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• Movie reviews, earthy anecdotes, seven of the best and more . . .
• Bookmark your favourite or most hotly anticipated articles
• The satisfaction of supporting independent blah blah blah . . .

Lock it in and fuhgeddaboudit with an annual subscription to Culturedarm, which supports the site while providing access to special content including playlists and alternative tracks of the week. You get:

• The best new music from free jazz to noise to avant-pop
• Alternative playlists and tracks of the week
• Culturedarm's weekly newsletter straight to your inbox
• Movie reviews, earthy anecdotes, seven of the best and more . . .
• Bookmark your favourite or most hotly anticipated articles
• The satisfaction of supporting independent blah blah blah . . .

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3
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Albums

Michael Bisio, Melanie Dyer, Marianne Osiel and Jay Rosen – NuMBq

Introduced by a deft clangour of gongs and chimes...

Michael Gordon & Theatre of Voices – A Western

Assailed by Howard Hawks and John Wayne for its...

Muslim Shaggan – Asar

Over the populous span of South Asia, a region...

Dave Sewelson, Gabby Fluke-Mogul, George Cartwright, Anthony Cox and Steve Hirsh – Murmuration

The Arkansas free jazz outpost Mahakala Music says that...

Klein – thirteen sense

For her last album marked the South London maverick...

Behind the Song

Behind the Song: Robyn – ‘Be Mine!’

Beginning her career in pop music at the age...

Behind the Song: Leonore Overture, ‘Farewell Amanda’, ‘One Night’

Ludwig van Beethoven - Leonore Overture No. 1, Op....

Behind the Song: David Bowie – ‘Subterraneans’

'Subterraneans' is the closing song on what has become perhaps David Bowie's most critically acclaimed album: Pitchfork placed Low at number 1 on their 'Top 100 Albums of the 1970s', on Q's list of the '100 Greatest British Albums Ever' Low was Bowie's highest entry at number 14, and while...

Behind the Song: Animal Collective – ‘Summertime Clothes’

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxhaRgJUMl8 Animal Collective's eighth studio album, Merriweather Post Pavilion, was...

Themes and References in Joanna Newsom’s Sapokanikan

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ky9Ro9pP2gc In the music video for 'Sapokanikan', Joanna Newsom saunters...

Tracks of the Week

Tracks of the Week 19.01.25

Benjamin Lackner plays the piano with a plangent grace...

Tracks of the Week 12.01.25

Not since Jerry Seinfeld groggily awoke to witness Tim...

Tracks of the Week 04.01.25

Fresh beginnings plus a few festive odds and ends...

Tracks of the Week 17.08.24

Allen Lowe's short bio says that the veteran saxophonist...

Tracks of the Week 10.08.24

David Lynch, the transcendental meditator and itinerant Eagle Scout...

At the Movies

Adam’s Rib (1949)

★★★★ (4 out of 4 stars) - Adam and Amanda Bonner, a couple of happily married lawyers who live in an upper-floor apartment in New York, begin to clash when they land on opposite sides of a trial for attempted murder. Adam views the matter in black and white, believing that Doris Attinger broke the law and deserves to be punished, while Amanda delights in teasing out some of the nuances of the case, perceiving an opportunity to rail against gender imbalances...

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974)

★★★★ (4 out of 4 stars) - From a modern perspective, the original and best film version of The Taking of Pelham One Two Three almost seems to lack a final act: when the shakeout comes and the criminals attempt to make their getaway, there is no major chase sequence, limited gunfighting, and the villains for the most part - faced with the ambling steeliness of Walter Matthau's Lieutenant Zachary Garber - prove their own undoing...

Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw (2019)

★½ (1.5 out of 4 stars) - When it comes to the blockbuster action movie, three franchises remain. There is the Marvel Cinematic Universe and other assorted comic book pictures, y'know, for kids; Tom Cruise, most clearly for the ever stellar Mission: Impossible series, wilfully forgetting Jack Reacher but with shoutouts to American Made, Edge of Tomorrow, and the upcoming Top Gun sequel, sure to be a success; and then there's The Rock...

Little Women (2019)

★★★★ (4 out of 4 stars) - Greta Gerwig imbues the seventh film adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's classic coming-of-age novel with deft characterisation and heady momentum, across and finally through the screen. Each scene bustles with gesture and intonation even when its components aren't rushing headlong through the streets of Manhattan, idling about the parks of Paris, or swirling the ballrooms and striding fields and beaches in the vicinity of Boston, Mass...

Uncut Gems (2019)

★★★★ (4 out of 4 stars) - Juggling a growing amount of debt, Howard has begun pawning off as sports memorabilia the collateral he receives for loaning out his jewels. When the opal finally arrives from Ethiopia, the basketball player Kevin Garnett can hardly avert his gaze. Howard accepts a 2008 NBA Championship ring as Garnett takes lend of the opal, immediately pawning it for the sake of a little liquidity unbeknownst to Demany and the Boston Celtics star.

World Cinema

Little Women (2019)

★★★★ (4 out of 4 stars) - Greta Gerwig imbues the seventh film adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's classic coming-of-age novel with deft characterisation and heady momentum, across and finally through the screen. Each scene bustles with gesture and intonation even when its components aren't rushing headlong through the streets of Manhattan, idling about the parks of Paris, or swirling the ballrooms and striding fields and beaches in the vicinity of Boston, Mass...

Toni Erdmann (2016)

★★★★ (4 out of 4 stars) - Winfried Conradi is so given to practical jokes that he practically depends on them. When he opens the door of his home in the spa town of Aachen, he regales the postman with an elaborate deception featuring look-alike brothers, prison terms, erotic magazines, and mail bombs, tipping the postman for any distress accrued and to make amends for his own strange excesses. He carries a pair of false teeth...

Diego Maradona (2019)

★★★½ (3.5 out of 4 stars) - One of the successes of Diego Maradona lies in how it manages to restore some of the luxe hedonism and heady momentum to a story so often shrouded by bloated excess. A keenly self-conscious Maradona pushes himself through sporting triumphs and binge cycles, as the barrio boy from Buenos Aires in the slum city of Naples embraces the fur coats and neon lights.

The Rules of the Game (1939)

★★★★ (4 out of 4 stars) - Instead Renoir produced a bawdy comedy with French airs and graces, which seems to share much in common with so many American films of the late thirties with their loose morals, gender distortions, and hedonistic flushes of romance. The inspirations may have been Marivaux and Beaumarchais, but in style and temperament The Rules of the Game rubs up equally alongside The Philadelphia Story and the screwball comedies of Howard Hawks.

Halloween (1978)

★★ (2 out of 4 stars) - In the suburban neighbourhood of Haddonfield, Illinois, on Halloween night, 1963, while other kids are out trick-or-treating, a six-year-old boy without any apparent motivation creeps up the stairs, slips on a mask, and slashes to death his near-nude teenage sister. Fifteen years later he's still confined to Smith's Grove, a sanatorium for psychiatric patients, but he breaks out and returns to Haddonfield...

Earthy Anecdotes

Earthy Anecdotes: Katharine Hepburn Steals Stephen Sondheim’s Plant

By the turn of the twentieth century, the Turtle Bay neighbourhood on the east side of Midtown Manhattan was a 'riverside back yard' for the city of New York. Imposing brownstones and squalid tenement housing butted up against the breweries, gasworks, and slaughterhouses which lined the waterfront. Eventually the waterfront would be reshaped by the United Nations headquarters, with dozens of diplomatic missions...

Earthy Anecdotes: The Texas Chain Saw Massacre’s Hellish Dinner Scene

One of the most influential horror movies of all-time,...

Earthy Anecdotes: Alex Ferguson, Mick Harford and The League That Got Away

In the winter of 1991, Manchester United stood atop...

Earthy Anecdotes: The Premiere of The Rite of Spring

On 29 May 1913, The Rite of Spring, the ballet and...

Earthy Anecdotes: Zola’s House at Médan by Paul Cézanne

In Banks of the Marne by the French artist...

Poetry

Emily Dickinson – ‘I Can Wade Grief’ (1862)

Emily Dickinson was born on 10 December 1830 in...

Alexander Blok – ‘Night, street, street-light, drugstore’ (1912)

Alexander Blok (Александр Блок) (1880-1921) was the foremost of...

Pierrot Through the Arts

Pierrot, the sad clown in white face and loose...

Fyodor Sologub – ‘At Times There Comes a Strange Smell Wafting’

Fyodor Sologub was born Fyodor Kuzmich Teternikov on 1...

James Joyce

Joyce, Nabokov, and Dirty Books: The Publications of Ulysses, Haveth Childers Everywhere, and Lolita

With Ezra Pound acting as intermediary, from the spring of...

Ignatius Loyola and the Jesuits; and the Jesuits and James Joyce

With the election yesterday evening in Rome of former...

Behind the Song: ‘M’appari’ from Friedrich von Flotow’s Martha

'M'appari' is the best known name for the central...

Daily Visual 16.06.15: Bloomsday 2015

Bloomsday today in Dublin marks the culmination of a...

Obituaries

Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry, the Influential Producer and Dub Pioneer, Dies at the Age of 85

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTNam6GbJYg Lee 'Scratch' Perry, the charismatic producer and restless pioneer...

Stephen Sondheim, Who Reinvented the Musical Theatre, Dies at the Age of 91

The composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim died on Friday...

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Supreme Court Justice, Dies at the Age of 87

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRlEFT-44Ik Ruth Bader Ginsburg, associate justice of the Supreme Court...

Ned Beatty, Deliverance, Nashville, and Network Actor, Dies at the Age of 83

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TwyrAS2lU8 The actor Ned Beatty died of natural causes on...

Culturedarm

Subscribe to Culturedarm

A monthly subscription supports Culturedarm while providing access to special content including playlists and alternative tracks of the week. You get:

• The best new music from free jazz to noise to avant-pop
• Alternative playlists and tracks of the week
• Culturedarm's weekly newsletter straight to your inbox
• Movie reviews, earthy anecdotes, seven of the best and more . . .
• Bookmark your favourite or most hotly anticipated articles
• The satisfaction of supporting independent blah blah blah . . .

Lock it in and fuhgeddaboudit with an annual subscription to Culturedarm, which supports the site while providing access to special content including playlists and alternative tracks of the week. You get:

• The best new music from free jazz to noise to avant-pop
• Alternative playlists and tracks of the week
• Culturedarm's weekly newsletter straight to your inbox
• Movie reviews, earthy anecdotes, seven of the best and more . . .
• Bookmark your favourite or most hotly anticipated articles
• The satisfaction of supporting independent blah blah blah . . .

placeholder text
3
25
0

Albums

Michael Bisio, Melanie Dyer, Marianne Osiel and Jay Rosen – NuMBq

Introduced by a deft clangour of gongs and chimes...

Michael Gordon & Theatre of Voices – A Western

Assailed by Howard Hawks and John Wayne for its...

Muslim Shaggan – Asar

Over the populous span of South Asia, a region...

Dave Sewelson, Gabby Fluke-Mogul, George Cartwright, Anthony Cox and Steve Hirsh – Murmuration

The Arkansas free jazz outpost Mahakala Music says that...

Klein – thirteen sense

For her last album marked the South London maverick...

Behind the Song

Behind the Song: ‘M’appari’ from Friedrich von Flotow’s Martha

'M'appari' is the best known name for the central...

Behind the Song: David Bowie – ‘Subterraneans’

'Subterraneans' is the closing song on what has become perhaps David Bowie's most critically acclaimed album: Pitchfork placed Low at number 1 on their 'Top 100 Albums of the 1970s', on Q's list of the '100 Greatest British Albums Ever' Low was Bowie's highest entry at number 14, and while...

Themes and References in Joanna Newsom’s Sapokanikan

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ky9Ro9pP2gc In the music video for 'Sapokanikan', Joanna Newsom saunters...

Behind the Song: Robyn – ‘Be Mine!’

Beginning her career in pop music at the age...

Behind the Song: Van Morrison – ‘Crazy Love’

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIaKy1vM9hs 'Crazy Love' is the third track from Moondance, Van...

Tracks of the Week

Tracks of the Week 19.01.25

Benjamin Lackner plays the piano with a plangent grace...

Tracks of the Week 12.01.25

Not since Jerry Seinfeld groggily awoke to witness Tim...

Tracks of the Week 04.01.25

Fresh beginnings plus a few festive odds and ends...

Tracks of the Week 17.08.24

Allen Lowe's short bio says that the veteran saxophonist...

Tracks of the Week 10.08.24

David Lynch, the transcendental meditator and itinerant Eagle Scout...

At the Movies

Virgin Mountain (2015)

★★★ (3 out of 4 stars) - Fúsi (Gunnar Jónsson) is forty-three years old and a virgin, still living at home with his mother. He spends his days working as a baggage handler at Keflavik airport, his evenings wargaming with his friend Mörður (Sigurjón Kjartansson), as together they painstakingly recreate the Battle of El Alamein, and each Friday he orders Pad Thai and eats cloistered in the same corner of the same restaurant...

Don Jon (2013)

★★★ (3 out of 4 stars) - In Japan grown adult men - thirty, forty, fifty years old or more - lie prostrate in their childhood bedrooms, which they never leave, as their ageing parents push parcels of food beneath the door. On their beds they clutch plush life-sized cartoon figures, somehow prepubescent but boasting ginormous boobs, and between the heaving and moaning they not only cry but orgasm into their pillowcases...

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974)

★★★★ (4 out of 4 stars) - From a modern perspective, the original and best film version of The Taking of Pelham One Two Three almost seems to lack a final act: when the shakeout comes and the criminals attempt to make their getaway, there is no major chase sequence, limited gunfighting, and the villains for the most part - faced with the ambling steeliness of Walter Matthau's Lieutenant Zachary Garber - prove their own undoing...

Pickpocket (1959)

★★★ (3 out of 4 stars) - Michel the titular character of Robert Bresson's snappily downcast Pickpocket is a renegade, a nihilist, one of cinema's Nietzschean Übermensch and most of all a real churl. He is the surliest of apostates with the hint of a bad boy persona that might suggest Marlon Brando or James Dean in blocking or on the amateur stage, for as is Bresson's wont the lead Martin LaSalle was a rank novice...

Million Dollar Baby (2004)

★½ (1.5 out of 4 stars) - Maggie Fitzgerald (Hilary Swank), from southwest Missouri, has worked as a waitress from her early teens. Stuck in grim poverty, she seeks a way beyond her circumstances, and determines to become a boxer. She turns up at a worn-down Los Angeles gym, owned and run by Frankie Dunn (Clint Eastwood) with the help of Eddie 'Scrap-Iron' Dupris (Morgan Freeman): a former boxer himself...

World Cinema

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974)

★★★★ (4 out of 4 stars) - From a modern perspective, the original and best film version of The Taking of Pelham One Two Three almost seems to lack a final act: when the shakeout comes and the criminals attempt to make their getaway, there is no major chase sequence, limited gunfighting, and the villains for the most part - faced with the ambling steeliness of Walter Matthau's Lieutenant Zachary Garber - prove their own undoing...

The Switch (2010)

★★★ (3 out of 4 stars) - Kassie Larson (Jennifer Aniston) is in her thirties, and she's single, and with no romantic prospects on the horizon she decides she can no longer wait to have a child. She talks the matter over with her best friend Wally Mars (Jason Bateman) - they dated six years ago, and though it didn't work out they've got along swimmingly ever since...

Teen Wolf (1985)

★½ (1.5 out of 4 stars) - It would be naive to suggest that things were simpler back in the 1980s, but when it came to the movie preferences of adolescent males, they were less demanding at least. True it was the era of high concept film, of space operas and extra-terrestrials and all-action archaeologists, of darkening or neon-clad dystopias, of robots and terminators, of zombies and ghosts and gremlins...

Parasite (2019)

★★★★ (4 out of 4 stars) - A family of four live in a cramped and roach-infested banjiha, a semi-basement apartment in Seoul. They crib free Wi-Fi from unsuspecting neighbours and a nearby coffee shop, and their only source of income, procured by the mother Chung-sook via WhatsApp, comes from the folding of pizza boxes for a local delivery service, a task at which they are only moderately successful...

North by Northwest (1959)

★★★★ (4 out of 4 stars) - A Madison Avenue advertising man, run-of-the-mill if unusually tanned with his grey flannel suit an impeccable fit, stands up at the wrong moment in the Oak Room of the Plaza Hotel in Midtown Manhattan. Roger Thornhill has theatre tickets. He wishes to send a wire to his mother, but by summoning the wrong waiter and ostensibly responding to the wrong call, he gets mistaken for George Kaplan, a government agent.

Earthy Anecdotes

Earthy Anecdotes: Katharine Hepburn Steals Stephen Sondheim’s Plant

By the turn of the twentieth century, the Turtle Bay neighbourhood on the east side of Midtown Manhattan was a 'riverside back yard' for the city of New York. Imposing brownstones and squalid tenement housing butted up against the breweries, gasworks, and slaughterhouses which lined the waterfront. Eventually the waterfront would be reshaped by the United Nations headquarters, with dozens of diplomatic missions...

Earthy Anecdotes: The Texas Chain Saw Massacre’s Hellish Dinner Scene

One of the most influential horror movies of all-time,...

Earthy Anecdotes: Alex Ferguson, Mick Harford and The League That Got Away

In the winter of 1991, Manchester United stood atop...

Earthy Anecdotes: The Premiere of The Rite of Spring

On 29 May 1913, The Rite of Spring, the ballet and...

Earthy Anecdotes: Zola’s House at Médan by Paul Cézanne

In Banks of the Marne by the French artist...

Poetry

‘Silentium!’ by Fyodor Tyutchev

Silentium! Speak not, lie hidden, and conceal the way you dream,...

Emily Dickinson – ‘I Can Wade Grief’ (1862)

Emily Dickinson was born on 10 December 1830 in...

Rabindranath Tagore, E. E. Cummings; Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, Björk

Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) was a Bengali polymath, best known...

Pierrot Through the Arts

Pierrot, the sad clown in white face and loose...

James Joyce

Behind the Song: ‘M’appari’ from Friedrich von Flotow’s Martha

'M'appari' is the best known name for the central...

Daily Visual 16.06.15: Bloomsday 2015

Bloomsday today in Dublin marks the culmination of a...

Ignatius Loyola and the Jesuits; and the Jesuits and James Joyce

With the election yesterday evening in Rome of former...

Joyce, Nabokov, and Dirty Books: The Publications of Ulysses, Haveth Childers Everywhere, and Lolita

With Ezra Pound acting as intermediary, from the spring of...

Obituaries

Jean-Paul Belmondo, the Face of the French New Wave, Dies At the Age of 88

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbAMIHLciGk Jean-Paul Belmondo, the actor whose crooked nose and raffish...

Toots Hibbert, Reggae Pioneer and Lead Vocalist of the Maytals, Dies Aged 77

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErQ2UB44k-o Toots Hibbert, the pioneering reggae musician who imbued his...

Ned Beatty, Deliverance, Nashville, and Network Actor, Dies at the Age of 83

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TwyrAS2lU8 The actor Ned Beatty died of natural causes on...

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Supreme Court Justice, Dies at the Age of 87

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRlEFT-44Ik Ruth Bader Ginsburg, associate justice of the Supreme Court...

Culturedarm

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Cultureteca 03.11.19

On Monday morning, media outlets reported that the iconic and sometimes scabrous film producer Robert Evans had died over the weekend at the age of 89 years old. After a brief career as an actor, Evans used his few industry connections and personal wealth accrued from the fashion industry to begin a meteoric rise as a movie producer: his first venture saw him purchase the rights to the novel The Detective by Roderick Thorp, which was subsequently turned into a successful neo-noir film starring Frank Sinatra, Lee Remick, Jacqueline Bisset, Jack Klugman, and Robert Duvall. His forthright production style and a profile in The New York Times swiftly brought him to the attention of Paramount Pictures, and in 1967 at the age of just 36, Evans was named the studio’s head of production.

When Evans was installed as the head of Paramount, the studio ranked ninth and last of the Hollywood majors and was on the verge of collapse. Eight years later the studio ranked first, and headed into the 47th Academy Awards with a record forty-three nominations led by Chinatown, The Conversation, and The Godfather Part II. The turnaround wrought by Evans owed much to his willingness to option new material, to his habit of investing in young directors even as his combative nature brought conflicts and edits, and to his passion for film. Early successes came in the form of Barefoot in the Park, The Odd Couple, and Rosemary’s Baby, after Evans sought Roman Polanski to make his American debut. The Italian Job, Love Story, The Godfather, and Serpico followed, before Evans’ work as a producer on Chinatown amounted to a personal and artistic peak. In the process Evans helped to hone talents including Polanski, Francis Ford Coppola, and Elaine May, even as some of these relationships turned fractious. He brought the plays of Neil Simon to the screen, and boosted Paramount’s investments by helping to instigate the purchases of Desilu and Simon & Schuster.

After Chinatown, Evans attempted to branch out as an independent producer, but after some successes the 1980s were marked by a cocaine addiction and tumultuous film projects, most notorious of all the long-running saga around the film The Cotton Club. He continued to produce sporadically, while cameo acting appearances and voice roles more often than not saw him embrace his own mythos, performing as some version of himself. Robert Evans also published a couple of memoirs, The Kid Stays in the Picture in 1994, which was subsequently adapted for a feature documentary, and in 2013 The Fat Lady Sang which elaborated his long recovery from a stroke. Across Hollywood, Evans’ death brought a string of tributes.

* * *

A group of scientists from South Africa, Australia, South Korea, and Namibia, led by Vanessa Hayes from the Garvan Institute of Medical Research in Sydney, published a study this week tracing the origins of modern humans to the wetlands of Botswana. The research, titled ‘Human origins in a southern African palaeo-wetland and first migrations’, was published in the journal Nature. Based on 1,217 samples of mitochondrial DNA, the study argues that anatomically modern humans appeared 200,000 years ago in an area south of the Zambezi river, remaining there for a period of 70,000 years before regional climate change prompted the first migrations. Other scientists however have disputed the nature of the study, arguing that analysis of mitochondrial DNA alone – which is maternally inherited and one small part of human genetics – is insufficient when it comes to narrowing down the complex process of human development.

The Zambezi river in Botswana, the region which a new study identifies as the birthplace of modern humans (Credit: Hoberman Collection/UIG via Getty Images)

* * *

As Red Bull Music Academy prepares to close – touted back in April as a move to decentralise the company’s creative operations following a split with the consultants Yadastar – it has posted online twenty-one years’ worth of archival material. From the academy’s first lecture, with techno pioneer Jeff Mills in Berlin back in 1998, to modern series from artists as diverse as Janelle Monáe, Mykki Blanco, Jean-Michel Jarre, and Laurie Anderson, the archive boasts more than 500 lectures in total alongside interviews, features, and other videos. The full archive is available to search while Red Bull Music Academy continues to present randomised daily collections.

* * *

The crown has been passed from a scalp to some tousles, one must die so that another might live, and all that jazz or dirge-like folk music, for this week in its quest to find a suitable Game of Thrones prequel HBO cancelled one project, in the process breathing new life into the next. First HBO reportedly took the sword to a prequel which was to have been set a thousand years before Cersei and Jon and Daenerys et al. fought over Westeros, ‘weaving in issues of race, power, intrigue and White Walkers’. The prequel had been created by George RR Martin and showrunner Jane Goldman – co-writer of Kick-Ass and the Kingsman films – and a pilot had been shot in Northern Ireland, directed by S.J. Clarkson and starring Naomi Watts. The prequel was one of a batch put into development prior to the ending of Game of Thrones, none of which have now received the go ahead.

At the same time HBO gave a ten-episode straight-to-series commitment to ‘House of the Dragon’, a prequel based on the A Song of Ice and Fire companion Fire & Blood, which will be set 300 years prior to the events of Game of Thrones with a focus on House Targaryen. George RR Martin and Ryan Condal are co-creators of the series, and Condal and Miguel Sapochnik will serve as the showrunners. Sapochnik will also direct the pilot and subsequent episodes, having tested his metal on some of the iconic Game of Thrones episodes including ‘Hardhome’, ‘Battle of the Bastards’, and ‘Winds of Winter’.

* * *

The actor and comedian John Witherspoon died suddenly on Tuesday at his home in Sherman Oaks. He was 77 years old. Witherspoon began his career in entertainment as stand-up in the 1970s, before transitioning to television with a variety of roles on the short-lived Richard Pryor Show. A string of minor film and television appearances followed, before his role as Ice Cube’s father in the 1995 cult comedy film Friday brought him to wider recognition. Witherspoon featured in the film’s two sequels, while serving as a member of the main cast on the sitcoms The Wayans Bros. (1995-99), The Tracy Morgan Show (2003-04), and The Boondocks (2005-14). Most recently, he lent his voice to episodes of The Jellies and BoJack Horseman, and played for three seasons on the sitcom Black Jesus. Ice Cube, Marlon Wayans and others paid tribute.

* * *

On Wednesday in a series of tweets, Jack Dorsey, the chief executive of Twitter, announced an effective ban on political advertisements across the platform. Stressing that the ban would cover both candidate and issue-based ads, describing internet political ads as a ‘challenge’ to ‘civic discourse’ owing to the scale and sophistication of ‘machine learning-based optimization of messaging and micro-targeting, unchecked misleading information, and deep fakes’, Dorsey added that Twitter’s full policy on the matter will be published by 15 November, with enforcement commencing the following week. While the announcement inevitably increases the pressure on Facebook to follow suit, critics noted that political ads make up only a tiny fraction of Twitter’s revenue, while querying the practicalities of classification and enforcement and wondering whether the policy serves to favour the status quo.

 

* * *

Wednesday night brought perhaps the biggest treat in all of baseball: a Game 7 of the World Series. And it was the Washington Nationals, coming from behind yet again, who emerged as the surprise victors, with a turnaround seventh inning at Minute Maid Park against the Houston Astros. The Astros led 2-0 after six innings, failing to make the most of their baserunners but with pitcher Zack Greinke dominating the mound. But in the seventh inning a home run from Anthony Rendon brought the Nats back into contention, and when Greinke issued a walk to Juan Soto, he was withdrawn and replaced by Will Harris.

Harris’ second pitch was met by the bat of Howie Kendrick, and it sliced right up and over the field, eventually hitting the steel foul pole for a two-run homer that gave the Nationals the lead. It was a lead they only extended over the next two innings, with the game finishing 2-6 in favour of the Nationals. In the process the Nationals won their first ever World Series: especially remarkable for a team that started the season 19-31, went into the postseason as underdogs, and trailed as late as the eighth inning in both the wild-card game and the final game of the division series. The World Series was also remarkable because for the first time, the away team won every matchupStephen Strasburg was named World Series MVP, as Washington began its celebrations.

* * *

Between the ongoing controversy over World Wrestling Entertainment’s long-term partnership with Saudi Arabia and a stalled return flight which left many superstars unable to attend SmackDown on Friday night, WWE at least managed to eke a little bit of positive coverage from Crown Jewel at King Fahd International Stadium in Riyadh, which on Thursday hosted Saudi Arabia’s first ever women’s wrestling match. Natalya forced Lacey Evans to submit in the Sharpshooter as part of the undercard, with Brock Lesnar also defeating a debuting Cain Velasquez by submission before ‘The Fiend’ Bray Wyatt won the WWE Universal Championship from Seth Rollins in the main event.

* * *

Not quite a year on from Some Rap Songs – Earl’s third studio record and one which made Culturedarm’s albums of the decade list – at midnight on Thursday Earl Sweatshirt released Feet of Clay, a surprise new EP. Mostly self-produced, with additional production from Alchemist and Ovrkast and featuring spots from MAVI and Mach-Hommy, Earl said in a statement ‘FOC is a collection of observations and feelings recorded during the death throes of a crumbling empire’. Feet of Clay, with its spectral goat sleeve and seven brisk tracks, arrives on Warner Records in partnership with Earl’s own label Tan Cressida.

* * *

Saturday was Día de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead, Mexico’s annual celebration of the deceased, which encompasses ceremonial altars called ofrendas, representations of skeletons and skulls, visits to gravesites, and street parties full of food and fancy dress. 800,000 people turned out in wet weather for Mexico City’s Day of the Dead parade, with a host of smaller events taking place in the capital and across Mexico.

A woman lights copal incense during an ‘Alumbrada’ vigil on the Day of the Dead (Credit: Jordi Cueto-Felgueroso Arocha/ CC BY-SA 4.0)

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A wild weekend of sport booted off early Saturday in Yokohama with the final of the Rugby World Cup, and after blasting past New Zealand in the semis a disappointing England were unable to match the physicality of South Africa, as the Springboks scored two tries and six penalties to triumph. This was South Africa’s third world title, and amid the celebrations players hoped for a unifying effect. On Saturday night UFC 244 at Madison Square Garden came to a slightly underwhelming and contentious close, as the self-styled ‘Baddest Motherfucker’ title went to Jorge Masvidal, with Nate Diaz stopped by the doctor at the end of the third round thanks to a deep eyebrow cut. The Rock was on hand to present Masvidal with the BMF belt, while the undercard saw important victories for Darren Till and Stephen Thompson.

Staying in New York, Sunday brought the forty-ninth edition of the New York City marathon. The men’s race was won by Geoffrey Kamworor, for his second title in New York after winning in 2017 and finishing third last year, while the women’s race was won by Joyciline Jepkosgei. Jepkosgei’s victory was all the more impressive as the half marathon world record holder was competing for the first time over the longer distance, and managed to get the better of perennial winner Mary Keitany. Finally in tournaments hampered by withdrawals due to fatigue and injury, Ashleigh Barty won the season-ending WTA Finals in Shenzhen, the world number one defeating defending champion Elina Svitolina 6-4, 6-3. With the ATP Finals still to come, at the Paris Masters Novak Djokovic closed the gap on Rafa Nadal in the race for the year-end number one ranking, with a 6-3, 6-4 victory over Denis Shapovalov.

Christopher Laws
Christopher Lawshttps://www.culturedarm.com
Christopher Laws is the writer and editor of Culturedarm, currently based in Umeå, Sweden.

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