Despite air quality concerns as the country continues its struggle against devastating bushfires, and lingering doubts as to the response of tournament organisers after qualifying competitors complained of breathing difficulties, the Australian Open proper commenced as planned on Monday. Wet weather was to blame for a slew of first-round cancellations, but otherwise the first Grand Slam of the tennis calendar continued more or less swimmingly. There were a smattering of upsets over the first handful of days, and Novak Djokovic dropped a set in his opening match while world number one and home favourite Ash Barty was forced to come from behind versus Lesia Tsurenko, but the tournament front-runners carried themselves with relative ease as the week progressed, with 15-year-old Coco Gauff again making headlines as she kick-started her season with another impressive victory over Venus Williams.
Sea change on Friday saw the departure of several favourites on both sides of the draw. In the men’s singles, a resurgent Milos Raonic outserved sixth seed Stefanos Tsitsipas, and Marin Čilić bested Roberto Bautista Agut over five hard-fought sets, as Tsitsipas and Bautista Agut joined Matteo Berrettini among the top-ten seeds left on the sidelines. Roger Federer came perilously close but just managed to pip Aussie underdog John Millman at the finishing line. If the men’s draw was troubled, the women’s was devastated. On Friday Serena Williams failed in her quest for a record-tying twenty-fourth Grand Slam title, as she lost in three sets to China’s Wang Qiang in a performance Serena later bemoaned as ‘unprofessional’. Coco Gauff stormed past third seed and defending champion Naomi Osaka. And tenth seed Madison Keys fell to Maria Sakkari, a prelude to Saturday which saw the second, fifth and sixth-seeded women depart in the various forms of Karolína Plíšková, Elina Svitolina, and Belinda Bencic. The close of the week also saw the tennis world say goodbye to Caroline Wozniacki, as the former world number one and Australian Open champion celebrated her planned retirement following a third-round loss to Ons Jabeur. The Dane retires as one of the most popular and successful members of the tour, while Jabeur became the first Tunisian to reach the fourth round of a major.
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In October, HBO Max announced that it had secured exclusive rights in the United States for the streaming of Studio Ghibli movies. A coup for the fledgeling streaming service, set to launch in the spring, it marked an about-turn for the famously reticent Japanese animation studio, which had previously focused on theatrical and physical distribution. From May, Studio Ghibli’s iconic catalogue of films will be available to stream for the first time in the United States, including Hayao Miyazaki-directed classics like My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, and Howl’s Moving Castle, with The Wind Rises to follow in the autumn. Now Netflix has announced that it has obtained global rights for the streaming of Studio Ghibli movies outside of Japan, the United States, and Canada. Twenty-one Ghibli features, from Totoro to The Tale of The Princess Kaguya, will be available starting later this month, in their original Japanese with foreign-language subtitles. Ghibli producer Toshio Suzuki said:
‘In this day and age, there are various great ways a film can reach audiences. We’ve listened to our fans and have made the definitive decision to stream our film catalogue. We hope people around the world will discover the world of Studio Ghibli through this experience.’
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As superhero blockbusters and small-run independent releases leave a hollowed-out middle, Netflix continues to partner with acclaimed auteur directors like Martin Scorsese, Alfonso Cuarón, and Noah Baumbach. On Monday, the day of the celebrated surrealist director’s 74th birthday, Netflix released a short film by David Lynch entitled What Did Jack Do?. Reportedly filmed back in 2014 as Lynch worked on the third season of Twin Peaks, What Did Jack Do? stars a capuchin monkey named Jack Cruz, who Lynch interrogates as a detective investigating a murder. Shot in black and white and briefly featuring Lynch’s wife, the actor Emily Stofle, the short synopsis for the film reads ‘In a locked down train station, a homicide detective conducts an interview with a tormented monkey’.
This isn’t Lynch’s first collaboration with monkeys, nor his first time on Netflix: the first two seasons of Twin Peaks currently air on the streaming platform in the United States, while the prequel film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me made harrowing use of a monkey who could only utter the word ‘Judy’. What Did Jack Do? was commissioned by Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain and premiered in France in 2017 before showing the following year at Lynch’s annual Festival of Disruption, but this is the first time the film has been widely available. Music from the film showcasing the vocal talents of Lynch and Cruz will be released as a 7” via Sacred Bones in the spring.
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Researchers have recreated the voice of a 3,000-year-old Egyptian mummy, reproduced as a vowel-like sound using a reconstructed vocal tract and artificial vocal cords, with the process and the findings of the study published this week in the journal Scientific Reports. Nesyamun was a priest and scribe who lived around the time of Ramesses XI at the beginning of the eleventh century BC. Mummified in death with an inscription on his coffin reading ‘Nesyamun, true of voice’, his remains were unwrapped in 1824 and the mummy has remained in Leeds ever since, a longstanding part of the collection of the Leeds City Museum in the United Kingdom. One of the most studied coffins in the world, the mummy survived the bombing raids in 1941 that destroyed much of the museum, and further examination in 1964 by the University of Sheffield School of Dentistry, and in 1990 by a University of Manchester team using endoscopy, histology, X-ray, and early CT scanning techniques, confirmed that Nesyamun had died sometime in his 50s.
The reproduction of Nesyamun’s voice has only been possible because the mummy is remarkably well-preserved. His death was purportedly caused by an allergic reaction, possibly the result of an insect sting to the tongue, which left a mummy with tongue lolling out but no damage to the neck bones. In 2016, a CT scan carried out at Leeds General Infirmary showed that much of the mummy’s throat remained intact. A group of researchers, led by David Howard of the department of electronic engineering at Royal Holloway, University of London, proceeded to create a 3D-printed version of Nesyamun’s vocal tract, the cavity which filters air from the larynx to produce the distinctive sounds of the human voice. Filling in the soft palate, and coupling their model to a loudspeaker and computer software which served as an artificial larynx, the result was a sound somewhere between the vowels in ‘bad’ and ‘bed’. Suggesting a slightly higher pitch than today’s average male, John Schofield of the University of York, one of the study’s co-authors, accepted ‘This is never a sound he would have made in life’, but the researchers heralded their findings as a first step towards approximating the spoken word and as a potential boon for museum attendances.
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On Sunday afternoon the death of Kobe Bryant was confirmed, following a helicopter crash in the hills above Calabasas which killed nine people including his 13-year-old daughter Gianna. The basketball icon was 41 years old, and was flying in foggy conditions to watch a basketball game at his Mamba Sports Academy in Thousand Oaks. Hours earlier on Saturday night, fans had watched on as LeBron James paid tribute to Bryant, who he surpassed to move into third place on the all-time NBA scoring list, and as news of Bryant’s death spread on Sunday, the wider world mourned the loss of one of the defining figures of American sport in the twenty-first century.
Born in Philadelphia to former NBA player Joe Bryant and Pamela Cox Bryant, Kobe Bryant gained national recognition playing for Lower Merion High School in the suburb of Ardmore, before becoming only the sixth person to skip college and transition directly into the NBA. Drafted at the age of 17 by the Los Angeles Lakers, as a shooting guard Bryant spent all of his twenty professional seasons with the Lakers, starring as they won five NBA championships. During the course of his career, he became an 18-time All-Star, a 15-time member of the All-NBA Team, the league’s Most Valuable Player in 2008, and twice NBA Finals MVP as he led the Lakers to successive titles in 2009 and 2010. In 2008 and 2012, playing for the United States national team he added two Olympic gold medals.
At the height of his career, controversy followed Bryant on and off the court. A long-running, highly-publicised feud with teammate Shaquille O’Neal culminated in 2004 with the departures of O’Neal and Lakers coach Phil Jackson, and in 2003 Bryant was accused of sexual assault, later settling out of court and issuing a public apology. Following his retirement in 2016, Bryant branched into media production, in 2018 winning the Academy Award for Best Animated Short for his film Dear Basketball, and partnering with Sports Academy to open the Mamba Sports Academy in Thousand Oaks, a 100,000 square-foot facility which hosted the occasional NBA training camp while focusing on the development of young athletes. Bryant remains the top scorer in Lakers history, the first player in NBA history to have amassed 30,000 career points and 6,000 career assists, and fourth in the all-time regular and postseason scoring lists. His daughter Gianna was herself an aspiring basketball player. Bryant leaves behind his wife Vanessa and three children.
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A turbulent week for the Recording Academy found some measure of solace in the arms of Alicia Keys, who hosted the 62nd Annual Grammy Awards on Sunday night at Staples Center in Los Angeles. Having baulked at a challenge from the Oscars and bumped their ceremony up a few weeks, this was to have been the first Grammy Awards overseen by the new chief executive of the Recording Academy Deborah Dugan, who acceded the role in August after being confirmed as Neil Portnow’s replacement. Dugan became the first female chief executive in the history of the Recording Academy, and pledged fresh perspectives and increased diversity. But ten days before the Grammys she was removed from her post following a formal allegation of misconduct. Dugan responded on Tuesday in a blistering 44-page document which accused the Recording Academy of voting and financial irregularities and systemic gender discrimination and sexual harassment, incorporating the claim that Portnow’s departure owed to an allegation of rape.
Against this backdrop, and as Los Angeles reeled from news of the death of Kobe Bryant, the 62nd Annual Grammy Awards were casual and reflective if not quite downbeat. Billie Eilish dominated proceedings, together with her brother and producer Finneas winning the awards for Record of the Year, Album of the Year, Song of the Year, and Best New Artist on the back of ‘Bad Guy’ and her debut album When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?. Eilish became only the second artist in history to win that illustrious quartet, and at the age of 18 the youngest solo performer to win best album, adding another prize for Best Pop Vocal Album to the already heady mix. There were breakthroughs too for Lizzo, who won Best Pop Solo Performance for ‘Truth Hurts’, Best Traditional R&B Performance for ‘Jerome’, and Best Urban Contemporary Album for Cuz I Love You, and for Lil Nas X who claimed the Best Pop Duo Performance and Best Music Video awards for the enduring success of ‘Old Town Road’ featuring Billy Ray Cyrus.
Tyler, The Creator took home his first Grammy as IGOR won the award for Best Rap Album, triumphing in the moment but later expressing his reservations about the use of the term ‘urban’, while Rosalía excelled in the similarly contentious category for Best Latin Rock, Urban or Alternative Album thanks to her outstanding sophomore effort El mal querer. And after dazzling on the red carpet, Lizzo kicked off a night of mostly stellar performances, with renditions by turns dramatic and emotional from Tyler, The Creator, Ariana Grande, Camila Cabello, and Demi Lovato, marking her first live performance in two years. Artists from Boyz II Men to Meek Mill and John Legend paid tribute to Kobe Bryant and Nipsey Hussle, though in one of the night’s missteps even FKA twigs and Sheila E. struggled to spark life into Usher’s incongruous tribute to Prince.
