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Lupita Nyong’o’s karaoke song of choice is You Oughta Know by Alanis Morissette. She’s feeling under the weather when we meet in London and it turns out it’s the result of belting out this mid-90s breakup song on a trip to South Korea.
She doesn’t want to shake hands and spread her lurgy, so instead she crosses her arms over her chest in greeting, imitating Nakia, her character in the new Marvel superhero film Black Panther.
Lupita’s trip to the karaoke bars of Asia was part of the global press tour to promote the movie, which broke box office records before it was even released.
While it may feel like there are more superheroes than we can keep track of these days, this one is different — a black king, played by Chadwick Boseman, ruling over the fictional African nation of Wakanda and surrounded by female warriors.
“The very fact that this script features more than one woman and more than one female and speak isiXhosa ... it was really celebrating an African tongue which you never get to see.
“People read subtitles for every other thing, but you never see the African language given this sort of platform.
“And in the costuming there is that expression of beautiful African specificity through all those different cultures that are represented in our costumes. That was very awesome.”
That representation also matters deeply to Michael B Jordan, the Creed star who plays Black Panther’s rival Erik Killmonger.
“The inspiration to little kids, little boys and girls that are going to be watching this, I think is extremely important to me,” he says.
“It’s a lot. And we don’t know what this film is exactly going to do. People haven’t really seen it yet.
“So I think just the potential is extremely powerful.
“All kids going to see this film and feeling some sense of pride of who they are and where they come from and their heritage and culture, I think that is extremely important.
“Identity is extremely important. I feel like I can see every kid going to see this thing and feeling empowered in some type of way.
“I hope this film starts so many conversations about understanding differences, coming from different places, understanding one another.”
Black Panther is at cinemas now EastSide Gallery, EastSide Visitor Centre, Belfast Until March 25
As part of the Northern Ireland Science Festival, the EastSide Gallery is offering an exhibition of art and science celebrating astronomy, the planets and the stars.
This show brings together art that captures the power of celestial bodies alongside scientific artefacts, drawings and photographs by leading astronomers, including Professor Alan Fitzsimmons and Dr Paul Abel, paintings by Professor Harry McMahon, Patrick Conyngham and Colin McGookin, solar eclipse photographs by Dr Ann McVeigh and Ken Bartley, mixed media work by Emma Whitehead, and prints by Dr Josephine McCormick.
Some of the photographs are quite stunning in their simplicity, such as Fitzsimmons’ Moonset La Palma or Nashville Eclipse, 2017.
These are the kind of images that make you ask, ‘Why don’t I look more at the beauty of the heavens instead of walking around with my head down?’.
This show should be a must for everyone because I doubt any of us has ever looked to the heavens and not been overawed by the majesty and beauty of what we behold.
❝
Until March 10
Golden Thread Gallery, Belfast
The Golden Thread continually produces interesting and exciting exhibitions, and this is no exception.
Artist David Godbold presents his show and, to quote the gallery: “The main 17-metre wall of GT’s gallery one has been transformed into a vast hand-painted panorama, which theoretically would meet itself if joined endto-end; a huge territory seen all at once.
“Overlaying this, and clearly influenced by the panels and texts of comics, Godbold has installed a substantial swarm of 121 framed drawings, selected from a substantial production over 20 years, most of which have not been previously exhibited in Northern or Southern Ireland.”
Elizabeth Baird