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      ‘I wasn’t sure it was even possible’: the race to finish 80,000 levels of Super Mario Maker

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · 13:31

    A small team of skilled players set themselves a near-impossible task: to complete every level of Super Mario Maker before Nintendo shut its servers. Did they manage it?

    On 14 March, Team 0% was close to finishing its seven-year mission to complete every single uncleared level in the 2015 Nintendo game Super Mario Maker – all 80,000 of them. Two hellish maps stood in their way: Trimming the Herbs and The Last Dance. And time was ticking. Nintendo had announced it was shutting down the game’s servers on 8 April, and if the levels weren’t completed by then, they would remain forever unfinished. Team 0% would fail at the last stretch of their marathon.

    When Nintendo released Super Mario Maker for its Wii U console , it was packed with platforming levels made by its design team. But the game’s lasting appeal came from the tools it gave players to make their own levels that they could share online. The only barrier to uploading was that its creator must have completed the level at least once, proving that it was possible.

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      How can we save British nightlife from collapse? Look to Germany – and its football | Gilles Peterson

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · 13:22 · 1 minute

    Small venues are the heart of our musical culture. Here’s my two-pronged plan to keep that heart beating

    Grassroots venues are the foundation upon which the mighty British music industry has been built, fuelling the phenomenal level of talent this small island has produced. Yet while successive governments have shouted about how they are a shining demonstration of the country’s creativity, the very same people have cut funding and opened the cultural sector to the most brutal market logic. Alongside government neglect, small venues across the country also face rising trade costs, pressure on disposable incomes, greedy property developers, post-pandemic changes in attitudes to communal experiences and the continuing shift towards an increasingly screen-based lifestyle.

    I cut my teeth DJing and dancing in small venues up and down the country, from my earliest experiences at Christie’s, in Sutton – when I’d head home after Carl Cox finished up as I had to be at school the next day – to a 10-year weekly Monday residency at Bar Rumba in Soho and many formative nights at the Hare & Hounds in Birmingham. There are countless more – far too many to list them all. If it weren’t for these backrooms, I would not be where I am today as a DJ. Nor would I have encountered (and still do!) those voices that push the culture forward and bring energy and positive momentum to our world.

    Gilles Peterson is a DJ, broadcaster and founder of Brownswood Recordings

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      Harvard will remove binding made of human skin from 1800s book

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · 13:16

    University says first owner of book by French novelist took the skin from a deceased female patient without consent

    Harvard University has said it will be removing the binding made of human skin from a 19th-century book held in its library because of the “ethically fraught nature” of how the unusual binding took place.

    The book, called Des Destinées de l’Ame (or Destinies of the Soul), has been held at the university’s Houghton Library since the 1930s but drew international attention in 2014 when tests confirmed that it was bound in human skin .

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      Five of the best books about social media

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · 12:40

    From online courtroom to information manipulation, social media has radically changed communication. Here are five books to help navigate it

    From Covid conspiracy theories to recent speculations about Catherine, Princess of Wales, social media is at the heart of how we share information, and misinformation, with one another in the 21st century. For those who want to have a better understanding of social media and how it affects us, here are a selection of titles that explore how we consume, share, and manipulate information on social media platforms.

    ***

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      Bill Nighy: ‘I have danced naked in my front room, but you need shoes to really spin’

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · 12:06 · 1 minute

    The star of The First Omen takes your questions on working as a chimney sweep, finessing his perfect sandwich – and hoping to die in a hail of bullets

    There’s an argument that you’re the person James Bond matures into: women still want to sleep with you and men want to be you. What’s your secret? MarcoPoloMint
    I have no idea. I don’t get out much and I don’t identify with whomever they’re talking about. I did used to quip that I could be James Bond’s grandfather and I’ve always wanted to say: “The name’s Nighy. Bill Nighy.” I’m very happy to hear, but it’s a bit of a stretch for me to grasp.

    When you were younger, you travelled to Paris to write a book, but never completed it. Will you ever dust down your great unfinished novel to realise your literary ambitions? VerulamiumParkRanger
    I had a very romantic idea – I was a walking cliche in my 20s – of running away to Paris to write the great English short story. The pathetic thing is that I went and stood in the Trocadéro, outside the Shakespeare and Company bookstore and under the Arc de Triomphe, hoping to catch some vibes. I sat down for an hour in front of a blank page and drew a margin, like at school, for the teacher’s remarks, but the doorbell went or the phone rang and that was the end of my literary career.

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      Nico: The Marble Index/Desertshore review – an unforgettable trip to a very dark place

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · 12:00 · 1 minute

    (Domino)
    These two reissued solo albums from the German singer have a fearsome reputation – but they offer an experience like no other

    To say Nico is an artist more talked about than listened to is putting it mildly. In recent years, her life has been the subject of two plays, two autobiographies, a biopic and at least four songs, Low’s Those Girls (Song for Nico) and Beach House’s Last Ride among them. But Spotify’s list of her 10 most popular tracks contains two of her three contributions to the first Velvet Underground album – These Days and The Fairest of the Seasons – the two Jackson Browne covers from her debut solo album that were featured in Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums, and … five Velvet Underground songs that don’t actually feature Nico: she does appear on the No 1, Sunday Morning, but only as a spectral presence, her few backing vocals buried deep in the mix. It’s hard to think of another artist so tangentially attached to their most-streamed song – Milli Vanilli, perhaps.

    Perhaps this is rooted in the fact that Nico’s slender solo oeuvre is preceded by its reputation, or rather reputations plural. In the popular imagination, her solo work falls into three categories: unrepresentative (jaunty debut single I’m Not Sayin’ and Chelsea Girls, which the singer hated so much, she burst into tears the first time she played it); cobbled together to fund her heroin habit (1981’s Drama of Exile, 1985’s Camera Obscura); and famously unlistenable, including the two albums reissued here. Indeed, the fearsome reputation of 1968’s The Marble Index was burgeoning before it was even completed. Supposedly it lasts only half an hour because that’s as much as its putative producer, Frazer Mohawk, could stand to listen to before being overwhelmed by despair.

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      British Museum appoints new director after alleged thefts scandal

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · 11:56

    Nicholas Cullinan, head of National Portrait Gallery, replaces Hartwig Fischer who resigned over disappearance of 1,500 items

    The British Museum has appointed the National Portrait Gallery head Nicholas Cullinan as its new director, after it emerged last year that hundreds of objects had been allegedly stolen from the museum’s collection .

    He replaces the interim director Sir Mark Jones, the former head of the Victoria and Albert Museum, who stood in for former director Hartwig Fischer. Fischer resigned last year over the scandal.

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      The Odyssey: It’s a Really Really Really Long Journey review – Behold, Telemachus the mummy’s boy!

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · 11:10

    Unicorn theatre, London
    Even a cyclops can get lonely, even a parent can make a mistake … this electric rendering of the classic is for all the family as Odysseus’s son takes centre stage

    ‘Wallet, phone, keys, sword,” Telemachus recites to himself as he checks his pockets. Backpack on, teddy tucked in and he’s ready to go, setting off on a grand quest to find his dad. What he doesn’t reckon on is finding himself along the way.

    At its highest points – of which there are many – Nina Segal’s new production of The Odyssey is electric. Made for families, Jennifer Tang’s direction delights in Naomi Hammerton’s fast-paced songs, whirling dances and moments of highly absurd dramatic images. It’s when the music slows and the pace falters that the tension drops away. But this cast approach everything with full hearts and bright smiles, so that every lag is soon followed by a new burst of energy and adventure.

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      Carmen review – stripped-back ballet focuses on the femicide

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · 11:09 · 2 minutes

    Sadler’s Wells, London
    Given its UK premiere by English National Ballet, Johan Inger’s new version of the Bizet story cuts out cliche and embraces the bleakness – albeit at the expense of some passion

    Who is Carmen? A free-spirited lover, a woman bent on destruction, or a pragmatist using the only currency she has to get what she wants? In Johan Inger’s ballet, given its UK premiere by English National Ballet, it’s hard to say. She flirts (and more) with every man she passes, but merely for sport it seems. And it turns out this is not really Carmen’s ballet – she doesn’t even get a solo – and the story belongs to Don José (Rentaro Nakaaki), a man so tortured by the fantasy of a woman who will never love him that it leads him to murder her.

    The bleakness only comes later though. It all starts out much warmer, with Bizet’s perky overture and the lively impulse and attack of the choreography. You feel a rush of energy as the women arrive, storming the stage with ruffled dresses and self-possession. Swedish choreographer Inger gives us limbs angled like arrows; deep, squat plies in second position followed by bodies zipped up on the vertical. There’s levity too and lots of floorwork, all handled easily by ENB’s agile dancers – not en pointe, but on point.

    Inger likes a choreographic device, whether that’s the chorus-like figure of Francesca Velicu who stands outside the action, reflecting its hope and woe, or the ominous gang of black-clad and masked figures who sometimes manipulate the players. Among the various lovers Carmen (Minju Kang) takes, Erik Woolhouse’s Torero, soloing in front of a bank of mirrors in a sequinned bolero, might be her true match in the narcissist stakes. Woolhouse is good, hamming it up and throwing his body into the deep curves of the choreography.

    The piece uses Rodion Shchedrin’s 1960s reboot of the Bizet score, with moody additions by Spanish composer Marc Alvarez. The stripped-back designs shift into darkness in tandem with the story, the Spanish cliches are cut out, and so is the passion. Inger’s is an interesting if emotionally hollow interpretation, focusing on Don José’s obsession and ruin. Inger’s intention was to explore violence against women, specifically men who kill their ex-partners, and there’s something in that. But perhaps we owe it to the woman in question to make her a three-dimensional character.

    • At Sadler’s Wells, London , until 6 April

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