Temilade Openiyi, popularly known as Tems, has her hit single, ‘Me & U’, featured in the first official teaser for the Hollywood fantasy film, Children of Blood & Bone.
Oyinkansola Aderibigbe, popularly known as Ayra Starr, also appeared in the teaser, marking her Hollywood acting debut.
The behind-the-scenes teaser, shared on Monday by director Gina Prince-Bythewood on her Instagram page @gpbmadeit, features scenes from the film’s production, including costume preparations, action sequences and brief appearances by cast members
Its caption reads: “So excited to share a peek behind the scenes of our incredible journey to Orisha. CHILDREN OF BLOOD AND BONE TRAILER drops TOMORROW! And in theaters Jan 15!”
Tems’ Me & U soundtracks the teaser, while Ayra Starr appears briefly alongside other cast members in the Paramount Pictures adaptation of Tomi Adeyemi’s bestselling novel.
The film stars Viola Davis, Idris Elba, Cynthia Erivo, Damson Idris, Thuso Mbedu, Lashana Lynch, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Amandla Stenberg and Ayra Starr.
The plot follows Zélie Adebola as she seeks to restore magic to her people after it was violently taken from them, in a world inspired by West African mythology.
The plot follows Adebola, a young woman who seeks to restore magic to the West African-inspired kingdom of Orïsha after it was violently taken from its people.
Children of Blood & Bone is based on Tomi Adeyemi’s 2018 novel, the first book in the Legacy of Orïsha series. (Vanguard)
Sam Neill, a smoothly elegant and versatile actor whose career moved from art film to blockbuster as he dodged velociraptors in “Jurassic Park” to playing Holly Hunter’s husband in “The Piano,” has died. He was 78.
In 2023, Neill disclosed he had been diagnosed with angioimmunoblastic T-cell lymphoma, a rare type of non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Neill died on Monday in Sydney, according to a statement posted to the actor’s social media page.
His death was “sudden and unexpected,” the statement said, adding that he “remained cancer free” when he died. A cause of death wasn’t specified.
“Sam was surrounded by family and passed with the dignity that has characterised his whole life,” his family wrote.
Neil was one of a host of actors and directors who achieved international fame after an explosion of Australian films that began in the late 1970s, a list that includes Paul Hogan, Mel Gibson, Geoffrey Rush, Russell Crowe, Jane Campion, Peter Weir and Gillian Armstrong. His range was remarkable, playing opposite Helena Bonham Carter in the Alan Ayckbourn comedy “Sweet Revenge” to chopping off Hunter’s finger in “The Piano” to poking his own eyes out in the sci-fi horror “Event Horizon.”
In “Omen III: The Final Conflict,” he played Damien the Antichrist and he also played Cardinal Thomas Wolsey in “The Tudors.”
The actor first came to the attention of international audiences in Armstrong’s 1979 film “My Brilliant Career,” which also introduced Judy Davis. He later appeared in Phillip Noyce’s “Dead Calm,” a classy thriller set at sea and co-starring the then-relatively unknown Nicole Kidman.
Neill twice co-starred with Meryl Streep, in Australian director Fred Schepisi’s “Plenty” and — again for Schepisi — in “A Cry in the Dark,” a film about the sensationalized aftermath of a dingo killing a baby in the Australian outback. He earned an Emmy nomination for his performance in the title role of the 1998 mini-series “Merlin” and another as narrator of 2017’s “Wild New Zealand.”
But perhaps he achieved his highest level of fame in “Jurassic Park” playing paleontologist Alan Grant, who is summoned to an island off Costa Rica where a theme park has been built to house herds of cloned dinosaurs. He co-starred alongside Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum and Richard Attenborough.
His character was thoughtful and reasonable, a scientist who warned the mastermind of the theme park before the chaos: “Dinosaurs and man, two species separated by 65 million years of evolution have just been suddenly thrown back into the mix together. How can we possibly have the slightest idea what to expect?”
Grant survived the harrowing events when the creatures get loose, but didn’t return for “The Lost World: Jurassic Park II” in 1997. He came back for the third episode in 2001 and “Jurassic World: Dominion” in 2022.
“It’s probably a little late to learn these things,” he told the Daily New of New York in 2001, “but I finally feel I’ve worked out how to be an action hero. I’m happier with Grant this time. He’s gnarly and grizzled, but he looks like he knows what he’s doing.”
Born in 1947 in Northern Ireland, Neill emigrated to New Zealand at the age of 7. His family settled in Dunedin on the South Island and he was sent to boarding school in Christchurch. After college, he took the lead in “Sleeping Dogs” in 1977, the first feature made in New Zealand in more than a decade.
Neill’s other film roles included playing a Soviet submarine officer who memorably dreams of a home in Montana in “The Hunt for Red October” and an investigator in director John Carpenter’s “In the Mouth of Madness.”
On the small screen, Neill played the malign Chester Campbell in TV’s “Peaky Blinders” and Thomas Jefferson in the four-hour CBS miniseries, “Sally Hemings: An American Tragedy.” On Apple TV+, he was on “Invasion,” playing Oklahoma Sheriff John Bell Tyson, a man late in his career searching for his purpose. In 2024 he starred opposite Annette Bening in the Peacock series “Apples Never Fall.”
Neill was also a vintner and under his Two Paddocks brand, he produced pinot noir and riesling wines from his winery in the Central Otago region of New Zealand’s South Island.
On social media, he often posted images of his farm animals, many of them affectionately named after celebrities and friends, like Laura Dern the chicken, Kylie Minogue the duck and Helena Bonham Carter the cow.
On social media, he often posted images of his farm animals, many of them affectionately named after celebrities and friends, like Laura Dern the chicken, Kylie Minogue the duck and Helena Bonham Carter the cow.
His memoir “Did I Ever Tell You This?” came out in March 2023 and he was awarded a knighthood in recognition of his “outstanding contribution to film,” a title approved by the late Queen Elizabeth II.
“I can’t pretend that the last year hasn’t had its dark moments,” Neill told The Guardian in 2023, referring to his cancer diagnosis and treatment. “But those dark moments throw the light into sharp relief, you know, and have made me grateful for every day and immensely grateful for all my friends.” (JapanToday)
Bonnie Tyler, the gravelly voiced, Grammy-nominated Welsh pop star whose 1983 chart-topping power ballad “Total Eclipse of the Heart” enchanted succeeding generations with its bombastic charms during solar and lunar eclipses, has died. She was 75.
Tyler died unexpectedly in a hospital in Portugal where she was being treated for an illness, her family said Thursday in a statement on her website. She was hospitalized in May in Faro, where she had a home, for emergency intestinal surgery. She had been placed in an induced coma for a period but was reportedly improving last month and expected to make a good recovery.
“Bonnie’s family and team are heartbroken to announce that Bonnie unexpectedly passed away last night in hospital in Portugal as a result of the illness that she was being treated for,” her family said.
Tyler earned three Grammy nods and in 2013 represented Britain at the Eurovision Song Contest, where she came in 19th. She was honored as a Member of the Order of the British Empire in 2022 for her services to music by Queen Elizabeth II, thanks mainly to “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” which has had more than 1 billion streams, boosted by real eclipses in 2017 and 2024.
The song spent four weeks at No. 1, and when Stereogum reevaluated it in 2020, the music outlet declared it an “extinction-level event rendered in musical form.”
“It’s pop music as heart-pounding, chest-thumping, blood-gargling, heavens-falling passion explosion. It’s sheer spectacle. It’s fireworks and lasers and lightning and thunder. It soars and swoops and barrel-rolls,” the site said.
The song has never really gone away: it was covered by the English singer Nicki French in 1995, and the band Westlife in 2006. Cate Blanchett sang it while hitting Billy Bob Thornton with her car in 2001’s “Bandits,” it appeared in a wedding scene in 2003’s “Old School” and One Direction sang it in 2010 on a U.K. version of “The X Factor.”
Tyler was born — as Gaynor Hopkins — a coal miner’s daughter in public housing with an outside toilet in Skewen, Wales, about 7 miles (11 kilometers) outside Swansea. She grew up with three sisters and two brothers.
She adored the Beatles and her first album was “A Hard Day’s Night.” The first song she bought, at 13, was “Hippy Hippy Shake” by the Swinging Blue Jeans and she watched “Top of the Pops” religiously, according to her memoir, “Straight From the Heart.”
She would record “Top of the Pops” on a reel-to-reel two-track recorder and write down the lyrics of songs she loved. Her favorites were by Janis Joplin, Nina Simone, Tina Turner, Wilson Pickett and Otis Redding.
“I used to sing them into my hairbrush for hours and hours, and that’s how it all started for me. I fell in love with singing just from doing that. Looking back, even then my voice had a husky tone to it, but I didn’t think much of it. I thought everyone’s voices were different from each other’s,” she wrote.
In 1976 she had to have surgery to remove nodules on her throat, leaving her with that trademark vocal sound. Changing her name to Sherene Davis, she was fronting a soul band when she was discovered by talent scout Roger Bell, who brought her to London for demo sessions. Then she waited for a label until RCA said it was interested.
Under her new RCA-sanctioned name Bonnie Tyler, her debut album “The World Starts Tonight” in 1977 contained her first chart hit, “Lost in France,” and she was nominated for a breakthrough artists award at the Brit Awards. She then had a No. 3 hit in 1978 with “It’s a Heartache,” but soon drifted. She then signed with Sony and saw Meat Loaf perform “Bat Out of Hell” on the BBC. Impressed, she requested to work with Meat Loaf songwriter and producer Jim Steinman.
Steinman introduced her to his song “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” which would become the debut single for her fifth studio album, “Faster Than the Speed of Night.” He borrowed one of the song’s lyrics — “Turn around, bright eyes” — from his 1969 musical “The Dream Engine,” written when he was a student at Massachusetts’ Amherst College. He told her the song was from a prospective musical version of “Nosferatu.”
“Jim liked to put down a basic rhythm track, do nine takes of the song, choose the best one and then put the kitchen sink on there, like Phil Spector used to,” Tyler told The Guardian in 2023. “He gave me a cassette to listen to in my hotel and we both preferred take two.”
Featuring E Street Band members Roy Bittan on piano and Max Weinberg on drums, “Total Eclipse” is a rumination on lost love: “Once upon a time there was light in my life/But now there’s only love in the dark,” she sings.
The video, a staple of early-days MTV, was shot in a frightening gothic former asylum in Surrey, where the guard dogs apparently wouldn’t set foot in the rooms downstairs where they used to give people electric shock treatment. The visuals included slow-motion tossed doves, candles, dancing ninjas, dancing greasers, Tyler in frighteningly big shoulder pads, fencers, gymnasts, wind machines and shirtless boys wearing swim goggles being doused with water.
“Faster Than the Speed of Night” earned a Grammy nomination for best rock vocal performance — losing to Pat Benatar’s “Love Is a Battlefield” — and Tyler got another nod for “Total Eclipse of the Heart” in the best pop vocal performance category, losing to Irene Cara’s “Flashdance — What a Feeling.”
Tyler never reached such dizzying heights again but stayed current with such movie soundtrack singles as “Holding Out For a Hero” — from 1984’s “Footloose” — and “Here She Comes” from “Metropolis” also in 1984.
Her 2019 disc “Between the Earth and the Stars” featured duets with Rod Stewart, Cliff Richard and Status Quo’s Francis Rossi, and she ended that year performing a Vatican Christmas concert before Pope Francis. (JapanToday)
Cate Blanchett brought Hollywood starpower to Brussels on Tuesday as she launched a free tool to give people the right to decide how their image can be used by AI firms.
Blanchett announced the Human Consent Registry was live at the European Parliament also attended by Hollywood directing heavyweight Steven Soderbergh.
The public tool available online will allow anyone to register how they want their identity — name, image, voice, likeness, movement and/or other personal attributes — to be used by artificial intelligence systems.
They will have three options: allowed, allowed with terms, or prohibited.”Human consent is not an impediment to progress.
Human consent does not diminish the struggles and the joys of technological innovation or inhuman creativity,” Blanchett said at the event in the parliament’s library.
She insisted the issue did not just affect public figures like herself, but for anyone who has been photographed “or simply lived some part of their life online”.
The registry has been launched by RSL Media, co-founded by Blanchett, a non-profit organization focused on ensuring consent in AI use.
RSL Media hopes AI companies will voluntarily consult the registry.
Blanchett has been a staunch proponent of protecting rights in the age of generative artificial intelligence.
She was among over 800 creatives including fellow actor Scarlett Johansson as well as director Guillermo Del Toro, who published an open letter accusing AI giants of “theft” in January this year.
Hosting Tuesday’s event was EU lawmaker Eva Maydell who hailed the new tool.
The registry “represents an ambitious attempt to turn the principles into practice and make consent more accessible and feasible, to make rights more transparent, and to make trust more scalable”, Maydell said. (JapanToday)
Clive Davis, the record company lawyer who became one of the music industry’s most powerful figures, launching or resurrecting the careers of such superstars as Janis Joplin, Whitney Houston, Carlos Santana and Alicia Keys, has died, his family confirmed. He was 94.
Earlier this year, Davis was hospitalized following an upper respiratory issue and was released a few days later. His death, in his Manhattan apartment, was confirmed by his publicist Aliza Rabinoff, who also shared a statement from his family.
“To the world, our father was the iconic music legend whose vision, instincts, and relentless pursuit of excellence shaped the soundtrack of countless lives. He discovered, mentored, and championed the greatest artists in modern music history, leaving an indelible mark on culture that will endure for generations,” the statement read.
Unlike other record moguls whose influence waned as they got older, Davis’ might only seemed to grow, spanning multiple genres and labels. Into his later years, he was directing the careers of everyone from Barry Manilow to “American Idol” winners Carrie Underwood and Kelly Clarkson. And his exclusive pre-Grammys gala, held the Saturday night before the Sunday award show every year since 1975, continued to be an institution.
“Clive’s talent has always been seeing and hearing what other people don’t,” former President Barack Obama said in a video message played at this year’s gala.
Clive Jay Davis was born on April 4, 1932 in Brooklyn, New York, where he grew up in the Crown Heights neighborhood. His father was an electrician and traveling salesman. He attended New York University and then Harvard Law School, eventually landing a job as an in-house lawyer at Columbia Records.
Davis always had a knack for business, and by 1967, became president of the company, just seven years after being hired as an attorney. He cited attending the Monterey International Pop Festival that year as pivotal; it eventually led him to bringing Bruce Springsteen, Chicago, Neil Diamond and many other groups to the label — bringing a counterculture spirit to a company that had resisted rock ‘n’ roll.
Davis took big swings in the music industry, particularly in his support for Black artists, beginning when he signed Gamble and Huff’s Philadelphia International Records in 1971.
In 2015, the NAACP recognized Davis for his groundbreaking work by presenting him with the Vanguard Award. And last summer, Davis was presented with the Apollo Theater’s Apollo Legacy Award and inducted onto its Walk of Fame.
His success stories were staggering, with Houston a crowning achievement and devastating tragedy: Davis signed her to his Arista record label when she was just a teen and turned her into America’s reigning pop princess.
Houston racked up multiple No. 1 hits and became one of the top-selling artists in pop history before drug abuse hobbled her career. She died in a Los Angeles hotel room in 2012, just hours before she was to appear at the annual pre-Grammy Awards gala hosted by Davis, who had been convinced she was turning her life around.
“Maybe I should have been more skeptical,” Davis wrote in his 2013 memoir, “The Soundtrack of My Life,” “but I’ve always been optimistic, and I felt hopeful. It felt like old times.”
He also launched the career of multi-platinum, multiple-Grammy winner Keys — and was quick to note other talents he signed, including Joplin and Billy Joel, Blood Sweat & Tears and other “all-timers,” as he so often put it.
“I signed Patti Smith, the great Renaissance woman … I signed Lou Reed … I signed the Grateful Dead,” he proudly touted in an interview with The Associated Press in 1999.
He also signed the then up-and-coming producer Sean “Diddy” Combs to a label deal with his Bad Boy Records. Under Davis, the label would have some of its biggest successes, most notably with late rap icon the Notorious B.I.G. That was long before the hip-hop mogul Diddy would be incarcerated, convicted of violating the federal Mann Act, which bans transporting people across state lines for any sexual crime. (JapanToday)
South Korean seven-piece BTS have won artist of the year at the American Music Awards (AMAs) for the second consecutive year, cementing their status as one of the world’s biggest bands.
The award, considered the ceremony’s grand prize, is just the latest crown jewel for the so-called kings of K-pop, who have been on a $1bn world tour since returning from a nearly four-year hiatus in March.
BTS also won song of the summer for their album’s lead single Swim and best male K-pop artist, while label partners Katseye were dubbed new artist of the year.
Golden, the viral single from the animated hit film K-Pop Demon Hunters, was named song of the year, while Sabrina Carpenter won album of the year for Man’s Best Friend.
Carpenter also won best female pop artist and best pop album, while Justin Bieber was named best male pop artist.
BTS beat artists including Taylor Swift, Bruno Mars, Bad Bunny and Lady Gaga in the artist category, as well as the likes of Harry Styles, Tame Impala and PinkPantheress in the song category.
Swift, who holds the record for the most AMA wins, went into this year’s awards with eight nominations but came home empty-handed.
But PinkPantheress didn’t miss out, picking up collaboration of the year for Stateside with Zara Larsson.
Larsson, who performed at Radio 1’s Big Weekend in Sunderland over the weekend, also won breakthrough album of the year for Midnight Sun.
Katseye also won two other prizes – best music video for Gnarly and breakthrough pop artist, while Huntrix also picked up best vocal performance, and best pop song.
EJAE added to that with a win for best soundtrack for KPop Demon Hunters. While she attended alongside Rei Ami, Audrey Nuna was unable to make it due to work commitments. (BBC)
Cate Blanchett said the #MeToo movement “got killed very quickly” in Hollywood, speaking Sunday at the Cannes Film Festival.
In a wide-ranging staged conversation, Blanchett lamented that the tide of #MeToo has been turned in Hollywood, where she has been outspoken about gender equality.
“It got killed very quickly, which I think is interesting,” said Blanchett.
“There are a lot of people with platforms who are able to speak up with relative safety and say this has happened to me,” Blanchett said. “And the so-called average woman on the street, person on the street, is saying MeToo. Why does that get shut down?”
In 2018, when she was president of the jury in Cannes, Blanchett took part in a red-carpet protest. She and 81 other women appeared on the steps of the Palais des Festivals, symbolically representing the number of female director who were selected for Cannes’ competition lineup. Over the same period, 1,866 male directors had been selected.
“I’m still on film sets and I do the headcount every day. There’s 10 women and there’s 75 men every morning,” Blanchett said.
“I love men, but what happens is the jokes become the same,’ she said. “You just have to brace yourself slightly, and I’m used to that, but it just gets boring for everybody when you walk into a homogeneous workplace.” (JapanToday)
Hollywood star John Travolta was given a surprise lifetime achievement award at the Cannes Film Festival Friday as he premiered the first movie he has ever directed.
The man who became an icon overnight with “Saturday Night Fever” was visibly moved as he accepted the honorary Palme d’Or before the screening of “Propeller One-Way Night Coach”, which is based on a book about his first experience in an airliner.
“I just can’t believe it. This is beyond the Oscar, really,” he said as he accepted the tribute.
The festival has been laying on the love for Hollywood legends this year despite the big studios staying away, with honorary Palmes for Barbra Streisand and Peter Jackson as well as a gala screening for Vin Diesel and the stars of “The Fast and the Furious” franchise to mark its 25th anniversary.
Travolta — who has never won an Oscar — revived his flagging career with his iconic turn as hitman Vincent Vega in Quentin Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction”, which won the festival’s Palme d’Or top prize in 1994.
Many critics hailed it as his greatest performance, one that has since gone down in cinema history.
“My favorite movies in the history of my life have always been the winners of the Palme d’Or,” Travolta said.
Cannes had kept the award under wraps until the actor walked on stage for the premiere wearing a black suit and a white beret.
The 72-year-old said he had been hugely surprised to have his directorial debut, which stars his daughter Ella Bleu as an air hostess, accepted at the world’s most prestigious film festival.
When Cannes director Thierry Fremaux told him in November that “it would be the first film ever accepted that early I cried like a baby,” he said.
“I had no expectation my film would be accepted,” he added.
“Propeller One-Way Night Coach” is a one-hour self-financed autobiographical tale about Travolta’s flight as an eight-year-old with his actress mother from New York to Los Angeles in 1962.
“This is the blueprint of my life,” said the actor, a lifelong aeroplane nut, who narrates the story. What you’ll see in the movie is completely my perspective on what I witnessed people go through.
“Everyone that was in the movie is sitting in the audience right there, my family,” he added.
Travolta was bitten by the acting bug early.
Born in New Jersey to the an Irish mother and an Italian-American father who ran a tyre store, he left school at 16 to try his hand at acting and dancing.
Two years later he landed his first big stage role in the Broadway musical “Grease”.
He was nominated for an Oscar in 1978 for playing disco-dancing champion Tony Manero in the low-budget “Saturday Night Fever” and was launched into the Hollywood stratosphere by his role in the movie version of “Grease” the same year.
The rights to “Propeller One-Way Night Coach” have been bought by Apple, Travolta said.
Asked if he would direct again, he said he had watched all sorts of directors as an actor.
“I really believe that I can navigate around all of that, and anything I would choose to do, but I really feel I have to have passion about the material to do again what I’ve done here,” he said. (JapanToday)
After two weeks trailing “The Devil Wears Prada 2,” the Michael Jackson biopic “Michael” reclaimed the No. 1 spot at the North American box office with $26.1 million in ticket sales, according to studio estimates Sunday.
The Lionsgate movie is in rarefied territory, having brought in $703.9 million worldwide and counting. It still has a way to go to surpass the current reigning champion of musical biopics: “Bohemian Rhapsody.” The Queen movie grossed over $910.8 million worldwide.
There were also several newcomers in the mix this weekend, including the relationship horror movie “Obsession,” the Guy Ritchie action pic “In the Grey” and the revenge saga “Is God Is,” but the holdovers continued to draw the largest crowds. The power dynamics are poised to shift when “Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu” hits theaters next weekend.
Disney and 20th Century Studios’ “The Devil Wears Prada 2” took second place in its third weekend with $18 million, bringing its domestic total to $175.9 million and worldwide earnings to $546.2 million.
“Obsession” topped the newcomers, exceeding expectations with an estimated $16.1 million from 2,615 theaters. YouTube breakout Curry Barker wrote and directed the thriller in which a hopeless romantic gets more than he bargained for when his crush returns his affections. The film received positive reviews from both critics (94% on Rotten Tomatoes) and audiences (A- CinemaScore). Perhaps more notable is that Barker made the film for $750,000. Focus Features acquired it out of the Toronto International Film Festival last fall for around $15 million.
Lisa Bunnell, president of domestic distribution for Focus Features, attributed some of “Obsession’s” success to audiences craving fresh, original voices at the movies. It’s also getting an infusion by word-of-mouth, with younger audiences making plans to go back with friends. Horror movies don’t often get CinemaScores in the A- range, but “Obsession” is in good company with another recent hit: “Weapons.”
“I’m expecting a really strong holdover,” Bunnell said.
Fourth place at the box office this weekend went to “Mortal Kombat II,” which fell 65% in its second weekend to $13.4 million in domestic ticket sales. Globally, it has made $101.2 million from 80 markets.
Amazon MGM Studios had three movies in the top 10, including “The Sheep Detectives” in fifth place, “Project Hail Mary” in seventh place and “Is God Is” rounding out the top 10.
“The Sheep Detectives” enjoyed a slim 33% drop from its first weekend, taking in an additional $10.2 million and bringing its running total to $30.5 million. “Project Hail Mary,” which is now available to rent or buy at home, brought in another $3.4 million in its ninth weekend in theaters. “Is God Is,” Aleshea Harris’s adaptation of her Obie-winning play about twin sisters ( Kara Young and Mallori Johnson ) on a quest to find and kill their abusive father made $2.2 million in its first weekend in theaters. It has a 97% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
Meanwhile, the action caper “In the Grey,” released by Black Bear, made $3 million from 2,018 locations. Henry Cavill, Jake Gyllenhaal and Eiza González star in the film about a team of elite operatives on an impossible mission. It currently carries a 44% on Rotten Tomatoes and a B CinemaScore.
There were also several high-profile re-releases in theaters this weekend, including “Top Gun” which made $3.1 million, and “Shrek” which earned $1.3 million.
Paul Dergarabedian, head of marketplace trends for Comscore, noted that “Prada,” “Michael” and “Top Gun” all making the top 10 show “nostalgia is on full display.”
“What’s old is new again and audiences clearly love it,” he said. (JapanToday)
Bulgaria won the Eurovision Song Contest for the first time on Saturday in a final overshadowed by five countries’ boycott over Gaza, claiming a dramatic victory despite another big public vote for Israel that again secured it second place.
The garish and usually good-natured competition involving pop acts from countries across Europe and beyond, now in its 70th year, was plunged into crisis by a dispute over Israel’s military offensive in Gaza, a response to the Hamas-led attack on October 7, 2023.
The public broadcasters of heavyweights Spain, the Netherlands and Ireland, as well as Iceland and Slovenia, chose not to take part in protest at Israel’s participation.
Israel has alleged a global smear campaign against it. Its performance at the final was not, however, marred by any obvious protests, unlike Tuesday’s semifinal.
“This is unbelievable. I don’t even know what’s going on right now,” Bulgaria’s entrant Dara told a press conference after winning with her thumping, crowd-pleasing dance track “Bangaranga” that avoided politics altogether.
The song touches on themes of empowerment and surrendering to the night. It also left many puzzled as to its meaning.
“Bangaranga is a feeling that everybody gets in themselves. It’s the moment that you choose to be in love and not fear,” Dara said when asked to explain the song in the “green room” where artists await the results.
“This is a special energy … Once you feel (at) one with nature and your universe, you feel the harmony that you can be whatever you want to be and that everything is possible,” she said. (JapanToday)
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