Rio's top samba schools parade at the Sambadrome on second night of Carnival
The Carnival is in full swing as music, glam and glee continue to dominate the streets of Rio de Janeiro. Samba school Unidos da Tijuca opened the festivities on Monday night with an afro-Brazilian religious theme, honoring Logun Edé, a deity of the Yoruba religion. They were followed by Beija Flor de Nilópolis, which honored the school's historical Carnival director Laila, who died in 2021. (AP video shot by Lucas Dumphreys and Mario Lobao)
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San Francisco Chronicle
26 minutes ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Sly Stone, revolutionary funk rock musician, dies at 82
NEW YORK (AP) — Sly Stone, the revolutionary musician and dynamic showman whose Sly and the Family Stone transformed popular music in the 1960s and '70s and beyond with such hits as 'Everyday People,' 'Stand!' and 'Family Affair,' died Monday at age 82. Stone, born Sylvester Stewart, had been in poor health in recent years. His publicist Carleen Donovan said Stone died in Los Angeles surrounded by family after contending with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and other ailments. Formed in 1966-67, Sly and the Family Stone was the first major group to include Black and white men and women, and well embodied a time when anything seemed possible — riots and assassinations, communes and love-ins. The singers screeched, chanted, crooned and hollered. The music was a blowout of frantic horns, rapid-fire guitar and locomotive rhythms, a melting pot of jazz, psychedelic rock, doo-wop, soul and the early grooves of funk. Stone's group began as a Bay Area sextet featuring Sly on keyboards, Larry Graham on bass; Sly's brother, Freddie, on guitar; sister Rose on vocals; Cynthia Robinson and Jerry Martini horns and Greg Errico on drums. They debuted with the album 'A Whole New Thing' and earned the title with their breakthrough single, 'Dance to the Music.' It hit the top 10 in April 1968, the week the Rev. Martin Luther King was murdered, and helped launch an era when the polish of Motown and the understatement of Stax suddenly seemed of another time. Led by Sly Stone, with his leather jumpsuits and goggle shades, mile-wide grin and mile-high Afro, the band dazzled in 1969 at the Woodstock festival and set a new pace on the radio. 'Everyday People,' 'I Wanna Take You Higher' and other songs were anthems of community, non-conformity and a brash and hopeful spirit, built around such catchphrases as 'different strokes for different folks.' The group released five top 10 singles, three of them hitting No. 1, and three million-selling albums: 'Stand!', 'There's a Riot Goin' On' and 'Greatest Hits.' Sly's influence has endured for decades. The top funk artist of the 1970s, Parliament-Funkadelic creator George Clinton, was a Stone disciple. Prince, Rick James and the Black-Eyed Peas were among the many performers from the 1980s and after influenced by Sly, and countless rap artists have sampled his riffs, from the Beastie Boys to Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg. A 2005 tribute record included Maroon 5, John Legend and the Roots. A dream dies, a career burns away By the early '70s, Stone himself was beginning a descent from which he never recovered, driven by the pressures of fame and the added burden of Black fame. His record company was anxious for more hits, while the Black Panthers were pressing him to drop the white members from his group. After moving from the Bay Area to Los Angeles in 1970, he became increasingly hooked on cocaine and erratic in his behavior. On 'Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin),' Stone had warned: 'Dying young is hard to take/selling out is harder.' Late in 1971, he released 'There's a Riot Going On,' one of the grimmest, most uncompromising records ever to top the album charts. The sound was dense and murky (Sly was among the first musicians to use drum machines), the mood reflective ('Family Affair'), fearful ('Runnin' Away') and despairing: 'Time, they say, is the answer — but I don't believe it,' Sly sings on 'Time.' The fast, funky pace of the original 'Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)' was slowed, stretched and retitled 'Thank You For Talkin' to Me, Africa.' By the end of the decade, Sly and the Family Stone had broken up and Sly was releasing solo records with such unmet promises as 'Heard You Missed Me, Well I'm Back' and 'Back On the Right Track.' Most of the news he made over the following decades was of drug busts, financial troubles and mishaps on stage. Sly and the Family Stone was inducted into the Rock & Roll of Fame in 1993 and honored in 2006 at the Grammy Awards, but Sly released just one album after the early '80s, 'I'm Back! Family & Friends,' much of it updated recordings of his old hits. A born musician, a born uniter He was born Sylvester Stewart in Denton, Texas, and raised in Vallejo, California, the second of five children in a close, religious family. Sylvester became 'Sly' by accident, when a teacher mistakenly spelled his name 'Slyvester.' He loved performing so much that his mother alleged he would cry if the congregation in church didn't respond when he sang before it. He was so gifted and ambitious that by age 4 he had sung on stage at a Sam Cooke show and by age 11 had mastered several instruments and recorded a gospel song with his siblings. He was so committed to the races working together that in his teens and early 20s he was playing in local bands that included Black and white members and was becoming known around the Bay Area as a deejay equally willing to play the Beatles and rhythm and blues acts. 'A Whole New Thing' came out in 1967, soon followed by the single 'Dance to the Music,' in which each member was granted a moment of introduction as the song rightly proclaimed a 'brand new beat.' In December 1968, the group appeared on 'The Ed Sullivan Show' and performed a medley that included 'Dance to the Music' and 'Everyday People.' Before the set began, Sly turned to the audience and recited a brief passage from his song 'Are You Ready': don't hate the white, if you get bitten, just hate the bite.'
New York Post
an hour ago
- New York Post
‘How to Train Your Dragon' review: Live-action remake is nice, but doesn't always soar
movie review HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON Running time: 125 minutes. Rated PG (sequences of intense action, and peril). In theaters June 13. Over the course of two hours, the macho Vikings of the village of Berk go from despising and demonizing dragons to loving them like adorable puppies. I can't say I experienced the same abrupt about-face when it comes to the noxious trend of turning fantastic animated films into live-action remakes. But, hey, at least the decent 'How to Train Your Dragon' update is better than 'Snow White.' The transition from the DreamWorks CGI version from 2010, one of the best family flicks in years, to real human actors is thankfully smoother and not as off-putting as most of Disney's recent, pitiful princess efforts. Redoing 'Dragon' in a photorealistic way actually makes sense, even if it's just another studio ploy to plunder our wallets by rehashing their greatest hits. The heart of the story about a misunderstood boy named Hiccup and the scaly scamp called Toothless, who becomes his unlikely best friend, still beats, if a little less magically. Its relative success is because 'Dragon' was already an action-adventure story with aerial chases, fire-breathing beasts and explosions to begin with. That's a lot easier to swallow than the House of Mouse making a zoo hyena sing a song. The new movie works best when our hero is soaring through the air with his pal as John Powell's inspiring score is blared. 3 Hiccup (Mason Thames) makes an unlikely new friend in 'How to Train Your Dragon.' AP And it's tear-jerking as ever watching the very well-cast 17-year-old newcomer Mason Thames as geeky Hiccup teaching Toothless, an injured Night Fury, how to fly again. By the way, just because 'Dragon' is no longer fully animated doesn't mean the flick is 'Jurassic Park.' Toothless still has huge eyes, rather than a cold-blooded creature's beady peepers. And he's not really threatening at all, even before the duo become bros. Instead of making the lizards look like ferocious dinosaurs, director Dean DeBlois' movie keeps them toy-like and unscary. Fine. It's a movie for children — and depressed millennials. 3 The filmmakers opted not to turn Toothless into a scary dinosaur. AP Where 'Train' derails are the supposed-to-be-funny scenes in the dumb little town of Berk, the aesthetic of which is 'Game of Thrones' if Westeros was inhabited by the Teletubbies. The script is almost word-for-word the same as the original. Big mistake. Without the chipperness of animation, the jokes all fall flat. The lines are too simple, and the characters who speak them are obnoxious. I became more annoyed by the adults in this movie than their hormonal kids were. Gerard Butler as Hiccup's strict chieftain dad Stoick, who wants his loner son to become a dragon killer, is just plain dreadful as he stomps around harrumphing and brooding. He really is the haggis of actors. 3 Gerard Buter is terrible as Stoick. AP The other rascally teens training alongside Hiccup to be dragon slayers — including Nico Parker as his warrior crush Astrid — fare better. But their characters are, well, too cartoony to believe. The dialogue could've used some rewrites. Whenever the movie ventures into the forest and homes in on the sweet friendship of Thames and Toothless, even the iciest crank will melt. OK, so 'How to Train Your Dragon' is watchable. That doesn't make the live-action remake trend any less toothless.
San Francisco Chronicle
an hour ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Tony Awards draw best audience in 6 years for CBS
NEW YORK (AP) — The Tony Awards on Sunday lured 4.85 million viewers to CBS, its largest broadcast audience in six years, according to Nielsen's data. CBS said Monday the telecast — hosted by 'Wicked' star Cynthia Erivo — scored a 38% increase over last year's 3.53 million viewers. That's the largest audience for the Tonys since 2019, when the telecast that year nabbed 5.4 million viewers and ' Hadestown ' was crowned best new musical. The latest version also had to compete with the second game of the NBA Finals, between the Thunder and Pacers, CBS also said the awards show drew its largest ever streaming audience on Paramount+ but did not disclose streaming viewership numbers, only saying it was up 208% from last year. 'Maybe Happy Ending,' a rom-com about androids that crackles with humanity won best new musical on a night when Kara Young made history as the first Black person to win two Tonys consecutively for 'Purpose,' which also won best new play. Interest in the Tonys may also have been fueled by the competition in the best lead actress in a musical category, with Audra McDonald gunning for her record-setting seventh Tony and Nicole Scherzinger of 'Sunset Blvd.' hoping to be crowned a legitimate Broadway diva after a career in the pop group Pussycat Dolls and as a TV talent show judge. Other Hollywood names included in the telecast included George Clooney making his Broadway debut and 'Succession' star Sarah Snook being named best leading actress in a play for 'The Picture of Dorian Gray,' a one-woman show.
