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Peechaya Burroughs' Instagram Art Is Perfect Minimalist Fun

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Childhood memories have this mischievous ability to change over time, almost imperceptibly at first, and then more so, until recollections of your fifth birthday are as infused with strangeness as a Salvador Dali painting. 


Thailand-born, Australia-based artist Peechaya Burroughs channels this unusual mix of nostalgia, optimism and absurdity in her minimalist compositions of everyday objects. In one, an oreo cookie dissected down the middle becomes an impromptu piano. In another, a sandwich is stuffed with yellow and pink daisies. In a third, a yellow balloon mirrors the yoke of an egg, especially against its gooey white backdrop. 


Somewhere between kindergarten crafts and abstract formalist sculpture, Burroughs' work illuminates the way everyday objects can be made new, again and again. If you ever want to turn a kid under 10 onto minimalist abstraction, this is probably your best shot. 



+ packed + #idea_in_picture

A photo posted by peechaya burroughs (@pchyburrs) on





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{ come in pairs } #WHPdoubletake #idea_in_picture

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#WHPmamatoldme {b is for bird} #idea_in_picture

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An Updated, But No Less Definitive Ranking Of Madonna's Singles

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Two years ago, right as "Like a Prayer" was turning 25, we ranked the 68 singles Madonna has released since her 1982 debut. Since then, "Rebel Heart" -- the singer's 13th studio album -- brought that total to 71, while another headline-grabbing world tour extended the shelf life of some of Madonna's classics. Now it's time to update our rankings.


In instances where the Rebel Heart Tour prompted us to reevaluate certain songs, we've noted significant changes that depart from the previous list and linked to the performances that inspired them. A few other tracks were slightly reshuffled because who doesn't question their judgment two years later? Otherwise, it's the same drill as before. 


Rubric:
• Billboard Hot 100 success (Many songs made splashes on the Hot Dance Club Play chart and abroad, including some that failed to chart on the Hot 100. For the sake of these rankings, only the Hot 100 performance was considered.)
• Single’s longevity, or: Do people still know it? Is it still played on the radio and in other public arenas?
• How the song contributed to Madonna’s image and critical reception
• Author’s personal taste


What’s missing?
• Promotional singles don’t count (e.g. “Nobody Knows Me,” “Hey You”).
• Featured-artist credits don’t count (e.g. “Me Against the Music” with Britney Spears).
• Any songs that were not released as singles in the United States don't count. Two exceptions: “Into the Groove” and “Fever,” neither of which was technically released as a single. Both were hits in their own right regardless, becoming some of Madonna’s most famous songs.


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Tracee Ellis Ross Is 'Certainly A Proud Feminist'

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Tracee Ellis Ross has never been shy about showing support for other women -- so it comes as no surprise that, while being interviewed at the Marie Claire Power Trip conference on March 22nd, Ross confirmed that she is "certainly a proud feminist." 


The "Black-ish" star and lip sync phenom has used her place in Hollywood --and her Instagram account -- to celebrate the accomplishments of other women. She has given shout-outs to everyone from the women of "Broad City" and Amandla Stenberg to Gloria Steinem and Maya Angelou.




Though "myths" about feminism and what a feminist looks like -- think Birkenstocks and hairy legs -- prevented her from fully embracing the movement until after college, now in her 40s, Ross attributes her understanding of feminism to Steinem. "[Feminism] means you believe in the equality for everyone," she said at the Power Trip conference.


Ross also discussed an upcoming episode of "Black-ish," where her character, Rainbow, will reveal why she never took her husband's last name. Apparently, that revelation will provide a jumping-off point for on-screen feminist discussions. 


"So we state that ‘Bow is a feminist,' and from there it was very interesting, some of the things that were written,” Ross said. 


Slay on. 


H/T The Cut

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10 Hilarious Comics That Show Having Kids Is One Helluva Ride

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From tired tantrums to the endless crumbs on the floor, the early years of parenting can be a challenge (to say the least). But Cathy Thorne, creator of Everyday People Cartoons, takes a hilarious approach to the struggle.


Thorne has been creating comics since 1999. Though she has a teenage daughter and a son who's "looking forward to double digits," her parenting comics speak to the earlier years as well. "I don’t think the comics have changed much, but the amount of material I have to work with has grown exponentially," she told the Huffington Post.


She hopes her comics give fellow parents "a good laugh, and the knowledge that no matter what we're experiencing, we're not alone." Check them out below, and you can find more on her Etsy page.


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This Glass Treehouse Is The Escape We've Been Waiting For

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There may come a day when you just want run away from it all and go live in a tree.


And this, friends, is where you'll want to run. It's a proposed four-story, glass-encased living space surrounding the trunk of a tree. Architect Aibek Almassov told The Huffington Post it's a place for humans to "live in harmony with nature," as the tree gives life to the house around it.






When completed, the house will live in a beautiful exchange with the tree at its core. Transparent solar panels will coat the glass walls, Almassov told HuffPost, and rainwater will be purified and renewed for human use. As oxygen from the tree flows through the home, solar spotlights will shine on any branches covered by its minimal shade. 


The best parts of this house might just be the entryway and forest-floor glass capsule shower:




The treehouse has been in the works for some time now: Almassov says he plans to start building in a forest in 2017, and has consulted with his local government in Kazakhstan about making the structure a public visiting space instead of a single-family home. 


Logistics are indeed a bit dodgy -- there doesn't seem to be space for a dimly-lit bedroom -- so the treehouse may function better as a public visiting space, after all.


But that's not to say treehouses couldn't become a popular dwelling option in the near future, as humans get creative to solve energy problems and cure their constant craving to be with nature.  


For now, though, this place is darn tree-licious to look at. 

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Gentle People Of The Internet, Here Is Your Chance To Be In 'Hamilton'

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Break out your 18th-century garb and 20th-century hip-hop knowledge, because you'll need both to score what is possibly one of the most coveted auditions in musical theater right now. 


The Broadway smash hit that is "Hamilton" just announced that it will hold open auditions for replacements in the musical's New York production and cast spots in the show's upcoming national tour. 


The auditions will take place in New York City on May 3 (with future auditions in Atlanta and Dallas). And by "open," the listing means that you don't have to be a member of the Actors Equity in order to apply. Actually, according to Playbill, no prior acting experience is even necessary.


What the musical is seeking, however, is "non-white men and women, ages 20s to 30s" who also happen to be "singers who rap." Need more info?



Sign-in starts at 10 a.m. May 3 at Chelsea Studios, 151 West 26th Street, sixth floor, in Manhattan. Auditions will run 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. [...] Those interested in auditioning in Atlanta and Dallas are asked to send photo and resume to Casting@HamiltonBroadway.com, and to specify which city, Atlanta or Dallas, they would like to audition in. 



Take a deep breath. Sing a verse or two from "My Shot." And try not to spend the whole day imagining a future in which you hang out with Lin-Manuel Miranda at the White House on the regular


Okay, back to this Wednesday.





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6 Afro-Latinos Open Up About What It Means To Be Black And Latino

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Too black to be Latino and too Latino to be black is a feeling many Afro-Latinos know too well -- but the reality is that these two identities are far from mutually exclusive. 


Not only is it possible to be both black and Latino, it's also fairly common within the Latino community. In the United States 24 percent of Latinos self-identify as Afro-Latino, according to survey results the Pew Research Center released in March. 


HuffPost Latino Voices asked six Afro-Latinos to share what it really means to grow-up black and Latino. Because as writer Janel Martinez explains, it can be quite complicated at first.


"Growing up black Latina, was a bit complex for me," she said in the video. "I didn't always want to identify as Black, there were times when I didn't want to identify as Latina." 


Watch Martinez and others discuss everything from pride in their African roots to the challenges with erasure in the Latino community in the video above.


This video was edited by Terence Krey, shot by Jon Strauss and produced by Megan Robertson, Katherine Santiago, Melissa Montanez, Choyce Miller, Carolina Moreno and Tanisha Ramirez for HuffPost Originals.

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This Poet Made A Police Brutality Mad Lib, And It's Devastating

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In just two minutes, a slam poet has summed up the emotionally exhausting deja vu of police brutality, and she did it all through Mad Libs. 

 

Performing a poem called "Mad Libs: Black Death Edition" at the 2016 Women of the World Poetry Slam, poet Charlotte Abotsi emphasizes how tragically frequent black deaths at the hands of police are by reciting hypothetical police reports, news articles, and Facebook statuses that sound all too familiar -- all you need to do is fill in the blanks. 

 

"Fill in the blanks for the police report," Abotsi says, in a video posted by Button Poetry on Monday.

 

"At approximately 'time,' on 'date', officer 'Proper Noun' of the 'Proper Noun' Police Department, 'verb,' and killed 'Proper Noun,' an unarmed black 'noun.' Officer 'Proper Noun' stated self-defense. Said he was frightened, fear overtook him, and he thought he saw a 'noun,' or a 'noun,' or a 'noun'." 


 

 

The poem goes on the break down the tragic inevitabilities of these stories that we've seen time time and time again: the announcement that the officer will not be indicted, the victim's name becoming a hashtag, the protestors and their critics, who say "they're acting like animals." And, most heartbreaking of all: the mothers and fathers who, amidst all of the unrest, still have to cope with the loss of a child: 

 

"God, you took my baby. You made a hashtag of that name. They feared my baby. Why?"

 

Watch the poem in its entirety above. 

 

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Narcissists Make Better Artists, Study Says, Surprising No One

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A pretty successful artist named Pablo Picasso once said to one of his friends: "God is really an artist, like me... I am God, I am God, I am God."


Some people might qualify a statement like this as a sign of gratuitous and perhaps delusional self-obsession. In essence, it's a bit narcissistic. Yi Zhou, a Florida State University professor, would agree. And while such exceptionally high self-interest isn't the only characteristic that led to Picasso becoming one of the most iconic names in the history of art, it certainly didn't hurt. 


Zhou recently conducted a study examining the correlation between an artist's narcissistic tendencies and his or her success. And according to her findings, you may want to invest in your most self-absorbed artsy acquaintance, because narcissistic artists were determined to have higher market prices, higher estimates from auction houses, more museum shows, and more recognition from the art world.


As Zhou explains in her abstract: "We find that narcissism [...] is positively associated with the market performance of artworks."






To test the correlation between narcissism and success, Zhou honed in on a particular manifestation of an artist's ego: the size of their signature.


Following 2014 research that established an area-per-letter measure is correlated highly with the score on the Narcissistic Personality Inventory scale, Zhou's team measured the dimensions of artist signatures sampled from Oxford Art Online. The team then compared them to the market success of the artists as determined by auction data from Artinfo, Artprice.com, and websites of various auction houses. 


Turns out what they say about artists with big signatures is true -- literally writing your name bigger correlates with becoming a bigger name yourself. As Zhou's study determined: "A one standard deviation increase in narcissism increases the market price by 16 percent and both the highest and lowest auction-house estimates by about 19 percent." 


To confirm her hypothesis, Zhou then looked into two additional marks of inflated ego: the use of "I" in published interviews and the number of self-portraits.


Zhou ascertained that a one standard deviation increase of self-portraits increases the market price of art by 13 percent, while a one standard deviation increase in first-person pronouns will increase market price of art by 4 percent.



Zhou's findings, it should be noted, found a stronger correlation between narcissism and success in modern art as opposed to contemporary art, or post-war art. While a standard deviation of narcissism yields a 25 percent market price increase for modern art, contemporary art only saw an increase of 13 percent.


In an interview with artnet News, Zhou could not explain the shift, saying, "It would be a very good research topic to try to find out why this is the case." Could it be related to a more diversified art landscape, perhaps less stuck on the idealized image of the artist as a solo male genius? Or are self-portraits just going out of style?


Regardless, there does seem to be an overall correlation between self-adoration and monetary success and exposure. A 2013 study similarly claimed that narcissistic people are more likely to consider themselves creative, and thus take part in creative endeavors like art, than their non-narcissistic counterparts. And as Zhou's study concludes: "More narcissistic artists are offered a greater number of solo exhibitions and more group exhibits. They are included in more museum and gallery holdings and they are ranked higher by art scholars."


There you have it, aspiring artists everywhere. Keep at it with the big signatures, self-portraits and self-congratulatory language. You'll be on your way to MoMA in no time! 


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Discover Some Of The Best Roman Ruins In Croatia

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Croatia's dramatic rise as a travel hotspot can be attributed to its lavish Dalmatian coast, the beautiful Plitvice Lakes National Park, and scenes from a little television show you may have heard of called "Game of Thrones." However Croatia's Roman ruins, alone, are worth a trip to the Adriatic.


The Roman Empire ruled what is modern-day Croatia for over five centuries, yet it may surprise some to learn that the sixth largest Roman amphitheatre and one of the best preserved is found in Croatia, not Italy. 




Pula


Pula's arena, a stone's throw from the Archaeological Museum of Istra, once seated 20,000 spectators and today is still used to house events from Pula's Film Festival, to ice hockey games -- yes really!


Pula's Temple of Augustus located in the Forum at the center of Old Town, was destroyed by a bomb in 1944, but restored to its former glory and now houses ancient bronze and stone statues. 



Split


The old city of Split built between the 3rd and 4th centuries is centered around the Palace of Diocletian. It's made of sandstone from the nearby island of Brac, a Croatian sandstone that was later used to construct the White House. You may recall seeing this palace in scenes from "Games of Thrones."


The UNESCO World Heritage Site includes 220 buildings within the palace boundaries that have been converted into cafes and bars. The buildings are also home to 3000 people.  Who wouldn't want to spend the night in an ancient Roman palace? 



Salona


The ancient city of Salona is nestled in the sleepy village of Solin, just three miles from Split. The city once served as the political center during Emperor Diocletian’s reign. Visitors can marvel at the advanced covered aqueduct and manastirine from the 1st century. Bring a picnic and keep an eye out for wild asparagus if you're there in the spring. It's delicious.



The good news is that spring in the Balkan's is mild, no time like the present to start planning your trip to Croatia! 

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One Of The World's Greatest Living Artists Snags Herself A Husband That Is Also A Rock

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Art world romance alert!


Legendary artist Tracey Emin, known for her iconic feminist works "Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963–1995" and "My Bed," has finally found the husband of her dreams! 


He's older -- ancient, actually -- stable, solid and not going anywhere, ever, at all. Because this dreamy life partner is a full on rock, as in a naturally occurring solid aggregate of minerals or mineraloids. Just when you thought all the good ones were being used for doorstops ...


According to The Art Newspaper, Emin couldn't get enough of a stone she noticed in her French garden -- a diamond in the rough, if you will. They tied the knot last summer, The Guardian reports. 


When pressed for details on her mysterious new lover, Emin couldn't help but gush to Post Magazine. "The whole thing with the stone is -- it's a big fucking stone, right," she said. "It's in my garden, it's very nice and very impressive and I like it a lot. [Sigh.] The other thing about the stone is that it could be quite monstrous and scary. Instead I saw it as a protection thing as opposed to a fearful thing. The other thing with the stone is it's not going anywhere. Even if there's the biggest fucking tsunami in the whole fucking world, the stone will probably still stay there."


You hear that, ladies? After your so-called loyal partners shrivel up and die like the mortal beings they are, Emin's eternal love will live on and on. She expanded on what the relationship means to her in her interview with The Art Newspaper, saying, "It just means that at the moment I am not alone; somewhere on a hill facing the sea, there is a very beautiful ancient stone, and it’s not going anywhere. It will be there, waiting for me."


Never let go, rock. Never let go. Cheers to one of the greatest living contemporary artists for finally finding love. May you serve as an inspiration to all the other brilliant single women out there just trying to find something hard and jagged to cuddle up with at night. And to the rest of you ladies, don't get too jealous. There are plenty more stones on the ground.


But for real though, Tracey, we salute you. You are an exceptional artist and independent thinker and any inanimate object would be lucky to call you a wife. Keep fighting the patriarchy and marrying things.



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Title IX Regulations Are Making Universities Act More Like Corporations, AAUP Says

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The U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights has pushed colleges and universities toward acting more like corporations in handling sexual assault and harassment cases, a new report argues.


Many schools working to change their policies to better comply with the gender equity law Title IX are doing it solely to avoid federal investigations and lawsuits, not to actually stamp out sexual violence on campus, the American Association of University Professors claims in a draft report released Thursday. In the process, they say, many policies are endangering academic freedom and due process rights of faculty and students. 


"This client‐service model can run counter to universities’ educational mission when, as in the case of Title IX, universities may take actions that avoid OCR investigations and private lawsuits but that do not significantly improve gender equity," the report says.


Instead, the AAUP argues, these steps may "actually exacerbate gender and other inequities on campus."


Sexual violence in college has received widespread attention in recent years, largely prompted by student activism and complaints that universities mishandled cases, treating victims poorly. There are over 200 ongoing investigations by OCR of colleges allegedly mishandling sexual assault cases.


In response, schools have reformed their policies, either due to activist or media scrutiny, or under pressure by guidance released by OCR. Those efforts haven't been productive, according to AAUP, and often skimp on "comprehensive assessments of bases of inequality."


For example, colleges and the Education Department would do well to focus on improving "conditions of interdisciplinary learning on campus by funding gender, feminist, and sexuality studies, as well as allied disciplines." In other words, if schools focused more effort toward actually educating students about sex-based discrimination, they would be more effective at shifting cultures on campus. 


The Education Department denied there is any conflict between its enforcement of federal civil rights laws and First Amendment rights on college campuses. 


"The Office for Civil Rights has consistently maintained that the statutes and regulations it enforces protects students from prohibited discrimination and do not restrict the exercise of expressive activities or speech that are protected under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution," Dorie Nolt, Education Department spokeswoman, said in a statement this week. "Free speech and safe, equitable and respectful learning environments for students are both fundamental rights, and they are not in conflict."


Recommendations From AAUP's Report


The AAUP report discusses the initial implementation of Title IX from the 1970s, and how a series of court decisions ultimately concluded that schools are obligated to address sexual harassment involving their students, with sexual assault being an extreme form of harassment. 


But today, OCR is interpreting what constitutes a "hostile environment" due to sexual harassment too broadly, AAUP said. The report cites several recent cases involving faculty, like those at Louisiana State University and Northwestern University, as prime examples of schools going too far in their Title IX interpretation. In addition, dozens of men are suing colleges saying they were treated unfairly when disciplined for sexual misconduct.


AAUP goes on to criticize OCR for not giving enough attention to due process in sexual assault cases, and raps the agency for advising schools to use the "preponderance of evidence" standard, meaning it is more likely than not an accusation of assault is true, rather than "clear and convincing," which means being reasonably certain about the accusation. The preponderance standard is used in civil litigation, but AAUP said the Office for Civil Rights should have allowed for feedback from institutions before dictating that schools must use it to comply with Title IX.  


Republicans in Congress recently challenged Education Department officials on the same point.


Officials with the Education Department pointed to guidance in 2014 and 2015, which reminded that "when a school works to prevent and redress discrimination, it must respect the free-speech rights of students, faculty, and other speakers."


While AAUP would prefer schools use the "clear and convincing" standard, it asks that OCR at least allow colleges and universities to choose whether or not to use that standard. 


The report further calls on universities to include faculty more in determining how their policies will comply with Title IX. Faculty could provide insight on writing policies to address sexual assault and harassment, without violating academic freedom, the AAUP suggests. 


Universities need to "distinguish speech that fits the definition of hostile environment from speech that individuals may find hurtful or offensive but is protected by academic freedom," AAUP said, arguing that many schools are blurring the lines between the two. 


Schools should also work toward "closer collaboration with local law enforcement" to better carve out how they'll each handle sexual assault cases, the report adds. 


______


Tyler Kingkade covers higher education and sexual violence, and is based in New York. You can reach him at tyler.kingkade@huffingtonpost.com, or find him on Twitter: @tylerkingkade.


 


 



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Pop-Up Magazine Is A Here-Today, Gone-Tomorrow Experiment In Storytelling

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For just four glorious nights -- in Brooklyn, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Oakland -- a new issue of the most exclusive magazine in the world will materialize.


It’s not exclusive in the manner of high-end luxury mags targeting the super-affluent, like The Robb Report, or Rhapsody, an in-flight literary magazine featuring original works by big-name authors such as Joyce Carol Oates and Karen Russell, available only to United Airlines’ first- and business-class customers. You needn't splash out enormous sums for the privilege of perusing this magazine.


But if you miss the four-night window of opportunity, that issue of Pop-Up Magazine, a so-called “live magazine” in which reported stories are performed on stage, will become infinitely more elusive and unobtainable than a fresh copy of Rhapsody to a lowly coach ticket-holder. “It's not recorded, it's not filmed, so you really have to be there,” Douglas McGray, co-creator and editor-in-chief of Pop-Up, told me. “It's a memorable experience.”


McGray was reluctant to even tell me what was on tap for the upcoming tour, which kicks off in Brooklyn on April 5. “We keep most of what's going to happen in the show a secret, just because we think surprises are fun,” he said. “There will be some magical sort of ‘you had to be there’ moments.”


For a show that only appears four times in public, that’s a particularly tantalizing statement, especially when you look at the lineup, featuring stars of stage and page including Wyatt Cenac, Daniel Alarcon, Lindy West, Kumail Nanjiani and Doreen St. Félix. Pop-Up Magazine first appeared in 2009, at a small theater in the Mission district of San Francisco. McGray says at the time, it was nothing more than a hobby born out of his desire to bring together the disparate worlds of different professional storytellers. At the time he was a writer but had begun to dabble in radio work.


“It struck me that I didn't know any radio producers, and I knew tons of writers,” he told me. “I thought that was kind of weird, as we're all in the story business, that the worlds would be so professionally separate.” The show didn’t just unite writers and radio producers on stage, though; it also drew in photographers, illustrators, documentarians, animators and musicians, among others.



At first, each contributor would take the stage and perform their piece of work; a journalist reading a reported article, a documentarian showing a film. But soon, McGray remembers, as these creative people found themselves in the same space, collaborations flourished, some proposed by the Pop-Up team and others forged by the contributors. Reported pieces were given live soundtracks performed by a band or animated illustration. “We started art directing stories like a magazine does and sound designing a little bit like a radio show,” he told me. “It became this very multimedia thing that just felt very different from everything else.”


In the few hints McGray was willing to drop about this issue, the unconventional combinations of art and reporting are attention-grabbing, in large part because it’s impossible to envision what, for example, this might look like: “[Writer Claire Hoffman] is doing this really interesting collaboration with Miwa Matreyek, who's a dancer and multimedia artist, and so her story -- it's a story about religion and it's a story about growing up, but it unfolds onstage in just a really surprising way," he explained, cryptically.


There’s something deeply appealing about this, an experimentation with investing more deeply, rather than less deeply, in reporting stories. There’s also a whiff of exclusivity that may be inescapable for the fine arts, especially those that demand personal viewings rather than clicking on viral links. Pop-Up Magazine reinforces this by not broadcasting or even filming its shows. If you don’t go to a theater and see it live, you simply don’t see it.


I asked McGray whether he worried that by restricting the audience of Pop-Up so greatly, to in-the-know urban dwellers with spare cash for a theater ticket, he was steering today’s in-depth, high-quality journalism toward the fate of once popular arts that now exist largely for the elite, like opera.


I wouldn't want everything to be the same, I guess,” he responded. “Part of what makes people want to go to Pop-Up Magazine is that it feels different, that it's not like everything else.” With so much of new media almost overly available -- constantly at our smartphone-holding fingertips -- Pop-Up’s experiment with melding theater and journalism only adds diversity to the landscape. 



Even Pop-Up itself isn’t done trying different things. In 2014, the magazine branched out into print, launching California Sunday Magazine as a Sunday supplement in major California papers, as well as online. “We started a media company,” McGray said. “We approached it like a story production company. Some of the things we'd make would be live experiences, live stories, and some of the things we'd make would be stories for you to read at home.” 


Where Pop-Up, as McGray puts it, got viewers to pay attention to journalism by capitalizing on people’s willingness to put down their phones for an evening out at the theater, California Sunday aimed at the weekend. “It was an idea of classic, leisurely reading, the idea of having more than 60 seconds to look at something and actually having time to get lost in a story that's beautifully written and beautifully art-directed and designed,” he said.


For longform fans who aren’t situated in major cities, California Sunday’s deep dives into why so many NFL recruits are Samoan, the complicated ethics of wildlife conservation, and more West Coast-inspired stories, bring a little of that all-out, full-throttle magazine extravagance to them, right where they are.


Of course, Pop-Up Magazine and its print counterpart have company in the quest to put story and artistry at the center of journalism, whether its fellow West Coast mag Pacific Standard, more traditional East Coast bulwarks like The Atlantic, and up-and-comers like The Atavist and Medium, but it has its own special flavor. The print magazine was formed, to some degree, by the live show from which it sprang. “A word we used a lot when we started [California Sunday] was cinematic. We wanted the stories to read in that way, to have characters and plots that draw you in,” McGray told me. “We wanted it to have big, beautiful photography that creates a sense of story.”


The wild success of Pop-Up Mag -- its shows routinely sell out within minutes -- and the engaging work of California Sunday may well have lessons for an industry still struggling, post-Internet apocalypse, to regain its balance enough to sustain serious reporting as well as viral clipping. For one, artistic experimentation: the mixing and mingling of different storytelling forms in new and unpredictable ways. At Pop-Up and California Sunday, each element exists not just for the sake of adding a video or a photo, but in service of the story -- and McGray's interest in getting storytellers from different mediums in the same room is clearly paying off.


But, he pointed out, not every startup needs an opulent office or daily bagel platters: “Our approach has really been obsessive focus on creating great stories and great experiences and getting the money to pay for it a few different ways. And not spending any money we don't have.” 


It’s the things we can’t have that suddenly seem the most desirable. Perhaps that’s why the pop-up shop has become such a popular strategy for brands to build cachet and move product; if the storefront will be gone next week, a customer can’t wait until payday to splurge on that perfume or pair of shoes. (Plus, everyone and her mother won’t be able to swing by over the next month and nab the exact same outfit you thought was so chic.) The journalism landscape, littered with article factories churning out endless streams of content, is every bit as choked by limitless access as shopping, in the age of Costco, Target, Amazon and endless online sales, has become. And Pop-Up Magazine, like a pop-up boutique in SoHo, offers us, finally, something else -- a chance to feel like we’re being offered something special, curated, limited-edition. Not once in my entire conversation with McGray about his journalistic media project did he employ the word “content.”


It felt almost archaic, but comfortingly so. He favors the word “story,” a cornily earnest choice in today’s super-ironic media environment. Maybe calling a piece “content” implies it’s a product, put out to give readers something to click on. Calling it “a story,” well, that means it’s something worth telling, and worth telling well. Maybe to tell it properly, you might need to get up on stage with an avant-garde paper animation company and a full band, with no one watching but a packed theater.


If you are in the New York, Los Angeles or the Bay Area, McGray wants to point out, Pop-Up Mag isn’t like a night at the Metropolitan Opera or even Broadway. “You do have to be there, you have to go, but you'll see in all of our theaters there's a spread of ticket prices ... There are ways you can come for $25 or $35 or $45.”


Basically, for little more than the price of a 3D-movie ticket in an expensive, big-city market, you can have an intimate, irreplaceable live experience that brings journalism off the page and tells stories in unexpectedly captivating ways. It’s your choice.


Tickets for the early April tour of are on sale now.


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The Bottom Line: ‘The Bed Moved’ By Rebecca Schiff

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The title of Rebecca Schiff's debut short story collection, The Bed Moved, is a short, declarative sentence. Grammatically, it's straightforward. But its meaning is strange -- fantastical, even. It raises more questions than answers: where, and how, did the bed move? Did it move once, or continuously, a floating space-bed? And whose bed was it? 


The titular bed belongs to the protagonist of the collection's first story. Quipping about the men she's slept with, a blur of individuals each defined by his career -- film student, anthropologist -- she jokes, "Finally, I had an audience." For her, sex and the act of pursuing it is a performance, her bed a stage. The men are an anonymous crowd.


Like Kate Zambreno’s Green Girl and Nell Zink’s The Wallcreeper, Schiff’s stories follow female characters whose identities are shaped by their sexual explorations. They try on encounters with men like outfits, willingly swapping one out for another, and feeling empowered by their own whirring spontaneity. 


But unlike other writers of her ilk, Schiff doesn’t tell these tales in a gritty, realistic style, shedding light on something sinister lurking beneath the characters’ sexual whims. Instead, her very short stories are spare and buoyant, bouncing from one insight to the next. Like smart, confident teens trying out new belief systems in earnest, her characters make assured, funny observations about their peers, and then, lightly, move on. 


In “Men Against Violence,” she writes disapprovingly about a pacifism club at her college, founded by her close friend’s then-boyfriend. “It’s not that impressive to be against violence,” her nameless protagonist muses, “If you would never be violent anyway.” The rest of the story is comprised of these stream-of-consciousness thoughts, most of them cropping up at a wedding, where the aforementioned man against violence was the groom.


“My toast was not very good,” she writes. “I said my friend was marrying someone with a cool beard. I had seen cooler beards. I had seen cooler beards at this wedding, but most of the men with beards had girlfriends, assigned to sit next to them in case the water glasses got mixed up. When had my friend made so many new friends?”


Surrounded by pacifists with tendencies to speak in clichés, she concludes that violence “has to mean what it says, and it shuts everybody up when it says it.” An astute sentiment, but one that seems dogmatic in the context of the story.


A similar moral lesson is at the center of “It Doesn’t Have to Be a Big Deal,” a story about a girl who visits her long-distance boyfriend, whom she allows to mooch off of her even though she feels intellectually superior to him. “I wanted to be someone’s girlfriend, not their creditor,” Schiff writes. “What would Jesus do? Would Jesus lend his friend three thousand dollars? Of course he would. Would Jesus’ girlfriend ask for two hundred dollars back? This wasn’t my culture.”


These funny, on-the-nose observations might turn off readers who prefer quiet stories. But, the stand-up routine-like quality of Schiff’s characters’ thoughts lends itself to frank discussions of established dating norms.


Her explorations of grief and loss are subtler, and more touching. While her characters experience sex in a vague, nebulous way, viewing partners as a collective force, Schiff writes about loss in a way that’s painfully specific. In “http://www.msjiz/boxx374/mpeg,” a girl whose father died due to complications related to diabetes skims his search history, and stumbles on an Internet porn video of two topless women boxing. It’s a jarring image, one that makes her lost parent feel peculiar and flawed, and very human. The reader gets the chance to know him intimately -- more intimately than his family did when he was alive. Schiff perfectly elicits the feeling of confusion that accompanies loss, and leaves you wondering how to process the information you’ve been given.


In “Another Cake,” a college student returns home when her father dies and comments on the hospitality of others, who bring gifts and offer general assistance. But the narrator feels removed from the experience, and to illustrate her disassociated feelings, Schiff writes, “I made weeping noises. The guests chomped cheddar cheese.”


In this story and most of Schiff’s, the heroine understandably lacks agency. She floats along, her wit her only paddle. And it’s a ride worth taking, if only for the biting jokes.


The Bottom Line:


The women in Schiff’s stories are realer than real; armed with wry humor and strong opinions, their quips are as funny as their insights are tender. 


What other reviewers think


Publishers Weekly: "Consistently and darkly funny, Schiff makes light of her characters’ dilemmas, but never belittles their genuine distress, resulting in a fresh, varied collection that will resonate with readers."


Kirkus: Schiff’s startlingly honest, deliciously wry stories herald the arrival of a beguiling new talent.


Who wrote it?


Rebecca Schiff’s stories have been published in n+1 and Guernica. This is her first book. 


Who will read it?


Anyone interested in books that make them laugh, and books that center on the lives of powerful women. 


Opening lines


There were film majors in my bed -- they talked about film. There were poets, coxswains, guys trying to grow beards. 


“Kids get really scared when their dad grows a beard,” I said.


Finally, I had an audience. 


Notable Passage 


“We could switch places,” I say. I picture myself ablaze with blush in the gym on Sports Night, cat-crawling across the volleyball court, telling a reporter I’m just proud of my body. 


“So I would have to be on the school newspaper? Nobody reads that.”


“That’s not why we do it. We do it for college.”


“That’s not why you do it,” she says. Before I can find out why I do it, detention comes out of the building and turns the step into a skateboard ramp, a dangerous, bumpy thing. 


The Bed Moved


By Rebecca Schiff


Knopf, $24.95


Publishes April 12, 2016


The Bottom Line is a weekly review combining plot description and analysis with fun tidbits about the book.

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The Eternal Mystery Of Edgar Degas, A Man Obsessed With Dance

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In a game of word association, the name Edgar Degas provokes a stream of familiar responses: painter, French, Impressionism. Maybe absinthe and naked women, too. But probably, before you even mutter "artist," you've let "dance" or "ballet" roll off your tongue. In fact, as you read this, you're likely envisioning ladies in tutus bowing to crowds and lunging from barres, stuck with their arms in perpetual fifth position.


Degas, born to a moderately wealthy family in Paris in 1834, was obsessed with dance -- he is said to have described his soul as a worn pink satin ballet shoe -- but less so with the dancers. "People call me the painter of dancing girls," Degas once mused to his Paris art dealer Ambroise Vollard. “It has never occurred to them that my chief interest in dancers lies in rendering movement and painting pretty clothes.” 


A delightful contrarian, Degas was not a fan of the en plein air tendencies of Impressionism (he, for that matter, rejected the movement's name in favor of referring to himself as a realist), preferring to work indoors. He rendered his women nameless, sometimes faceless, focusing on the ways their bodies became blurry when they fluttered across a stage or rehearsal space. With an eye forever to the floor, his ominous presence is still felt in the works, as if he's a wildlife photographer documenting the quirks of a species he's yet to understand. 



"His obsession with dancers lasted four decades, took him from the academy to modernity (and through two opera houses)," Roberta Smith wrote in The New York Times over a decade ago, "and resulted in roughly half of his entire artistic output, some 1,500 works." The legacy endures today.


But back to that first identifier -- painter. Degas was indeed a painter, as well as a sculptor, draftsman and printer. In the latter medium, he dabbled in lithography, but found a niche in monotypes, a kind of printmaking that involves painting or drawing directly on a non-absorbent surface before transferring the image, by pressing, onto a piece of paper. He described the monotype like he would a view from a train; always in motion


Degas monotypes are currently on view at New York's Museum of Modern Art, in an expansive exhibition dubbed "A Strange New Beauty." There, patrons can pore over 120 monotypes and nearly 60 related works, including paintings, drawings, pastels, sketchbooks, and other prints. "Captivated by the monotype’s potential, Degas took the medium to new and radical heights," MoMA recounts in an exhibition description. "The resulting works are characterized by enigmatic and mutable forms, luminous passages emerging from deep blackness, and a heightened sense of tactility."



To create the monotypes, Degas would sometimes use a dauber -- a piece of felt folded in on itself like a pinwheel pastry -- to lather his surface in black ink, etching out a scene with the end of a paintbrush, a piece of fabric, his own hands. These monotypes are called dark fields. 


Other times, in his light fields, he'd apply positive chunks of colors with a brush or rag, crafting both landscapes and portraits of dancers. He'd push the physical limits of his prints, producing not just one image, as the name monotype would suggest, but several. The second and third attempts would appear as degraded, phantom versions of their originals that he'd punctuate with pastels after the print, adding the deep blue-green and subtle pink that dominated his canvases too.


Like in his paintings and pastels, ballerinas appear in the monotypes as Degas' inescapable subjects. Rarely defined, always teetering on the edge of some pose or another, the women are usually indistinguishable as they crowd onto benches and swarm onto stages. Their ritual and exhaustion bleeds through the prints, more than their satisfaction or ingenuity; the intricacies of tulle and pinches of silk take precedence over the details of an expression or gaze.



In this way, the universe of Degas offers glimpses into theaters not unlike peeks into brothels. In "Waiting for a Client" and "Three Women in a Brothel," the female figures are shown with their backs to the viewer, splashes of color highlighting thigh-high socks and decor, rather than lips or eyes or flesh.


As MoMA notes in its exhibition placards, Degas' brothel scenes are distinct from the depictions of other late 19th-century artists who drew sex workers as perfect, untouched beings in repose. Like his dancers, Degas' brothel women sometimes appear unbothered, casually adjusting clothing and lounging on furniture. At other times, they appear hesitant, anxious, their backs stiff and their faces obscured. In art critic J.K. Huysmans' opinion, Degas "brought ... to his studies of nudes, an attentive cruelty, a patient hatred." He abandoned "the idol ... woman, whom he debases as he depicts her."


"I have perhaps too often considered woman as an animal," Degas once admitted.


"It would be easy to see Degas as a misogynist, cold and voyeuristic, and there is truth in this," art critic Jonathan Jones wrote. "Yet Degas' very preoccupation with the physical lives of women made him look beyond the conventions of 19th-century bourgeois life; his very desire to spy made him look at the poor, the marginalized, and see beneath the lie of the middle-class home."



Perhaps this is a forgiving conclusion, a sentiment that belies the gender dynamics of the time. Ballerinas in the early 19th century were often of little means, paid to entertain audiences of mostly men, men who rarely saw such unclothed limbs in public settings. Their lives, ruled both by the athletically demanding rigor of dance and the financially trying reality of unmarried life, were influenced by a wafting desire to pair with a wealthy patron. And there were many, called abonnés, who were given access backstage to the halls and dressing rooms. Degas spied on this, too. 


"These women of mine are ... unconcerned by any other interest than those involved in their physical condition," Degas described, "it is as if you looked through a keyhole."


This is a darker place to settle, a more callous interpretation of the listlessness of Degas' work. But one that's hard to ignore when the only bodies eyed in MoMA's halls of monotypes are frequently those of ladies, clothed and not, their skirts more refined than their cheekbones. If one tries to see Degas as more than a dance master, what kind of anthropologist was he? Was he breaking through the veneer of well-to-do life in Paris, exposing the the ways women struggled to live? Or was he working with what he had? In an uncaring quest to capture the female figure, he had only two options -- head to the brothel or the ballet, for there you could see shoulders and knees, unlike prim public life. 


Of this, the poet Paul Valéry said Degas was "divided against himself; on the one hand driven by an acute preoccupation with truth, eager for all the newly introduced and more or less felicitous ways of seeing things and of painting them; on the other hand possessed by a rigorous spirit of classicism, to whose principles of elegance, simplicity and style he devoted a lifetime of analysis."



There is certainly more to see at MoMA than dance, less beguiling and equally representative of Degas' pure knack for making monotypes. His landscapes deftly blend color and form, showing how Degas could abstract hills and fields into curious color blocks. His cropped portraits of upper-class theatergoers give ghostly impressions of what it was like to meander through the halls of the Paris Opera. Viewers can hold a magnifying glass up to the small frames, spying on the thin lines that separate body from background, treetop from muted sky, the remaining pieces of Degas' historical fiction.


"A painting requires a little mystery, some vagueness, and some fantasy," Degas is quoted as saying. "When you always make your meaning perfectly plain you end up boring people.”


In the end, the many works, crammed into but a few rooms on the museum's sixth floor, reveal the storied repetition of a man -- never married, plagued by diminishing sight, and later prone to anti-Semitism before his death in 1917 -- whose obsessions never faded. He remains as perplexing to us and his ballerinas, an unsolved mystery of art, and perhaps that's the way he intended it.


"Edgar Degas: A Strange New Beauty" will be on view at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City from March 26 until July 24, 2016.







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Photographer Documents People Kissing In Public Spaces Around The World

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Whether you're the kind of softie who can't help but awww when you see two teenagers grinding on a park bench or the heartless cynic who rolls your eyes at any two people who dare swap spit in public, you will most surely crack a smile upon seeing "100 World Kisses," a street photography series by Ignacio Lehmann. 


As you may have inferred, "100 World Kisses" features kisses from around the world, showing that regardless of age, gender, religion, background, sexual preference, or whatever else, you can still communicate in the universal language of locking lips. Over the past three years, Lehmann has captured tender moments between couples, families and enthusiastic pet owners in cities including New York, London, Paris, Hiroshima, Berlin, Barcelona, Tokyo, Mexico City, Amsterdam, Venice, Florence, Bogotá and Cartagena.


Lehmann is currently fundraising on Kickstarter to turn his series into a book, hoping to meet his $35,000goal by the evening of Thursday, March 24. If you pledge $9,000 or more, Lehmann will come to you, wherever you are and photograph you and your sweetheart (or baby or best friend) in a passionate embrace. 


Mull it over while gushing over all the happy couples engaging in some seriously cute PDA below. 


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Sotheby's To Exhibit Work By Wildly Talented High Schoolers

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The National YoungArts Foundation is a scholarship program designed to help talented teens, 15 to 18 years old, feel confident in their skills, get into art school and hopefully make it in the art world. 


"We want to help students at this critical time in their lives when they're making these big decisions," vice president of artistic programs Lisa Leone told The Huffington Post in an interview. "We help them validate them, so they can feel good saying 'yes, I should be an artist!'"


This April, as part of the New York program, an exhibition of YoungArts' visual artwork will go on view at Sotheby's. Each student submitted 10 works, which were then narrowed down by Sotheby's curators to yield a mature and diverse range of work, from a surreal mixed media collage of floating fingers and eyes to a sponge contorted by delicate thread, reminiscent of outsider artist Judith Scott. 



YoungArts recruits young adults working in 10 artistic fields: cinematic arts, dance, design, jazz, music, photography, theater, visual arts, voice and writing. Students applying to the scholarship program go through a three-tiered judging system. "Judges don't know where they're from, what they're name is, they just see the work," Leone said. "Wherever you're from it doesn't matter. They judge completely by portfolio."


Those selected participate in planned programs designed to challenge and nurture the budding artists, with help from some of the most acclaimed creatives in their respective fields. The New York program, for instance, features master teachers including artist Derrick Adams, writer Salman Rushdie, and dancer Adesola Osakalumi. 


The YoungArts students' work will be on view at Sotheby's from April 12 to April 17, 2016.


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58 Stunning Photos That Show The Bond Between Moms And Doulas

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For many parents, birth doulas are beacons of calming encouragement who enhance the labor, delivery and postpartum experience in incomparable ways. 


An ancient Greek word for female servant, "doula" today refers to a trained helper who aids laboring mothers by providing expertise and emotional support and advocating for their birth needs and desires. 


Doulas are increasingly prevalent in U.S. birth culture, spawning praise-filled blog posts and studies about their positive impact on pregnancy and childbirth.


In honor of World Doula Week, here are 58 incredible photos of doulas in action in the U.S. and beyond, along with captions from the photographers who witnessed the magic. 


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Cuban-American Photographer Shows What It Was Like To Cover Obama In Havana

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Behind-the-scenes photos show the stress and chaos involved in covering President Barack Obama's three-day trip to Cuba earlier this week, the first visit by a sitting U.S. president to the island nation in 88 years.


The United States and Cuba restored diplomatic relations last July, more than five decades after they cut diplomatic ties amid Cold War tensions in 1961. Obama's historic visit symbolized a new chapter in the countries' relationship, with Cuba's state-run media providing live updates and airing special coverage of the U.S. president's activities throughout the trip.


It was a particularly special experience for Chip Somodevilla, a U.S.-based photographer who traveled with the White House to cover the trip for Getty Images. Somodevilla's father grew up in Havana but fled to the U.S. as a refugee in late 1960, almost two years after Fidel Castro took control of the country, the photographer told The WorldPost.



While the March 2016 visit was the fourth time Somodevilla has traveled to Cuba, it was nonetheless a dream come true for him. 


"If you told me that I was going to travel with President Obama to Cuba, and that we [the U.S. and Cuba] would normalize diplomatic relations, three or four years ago, you might as well have told me I was going to photograph a unicorn," he said. "I just didn't think that was even going to be possible."




Covering Obama didn't go as seamlessly as expected, however.


Havana wasn't used to accommodating such an influx of reporters and photographers, or having Cuban and American press liaisons and security forces all work together, Somodevilla said.


"All the time the schedule's kind of changing a little bit, what we could do, what we couldn't do, where we could go and where we couldn't go," he recalled. "All those were in flux at all times, and it made planning a little difficult."


"It was one of the most hectic trips I've ever had in my life," he added.



But amid the chaos, Somodevilla was able to get a glimpse of how the two countries' leaders interacted. Castro warmed to Obama throughout his trip, Somodevilla said, despite a language barrier between them.


The two presidents "spent most of the time talking to translators," the photographer noted. "But even with that barrier, they still seemed very collegial and comfortable."


Even after Obama's speech at Havana's Gran Teatro, which appeared to challenge Cuba's communist regime, the two presidents appeared to be bonding at a baseball game between the Tampa Bay Rays and Cuba's national team hours later.


The two presidents "sat next to each other at the baseball game, they joked, they razzed each other a little about how the other's baseball team was playing that day," Somodevilla said.


"The image that was put forward was of collegiality, of happiness -- and despite their differences, I believe that they do want to learn to get along."



Somodevilla shared the six previously unpublished photos above with HuffPost. See more of his photos from Cuba below.


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Charlize Theron Goes To Battle In 'The Huntsman: Winter's War' Clip

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In 2012, "Snow White and the Huntsman" earned mega-millions at the box office and a sex scandal on the side. With a new director on board and Kristen Stewart bowing out of the project, its forthcoming prequel, "The Huntsman: Winter's War," shifts focus to the Evil Queen Ravenna (Charlize Theron) and her wicked younger sister (Emily Blunt). They threaten the stability of the kingdom, unless that dashing huntsman Eric (Chris Hemsworth) and his wife (Jessica Chastain) can prevent their takeover.


The Huffington Post and its parent company, AOL, have an exclusive clip that pits Theron against Chastain and Hemsworth. The movie opens April 22. 




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