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Palme d’Or: Triangle of Sadness wins top prize in Cannes for Ruben Ostlund

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On Saturday, Ruben Ostlund’s Triangle of Sadness won the Palme d’Or, a film in which models and the ultra-rich have their status questioned by unexpected events.

The award is the second for the Swedish director, who previously won it in 2017 for The Square. Park Chan-wook of South Korea took home the award for best director. Park, who is best known for the 2003 thriller Oldboy, took home the award for his erotic crime film Decision to Leave.

The best actor award went to Song Kang-ho for Broker, capping off a strong night for South Korea. Song gained international acclaim for his role in the Oscar-winning film Parasite in 2019. Ostlund, dubbed the “King of Cringe,” told reporters that he wanted to make a film that would make people laugh.

“I think we had one goal when we started making this film – to really, really try to make an exciting film for the audience and bring thought-provoking content,” Ostlund said, adding, “We wanted to entertain them, we wanted them to ask themselves questions, we wanted them to go out and have something to talk about after the screening.”

During its premiere, his film elicited a strong reaction from the audience, with news agency AFP reporting that one scene in particular “left viewers either howling with laughter or turning green.” The story of Triangle of Sadness revolves around two models, played by British actor Harris Dickinson and South African Charlbi Dean, who embark on a luxury cruise.

However, unexpected events have left them stranded, and the need to survive has thrown the social order into disarray.

While the film “makes you laugh,” Ostlund “also makes you think,” according to the entertainment magazine Variety. “We’re bound to see the world differently no matter what sphere he tackles,” it says in its review.

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News Trending War

Severodonetsk: Ukrainian man rides his bike through the besieged city while dodging Russian shells

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By cycling and dodging Russian shells and warplanes, a Ukrainian man managed to escape the heavily bombed eastern city of Severodonetsk unharmed.

Arif Bagirov, 45, told BBC Newshour that it was his “craziest journey.” He described his 70-kilometer (43-mile) bike ride to Bakhmut as “a lot of firing and at least two air strikes near me.”

The editor and blogger predicted that if one shell landed close by, the Russians would most likely avoid hitting the area again. Using these strategies, he was able to reach Bakhmut unharmed. “There were holes in the road, and everything, including cars, was smashed up,” Mr Bagirov said.

“And there was a lot of debris strewn about.” It is, after all, a frontline road. Thankfully, there were no bodies, but it was clear that people had died there.”
Mr Bagirov claimed that avoiding Russian warplanes was easier because he could hear them approaching from afar.
“I found a ditch to lie down in and stayed there until they passed.”
When he finally arrived in Bakhmut, a Ukrainian-controlled city further west, he said it was a huge relief. “When I was riding my bike, it wasn’t so much a sense of fear as it was a sense of anger: ‘This is my land, this is my country!’

And whether you like it or not, I’m going to finish this journey!’ He describes the sensation as “sporting anger, a positive anger” that kept him going. Mr Bagirov, a seasoned cyclist, added, “It was definitely my craziest journey on a bike.” “I’d travelled great distances before, but never in such adverse conditions.”

“I don’t know at the moment,” he said simply when asked about his future plans. I’m just on my way to Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, and once there, I’ll get some rest.” “As soon as the opportunity presents itself, all I want to do is help my home town again,” he added.

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Alan White, the drummer for Yes, has died at the age of 72

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Alan White, a founding member of the seminal prog-rock band Yes, has passed away.

After a brief illness, the 72-year-old, who was born in Pelton, County Durham, died peacefully at his home in the United States. According to the band, he had been looking forward to an upcoming UK tour and celebrating his 50th anniversary with Yes, which he had joined in 1972.

White collaborated with John Lennon, George Harrison, and Joe Cocker during his career. “Alan White, our beloved husband, father, and grandpa, passed away at the age of 72 at his Seattle-area home on May 26, 2022, after a brief illness,” the band said in a social media post.

“Alan was many things to many people throughout his life and six-decade career: a certified rock star to fans all over the world, a band mate to a select few, and a gentleman and friend to all who met him.”

Former frontman Jon Anderson and bassist Chris Squire, along with guitarist Peter Banks, keyboardist Tony Kaye, and drummer Bill Bruford, founded Yes in London in 1968. The band went through several lineups, including White and Rick Wakeman, and experimented with a variety of musical styles.

Owner Of A Lonely Heart, Roundabout, and Long Distance Runaround are some of their biggest hits. White began playing the drums at the age of 12 and was performing in front of an audience at the age of 13.

In the 1960s, he worked with a variety of bands before receiving what he thought was a prank phone call from John Lennon in 1969.

However, it was the former Beatle who called to ask if White would join the Plastic Ono Band, and White went on to play on several of John Lennon’s albums, including Imagine. This led to a meeting with Harrison, who requested that the drummer play on the album All Things Must Pass, which included the single “My Sweet Lord.”

White had only three days to learn the songs before the start of a major US tour when he joined Yes on July 27, 1972. White was the band’s longest-serving member until founding member Chris Squire passed away in 2015. In 2017, Yes was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

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Elvis biopic: Austin Butler praised, but mixed reviews for film

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Many critics praised actor Austin Butler’s portrayal of Elvis Presley in a new biopic of the singer, which has received generally positive reviews.

The film, directed by Baz Luhrmann, had its world premiere on Wednesday at the Cannes Film Festival. Butler “throws himself into the performance,” according to The Wrap, and Total Film predicted an Oscar nomination.

Vanity Fair, on the other hand, called Butler “the only thing that works,” while IndieWire called the film “deliriously awful.” “Yes, it’s a bright and splashy jukebox epic with an irresistible central performance from Austin Butler,” wrote Robbie Collin of The Telegraph, who gave the film four stars.

“But it veers in and out of fashion on a scene-by-scene basis, in that signature Luhrmann way: it’s the most impeccably styled and blaringly gaudy thing you’ll see all year, and all the more fun for it.”

Elvis is “easily Luhrmann’s best movie since Romeo + Juliet,” according to Kevin Maher of the New York Times, in another four-star review. “The musical numbers have a lot of power because of Butler’s performance, but also because of Luhrmann’s editing, which has the kind of frenetic rhythms that are almost impossible to resist (feet will tap),” he said.

When Butler was cast as Elvis Presley in 2019, he reportedly beat out Harry Styles, Ansel Elgort, and Miles Teller.

Butler’s performance was praised by Clarisse Loughrey of The Independent, who wrote that the actor “makes a compelling argument for Elvis’ power, at a time when the musician’s arguably lost a little of his cultural cachet.”

“Butler has the looks, voice, stance, and wiggle down pat,” she said, “but what’s truly impressive is that indescribable, undistillable essence of Elvis-ness – magnetic, gentle, and fierce all at once.”

Steve Pond of The Wrap described the star’s performance as “wildly physical but never cartoonish or disrespectful.”

Total Film’s Jordan Farley said: “Some may be offended by the length of the film, which clocks in at over 150 minutes, but a lack of action isn’t the issue; there’s enough to Elvis’ story to fill 150 hours.

“The problem is that well-edited montages or a time jump bridged by a newspaper headline to fill in the gaps miss a lot of interesting material. Most of Elvis’s Hollywood years, as well as his initial rise to chart-topping fame, are relegated to one of these montage.

“In the end, nothing in Elvis’ life happens gradually – this is a fast-paced life story, but such is the energy that Luhrmann cultivates. At the very least, it’s never dull.”

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Ukraine war: Russian soldiers’ bodies are dumped near Kyiv

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Villagers in Zavalivka called the authorities after their dogs began digging incessantly in the woods.

The topsoil was carefully removed by a Ukrainian military team wearing white protective suits. They discovered a man’s body, lying face down with his legs twisted strangely beneath him. His uniform indicated that he was a Russian soldier.

Russian troops’ remains are still being discovered in and around the villages they passed through or occupied near Kyiv, weeks after they failed to seize Ukraine’s capital. However, Ukraine claims that Russia is uninterested in returning them.

The body was taken from its grave in the woods to a refrigerated train on the outskirts of Kyiv, which now serves as a mobile morgue for the Russian dead. The white plastic sacks are labelled with numbers rather than names, and on the day we visited, there were at least 137 stacked inside two carriages.

The Ukrainians try to identify the dead: the forensics team discovered two bank cards and badges for a Russian motorised rifle brigade on the body that was just brought in.

“At least this one has a chance of getting home,” the man in charge said as he displayed the finds, which included a soiled T-shirt with the Army of Russia logo printed on it.

I confirmed that the man I had just seen exhumed was a young, married soldier from Siberia a few moments later. A carefully posed black-and-white photograph from his social media profile stared out from my phone next to his body bag.

“We don’t abandon our own,” Russia proudly proclaims. It’s a big part of President Vladimir Putin’s pretext for invading Ukraine, where he falsely claimed Russian-speakers required protection.

This pledge does not appear to apply to Russian soldiers.
“The bodies we’ve discovered show they treat people like garbage, like cannon fodder,” Col Volodymyr Liamzin told the BBC. “They don’t require their troops. They throw them here, then flee, leaving the bodies behind.”

Russian soldiers are being urged to surrender and save their lives, while Ukrainian children are being sacrificed.

After the battle, the village elder claims he and others buried the Russians “for sanitary reasons.” When I ask why, he says most of them were blown to bits.

He wasn’t allowed to show us the graves because they are a crime scene until Col Liamzin’s team visits and exhumes the site. However, his to-do list is already lengthy.

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Heard’s team has changed their mind about Johnny Depp’s testimony

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According to a source close to Amber Heard, her team will not call Johnny Depp to the stand in the high-profile trial’s final days.

Ms. Heard’s team had planned to question Mr. Depp further on Monday, but at midday, they abruptly changed course. Mr Depp, 58, is suing his ex-wife for $50 million (£40 million) over a column she wrote in which she claimed to have been the victim of domestic abuse. Ms. Heard, 36, has filed a counterclaim.

This week is expected to be the end of the case. In the remaining days of the defamation trial, British supermodel Kate Moss, a former girlfriend of Mr Depp, is expected to testify.

Ms Heard’s team called several witnesses, including psychologist David Spiegel, to testify in court on Monday in Fairfax, Virginia.

Mr. Depp, according to Dr. Spiegel, “has behaviours that are consistent with both someone who has substance use disorder and someone who is a perpetrator of intimate partner violence.” Dr. Spiegel told jurors that 40-60% of intimate partner violence is committed while under the influence of alcohol or other drugs.

On cross-examination, Mr. Depp’s lawyers tried to discredit this testimony by pointing out that Dr. Spiegel reached his conclusions without speaking with Mr. Depp.

On Monday, a hand surgeon testified that Mr Depp’s finger was unlikely to have been cut in the way he described during a fight with Ms Heard in Australia.

When Ms Heard threw a vodka bottle at him, Mr Depp claims the tip of his middle finger was severed. Dr. Richard Moore told the jury that the damage to Mr. Depp’s finger was more consistent with being pinched by a closing door.

At the time of the accident, Dr Moore did not examine Mr Depp physically. Mr Depp’s team is expected to rest its case early this week, giving Ms Heard’s team one last chance to persuade the jury.

Mr Depp, according to Ms Heard, was prone to alcohol and drug binges, was easily triggered by jealousy, and was frequently consumed by violent rages.

Mr Depp, for his part, claimed he was a victim of Ms Heard’s erratic behaviour, telling jurors he was subjected to her verbal, emotional, and physical abuse on a regular basis.

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Miss. Tic, a 66-year-old French street artist, has died

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Miss. Tic, a well-known French street artist, died in Paris at the age of 66, according to her family. Her family said in a brief statement that the artist, whose real name was Radhia Novat, died on Sunday after suffering from an undisclosed illness.

Miss. Tic is regarded as a pioneer of stencil art, and her enigmatic female figures became a common sight in Paris thanks to her graffiti. In 1997, she was briefly detained on charges of vandalism to public property. Her work, however, was eventually shown in galleries in France and abroad. She’s also worked with fashion houses like Kenzo and Louis Vuitton.

From all over France, tributes have been paid to the artist.

Miss. Tic’s “iconic, resolutely feminist” work “will continue to poetize our streets for a long time,” France’s newly appointed Culture Minister Rima Abdul Malak wrote on Twitter.

Christian Guemy, aka C215, a street artist, was hailed as “one of the founders of stencil art.” He wrote on Twitter that the walls of Paris’s 13th arrondissement, where her images are common, “will never be the same again.”

Miss. Tic was born in 1956 in Paris’s Montmartre neighbourhood to a Tunisian immigrant father and a Normandy mother.

Before moving to California, she studied applied arts and street theatre. In an interview with AFP in 2011, she said, “I had a background in street theatre, and I liked this idea of street art.”

“At first I thought, ‘I’m going to write poems’. And then, ‘we need images’ with these poems. I started with self-portraits and then turned towards other women,” she said.

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Elon Musk advertises a Tesla job on Twitter, and the response is hilarious

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Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, recently posted a job advertisement on Twitter, and internet users couldn’t help but troll him.
Elon Musk announced on Twitter a day after sexual harassment allegations against him surfaced, which he denounced as “completely false,” that his company would be forming a “hardcore litigation department” to “directly initiate and execute lawsuits,” with the team reporting to him.

“My commitment: we will never seek victory in a just case against us, even if we will probably win [and] we will never surrender/settle an unjust case against us, even if we will probably lose,” Mr Musk said in a Twitter threat. “I’m looking for hardcore streetfighters, not white-shoe lawyers,” he continued, adding that “there will be blood.”

Mr Musk requested that applicants submit three to five bullet points demonstrating “evidence of exceptional ability.” As a result, Twitter users decided to have some fun, with some mocking Mr Musk for using social media to find the best legal minds in the world, while others pitched hilarious points, just as the Tesla CEO had requested.”Because if I wanted to assemble a team of the world’s best legal minds, the first place I would go would absolutely be Twitter,” one user wrote. Another shared three bullet points: “1. I drank 69 beers in one day in July 2017 2. I know everything there is to know about Arizona dive bars 3. A Tier 1 law school awarded me Magna Cum Laude. These are ranked from most important to least important.” Another user claimed to have “a lot of experience stealing coffee from Harvard Law.”

Meanwhile, according to Business Insider, SpaceX paid $250,000 in 2018 to settle a sexual harassment claim filed by an unnamed private jet flight attendant who claimed Mr Musk exposed himself to her. According to the article, an anonymous source claimed to be a friend of the flight attendant.
Elon Musk, on the other hand, denounced the “completely false” claims the next day. “It never happened,” he said, and he challenged the anonymous person to describe something that isn’t widely known.

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Ukraine war: One Russian’s anti-war protest on the side of his shopping centre

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You can reach Russko-Vysotskoye by driving eight hours north of Moscow.

Apart from the chicken farm and the church that was reduced to rubble during WWII, there isn’t much to see here.  However, there is one feature of this town that stands out: the local shopping centre.

The building is owned by Dmitry Skurikhin, and you should see what he’s done to the front. “Peace to Ukraine, Freedom to Russia!” he writes in huge letters. He’s written the names of Ukrainian towns that have been attacked by the Russian army in bright red paint.

Mariupol, Bucha, Kherson, Chernihiv, and other cities are among them. Dmitry explains, “I thought this would be a good way of getting information out.”

“Because our people had no idea what was going on during the first few weeks of the war. They assumed that a special operation was underway to remove drug addicts from the Ukrainian government. They were completely unaware that Russia was shelling Ukrainian cities.” Dmitry has even transformed his store’s roof into a massive yellow and blue Ukrainian flag. Dmitry pulls out a paint pot and brush and begins to add more names.

Irpin, Borodyanka, Odesa… The excess paint drips blood red down the wall, amplifying the impact of this statement.

Dmitry is well aware that his actions are fraught with danger. Protests in Russia frequently result in prosecution or threats. Or both. His door has already been defaced with the word “traitor.” The cops have also paid us a visit. He was fined later for smearing the Russian military.Paint, Dmitry Skurikhin knows, will not bring peace. But, he believes, if his protest causes people in the town to stop, think, and even question, it will have been worthwhile.

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Russia has cut off gas deliveries to Finland

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Russia has stopped supplying natural gas to Finland, according to Gasum, the Finnish state-owned energy company.

Finland has refused to pay in roubles for its supplies. However, it comes after Finland’s announcement that it will apply to join NATO. Gasum said the move was “regrettable,” but that customers would not be inconvenienced.

Despite the conflict in Ukraine, Russia continues to provide gas to a number of European countries. Following Western sanctions over the war, Russia announced that “unfriendly” countries must pay for gas in Russian currency, a move the EU regards as blackmail.

Many consumers are experiencing a cost-of-living crisis as a result of their reliance on Russian energy. The majority of Finland’s gas is imported from Russia, but gas accounts for less than a tenth of the country’s total energy consumption.

“It is extremely unfortunate that natural gas supplies under our supply contract will now be halted,” Gasum CEO Mika Wiljanen said. “However, we have been meticulously preparing for this situation, and we will be able to supply all of our customers with gas in the coming months assuming there are no disruptions in the gas transmission network,” he added. “It is obvious that nobody is going to deliver anything for free,” a Kremlin spokesman said when asked about the situation.

Russia also cut Finland’s electricity supply on Sunday. If Finland applied to join Nato, it had threatened retaliation.

Separately, Russia’s state-owned oil company Rosneft announced on Friday that former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder had informed them that he would no longer serve on its board of directors.

Mr. Schröder’s lucrative role has sparked growing public outrage. He has refused to criticise Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, whom he considers a personal friend, over the conflict.

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