Notices by Flipboard Culture Desk (culturedesk@flipboard.social)

Michael Madsen, the actor best known for his roles in "Kill Bill" and "Reservoir Dogs," has died at age 67. Here's @Variety with more.

https://flip.it/IWutU1

#MichaelMadsen #Movies #Film #Cinema #Entertainment #RIP #InMemoriam

Tomorrow is Canada Day, and this year has seen a resurgence in Canadian pride after U.S. President Donald Trump's "51st state" threats. But in some parts of Canada, today has been proclaimed Indigenous Survivors Day. Here's @cbc@flipboard.com's interview with Troy Abromaitis, the Sixties Scoop survivor who created the observance. "By placing Indigenous Survivors Day on June 30, we invite Canadians to reflect before they celebrate Canada Day, and to remember the children who are taken and why this matters," said Abromaitis, a member of the Nlaka'pamux Nation from Lytton First Nation in British Columbia.

https://flip.it/z5-LGZ

#Canada #CanadaDay #Indigenous #SixtiesScoop #IndigenousSurvivorsDay #History @histodons

The USA's history is littered with shameful moments and dark chapters — and in recent years, historical sites have begun to acknowledge this in their communications with visitors. That may be about to change. The Trump administration is now posting signs asking visitors to report historical information “negative about either past or living Americans," the Colorado Sun reports. Last Friday, signs went up at the Amache site where Japanese Americans were incarcerated during World War II, and at the Sand Creek Massacre site where U.S. troops killed peaceful Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho people in 1865. “I interpret it as a direct threat to why we have national parks,” said Tracy Coppola, Colorado senior program manager for the southwest regional office of the nonprofit National Parks Conservation Association. “Definitely a chilling effect on our park rangers, whose job is to tell the story of these places. The Park Service is not partisan, and they represent all of us.”

https://flip.it/q8UVXF

#Culture #History #USHistory @histodons #NationalParks #JapaneseAmerican #NativeAmerican #Indigenous #TrumpAdministration

The U.S. Supreme Court will soon rule on L.W. vs Skrmetti, a case that will decide whether state bans on gender-affirming treatment for young people are constitutional. @TeenVogue spoke to trans youth and their supportive families about what this means for them, the difficulties they've had in accessing care, and why it's so important. One mom, Esther, spoke of what she witnessed right after her daughter Kai told her she was trans. “I opened the door, and she was just beaming. She had her headphones in and was just kind of be-bopping and, like, dancing,” Esther recalls. “I'd never seen her smile like that. She'd been suffering with depression, [harming] herself, anxiety for years, and just had this heaviness to her. And it was just gone. There was a lightness.”

https://flip.it/vcktGi

#LGBTQ #LGBTQYouth #Skrmetti #USGovernment #TransRights #TransRightsAreHumanRights

The largest ever nationwide survey of the transgender community, which surveyed more than 90,000 people, found that the overwhelming majority reported a vast improvement in life satisfaction after transitioning. This is in spite of trans people continuing to experience discrimination and mistreatment because of their gender identities and/or expressions. Here's more from NBC.

https://flip.it/eNeH3Y

#LGBTQ #Pride #TransRightsAreHumanRights #Happiness #USA #America

A year ago, film lovers raised $1M to save Seattle's Scarecrow Video, the world's largest video rental store and a cultural icon beloved by everyone from Roger Ebert to Quentin Tarantino. Now, the team behind it is shifting focus from survival to thriving. @IndieWire checked in with some of the people who are leading the institute into its new phase. “I think about this job a lot in terms of who gets to be the arbiter of truth,” said director of development Tyler Mesman. “Our job is to draw attention to things people might not know about. Unlike other public media libraries that are being pilfered right now, that are being censored, that are being torn asunder, nothing is going to leave our collection.”

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#Movies #Cinema #Film #Entertainment #VideoRental #Lifestyle #DVD #VHS

The Chitlin' Circuit consisted of venues throughout the U.S. that were mainly Black-owned, where Black entertainers would perform, predominantly to Black crowds, during the racial segregation era of the 1930s to the 1960s. "[It] is really the educational training ground for African American performers. Before they reach concert stages or Broadway or make recordings or they’re going to places like Motown or Stax or Chess Records, they’re really getting their start, particularly for musicians, in these small clubs, really forming a community of musicians, learning your craft, learning your vocals for the day, and then going on to the next level," history professor Michelle Scott told Jala Everett on Atlas Obscura's podcast. They chatted about one specific venue, Club Ebony in Indianola, Mississippi, where artists like B.B. King, Count Basie, Jimmie Lunceford and Bobby Rush cut their teeth.

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#History #BlackHistory @histodon @blackmastodon #Music #Culture #Lifestyle #ChitlinCircuit #USHistory

Marc Maron announced that he will end his "WTF With Marc Maron" podcast this fall. "We're tired, we're burnt out, and we are utterly satisfied with the work we've done," he said on today's show. Maron, who is also an actor and standup comedian, has recorded more than 1,600 episodes with everyone from President Barack Obama to Carol Burnett. His interview with Robin Williams, recorded in April 2010, was the first one-on-one podcast episode to enter America’s National Recording Registry. Here's @RollingStone's story.

https://flip.it/0WHBU_

#Podcasting #Podcast #MarcMaron #Maron #WTFWithMarcMaron #Entertainment #Lifestyle

"It will be nice to talk about fiction again because ever since the attack, really the only thing anybody's wanted to talk about is the attack, but I'm over it,” Sir Salman Rushdie recently said. The “Satanic Verses” author was injured in a 2022 knife attack while giving a lecture in New York has a new book coming out later this year. So you can see the reasons why he’s ready to move forward, and he talks about some of them in this article from from @BBCNews:

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#Culture #SalmanRushdie #Books #Bookstodon #Reading

London-based folks, put July 25 in your diary! It's the date of the first performance by a new theatre group, Trans What You Will, which will perform a rehearsed reading of Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night," directed by and cast with trans and nonbinary performers. The event will be opened by Sir Ian McKellen and staged at The Space Theatre, on the eve of London Trans Pride. And international people won't be left out — a global livestream will be available. Here's more from Attitude magazine, including links to buy tickets for both the IRL event and the livestream.

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#Theatre #London #Entertainment #SirIanMcKellen #TransRights #TransPride #LGBTQ

Five years ago, George Floyd was murdered. Part of the reason we know his name is because of Darnella Frazier, who was then 17 years old. She was walking her cousin to the Cup Foods corner store when she saw Floyd being held to the ground by officer Derek Chauvin, who had his knee on Floyd's neck. She took out her phone and filmed, for the full nine minutes that Floyd was dying, even as officers told her to stop, and that evening, she uploaded the footage to Facebook. Jesse Washington, who directed the documentary "Bearing Witness: A Portrait of Darnella Frazier," writes about how, in spite of attempts to end diversity efforts, halt and reverse progress, and ban books, he believes Frazier's efforts were not in vain. "The fist still rises, thanks to a 17-year-old Black girl who stared death in the face and pressed record," he writes for Andscape.

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#GeorgeFloyd #DarnellaFrazier #BlackLivesMatter #BlackMastodon @blackmastodon #Film #Documentary

America's largest remaining antebellum plantation, Nottoway Plantation in Iberville Parish, Louisiana, has burned to the ground. The cause is still under investigation but Parish President Chris Daigle says the building is "a total loss." In recent years, the plantation had been rebranded as Nottoway Resort, a luxury hotel described on its website as "restored to her days of glory." Sharing a video of the burning building on Facebook, a local man named Brad Gordon wrote: "If you don't understand why Black Americans are celebrating the symbolic dismantling of this monument to bondage and generational oppression — well, today, we simply don't care." Here's more from @AxiosNews.

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#BlackHistory #BlackMastodon @blackmastodon #USHistory #USNews

A slow clap for this dingus, a Chinese student living in Japan, who got stuck on Mount Fuji last week and was airlifted to safety, then had to be re-rescued four days later when he went back to retrieve his phone. Here's more from @CBSNews.

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#Climbing #Lifestyle #Travel #AdventureTravel #Japan #MountFuji

“This brand is bigger than any one person and bigger than what I’m able to lead on my own. It’s a movement. And it deserves a team with the scale, experience, and infrastructure to realize its potential."

What successful international conglomerate is being discussed here? It is, of course, Fyre Festival.

Felon founder Billy McFarland announced today that he's officially canceled the second edition of the festival, which was due to take place next month in Mexico, and is also selling the name. “We have decided the best way to accomplish our goals is to sell the Fyre Festival brand, including its trademarks, IP, digital assets, media reach, and cultural capital - to an operator that can fully realize its vision.," he said in a statement on the official website. "There is a clear path for operators and entrepreneurs with strong domain expertise to build Fyre into a global force in entertainment, media, fashion, CPG, and more.” Here's more from @FlipboardUK

We don't have any info on how much MacFarland hopes to get for his brand, but we'll be sure to keep you posted, in case you're interested in investing.

https://flip.it/0WjDs2
#Music #MusicFestivals #FyreFestival #BillyMacFarland #Lifestyle #PopCulture

Quentin Tarantino and David Fincher, two of the most idiosyncratic filmmakers of their generation, couldn’t possibly be working together, could they? And yet with the corroboration of this news, shock has given way to questions about the possibilities that this teaming might allow for. The Ringer has more on “one of the most high-profile collaborations in Hollywood history.”

https://flip.it/Ilqze5

#Culture #Movies #Film #Entertainment

Jackhammers have begun to remove the large yellow "Black Lives Matter" painted on to the street a block from the White House. D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser announced the change last week, which was made as a result of pressure from Republicans in Congress. The words will be replaced by murals, the design of which is as yet unknown. "The removal amounts to a public acknowledgement of just how vulnerable the District of Columbia is now that Trump is back in the White House and Republicans control both houses of Congress," writes @AssociatedPress.

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#BlackLivesMatter #WashingtonDC #WhiteHouse #BLM

If you've seen Canadians share messages on social media (and "Saturday Night Live") with the words "elbows up" and wondered what that means, MP Charlie Angus has written this helpful explainer. Referring to the late, great hockey player Gordie Howe, Angus writes: "When Gordie put the elbows up, guys lost teeth or ended up with black eyes ... A big surprise is coming for guys like Pete Navarro, J. D. Vance, and the Trump trolls who think they can bully, threaten and push us around."

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#Canada #CaPoli #Tariffs #Trump #CharlieAngus #TrumpAdministration #ElbowsUp

Michelle Trachtenberg, the former child actress who went on to appear in shows like "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Gossip Girl," has died at age 39. Here's @THR's tribute to her.

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#Celebrity #Television #Movies #Entertainment #RIP #InMemoriam #MichelleTrachtenberg

This week marks the 60th anniversary of the assassination of Malcolm X, the African American leader whose uncompromising vision of Black separatism inspired some while terrifying others. Born Malcolm Little, he disavowed his “slave name” in favor of X, and later became El Hajj Malik El Shabazz after a pilgrimage to the Muslim holy city of Mecca. @BBCNews has more on his life, death, incendiary rhetoric, and the lesser-known moderate views he later adopted:

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#Culture #BlackHistoryMonth #MalcolmX #CivilRights

Classical composer Edmund Dédé was born in New Orleans in 1827 but left the city for France in the 1850s as the rights of Black people in the U.S. became more restricted in the years before the Civil War. In Bordeaux, where he had a prestigious position at the Grand Théâtre, he wrote his grand opera, "Morgiane." But after his death in 1902, the manuscript vanished. It was discovered in Harvard's archive in 2007 and is believed to be the first complete opera by an African American. Last week, it had its concert premiere, co-produced by Opera Lafayette and OperaCréole. Here's @CNN's story about the losing and finding of the piece. Click the second link to join a mailing list so you can watch the livestream.

https://flip.it/ApJjTH

https://operalafayette.org/newsletter

#Music #Opera #BlackHistory @blackmastodon #History @histodons #EdmundDede