out,” said Haywood. “It’s been exciting for this season for us to be very self-aware and be vulnerable, be courageous and not be afraid and not have any fear to say those things.”Kelley co-wrote “Be Patient with My Love” after feeling like he was letting his emotions get in the way of his relationships, saying things he didn’t mean to his wife, and not taking care of his spiritual health.”That was kind of my first time I’ve really been really honest with myself on a song,” Kelley said. “My wife, when I played it for her, she was really proud of that. It’s nothing new to us. There’s a lot of that, say something you didn’t mean, wake up the next day, apologize, move on. Seven months later, back in the same spot.”On “What I’m Leaving For,” the trio, who all have kids, address how it feels to leave children behind when they travel so much, something that Scott, whose parents are also well-known touring artists, knows intimately.”I was that kid that we sing about and now I’m that mom,” Scott said, who has three girls. “My husband is a full-time dad at home and I travel.”In the music video for the title track, Scott was moved to tears as she sang the lyrics about wanting to drown yourself in someone that’s emotionally unavailable. Her vocal delivery feels so lonely and lost as she pleads for a human connection.”There are so many people hurting, myself included,” Scott said. “I just feel like this world we live in, we’re one of the most stressed-out cultures. It’s talked about in just about every headline you see…. That’s what this is about and that’s what I am seeing resonate with people.”The record also includes a contribution from their longtime friend, songwriter and producer busbee, who died in September at the age of 43. He produced their last record, “Heart Break” in 2017 and co-wrote their single You Look Good,'' from that album. The band and busbee wrote an uplifting banjo-laden jam calledAlright,” which is how the band wants to remember him.”He was such a light. He was this big tall guy with so much love to give,” Scott said. “It’s just talking about how no matter what happens, that it’s going to be alright and that this is life is beautiful. It’s so encouraging.”    
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Construction work has been completed at Tokyo’s National Stadium, set to be the centerpiece of next year’s Olympic Games, the site’s owners said on Tuesday.The Japan Sports Council said the final work had been completed on Thursday with just the final quality and safety checks remaining before the stadium opens next month.It will be officially unveiled on Dec. 21, with the Emperor’s Cup soccer final being the first sporting event to be held there on New Year’s Day.Completed at a cost of more than $1.25 billion, the stadium, which can accommodate 60,000, will also host the athletics and soccer events during the Games.Construction started in December 2016, about 14 months later than planned, after the original design was scrapped because of a public outcry over spiralling costs.The delay meant the stadium could not host matches of the Rugby World Cup, as originally planned.The National Stadium is one of eight new venues to be used at the Tokyo Games, all of them are either complete or on schedule to be finished before the event.The Tokyo Olympics run from July 24 to Aug. 9.
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When Idina Menzel first started performing “Let It Go” live in concerts, she thought the lyrics and soaring vocals would empower all those young girls in the audience dressed up as Elsa.Instead, Menzel said she often walked away from those performances feeling just as inspired.”I feel an extreme sense of pride about it,” said Menzel, the Tony Award-winning performer who voices Elsa, a fiercely independent queen with the magical ability to manipulate ice and snow. The song especially resonated with her because at the time she was juggling several shows on Broadway and going through a divorce while “trying to put one foot in front of the other.””But you see a little girl in a blue dress in the second row,” she continued. “That’s when you realize the song and movie represents them. It’s giving them permission to take ownership of who they are, and everything that makes them unique and different. But it’s a reciprocity. It’s coming back to me exponentially because I need to hear it too.”Voice actress Idina Menzel, poses for photographers alongside reindeer, upon arrival at the European premiere of “Frozen 2” in central London, Nov. 17, 2019.Menzel believes “Frozen 2,” which arrives in theaters Friday, has the capacity to empower viewers of all ages in the same way. The new film comes six years after the original broke box office records for an animated film, amassing $1.2 billion in worldwide ticket sales. It was bolstered by “Let It Go,” which won a Grammy and two Oscars.Jennifer Lee, co-director and writer of both films, said she didn’t anticipate the success of “Frozen.” Lee said a conversation with a stranger demonstrated the film’s impact.”I met a woman wearing a handmade ‘Let It Go,’ necklace, but she didn’t have any idea who I was,” Lee said. “She was talking, and I observed. She embraced the movie for herself. She felt the music spoke to her. It seemed to empower her. That’s our goal.”Menzel is unsure if the sequel can generate the same astronomical numbers as the original. But she is hopeful the story and music can resonate with viewers and further the themes of the original, including showing that female characters don’t necessarily need their male counterpart to rescue them from distress.”I think it’ll move people,” she said. “I think the film is powerful. I don’t know what the success of the music will be outside the film. But I know how I felt when I heard (the songs). I know how much I loved recording them and getting inside of them. I think people will learn from Elsa who is always overcoming her fear to take the next step and risk.”Numerous rewritesIn “Frozen 2,” Elsa finally embraces her powers, but she finds herself haunted by an unsettling voice from afar that no one else can hear. She ends up going on a dangerous journey to seek answers with her sister Anna, played by Kristen Bell. Also joining them are Anna’s boyfriend Kristoff (Jonathan Groff), his reindeer friend Sven and the bubbly snowman Olaf, voiced by Josh Gad.Voice actors Josh Gad poses for photographers upon arrival at the European premiere of “Frozen 2” in central London, Nov. 17, 2019.Co-director Chris Buck said the sequel has moments of being “fun and humorous,” but the story also delves deep into Elsa and Anna’s emotions. He said the main characters are trying to find their meaning in life. The film expands on challenges facing Elsa’s kingdom of Arendelle, with Sterling K. Brown joining the cast as a military officer and Evan Rachel Wood voicing the sisters’ mother.”The first film is more like Act 1 of a musical where you’re setting up the characters’ wants and who they are,” Buck said “In this one, we can do Act 2. Usually, those songs go deeper and they’re more emotional. You find out more. The struggles are harder. We had that sort of template. That helped us shape it.”Several deadlines were “blown past” while creating the story line that had at least 50 versions of rewrites, the directors said.Bell applauded the creative team for taking their time.”They didn’t just try to come up with the follow up for whatever monetary or marketing sake,” the actress said. “You can see a follow up from anything and you know in your soul, in your gut whether or not you connect to it. Like ‘Oh those are the same characters I loved but didn’t connect to them.’ They waited to find something that people would connect to.”Song that ‘changed everything’Lee said the biggest breakthrough came when husband-and-wife songwriting team Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Bobby Lopez delivered the song “Into the Unknown.””That changed everything,” Lee said. “It was the most active song. It’s a song that says to Elsa ‘You’ve got to act. You’ve got to have the guts to follow what your life could be.’ You see the change in her from the beginning to the end of the song. It started the whole engine for the whole movie.”Anderson-Lopez agrees. She said the music and film should compel women to trust their instincts in times of conflict.”We’re continuing to say that women need to listen to their gut and follow their gut,” said Anderson-Lopez, who won two Oscars with her husband for “Let It Go” and “Remember Me” from the film “Coco.””You are powerful in your own unique way by speaking truth and rising up from the floor,” she continued. “When the worst thing happens to you really does happen, you learn to do the next right thing. You take one step then another step, then another and stumble blindly toward the light. One breath. One step at a time.”
 
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Paul McCartney is to headline the 50th anniversary of Glastonbury in June next year, the world’s largest greenfield festival, organizers announced on Monday.”Hey Glasto – excited to be part of your Anniversary celebrations. See ya next year!” the 77-year-old former Beatle tweeted.The “Hey Jude” hitmaker will be the headline act on the festival’s main Pyramid Stage on Saturday, June 27, according to the Glastonbury Twitter account. McCartney last appeared on the Pyramid Stage in 2004 alongside Oasis and Muse.Glastonbury and McCartney’s representatives were not immediately available for further comment.Tickets for the 2020 event went on sale in October and were sold out in just over half an hour, according to the festival’s website.Glastonbury Festival was founded by farmer Michael Eavis, 83, and his late wife Jean in 1970, after they were inspired by the Bath Festival of Blues. Marc Bolan played the first event, which had an entry charge of 1 pound with free milk included. 
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