Category: Entertainment

In 2013 French electronic duo Daft Punk released their Grammy Award-winning album Random Access Memoriestheir first studio album after nearly a decade. Random Access Memories leans heavily into disco and funk music, and the third track on the album, Giorgio by Moroderis a nine-minute-long tribute to Italian music legend Giorgio Moroder, often referred to as the “Father of Disco”.

A significant portion of the track consists of a monologue delivered by Moroder, where he discusses his life and approach to producing music, edited from a long interview he conducted with Daft Punk. Just before his voice cuts out and is replaced with Daft Punk’s synths, keys and guitars, he describes the creative process behind one of the most influential records ever released: Donna Summer’s 1977 disco concept album, I Remember Yesterdayproduced by Moroder and English musician Pete Bellotte.

“I wanted to do an album with the sounds of the ’50s, the sounds of the ’60s, of the ’70s, and then have a sound of the future,” Moroder recounts in his monologue. The story he’s telling is the story of how I Remember Yesterday came together. Each track combined disco elements with popular musical elements of each decade, before culminating in I Feel Lovethe final song on the album.

I Feel Love was the “sound of the future” Moroder was referring to. He goes on in his monologue to explain how his pioneering use of an early-era Moog synthesiser helped the song find its futuristic sound. I Feel Love went on to top the charts around the world, including here in Australia. It inspired David Bowie and Blondie, and is generally accepted as the song that created modern electronic dance music. Once you realize the impact this track, and Moroder more generally, had on the development of electronic music, you can understand why Daft Punk dedicated a full nine minutes to him on Random Access Memories.

You can also understand why Beyonce, herself one of the most influential artists of her generation, decided to pay her own tribute to Moroder, Donna Summer and I Feel Love on her latest album, renaissance. The whole album is a dazzling, thoughtful and cohesive love-letter to house music, disco and techno – genres pioneered by black and queer artists in the second half of the 20th century. By collaborating with artists like the Chicago-born DJ Honey Dijon and sampling an eclectic mix of music including tracks by Right Said Fred, James Brown, Robin S., and Kelis, Beyonce is taking listeners on a history tour of some of the most important and influential dance music ever released.

But it’s her interpolation of 1977’s I Feel Love that masterfully ties the whole project together. Summer Renaissance is the closing track on Renaissance, just like that I Feel Love was on Yo Remember Yesterday. Beyonce’s track starts with a driving bassline and synth chords that immediately evoke Moroder’s iconic production on the original song, and when we hit the chorus we get to hear one of the world’s greatest pop singers replicate Donna Summer’s masterful croon of “It’s so good, it’s so good, it’s so good”.

Thirteen Lives ★★★★
(PG) 147 minutes

The title, although clunky, refers to the 12 Thai boys and their football coach who were rescued from the caves in northern Thailand in July 2018. A more appropriate title might be 10,000livesas that’s how many people helped with the rescue effort.

Inevitably, a lot of people are left out of Ron Howard’s gripping, generally accurate re-creation of the story. The screenplay is by English writer William Nicholson, whose credits include Gladiator, unbroken and Everest. The casting gives us Colin Farrell as John Volanthen and Viggo Mortensen as Rick Stanton, the two British cave rescue divers who found the children four kilometers inside the cave. They had by then been trapped for 10 days, without food.

About halfway through the 147-minute film, Joel Edgerton joins the other divers as Australian diver/anaesthetist Dr “Harry” Harris after Volanthen realizes they will have to sedate the boys to get them out. Craig Challen, diving partner of Harris, played a significant part in the rescue, but he’s nowhere to be seen.

Three other British divers have significant roles: Kevin Spink as Josh Bratchley, Tom Bateman as Chris Jewell and Paul Gleeson as Jason Mallinson. Nicholson leaves out the rest of the Australian contingent, not to mention the Chinese, Czech, Finnish, Danish, Belgian, French, Canadian, Indian, Israeli, Japanese, Dutch, Russian and Ukrainian divers who went into the cave to help. There were more than 100 divers in those caves, most of them Thai.

Howard has said he tried hard not to make a white-men-to-the-rescue film, and to some extent he succeeds. Thai Navy SEALs have a major presence. The Thai actors speak Thai with subtitles rather than casting actors who can speak English.

The politics of national pride play a major part in the story. Howard makes sure we see the Thais working in every facet of the rescue, including a heroic, largely civilian effort to stop the flow of water into the cave from above the boys. The two men who died were Thai rescue divers. Howard recreates the death throes of Saman Kunan, the retired SEAL who came back to help, in agonizing detail.

Much of the film was shot in Australia during the pandemic. Howard could not go to Thailand for scenes shot there. Apparently he directed by Zoom, which must be some kind of first. His work by him, as ever, is fabulously efficient — keeping tight rein on the sentiment, but not so tight that we miss it — and building tension to an agonizing, almost paralyzing degree. Even when we know the outcome, Howard succeeds in squeezing every drop of dramatic tension out of the narrative.

Princess Diana’s former bodyguard said that the late royal’s legacy is more “clearly visible” in Prince Harry as he has grown older, in a new book to be published ahead of the 25th anniversary of her death.

Ken Wharfe was a personal protection officer to Princess Diana from 1987 to 1993 and has written extensively about his time in royal service, including the upcoming book Diana: Remembering The Princess co-authored with journalist Ros Coward.

Wharfe worked closely with Prince William and Prince Harry at Kensington Palace, heading their security for a year before being assigned solely to Diana.

In an extract from his new book, run by the Mail on SundayWharfe recounted how Diana took pity on him for having been assigned to her two sons, calling them a “bloody nuisance.”

“I was shown into a drawing room where Diana was sitting on the sofa,” he wrote of his introduction at Kensington Palace. “William was attempting to play a piano and Harry was being an entertaining pest, standing on a table, picking apart some lilies in a vase. Immediately, Diana said to me: ‘I don’t envy you, Ken, looking after my kids —they can be a bloody nuisance.'”

Wharfe has written of this exchange as an example of the informality and warmth displayed by the late princess when interacting with members of her staff.

“That candid, informal exchange set the scene for the rest of our working relationship,” he wrote. “There wasn’t this barrier between Royalty and me, the policeman, the servant or whatever. It was more as though a sister or friend was speaking to me, and that was extraordinary.”

After his five years working for Diana, Wharfe resigned during the tumultuous falling out of her official separation from Prince Charles—a period in which the bodyguard described her behavior as “erratic.”

“It was around then I decided it was probably the right time to leave,” he wrote. “I simply felt that I couldn’t keep her safe any longer as her behavior was so erratic. I didn’t know at that point that, just a few weeks later, she would decide to live without any security cover. And that would ultimately lead to her death.”

Diana died four years later in a high-speed car crash while being driven with her partner, Dodi Fayed, through a tunnel in Paris. She had been dispensed with formal royal protection officers, though a private security guard hired by the Fayed family was in the car on the evening in question.

This year marks the 25th anniversary of Diana’s death. Last year, William and Harry came together to unveil a statue of her at her former home, Kensington Palace, on what would have been her 60th birthday. The princes’ relationship has been reportedly strained since Harry stepped down as a working member of the royal family and moved to the United States with his wife, Meghan Markle, and their son, Archie.

On how Diana would view Harry’s new role, Wharfe writes: “There is no doubt in my mind that she would completely understand the position Harry finds himself in and would probably have been jetting across the Atlantic on a regular basis to offer help.”

“William and Harry are very much their mother’s boys in so many ways, even though there are differences between them,” he continued. “Although William has perhaps reverted to a world away from the limelight when it comes to his children from him, he does try to engage and to bring a more modernized approach.

“But with Harry, we can see Diana’s legacy more clearly – and when he returns into the Royal fold, which I think he will do, I believe that will be even clearer.”

Since moving to the US, Harry has spoken openly about his mother and how he feels she would have supported the difficult life choices he has made over the past three years.

speaking to Today show host Hoda Kotb in April, the prince said he feels the spirit of his mother constantly.

“For me, it’s constant and it has been over the last two years,” he said. “More so than ever before. It’s almost as if she’s done her bit with my brother and now she’s very much helping me. She’s got him set up now she’s helping me set up. That’s what it feels like.”

the Today show appearance followed an interview he gave to People magazine in which he described his hope that he makes Diana proud.

“I certainly hope and believe everything I do makes her proud,” he said. “In the 12 short years I was lucky enough to have with her, I saw and felt the energy and lift she got from helping others, no matter their background, ailment or status. Her life and theirs was better for it—however short theirs or hers was.”

He added: “I honor my mother in everything I do. I am my mother’s son.”

Newsweek reached out to Ken Wharfe’s representatives for comment.

Diana: Remembering The Princessby Ken Wharfe and Ros Coward will be released in the UK on August 4.