Malala has lengthy been identified for her world activism, however now she’s turning her sights stateside – to Hollywood.
Talking Wednesday at Selection’s Energy of Ladies occasion, Malala Yousafzai, who grew to become an activist after being shot by the Taliban, referred to as out Hollywood for its lack of illustration for Muslims and different Asian individuals. She intends to alter that.
“I don’t anticipate Hollywood to alter as a result of it’s the correct factor to do, and even as a result of it’s good for enterprise. I need you to do it since you’re artists and you realize that artwork belongs to everybody,” Malala mentioned. “In case you are an artist who has heard your story, or have been instructed that you’re too younger, that you simply don’t have the correct background, then come sit at my desk and let’s work collectively.”
Advertisement
However the Nobel Laureate and training activist isn’t simply in search of illustration, she mentioned Wednesday.
“To me, illustration is only a comfort prize,” she mentioned. “I need our reveals and our mates to be the mainstream.”
Final 12 months, Malala inked a multi-year partnership with Apple to develop unique programming for its streaming service Apple TV+. Her choices are supposed to span dramas, comedies, documentaries, animation, and youngsters’s sequence, all by means of her manufacturing firm Extracurricular.
The primary slate of these tasks is presently in growth on the streaming service, she instructed Selection.
“We now have so many younger, numerous roles on TV. Simply have a look at ‘By no means Have I Ever,’ ‘Intercourse Training,’ ‘Ms Marvel,’ and ‘Coda’ received finest image. All of that’s true and I’m so grateful for each alternative to see new faces and listen to new tales,” Malala mentioned Wednesday. “However for each I simply talked about, I do know that the executives have handed [on] dozens of high quality, equally superb tasks as a result of they thought that the characters or the creators have been too younger, too brown, too international, too poor.”
Advertisement
Although 25% of the world’s inhabitants is Muslim, a research printed in 2022 discovered that Muslims make up simply 1% of talking characters on tv.
One other report, printed in 2021, discovered that feminine Asian and Pacific Islander characters are extra doubtless than feminine characters of some other race to be objectified on display screen.
“A lot of my mates are younger ladies of shade,” Malala mentioned to the viewers of Hollywood executives and creatives. “We’re watching ‘Ted Lasso,’ ‘Succession,’ ‘The Crown,’ all of it. So please ask yourselves, if we will love these tales what makes you assume that individuals received’t be fascinated about ours?”
It’s a summery, late-afternoon Saturday on the backyard lawn of LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes, with the kind of warmth and variety of sounds, sights and smells that have defined weekends in many Los Angeles neighborhoods for generations. This one happens to be for a KCRW Summer Nights event headlined by East L.A. soul revivalists the Altons, but the blend of demographics, cultures and backgrounds on display gives it an authentically local feel that could be mistaken for an informal block party in any decade — except perhaps for the screen printer creating band merch and a design of Snoopy humping an ice cube with an expletive about Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
That same blend of history and cultures that has brought Los Angeles together across generations is also what’s given the Altons their signature sound and made them one of the city’s latest breakout stars. When they go on tour and bring their unique blend of soulful “oldies,” modern rock and bilingual R&B around the world, they aren’t just sharing their music but also their culture.
“On any given weekend, you can have some party down the street playing cumbia or music that your parents grew up on, their next door neighbor might have a punk rock show, and another guy down the street that’s just listening to oldies and Art Laboe,” vocalist and guitarist Bryan Ponce explains about the roots of the Altons’ diverse sound stemming from their collective Los Angeles childhoods. “We all grew up on all of this music that we’d hear in our neighborhoods, so all of our influences just came together and came out in our music.”
The Altons members Adriana Flores, Caitlin Moss, Bryan Ponce and Joseph Quinones perform at LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes on June 28.
(Brian Feinzimer / For The Times)
Advertisement
For a band that started with modest expectations nearly a decade ago, the Altons now find themselves heading out on international tours and playing to thousands of people at a time — as they will Saturday when they rock the Oldies 2 Souldies show with Los Lonely Boys at the Greek Theatre. And while their rise has been more of a gradual incline than anything particularly stratospheric, they’ve carved their own path without compromise. They’re willing to fuse genres, languages, tempos and sounds as they see fit and based on what they feel will work best for the songs and messages they’re wanting to deliver instead of catering to what may be popular in the moment, a choice that’s made them the face of the “oldies revival” now that millennials and Gen Z are falling back in love with tunes from their grandparents’ day.
“It’s incredible to play a show where a grandmother’s there with her daughter and grandkids, and just have multiple generations of people come together,” vocalist Adriana Flores says. “There’s not a lot of shows that I would even take my dad to, so I think it makes the music even more special and I’d like to be one of the bands shedding the light on what’s been happening in L.A. We’ve been doing it for years and just sharing the types of music we like — which is the retro sound of soul mixed with other elements. We like to show people what’s been happening in L.A. that’s not just Hollywood.”
The Altons’ Adriana Flores and Bryan Ponce perform at LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes in late June.
(Brian Feinzimer / For The Times)
Advertisement
That desire to show the “real” L.A. that they know and love is a driving force for the Altons, particularly as they go further and further from home. All of them — Flores and Ponce along with Joseph Quinones on guitar/backup vocals, Chris Manjarrez on bass, Christian “Elyzr” Meraz on keyboards and drummer Caitlin Moss — are proud to represent their East L.A. roots for those who only see the California that gets presented on television. The group eagerly reminisces about a fan they met at a show in France who had never set foot in California but loved the culture so much that he dressed the part of a classic cholo. “He looked like he could have been related to me or went to school with me,” Ponce says with a laugh. “He was bald, he had the Locs on, the Pendleton on and he was screaming our neighborhoods.” They recall the times they’ve felt like cultural ambassadors bringing their hometown heritage to cities like Boston.
But the self-placed weight of representing and sharing their lifelong culture isn’t always all fun and games. Just a matter of weeks before they were walking through the halls of LA Plaza’s museum to see their brand-new exhibition on the importance of East L.A. musicians, they were on tour in the U.K. feeling helpless as they watched the ICE raids and protests flood the city.
Bryan Ponce and Adriana Flores onstage at LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes.
(Brian Feinzimer / For The Times)
“You couldn’t really grasp what was going on,” Ponce says. “I would watch videos and see stuff online, but I didn’t really see it until we came home for a couple of days before we left again. [Manjarrez] and I live close to each other, and we started seeing videos of all these places and stores and people in our community. It was just devastating to have to leave again and see that they’re getting even closer to your house and seeing it happening on your street. You’re trying to go and play music to entertain people, but you’re also trying to find a balance. It’s like ‘Are we going to speak on what’s going on?’ Because some people thought that L.A. was burning down, and that’s not really the case.”
Advertisement
“Watching the community go through something so heartbreaking while being away was really difficult,” Flores adds. “It was really tough seeing our community being targeted, but I’d like to believe that music and being creative and spreading joy is a form of resistance. I hope that people can come to our shows and escape. Even though this is way bigger than us, we have to use our platform to be vocal about what’s going on. It’s scary times, but another scary time was the ‘60s when the whole civil rights movement was happening, and some of the best music came out of that because people were finding that outlet and creating.”
Gevi Movie Synopsis: When a few people die in a hilly area because of a landslide and the lack of proper hospital facilities, an entire community rises against the police and politicians. However, this bravery only deepens their struggles.Gevi Movie Review: Debut director Tamil Dhayalan emerges as a strong voice to watch. Gevi is occasionally slow-paced, but the honest storytelling holds so much impact that everything else doesn’t matter. As we are introduced to the people living in Gevi, a small village near Kodaikanal, the screen is dark–lit only by torch lights and yellow-lit sodium vapor lamps. It’s one of their unfortunate days, a landslide has hit, and the villagers carry the injured up and down the hills in a makeshift cradle, trying to quickly reach the hospital. But a few minutes in, it becomes clear that this unfortunate day is nothing new to them. Every time someone falls sick, the same routine repeats, and still, nothing changes in their lives.However, the film reminds us that this struggle isn’t their whole life. It also talks about different people and the community’s lifestyle. Gevi is also conscious of its social commentary. So, when it shows the power hierarchies at play, it doesn’t hesitate to depict the multiple dimensions within it. For instance, even as the Gevi people fight to survive, the film portrays how their rebellion, in itself, is not a threat and is simply overlooked by those in power. In addition, it shows how the middlemen within the system suffer too. At the center of this story is the lovely couple Mandharai and Malaiyan (a brilliant Sheela Rajkumar and Aadhavan), who are awaiting their child’s birth. So nestled within a raw, moving story are delicate, beautiful bonds and moments you’re made to care for. For instance, when two lives are in danger, caught on different sides of the hills, the director decides to cut to a flashback. Caught in the rain, a pregnant wife tells her husband that the raindrops feel like their child’s little kisses, and the husband laughingly replies that he doesn’t have so much creativity and to him, it feels like his child is urinating. The scene is brief, cute, yet powerful. Because when the film instantly pulls you back to the present day, you realise: their fight that night is not just to survive, but to protect such tiny dreams and little joys of hope. Moments like these pull the viewer into Gevi’s world and make them part of it. The only time where the film lets its audience down is how each person in the village is written with soul, but in sharp contrast, be it the nonchalant politicians or egoistic cops, every other character is one-dimensional and just evil. That said, even through songs and lyrics like “Eesan sonaalum ration kedaikuma”, the film delivers a sharp critique of systemic oppression. Something that makes Gevi even more compelling is the way the film is shot. Right at the beginning of the film, when the Gevi people are mourning over the death of their loved ones due to the landslide, the camera moves away as far as it can, capturing an aerial view of “just the Gevi people” wrapped in a small place, all alone in the vast hills, which remains a silent observer of their struggles. Such images speak volumes about how unseen and unheard they are within this system. Props to cinematographer Jagan Jaya Surya—every frame enhances the moment, complementing the rawness of the story being told. Written By:Harshini SV
Theater and television actor Tom Troupe has died at 97.
Troupe died Sunday morning of natural causes in his home in Beverly Hills, according to his publicist, Harlan Boll.
Known for his extensive career in theater and TV, Troupe made his Broadway debut in 1957 playing Peter van Daan in “The Diary of Anne Frank.” A year later, he moved to Los Angeles and appeared in more than 75 TV series over the course of his career, including “Mission: Impossible,” “Star Trek,” “Planet of the Apes,” “CHiPs,” “Quincy M.E.” and “Who’s the Boss.”
However, he continued to act in stage productions, appearing in “The Lion in Winter,” “Fathers Day” and “The Gin Game,” all three of which also co-starred his wife, actor Carole Cook. He also starred in a single-character play he co-wrote called “The Diary of a Madman.”
Troupe also had roles in several films, including 1991’s “My Own Private Idaho,” starring Keanu Reeves and River Phoenix; 1970’s “Kelly’s Heroes,” which starred Clint Eastwood and Don Rickles; and 1959’s “The Big Fisherman.”
Advertisement
He and Cook were awarded the L.A. Ovation Award for Career Achievement in 2002 because of their extensive stage work over the years in Los Angeles.
Born in Kansas City, Mo., on July 15, 1928, Troupe got his start acting in local theater productions before he moved to New York City in 1948.
He won a scholarship to train with stage actor and theater instructor Uta Hagen at the Herbert Berghof Studio in Manhattan before he went to fight in the Korean War, where he was awarded a Bronze Star. After the war, he returned to New York to act on the stage.
Troupe married Cook in 1964. The actor, who was known for her roles in “Sixteen Candles” and Lucille Ball’s “The Lucy Show,” died in 2023 at the age of 98.
Troupe is survived by his son, Christopher, daughter-in-law Becky Coulter, granddaughter Ashley Troupe and several nieces and nephews.
