After a turbulent U.S. presidential election and a rollercoaster start to President Donald Trump’s administration, this year’s Tribeca film festival will come with a statement.

Environmental, political and social issues all feature strongly in the 200-strong selection of feature films, documentaries, television shows and immersive installations on offer during the April 19-30 festival.

Co-founder Jane Rosenthal said choices for the 16th festival included themes of the environment “and the fact we are an open society and everyone is welcome here.”

“Artists can express things sometimes that no politician can,” Rosenthal told Reuters Television.

Films about food waste, the protests over the Dakota Access Pipeline and the endangered white rhino are among a dozen projects linked to Earth Day, which falls in the middle of the festival on April 22.

A retrospective documentary about Cuban boy Elian Gonzalez, who was at the center of a 2000 custody and immigration battle; a documentary on maverick political operative Roger Stone; and “Copwatch,” about the U.S. citizens who film police activity and arrests, are just some of the offerings tackling social and political issues.

On a lighter note, the festival will open next Wednesday with a documentary about record producer Clive Davis – the man behind the success of singers like Whitney Houston, Kelly Clarkson and Jennifer Hudson.

The closing weekend sees a 45th anniversary reunion and screening of the cast and director of Oscar-winning Mafia movie “The Godfather” and its 1974 sequel “The Godfather: Part II.”

Francis Ford Coppola, Al Pacino, Diane Keaton, Robert De Niro and Robert Duvall are all expected to join a conversation after the April 29 screenings.

The Tribeca film festival was founded in 2002 by De Niro and Rosenthal to revitalize lower Manhattan after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

 
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Lady Gaga will make history when she performs at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts festival this weekend, marking a decade since a solo woman has been billed as a headliner on the prestigious musical stage.

 

Beyonce had been slated to headline the festival in Indio, California, but backed out because she’s pregnant with twins. Bjork was the last solo female to headline Coachella in 2007, so it begs the question: Why has it taken so long?

 

Women have always performed at Coachella, which began Friday, since it was launched in 1999. In the last few years the number of female performers has grown, including acts that blend alternative and pop, such as Sia and Tegan & Sara, to mega genre-mashers like M.I.A., Janelle Monae and Santigold.

 

Coachella is known as the festival for cool kids — and musicians. That leaves little to no room for acts that dominate Top 40 radio, where women have a strong presence, from Katy Perry to Rihanna.

 

Halsey, the Grammy-nominated singer who is readying her second alternative album and had one of last year’s biggest pop hits with “Closer” alongside the Chainsmokers, performed at Coachella last year. The 22-year-old said women who perform alternative music are often billed as pop artists because of their sex.

 

“Festivals like Coachella, they pride themselves on being part of the counterculture, being tastemakers, upholding themselves to a certain standard of the artists that they include, and I think one of the problems is that female artists are so often tainted as pop artists even when they don’t necessarily intend to be,” Halsey said. “Female artists can put out the same style of a record as a male artist and when a male artist does it, it has a certain type of dignity, it has a certain type of edge … as soon as a woman puts out a record of the same caliber, it’s immediately filed as a pop record no matter what.”

 

Halsey said it’s something she’s experienced in her own career with the success of “Closer.”

 

“It was this giant pop record and immediately I was a pop artist even though I put out an alternative album, I played alternative festivals and I was on alternative radio,” she said. “As soon as [you] do one pop record it’s like the kiss of death for a female artist sometimes.”

 

Gary Bongiovanni, CEO of concert trade publication Pollstar, said he didn’t think the gap between male and female headliners at Coachella was calculated.

 

“I don’t see that there’s any sexism. There’s nothing more than trying to put together a bill of artists that the public wants to see. And we live in a world where a significant majority of the acts are either male or male-fronted bands versus females or female-fronted bands,” he said. “If you look at the level of business all of those artists do and you try to cobble together a lineup that’s going to be appealing, it’s difficult, and there are a lot of the female acts that may not lend themselves to performing in front of 60,000 or 80,000 people in an open field, versus headlining an area or more likely a theater.”

 

In last year’s Pollstar chart of the 100 top-grossing North America tours, women made up about 15 percent of the list, which was dominated by male acts and male-fronted bands. Only two women cracked the Top 10: Beyonce was No.1 and Adele came in fifth.

 

Coachella is sold out before the lineup is announced, so the festival has the luxury of picking performers instead of relying on acts to help sell tickets.

 

Along with Gaga, this year’s headliners include Radiohead and Kendrick Lamar, who released his hotly anticipated new album Friday. Some of the female performers include Lorde, Banks, Tove Lo, Kehlani, Nao, Kiiara and Bishop Briggs. Yukimi Nagano, who fronts Swedish band Little Dragon, is returning to Coachella for a third time.

 

Nagano said she was surprised that it’s been 10 years since a woman headlined the festival, adding: “I think it’s a really positive thing.”

 

Jason White, executive vice president of marketing at Beats by Dre, said the company is purposely, and exclusively, giving attention to women at the festival: Their space at Coachella will only feature female performers, including Erykah Badu, DJ Kiss, Ana Calderon, JCK DVY and Jasmine Solano.

 

“I think it really meshes incredibly well with what’s going on with Coachella because you do have Gaga, we’re excited about seeing Kehlani [and] there’s some really solid performers this year,” he said.

 

Halsey, who spoke over the phone Thursday as she drove to the desert to watch Coachella as a fan, said she was thrilled to see Gaga take the stage. She said the recent Super Bowl halftime performer is one of those pioneering female acts that haven’t been boxed into a genre, though she knows “the extremes [Gaga] has to go to maintain that counterculture are much greater than that of what a male artist has to do.”

 

“Drake is still considered a rap/rhythm artist even though he is essentially a pop artist when you look at the decisions that he makes and the climate that kind of surrounds his projects,” Halsey said.

 

“And when you have a female artist in the same lane, they get written off as a pop artist simply because they’re female, simply because the conversation with them, it goes to fashion, makeup or whatever, and those are questions and comments that don’t surround the brand and surround the career of a male artist.”
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Julian Lennon is looking to nurture a new generation’s commitment to the environment, with a little help from a white feather.

 

The firstborn son of the late John Lennon has co-authored “Touch the Earth,” a picture book for kids as young as 3 about the world’s water problems, from polluted oceans to the need for clean drinking water in the developing world.

 

Out later this month, the book from Sky Pony Press has a group of kids loaded into a plane called the White Feather Flier as they span the globe and learn about the need for filtration, irrigation and ocean life protection. With illustrations created both by hand and computer, it’s the first of three children’s books he plans, in line with the environmental and humanitarian work of his White Feather Foundation.

 

“We’ve failed miserably in looking after our environment. I think this is a great way to approach children into realizing what’s at stake, and to help educate and help them make decisions about the right things to do for the future,” Lennon said in a recent interview with The Associated Press. “It’s for those with inquiring minds who are asking why?”

 

Lennon has taken on environmental issues in song, including his 1991 “Saltwater,” and in film, including the 2006 documentary “Whaledreamers,” covering a gathering of indigenous and tribal leaders that explores connections among whales, dolphins and humanity.

 

Appealing to the next generation of prospective eco-warriors grew out of his friendship with co-writer Bart Davis after the two put aside plans — for now — for the 54-year-old Lennon to write a biography. But he hasn’t completely abandoned the idea.

 

“I feel time’s marching on, you know. A lot of my friends and people I know are popping their clogs,” Lennon laughed. “You know, who knows what’s next. It’s in the cards in the next few years, absolutely, before it’s too late.”

 

So what’s up with the white feather for Lennon, the former Beatle’s son with his first wife, Cynthia? He shares the story at the back of the book.

 

“On the odd occasion when I saw dad he mentioned once that should he ever pass, a way he would let me know that he was OK, or that we were all going to be OK, would be in the form of a white feather,” Lennon explained. “I thought that quite peculiar. I told mum about it, too, and we just sort of went on with life.”

 

Later, while on tour in Australia, he was presented with a white swan feather by an aboriginal tribal elder of the Mirning people.

 

“It was a freaky moment, but one I took to heart immediately,” he said. “I realized that this was about stepping up to the plate now and, you know, I can sing all I want about this stuff but am I actually going to do something about it? So I spent 10 years making a documentary about the Mirning people.”

 

It’s also when he established his foundation, visiting Ethiopia with the head of a clean water initiative and touring schools and health clinics in Kenya. A portion of the books’ proceeds will go the foundation, which now does a range of work, including providing scholarships for girls in Kenya.

 

Lennon’s father was shot to death in 1980. His mother died two years ago of cancer at age 75. Her loss remains tender. Lennon dedicates the book to Cynthia, and he established the Kenya scholarships in her name.

 

“I talk to her every night, pretty much,” Lennon said. “She has given me the strength to carry on. Where I’m at at the moment, I feel very strong, very zenlike. I just want to do the right thing. To try to continue to be the best that I can be. That was all based around wanting to make her proud. I try to continue all the work that I do in her name.” 
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Russia’s leading state broadcaster has announced plans to boycott the Eurovision 2017 song contest after the host country, Ukraine, barred Russia’s contestant, wheelchair-bound singer Yulia Samoylova, from entering the country.

Kyiv’s decision in late March to ban the 28-year-old Russian paraplegic vocalist stemmed from her June 2015 performance in Crimea, where she appeared without the approval of Ukrainian authorities after Russia annexed the Black Sea peninsula.

Announcing the boycott Friday, Channel One, the state broadcaster that transmits the competition to large Russian audiences, said event organizers had offered the option of sending a different contestant or having Samoylova perform via video link from Moscow.

“In our view this represents discrimination against the Russian entry, and of course our team will not under any circumstances agree to such terms,” said Yuri Aksyuta, the station’s chief producer for musical and entertainment programs.

The contest organizers also condemned the Ukrainian decision but said the event will go ahead.

In March, a Ukrainian security services official told VOA that the ban on Samoylova was “based solely on the norms of Ukrainian law and national security interests.”

The Kremlin called it political pettiness.

“Practically everyone has been to Crimea; there are hardly any people who haven’t been to Crimea,” said Dmitry Peskov, spokesperson for Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Peskov also challenged criticism that Samoylova’s nomination was a deliberately provocative act by Kremlin officials — an attempt to make Kyiv appear cruel for restricting participation of a disabled artist.

“We don’t see anything provocative in this,” Peskov said, explaining that Channel One producers had nominated Samoylova independently.

Despite the high-blown kerfuffle, Ukrainian political analyst Mikhail Bassarab told VOA that Ukraine’s law can’t allow for exceptions.

“On the basis of Ukraine and international law, the Russian contestant violated the law,” he told VOA’s Russian service. “Naturally, anybody, including this particular Russian citizen, should be barred entry into Ukraine. There is nothing personal in this position. We can’t make exceptions … [just because] they were nominated for an international contest or have a disability.”

Politics or entertainment?

Ukrainian political analyst Yaroslav Makitra says Kyiv’s ban touches on a broader range of questions.

“It’s critical to decide what matters to us more, politics or entertainment,” he said. “If it’s politics, then we should have said ‘no’ to hosting Eurovision. … But if we want to promote the Ukraine across the globe, then we need to seek legislative and legal opportunities that would allow the Russian contestants to come to Ukraine.”

Otherwise, he said, Kyiv risks turning Eurovision into a competition of political finger-pointing.

Samoylova, a 2013 runner-up in the Russian version of The X Factor, who also performed at the opening ceremony of the 2014 Winter Paralympics, says that if she were permitted to perform, political tensions would be far from her mind.

“I’m simply not thinking about that. It is all out of the mix and it’s not very important,” she said. “I sing and my goal is to sing well, to represent Russia and not to embarrass myself.”

Frank Dieter Freiling, chairman of Eurovision’s steering committee, issued a statement Friday condemning Kyiv’s decision to ban Samoylova on the ground that it violates Eurovision’s ethos as a nonpolitical event.

“However, preparations continue apace for the Eurovision Song Contest in the host city, Kyiv. Our top priority remains to produce a spectacular Eurovision Song Contest.”

Dima Bilan was the last Russian to win Eurovision in 2008. The 62nd international song contest will be held in May in Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital.

Svetlana Cunningham translated from Russian. This report was produced in collaboration with VOA’s Russian service. Some information is from Reuters.
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Celebrities of Armenian descent including Cher and the Kardashians lent their support this week to “The Promise,” a period drama centered around the massacre of Christian Armenians during World War I in what is now Turkey.

“The Promise,” out in U.S. theaters on April 21, stars Oscar Isaac as an Armenian medical student and Christian Bale as an American foreign correspondent, both of whom fall in love with the same woman.

Their love triangle unfolds as the Ottoman Empire’s entry into the war is followed by the 1915 massacre of Christian Armenians.

“So many people, when confronted with a period film, they tend to ask that question ‘why is this still relevant?'” Bale told Reuters at Wednesday’s red carpet premiere in Los Angeles.

“You only have to look at the news to see sadly how relevant this story still is,” he added.

Terry George, who directed 2004 Oscar-nominated historical drama “Hotel Rwanda,” said shooting “The Promise” coincided with news of Yazidi refugees besieged by Islamic militants in northern Iraq and the mass exodus of Syrians attempting to flee the war-torn country for Europe.

“As we were shooting, we were watching the same events in the same location – people under siege in the mountains and drowning in the Mediterranean,” George said.

The nature and scale of the massacre of Christian Armenians remains a contentious issue.

Turkey accepts that many Armenians died in partisan fighting beginning in 1915, but denies that up to 1.5 million were killed and that this constituted an act of genocide, a term used by many Western historians and foreign parliaments.

Singer Cher, whose father was Armenian-American, joined reality TV stars Kim and Kourtney Kardashian at the premiere.

“There is something about people when they don’t see other people as human beings, then they objectify and then they can do anything to them,” Cher said about the massacre.

“Westworld” actress Angela Sarafyan, who plays Isaac’s wife in the film and is of Armenian descent, described the role as very personal.

“My great-great-grandparents fled to Syria, Aleppo to survive and to start a family and today, people from Syria, Aleppo leave to other places so they can live,” she said.

“One hundred years have gone by and that is still happening,” she added.
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Is the Force still strong with Luke Skywalker?

 

The first trailer for “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” dropped on Friday, showcasing a morose and withdrawn Skywalker. The two-minute teaser , unveiled by director Rian Johnson at the “Star Wars Celebration” fan event in Orlando, Florida, offered few clues to the film. But it notably includes Mark Hamill’s iconic hero gravely intoning, “It’s time for the Jedi to end,” from a dark cave.

 

The trailer whetted the appetites of ravenous “Star Wars” fans who turned out in droves in Orlando and online, where the event was streamed live. Actor Josh Gad, a Disney star from another universe (“Frozen,” “Beauty and the Beast”), hosted a panel including Johnson, producer Kathleen Kennedy and cast members Daisy Ridley, John Boyega and a new addition, Kelly Marie Tran.

 

“The Last Jedi” picks off where “The Force Awakens” left off, with Rey (Ridley) meeting Luke on a remote island, filmed off the coast of Ireland. Some shots in the trailer also suggested Skywalker training Rey on the island. In “The Force Awakens,” Adam Driver’s Kylo Ren has turned to the dark side after being tutored by Luke.

The presentation was mostly a game of teasing hints about the film while revealing very little about it.

 

“I actually can tell you some things. A small amount,” said Ridley, laughing. She said the film will go “deep” into Rey’s story and reveal how it can be difficult meeting your heroes — presumably alluding to a cranky Skywalker. “They may not be what you expect,” said Ridley to knowing groans in the crowd.

 

“The Force Awakens” director and “Last Jedi” producer J.J. Abrams has previously hailed Hamill’s performance in the film, suggesting it could land him an Oscar nomination. Hamill, the most raucously received star on Friday, said he drew on his own experiences for this new chapter in Luke’s life.

 

“I said: I have to relate to things that are real in my own life to understand where Luke is at this point in his life,” Hamill said.

 

“The Last Jedi” is due in theaters Dec. 15.
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Texas has a wealth of oil and gas production facilities, hundreds of ranches … and 14 national park sites that protect and preserve some of America’s most precious natural, cultural and historic land and waterscapes.

National parks traveler Mikah Meyer, who’s on a mission to visit all of the more than 400 sites within the National Park Service, crossed into Texas via its eastern border, eager to begin his ambitious adventures across the vast state.

Magical moments

First stop, Big Thicket National Preserve, which protects almost 45,780 hectares (113,121.96 acres) of land and water spread over seven counties in southeast Texas.

Mikah enjoyed the quiet beauty of a swamp cypress tupelo forest as he glided through one of its many rivers on a small boat. The dominant trees in most of the Big Thicket swamps are bald cypress and water tupelo which look primeval in appearance.

“There was something mystical and magical about the place even though it didn’t have the big sweeping vista that other parks might have,” Mikah observed.

Timeless beauty

Mikah found more natural beauty at Padre Island National Seashore near Corpus Christi, which protects 112 kilometers (70 miles) of coastline, dunes, prairies, and wind tidal flats, teeming with life.

To get to Padre Island, he had to travel through Houston, the most populous city in Texas, (which has no national park sites), and he said he couldn’t help but notice the contrast between the urban environment and the natural one.

“It was interesting to contrast this state that is so well known for oil… and then just to the southeast of this city known for oil production there’s the world’s longest undeveloped barrier island.”

“What I’m learning about the seashores is that what really makes them unique is that they present the opportunity to experience our coastal land as it was before human development,” Mikah said.

Timeless journeys

That seems to be the recurring theme as Mikah travels across the country from one national seashore to another.

“Everything from Cape Cod National Seashore to Canaveral National Seashore, Gulf Islands National Seashore and now Padre Island National Seashore — the consistency is that they offer the opportunity to experience undeveloped beaches,” he emphasized.

Near the park’s visitor center is an area where the tides come together, bringing with them literally tons of trash, which get swept up onto the beach. The park service uses that naturally occurring event as an opportunity to teach school children about conservation.

“They give them a trash bag and the kids can go out and pick up trash and they talk about conservation and taking care of the earth,” Mikah explained. “So it’s a cool way to see how the National Seashore is trying to involve the next generation in preserving and taking care of these lands,” he added.

A mammoth discovery

When people hear the name Waco, Texas, many associate it with the deadly siege carried out by federal agents of a compound belonging to the Branch Davidian religious group in 1993.

But the city was famous long before then for something a little more appealing.

As Mikah describes it, in 1978, two young friends, Paul Barron and Eddie Bufkin, were looking for old Native American arrowheads in the area near their homes when they found a bone sticking out of the ground. “So they started digging around it and it turned out to be a mammoth tusk,” Mikah explained.

The young men removed the bone and took it to Baylor University’s Strecker Museum (predecessor to the Mayborn Museum Complex) for examination. Museum staff identified the find as a femur bone from a Columbian mammoth. This extinct species lived during the Pleistocene Epoch (more commonly known as the Ice Age) and inhabited North America from southern Canada to as far south as Costa Rica.

That stunning discovery launched a massive archaeological dig “that produced the largest — and what I think is the only — find ever of an entire herd of mammoths,” Mikah said.

A lost world

Strecker Museum staff quickly organized a team of volunteers and excavation began at the site. The crews slowly excavated a lost world. Between 1978 and 1990, they uncovered the fossil remains of 16 Columbian mammoths. Their efforts revealed a nursery herd that appears to have died together in a single natural event. Six additional mammoths as well as the fossil remains of many other animal species have been excavated in the years since, including the tooth of a juvenile saber-toothed cat and a camel that lived approximately 67,000 years ago.

Waco Mammoth National Monument was designated as a new unit of the National Park System by President Barack Obama in 2015.

“When you hear the word Waco you think of compounds and biker gangs, so you know it’s good that they have some things a little less controversial to be known for,” Mikah observed.

Mikah invites you to join him as he continues his journey across the Lone Star state by visiting his website, Facebook and Instagram.

 
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The local publisher of Vogue Arabia has announced Manuel Arnaut as its new editor-in-chief a day after the surprise exit of its former editor.

Arnaut is currently the editor-in-chief of Architectural Digest Middle East, which like Vogue Arabia, is a publication of Conde Nast International.

 

In a statement released Friday, Dubai-based publisher Nervora said Arnaut, who hails from Portugal, will begin as editor-in-chief of Vogue Arabia May 7.

 

The fashion magazine’s new edition for the Middle East had published just two print issues when it was reported Thursday that its editor-in-chief, Saudi Princess Deena Aljuhani Abdulaziz, was no longer in the post.

 

She was quoted in a statement to insider fashion website Business of Fashion saying she was fired because she refused to compromise on her vision for the magazine.
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On April 15, 2013, the Boston Marathon bombing shook the world. Two bombs that exploded 12 seconds apart near the finish line of the world famous race killed three people and injured an estimated 264 others who were treated at 27 hospitals. At least 14 people required amputations. 

Movies such as the feature film Patriots Day have offered a dramatized account of those events. But Jon Dunham’s documentary Boston, narrated by Boston native Matt Damon, looks beyond the bombings, weaving an uplifting narrative of the race from its inception in 1897 to 2014, the year after the attacks.

Watch: Boston Documentary Chronicles the History of Boston Marathon

A lot of grieving

By the size of the race, the sheer enthusiasm of the 36,000 racers and the community spirit during the 2014 Boston Marathon, no one would have guessed that the year before, the event, its participants and the city itself had been devastated by a terrorist attack. 

The bombings weighed heavily on filmmaker Jon Dunham, a marathon runner who had planned, for years before the attacks, to make a documentary about the history of the race.

“There were a number of feelings — there was certainly a lot of grieving for what had happened. I walked up and down Boylston Street every day as soon as I arrived here in Boston in January of 2014, and just thought about it every day,” the filmmaker said.

A history of the race

His documentary Boston does not focus on the pain and fear in 2013. Instead, it chronicles the Boston Marathon as an event that has fostered charity, unity and strength since its inception in 1897.

Dunham’s film follows the growth of the event through the decades. The race has become more selective, the runners faster. They come from all over the world to compete. One of them is Kenyan runner Wilson Chebet.

“Long time ago, when I was a child, I used to run to school. 3.7 kilometers. Lunchtime you come back, you go to school after lunch, and then in the evening you come home,” Chebet said.

War connection

The documentary shows how the race also has grown into a major fundraising event. 

It started with Greek Olympic athlete Stylianos Kyriakides, who won the Boston Marathon in 1946 and used his notoriety as a Boston Marathon champion to raise funds and put together supplies that aided Greece after WWI, Dunham said.

He says the history of the marathon has been intrinsically connected with war. 

“It is interesting to consider the marathon in the context of war, even if you want to go back to the whole idea of the marathon. … The Battle of Marathon in Greece and the Athenians having triumphed over the invading Persians and then the messenger being sent from Marathon to Athens to share new good news, that they had been victorious in this battle. That of course being the idea for creating a Marathon race came from,” Dunham said.

Ready for 2017

With just a few days before this year’s race, Boston is getting ready. T.K. Skenderian, director of communications at the Boston Athletic Association, is in the middle of the preparations.

“In the year that followed (the Boston Marathon bombing), and in the years that have followed, the sense of solidarity and community pride that has emerged from not just those injured but people locally, people from around the world, has been overwhelming. I mean that sense of civic pride, city pride, and pride in the sport of running has been enormous. Yeah, we got knocked down but we got back up in a big way.”

Two days before the 121st running of the Boston Marathon, Jon Dunham’s documentary is premiering in its namesake city.

“There are so many things we cannot control in life, but getting out and running, setting a goal like running a marathon, is something that can be done, and it really does change lives, and it is something very positive,” the Boston filmmaker said.
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On April 15, 2013, the Boston Marathon bombing shook the world. Movies such as the feature film “Patriots Day” offered a dramatized account of those events. But Jon Dunham’s documentary “Boston,” narrated by Boston native Matt Damon, looks beyond the bombings, weaving an uplifting narrative of the race from its inception in 1897 to 2014, the year after the attacks. VOA’s Penelope Poulou has more.
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How do you celebrate 40 years of Star Wars in 90 minutes?

With a surprise Harrison Ford appearance, a touching Carrie Fisher tribute, a John Williams performance and a fair amount of jokes about George Lucas’ dialogue, of course.

Attendees at Star Wars Celebration were treated to that and more Thursday in Orlando, Florida, at the kick-off of the four-day fan event marking the anniversary of Lucas’ space saga.

Actor Warwick Davis moderated the sprawling look-back at the four decade legacy, featuring appearances by Lucasfilm chief Kathleen Kennedy, Mark Hamill, Billy Dee Williams, Anthony Daniels, Peter Mayhew and Hayden Christensen.

There were also video messages from Liam Neeson, who joked that a film was being made about Jar Jar Binks going to the dark side, and from Samuel L. Jackson, who cheekily suggested that his prequel character Mace Windu is not dead.

“Let’s make it happen,” Jackson said directly to Kennedy. “All you gotta do is say the word.”

Ford sticks the landing

Ford’s unexpected appearance garnered the most enthusiastic response from the thousands of fans in the convention center.

“I can’t believe we managed to keep it a secret considering you landed your plane” on Interstate 4, Davis joked when the applause died down.

“It was a good landing,” Ford said, smiling. 

The actor has historically had a tenuous relationship with the fandom around his character Han Solo, but he appeared genuinely happy to reminisce Thursday about the lasting legacy of Lucas’ creation. 

Lucas said he had worked with Ford on American Graffiti when he gave Ford the part because it was about “spaceships and flying” and he could fly.

Ford, quoting another of his iconic characters, Indiana Jones, quipped back, “Fly? Yes. Land? No.”

Well-told tales

For Star Wars super fans, most of the behind the scenes stories told were as well-known as the stories in the actual films — from the fact that Lucas’ inspiration for Chewbacca was his dog Indiana to the actors’ problems with Lucas’ fanciful and technical dialogue.

“How can you make it sound like it’s spontaneous dialogue rolling off the tongue?” Hamill asked.

“He was right. It was a bit much,” Lucas responded.

Ford laughed.

“I said to George, ‘You can type this stuff but you can’t say it. Move your mouth when you’re typing,”’ Ford said.

Fisher tribute

Missing, of course, was Carrie Fisher, who died late last year at 60. Lucas and Kennedy saved their words about Fisher for the end.

“She was very strong, very smart, very funny, very bold and very tough. There were not very many people like her. They’re one in a billion,” Lucas said, recalling Fisher’s willingness to tell him when his dialogue was too difficult to say in portraying Princess Leia. “We’ll all love her forever and ever.”

Fisher’s daughter Billie Lourd, who acted alongside her mother in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, appeared on stage decked in Princess Leia white to remember her mother and grandmother Debbie Reynolds. Hamill also has planned a Fisher tribute for Friday.

Star Wars composer John Williams closed out the session, conducting the Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra in a performance of his score, from the Imperial March to the Main Title.

Star Wars Celebration runs through Sunday and includes a myriad of events for fans, many of which can be streamed online. 

Perhaps the most anticipated is a talk with Star Wars: The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson on Friday in advance of its December release.
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More than 50 U.S. cities will be hosting Make Music Day, a free one-day outdoor festival celebrating music and music-making.

The annual event is June 21, the summer solstice.

Highlights of Make Music Day in the U.S. will include Sousapaloozas in Chicago; Cleveland; Madison, Wisconsin; Minneapolis-St. Paul; New York; and San Jose, California.

Part of Make Music Day is an event called Mass Appeal in which musicians play together in single-instruments groups. Featured instruments will include guitars, harmonicas, accordions, trombones, bassoons, French horns and harps. More than 150 are scheduled.

Street Studios in Atlanta; Chattanooga, Tennessee; Minneapolis-St. Paul; New York; and Philadelphia will give passers-by a chance to collaborate in producing original music.

The festival began in France in 1982 and has since spread to 750 cities across 120 countries.
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University of Michigan mechanical engineering students have made one of the most popular puzzle games much larger. And tougher to solve.

Seven former and current students unveiled a 1,500-pound Rubik’s Cube during a ceremony Thursday inside the G.G. Brown engineering building on the Ann Arbor campus. The massive, mostly aluminum structure is meant to be played by students and others on campus.

Four students came up with the idea three years ago and handed down the project to other students.

“It’s the largest solvable mechanical stationary Rubik’s Cube,” said Ryan Kuhn, a 22-year-old senior who helped assemble the giant puzzle this week. “It was kind of an urban myth of North Campus, this giant Rubik’s Cube that’s been going on for a while.”

 

The oversized version of the brain-teasing 3-D puzzle, which has flummoxed players since its heyday in the 1980s, is much harder to decipher than its diminutive counterpart, said Kuhn, who called it an “interactive mechanical art piece.”

The puzzle is solved when the player is able to manipulate the cube until all nine squares on each of its six sides display an individual color.

“It’s very reasonable that it could take at least an hour” to solve, said Martin Harris, who helped conceive the project in 2014 while hanging out in the College of Engineering honors office.
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Twenty years ago on April 13, 1997, American athlete Tiger Woods made history, winning one of golf’s most prestigious tournaments, the Masters, in Augusta, Georgia. He became the youngest golfer to win – and he did it by 12 strokes, a record that still stands.

​That day, Woods not only shot a 72-hole score of 18-under-par 270, but he also shattered the Masters record of 271 that Jack Nicklaus and Raymond Floyd had shared. 

By June 1997, Woods was ranked No. 1 in the world.

Two years later, he won eight PGA tournaments, earned a record $6 million in prize money and began a winning streak that eventually tied Ben Hogan’s in 1948, the second-longest in PGA history. 

Much of his success is owed to Tiger’s close relationship to his father, Earl, who coached his prodigal son since childhood.

In June 2000, Woods won his first U.S. Open, considered the most challenging golf tournament in the world. Woods shot a record 12-under-par 272 to finish 15 strokes ahead of his nearest competitors. 

It was considered the greatest professional golf performance in history, surpassing even his 1997 Masters’ triumph and the 1862 showing by Old Tom Morris. 

In July 2000, Woods captured the British Open, and in August the PGA championship. At the age of 24, he was the youngest player ever to win all four major golf titles and just the second to win three majors in a year.

His winning streak slowed in the 2000’s around the time he married Elin Nordegren, a Swedish former model with whom he had two children.

The golfer won his 10th major, the British Open, in 2005. 

His performance fluctuated throughout the rest of the decade as he struggled with a torn ACL. His career took a further hit in 2009 in relation to a car accident outside his Florida home.

Later, several women came forward alleging they had affairs with the famous golfer. Nordegren divorced him in August 2010.

Woods’ last win took place in 2013.  

Woods planned to play throughout 2017, but a nagging back injury forced him to announce last month that he was withdrawing from the 2017 Masters. 
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The International Olympic Committee said Thursday that it still planned to hold its annual meeting in Lima despite the devastating recent floods in Peru.

The 2024 Olympic hosting vote between Los Angeles and Paris is set for September 13, the opening day of the IOC session.

Peru’s suitability for the weeklong Olympic meetings was questioned in ongoing fallout from heavy rains and mudslides last month.

The IOC said the Peruvian government confirmed Thursday that its preparations were “going ahead as planned.”

Peruvian President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski said hosting the Olympic meetings would “send a vital message to the world and to Peru that we are ready to welcome the world after the emergency situation.”

Last week, the IOC and Pan American Sports Organization made a $600,000 donation to flood recovery work.
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Russia’s lack of progress in cleaning up its doping culture and introducing a satisfactory testing regime continues to impede the country’s reinstatement to athletics, the IAAF said Thursday.

Providing its latest update on Russia’s state-sponsored doping system, the  International Association of Athletics Federations also criticized the country’s decision to make Yelena Isinbayeva the head of the country’s scandalized anti-doping agency.

“It is difficult to see how this helps to achieve the desired change in culture in Russia track and field, or how it helps to promote an open environment for Russian whistle-blowers,” Russia task force chairman Rune Andersen said in his report to the IAAF Council.

Isinbayeva repeatedly criticized the World Anti-Doping Agency, framed doping investigations as an anti-Russian plot and called for a leading whistle-blower to be banned for life.

The two-time gold medalist and world-record holder missed the Rio de Janeiro Olympics because of a ban on Russia’s athletics team that is unlikely to be lifted soon, based on the IAAF’s fresh concerns.

Tough stance stays

“There is no reason why better progress has not been made,” IAAF President Sebastian Coe said, adding that the IAAF would not soften its tough stance.

“There is testing but it is still far too limited,” Coe said. He said the Russian investigative committee was “still refusing to hand over athlete biological passport samples for independent testing from labs”; some athletes remained in “closed cities that are difficult or impossible to get to”; coaches from a tainted system were still employed; and “we have got the head coach of RUSAF [Russia’s athletics federation] effectively refusing to sign their own pledge” to clean up its culture.

The IAAF is allowing some Russians to compete internationally as neutrals while their country remained banned, with 12 athletes proving they have been adequately tested for drugs over a lengthy period by non-Russian agencies.

The athletes are still “subject to acceptance of their entries by individual meeting organizers,” such as the Diamond League series, the IAAF has said. The 14-meet circuit opens on May 5 in Doha, Qatar.
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Every night, the Inner Harbor in Baltimore, Maryland glistens with an array of lights from the waterside restaurants and shops, creating lovely water reflections. But during the Light City festival, illuminated sculptures and colorful interactive light displays add to the beauty along the waterfront.
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British actor Jude Law has been cast to play a young version of Hogwarts’ venerable headmaster Albus Dumbledore, a key character in the second film of J.K. Rowling’s Fantastic Beasts movie spinoff, Warner Bros. said Wednesday.

Law, 44, best known for his role as Dr. John Watson in the Sherlock Holmes action movies, will play Dumbledore decades before he became the beloved headmaster of Hogwarts, the school where Harry Potter and his friends learned to become wizards and fight dark forces in society.

Rowling, who created Dumbledore for her best-selling Harry Potter books, has said she thinks of him as a gay man who fell in love, when he was younger, with Gellert Grindelwald, who later turned out to be evil and violent.

She told reporters in New York last year that the second Fantastic Beasts movie would show Dumbledore “as a younger man and quite a troubled man — he wasn’t always the sage. … We’ll see him at that formative period of his life.”

Johnny Depp will play Grindelwald in the second movie, for which Rowling has written the screenplay, Warner Bros. said in a statement. Filming will start this summer.

The five-movie spinoff is set some 70 years before Harry Potter goes to Hogwarts and features some new and some familiar Potter characters. The story centers around Newt Scamander, a “magizoologist” with a suitcase full of strange creatures.

Several British actors were considered for the role of young Dumbledore, including Christian Bale, Benedict Cumberbatch and Jared Harris, according to Hollywood publication Variety.

“We are thrilled to have Jude Law joining the Fantastic Beasts cast, playing a character so universally adored,” said Toby Emmerich, president and chief content officer of Warner Bros. Pictures.

The first Fantastic Beasts film, released in November, made some $813 million at the global box office. The second of the movies, which is yet to be titled, is due for release in November 2018.

The eight Harry Potter movies made $7 billion at the global box office.
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American artist Ryan Mendoza, who has moved the former house of the late civil rights icon Rosa Parks from Detroit to Berlin, says he would like to return it to the United States one day.

Parks’ refusal in 1955 to give up her bus seat in Alabama for a white passenger became a symbol of the U.S. civil rights movement. She later moved to Detroit, where the house she lived in faced demolition until her niece, Rhea McCauley, bought it.

McCauley paid $500 for the two-story dwelling and in turn handed it over to Mendoza, who painstakingly stripped it into 2,000 pieces and paid $13,000 to move it to Berlin, where he has put it back together outside his studio.

Now he wants to move the house back to the United States.

“This house really belongs in the United States,” he told Reuters. “It doesn’t belong here, but since it is here, it encourages more people to think about why it was on the demolition list.”

Mendoza would also like to involve former U.S. first lady Michelle Obama in the project.

“It would be the perfect solution if Michelle Obama became the ambassador of this project,” he said. “She has the courage and she totally convinced me when she said what was so obvious: that the White House was built by slaves.”

Former U.S. President Barack Obama is due to join German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin in May as part of celebrations to mark 500 years of Protestantism in Europe.
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The sculptor of Wall Street’s “Charging Bull” says New York City is violating his legal rights by forcing his bronze beast to face off against the “Fearless Girl.”

Artist Arturo Di Modica said Wednesday that the new neighboring statue changes his bull into something negative.

He says the bull’s message is supposed to be “freedom in the world, peace, strength, power and love.”

His lawyers say “Fearless Girl” exploits the bull for commercial purposes. They want it moved and are hoping for an amicable solution.

Artist Kristen Visbal’s statue of a girl with her hands on her hips was placed on the traffic island on March 7.

Mayor Bill de Blasio says men who don’t like women taking up space “are exactly why we need ‘Fearless Girl.'”

 
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