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    Movies to Watch Whether You Love or Hate Valentine’s Day

    ‘Love & Basketball’ (2000) Gina Prince-Bythewood’s brilliant directorial debut cares equally about the two nouns referenced in its title, which is one of the reasons it’s so special. A sprawling movie, it charts the years-long game of emotional one-on-one between Monica (Sanaa Lathan) and Quincy (Omar Epps), childhood neighbors who both have dreams of hoops […] More

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    Quiz: Do You Respect ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’?

    Photo credits: HBO (“Curb Your Enthusiasm”); NBC (“Seinfeld”); Craig Barritt/Getty Images (Elmo); Albert Ceolan /De Agostini Picture Library, via Getty Images (St Benedict amongst Angels, detail from The Glory in Heaven, 1746, by Johann Jakob Zeiller); Peter Dazeley/Getty Images (snakes); James Warwick/Getty Images (zebra); Simon Maina/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images (Moamer Kadhafi); Paramount (“Star Trek: The Next Generation”); Shawn Thew/EPA, via Shutterstock (Bernie Sanders); Universal Pictures (“Back to the Future”); Kenny Holston/The New York Times (Sanders); Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images (Sanders)Produced by Sean Catangui, Alicia DeSantis, Gabriel Gianordoli and Josephine Sedgwick More

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    12 African Artists Leading a Culture Renaissance Around the World

    In one of his famed self-portraits, Omar Victor Diop, a Senegalese photographer and artist, wears a three-piece suit and an extravagant paisley bow tie, preparing to blow a yellow, plastic whistle. The elaborately staged photograph evokes the memory of Frederick Douglass, the one-time fugitive slave who in the 19th century rose to become a leading […] More

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    ‘The Exorcist’ at 50: How One Horror Movie Shocked the World

    Essays by Jason Zinoman, Manohla Dargis and Erik Piepenburg Could a movie about a girl possessed by the devil really have caused audience members to faint and lose their lunch at theaters? The vehement reaction to “The Exorcist” when it premiered in late 1973 helped create a special place for it in pop culture, as […] More

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    Taylor Swift’s Viral Era: a Timeline

    Fan demand broke Ticketmaster, and that was just the prologue. These are the moments that turned the Eras Tour into a phenomenon: March 17 Glendale, Ariz. Taylor returns to the stage. After five years away, she dives right in. Taylor Swift, wearing a long green gown, takes a swan dive pose and jumps into a […] More

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    Quiz: How Well Do You Know ‘Succession’

    F-Off

    Photo credits: HBO (‘Succession’); Shannon Fagan/Getty Images; Ezra Bailey/Getty Images; vm/Getty Images; skynesher/Getty Images; Martin Barraud/Getty Images; Jennifer Smith/Getty Images (candle); E! (Kendall Jenner); Christof Stache/AFP, via Getty Images (Ken doll); Daniela White Images/Getty Images (mashed potatoes); Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times (turducken); Dorling Kindersley, William Reavell/Getty Images (curdled cream); Stockbyte/Getty Images (raisin); Fabrice Coffrini/AFP, via Getty Images; Simon Dawson/Bloomberg, via Getty Images; and Zheng Huansong/Xinhua, via Getty Images (Davos)
    A quiz by Tala Safie. Produced by Josephine Sedgwick, Sean Catangui and Amanda Webster. More

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    Young Rappers in Seville, Spain, Turn “Tears Into Rhymes”

    La Barzola, a neighborhood in Seville, Spain, is home to a diverse population of working-class families, many of them immigrants, with the pulse of community and creative resistance running through their veins. The heart of the barrio is the Plaza Manuel Garrido, a public park and social nexus. And within this space is a basketball court that a group of aspiring rappers call their own.

    Hip-hop was born 50 years ago from the rubble of urban distress in the Bronx, an act of resistance and self-expression by society’s most vulnerable. Today, the music is everywhere: a multi-billion-dollar ecosystem. But it also remains a deeply personal form of expression, including for the young men in this community.

    “Whatever pain, anger or frustrations we harbor from our everyday experiences, music allows us to excavate those things and make something useful out of it,” Zakaria Mourachid, 21, who makes music under the name Zaca 3K, said. “We take our anger out on the music. We turn our tears into rhymes, because it makes us feel free in a world that creates barriers around us everyday.”

    Just like the originators of hip-hop, the rappers of this collective ground their material in their personal narratives.

    “Overcoming immigration, overcoming having to leave one’s country of origin, overcoming being separated from our families and overcoming the loss of those we meet who may or may not continue the journey with us.” More