Coming soon to West End and Broadway stages: Rex Tillerson, Jeff Sessions, Tom Price and Scott Pruitt

 

Four key players in President Donald Trump’s new administration are central characters in a “verbatim play,” boiled down from combative U.S. Senate confirmation hearings, that looks to Trump’s Cabinet picks for clues to his government’s direction.

 

“All the President’s Men?” – the question mark sets it apart from the famous Watergate expose – is being presented as a staged reading Monday at London’s Vaudeville Theatre. It will play New York’s Town Hall theater on May 11 with a U.S. cast reported to include some famous names.

 

The play is among the first trickle of what will soon be a flood of artistic responses to Trump’s election.

 

An HBO miniseries about the 2016 election is in the works, while British writer Howard Jacobsen turned his shock at the outcome into a just-published satirical novel. Robert Schenkkan’s play “Building the Wall,” which imagines Trump’s presidency taking a darkly authoritarian turn, is in the midst of an acclaimed run in Los Angeles and next goes to New York for an off-Broadway run in May.

 

Also planned for Broadway are a pair of starkly political works – a revival of Henrik Ibsen’s “An Enemy of the People,” about a well-intentioned whistleblower eventually branded a traitor, will be produced during the 2017-18 season, and a stage version of George Orwell’s nightmarish “1984” is scheduled to open in June at the Hudson Theatre.

 

Nicholas Kent, who has created and directed “All the President’s Men?” said he wanted to understand what Trump, the ultimate outsider politician, actually stands for.

 

“We’d heard all this rhetoric about “draining the swamp,’” he said. “I thought the best way of finding out about the whole philosophy behind the Trump presidency would be to look at the Senate confirmation hearings. Because the beliefs of the people involved would come out of that, and their backgrounds would come out.”

 

Kent, former artistic director of London’s Tricycle Theatre, has overseen fact-based plays on subjects including England’s 2011 riots (“The Riots”), the U.S.-led war on terror (“Guantanamo – Honor Bound to Defend Freedom”) and Afghanistan’s history of conflict (“The Great Game”).

 

For his latest project, Kent watched 50 hours of Senate hearings, and admitted that “to begin with it was a little like watching paint dry.”

 

But he said he gradually “saw the big issues coming out. The questioners, and the questions asked, were as revealing as the answers in many ways.”

 

The four candidates were little known to most Americans. There was Tillerson, the ex-oil company boss who is now at the helm of U.S. foreign policy as secretary of state; Sessions, a longtime Republican senator who is now attorney general; Obamacare critic Price, the health secretary; and climate-change skeptic Pruitt, now in charge of the Environmental Protection Agency.

 

“I chose particularly these four people because they represent in many ways the nub of how America will be governed for the next four years,” Kent said.

 

“I’m trying to look for the central essence of each of the characters. I’m not trying to do a satirical portrait in any way whatsoever. I’m trying to look at their beliefs.”

 

The play is backed by Britain’s National Theatre and New York’s Public Theater. In London, it is performed by a cast of West End veterans including Peter Davison, Sian Phillips, Phil Davis and Sinead Cusack. For the New York performance, Kent said “they’ve promised me a very starry cast.”

 

Kent says the president himself appears in the play only through “a few tweets.”

 

“It’s the administration that’s going to make the man, as we’ve already seen,” Kent said, noting that two of Trump’s flagship promises – to halt travel from countries deemed epicenters of terrorism and to dismantle Obamacare – have been stymied by courts and Congress.

 

“He can be a figurehead and he can tweet till kingdom come,” Kent said. But “it is actually the machinery of government and the people under him, who are going to carry out his policies, that are the most interesting.”
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Billionaire Elon Musk is getting close with actress Amber Heard.

 

The pair is shown in paparazzi photos zip-lining in Australia, where Heard is filming “Aquaman.”

Both Musk and Heard posted pictures to their Instagram accounts Monday showing Musk with lipstick on his cheek left behind from a kiss.

Musk wrote on his post that he and Heard were dining with “Aquaman” director James Wan and producer Rob Cowan on Australia’s Gold Coast.

 

Musk has been married three times, twice to British actress Talulah Riley. He has five sons from another previous marriage.

 

Heard and Johnny Depp settled a divorce last year.

 
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Robert De Niro helped Burt Reynolds onto the red carpet for the Tribeca Film Festival premiere of his new movie “Dog Years” Saturday night in New York. It was a rare appearance for the 81-year old actor, who at times struggled to walk.

Reynolds was given a chair on the red carpet, so that he could speak to a limited number of press outlets about the film.

 

He was overjoyed at the turnout.

 

“Great to see Mr. De Niro, who I love, and … you know, all the people that I know,” Reynolds said. “It’s very sweet.”

 

In the film, which is still shopping for distribution, Reynolds portrays an aging movie star who realizes his best days are behind him. The actor sees similarities in the character with his own life.

 

Reynolds laughed at the obvious parallel with his own life, though he said, “I guess I’m doing all right. I think because it’s a hell of a turnout.”

 

Written and directed by Adam Rifkin, the film also stars “Modern Family’s” Ariel Winter, Chevy Chase and Nikki Blonsky.

 

Reynolds joked about working with younger co-stars.

 

“You don’t learn from young actors,” Reynolds said. “You just tell them how to behave.”
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Erin Moran, the former child star who played Joanie Cunningham in the sitcoms Happy Days and Joanie Loves Chachi, died Saturday at age 56.

A statement from the sheriff’s department in Harrison County, Indiana, said the dispatcher “received a 911 call about an unresponsive female. Upon arrival of first responders, it was determined that Erin Moran Fleischmann was deceased. An autopsy is pending.”

The dispatcher confirmed to The Associated Press that the woman was the actress, who had been married to Steven Fleischmann.

A Burbank, California, native, Moran began acting in TV and movies before she was 10 years old. She had nearly a decade’s worth of experience when she was cast in 1974 in Happy Days as Joanie Cunningham, the kid sister to high school student Richie Cunningham, played by Ron Howard.

Debuting at a time of nostalgia for the seemingly innocent 1950s, the sitcom was set in Milwaukee and soon became a hit. Howard and Henry Winkler, who played tough guy Arthur “The Fonz” Fonzarelli, were the show’s biggest stars, but Moran also became popular. In 1982, she was paired off with fellow Happy Days performer Scott Baio in the short-lived Joanie Loves Chachi.

Her more recent credits included The Love Boat and Murder, She Wrote, but she never approached the success of Happy Days and was more often in the news for her numerous personal struggles.

“OH Erin … now you will finally have the peace you wanted so badly here on earth,” Winkler tweeted. “Rest In It serenely now … too soon.”
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The gigantic black and white portraits of children started appearing on walls around a suburban neighborhood of Havana two years ago, the work of Cuban artist Maisel Lopez.

The sober, finely painted portraits contrast with Cuba’s dilapidated buildings and pot-holed streets, colorful vintage cars and peeling pink, apricot and turquoise paint on eclectic architecture.

With nearly 30 murals completed, Lopez said he is only getting started on his “Colossi” series, a striking endeavor in the Communist-run country where street art is rare.

“I want to keep expanding further afield,” said Lopez, 31, who started painting the walls of homes and shops in his home district of Playa and is now completing his first mural in neighboring Marianao.

A chubby girl with wispy blond hair wistfully rests her chin on her hands, while a black boy with angular features peers at passersby with a slight air of defiance.

The murals are unusual in a country where public spaces are tightly controlled and posters and murals mainly have political themes or depict figures like Ernesto “Che” Guevara.

Only one other artist in Havana, Yulier Rodriguez, has an equally recognizable assortment of street art. His figures are alien, the murals colorful. Lopez’s subjects are realistic and monochrome.

Lopez said in an interview last week that political art led him to paint murals. He helped with several celebrating the Bolivarian revolution during a cultural mission in 2009 to Cuba’s socialist ally Venezuela.

“A mural is constantly in interaction with the public,” said Lopez, whose work is inspired by Cuban independence hero Jose Marti, who said “children are the hope of the world.”

“That’s why I paint the children big, to mark their importance,” he said.

Unlike many street artists, including Rodriguez, Lopez seeks permits to paint on walls. While initially hard to get, he gained trust as he developed the series, he said.

Each colossus is several meters tall and takes Lopez four days to a week to paint. Each depicts a child living in the vicinity. He does not charge to paint them.

Instead, he earns a living teaching art classes and selling canvas portraits that can fetch up to $1,500.

Locals have declared themselves fans and guardians of his work, looking after it as people stop to take photographs.

“It’s really striking and gives life to the street,” said Vivian Herrera, 47, who runs a bakery next to one of the murals.

“It’s like the girl is really there, with her big, open eyes.”
…

Philosopher, humanitarian and physicist Albert Einstein is the subject of new TV series “Genius,” which delves into the drama and passion of the man who developed the theory of relativity and helped initiate the U.S. effort to build an atomic bomb.

Executive producer Ron Howard told reporters at the TV show’s launch at the Tribeca Film Festival that he had always been fascinated by Einstein.

“But I never realized how many twists and turns and, you know, there were in his life, and how much drama there was,” Howard said on Thursday.

The 10-part series for the National Geographic channel shows Einstein’s personal struggles and “how complicated, sexy, you know – kind of bohemian – a lot of his relationships were,” Howard said.

Australian Geoffrey Rush plays the older Einstein, with Britain’s Emily Watson and American actress Gwendolyn Ellis portraying older and younger versions of his second wife, Elsa.

“He wasn’t just a scientist,” Watson said of Einstein, who died in 1955. “He was a philosopher, a humanist. He was an immigrant. He was at the center of so many political events in the 20th century, or close to the center of them, and had incredibly complicated relationships in his life.”
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Fans are marking the anniversary of U.S. musician Prince’s sudden death from an accidental drug overdose with visits to his Paisley Park home, which has been turned into a museum.

The museum is hosting a four-day event that includes concert performances by Prince’s former bandmates and panel discussions.

It was a year ago Friday that the pop legend was found dead at Paisley Park, a recording complex outside Minneapolis, Minnesota, where Prince lived and created his music.

Fans come to grieve

Fans who came to the complex Friday included Mary Adams, who drove six hours from Kansas City, Missouri, with her 10-year-old daughter. 

“I needed to come here. This is where it began. I needed to pay homage to the star,” she said.

Adams said Prince had a profound impact on her life.

“Prince is the person that helped me decide that is was OK to be me, because that’s who he was. And he did it his way, his music, his style,” she added.

Minneapolis landmarks in purple

Fans are also holding a street party Saturday outside First Avenue, the club Prince made famous in Purple Rain, the title track of his breakthrough 1984 album and movie.

Landmarks around Minneapolis are being lighted in purple for two nights in tribute to Prince, while the Minnesota History Center is holding a special exhibit of Prince memorabilia.

The anniversary was supposed to be celebrated by the release of new Prince music. However, a Minnesota district court this week issued a temporary injunction barring the release of the six-song EP Deliverance after Prince’s estate filed a lawsuit claiming the works were stolen by his former sound engineer.

Prince’s commercial legacy continues to be surrounded in controversy. The pop star died without a will or children, and dozens of people came forward after his death, claiming they were heirs.

Musical legacy

Prince died at 57 from an accidental overdose of powerful painkillers he was secretly using to ease the pain of hip surgery.

Prince was 19 when he released his first album, For You, in 1978. In the decades that followed, the multitalented musician released 1999, Little Red Corvette and Purple Rain.

He sold more than 100 million albums worldwide, won seven Grammys and picked up an Oscar for Best Original Song score for Purple Rain. He was also inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2004.

Rhonda Soso said Friday that she came from California to Paisley Park “just to be a part of the purple family, the purple army, just be a part of just his spirit, just his energy.”

“It’s just still so difficult accepting that he’s no longer here,” she added.

 
…

They call themselves “water protectors” and describe the Dakota Access pipeline ferrying crude oil across America as “the black snake.”

In “Awake: A Dream From Standing Rock,” the Standing Rock Sioux tribe and those who flocked to windswept tribal lands in North Dakota last year to protest the pipeline, get to tell their story on their own terms.

They also hope to build on the impetus of the months-long standoff, despite the $3.8 billion project by Energy Transfer Partners LP eventually going ahead.

“The ambition of the film is really to get people to understand the issue and feel it in a way that’s emotional,” said director Josh Fox, an environmental activist and filmmaker.

The film, comprised of three parts by different directors, premieres on Saturday – Earth Day – at the Tribeca film festival. It also will be streamed online at awakethefilm.org on a pay-what-you-can basis with all proceeds going to the cause.

“It’s really about pushing the movement forward. We also want to say, you guys did something unbelievable, and this is one way of giving a debt of gratitude,” Fox said.

The 1,172-mile (1,885-km) Dakota Access line running from North Dakota to Illinois drew international attention in 2016 after the Standing Rock Native American tribe sued to block completion of the final link, saying it would desecrate a sacred burial ground.

Environmentalists also argued that potential leaks along its length would risk poisoning the water supply for some 17 million Americans.

In February, U.S. President Donald Trump gave the go-ahead to complete the project. The protest camps were demolished and oil is expected to start flowing in mid-May.

The film contrasts the water cannon, rubber bullets, helicopters and riot gear used by law enforcement officials against the protesters with idyllic scenes of sparkling water, sunsets, starry skies and communal camp life. More than 700 people were arrested during the protests.

“The film initiates as a dream, as if the last 500 years of civilization didn’t happen,” said Fox.

“It was an amazing place, and it ran on very different principles than our society – those of sharing mutual respect and non violence,” said Fox, who spent several weeks there at the suggestion of “Divergent” actress Shailene Woodley.

Although the protesters ultimately lost the battle over the pipeline, their spirits remain high.

“Our camp is gone, but our spirit is not broken,” says Sioux member Floris Bull White. “Will you wake up and join us?”
…

For Prince fans, Friday’s one-year anniversary of his shocking death from an accidental drug overdose will be a time for sadness and celebration.

 

At his Paisley Park home and recording studio-turned-museum, a full four days of events are on tap, ranging from concert performances by his former bandmates to panel discussions.

Fans who can’t afford those high-priced tickets can head to a street party outside First Avenue, the club he made world famous in “Purple Rain.” And the Minnesota History Center is staging a special exhibit of Prince memorabilia, including his iconic “Purple Rain” suit.

 

Here’s a look at how Prince’s home state will honor his legacy and mourn his loss:

 

Paisley Park

 

Prince’s home base in the Minneapolis suburb of Chanhassen is marking the anniversary with a roster of shows from artists such as his old band The Revolution, Morris Day and the Time and New Power Generation. Also on the docket: panel discussions featuring such speakers as his old band mates — think Lisa (Coleman) and Wendy (Melvoin) from “Purple Rain” and The Revolution — along with many more.

 

Fans who could afford it spent $999 for VIP passes for the Paisley schedule, and the estate said those were sold out. A relatively cheaper option — $549 general admission passes — was still available midweek.

 

Prince’s siblings, who are on track to inherit an estate valued around $200 million, are hosting an all-night dance party in the Minneapolis suburb of Golden Valley with Dez Dickerson, Apollonia Kotero, Andre Cymone and others.

 

First Avenue

 

The downtown Minneapolis club where Prince filmed key parts of “Purple Rain” is hosting late-night dance parties Friday and Saturday with tracks from the late superstar.

 

A memorial street party outside the club is also on tap for Saturday. It will be reminiscent of the one that drew thousands of mourners on the night of Prince’s death to cry, dance and sing along.

 

Pieces of History

 

Prince’s “Purple Rain” costume — purple jacket, white ruffled shirt and studded pants — was put out for display at the Minnesota History Center in St. Paul through Sunday.

The museum is also marking the anniversary by featuring handwritten lyrics to an unreleased song, “I Hope We Work It Out,” signed by Prince in 1977. Prince performed it for record executives when he first signed with Warner Bros.

 

Painting the Town Purple

 

Several landmarks in Minneapolis will be lit up in Prince purple, including U.S. Bank Stadium, Target Field, the IDS Center, and the Interstate 35W and Lowry Avenue bridges over the Mississippi River.
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An award-winning documentary has captured the innovative ways farmers and others are trying to make the planet a greener, more sustainable place.

Winner of the 2016 César for best documentary, the French equivalent of an Oscar, Tomorrow charts a road trip in which co-directors Cyril Dion and Mélanie Laurent roam the globe in search of solutions to environmental problems.

Their journey takes them to Icelandic volcanoes, Indian slums and French farmlands, among other places, to tell the stories of ordinary people fighting climate change.

The decision to steer away from doomsday narratives — most recently seen in Leonardo DiCaprio’s “Before the Flood” — came from the realization that such an approach failed to spur people into action, Dion said.

“When we focus on catastrophe, and on things that raise fear, it triggers mechanisms in the brain of rejection, flight and fear,” the longtime environmental activist said in a phone interview ahead of the film’s U.S. release Friday.

The film begins in the United States, where two California professors discuss their milestone 2012 study concluding climate change may signal a new cycle of mass extinction.

Soon afterward, Dion and Laurent — a French actress known for her role in “Inglourious Basterds” — hit the road.

Public plantings

In Britain, they visit the market town of Todmorden where residents have seized public spaces to plant fruit, vegetables and herbs — which pedestrians are encouraged to pick.

In the French city of Lille, the CEO of an envelope company shows them how bamboo is grown in the factory’s wastewater to feed a wood boiler that powers the unit’s central heating.

And in Copenhagen, local planners explain how building a labyrinth of bike paths is part of efforts to become first carbon-free capital by 2025.

“We don’t make the cities to make the cars happy, to make the modernistic planners and architects happy,” Jan Gehl, a local architect and urban planner, says in the film. “We have to make the cities so that citizens can have a good life and a good time.”

Dion said he was confident the film would appeal to American viewers despite the many U.S. lawmakers who are skeptical about climate change and oppose regulation to combat it.

Since being sworn in January, President Donald Trump has taken several steps to undo climate change regulations put in place by the previous administration.

Trump also promised during his election campaign to pull the United States out of the global climate change pact reached in Paris in 2015.
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The stars of Guardians of the Galaxy, the Marvel movie about a rag-tag group of intergalactic heroes, landed in Hollywood to debut their return in a much-anticipated sequel that sees them embark on another high-stakes space adventure.

In Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, space heroes Peter Quill, Gamora, Drax, Rocket and Groot find themselves pursued by a villain and once again are given the task of saving the universe.

They are joined along the way by Gamora’s petulant sister Nebula, space pirate Yondu and Mantis, an empathic alien. The film is scheduled to open in theaters May 5.

“This is a million-piece puzzle and when you sit back and see the mosaic put together you get this one incredibly even, fully executed idea,” Chris Pratt, who plays Peter Quill, said at the red carpet premiere Wednesday.

“It’s brilliant, great music, it’s super funny, dramatic and it’s got great emotion and relationships, it’s stunning,” he said.

Action with a heart

Sylvester Stallone, who makes an appearance as Stakar Ogord leader of the space pirates known as “ravagers,” said action films “are modern mythology when it’s done right.”

“The kind of action films I’ve done are sort of more mano-a-mano … now they’ve developed this Marvel universe Guardians that have a heart, that has a lot of emotion to it, that takes it another step further,” he said, using the Spanish phrase for “hand to hand” combat that has come to be associated with any kind of competition between two people.

“It’s kind of a cross between Rocky [and] Rambo in space,” he added.

Original set records

The sequel follows 2014’s Guardians of the Galaxy, which smashed summer box office records and ushered in a new cadre of edgy heroes in the Marvel cinematic universe.

“I made a movie about outcasts for outcasts and it’s very touching for me that people all over the world, whether here or in Japan or in Russia or in England have been touched by the movie,” writer-director James Gunn said.

Gunn will write and direct the third Guardians film, set for release in 2020.
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We’re lining up the five most popular songs in the Billboard Hot 100 Pop Singles chart for the week ending April 22, 2017.

It’s one thing when a song enters the Top Five, but quite another when it debuts in the Top Five. That’s what we’re looking at this week.

Number 5: The Chainsmokers & Coldplay “Something Just Like This”

Let’s start in fifth place, where The Chainsmokers and Coldplay back off two slots with “Something Just Like This.”

Coldplay is touring Asia and just performed in South Korea, where the band honored victims of the Sewol ferry tragedy, South Korea’s worst maritime disaster. On April 16, 2014, the ferry capsized and sank, leaving more than 300 people dead or missing.

Lead singer Chris Martin called for 10 seconds of silence to honor the victims.

Number 4: Kyle Featuring Lil Yachty “iSpy”

Kyle and Lil Yachty gain a notch in fourth place with “ISpy.” Lil Yachty says his debut full-length album will be titled Teenage Emotions; we still don’t have a release date.

Lil Yachty made an appearance last weekend at California’s Coachella Festival, joining Gucci Mane onstage.

Number 3: Bruno Mars “That’s What I Like”

Bruno Mars descends a slot to third place with “That’s What I Like.” If Mars feels like grabbing another artist for a collaboration, I have two names for him.

Barry Manilow says he loves Mars’ performing style; Manilow says they met once, but nothing came of it. If Mars wants to work with a female artist, JoJo says he’s her number one pick in the current music scene.

Number 2: Kendrick Lamar “Humble”

Here’s your big entrant of the week: Kendrick Lamar debuts in the runner-up slot with “Humble.”

On April 16, he closed Coachella’s first weekend with a headlining performance. It all happens again next weekend.

Number 1: Ed Sheeran “Shape of You”

Speaking of repetition, Ed Sheeran extends his championship run to 12 weeks with “Shape Of You.” How common is this? Not very.

In the 58-year history of the Hot 100 chart, only 18 songs have held the title for 12 weeks or longer. Most recently, The Chainsmokers and Halsey lasted exactly 12 weeks at the top with “Closer.”

That happened last November…but what will happen next week? Join us in seven days and we’ll listen together.
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The Mississippi Delta has no shortage of museums, historic attractions and clubs devoted to the blues. But visitors will find the region has many other stories to tell, from the cotton plantations where African-American families worked and lived in desperate poverty to culinary traditions that reflect a surprising ethnic diversity.

The Blues Trail and Museums

You can’t miss the big blue guitars marking the famous crossroads of Highways 61 and 49 in Clarksdale. This is where, according to legend, Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil to learn how to play the blues.

 

Roadside signs for the Mississippi Blues Trail make it easy to find other sites as well, from Clarksdale’s Riverside Hotel, where Bessie Smith died, to the Dockery Farms cotton plantation in Cleveland, where many pioneering bluesmen lived, worked and made music, including Charley Patton, Roebuck “Pops” Staples and Howlin’ Wolf.

A sign in a field at Clarksdale’s Stovall Plantation notes that Muddy Waters’ songs were recorded there in 1941 by musicologist Alan Lomax as he collected folk music for the Library of Congress.

 

The sharecropper’s shack that Waters lived in has been restored and relocated to the nearby Delta Blues Museum. In Indianola, the B.B. King Museum and Delta Interpretive Center pays tribute to King’s life and legacy. He’s buried there as well.

These museums and others use photos, artifacts, videos and other exhibits to explore the blues’ roots, beginning with African musical traditions brought to the South by slaves. Because Delta cotton plantations were relatively isolated, musical styles developed here uninfluenced by trends elsewhere. But eventually, many African-Americans who barely eked out a living working for white landowners in the decades after the Civil War migrated away from the South, seeking economic opportunity elsewhere along with an escape from segregation and racial terror.

 

Waters left the Delta for Chicago in 1943. King left Mississippi for Memphis, where he got his big break at radio station WDIA. These and other bluesmen were worshipped by 1960s music giants like Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones. “Muddy Waters’ music changed my life,” said Eric Clapton. As the title of one of Waters’ songs puts it, “The Blues Had a Baby and They Named It Rock and Roll.”

Cat Head, clubs, festivals

Stop in Cat Head, a Mississippi blues music and gift store in Clarksdale, for a chat with owner Roger Stolle, a blues fan who moved there to “help pull the blues scene together in a way that would get people to come.” Local clubs stagger their schedules so you can hear live music every night. Stolle keeps a list online of who’s playing where.

Clarksdale’s best-known club is Ground Zero, co-owned by actor Morgan Freeman and Clarksdale Mayor Bill Luckett, but blues fans may be disappointed by party-vibe bands playing songs here like “Sweet Home Alabama.”

 

A more interesting venue is Red’s. Don’t be fooled by its rundown appearance and tiny, informal, living-room-style interior. Red’s showcases under-the-radar, brilliantly talented musicians like Lucious Spiller, whose performances will make you realize why the blues still matter.

Delta festivals include the Sunflower River Blues & Gospel Festival, August 11-13, and the October 12-15 Deep Blues Fest. Next year’s Juke Joint Festival will be April 12-15.

Food, lodging

Mississippi cuisine isn’t just catfish and barbecue. Doe’s, in Greenville, where a security guard watches over your car as you dine and walks you to the parking area when you leave, is known for steaks the size of your head and has been recognized by the James Beard Foundation. Chamoun’s Rest Haven in Clarksdale, founded by a Lebanese family in the 1940s, serves some of the best kibbe you’ll find outside the Middle East.

At Larry’s Hot Tamales, ask owner Larry Lee to share stories of how Mexican tamales became a scrumptious Mississippi staple. For upscale bistro fare like ceviche and roasted vegetables, try Yazoo Pass in Clarksdale.

To learn more about culinary traditions in Mississippi and elsewhere in the South, visit the Southern Foodways Alliance website.

Delta accommodations range from motels to the Alluvian, a luxury boutique hotel in Greenwood. A unique lodging option in the Delta is spending the night in a preserved sharecropper’s shack at the Shack Up Inn in Clarksdale or at Tallahatchie Flats in Greenwood.

Some travelers may find the concept offensive as a sugarcoating of the misery experienced by those who had no choice but to live this way. But for others, a night spent in a rustic cabin that rattles with the howling wind or shakes to its foundations in a thunderstorm may evoke the very vulnerability that makes the blues so haunting.
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New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady and Cleveland Cavaliers forward LeBron James were among seven sports figures named to Time Magazine’s annual list of the world’s most influential people, which was announced Thursday.

While Brady and James have ample championships on their resume, polarizing NFL free-agent quarterback Colin Kaepernick also appeared on the list that included pioneers, artists and leaders.

Chicago Cubs general manager Theo Epstein, 2016 Olympic gold-medal gymnast Simone Biles, UFC light heavyweight champion Conor McGregor and Barcelona superstar forward Neymar were also included on the list.

Brady collected his fifth Super Bowl ring in February after helping the Patriots overcome a 25-point deficit in the third quarter to defeat the Atlanta Falcons in overtime of Super Bowl LI.

“The mic was dropped,” talk-show host Conan O’Brien wrote of the victory over the Falcons. “But Tom’s real achievement is that he willed himself to be (the best).”

James also was instrumental in helping his team rally from a 3-1 series deficit to upend the Golden State Warriors in the NBA Finals.

“By making good on his pledge to bring a championship to the Cleveland Cavaliers and by investing in the promise of future generations through his foundation, LeBron James has not only bolstered the self-esteem of his native Ohio but also become an inspiration for all Americans — proof that talent combined with passion, tenacity and decency can reinvent the possible. Poetry in motion, indeed,” wrote Rita Dove, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and former U.S. poet laureate.

Kaepernick’s initial refusal to stand for the national anthem as part of his protest for racial injustice led others around the NFL to follow suit.

“I thank Colin, for all he has contributed to the game of football as an outstanding player and trusted teammate,” Kaepernick’s former coach Jim Harbaugh wrote. “I also applaud Colin for the courage he has demonstrated in exercising his guaranteed right of free speech. His willingness to take a position at personal cost is now part of our American story.”

 
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Oprah Winfrey doesn’t scare easy and she wasn’t frightened here.

“But I was unsure and uncertain of myself going into this role,” she says. “I did not want to do it. I never truly expected to do it. I had other people in mind to do it.”

Instead, it’s Winfrey who erupts in the new HBO film “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” as a tormented woman in search of the mother she never knew whose tissue sample would yield medical marvels benefiting millions.

The film, which premieres Saturday at 8 p.m. EDT, is based on the best-seller by Rebecca Skloot. It charts the rocky road to discovery shared by Henrietta Lacks’ daughter Deborah (Winfrey) with Skloot, who wanted to shine light on the human story behind the legendary cell line known as “HeLa.” Rose Byrne (“Damages,” ”Bridesmaids”) plays the intrepid reporter Skloot.

Winfrey was captivated by the book and acquired the rights with the intent of producing a film. Then two things happened to set the project on its proper course.

She heard one of the hundreds of interviews Skloot had made with Deborah Lacks (who had died just months before the book’s 2010 publication). Winfrey heard her on tape saying to Skloot, “Girl! Did you see ‘The Oprah Show’ today? SHE should play me!”

“I did it as a way of honoring her,” Winfrey says, “honoring the legacy she tried to create and build for her mother.”

The other reason Winfrey couldn’t say no to the role: George C. Wolfe, the celebrated Tony Award-winning stage and film director, joined the project.

Wolfe saw the film as more than an untold tale of science.

“The desire to know one’s parents – that’s a very primal thing,” he says. “They are literally and metaphorically the DNA of who we become. For Deborah to know her mother is to know her own story. That’s the driving energy on which everything else in the film can hang.”

Even the simplest things Deborah wants to know: “Did she breast-feed me? Did she love to dance?”

A poor tobacco farmer who worked the same Virginia land as her slave ancestors, Henrietta Lacks died in 1951 at age 31.

“In segregated America, on paper, she had no power,” says Wolfe. “But her HeLa cells were unbelievably powerful. That juxtaposition was really fascinating to me.”

The film was shot last summer in the Atlanta area, plus a few days on location at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore.

Byrne reports that during the production, “I didn’t see the Oprah that we all know: ‘OP-rah WIN-frey!!!’ She was very focused, very meditative, finding her way, like we all did.

“It was intimidating for me,” Byrne adds. “But that was good because that’s what Rebecca was: intimidated to try to tell this story (about Henrietta Lacks and her cell line) that she had been obsessed with since she was 15.”

The close but stormy relationship forged between Deborah and Rebecca is portrayed robustly by Winfrey and Byrne.

“The way you achieve that is by finding two people who are extraordinarily generous with each other,” says Wolfe. “Where one pushes, the other is there to receive the push and then push back. You can’t achieve that kind of connectedness with people who have their guards up.”

As for Winfrey in particular, Wolfe hails her as “brave and ferocious and willing.”

“I don’t have a lot of acting experience,” insists Winfrey, who says she learned her greatest acting lesson long ago, during her first, Oscar-nominated film appearance in the 1985 drama “The Color Purple.”

The director, Steven Spielberg, warned her that she would need to cry in a scene the next day. She feared she didn’t know how. She was frantic. Then a veteran co-star, Adolph Caesar, gave her wise counsel: “He says, ‘You got to let the character take control. And if SHE wants to cry, she will cry. But if SHE doesn’t want to cry, not even Steven Spielberg can make her.’ So giving yourself over is part of the process.”

Perhaps by now, at 63, Winfrey has learned to give herself over to the process in ways even beyond a film role: She says she’s easing up after all those hard-driving decades seeking more and more mountains to climb.

“The 60s are no longer about the climb. They’re about enjoying the view, the view that you created based on the long climb,” she explains. “I feel no need to prove anything anymore. The joy is in doing it, when you can come away from an experience savoring the view.”

 
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There’s another kerfuffle about crowd size surrounding the president.

On Wednesday, the Super Bowl-winning New England Patriots visited the White House to meet U.S. President Donald Trump.

As is the tradition, there were plenty of photo opps, including a group photo.

The New York Times then tweeted the group shot photo and compared it to the 2015 shot, which also featured the Patriots.

Some players declined to visit the controversial president. Star quarterback Tom Brady, a friend of Trump, also missed the event, saying he had to attend to family issues.

Upon a quick glance, it looked like there were fewer people in the 2017 shot, but the Patriots quickly pointed out that the Times comparison lacked a key piece of information.

“These photos lack context. Facts: In 2015, over 40 football staff were on the stairs. In 2017, they were seated on the South Lawn,” the team tweeted from its official account.

Trump, who appears to have a love-hate relationship with what he has called the “failing” New York Times, was quick to weigh in.

“Failing @nytimes, which has been calling me wrong for two years, just got caught in a big lie concerning New England Patriots visit to W.H.,” the president tweeted from his @realDonaldTrump account.
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Cuban farmer Pascual Ferrel says his favorite fighting cock’s prowess was “off the charts,” so after it died of illness he had the black and red rooster preserved and displays it on his mantelpiece beside a television.

“He fought six times and was invincible,” the 64-year old recalled fondly, talking over the crowing of 60 birds in his farmyard in the central Cuban region of Ciego de Avila.

Though it is banned in many parts of the world, cockfighting is favored throughout the Caribbean and in Cuba its popularity is growing.

Last year, Ciego de Avila opened its first official cockfighting arena with 1,000 seats, the largest in Cuba, to the dismay of animal rights activists who see it as a step backward.

Cockfighting is a blood sport because of the harm cocks do to each other in cockpits, exacerbated by metal spurs that can be attached to birds’ own spurs.

After the 1959 revolution, Cuba cracked down on cockfighting as part of a ban on gambling, recalls Ferrel.

Over the years that stance has softened. Official arenas have opened and hidden arenas are tolerated as long as there are no brawls.

“‘People say: if the government is allowed to hold cockfights, why can’t we?” says Nora Garcia Perez, head of Cuban animal welfare association Aniplant.

Enthusiasts argue that cockfighting is a centuries-old tradition. Critics say it is cruel, and they blame its popularity on lack of entertainment options, poor education on animal welfare, and its money-making potential.

In Ciego de Avila, there is a different clandestine arena for every day of the week, some hidden among marabu brush or in sugarcane fields, down dirt tracks with no signs.

People carrying cockerels in slings or under their arms travel to these venues by horse-drawn carriage, bicycle or in candy-colored vintage American cars.

Arenas made of wood and palm fronds operate like fairgrounds. Ranchera music blasts from loudspeakers, roasted pork and rum are sold and tables are set up with dice and card games.

“You’ll see how fun this is,” says Yaidelin Rodriguez, 32, a regular with her husband, writing in a notebook bets she has placed on her cock.

Gambling is outlawed in Cuba but wads of cash exchange hands at most arenas. Enthusiasts wear baseball caps that read “Cocks win me money, women take it away.”

In the Ciego de Avila official arena, foreigners pay up to $60 for a front row seat. At concealed arenas, mainly a local affair, seats are $2 to $8, a princely sum in a country where the average monthly state salary is $25.

“We can earn about $600 a day from entrance fees and the sale of seats,” says Reinol, who declined to give his full name.

He splits that sum with his business partner and still earns more from it than from his regular job as a butcher.

Cuba also exports cockerels, breeders say, adding that cocks with proven fighting prowess could sell for up to $1000.

At a secluded arena near Ciego de Avila one recent afternoon, cigar-smoking, rum-swigging owners guarded their birds to make sure no one hurt or poisoned them before the fight.

“Come on,” “Go for it,” onlookers screeched once it began, the cocks flying at one another in rage.

“You have to train the cocks like they are boxers, so they are prepared,” says Basilio Gonzalesm adding they must also be groomed, scarlet legs sheared and feathers clipped.

Some, like cockfighting enthusiast Jorge Guerra, dream of making more money in countries where betting is legal.

“I’d like to go somewhere with big competitions and bets like Puerto Rico,” the farmer said. “I’d like to show someone how much money I could make for them breeding cocks.”

 
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Zimbabwean boys as young as 10 hurry every weekend to a boxing ring whose nickname, Wafa Wafa, in the local Shona language suggests that whoever enters will be lucky to come out alive.

 

No one has died in the ring, let alone suffered serious injury. But the exchanges can be brutal and bleeding is part of the game in this impoverished township 18 miles (30 kilometers) outside the capital, Harare.

 

In Zimbabwe, where unemployment is rife and many youths are taking to drugs and alcohol, a former boxing champion hopes the pain in the makeshift ring will make for some gains.

 

“We are teaching them discipline through boxing. They are less prone to do drugs once they are committed to this regime,” said Arigoma Chiponda, a former light heavyweight local champion who now runs a gym and encourages youths to take up boxing, even though the prospects of going professional are slim.

 

The floor of the ring is muddied from recent rains, the ropes supported by unprotected metal poles. Most boys go into the ring barefoot. They wear anything from old jeans and T-shirts to shorts. One fighter goes into the ring with formal trousers, shirt and shoes, looking like he’s come from a wedding.

 

There are two pairs of frayed gloves which the young fighters use to pummel each other. They are one-size-fits-all, so they are sometimes comically oversized for the youngest fighters.

 

Often there are bloodied noses, and tempers flare over “unprofessional conduct” when blows go below the belt.

 

Nearby is a shopping center teeming with beer drinkers. Other youths pass around a prescription cough syrup sold on the black market to get high. Groups of numbed youths sit like zombies there and at nearby street corners.

 

“I stopped being part of that crowd when I started boxing,” said Abel Chitsoka, 17, pointing at some teens his age gulping the cough syrup nearby.

 

“The ring is free for all. It helps keep the kids focused but eventually we would want them to go professional. Unfortunately, the sport is not viable in Zimbabwe right now. There are no sponsors and it has been years since we had professional tournaments,” said Gilbert Munetsi, a regular at the fight club and a former secretary-general of the Zimbabwe Boxing Control Body. “We are thinking of taking them to Namibia.”

 

Kudzai Chimwaya is 10 but throws and dodges punches like a mini-professional.

 

“I have been coming here for two years now,” he said. “I want the bigger boys now.”

 

Coaches milling around won’t allow it because the rule is to pair boys of the same age group to avoid serious injuries.

 

“Our challenge has been convincing their parents that this is a safe sport,” said one coach, Pamson Sankulani. “The lack of proper equipment and medical kits is something that always unnerves the parents.”

 

They don’t have such issues with Omega Chimwaya, Kudzai’s father. He is usually among the ringside spectators watching his son in action.

 

“He loves it, so I let him do it. I fear I will lose him to the drug and alcohol gang if he doesn’t grow up boxing,” said Chimwaya. He added that he hopes his son won’t think of taking the sport too seriously as he grows up.

 

“No way. Boxing doesn’t pay in this country. He should do school and become someone in life. He has to finish his weekend school homework before he ventures out here,” the father said. “Yes, it’s a good place to keep the kids from the wrong influences. As a career, no.”

 
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Egypt has unveiled a massive granite statue of Ramses II, the most powerful and celebrated of the ancient Pharaohs, after completing its restoration.

Standing 11 meters (36 feet) tall and weighing 75 tons, the statue was presented in a floodlit ceremony at the Luxor Temple on the banks of the Nile on Tuesday evening. When the statue was discovered between 1958 and 1960, it was in 57 pieces.

Ramses II, also known as Ramses the Great or Ozymandias, reigned more than 3,000 years ago. He led several military expeditions and expanded the Egyptian empire to stretch from Syria in the north to Nubia in the south.

The statue was displayed just hours after archaeologists unveiled the tomb of a nobleman from more than 3,000 years ago, the latest in a series of discoveries that Egypt hopes will revive a tourist business hit by political instability.

“What we’re happy with is that [the kind of tourists drawn to] classical Egypt, Luxor, Aswan, Nile cruises … are back to normal levels again,” said Hisham El Demery, chief of Egypt’s Tourism Development Authority.

However, an attack Tuesday claimed by Islamic State near St. Catherine’s Monastery on the Sinai Peninsula, one of the world’s most important Christian sites, revived fears for the tourist sector there.

The attack left one police officer dead and four others wounded.
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The Museum of the American Revolution has opened its doors in Philadelphia, with fife and drum music, colorful colonial re-enactors and the blessing of former Vice President Joe Biden.

 

Wednesday’s grand opening festivities traversed three spots in historic Philadelphia, starting at the Tomb of the Unknown Revolutionary War Soldier.

 

A fife and drum corps provided an 18th century soundtrack as re-enactors marched to Independence Hall.

Current and former governors of states making up the 13 original colonies gave toasts.

 

Another march led to the new museum for the official dedication and performances including songs from the Broadway hit “Hamilton.”

 

Biden told the crowd the museum is an important reminder of “how we got where we are.”
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