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Opera's Biggest Stars Predict Bright Future For The Art Form

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Some of the most influential members of the opera world gathered at the tenth annual Opera News Awards on Sunday. It was a glamorous evening at New York City's Plaza Hotel as the awards honored tenor Piotr Beczala, bass Ferruccio Furlanetto, and soprano Sondra Radvanovsky, bass Samuel Ramey and soprano Teresa Stratas.

Hosted by Opera News, a magazine published by the Metropolitan Opera Guild, the awards recognize "distinguished achievement" in opera. Of this year's honorees, Beczala, Furlanetto, Ramey and Radvanovsky are actively performing, with Radvanovsky set to make a historical run next season at the Metropolitan Opera as the first singer to perform all "Three Queens" by Donizetti. Stratas, a veritable operatic legend, is retired.

We spoke with the honorees, the editor-in-chief of Opera News and a member of the Met's Lindemann Young Artist Development Program about what the future of opera holds and how to get new audiences to pay attention.



The Future Looks Good

samuel ramey
Samuel Ramey in the title role of Boito's "Mefistofele," Nov. 3, 1999, during a rehearsal at New York's Metropolitan Opera.


"I think the future of opera is quite positive," F. Paul Driscoll, the editor-in-chief of Opera News, told The Huffington Post. "It’s something that’s survived for 400 years, and there’s no reason to think that it won’t survive for 400 more."

Samuel Ramey said that in Wichita, Kansas, where he lives, there's active interest in the art form. The local opera company and movie theater screenings of operas are typically sold out.

Driscoll added that opera has changed over the years and will continue to do so, adapting along with societal and technological evolutions.



Smaller Companies Are Coming

ferruccio furlanetto
Ferruccio Furlanetto, center right, performs as Philip II alongside Marina Poplavskaya performing as Elisabeth during the final dress rehearsal of Guiseppe Verdi's "Don Carlo" at the Metropolitan Opera in 2010.


A change we're seeing now is the movement to smaller companies in different performance spaces.

"[Opera] was something that was originally performed at parties in Italy, and it grew bigger, the theaters grew bigger, and it got filled with bigger and bigger spectacles," Driscoll said. "Now we’re going back to wonderful small companies being able to perform things in addition to the big houses."

While the Met continues its extravagant productions in Manhattan, LoftOpera has been performing lower-cost productions in intimate spaces in Brooklyn.

"I just went to [LoftOpera's] 'Lucrezia Borgia' last weekend in Brooklyn," Yunpeng Wang, a baritone in the Met's Lindemann Young Artist Development Program, told HuffPost. "The venue is small, but I never had that experience before. It’s so intimate you feel like you are involved in the situation, every second."



New Visuals Are Not Always Better

piotr beczala
Piotr Beczala as The Duke during the final dress rehearsal of Giuseppe Verdi's Rigoletto at the Metropolitan Opera in 2013.


Many opera leaders have argued that new, modern productions are a vital way to bring new audiences into houses. The singers at the Opera News Awards spoke against that perspective.

"I think the power of opera has been shifted from the music to the director, because this is a very visual age that we live in," said Radvanovsky. "Opera -- above and beyond anything else -- is about the music, and it should be about the music."

Furlanetto said that a difficult part of being a singer is "trying to avoid certain terrible productions."

"It’s no rule that young people want to see only modern operas and productions, and [that] older people like traditional," Beczala told HuffPost. "[Major opera houses] have to offer the public everything, from modern to traditional. The consumer has to have the choice to find something that’s the best selection for them. Fifteen years old, 25, or 70, it doesn’t matter. When we are honest on the stage, representing true emotions, that’s what’s important. It doesn’t matter how old our production is."

But some modern touches can help performances onstage, Wang explained.

"I think the HD broadcasts encouraged the singers to be better actors, to completely involve themselves to being in the production," he said.



Education Is Key

sondra radvanovsky
Tenor Placido Domingo, in the role of Cyrano, and Sondra Radvanovsky, in the role of Roxane, during a dress rehearsal for 'Cyrano de Bergerac' at the Metropolitan Opera in 2005.


Rather than focus on productions, the singers suggested that education is the best way to get new audiences to opera.

"You have to start exposing people young," Ramey said. "If they’re interested when they’re young, hopefully the interest will stay with them. I think that’s the most important thing."

Radvanovsky said that education is "paramount" to attracting young people.

"What if you didn’t have education for sports?" she asked. "People with a natural inclination for sports, athletes without any kind of education, without any kind of training, they would just be couch athletes instead of the world class Olympians that we have."

Proceeds from the Opera News Awards -- where individual tickets cost $850 -- are going to the Met Opera Guild's education programs. Ramey added that Wichita State University, where he's served as professor, and Opera Kansas have succeeded in bringing opera to schools and young people.



Bottom Line: "They Need To Hear It"

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Teresa Stratas fixes her hair in mirror before making her Metropolitan Opera debut as Pousette in "Manon" Oct. 28, 1959 in New York.


Quality in the art form is what is going to keep opera alive and new audiences coming, the opera icons told HuffPost. Beczala explained that creative collaboration, rather than trying to be a star, is what keeps opera distinctive.

"Of course opera singers are very individualist, they’re all great personalities, but opera, for me, is the result of collaboration on the stage and behind the stage," he said. "When we keep this kind of collaboration between singers, directors, conductors, then opera has a future."

Ultimately, it's the music itself that will keep opera thriving.

"I believe that this kind of music -- human voices applied to this music -- will be always living," Furlanetto said. "The audience loves this kind of music. For us it’s not a profession, it’s a privilege."

Stratas and Driscoll believe that it's also the music that will bring new audiences in.

"They need to hear it, honey," Stratas told HuffPost. "The music, music to the ears, music for the soul. There’s enough noise going on in our universe, on our planet. A lot of noise going on, bad noise. The music of the masters, who really had a connection, that’s an important thing."

Driscoll said that familiarizing people with even small pieces of opera music -- "whether it’s [through] YouTube, whether it’s social media, whether it’s sampling an aria" -- will get people interested in opera.

"If you get someone interested in a piece of music, they’ll want to know what the rest of the opera is like," he said.

"I believe once people hear opera, and if we can spread it, then it really does change lives," Stratas said. "The masters are the people who wrote the operas. If we expose people to those masters, who have the direct connection to God, or whatever we call God, then it’s one of our hopes, one of our beacons for the future."

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Artist Natalie Sharp Creates Incredible Album Art On Her Face For Record Store Day

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Spoiler alert: The best album in this collection is Nirvana's "Nevermind."

East London musician and artist Natalie Sharp, 33, painted the covers of different music albums onto her face in honor of last week's Record Store Day.

Though she originally thought she could accomplish more than 40 albums, she told The Huffington Post she quickly realized how daunting the task was.

"I started off thinking that every time I finished listening to the album I would only play [the album] on repeat for each face and have a glass of bubbly," but that didn't fare too well, Sharp said in an email. "By the end of it I was hammered and getting topless in front of a bewildered looking cat."

The 11 album covers that she did manage to recreate are all pretty beautiful, so we'll forgive her.

Check out her full collection below, and don't forget to follow her other art projects.





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This Is Why Christopher Nolan Won't Explain The 'Inception' Ending

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The final moments of Christopher Nolan's "Inception" will be debated by cinephiles until the end of time. Did the totem keep spinning? Did it topple? Was it all a dream?

The theorizing will tirelessly continue amongst movie lovers (myself included), especially since Nolan has remained rather silent about the ending. Besides shooting down fan theories, Nolan further dampened spirits when he told Entertainment Weekly in 2010 that those who ask about the totem are missing the point of the scene, which for him is all about Dominick Cobb looking at his kids. The filmmaker, however, did give one interpretation of the ending in a 2011 interview with Wired, saying "I choose to believe that Cobb gets back to his kids, because I have young kids."



But to this day, Nolan still refuses to give a definitive explanation of "Inception." During a conversation with filmmaker Bennett Miller ("Moneyball," "Foxcatcher") at the Tribeca Film Festival on Monday, Nolan flat-out refused to answer an audience member's question about the final scene, saying, "I'm certainly not going to answer that." But he did explain the reason behind his silence, which began after his second film, "Memento."

Nolan shared a story about the time he and Jonah Nolan, his brother and frequent collaborator, attended the Venice Film Festival in 2000 for the "Memento" premiere. "We did a press conference afterwards," Nolan recounted, "and somebody asked about my interpretation of the ending. I said, 'Well it's up for the audience to decide, but this is what it means to me.'"

After the press conference the "Memento" filmmaker's brother pulled him aside and said, "You don't understand, nobody hears that first bit where you say it's really up to the viewers if you then give your interpretation.'" That was enough to persuade the "Dark Knight" filmmaker to never open his mouth again on "those kind of issues." Now the top will forever remain spinning into oblivion ... or will it?

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Cool Baby's 'Thumbs-Up' Photo Will Assure You That It's All Good

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This baby is totally giving Zoolander a run for his money.

While posing for his daycare portrait, Sawyer Loudon, then 5 months old, was caught giving a "thumbs-up" to the camera.

sawyer

The epic photo was taken 2 months ago, but his mother, Kim Loudon, posted the stylin' picture to Reddit last week, where it quickly went viral. As of Tuesday afternoon, is has a whopping 2.8 million views on Imgur.

The picture perfect pose, Loudon told The Huffington Post in an email, seemed to be orchestrated completely by chance.

"I'm not sure how the photographer caught him at the perfect moment but I'm sure he was in the middle of taking his fingers to or from his mouth," Loudon wrote. "I'm not sure we could repeat the pose any time soon even if we tried."

Sawyer's picture took the Internet by storm, and was even the subject of a Reddit Photoshop Battle. While Loudon and her husband, Jeff, thought the picture was funny, they never thought it'd end up getting so much buzz.

"We thought a few people would find [the portrait] humorous and maybe brighten their day a bit," Loudon explained. "It's been kind of surreal. We never thought his picture would get this much attention."

Sawyer's now almost 7 months old, and while his parents haven't considered a modeling career for the tot, we're totally all for it.

Forget "Blue Steel,' Sawyer's bringing back the thumbs-up.

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Kate Bolick Shares Her 'Spinster Wishes' With Single Women Everywhere

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Kate Bolick is a self-proclaimed "spinster." She's over the age of 40, unmarried and -- gasp! -- happy.

In 2011, when she was 39, Bolick wrote a cover story from The Atlantic titled "All The Single Ladies." And it was her face on the cover of the magazine instead of that of stock photo model, with the tagline "What Me, Marry?" emblazoned across her body in bold block letters. The story -- which posed the question one would hopefully always say yes to, "Can I spend my life alone and still be happy?" -- gave way to a thousand thinkpieces, and eventually, a book deal for Bolick.

The result is Spinster: half memoir, half historical views of singledom. Bolick situates her own life within the context of today's reality -- both marriage rates and birth rates have reached historic lows -- and within the lives of five women whose work influenced her greatly, women whom she refers to as her five "female awakeners." Those awakeners are Edith Wharton, Neith Boyce, Maeve Brennan, Edna St. Vincent Millay and Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

That Spinster is first and foremost Bolick's story will make the narrative deeply familiar to some single women, and likely unrecognizable to others. But that comparison and inner dialogue is what Bolick wants from her readers. "I wanted to show the conversation that I’d been having in my head with these women from the early 1900s, and I thought that by putting my own life on the page along with theirs, then the reader could replicate the experience that I’d been having with the women I’d been reading about," she said to The Huffington Post over the phone last week. "I want whoever is reading the book to be in conversation with me -- agreeing with me, disagreeing with me."

Bolick may have written a book all about what it means to be unmarried, but her ultimate point is that "single ladies" are so much more than their relationship status. "It’s almost as if the single person is still not a real, live person, with her own range of experiences," she said. "We have not seen the single experience represented in all its complexity ever, really. So because of that, we’re stuck thinking of the single woman as a static being."

The Huffington Post spoke with Bolick about her new book, her "spinster wishes" and what it all means for today's 20 and 30-something single women.

In the opening of the book, you say that “whom to marry and when will it happen” are two questions that dominate every woman’s existence. How do these questions shape the way women see their lives?
I’m glad you’re focusing on the word "questions," ‘cause that’s the point of that statement. I see these questions as defining the female experience because culture expects us to get married, and so we grow up assuming we’ll get married some day. That question is always there -- when will I and who will it be? And possibly you get to a point where you decide you don’t want to get married, but it’s something you have to reject.

What has it meant for men that they haven’t historically been forced to define their lives by these questions?
It means for one, that how to answer them is far less freighted for men. Men too assume that they will one day marry, it’s not just a female assumption, but because traditionally men have been less defined by it than women have, it’s something that they’re able to have a more casual relationship to the idea of, or just trust that it’ll happen someday. Historically, we’ve put the power in the man’s hand, because the man is the one who proposes or he’s the chooser of the mate. So men grow up thinking that sure, this is something that they’ll do someday, whenever they feel like getting around to it. With women, it’s a more passive experience. They assume it’s something that they’ll do, but they don’t know when or how.

You talk about why you love the word "spinster." At what point did you land on Spinster as your book’s title?
I was in Toronto visiting my friend Michael, who I write about in the book, who is a professor at the University of Toronto. He wrote an academic book a couple of years ago called Single: Arguments for the Uncoupled, and talking about this is something we do all the time. He came up with the title. Not only have I always liked the word and the idea of the spinster, but I like how it broadcasts an historic angle. It’s a book that’s about history as well as the contemporary experience. "Spinster" is also a word that people have very strong reactions to. I had to spend a lot of time convincing my publisher that this was a good idea, because they thought it was going to scare off readers, that no single woman wants to sit on the subway reading a book called Spinster. But I think it’s been something that’s been bubbling up over the past few years -- women my age talking or thinking about “spinsterdom.” So I think there is some warmth around the word as well.







You also mention our inability to really remember how things looked beyond the experience of our parents and grandparents. When you dug into the history of single women in the U.S., what did you learn that surprised you most?
The biggest surprise was that the single woman hasn’t always been derided. There were moments in history where single women were embracing their single status and talking about it with each other, and even perceived positively by the culture. [Feminist, sociologist and author] Charlotte Perkins Gilman, for example, was born in 1860 and she came of age in what I think of as the Golden Age of the Aunt or Great-Aunt, where the women who were her aunts, the women of the 1830s and ‘40s were actively and publicly choosing not to marry. It wasn’t a mass movement, but that thinking and energy were in the air, so by the time Gilman was growing up, she had examples of very strong, singular, unmarried women in her family tree. She could see that marriage was a choice and not a necessity. We tend to think that people have always been coupled, always been married, and completely forget that there is this long history of people who have lived outside of those arrangements and thrived there.

You write about your “spinster wishes.” What is it that you always found so appealing about the fantasy of solitude and independence, even when you’ve been in relationships that on paper seemed perfect?
I read through all of my journals and was shocked to see myself writing about the “spinster wish.” That was remarkable to me, that even at 21 and 22 I was glamorizing and romanticizing the idea of the woman alone. I think that was because I’m such a relationship-oriented person.

Back in my 20s, when I was in relationships all the time, solitude was something I was always stealing. It always felt like a stolen good I had to treasure but that I couldn’t count on having. Those moments felt charged and very exciting. I have a very different relationship to alone-ness and solitude now, because now it’s what I do all the time. So it’s not this charged, exciting thing -- it’s just the way I live my life. But that’s the way I wanted it. I didn’t want to want to be stealing time for myself. I wanted time for myself to be the fundamental way that I live.

Do you feel like you had a moment where you had a realization that being alone was something you could choose?
It was definitely in my late 20s, when I was thinking very seriously about the relationship that I was in, and where we would go, and realizing that -- wait a minute -- I had never been alone in my life. How could I expect to be someone’s life partner if I don’t know how to take care of myself yet? So that really felt like a revelation. I was driven by an impulse that I didn’t really understand, which felt very frightening. And then once I was alone and living on my own, I thought, “This will just be a temporary thing. I’ll just do this for a couple of years. And during that time I’ll learn about myself and how to take care of myself and then I’ll be ready to partner up with somebody.” I was very surprised that I kept never wanting to do that. I was still entering into relationships assuming that it would go forth down a particular trajectory, and then culminate in: to marry or to not marry. I didn’t know how to undo that way of thinking about things.

In my early 30s, I was still assuming that I’d meet someone and be struck by lightning and want to marry him, and I kept being surprised that that didn’t happen. And along the way, I grew into this way of being.

Is there something you hope single women in their 20s take away from reading about your experiences?
That these years alone can be an incredibly rich period of your life and it’s not something to be feared. Don’t organize your life around the pursuit of a mate, because there are much more interesting things to be doing with your time. And have love and romance be part of it -- I think it’s essential to most people’s lives -- but there doesn’t need to be so much anxiety around whether or not you’ll find a person. That will happen in its own time.

At the end of book, you say that this dichotomy between single vs. married is a false one. Why do you think we have a tendency to see just two camps of women -- single and married -- when our lived experiences aren’t limited in that way?

Isn’t it astonishing that we can’t stop seeing it in this very reductive way? I think part of it is that we still don’t fully understand the single female experience, because we haven’t seen it reflected and represented enough. We understand the married person and the married experience, and then the single person is still inscrutable. It’s just easier to create this false dichotomy.







Another image that looms large in the minds of single women is of the “crazy bag lady” or “crazy cat lady.” Why do you think it is that this fear of being alone is a) so terrifying and b) so tied up in finding a (presumably male, heterosexual) romantic partner?
I think it has a lot to do with the fact that women still find a lot of social and personal validation in the idea of being chosen by a man. Obviously not all women feel that way, but I think that [idea] is pretty pervasive. And because the ultimate social validation is being loved by a man -- whether or not you’re married to him -- not being loved by a man is the worst possible thing. So that’s why the specter of the crazy bag lady who lives on the streets is so threatening. She’s the ultimate example of what it means to not be loved.

It’s just crazy to me the power that image still holds, even amongst powerful, successful single women. There’s this incredible disconnect between what we know to be true intellectually and the emotional part, which is harder to conquer.
Exactly. And I want the book to be speaking to the emotional aspect of it -- to show my own insecurities and fears throughout this process. It’s something we struggle with, and that’s OK, to some extent. It’s important stuff, how we spend our life and who we spend our time with. And it requires a lot of thought. But I would hope that a young woman could read my book and see the amount of insecurity I went through and maybe she could learn to not be as insecure. Because I shouldn’t have been as afraid as I was at certain points.

What can we do to free ourselves from that fear dominating our lives?
For me, when it happened was when I didn’t marry by 35 or 36. I had another one of these “aha!” revelatory moments. I thought, “Oh, I didn’t do it when I was supposed to. I didn’t get married on the expected timeline. So this means it might never happen -- or that it might happen at any time. It could happen in 10 years or 20 years or next year.” And that freed me. I wasn’t chasing after marriage as a brass ring. And yet, still, it was something I thought I was supposed to be doing.

I think another piece of this is de-emphasizing the primacy of romantic love in the couple, and making yourself alive to all of the relationships in your life that are positive and sustaining. So rather than being a singular alone person looking for a mate, recognizing that you live inside of a constellation of relationships that sustain you and are valuable to you.

Do you feel as though single women are having a particularly visible moment right now?
Oh absolutely. I think it’s really exciting. It’s so different than 15 years ago when I was first starting to think about these things in earnest. There was no productive or interesting conversation around the single woman. And now we’re really thinking about it.

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Original 'X-Men' Character Iceman Comes Out As Gay

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Original "X-Men" member Iceman is set to make a big revelation this week: he's gay.

The iconic character makes the surprise declaration in the All-New X-Men #40, which is available in stores and online April 22. Pages from the new book show an intimate conversation between a young Iceman, or Bobby Drake, and pal Jean Grey.

After Iceman comments on how hot he finds his female teacher, the telepathic Jean sees right through her friend's thinly-veiled declaration and tells him outright that she knows he's gay.

iceman gay

As a number of publications have already pointed out, the Iceman depicted in this new installment is the teenage version of the character displaced in time. The older, present-day Iceman that audiences are familiar with from the series, identifies as straight.

In an email statement, All-New X-Men writer Brian Michael Bendis told The Huffington Post that Iceman's storyline will continue to evolve in future books, and that the decision to make the character a gay man was in keeping with contemporary social dialogue around lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) issues.

"There are thousands, if not millions, of stories of people who, for many different reasons, felt the need to hide their sexuality," he said. "The X-Men, with the conceit of time travel, give us a fascinating platform in which to examine such personal journeys. This is just the first little chapter of a much larger story that will be told.”

In 2012, Marvel Comics made waves when it was announced that its first openly gay hero, super speedster Northstar, would tie the knot with his longtime civilian boyfriend, Kyle Jinadu, in an issue of “Astonishing X-Men.”

Still, Iceman's declaration breaks fresh ground in that the character was one of the original "X-Men" created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in 1963.

Check out pages from All-New X-Men which depict Iceman's coming out below:




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Amy Schumer Pranks Kimye On Red Carpet At The Time 100 Gala

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All the celebrities gathered at the Time 100 gala in New York City on Tuesday night to celebrate the magazine's 2015 list of the 100 Most Influential People In the World.

The night included a 20-minute performance by Kanye West, who was one of Time's cover stars, a handful of celebrity photos and one amazing photobomb by Time honoree Amy Schumer. The stand-up comic pulled a Jennifer Lawrence on the Time 100 red carpet as she took a tumble in front of West and Kim Kardashian. But it was all planned, of course.

amy schumer

amy schumer

The "Inside Amy Schumer" actress told Time about the fall afterward. “I saw them," Schumer said of Kimye, "and said to my publicist, ‘Can I pretend to fall?’ and she said, ‘I can’t stop you." And she certainly didn't. Amy Schumer for Most Amazing Woman of 2015, please?

Some of the other great photos of the night captured Martha Stewart with Kardashian, Emma Watson with Bradley Cooper and Naomi Campbell dancing:





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Wu-Tang Clan Member Will Speak At MIT About Art And Outer Space

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CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) -- Rapper GZA from the Wu-Tang Clan will talk about how art and outer space collide at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in May as part of the school's speaker series featuring hip-hop artists.

The Boston Globe reports (http://bit.ly/1aQR7C0 ) that Gary Grice, who goes by the stage name GZA, also will discuss his latest album when he meets with students.

Sam Magee, manager of student programs at the Arts at MIT office, says physics professor Christoph Paus will moderate GZA's lecture since the rapper's latest album, "Dark Matter," encompasses aspects of space and time.

GZA isn't a first time visitor to the campus. The founding member of the Wu-Tang Clan visited MIT in 2012 to talk to students about freestyle rapping, the music that influences his life, and chess.

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Information from: The Boston Globe, http://www.bostonglobe.com

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Gay Singer-Songwriter Aiden Leslie On His New Video, 'I Just Go,' And The Future Of His Musical Journey

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Aiden Leslie has always aimed to forge a new path for male performers in dance music, a genre traditionally dominated by divas.

The 38-year-old singer-songwriter, who is openly gay, made a name for himself on the New York nightlife circuit with singles like "Worlds Away" and "Nobody Said." Now, he's taking a more soulful approach with his latest song and music video, "I Just Go."

The tune, which Leslie describes as his most personal work to date, is very much an uptempo, string-driven ballad, particularly when compared to the EDM-tinged "bangerz" that dominate dance floors these days. Released earlier this month, the cinematic video for the song was filmed mostly in Manhattan and Brooklyn, with its splashy beach sequences shot in Breezy Point, New York.

The hunky performer, who aims to follow up the song with a summer tour and a full-length album, was refreshingly candid in a recent chat with The Huffington Post, discussing his new music, his ideal date, out stars in the music industry and his plans for the future.

Congrats on the release of your new song and video, "I Just Go." What’s the inspiration behind the new song?
Thank you so much! When I wrote this song, I was probably at one of my lowest moments...I was running with the wrong crowd, partying a lot, having probably too much fun. I was lost. It was definitely a jet-set type of lifestyle that lots of people from the outside would think was fabulous, and it was! But it took its toll on me spiritually. I was searching for lots of things, and in all the wrong places. So I dug deep and wrote about it, and by doing that, it healed me.

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"I think it's sexy when somebody goes for it. That's impressive to me."

You've got a super-cute costar [Rafaele Rivera] in this video. What does a man have to do to impress Aiden Leslie? What’s the biggest turn-on in a prospective date?
I like when a person is direct and says what they want. That might scare some people and perhaps at one point in my life, myself. But now I think it's sexy when somebody goes for it. That's impressive to me. So many guys dance around things, and it's so tiring. I like a man! That will get my attention. Also, if you smell good, I'm already in halfway (laughs). That's a good starting point.

The video for the song traces the arc of a relationship. What do you see as its ultimate message?
The video definitely illustrates a relationship from a literal standpoint, but it’s more of a metaphor for the song. There are lots of layers. I went to many things to numb the pain, and the relationship was one of those things. If you look at the lyrics, they are on the dark side: “I could care/Should care/But I just go." It’s that universal thing of doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. So many choices were before me and I chose things that were not serving me. In the bridge of the song I write, “Running down this path with my eyes closed searching for the truth.” I didn't want to see the truth, so I chose to keep going no matter what...a survival technique, one I think most of us can identify with.

Interestingly, you mention that this is one of the first songs you ever wrote. Why did the timing feel right to release it now?
It was one of very first songs that I ever wrote. It was a long-form artistic kind of electronica demo. It was slow and ambient. After a while, we thought, let’s change it up into a dance mix and it received some notice. Then I just put it away for a few years. But I always loved it. I would perform it at shows around the country. About a year and a half ago, I did an acoustic show at The Cutting Room here in New York City. I just played it on a guitar and it got a really good response, and I thought, Let’s re-think this and do it like a full single and video with of course, remixes! I think this track is written where it works any way you decide to do it. It felt time to talk about this time in my life.

aiden leslie

"I think it's so exciting to see the industry embracing out artists. It's about time, right?"

In recent years, pop music's lineup of out stars has grown to include stars like Adam Lambert, Frank Ocean and Sam Smith. As an artist, where do you see yourself fitting into this landscape? Who are your biggest musical inspirations?
Whenever you get into this industry you have to always remember there is room for everybody and I think it's so exciting to see the industry embracing out artists. It's about time, right? We all have something to say and it's unique because we're artists. That's the beauty of it, really. I love inventive, soulful lyrics paired with catchy, simple melodies. Top 40 pop music -- that's what I love. I love great songwriters like Prince, Lenny Kravitz, George Michael. Also, Natalie Merchant, Jewel and, of course, Madonna, Taylor Swift, Beyoncé, Jay Z, Kelly Clarkson and Pink.

Is a full-length album in the works?
Yes, it has been for a while now. But I want it to be right when I do it. We live in a 15-second world these days. It seems people's attention spans are pretty thin. So I think it's easy for things to get lost in today's world. It breaks my heart when artists put out 15-20 tracks and the consumer clicks on two and trashes the rest after a five-minute search on iTunes. I see it all the time. So I want to make the best impact for now. There is nothing better than going on a journey with an album, but it's an art that's less noticed and appreciated.

What’s next for Aiden Leslie?
I'm trying to not think too much on what the future holds. But I work. It's who I am. And I must create. With that said, we’re booking a lot of shows for the summer and getting ready to release my largest remix package on May 5. And, of course, the music will always continue, always.

This interview has been edited and condensed for style and length.

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Fitness Blogger Photoshops Her Body In Real-Time In Response To Hateful Comments

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Fitness blogger and personal trainer Cassey Ho is tired of receiving negative comments about her appearance.

In a poignant YouTube video titled "The Perfect Body," Ho alters herself in response to online criticism of her body.

"In this video, you will experience what it feels like to be constantly bombarded with outrageous negativity," Ho wrote in a blog post introducing the video. "You will see what it looks like to have your self-esteem stripped away. You will read real comments left by real people. You will see me struggle with my own appearance."

In "The Perfect Body," Ho "makes changes" to herself including slimming her waist, increasing her bust and changing the color of her eyes. Ho wrote that she was tired of receiving negative comments and wanted to make a stand against cyber bullying.

"So what if I changed?" Ho wrote. "What if I had a slimmer waist and a bigger butt? Would everyone be happy then? What if I lived in a world where I could photoshop my body in real life? Would I be happy then?"

Watch the full video above.

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Public Books — The Novel’s Forking Path

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April 1, 2015 — Reading Tom McCarthy’s Satin Island, it suddenly occurred to me why his 2005 novel Remainder is so good. It’s not the reason Zadie Smith gave in the New York Review of Books, however important that essay has been to winning McCarthy the readership he deserves. Those who agreed with Smith’s judgment of McCarthy’s earlier novel will probably like his new one, which sets itself the task of thinking about the present as directly as a novel could. But they might also sense a writer whose imagination has flattened, as though newly subject to the force of gravity. Did Remainder really chart a viable way forward for the novel, as Smith promised? What claims on our interest can the novel make now? A few works later in the career of one of the most intellectually ambitious contemporary writers, it’s tempting to try to find an answer to that question in Satin Island.

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Trans-Excluding Michigan Womyn's Music Festival To End This Year

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The Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival, held annually since 1976, and which in recent years attracted controversy for refusing to admit transgender women, announced on Facebook that this year will be its last. Festival founder and organizer Lisa Vogel wrote, “We have known in our hearts for some years that the life cycle of the Festival was coming to a time of closure.”

In a note posted last night, Vogel wrote that this year’s Michfest, held in early August, would be its last, although she didn’t give one specific reason. The note reads, in part:

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Watch 102-Year-Old Former Star See Footage Of Her Young Self Dancing For The First Time

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Living to 102 years old don’t mean a thing if you ain’t got that swing.

Just ask Alice Barker, who recently celebrated her 102nd birthday. Though she now lives at a nursing home, Barker was a famous dancer during the Harlem Renaissance in the 1930s. She appeared in films, television and commercials, and even danced on the same stage as Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra.

“It just felt so good doing it,” Barker says in the video above. “Because that music -- I just get carried away in it.”

Yet, somehow, Barker had never seen footage of herself in action.

Until now. Jazz on Film’s Mark Cantor and David Shuff uncovered three “soundies” –- short musical videos –- of Barker shimming and swaying across the stage. They presented the footage to Barker in her nursing home bedroom.

When asked how it felt to see herself dancing, Barker replied, “Making me wish I could get out of bed and do it all over again.”

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After Losing His Sight, Painter John Bramblitt Feels The Colors On His Canvas

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"One of the last things I ever saw before completely losing my sight was the planet Saturn," John Bramblitt recalls wistfully. "I’d seen photos of it before, but seeing it in real life through a lens ..." He trails off at the memory, unable to complete the sentence, still amazed at the thought after 14 years.

Bramblitt, 42, leaves others as breathless as Saturn once left him, working full-time as a painter and consistently producing a trademark blend of vibrant colors, swirling brushstrokes and meaningful emotionality that stuns viewers, especially those previously unaware of his visual impairment.

couple on pier

Through a series of raised lines on the canvas, he can determine his spatial position at any moment. Through sense of touch he is able to determine the correct paint color, noting that "because oil paints are made from different substances they have a viscosity and texture that varies slightly from color to color." Through a vivid imagination, he is able to create works that transcend his own physical limitations and enter another realm, one in which the mind and not sight rules supreme.

On the day Bramblitt spoke to The Huffington Post, he was working on a painting of a giant floating eyeball, representing how much he used to believe vision was the key to a fulfilling life. "The idea of color means more to me now than it did when I was sighted. Now it has more emotion," says Bramblitt, who lives in Denton, Texas, outside of Dallas. "It's more than just light being reflected off something."

He uses and mixes colors purely by touch alone. "With oils, creating different textures is easy because they are actually made from different substances, so many of the colors already feel slightly different. Burnt sienna, in the brand that I use, has a slight jelly like consistency, and melts when combined with a little paint thinner. Cerulean blue has a smooth creamy feel right out of the tube," Bramblitt said. "You can enhance these subtle differences by adding mediums to thicken or thin the paint even more."

cowboy sunset

Bramblitt began losing his sight as a teenager, a process that lasted several years culminating in his mid-to-late-20s. Doctors say it was likely a long-term consequence of the epilepsy he had since age two and the Lyme disease he contracted as a teenager, in particular because the doctors did not catch the Lyme disease for a full three years. He had always enjoyed art but it was not his career choice. He earned a degree in creative writing and disability studies from University of North Texas, then spent the first few years of his professional life as an office manager.

At that point, he explained, he was going through a dark place and had ceased making art completely. Things changed when he started mobility training, learning to use a white cane. "I thought, ‘If I can get myself across the street, I can get myself across the canvas.’ It changed my entire perspective on life," Bramblitt said. "It forced me to live brushstroke to brushstroke. Always thinking about paint on the end of that brush, not the future."

duck pond

This isn't entirely unexpected, says John Kennedy, a professor of psychology at University of Toronto, whose research has focused on the relationships between vision, touch, and pictures.

"Like surfaces and edges, expression is visible and tangible too. Consider a tense body. Or a relaxed hand. Or a head bowed in sorrow. These are tangible as well as visible," Kennedy told HuffPost. "Blind adults and children have the same feelings and need for expression as the sighted."

Though Bramblitt can no longer see color, shape or form, he still retains light perception. Think of it the same way as you can't "see" anything if your eyes are shut tight, but if you were outside you could still sense whether it was day or night. That's what his world is like all the time.

evening stroll

He lives with his wife Jacqi Serie and his son Jack, 7, named after painter Jackson Pollock. Serie's favorite painting of her husband's is a stylized portrait he did of her titled "Muse." "It had so much energy with all the different colors he used in my hair," she recalled. "There's true emotion there, and that really speaks to me."

"The challenge [of his blindness] just becomes part of life, eventually you barely even think about it," she said. "If he bumps into something when he’s walking, I feel bad. It’s the everyday little stuff that provides challenges. But if anything, the blindness makes him a more attentive and loving father. Everything about living is treasured with him."

On his website, Bramblitt describes how his sense of touch allowed him to fully understand Jack during his first minutes of life.

"I was able to feel his face moments after his birth and laid upon his mother’s stomach. I felt as he took his very first breaths. I very well may have been the first blind man in history to have this experience because of the touch to site techniques," Bramblitt wrote. "Techniques that allowed me to see my son’s face in exquisite detail -- detail that would allow me to remember every bend and twist of his ear, the exact placement of the wrinkles on his hands, the spacing of his lips as he made his first sounds. Details that might be lost on even the most keenly sighted person."

boat on the coast

Professor Kennedy agreed that features such as form are, neurologically speaking, just as accessible to the visually impaired, although Bramblitt is exceptional in his ability to translate that back into the two-dimensional format of a canvas.

"Shape is present in vision and touch. Flat, convex and concave are known to the eye and the hand. Walking around we discover the slow rise of a hill, or the steepness of an incline that someone uses as a driveway. Blind people have a similar sense of perspective." Kennedy said. "Perspective is about direction, and direction makes sense to touch as much as it does to vision. Simple but true."

Bramblitt's greatest source of inspiration is music, which is why has has a speaker system set up all around his art studio. He has a rare condition called synesthesia, in which sounds also manifest themselves in his mind as colors. In hopes of gaining a better understanding of what he sees in his mind's eye, The Huffington Post played three recent massive pop hits on the music charts and asked Bramblitt what he visualized.

feel it by john bramblitt

"Uptown Funk!" by Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars produces "a little bit of orange and a little bit of blue at the start, but when the voice comes in I see a deep rich purple, mixed in with a golden yellow," Bramblitt said. "The higher voice and lower bass line contrast with each other, so the colors contrast bright and dark accordingly."

"Blank Space" by Taylor Swift begins with "tan brown colors, very light, almost as if there’s a vanilla. Then it lightens into this yellow, then a hyper-pink with a fluorescent green. On the canvas the pink and green would be along the edges," Bramblitt said. "Energy builds in the song, the more you listen, the more instruments and components are added. So the painting would be done in a way that it builds up, using more texture so it takes longer for your eye to take in, reflecting the time element of the music."

"Thinking Out Loud" by Ed Sheeran "starts out with brilliant blue fading to a violet at the bottom of the canvas. It also has a lot of white on the background, reflecting the sparse instrumentation and production."

spring jazz

Bramblitt has produced more than 300 paintings since his sight was lost. He insists that his blindness is not a drawback to his appreciation of life at its fullest. If anything, his other senses are heightened as a result.

"In truth, in the cafe that day, the music coming from the speakers colored the air; the conversations and laughter drifting from the tables did the same. The smell of the perfume from the woman sitting next to me was like clouds of rose and violet. The rough wood grain of the middle of the table had a different hue than the worn edges," Bramblitt wrote on his website's frequently asked questions page. "I think it’s ironic that in that coffee shop I would probably be the last person that anyone would ask about color, but I might actually be the one appreciating it the most."

bid d

Check out more of John Bramblitt's artwork on his official website.

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This Video Will Turn Even The Biggest Cynic Into A Tree-Hugger

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While issues like global warming and deforestation plague our world, a rapper is here to remind us that not all hope is lost -- we really can do something about it.

In a video entitled "Dear Future Generations, Sorry," outspoken rapper Prince Ea uses some poignant words to give us a glimpse into what the world could look like one day, by addressing generations after our time.

"Dear future generations, I think I speak for the rest of us when I say, 'Sorry,'" he begins. "Sorry we left you with our mess of a planet."

The rapper, who, according to the video, was inspired to create the message after witnessing the destruction of rainforests in Africa, continues to apologize for a horrific world that human beings caused as a result of "putting profit above people, greed above need, and the rule of gold before the golden rule."

"I'm sorry we use nature as a credit card with no spending limit, over-drafting animals to extinction, stealing your chance to ever see their uniqueness," he says. "But most of all I'm sorry about our mindset because we had the nerve to call this destruction 'progress.'"

But after saying sorry for a could-be world, Prince Ea takes his apology back, because, after all, he says that human beings don't have to allow the environment to become that bleak picture. He calls on people to act, rather than accept the issues that affect our world. At the end of the video, he also asks others to look into "Stand for Trees," an organization that aims to fight against the destruction of forests.

The artist's words are piercing, but ultimately, they offer a beautiful sense of hope and change.

"Cut the beat. I'm not sorry. This future I do not accept it. An era does not become a mistake until you refuse to correct it ... We are the root, we are the foundation -- this generation. It is up to us, to take care of this planet. It is our only home. We must globally warm our hearts and change the climate of our souls. And realize that we are not apart from nature, we are a part of nature. And to betray nature is to betray us. To save nature is to save us. Because whatever you're fighting for ...it won't matter in the least, because if we don't don't all work together to save the environment, we will be equally extinct."


Watch Prince Ea's video above. To learn more about Stand For Trees, visit their website here.

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Secrets of 'Avengers: Age of Ultron': Joss Whedon Tells All

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The following article is provided by Rolling Stone.

By BRIAN HIATT

"You've got to help me with this ankle bracelet – it shocks me if I try to go to Warner Bros.," says Joss Whedon. The writer/director of "Avengers: Age of Ultron" is, of course, joking: While he did just spend three months as a virtual prisoner on Disney's Burbank studio lot, living right on the property, working seven days a week away from his family, the ordeal was self-imposed. "Apparently you have to make the whole movie," he says, still looking weary. "I slaved. I was writing dialogue until a week ago: 'Oh wait, this is cleaner, this explains better, here's an opportunity.' At the same time, on the last day, I was like, 'you know, we can take out this word.'"

In the dark editing bay where he finished the highly anticipated sequel to the 2012 blockbuster, and then over lunch at Disney's on-site restaurant – where the salt shakers are shaped like Mickey Mouse – Whedon spoke at length about the film, the Hulk, and his future. (Some of the following interview appears in our new Hulk-themed cover story, which also features Mark Ruffalo and more).

How did you face what seems like the constant one-upmanship between summer blockbusters?

The first step is, we don't chase bigger. And I told [Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige] that my secret dream is that this movie is shorter than the first one. And it is. It's one minute shorter.

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Nicely done.

But what you don't want to do is take what you did and pile on, to create bloat or a sort of big echo of what you did before. There are so many new ideas, so many new interactions and problems, so many new sources of humor and excitement. Find the next story, that's all. That's the only job, I wanted to make a completely new movie about these people, not just make another installment. So it's really about finding where the heart is now. What happens when you have all these people who – when you have this much power – really shouldn't be in the same room together sitting around. What's good and what's very bad about that?

What is your mood when you finish something like this?

I've never done anything like this [laughs]. The burden of it, usually I can just like tune that stuff out. That's not my job. I'm here to tell a story. But at some point your brain starts running numbers. There's some weird choices in this movie. You know? There's some genuinely strange stuff. It's very new.

Yeah, the decision to make 40 minutes of it black and white and Russian was...
[Laughs] You know, with hindsight… No, believe me, it's not that weird, but I was like, we're definitely going to go left of center here. And that was an adjustment for people. So, I'm like, if this doesn't work, they're all going to go, "Well, you went left of center!" I just wanted to make it as interesting and complicated – not complicated, complex— as possible, and really get inside these characters' heads.

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Are you really still nervous?

I watched it yesterday, and was just hating life: "No, no. It's wrong." And [editor] Jeff Ford was like, "Joss, you can't do that because you're only going to watch it as someone who's making it. It's done. Now you have to wait and watch it with an audience. Then that part of your brain may shut down. Once you hear people laughing or gasping, then that part of you will go away."

So what helped push this to the last minute?

There's always, "Well, what if? And couldn't we..." That's part of Kevin's style, too – he wants to get his fingers into everything. Some directors, he makes them crazy; some directors he works fine with. Kevin's incredibly smart about rearranging things and finding not just problems but solutions, which is even better. When he and I are in pursuit of the same thing, it's great — and when we're not, it's tough. There's no way you make this movie without a certain amount of friction, and I respect the friction because I usually find that the best work comes out of that. It's like when an actor has opinions about his role, and we're like yeah, you're supposed to. So this movie was tough. Because I was fighting for some things that are a bit different and that I believe in.

I've been in studios where they've been like, 'Maybe it's a rom-com!' and you're like, 'We're doomed.'
The sort of internal, semi-psychedelic trips that the characters are forced into are unusual for the genre.

Yeah, dialing that in was very complicated and painful. And I came away the same way I did the first time: "I've compromised so much! I've given up so much and I had to fight." Even though we're all still trying to make the same movie. I've been in studios where they've been like, "Maybe it's a rom-com!" and you're like, "We're doomed."

But you fight a great deal. You work and you doubt and you shout, and you come away, win or lose, with "This movie is all me, it's so me." That's the thing I like about Marvel. They know I'm gonna make a Marvel movie — but they also know that the definition of that changes with every movie. I look at it like the comic books, because I read all of the Marvel books religiously. And what was great was not just how different the comics were but how different one book would become when a new artist and writer would take over. Which is how I look at "Cap" and "Cap 2." It really was like, oh, a new team is taking over. It's like Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli showed up. It was a very different tone.

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You've decided that you're not doing an "Avengers" movie again?

I'm not, no. They very sweetly asked me and I'm like, really? No. It would set me for life – and that life would be about five years long. It's only going to have more characters and be longer and be a bigger movie. That doesn't mean it can't be great; a part of me is desperate to do it. Because I still have enormous love for these characters and want to shepherd them through all other things. But the fact of the matter is, it's been over five years really since I created something. I mean, I created the S.H.I.E.L.D. show, but based on their universe, you know.

You got to edit Shakespeare's lines a lot on "Much Ado About Nothing.
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I did! But it's not quite creating. I just felt like this is the opportunity I have for the first time since I started working, to stop and go in a vacuum, not thinking about deals or friends or genres or networks or anything except what's in here. What would I do? I don't know how I'll approach it, but that's a huge deal for me.

I feel like I'm trying to grow up. And when I look at this movie, there are some things in here I can say, "This is a step forward," and then there are other things I'm like, "Is this a giant step back? Is this me running in place?" And if I were to shepherd an enormous – I mean really enormous, two-part mega monstrosity – I don't think I'd have the opportunity to grow as an artist. I apologize for using that phrase. I feel like I need a different challenge other than, "Oh my God, that's huge."


There's a lot more Hulk in this movie.

The thing that was great about this time with him was that the first time we had to be extremely parsimonious about how much Hulk we had. With this one, we had more leeway, and I got to do what I wanted to do, which was shoot him like a character. We have shots in this movie where I just shoot over your shoulder and you have a fuzzy Hulk shoulder in the frame — that would've been out of the question before. That's expensive, to have a fuzzy Hulk shoulder in the frame, and to let him just be a character in the piece, instead of it being just special effects.

Do you think that registers with viewers more on a subconscious level?

Yeah. I'm always fighting to make the shots less perfect. To say, let's have the bad camera; let's find the Hulk the way we find other people. Particularly in this movie, where I shot it very, very differently than the first. Everything in the first was very deliberate, and in this one, I said I want to go multiple cameras, a lot of sort of documentary-style footage, and worry less about the 3-D — [make] it a little more grown-up and little less presentational. Sometimes I thought, "This is really working," and sometimes I thought "Remember when I used to make decisions?"

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Was there a visual model in your head from other movies?

There are always several movies in my head. I have to say for both "Avengers," the movie that ended up sort of overshadowing all others would probably be "Black Hawk Down," where [director Ridley Scott] is just incapable of shooting an unattractive frame. It never looks like he's trying to prettify things. You just really feel the weight of what these guys are going through, and that's the thing I'm always trying to evoke, is that sort of a toll that it takes.

Mark [Ruffalo] said he had some doubts to overcome about taking the part of the Hulk. What do you remember about your early conversations?

The first thing I remember is that we had lunch and we walked around, and when we got back to the hotel and checked in with the Marvel peeps, they said, "What the fuck, man! Why didn't you call us?" I was like, "We had lunch, and now I'm calling you." They were like, "It's been four hours!" Right up front, we talked about rage; what it means, how it's portrayed, what causes it. We talked about making Banner sort of less whiny and self-obsessed. Later on, after he'd taken the part, we got out some mats and threw each other around some, talking about the way he would fight.

Did you really?

Yeah! It was really fun. And then we did the same thing with mo-cap to see what it would look like on the Hulk. We talked about, you know, he's not just gonna stand there throwing punches; he's gonna bite, he's gonna kick. Don't leave any part of him free, and he never moves backwards. Backwards doesn't suit him. I remember the first time, we were like, what is the first thing that is gonna make you fly into a sudden rage, and we both said, "My daughter." I've gotten better about that.

How did the idea of a romance between Banner and Scarlett Johansson's Black Widow come to you?

Obviously, the two of them have a thang. It just always seemed like something I had already thought of. It made sense to me that they are outsiders in a weirdly similar way, and they are also people who don't have their own movies so I'm actually allowed to play with that a little bit. There's a dynamic between the two of them that is lovely because its sad, and then they played it for enormous charm at the same time. They're my two New York thespians. The two of them together was so — first of all, she's so funny. They're both so funny and goofy, but they work so hard. They have a scene in the middle of the movie that caused my first ever, completely un-ironic group hug. I was just so moved, and they were just so damn good.

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There's a funny moment early in the movie where she kind of flirtatiously strokes the Hulk's arm.

That's something where I was like, there's physicality to it, but until they finished the rendered art of the Hulk, I didn't realize how flirtatious it was. It's like, oh man. She is working him. She is working me. She's good!

How many drafts did you go through on the screenplay?

There's not a number. Draft is too strong a word...there's so many changes, there's so much. I went home from the set every night – because we were keeping French hours, and we got home at a decent hour started at the same time every morning – and I'd go and write, every night. It was partially me, partially notes from the actors, partially the studio, like everybody had a hand in "This could be better." But I think in some ways its great to stay fluid, to see what's working and lean into it. There's stuff between Hawkeye and the Scarlet Witch that's some of my favorite stuff in the movie, and it's there because they're the only actors I had. When we started shooting in Italy, I had Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch, and Jeremy Renner; everybody else was busy. So, I'm like "Okay, I guess these guys are gonna have a scene, and I can work with that."

With so many characters, why add Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver? Especially when the X-Men franchise is also using Quicksilver.

We were already planning it when X-Men said, 'Oh we're gonna put in Quicksilver,' and we all sort of went "Ugh." But Aaron [Taylor-Johnson] is phenomenal, and the relationship between him and Scarlet Witch is sweet and different and strange. We need them because their powers are different, their looks are different, and their opinion is different. They will be young, fresh, and interesting. And there will be someone for Ultron to talk to — because all of Ultron's henchmen are Ultron! So he literally can't ever say, "Oh let's go over there" or "Oh no," because his henchmen are himself [laughs].

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Finally, Someone Wrote A Hardcore Rap Song About Documentarian Ken Burns

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"Bringin’ history to life while we zoomin’ in on pictures/ B*tch check the zeitgeist, generation fixture!"

With lyrics like that, who could argue that American director and documentarian Ken Burns shouldn't have a rap song about him? After 30 years of making films, harnessing the power of zooming in on old photos and NOT being the subject of a hardcore rap video, Skootch Comedy has given Burns the tribute he so obviously needed.

One watch and you'll be adding Burns' classic docs to your Netflix queue and trying to get this line out of your head: "Mark Twain, Prohibition, Jazz, and the Civil War/ Walk in the club snap, zoom, panties hit the floor."

Boom.


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102-Year-Old Harlem Renaissance Dancer Sees Herself On Film For The First Time

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Alice Barker was a chorus dancer during the Harlem Renaissance and just celebrated her 102nd birthday, but she had never seen herself on film. Until now.

David Shuff met Barker while working with his therapy dog at the Bishop Henry B. Hucles Episcopal Nursing Home in Brooklyn, New York, according to a Reddit thread about the video.

"I knew Alice for several years -- my dog is a therapy dog and we visited her nursing home -- the recreation nurse and I always talked about how amazing it would be to find her films and show her," he wrote. "And we finally were able to!"

Mark Cantor of the Celluloid Improvisations Music Film Archive, which has preserved more than 4,000 separate performances, to get the "soundies" of Barker dancing as a young woman. This past fall, the group showed Barker her films for the very first time.

She was thrilled.

alicer

"[It's] making me wish I could get up out of this bed and do it all over again," she said.

Barker performed at iconic venues like the Apollo, Cotton Club and Zanzibar Club, alongside greats like Frank Sinatra and Bill "Bojangles" Robinson. Seeing the videos 80 years later reminded her of her love for dance.

"It's just fabulous to see these," she said, "and remember all these things that [were] happening. I used to often say to myself, 'I'm being paid to do something that I enjoy doing and I would do it for free,' because it just felt so good doing it. Because that music, you know? I'd just get carried away in it."

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Street Artist Shepard Fairey's Environmental Art Implores You To 'Get Off Your Ass'

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"Today is Earth Day, and like I’ve said before, every day should be Earth Day!" iconic street artist Shepard Fairey wrote April 22 on his blog. A slew of gripping and disturbing images accompanied the statement, depicting -- in Fairey's typically razor-sharp style -- the dangers our planet currently faces.

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The activist and artist has long used his propaganda-inspired designs to promote political causes, from his Barack Obama "Hope" poster to his Occupy Wall Street imagery. However, today, instead of aligning himself with a political contingent, Fairey implores us all to wake up and make a conscious decision to protect the world we call home.

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"Please stick with me for a second, this is as important as anything I’ve ever said: we (powerful corporations especially) are behaving like the Earth is indestructible… and it isn’t! Hopefully, you don’t need to be a 'nature' person to understand that this planet is the one we humans and all other species have to live on (Mars fantasies don’t count). We are part of nature, not above it, and when we don’t treat our home well, it will eventually not treat us well. That time is imminent if not already here."

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In the same blog post, Fairey asks his followers to read Naomi Klein’s book, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate, to truly understand climate change and how it can be reversed. Then he delivers some memorable advice in the form of a kick to the pants:

"Get off your ass," he wrote. "Whatever COOL things or NOT COOL things you are spending your free time on, that shit is infinitely less important than the future of the planet!"

On that note, Happy Earth Day! To learn more, check out Fairey's entire online Earth Day presentation.

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'Mom Life' Photo Series Is A Tribute To The Messier Side Of Parenting

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When photographer Anna Angenend's friends were preparing to send their preschool-aged kids to school in August 2014, she was gearing up for another year of messy adventures at home with her toddler daughter Mia, who wasn't old enough for preschool yet.

"Rather than being emotional about sending my daughter off to class, I was staying up late planning activities that take 20 minutes for me to set up, five minutes for my daughter to finish, then another 20 minutes for me to clean up," she told The Huffington Post. To capture this contrast between Angenend's experience as a stay-at-home parent with a toddler and her friends' back-to-school emotions, she took a photo of herself and Mia undertaking one of their many chaotic activities.

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That photo -- which the photographer named "Back to School" -- became the first in a series she calls "Mom Life." From piles of laundry to sleepless nights to failed attempts at exercising, "Mom Life" showcases the less glamorous parenting moments that moms and dads know all too well.

"The series has become a way for me to laugh at and treasure all the less-than-perfect and messy moments. It won't be long at all before my house is no longer covered in sticky fingerprints, and that's going to make me really sad."

Angenend and her daughter take a new photo for the series about once a month. Mia loves being part of the series and often tries to take control of the camera, the photographer said. "I guess the apple doesn't fall far from the tree."

Since sharing the photos, Angenend says clients have asked her to shoot similar photos of their families. "I'd like to think this is a revolution of sorts for family portraits," she said.

The mom added that other parents and photographers "from all over the world" have reached out to let her know how much they enjoyed the photos. "I'm blown away that parents in such a wide variety of cultures can relate to these scenarios. Turns out, we all have 'those' days. I hope the series continues to put a smile on some tired parents faces, and remind them they're not alone."





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