Arts

Glen Campbell, the grinning, high-pitched entertainer whose dozens of hit singles included “Rhinestone Cowboy” and “Wichita Lineman” and whose appeal spanned country, pop, television and movies, died Tuesday, his family said. He was 81.

 

Campbell’s family said the singer died Tuesday morning in Nashville and publicist Sandy Brokaw confirmed the news. No cause was immediately given. Campbell announced in June 2011 that he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease and that it was in its early stages at that time.

 

“Glen is one of the greatest voices there ever was in the business and he was one of the greatest musicians,” said Dolly Parton in a video statement. “He was a wonderful session musician as well. A lot of people don’t realize that. But he could play anything and he could play it really well.”

 

Tributes poured in on social media. “Thank you Glen Campbell for sharing your talent with us for so many years May you rest in peace my friend You will never be forgotten,” wrote Charlie Daniels. One of Campbell’s daughters, Ashley, said she was heartbroken. “I owe him everything I am, and everything I ever will be. He will be remembered so well and with so much love,” she wrote on Twitter.

In the late 1960s and well into the ’70s, the Arkansas native seemed to be everywhere, known by his boyish face, wavy hair and friendly tenor. He won five Grammys, sold more than 45 million records, had 12 gold albums and 75 chart hits, including No. 1 songs with “Rhinestone Cowboy” and “Southern Nights.”

His performance of the title song from “True Grit,” a 1969 release in which he played a Texas Ranger alongside Oscar winner John Wayne, received an Academy Award nomination. He twice won album of the year awards from the Academy of Country Music and was voted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2005. Seven years later, he received a Grammy for lifetime achievement.

 

His last record was “Adios,” which came out in June and features songs that Campbell loved to sing but never recorded, including tunes made famous by Bob Dylan, Linda Ronstadt and Johnny Cash. Ashley Campbell, also a musician, made a quest appearance and said making the album was “therapeutic.”

 

Campbell was among a wave of country crossover stars that included Johnny Cash, Roy Clark and Kenny Rogers, and like many of his contemporaries, he enjoyed success on television. Campbell had a weekly audience of some 50 million people for the “Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour,” on CBS from 1969 to 1972. He gained new fans decades later when the show, featuring his cheerful greeting “Hi I’m Glen Campbell,” was rerun on cable channel CMT.

 

“I did what my Dad told me to do — ‘Be nice, son, and don’t cuss. And be nice to people.’ And that’s the way I handled myself, and people were very, very nice to me,” Campbell told The Telegraph in 2011.

He released more than 70 of his own albums, and in the 1990s recorded a series of gospel CDs. A 2011 farewell album, “Ghost On the Canvas,” included contributions from Jacob Dylan, Rick Nielsen of Cheap Trick and Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins.

 

The documentary “Glen Campbell … I’ll Be Me” came out in 2014. The film about Campbell’s 2011-12 farewell tour offers a poignant look at his decline from Alzheimer’s while showcasing his virtuoso guitar chops that somehow continued to shine as his mind unraveled. The song “I’m Not Gonna Miss You” won a Grammy for best country song in 2015 and was nominated for an Oscar for best original song.

 

Campbell’s musical career dated back to the early years of rock `n roll. He toured with the Champs of “Tequila” fame when the group included two singers who formed the popular ’70s duo Seals & Crofts. He was part of the house band for the ABC TV show “Shindig!” and a member of Phil Spector’s “Wrecking Crew” studio band that played on hits by the Ronettes, the Righteous Brothers and the Crystals. He played guitar on Frank Sinatra’s “Strangers In the Night,” the Monkees’ “I’m a Believer” and Elvis Presley’s “Viva Las Vegas.”

 

“We’d get the rock ‘n’ roll guys and play all that, then we’d get Sinatra and Dean Martin,” Campbell told The Associated Press in 2011. “That was a kick. I really enjoyed that. I didn’t want to go nowhere. I was making more money than I ever made just doing studio work.”

 

A sharecropper’s son, and one of 12 children, he was born outside of Delight, Arkansas, and grew up revering country music stars such as Hank Williams.

 

“I’m not a country singer per se,” Campbell once said. “I’m a country boy who sings.”

He was just 4 when he learned to play guitar. As a teenager, anxious to escape a life of farm work and unpaid bills, he moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico to join his uncle’s band and appear on his uncle’s radio show. By his early 20s, he had formed his own group, the Western Wranglers, and moved to Los Angeles. He opened for the Doors and sang and played bass with the Beach Boys as a replacement for Brian Wilson, who in the mid-’60s had retired from touring to concentrate on studio work. In 1966, Campbell played on the Beach Boys’ classic “Pet Sounds” album.

 

“I didn’t go to Nashville because Nashville at that time seemed one-dimensional to me,” Campbell told the AP. “I’m a jazzer. I just love to get the guitar and play the hell out of it if I can.”

 

By the late ’60s, he was a performer on his own, an appearance on Joey Bishop’s show leading to his TV breakthrough. Tommy Smothers of the Smothers Brothers saw the program and asked Campbell if he’d like to host a summertime series, “The Summer Brothers Smothers Show.” Campbell shied from the Smothers Brothers’ political humor, but still accepted the offer. He was out of the country when the first episode aired.

 

“The whole lid just blew off,” Campbell told the AP. “I had never had anything like that happen to me. I got more phone calls. It was awesome. For the first couple of days I was like how do they know me? I didn’t realize the power of television.”

 

His guests included country acts, but also the Monkees, Lucille Ball, Cream, Neil Diamond and Ella Fitzgerald.

 

He was married four times and had eight children. As he would confide in painful detail, Campbell suffered for his fame and made others suffer as well. He drank heavily, used drugs and indulged in a turbulent relationship with country singer Tanya Tucker in the early 1980s.

He is survived by his wife, Kim; their three children, Cal, Shannon and Ashley; and his children from previous marriages, Debby, Kelli, Travis, Kane and Dillon. He had 10 grandchildren.

 

In late 2003, he was arrested near his home in Phoenix after causing a minor traffic accident. He later pleaded guilty to “extreme” DUI and leaving the scene of an accident and served a 10-day sentence.

 

Among Campbell’s own hits, “Rhinestone Cowboy” stood out and became his personal anthem. Written and recorded by Larry Weiss in 1974, “Rhinestone Cowboy” received little attention until Campbell heard it on the radio and quickly related to the story of a veteran performer who triumphs over despair and hardship. Campbell’s version was a chart topper in 1975.

 

“I thought it was my autobiography set to song,” he wrote 20 years later, in his autobiography, titled “Rhinestone Cowboy.”
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Films by Greta Gerwig, Sean Baker and Agnes Varda are headed to the 55th New York Film Festival. The Film Society of Lincoln Center announced the selections of 25 films for its main slate on Tuesday, including eight directed by women.

The festival, held annually at Lincoln Center, is one of the most prestigious of the fall season. Among the films selected are Baker’s acclaimed Cannes entry The Florida Project, the 89-year-old Varda’s Faces Places and Gerwig’s directorial debut Lady Bird. Gerwig’s frequent collaborator and romantic partner Noah Baumbach will also return to the festival with his Netflix release The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected).

Many of the selections, as usual, include previous festival standouts. Luca Guadagnino’s Call Me by Your Name and Dee Rees’ Mudbound will come to the festival after lauded debuts at Sundance. Other Cannes hits include Ruben Ostlund’s Palme d’Or winning comedy The Square and Robin Campillo’s AIDS activist drama BPM (Beats Per Minute).

The festival previously announced its three galas, all of which are Amazon Studios releases. Richard Linklater’s Last Flag Flying, a kind of sequel to Hal Ashby’s The Last Detail, will open the festival. Todd Haynes’ Brian Selznick adaptation Wonderstruck is the centerpiece, and Woody Allen’s 1950s Coney Island tale Wonder Wheel will close.

The New York Film Festival runs Sept. 28 to Oct. 15.
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Deep below London’s bustling streets, a piece of once-vital communications technology will soon be roaring back into life after years of disuse — a train.

The train operates on the “mail rail” line — a 6.4-mile underground train track that once transported letters and parcels 70 feet below ground to and from sorting offices on the east and west sides of the city 22 hours each day.

The line, construction of which began in 1915, ceased operations in 2003. It will be opened to the public next month as a tourist attraction, part of the new Postal Museum in the city’s Clerkenwell district.

“Mail rail originally came about because mail was being delayed in London due to congestion in the streets above us,” Adrian Steel, director of the Postal Museum and mail rail, told Reuters.

Visitors can now ride a section of the old track in specially built trains, and explore an engineering depot turned exhibition space.

“One of the biggest jobs we’ve had is finding a way of taking people through these narrow tunnels that were never meant for people to pass through in a way that’s not completely uncomfortable or dangerous,” Steel said.

Apart from their role in delivering mail, the tunnels played a useful role during World War I and World War II.

Construction of the line was halted when war broke out and the space was instead used to store valuable artifacts, and was relied on heavily to avoid mail disruption during the blitz of World War II.

Aside from its unique history, another aspect of the mail rail line sets it apart from other London underground train lines — an absence of rats.

“It’s a rodent-free terminal and under London which is unusual,” Steel said. “Because there were no people on the trains, there is no food for the rats and mice.”

Rail mail at London’s Postal Museum opens to visitors on Sept. 4.
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Hackers using the name “Mr. Smith” posted a fresh cache of stolen HBO files online Monday, and demanded that HBO pay a ransom of several million dollars to prevent further such releases.

The data dump included what appear to be scripts from five “Game of Thrones” episodes, including one upcoming episode, and a month’s worth of email from the account of Leslie Cohen, HBO’s vice president for film programming. There were also internal documents, including a report of legal claims against the network and job offer letters to top executives.

HBO, which previously acknowledged the theft of “proprietary information,” said it’s continuing to investigate and is working with police and cybersecurity experts. The network said Monday that it still doesn’t believe that its email system as a whole has been compromised.

This is the second data dump from the purported hacker. So far the HBO leaks have been limited, falling well short of the chaos inflicted on Sony in 2014. In that attack, hackers unearthed thousands of embarrassing emails and released personal information, including salaries and social security numbers, of nearly 50,000 current and former Sony employees.  

 

Those behind the HBO hack claim to have more data, including scripts, upcoming episodes of HBO shows and movies, and information damaging to HBO.

In a video directed to HBO CEO Richard Plepler, “Mr. Smith” used white text on a black background to threaten further disclosures if HBO doesn’t pay up. To stop the leaks, the purported hackers demanded “our 6 month salary in bitcoin,” which they implied is at least $6 million.

 
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The estate of Michael Jackson says a 3-D version of the late singer’s iconic “Thriller” video is set to debut at the Venice Film Festival more than 30 years after its original premiere.

 

The estate says the “latest available technology” was used to convert the 14-minute short film from an original 35mm negative to 3-D.

 

Although the film wasn’t reedited or recut in any way, director John Landis says he was able to “use the 3-D creatively” and promises “a rather shocking surprise.”

 

“Michael Jackson’s Thriller” debuted in theaters and on television in 1983. An hour-long documentary detailing the making of the video will also screen at the Venice festival, which runs from Aug. 30 to Sept. 9.

 

Jackson died in 2009 at the age of 50.
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“Ditch your car” is one of the first bits of advice from author Edward Abbey, for anyone wanting to visit Utah’s vast desert landscapes.

“You can’t see anything from a car; you’ve got to get out of the … contraption and walk, better yet crawl, on hands and knees, over the sandstone and through the thornbush and cactus,” he writes in Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness, based on his two seasons (1956 and 1957) working as a park ranger in Utah.

Abbey was inspired by the western state’s stunning red rock formations that were shaped into other-worldly spires and dramatic arches by geological forces over millions of years.

Some of the most beautiful can be found at five of Utah’s most popular national park sites, known as “The Mighty 5.” National parks traveler Mikah Meyer planned to visit all of them.

Superstar of arches

There are more than 2,000 natural sandstone arches at Arches National Park, making up the world’s largest collection, and Mikah must have been thinking about Edward Abbey as he parked his van and took to the park’s numerous trails by foot.

He says he could see firsthand why it’s one of the most visited parks in the state, with 1.6 million visitors last year.

“Even outside of the park and all around Utah, there are these arches that just naturally form from the rock eroding, but in Arches National Park are some of the most magnificent … either really large, or there’s two or three all clustered together, there’s a double arch where you can see through two arches at once, and then of course there’s Delicate Arch.”

The massive, red-hued structure is considered by many the most famous natural stone arch in the world. “It’s this perfect arch that seems to come out of nowhere,” Mikah said, “because it’s essentially on its own on top of a hill with a giant vista and mountains behind it.” So it’s not surprising that visitors “one by one, take their time running or walking into the arch to take their picture,” he added.

After his visit to Arches, Mikah accepted a complimentary boat tour on the nearby Colorado River with Canyonlands by Night & Day jet boat company.

“It gives you a perspective of this land which many people describe as Mars with water because it’s just so arid, and so red and orange looking,” Mikah explained. “It’s this really cool juxtaposition not only of views, but of the wildlife that survives in the desert.”

He saw rattlesnakes, salamanders, chipmunks, frogs and deer in and around the river.

Island in the sky

The massive Canyonlands National Park, the next stop on Mikah’s Mighty 5 adventure, has three distinct districts: The Needles, Island in the Sky and the Maze.

The Needles District is home to a large collection of hoodoos, which Mikah described as “giant rock structures that look like giant fingers sticking out of the earth.” Visitors are able to hike around them.

But his favorite was the Island in the Sky district, which he reached just in time for sunset.

“This is where you’re able to drive along a scenic road that takes you along all these incredible overlooks that give you expansive views of the canyon and of the rivers, and it’s a wow moment,” he said. “It’s the take-your-breath-away, audibly say ‘wow!’ moment.”

Heart of red rock country

From Canyonlands, it was on to Capitol Reef National Park, which Mikah described as “a mix of all the other parks.”

“You have some stunning cliffs, some canyon views, some natural rock arches,” he said. “Just a nice blend of all the other Mighty 5 parks.”

In the coming days, Mikah plans to visit the other two of the Mighty 5 parks — Bryce Canyon and Zion national parks.

‘Bloody rocks’

In the introductory remarks to Desert Solitaire, Edward Abbey noted that many of the places he wrote about in 1967 were “already gone or going under fast.”

 

“This is not a travel guide but an elegy. A memorial,” he wrote. “You’re holding a tombstone in your hands. A bloody rock. Don’t drop it on your foot — throw it at something big and glassy. What do you have to lose?”

Mikah has nothing to lose. He plans to continue on his journey to visit all 417 National Park Service sites at full speed, and explore as many of those “tombstones” and “bloody rocks” while he can.

Mikah invites you to follow him on his epic journey by visiting him on his website TCBMikah.com, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube.
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Two members of the Russian feminist punk band Pussy Riot were briefly detained Monday after rallying for the release of a Ukrainian filmmaker outside his Siberian prison.

During Sunday’s protest in Yakutsk where Oleg Sentsov is serving his sentence, the band members unfurled a banner on a nearby bridge that read “Free Sentsov!”

Longtime Pussy Riot member Maria Alyokhina tweeted that she and Olga Borisova were taken to a police station following their detention earlier in the day and faced a court hearing over charges of holding an unauthorized rally.

Borisova later said on Facebook that she and Alyokhina were released after a judge found flaws in the case. It was unclear if the police would refile charges.

A Russian military court convicted Sentsov, who comes from the Crimean Peninsula that Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014, of conspiracy to commit terror attacks and sentenced him to 20 years in prison.

Sentsov, who made two short movies and the 2012 feature film “Gamer,” denied the charges, which he and his supporters denounced as political punishment for his opposition to Crimea’s annexation.

The U.S. and the EU have criticized his conviction and called for his release, and numerous cultural figures in Russia and abroad have urged the Russian government to free him.

Pussy Riot is a loose collective and most of its members perform anonymously. The balaclava-clad women rose to prominence with their daring outdoor performances critical of President Vladimir Putin and Russia’s ruling elite.

An impromptu “punk prayer” at Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Savior that derided the ties between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Kremlin got them into trouble in 2012.

Three band members were convicted of “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred” for the stunt. Alyokhina and another member, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, spent nearly two years in prison.
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In a vast network of tunnels carved into the rocks under the Maltese capital Valletta, faded maps of the Mediterranean hint at the place’s role in directing key battles in World War II.

Malta is now restoring the 28,000 square meters (300,000 square feet) of tunnels, planning to open a huge section to the public.

The compound, hidden under the picturesque port city perched on cliffs above the sea, was built by the British and served as the staging ground for major naval operations. The British military withdrew in 1979 and the compound was abandoned for almost 40 years.

German and Italian forces bombarded Malta intensively between 1940 and 1942 to try gain control of the Mediterranean, but did not manage to force the British out. During the Cold War, the tunnels were used to track Soviet submarines.

Over the years, water and humidity have let rust and mold spread. Some rooms have been vandalized, but traces of the military apparatus that once occupied the complex still remain.

Military cot beds, tangled cables and dust-covered rotary phones litter the rooms.

The Malta Heritage Trust, a non-governmental preservation group, began the multi-million-dollar restoration of the site in 2009.
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The music video for the No. 1 hit song Despacito has a new record — it’s become the most popular clip on YouTube of all-time with more than 3 billion views.

YouTube announced Friday that Luis Fonsi’s ubiquitous song with Daddy Yankee has surpassed previous record holder See You Again, the song by Wiz Khalifa and Charlie Puth from the Furious 7 soundtrack.

Despacito became an international smash hit this year, topping the Billboard Hot 100 chart. The record-breaking video does not include the popular remix with Justin Bieber; that version has been viewed more than 464 million times.

The video is also the most liked video on YouTube.
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The Western state of Utah is home to stunning red rock formations shaped by geological forces over millions of years. Some of the most beautiful are at five of the state’s most popular national park sites, known as “The Mighty 5.” At Arches National Park alone, there are more than 2,000 natural sandstone arches, making up the world’s largest collection. National parks traveler Mikah Meyer shared highlights of his visit to Arches, and two other Mighty 5 sites, with VOA’s Julie Taboh.
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Steve Jobs – who helped usher in the era of personal computers – has been the subject of movies and books, but his complicated life, and the ubiquitous objects he left behind, also turn out to be the stuff of opera.

“Steve Jobs’ life was complicated and messy,” notes Grammy-nominated composer Mason Bates. “He had a daughter that he didn’t acknowledge for many years; he had cancer – you can’t control that. He was while a very charismatic figure, quite a hard driving boss, and his collisions with the fact that he wanted to make everything sleek and controllable, yet life is not controllable, is (a) fascinating topic for an opera.”

Bates, who has composed dozens of symphonies and chamber works, felt that Jobs was the right subject for his first opera. Mark Campbell, one of the most prolific librettists in contemporary American opera, was not so sure.  

“I’ve had a number of socialist friends of mine saying, ‘Why would you write an opera about Steve Jobs? He was the worst capitalist!'” he recalls. His response? “Reach in your pocket; you probably have an iPhone there.”

Rather than creating a chronological life story, Campbell says the collaborators opted for a fragmented narrative to reflect the man and his machines. “Steve Jobs did have a mind that just jumped from idea to idea to idea – it was very quick. And we wanted to tell an opera that is also very quick, that jumps around.”

So The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs, which premiered at the Santa Fe Opera last month, shifts back and forth in time over the course of 18 scenes. And the composer created a different musical world for each character. Since Jobs played guitar, and spent much of his time dealing with electronics, Bates gave him “this kind of busy frenetic quicksilver world of acoustic guitar and electronica.”

Jobs’ wife, Laurene, had a calming influence, helping him focus – and her sound reflects that. “Completely different space, of these kind of oceanic soulful strings.”

Other characters depicted include Jobs’ partner, Steve Wozniak, and the Japanese-born Zen priest, Kobun Chino Otogawa, who led Jobs to convert to Buddhism, and served as a mentor for much of his life. Bates says he has an “almost purely electronic world of prayer bowls and processed Thai gongs.”

The opera’s set echoes Jobs’ creations, says director Kevin Newbury. After a prologue in a replica of the iconic garage where Jobs’ ideas first took shape, the garage walls explode into six moving cubes with screens…which look a lot like iPhones.  

“We’re doing something called projection mapping where all of the scenic units have little sensors, so the video actually moves with them. We wanted to integrate it so seamlessly into the design because that’s what Steve Jobs and Apple did with the products themselves.”

Jobs’ sense of design was influenced by Japanese calligraphy, including the ensō – a circle that depicts the mind being free to let the body create. Bates says that also figures in the opera’s title: The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs, with the capital “R” in parentheses.

“Of course, there’s the revolution of Steve Jobs in his creations and his devices. There’s also the evolution from a countercultural hippie, to a mogul of the world’s most valuable company. And there’s the revolution in a circle of Steve Jobs as he looks at the ensō, this piece of Japanese calligraphy, and finds that when he can kind of come full circle, he reaches the kind of completion that he sought so long in his life.”

Audiences have been wildly enthusiastic about the opera, even if the reviews from critics have been mixed. Now, it’s headed to Seattle – home to rival tech company Microsoft! – and then San Francisco, which will bring the piece full circle to the Bay area, where Steve Jobs grew up.
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Agatha Christie lived here once, but only memories remain of the time the world’s best-selling fiction writer spent among the ruins of the ancient Iraqi city of Nimrud.

The mud-brick house where the British author of Murder on the Orient Express once stayed is long gone. If she were alive today, she would probably be shocked by what has befallen the Assyrian city where she worked alongside her archaeologist husband five decades ago.

Islamic State attacked Nimrud with bulldozers, jackhammers and dynamite three years ago as part of their general assault on Iraq’s cultural heritage.

Iraqi military forces retook the site early in their campaign to drive the jihadists out of Mosul, which lies about 30 km (20 miles) north.

The house where Christie lived on site was knocked down some years before that, and the people who knew her have all died.

But her name still stirs recognition among locals, although most do not know what she is famous for.

 

“We just know that she was British,” said Abu Ammar, who lives in the closest village to the ruins.

Famed for her detectives — Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot — Christie is listed by Guinness World Records as the best-selling fiction author of all time. Her 78 crime novels have sold 2 billion copies in 44 languages.

Christie first visited Iraq before it gained independence from Britain in 1932 and met the man she would marry on an archaeological dig in the south.

The couple spent time in Mosul, and eventually moved to Nimrud.

“What a beautiful spot it was,” she wrote. “The Tigris was just a mile away, and on the great mound of the Acropolis, big stone Assyrian heads poked out of the soil. It was a spectacular stretch of country — peaceful, romantic and impregnated with the past.”

That description stands in contrast to the present.

The mound on which the ruins are situated has a fresh crown of razor wire to keep looters out, and until recently, corpses floated down the river Tigris from battlefields upstream.

Winged bull statues

Colossal winged bull statues — or lamassus — that stood guard at the entrance to a palace lie dismembered in a heap.

“Look, there’s a foot,” said Iraqi army Captain Ali Adnan, pointing out a giant talon carved from a slab of stone. Feathers and cuneiform letters are chiseled into other fragments.

Much of it was unearthed during the 1950s by Christie’s husband, Max Mallowan, who wrote the book Nimrud and its Remains.

Christie’s own interest in archaeology is evident in Death on the Nile and Murder in Mesopotamia.

Christie began writing her autobiography in Nimrud. However, she spent most of her time there documenting Mallowan’s work in photographs, and cleaning ivories dug up from the ruins, using her own face cream to coax dirt out of the crevices.

Mohammed Saeed is too young to have met Christie, but he is familiar with her legend.

A local man, he has worked on excavations at Nimrud since 1996, and used to show tourists around in less turbulent times.

“Here was Agatha Christie’s room,” he said, standing on a nondescript patch of scorched ground at the edge of the mound. “Now nothing is left.”

Bulldozers, destruction

Saeed was present when Islamic State took over and remained as a guard at the site until he started receiving threats from the militants.

Over the following months, he saw bulldozers at work on the mound, and at night, cars came and went. He suspected they were traders inspecting what could be sold to fill Islamic State’s coffers. A year later, the militants blew up the site.

“I can’t describe how I felt. My brothers thought I was going to die,” said Saeed. “The ruins are a symbol — a civilization. They represent this nation.”

It is a feeling he believes Christie would have shared: “She probably would have collapsed,” he said.

There is hope, however. Saeed said there were plans to begin excavating the southern palace next spring.

As Christie prepared to leave Nimrud, she wrote: “Now Nimrud sleeps. We have scarred it with our bulldozers. Its yawning pits have been filled in with raw earth. One day its wounds will have healed, and it will bloom once again with early spring flowers. … Who shall disturb it next? We do not know.”
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A New Orleanslike musical funeral procession with a band set in Vietnam and a transgender fire-eater are all a part of a multimedia traveling exhibit by a Ho Chi Minh City-based artist collective called The Propeller Group.

The exhibit is showing at the Blaffer Art Museum at the University of Houston.

Vietnamese-American Brittany Trinh has seen the exhibit more than once. The film titled, The Living Need Light, The Dead Need Music, is Trinh’s favorite piece in the exhibit.

“First it was the music and then the way that it was being filmed, and I just felt like I was a part of it.” Trinh said, “I just felt really connected to it in a strange way.”

The Propeller Group’s origins

Founded in 2006, three artists make up the core of The Propeller Group: Tuan Andrew Nguyen, Phu Nam Thuc Ha, and Matt Lucero. All have multicultural backgrounds.

Two of these founders were born in Vietnam and had to leave the country with their families because of the Vietnam War. Lucero is Native American with Spanish roots. All three grew up and were educated in countries including the United States and Singapore before going to Vietnam to live and work as artists.

“It was the end of the Vietnam War, and then the Cold War occupied so much of our kind of upbringing until, you know the early ’90s. And so that had always kind of affected how we thought and become something that haunted us,” Nguyen said.

These artists have backgrounds in filmmaking, but they found shooting video in public in Communist Vietnam was difficult, and their cameras were almost confiscated. To work around this, they formed an advertising firm that allowed them more freedom to shoot video in public.

“You’ll see propaganda and really slick advertising, and that was the space that Vietnam was in, and that was the space the Propeller Group came out of, looking at those kind of dichotomies and those collisions and ideologies,” Nguyen said.

“We were doing the advertising, the commercial work by day, and by night we were kind of developing our own artistic conceptual practice,” he said.

US exhibit

While the group rarely is allowed to show its work in Vietnam because of censorship, there is a traveling exhibit of its work showing in the United States. Themes of life and death can be seen in the pieces of multimedia works of art.

One film in the exhibit looks at the Vietnamese rituals surrounding funerals, which includes a transgender fire-eater.

“It’s a moment for them to perform and to express themselves without being stopped by the police. Then it becomes a moment of resistance in public as well, that’s one thing that kind of drew us to looking at these rituals and these traditions,” Nguyen said. “It’s (rituals) something that’s always in flux, and I think part of that comes from the many, many kinds of wars that Vietnam has been engaged in over the last few centuries,” he said.

How people die and live as a result of politics and ideologies and the impact of globalism also are themes seen in a time-lapse video of what happens when a motorcycle called the Honda Dream is left outside overnight in Vietnam. The motorcycle was stripped bare.

“So this motorbike that was once a symbol of the future and of economic mobility now is a symbol for something else. The Honda Dream becomes this physical manifestation of how ideas of capital and communism have kind of shifted over the last 10, 15, 20 years in a communist society,” Nguyen said.

Exhibit well received

The exhibit’s Houston curator says the city’s Vietnamese American community has been especially receptive to this exhibit.

“Houston is one of the most diverse cities in the United States. It’s also one of the cities that has one of the largest populations of Vietnamese. This exhibition will resonate and will bring forth questions and will open conversations about the identity of Vietnamese Americans,” said Javier Sanchez Martinez, Blaffer Art Museum’s Curatorial Fellow.

Nguyen says he hopes the exhibit will inspire the audience to re-examine how they think about history and the different narratives that affect their current way of thought.

The exhibit is organized by Blaffer Art Museum at the University of Houston’s Kathrine G. McGovern College of the Arts, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and the Phoenix Art Museum.

The Propeller Group’s exhibit will travel next to the San Jose Museum of Art.
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There is an emerging contemporary art scene in Vietnam, and it includes a collective of Ho Chi Minh City-based artists who come from multicultural backgrounds called The Propeller Group. While the group rarely shows its work in Vietnam because of censorship, there is a traveling exhibit of its work in the U.S. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee reports on how themes of the Cold War, life and death are represented in the multimedia exhibit now in Houston’s Blaffer Art Museum at the University of Houston.
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The art of French painter Henri Matisse is enough to draw a visitor to any gallery. The painter was drawn to art himself and during his lifetime gathered a collection of objects from around the world that inspired his art. London’s Royal Academy of Arts has staged a unique exhibit showing Matisse’s art collection along with the paintings it inspired. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke has more.
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This year’s Kennedy Center honorees will include two singers, a television writer, a dancer — and for the first time, a hip-hop artist.

The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on Thursday announced the recipients of the 2017 Kennedy Center Honors. They are: hip-hop artist LL Cool J, singers Gloria Estefan and Lionel Richie, television writer and producer Norman Lear and dancer Carmen de Lavallade. It’s the 40th year of the awards, which honor people who have influenced American culture through the arts.

The honorees will be celebrated at a gala Dec. 3, featuring performances and tributes from top entertainers and attended by President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump.

It’s tradition for the president and first lady to host a reception for honorees at the White House before the gala and sit with them at it. This year’s event will be the first for President Trump, who proposed cutting arts funding in his budget plan earlier this year.

“Given his indifference or worse regarding the arts and humanities, I don’t even know he’ll be there,’’ Lear said of the gala, though a Kennedy Center spokeswoman confirmed the president’s attendance. Lear told the Kennedy Center he won’t attend the White House reception.

Estefan, who once hosted a Democratic fundraiser attended by President Barack Obama but says she and her husband are not affiliated with a political party, said her personal politics will be on hold in accepting the honor. But she said the image of a Cuban immigrant being honored is important when Latino immigrants in particular have “taken a beating in the recent past.’’

“I’m happy to be a very clear example of the good things that immigrants have done in this country,’’ she said.

The awards gala will be recorded and broadcast Dec. 26 on CBS.

Here’s a look at this year’s honorees:

LL Cool J

“Yo, this is amazing.’’ That was LL Cool J’s reaction to being the first hip-hop artist awarded a Kennedy Center Honor.

“To be able to go from the corner in Queens beatin’ on a garbage can to getting a Kennedy Center Honor with this type of company and to be first is just an amazing feeling. You know, it just adds another level of legitimacy to hip-hop culture,’’ he said in a telephone interview.

LL Cool J, born James Todd Smith, began his rap career as a teenager. His debut album, “Radio,’’ was released in 1985 and more albums soon followed. In 1992, he won his first of two Grammy awards for best rap solo performance for “Mama Said Knock You Out.’’ He earned a second for “Hey Lover’’ in 1997.

Beyond music, he has branched out to working in television. Since 2015 he has hosted Spike TV’s reality show “Lip Sync Battle.’’ The show was nominated for an Emmy in 2016 and again in 2017. He also currently stars in the CBS drama “NCIS: Los Angeles,’’ where he plays special agent Sam Hanna.

Still, he says his “first love is hip-hop.’’

The 49-year-old is tied with Stevie Wonder, who was honored at the same age in 1999, for being the award’s youngest honoree.

​Gloria Estefan

Singer Gloria Estefan was in a car on the way to the airport when she learned she’d be honored by the Kennedy Center. Her husband got the news first, she said, and before announcing it told her to prepare herself. “Buckle your seatbelt,’’ he said, even though she was already strapped in.

The Cuban-American artist has won three Grammy awards and four Latin Grammy awards and sold more than 100 million records worldwide. These days there’s little the 59-year-old hasn’t done. She’s acted, written two children’s books, and she and husband Emilio Estefan own businesses including restaurants and hotels as well as a minority share in the Miami Dolphins. The couple was honored by President Barack Obama with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015.

“I’d be greedy if I wanted anything else in life,’’ she said in a telephone interview.

Estefan shot to fame as the lead singer of the Miami Sound Machine, a group formed by the man who would become her husband. Her hits include: “Conga,’’ “Rhythm Is Gonna Get You,’’ “Get on Your Feet’’ and “1-2-3.’’ A musical based on the couple’s lives and music opened on Broadway in 2015 and closes later this month. Estefan called the show’s closing bittersweet. But a national tour of the show begins in the fall, what Estefan called a “new beginning.’’ The show will also make its international premiere in the Netherlands in October.

What hasn’t she done that she’d like to? “Take an extended vacation,’’ Estefan joked in an interview before adding that she’d like to write a book about how she got through a 1990 tour bus crash in which her back was broken. And, she said, she’d like perform in a “free Cuba,’’ one not led by Fidel or Raul Castro.

​Lionel Richie

Lionel Richie could be forgiven for being tired by the time of the Kennedy Center Honors in December. The four-time Grammy winner is in the middle of his “All the Hits’’ tour and still has more than two dozen scheduled performances in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand before the tour ends in late October. Mariah Carey is joining the singer-songwriter on tour, and Richie says “so far she has killed it.’’

As for Richie, fans are there to see him perform some of his most popular songs including: “Three Times a Lady,’’ “Hello,’’ “All Night Long,’’ “Dancing on the Ceiling’’ and “Say You, Say Me,’’ which won him a Golden Globe award and an Oscar. Then there’s “We Are The World,’’ which he wrote with Michael Jackson.

Outside of music, Richie is involved in other ventures. He has a homeware line and is an investor in an app that lets people request a doctor come to their home. He’s also producing a movie about entertainer Sammy Davis Jr.

Richie, 68, says it’s good to be busy.

“I always say that the word ‘busy’ in show business is the most important word. You want to be busy,’’ he said in a telephone interview.

Richie said there’s no better word than “honored’’ to describe how he feels about being given a Kennedy Center Honor: “Lionel Richie just had to stop and go ‘oh my God,’’’ he said.

“You’re just going to catch a guy who’s going to just sit down and enjoy the show and from time to time kind of restrain myself from crying,’’ he said.

​Norman Lear

At 95, Norman Lear ties the record for oldest honoree. Born in 1922 in New Haven, Connecticut, Lear served in World War II before beginning his career in television writing. In the 1970s and 1980s he produced “All in the Family,’’ “Good Times,’’ “One Day at a Time’’ and “The Jeffersons,’’ among other shows.

Ask him for television recommendations these days, though, and he’s at something of a loss.

“There’s too much of everything and I can’t keep up with it all,’’ he said in a telephone interview before mentioning “Orange is the New Black,’’ “Black-ish,’’ and the work of Jill Soloway, creator of “Transparent’’ and “Six Feet Under.’’

He said it was a “thrill of thrills’’ to be honored by the Kennedy Center but he was skeptical about meeting the president.

“I have absolutely no idea at this moment what I would say to the president, but whatever I feel passionate about at the moment I have no hesitation saying,’’ he said.

Lear’s work extends beyond television. In 1981, he joined with the late Texas congresswoman Barbara Jordan and others to found People for the American Way, a nonprofit founded to “to fight right-wing extremism and defend constitutional values under attack.’’

Lear, the winner of four Emmy awards, was honored with the National Medal of Arts by President Bill Clinton in 1999 and a Peabody Lifetime Achievement Award in 2017.

Playwright and director George Abbott, who was honored by the Kennedy Center in 1982, was also 95 when he was honored.

​Carmen de Lavallade

Dancer, choreographer and actress Carmen de Lavallade has been going to the Kennedy Center for 30 years and performed a solo show on its stage in 2014. She was still “a little speechless’’ when told she’d be honored there, she said.

Now 86, the Los Angeles native made her dancing debut at 17. She has appeared on and off Broadway and in films, and was one of the first African-Americans dancers with the Metropolitan Opera.

Over her career she worked with a range of influential choreographers including Alvin Ailey, John Butler, Lester Horton and Glen Tetley. She also taught movement for actors at Yale. Most recently she has toured a work about her life called “As I Remember It.’’

De Lavallade met her late husband Geoffrey Holder in the cast of “House of Flowers,’’ her Broadway debut. Like his wife he was a multi-talented dancer, choreographer and actor. Their marriage was portrayed in the 2005 documentary “Carmen & Geoffrey.’’ He died in 2014.

De Lavallade says these days she’s doing a lot of mentoring of other performers. She said her advice is always: “Don’t compete. Be yourself.’’
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Upmarket fashion magazine Vogue has featured an unexpected new model in its latest edition — London’s first female police chief.

Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick has posed in her uniform for the glossy magazine as part of a feature that celebrates women at the top of their game.

Dick, 56, is the first female commissioner in the London police force’s 188-year history and began leading the organization of 43,000 officers and staff in April this year.

Dick, an experienced counterterrorism officer, had a turbulent start to her new role with London’s emergency services, having to cope with a devastating fire which engulfed the Grenfell tower block in central London, killing about 80 people.

“There is something about putting the uniform on. You’ve got a role to play, to be calm, to lead other people, to go forward when everyone else is running away. It gives you a sense of, not of courage but, ‘It’s my job,'” Dick told Vogue.

Dick joined the London force, known as Scotland Yard, in 1983 as a constable and made her way up the ranks to become Britain’s most senior counterterrorism officer and national director for security during the 2012 London Olympic Games.

In the Queen’s 2015 New Year Honour’s List, she was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE).

Dick said the Grenfell fire and recent fatal attacks in Westminster and by London Bridge had meant long working hours, but the police force’s morale has stayed high.

“It’s brought the public supporting the police, even more than before. You can’t walk down the road without people coming up to you and shaking your hand and saying thank you for what you’re doing. All the staff say the same,” she said.
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We’re in the mix with the five most popular songs in the Billboard Hot 100 Pop Singles chart, for the week ending August 5, 2017.

Lo and behold, we get a new song this week to supercharge our lineup. It happens in fifth place, where French Montana and Swae Lee jump four slots with “Unforgettable.”

Number 5: French Montana & Swae Lee “Unforgettable”

French Montana is Karim Karbouch – born in Morocco, he was 13 when his family immigrated to New York City. French made his first mix tape in 2007, and three weeks ago dropped his sophomore studio album “Jungle Rules.” This marks French Montana’s first appearance in the Top Five. Swae Lee is one-half of the rap duo Rae Sremmurd. You probably know them best from last year’s huge chart-topper “Black Beatles.”

Number 4: Dj Khaled Featuring Justin Bieber, Quavo, Chance The Rapper & Lil Wayne “I’m The One”

Our next artist is a first-generation citizen of the United States. While DJ Khaled was born in New Orleans, his parents had immigrated from Palestine.

Khaled backtracks a slot to fourth place with his former champ “I’m The One” featuring Justin Bieber, Quavo, Chance the Rapper, and Lil Wayne. On August 5, Chance will be in his hometown of Chicago for the annual Lollapalooza festival. In fact, all of the artists have concerts booked, except for Bieber.

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

Bruno Mars and DJ Khaled keep trading places in the Top Five, and this week, Bruno re-takes third place with “That’s What I Like.”

Bruno is currently on the North American leg of his world tour. In November, he and DNCE visit South America for six dates, and then next year it’s on to New Zealand and Australia. May 3, 2018, will also see Bruno perform at the Mall of Asia in the Philippines. It will be his third visit to his ancestral homeland.

Number 2: DJ Khaled Featuring Rihanna and Bryson Tiller “Wild Thoughts”

DJ Khaled remains in the runner-up slot with “Wild Thoughts” featuring Rihanna and Bryson Tiller. On July 26, Rihanna met with President Emmanuel Macron of France. They met in Paris to discuss educational initiatives. Rihanna is the global ambassador for the Global Partnership for Education.

Number 1: Luis Fonsi & Daddy Yankee Featuring Justin Bieber “Despacito”

Luis Fonsi, Daddy Yankee and Justin Bieber hold the Hot 100 title for an impressive 11th week with “Despacito.”

Justin recently canceled the remaining dates of his world tour and days later hit a photographer with his truck. The man wasn’t seriously injured. Justin’s biological father, Jeremy, flew from Toronto to Los Angeles to spend some quality time with his boy.

That’s it for now — we hope you’ll join us for next week’s lineup.
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The premiere of Star Trek: Discovery on CBS’s subscription streaming service, CBS All Access, was postponed nine months to maintain the quality of the brand.

Executive producer Alex Kurtzman told the Television Critics Association on Tuesday that much time had been spent discussing how to create this new world for TV that felt authentic to the Star Trek universe.

Also during that time, executive producer Bryan Fuller decided to exit the series to focus on other projects.

Kurtzman said it became clearer that the targeted January 2017 debut would compromise the quality of the show, so it was pushed back with the blessing of CBS Chairman and CEO Leslie Moonves.

Star Trek: Discovery stars Sonequa Martin-Green of The Walking Dead as the central character, First Officer Michael Burnham. She’s the foster daughter of the Vulcan Sarek, who is Spock’s father.

“We are telling a story that we believe in. Everyone is so passionate. The craftsmanship here in our entire company, behind the camera and in front of the camera, is nothing short of stellar,” said Martin-Green.

Kurtzman also debuted the theme song for Star Trek: Discovery, performed by a 60-piece orchestra. It plays homage to the original theme and the entire song will play under a credit sequence in each episode.

The timeline for the series is 10 years prior to the original series.

Executive producer Akiva Goldsman said, “We are going to cross paths with components that Trek fans are familiar with, but it is its own stand-alone story with its own characters and its own unique vision of Trek.”

Star Trek: Discovery also stars Jason Isaacs, Michelle Yeoh and Shazad Latif.

The series premiere will broadcast on CBS September 24. Immediately following, the first and second episodes will stream on CBS All Access. New episodes going forward will be available on Sundays.
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Money! Power! Glamour! Catfights! The CW’s reboot of “Dynasty” will have much in common with the classic 1980s original.

But the new “Dynasty” aims to “kick it up a notch,” says Elizabeth Gillies, who plays Fallon Carrington, daughter of wealthy industrialist Blake Carrington, on the show. Pamela Sue Martin played her in the original series.

 

Gillies told TV critics Wednesday that her character is “as feisty as ever” and that she loves Fallon’s strength.

 

She played a strong woman on FX’s “Sex&Drugs&Rock&Roll.” But on that show, her character was rough around the edges, while Fallon is refined.

 

Gillies noted that “Fallon doesn’t want to be a rock star. She wants to be CEO.”

 

That means trading in “crop tops and lace bras for Gucci and Christian Louboutins,” Gillies said.

 

“Dynasty” premieres Oct. 11.
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