Cultural News Today

Some of the world’s finest artists turned their hand to sports posters in the 20th century. Some of the best are up for auction next week, along with some charming old adverts for holiday destinations from Bermuda to Newquay At Swann Auction Galleries, New York, 7 August Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2Kj1Skt

Malaysia’s new king may be 60 years old, but he’s keeping up with the times.Sultan Abdullah Sultan Ahmad Shah, who was officially crowned king of Malaysia’s on Tuesday, has got K-pop fans all excited with a surprising revelation that he not only knows who BTS are, but would also choose them over fellow K-pop group Blackpink.In a six-minute interview with Malaysian TV news channel Astro Awani broadcast on Tuesday, the king was asked to play a game where he had to choose one of two options… from South China Morning Post https://ift.tt/2yuPfxe

He fled Pinochet’s Chile and now makes art that tackles the horrors of our age, from torture to genocide. As he hits Edinburgh with sandwich boards, he explains why he’s never really happy with the results Two light-box tables, like the ones a photographer would use to look at slides and negatives, are set in a corner of Alfredo Jaar’s airy studio in Manhattan. One is suspended from the ceiling, the other standing on the floor directly below it. Over the course of a minute, the suspended table is lowered to meet its twin. A thin black shadow is cast on to the studio’s walls at the moment of closure. As the table rises, the artist is brightly lit again, just as visitors will be when the piece, Lament of the Images, goes on show in Japan ( Tate has an earlier version ). There are no slides on the table, something that often confuses spectators, even those too young to have seen a slide. And that’s the point, says Jaar. The piece illuminates the onlookers in “a failed attempt to try and

Eric Lach writes on Senator Cory Booker’s impressive performance during the Democratic primary debate in Detroit, where he held his own alongside Joe Biden and Kamal Harris. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2KcTinu

Benjamin Wallace-Wells writes on how, in the Democratic primary debate, in Detroit, Joe Biden was made to answer for the policies of the Democratic Party’s past. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/332m6aR

And no, it's not JUST the Monster Mash. from Culture - ELLE https://ift.tt/2wyjr9w

Claire Friedman writes a humorous list of things to do when you mistakenly choose a song with a lengthy musical interlude during karaoke with your co-workers. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2GDPomq

A 250-tonne steel arc twice as high as the statue of Jesus in Rio will stand over busy E411 A Belgian motorway has been confirmed as the site of Europe’s tallest public artwork, which at 60 metres will be twice as high as the statue of Jesus in Rio de Janeiro and taller than the Statue of Liberty. Arc Majeur, an imposing 250-tonne steel arc, will stand over the busy E411 between Namur and Luxembourg, a spot chosen partly on the basis that a driver’s view will be unencumbered by any lampposts. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2MtmN7q

As well as contending with racism, queer refugees face homophobia and transphobia – even from their fellow refugees. One Dutch group is trying to carve out a safe space At the dinner table, conversations bubble around people as they tuck into a three-course meal. A plethora of different nationalities and identities have pulled up a chair and, here at Sehaq in Amsterdam , they welcome and make space for everyone. Suddenly, someone is standing on the table dancing, and as more people join in, the meal becomes an exuberant celebration. Some of them have travelled for more than two hours to attend and they don’t want to waste a single second if they have to leave early. For those who can stay, after the meal there will be performances, DJs and partying until late into the night. Most of the people here are LGBT refugees, and this event is one of the few that provides a safe space to socialise and collaborate. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2LPSQ1R

3/5 starsFrom poor beginnings in the slums of Havana, Carlos Acosta rose to become one of the most celebrated ballet dancers in the world, and the first black dancer to portray Romeo for The Royal Ballet in London.In Iciar Bollain’s film Yuli, Acosta stars as himself, directing a homecoming show in Cuba based on his rise to fame. While he rehearses key moments from his childhood with the cast of dancers, the film transports us back in time, reliving his struggles, and eventual successes.Acosta… from South China Morning Post https://ift.tt/2SUkzyR

Combining socks with sandals is now a mainstream trend. But even back when it was a fashion no-go, Germans couldn't have cared less. We look into the stereotype, as well as Germany's strong tradition of ugly sandals. from Deutsche Welle: DW.com - Culture & Lifestyle https://www.dw.com/en/germans-socks-and-sandals-an-exploration-of-the-cliché/a-49689654?maca=en-rss-en-cul-2090-rdf

He managed to survive Auschwitz by chance. The Italian Jewish chemist then went on to write invaluable autobiographical accounts of life in the Nazi concentration camps and of displaced people after World War II. from Deutsche Welle: DW.com - Culture & Lifestyle https://ift.tt/2LQco69

In the US writer’s third collection, a demon demands breast milk from a new mother, and a Joshua tree’s spirit leaps into the body of a woman I first encountered Karen Russell when I was a student, hunting for short-story writers in the library. Finding a copy of her debut collection St Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves , which was longlisted for the 2007 Guardian first book award, I took it home on a whim. With some books you begin a relationship with an author that will continue hungrily through everything they write. Russell’s writing inhabits its own universe, with metaphor and simile taking us to strange new places; we are led by the hand and find ourselves completely submerged, only later to come to, groggily, in our own world. In Russell’s second collection, Vampires in the Lemon Grove , women are silkworms and dead presidents live in the bodies of horses. In her novel Swamplandia! the Floridian swamps teem with alligator wrestlers; in her novella Sleep Donation, sleep is

From denture repair shops to raunchy laundrettes, Niall McDiarmid’s portraits of the overlooked parts of deepest south London are a wonderful throwback to a time before the developers descended • McDiarmid’s book Southwestern is published by Setanta Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2MtLBw6

From singing together to being read to in a library, an arts participation scheme is transforming lives in Denmark In a whitewashed studio in northern Denmark, 11 unemployed strangers are embarking on a hearty rendition of Yellow Submarine. Jonas Thrysøe is not one of them. At least, not yet. The 36-year-old has agoraphobia, rarely leaves the house and can’t think of anything worse than a group singalong. And yet by the second chorus he is putty in the choirmaster’s hands. “I swore I’d just stand at the back and listen,” he says. “But the mood was infectious.” Out of work and in his second year of sick leave because of anxiety and panic attacks, Thrysøe had become isolated. “I’d avoid situations where I thought I’d get anxious, until I ended up avoiding all situations. It was a vicious circle,” he says. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2Ygcgnb

For nearly 50 years, the photographer Camilo José Vergara has been documenting poor, segregated neighborhoods in large US cities. A few years ago, he started photographing his ‘familiar haunts’ at night. To him, ‘these nocturnal worlds are both beautiful and terrifying’ Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2LQSKGZ

Activists point out 21 artists in Space is the Place exhibition are white and the other Asian The organisers of an exhibition inspired by the unlikely bedfellows of the Afrofuturism movement and the tech entrepreneur Elon Musk have been criticised for not including a single black artist in its lineup. Opening in Berlin on Wednesday evening, the Künstlerhaus Bethanien’s Space is the Place exhibition – which takes its name from a song by the avant-garde free jazz group Sun Ra Arkestra – has fallen into “old curatorial habits” that favour white men, according to the activist group Soup du Jour. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2LP5u0R

Police tactics under scrutiny after remains of Steve Canico are found in Loire river The French prime minister has promised “total transparency” in investigating the death of a man following clashes between police and festival-goers in the western city of Nantes, as questions remained over the case. Investigators confirmed the identity of a 24-year-old man whose body was found in a river more than a month after riot police raided a music festival. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2MzZysr

The idea of the frontier in US history has been one of endless promise, but the reality has involved violence, even genocide. As this powerful study argues, its latest incarnation is Trump’s wall It is hard, as an American, to take much pleasure in the irony that the past appears to be catching up with the United States. We’ve been running from history for a long while now, watering the continent with blood and imagining all along the way that we were racing forward: not fleeing in fear but charging into a bolder, freer future. Now we’re caught in the knots our ancestors tied. We seem doomed to fight the same battles, replay the same massacres, weep again beneath the same old lynching tree. What else but ghosts could make children shoot each other in such extraordinary numbers each year? And somehow, despite the country’s increasingly florid pathologies – the school shootings, endless war, massive homeless encampments in some of the richest cities on the planet, the largest prison sy

From child star to superstar, the singer is still performing at 86. She talks about being consoled by John Lennon, her friendship with Karen Carpenter – and her close encounter with the King Petula Clark does not like to look back. She does not celebrate birthdays – hates nostalgia. So spending several hours in a studio, listening to her early records – as she was recently forced to do, for a compilation of songs from her seven-decade career – was “kind of torture”, she says. She affects a groan, eyes rolling beneath their spidery lashes. Clark is among the bestselling British female artists of all time, with one of the largest chart spans of any artist in history. She has been on Desert Island Discs three times: in 1951 (when she was just 18); 1982; and 1995. She made her debut as a child entertainer shortly before her tenth birthday in 1942; this October, the month before she turns 87, she will return to the West End as the bird lady in Mary Poppins. Continue reading... from Cul

The Proms favourite has worked with Greenpeace and scientists and wants to change the way we think, and listen. He explains why he is now bringing Finnish rune singing to the festival Three years ago, overnight, Pekka Kuusisto became the most talked about violinist in the UK. What everyone remembers most about his Prom debut is the Finnish folk song he played and sang as an encore: with the assurance of a standup comic, he got the Royal Albert Hall audience singing along as he led from the fiddle. “It was fun. It was the first time I’d performed at the Proms, and I’d only been in the hall once before, to hear Nigel Kennedy. In the second half, people in the audience handed him drinks, and he starting riffing in and out of Jimi Hendrix. He treated it like his living room. So maybe that helped me with the folk music thing.” Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2MrqpGY

With contestants selected by a random lottery and dazzled by gin-infused cuttlefish, Jason Atherton’s attempt to assemble a crack team of chefs is far from ‘reality’ TV Jason Atherton has the intense air of a man who rarely has to raise his voice before his wishes are accommodated. He radiates an iron calm, but you get the feeling you wouldn’t like him when he’s angry. And that he really, really wouldn’t like you. With four Michelin stars and 18 restaurants, Atherton relies on strong kitchen teams for the success of his empire. In The Chefs’ Brigade (BBC Two), he attempts to build such a team from scratch, out of cooks with only basic skills, cherrypicked from the pubs, cafes and bistros of the land. Once the brigade is assembled, he takes it on a tour of Europe, training his charges to compete against the finest restaurants on the continent. First stop: Puglia in south-east Italy . Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2SPQMaK

The youth movement that swept US churches in the 1990s also spawned many anti-dating books. Now, some writers are losing faith in ‘the Mike Pence rule’ Joshua Harris was just 22 in 1997 when he published I Kissed Dating Goodbye, a dating guidebook for young Christians that advised them to do anything but. Dating was a “training ground for divorce”, he argued in the book, which sold almost 1m copies worldwide. It also made Harris a superstar in the Christian purity movement, a pro-abstinence crusade that began in evangelical churches in the 1990s and became well-known in the purity ring-wearing hands of Jessica Simpson and the Jonas Brothers. Many authors came after Harris – John and Stasi Eldredge, Hayley DiMarco, Tim and Beverly LaHaye – all of them in the US, where religious publishing is worth $1.22bn (£1bn) a year. Now 44, Harris made headlines this week when he revealed he no longer considers himself a Christian. He has been issuing apologies for his own books over the last dec

Eric Lach on how CNN handled the first night of the Democratic debate, pitting the long-shot candidates against the front-runners Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2Orl9Wd

Naomi Fry writes on Marianne Williamson’s performance at the Democratic primary debate in Detroit, which added a level of rigor to her campaign. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2KeliqP

Benjamin Wallace-Wells writes on how the progressives Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders were the best communicators during the first night of the Democratic primary debates, in Detroit. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/31eWFkT

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Viewers have seen Jason Statham play soldier-turned-crook Deckard Shaw in three previous Fast & Furious movies. But director David Leitch wanted to take a different approach to the character for Fast & Furious: Hobbs & Shaw, the first spin-off feature from the enormously successful action film franchise. “When you have an actor like Jason in the fight scene in his sister’s apartment, you can see a guy who actually has a mastery of martial arts,” Leitch, 49, tells the Post in a recent interview… from South China Morning Post https://ift.tt/333gc9B

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3/5 stars Breaking the law and maintaining the moral high ground are the themes at the heart of The Great Detective Sherlock Holmes – The Greatest Jail Breaker, a deceptively simple animated feature that will keep children engaged while offering food for thought for the grown-ups accompanying them. The film is adapted by directors Toe Yuen Kin-to and Matthew Chow Wing-siu from two episodes of the illustrated children’s novel series of the same name by author Lai Ho, who is credited as the… from South China Morning Post https://ift.tt/312v4mG

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Sam Saulsbury makes a humorous list of possible branding slogans for companies who make athleisure clothing. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2KbE7Lb

A rapper facing jail time for a street fight in Stockholm and a high-profile call from President Trump: Just what exactly is going on? Here's what you need to know about A$AP Rocky as his trial starts in Sweden. from Deutsche Welle: DW.com - Culture & Lifestyle https://ift.tt/2LNUgtD

In the biggest upset since the Brexit vote, Greg and Amber have won Love Island. This is no longer a show about genetically blessed people finding romance – it’s about who deserves that Boohoo endorsement deal It wasn’t meant to go this way. For it was written that a pure-of-heart boxer would meet a pillow-lipped influencer who “does Instagram,” they would get to know each other, go on a journey, jump into a swimming pool fully-clad, win a £50,000 cash prize, and leave the Love Island villa to at least a year’s worth of endorsement deals, magazine photoshoots, and endless Daily Mail pap shots of them frolicking on a beach in Dubai. Related: Love Island final: fan favourites Amber and Greg win – as it happened Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2YrWyAj

Afrofuturist producer was an influential figure on LA alternative hip-hop scene and co-founded the Brainfeeder collective Hip-hop and funk producer Ras G, co-founder of the influential Brainfeeder collective, has died aged 39. No cause of death has been given but he had revealed in December that he had diabetes and pneumonia. Born Gregory Shorter Jr, Ras G was known for cosmic, Afrofuturist music that mixed genres including jazz, funk, soul, hip-hop and psychedelia. He released 24 albums and mixtapes since his debut in 2008, collaborated with artists including Thundercat and Open Mike Eagle, and frequently appeared at the Low End Theory, the Los Angeles club night that helped to reintroduce funk, jazz and electronic music to the city’s hip-hop scene. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2K5xBad

Deborah Treisman hosts the author Elizabeth Strout, who reads her short story “Motherless Child,” from the August 5 & 12, 2019, issue of The New Yorker. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2MpbWLG

Warning: This story spoils the ending of Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood . Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood is an affectionate snapshot of Los Angeles in the late 1960s, largely focusing on two fictional characters: Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio), a washed-up actor relegated to guest spots on television procedurals, and Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt), Rick’s long-time stunt double with a hazy past.But from the moment we discover Rick lives next door to the Cielo Drive residence of… from South China Morning Post https://ift.tt/312AFJB

In a 22-year-long legal battle involving German band Kraftwerk, the EU's top court has now set strict rules on sampling. Accusations of plagiarism in the music industry are rampant. But how do they affect creativity? from Deutsche Welle: DW.com - Culture & Lifestyle https://ift.tt/2ZkfHFR

For years, K-Patz have avoided the obvious. They’re back with Batman and Charlies Angels, threatening their hard-won credibility Modern Toss on child actors Watching the first trailer for Charlie’s Angels, something is immediately off key. The first thing we see is a closeup of Kristen Stewart and she is smiling. Before now, nobody was even sure Stewart could smile, so transcendently stoic is her screen persona. Stewart does other un-Stewart-ish things in the trailer: flirting with a guy, wearing a glittery pink dress, tossing her long blond hair, dancing. Reassuringly, this is all just a disguise and she’s beating the crap out of said guy moments later but, still, something has clearly changed. Stewart has spent the past decade cultivating a reputation as one of the coolest, most distinctive, least game-playing actors in the business. And now here she is in a big-budget Hollywood action-comedy. Whatever is going on with Stewart, it also seems to be going on with her former on- a

American rapper and two members of entourage accused of attacking alleged victim in Swedish capital on 30 June The trial of US rapper A$AP Rocky and two other men has begun in Stockholm in a high-profile case that has strained US-Swedish relations after celebrity entertainers rallied behind the artist and Donald Trump publicly demanded his release . Swedish prosecutors allege that the rapper, whose real name is Rakim Mayers, and two members of his entourage “deliberately, together and in agreement” attacked the alleged victim, Mustafa Jafari, in the Swedish capital on 30 June . Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2Gwl25x

He lit up the screen in the 80s – but things did not go as planned. As he takes on Chekhov, Everett speaks about stardom, midlife crises and penis padding R upert Everett is directing his first play and a few unfortunate incidents have occurred before opening night. It is David Hare’s new version of Uncle Vanya , in which Everett also stars, and all did not go as planned in its first preview. “In a fight scene I elbowed the leading actor, John Light [who plays Dr Astrov],” says Everett. “He really hurt his eye and had to go to hospital. He came back and then, leaning around the stage with his one eye, he fell off it and really hurt his leg.” The play’s opening has been pushed back a week, until Light is back on his feet, but if this production returns Chekhov’s 1898 play to the farce that Everett says it was written to be, and not a straightforwardly bleak tale of midlife ennui and angst, then the mishap has an edge of black humour, too. Continue reading... from Culture | The Gua

The PM seems to be trying to channel Winston Churchill and Barack Obama in his behind-the-scenes pictures. Surely the next step is the Vladimir Putin school of power imagery Hands in pockets as he pauses on the stairs at Admiralty House before going to see the Queen, Boris Johnson looks at once conscious of the weight of history and boyishly proud. However, while “Action this day” was the wartime slogan of Johnson’s hero, Winston Churchill, the first behind-the-scenes photographs of the new PM by Andrew Parsons, which have been splashed by several newspapers, show that an appropriate motto for Johnson is “Bullshit this day”. If he isn’t announcing a new railway, he is to be seen thoughtfully staring at three laptops or talking intently with some men and a woman. And yet, like Churchill, he must be seen to be relaxed under pressure. In one photograph, he has put his feet up for a minute and we get a good view of the worn soles of his shoes – still the scruff at heart etc. Continue re

Amol Rajan’s film exposed how employers recruit in their own image to maintain the unequal status quo. What a horrific waste of talent We live in a society that sees some of the best minds of every generation squandered because they are not expressed in the right accent or presented in the right clothes. That was the conclusion it was difficult to avoid by the end of Amol Rajan ’s documentary How to Break into the Elite (BBC Two). It looked at the likelihood of today’s youth being able to replicate his journey from state school boy in south London to BBC media editor, and showed the progress – or otherwise – of graduates from various backgrounds as they attempted to start their professional lives. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2YafPLr

‘Having a No 1 at 15 was a wild ride. I didn’t realise it was about the prohibition of teenage sex – but we got away with it’ When I was a kid I used to sing everywhere – the bathroom, the grocery store. When some musician friends of my parents had a party, my dad suggested I get up and sing. People went: “Wow. That voice. She sounds like a 30-year-old woman.” Before I knew it, I was singing on bills with people like Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3158xWu

Whether it’s from Sally Rooney or Edna O’Brien, their experimentalism has never frightened off readers Much has been written about the boom in Irish writing, buoyed by the apparently ceaseless tide of new voices: not a smattering of talent making a splash but waves and waves of writers, going beyond much repeated names such as Sally Rooney and Eimear McBride to the equally talented and ambitious Mike McCormack, Sara Baume, Colin Barrett, Anakana Schofield, Gavin Corbett and Lisa McInerney . Now there’s more. Having been an all-American affair in 2018, this year the shortlist for the Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award (the world’s richest short story prize – £30,000 for a single story!) is dominated by the Irish: Kevin Barry, winner of the award in 2012 and just longlisted for this year’s Booker ; Danielle McLaughlin from the Republic and Louise Kennedy from Northern Ireland. Joining them on the shortlist are Joe Dunthorne (Welsh), Paul Dalla Rosa, based in Melbourne, and Emma C

Rapper’s breakthrough hit smashes Billboard record set by Mariah Carey’s One Sweet Day’ more than 20 years ago Lil Nas X has broken Mariah Carey’s 23-year old record for most weeks at No 1 with his viral country-trap song Old Town Road. The breakthrough rapper smashed the record this week when the track spent its 17th week on top of the Billboard Hot 100 chart – the only song to do so since Mariah Carey and Boyz II Men’s duet One Sweet Day set the record in 1996. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/310cuvx

Ahead of release of C4 film I Am Kirsty, actor says British welfare system is crumbling The Oscar nominated actor Samantha Morton has pleaded with the government to address the impact of austerity on women, warning that they are increasingly being forced into sex work and homelessness. In an emotional interview with the Guardian, Morton said: “I am pleading with this government … to not just farm us all off as lefties, liberals or whatever, but to have a serious look at the implications of what has happened with cutbacks.” Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2K8tn0a

The gangster film, starring Robert De Niro as hitman Frank Sheeran and Al Pacino as union boss Jimmy Hoffa, will open the event Martin Scorsese’s long anticipated gangster film The Irishman is to receive its world premiere as the opening film at the New York film festival. Described by the festival as “a richly textured epic of American crime, a dense, complex story told with astonishing fluidity”, The Irishman pairs Robert De Niro, as Irish-American hitman Frank Sheeran, with Al Pacino, who plays union boss Jimmy Hoffa. It is based on I Heard You Paint Houses, Charles Brandt’s book about Sheeran which claims he was responsible for Hoffa’s murder in 1975. Joe Pesci plays mafia boss Russell Bufalino. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2LM9hvV

Two gouaches and landscape allocated to settle £900,000 owed on Cornish artist’s estate Three works by Peter Lanyon , one of the most important postwar British painters, have been acquired for the nation in lieu of inheritance tax. Arts Council England announced on Tuesday that an important abstract landscape painted in the last year of Lanyon’s life and two large gouaches had been accepted, settling just under £900,000 owed on the estate of Lanyon’s widow, Sheila. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2ZeNm3D

A war reporter faces a battle closer to home when childcare poses questions about a woman’s work-life balance “You should write about all of this,” suggests Megan Stack’s husband, Tom, in a well-meaning attempt to defuse yet another argument in the early weeks of their first son’s life. “This” meaning motherhood, domesticity, the perennial subject of a woman’s struggle to find some equilibrium between the old, professional version of herself and the new, dismantled by childbirth. Stack – a Pulitzer-nominated war reporter for the Los Angeles Times – is scathing about her husband’s ability to understand: “Tom, of course, was still at large in the world… He had become a parent and kept his career without making any degrading compromises.” Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2YoQ2KQ

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The artist Olimpia Zagnoli talks about the inspiration behind her cover for the August 5 & 12, 2019, issue of the magazine. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2K9mXOv

Elizabeth Kolbert on the “Prince of Humbugs,” who was a liar, a racist, and an entertainer who would do anything for a crowd.  from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/32WBVQn

New cartoons from the magazine. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2Ka2dGm

Letters respond to Nathan Heller’s investigation of GoFundMe campaigns, Jill Lepore’s Personal History about the loss of her friend, and Dan Chiasson’s piece on James Tate. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/32UV7hm

John Lanchester on how, in three centuries, the heresies of two bankers became the basis of our modern economy.  from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/32WBd5F

A free, twice-weekly online puzzle, with answers and clues that exhibit the wit and intelligence of the magazine. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2K9nGyX

Brooke Jarvis on the way mosquitoes slaughtered our ancestors and derailed our history. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2Ka1Njg

Henry Alford on misshapen fruits and vegetables and the farmers who love them. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/32UV6tO

“The Guarded Gate,” “Lotharingia,” “Fleishman Is in Trouble,” and “The Travelers.” from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/32WAscP

Tyler Foggatt on the late Supreme Court Justice’s belief that the Bard’s works were actually written by Edward de Vere, the seventeenth Earl of Oxford. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2MlDVM5

Through war, baseball and music, Burns’ monumental TV documentaries have told the story of the USA – a mission he says is even more urgent in the age of ‘alternative facts’ Many birthday presents are rapidly discarded or forgotten, but a gift given to a 17-year-old Michigan high-school student, on 29 July 1970, changed American television . Ken Burns received an 8mm movie camera, the first step on a path that made him such a revered figure in documentary film-making that, five decades later, his birthday this year will be celebrated with a whole day of his work on the PBS network. If 66 seems an odd birthday to be so honoured, it is because, on the more conventional landmark last year, Burns was locked away editing his latest eight-part, 16-hour series, Country Music , which airs in September. That work forms, with Baseball and Jazz , a loose trilogy about emblematically American sports and culture. Those series are a peacetime balance to another thematic trio: The Civil War , The

Her critics say she is too emotional, has too many rough edges, even plays the ‘white saviour’. But the TV journalist gets the stories and is ratings dynamite Stacey Dooley is so fresh-faced she could pass for a teenager. But, at 32, she has been making investigative programmes for 12 years, and has clocked up 80-odd documentaries around the world, taking on terrorists, paedophile networks, rightwing extremists and international drug dealers. She has just returned from Syria, where she met European Islamic State brides for her first Panorama; and Nigeria, where she got to know Boko Haram’s female suicide bombers. Last year, she wrote a bestselling book about inspirational women and won Strictly Come Dancing . On Friday it was announced that she had signed a £250,000-a-year golden handcuffs deal to work only for the BBC. Earlier this year, she found herself splashed across the tabloids – first for starting a relationship with her Strictly dance partner Kevin Clifton, then for being l

An Indian man finds love – and hate – in 1960s London in a neglected novelist’s topical gem first published more than 40 years ago When the African American artist Faith Ringgold ’s brilliantly provocative American People Series paintings were rediscovered a few years ago, after being hidden away in storage since the 1960s because of art world uninterest, she found herself belatedly proclaimed a major artistic figure. At 88, she had to wait 60 years for society to catch up with her radical black female genius. Zora Neale Hurston was sadly long dead when her womanist novel Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) was resurrected in the 70s by Alice Walker, after decades out of print. It has been considered a feminist classic ever since. One wonders how many other great works of art, especially from marginalised voices, are underrated or ignored because they were ahead of their time. The republication of The Nowhere Man (1972) by Kamala Markandaya, who migrated to Britain from India in 19

Streaming sites report growth in young listeners and festivals are signing up more jazz acts From smoky US bars to clubs in the Weimar republic, jazz has been popular across the world, with its heyday almost a century ago. But in a tiny converted railway arch in south-east London, a weekly jazz night has become the hub for a new flourishing scene in the UK. Steam Down in Deptford has hosted a growing number of British artists. Their presence, combined with the rise of streaming websites, is triggering a spike in appreciation for jazz in Britain. Signs of that surge in interest are visible across the music business, with streaming sites reporting a growth in young listeners, mainstream artists collaborating with jazz stars and big music festivals signing up more jazz acts than ever. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/312Bnqw

Through interviews old and new, we were offered a revealing picture of one of the world’s most important artists. But did we really need the Instagram influencers? Cindy Sherman does not want to appear on camera. “Why not?” asks the director, Clare Beavan. “People,” says Sherman, “are just so curious to see what I really look like. So there is this intrigue.” Can you make a film about someone without seeing their face as they talk about their life and work? I’m one of those desperate to see Sherman, to reconcile the person with the roles she creates for her art, but perhaps I’m just prying. In the Arena documentary Cindy Sherman #untitled (BBC Four), we get her voice in a new interview, and Beavan has filleted previous filmed interviews, the last from 2009. Peel away the layers in her portraits and you can see the traces of Sherman’s eyebrows and the wrinkles in her skin. “You can see the cracks in the armour,” says her old photography teacher. She’s in there somewhere, despite her be

Fringe of Colour campaigns to persuade venues to give free tickets to young local people of colour It prides itself on being the biggest arts festival in the world, but the “overwhelming whiteness” of Edinburgh festival fringe can be off-putting to potential performers and punters, according to Jessica Brough, the founder of Fringe of Colour. Brough is campaigning to persuade venues to give free tickets to young local people of colour in an attempt to diversify audiences at the three-week-long festival, resulting in more than 500 free tickets available. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2YfOjwk

Las Vegas variety producer considers relocating European base to Berlin or Paris The Edinburgh festival fringe is facing the loss of a $25m (£20m) five-year investment by a big US circus company owing to uncertainties over Brexit. Spiegelworld, one of Las Vegas’s biggest variety producers, is staging an extravaganza in Edinburgh this week before transferring back home to a purpose-built theatre in September. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2MltOHi

Painting commissioned to promote Britain’s second world war effort depicts workers of Mather & Platt in Newton Heath An important LS Lowry painting which was commissioned to promote Britain’s second world war effort on the home front is to return to its home city. The 1943 painting Going To Work is classic Lowry, showing a mass of workers trudging through a white industrial haze to the Mather & Platt engineering works in Newton Heath, Manchester. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2ZhZHnN

David Oyelowo to star in animated version of Judith Kerr children’s classic The Tiger Who Came to Tea, the classic children’s book by Judith Kerr which has enchanted generations of readers, will come to TV this Christmas as a half-hour animated film on Channel 4, featuring the voices of Benedict Cumberbatch, David Oyelowo and Tamsin Greig. They will be joined by David Walliams and Paul Whitehouse, and the role of Sophie will be taken by seven-year-old Clara Ross, who will make her TV debut. The special will be made by the team behind previous festive shows We’re Going on a Bear Hunt and The Snowman and the Snowdog. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2yhVZyr

With cave bombs, amateur amputations and all manner of derring-do, this was surely the most jam-packed episode of TV ever – and delicious to the last “London and its strange ways are far, far away!” Ah Demelza. London is not the only place with strange ways, or at least where a great deal of things happen in unimaginably rapid succession. This was a great episode for fans of primitive cave bombs, reckless chasm-jumping, ill-advised derring-do, amateur beachside amputations and bedside waterboarding. My heart was softened by the reappearance of Horace the Pug early on, and as events raced by I alternated between mildly weepy and completely broken. Then Valentine met his half-siblings and I was all puddle. It’s hard to know where to start with this episode, where as many things happened in one hour’s screen time as have happened in the previous four series. And yet it was masterfully managed. Most importantly, though, Horace the Pug returned! He’s put on weight. But obviously that’s hi

Everyone is on their wildest behaviour this week, as June’s bullying leads to disaster – and Aunt Lydia does a mean Dolly Parton impersonation Spoiler alert: this recap is for people watching The Handmaid’s Tale, series three , on Channel 4 in the UK. Please do not add spoilers for later episodes in the series. Last week was a low point for June’s morals, but here she found new depths, driving a pregnant woman to suicide-by-cop. None of June’s spiteful actions will bring Gilead down, or even hurt its founders, but that’s not her goal right now. She’s hellbent on getting revenge on Ofmatthew, the informer she blames for the death of Hannah’s beloved Martha Frances. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/32ZE8uf

Battersea Arts Centre, London This teasing, challenging new-music bill was a mashup of genres, noises and hi-tech tools that rejoiced in sonic breadth It opened with a vocal tour de force from Jennifer Walshe : snatches of pop hits poured unaccompanied from her lips, lyrics spliced like an anarchic mashup of Top of the Pops 2 footage. And it ended with Oliver Coates brandishing his cello aloft, its tone distorting with each movement – part helicopter, part electric guitar – as layers of synthesised sound roared around him. They dissipated gradually, leaving a single sustained note and ears ringing. This latest Proms outing beyond South Kensington didn’t just step away from the cavernous Royal Albert Hall into the intimate, artfully lit and stripped-wall surroundings of the BAC . Performed across three small stages surrounding its standing audience, this mixed programme of new music crossed other boundaries: between music and noise, genres and styles, human performers and hi-tech to

Mariah-Rose Marie writes a humorous illustrated guide to how people in New York, Los Angeles, Dallas, and other places in the United States view vegetarians. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2ygx1zw

The words the Democrats and the Republicans used may have been the same, but their meanings were not, Amy Davidson Sorkin writes. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2JXl1cJ

The feminist punks’ new album, produced by St Vincent and inspired in part by a Rihanna song, is their most expansive yet. So why did their drummer just quit the band? By now, we know reunion culture is a con. The brief excitement of seeing a favourite band re-form is swiftly tempered by watching them resentfully trot out the hits and confront their mortality. Plus, the past is no longer a novelty but our perpetual groundhog day of recycled franchises and rebooted brands. Which is why Sleater-Kinney’s surprise return, in 2015, nine years after they went on hiatus, was so refreshing. Not content to rehash old glories, the feminist punks had a brilliant new album, the riotous, new wavy No Cities to Love , and singer-guitarists Carrie Brownstein and Corin Tucker and drummer Janet Weiss were unabashedly vocal about ending the dearth of fortysomething women in rock. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2OkHYuF

The former Teen Vogue editor on Ava DuVernay’s latest TV series, why she models herself on Blanche from The Golden Girls, and what she listens to in the shower Born in California in 1986 , journalist and author Elaine Welteroth was named editor of Teen Vogue in 2016. The magazine’s first African American editor and the youngest in Condé Nast’s history, Welteroth bec ame known for her efforts to increase its coverage of politics and championing of diversity. After Teen Vogue ’s final print issue in 2017, she became a judge on the television show Project Runway . Her memoir More Than Enough (Ebury Press ) is out now. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/32TcfEc

Spanning 40 years, from the Vietnam war to post-9/11 Afghanistan, this spy thriller-cum-family saga is weighty and heart-rending Cryptically structured, glacially paced but with volcanic flashpoints, Salvatore Scibona ’s new book keeps you guessing as to what it’s even about. A mix of war novel, spy thriller and family saga, set in the US, Germany and Latvia, ranging in time from the invasion of Vietnam to post-9/11 Afghanistan, it eventually emerges as a kind of 400-page backstory to its alarming prologue – a bravura piece of writing that reels you in before Scibona starts to make us sweat over his purpose. It’s 2010 and we’re in the company of a US soldier, Elroy, a one-time jailbird and ex-addict who once got a waitress pregnant while posted to Latvia. The child, Janis, is now five and his mother is letting him go; she emails Elroy to come to Riga between tours of Afghanistan and take him to America. He arrives without a plan, and ends up – perhaps accidentally on purpose – abandon

Ashley Joiner’s film tries to do justice to the LGBT movement, but runs out of road The history of the many incarnations and issues of the Pride movement is explored in this earnest, informative but sometimes unwieldy documentary. Ashley Joiner’s thoroughly researched film contextualises Pride as a celebration born out of a reaction to the hostility, repression and incomprehension faced by gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans and queer people. But even within something as theoretically unifying as Pride, not everyone feels included. The film attempts to address intersectionality, to give voice to more marginalised communities – splinter group events include a trans march in Brighton and a Latinx vigil for the victims of the Orlando gay club shooting. The film also calls Pride to account for the increasing commercialisation that has, according to some, diluted the politics and the protest of the event . “It’s OK to have a party,” says one interviewee, “but to party in ignorance is dangerous.”

Sadler’s Wells, London Young hearts ran free in the National Young Dance Company’s thrilling Madhead, but too much was asked of four promising choreographers End of term in the dance world is a time of celebration and liberation. As in schools up and down the country, dance institutions put on a show, announce their leavers and their joiners, the talent promoted, the old-timers on the way out. Now Sadler’s Wells seems to be offering a choreographic version of the process, with two programmes highlighting young talent. Of the two, the annual performance of the National Youth Dance Company , choreographed by this year’s guest artistic director Botis Seva , gave most cause for jubilation. The company, made up of 28 dancers aged 15-24, plus 10 returning from previous editions of the scheme, made Madhead with Seva, who is himself only 28, over four intensive residencies, which take place in school holidays. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2ZfOfsD

Theatre by the Lake, Keswick Lucy Kirkwood’s domestic-seeming drama has the steely underpinning of a Greek tragedy A visitor arrives at a cottage by the sea – unexpected but not unknown. Rose has spent the past decades in the United States. She and Hazel have not met since Hazel’s eldest child was a toddler (she is now a difficult, offstage, grown-up, needily phoning home because her washing machine has broken down). Rachel Laurence (Rose) and Maggie O’Brien (Hazel) perfectly catch the spry, spiky awkwardness of the women’s catch-up conversation, its friendly surface rippled by an undertow of dislike and/or suspicion. Lucy Kirkwood’s 2016 play unfurls information gradually (sometimes too teasingly for my taste). The cottage stands just outside a no-go zone, contaminated following a meltdown at a nuclear power plant. Both women are nuclear physicists. Hazel is retired, as is her husband, Robin (Patrick Driver). All three were involved in the construction of the defective plant, their

The hit TV comedy loses some its essential rottenness in this big-screen debut As the parent of an eight-year-old, I have spent a lot of time cackling at Horrible Histories . The riotously uncouth, mostly factual kids television show, based on the books by Terry Deary , remains a high point in children’s programming. It’s lively, informative and genuinely funny, if slightly gutter-obsessed. And, crucially, it lives up to its name. A key problem with this feature-length movie spin-off is that both the historical and the horrible are rather relegated to footnotes. The backdrop is Roman Britain, circa 54 AD. The emperor Nero is in power; meanwhile, Boudicca is stirring up unrest among the Celts. But mainly the focus of the story is a fictional encounter between a scrawny, teenage Roman centurion, Atti (Sebastian Croft), and feisty Celtic proto-feminist Orla (Emilia Jones). And while the skit-based vignette structure of the TV series delivered regular chunks of fact dredged from the sewe

(Atlantic) In the past few years, Afro-fusion singer Burna Boy has gone from Nigerian superstar to international sensation. Rather than chasing the crossover, he’s waited for the zeitgeist to come to him . Around the same time he briefly featured on Drake’s seminal More Life mixtape of 2017, Damini Ogulu started cropping up on UK grime tracks (and vice versa ). He played Coachella last April; now he’s on a Beyoncé Lion King tune. Burna Boy’s fourth album lands in this powerful spotlight, continuing the singer’s boundary-hopping mixture of laid-back Caribbean swagger, Fela Kuti swing and multilingual communiques on a range of concerns. Recent single Dangote is a typically resonant swirl. Its title nods at Africa’s richest man while the lyrics mull the need for ordinary people to hustle; it’s all wrapped up in Auto-Tune warble, Fela-jazz horns and African-inflected dancehall. Of the handful of co-signs, Jorja Smith adds honey to Gum Body, her yearning underscored by low-key bras

The young Rolling Stone had more sympathy for his bus pass than the devil, says his former accountant To his fans, he was a young man focused on sex, drugs and rock’n’roll. But in his mid-20s Mick Jagger had other, rather more sedate, things on his mind, it has been claimed: a pension plan for his retirement. The Rolling Stones star turned 76 last week and appears to have no plans to hang up his microphone. But when he was young he found the idea that he would still be performing after the age of 60 preposterous, and was keen to prepare his finances for his twilight years, according to the man who was his accountant at the time. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/30YfoAT

As series 5 of ITV’s runaway reality hit show reaches its finale, we ask a selection of viewers what makes it so unmissable It’s been hot, brutal, unrelenting, but it’s finally time. Love Island draws to a close on Monday night as the finale reveals which couple has won the nation’s hearts, the £50,000 prize money and a golden opportunity to rinse the influencer economy dry by flogging protein shakes and teeth whitening products. Despite the assault by streaming services on terrestrial television, ITV2 has broken records: more than six million tuned in this month and a US version has been launched in tandem. It is a bona fide cultural behemoth. So much so that the channel has announced it will launch a winter edition next year. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2MmnJKL

Sarfraz Manzoor was a teenager in Luton when he met a friend for life and discovered his musical hero. Now that fateful encounter is the subject of a major film We were just kids. The first time I met Amolak was in autumn 1987. I was 16 and starting my first week at Luton sixth form college. My father worked on the production line at the Vauxhall car factory, my mother was a seamstress working from home and I was expected to get a stable, sensible job, have an arranged marriage and lead a quietly respectful life in obscurity. That isn’t how life turned out. When I first ran into Amolak he had his headphones on, and when I asked what he was listening to he told me it was Bruce Springsteen. When I queried his music taste he told me Bruce was a direct line to all that was true in this world. He then handed me some cassettes and instructed me to educate myself. The music I heard changed my life. It first turned me into a confirmed Springsteen fan and it then inspired me to follow my dre

Comedy is under scrutiny as never before. So when is a joke not a joke? Context, intent and expectations are all key, say leading exponents of the art Comedy is such a simple thing. One person tells a joke. Another person laughs. The end. Simple. Except, as every comedian knows, simple doesn’t mean easy. Not only do you have to make someone laugh (which is hard), if you’re a comedian, you have to make them laugh in the right way. At the right thing. For the right reason. We can all make a gag about Trump’s hairdo, but that won’t get us very far. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2YwiP49

Whitworth Art Gallery; Home, Manchester The Ghanaian artist resurrects the detritus of his nation’s post-colonial industry, while Lynch’s painting is predictably Lynchian The central room of Ibrahim Mahama ’s textured and provocative installation transports you 5,000 miles, and then some. A space is created at the heart of Manchester’s Whitworth Art Gallery by tiered seats on four sides. The seats, in an unforgiving, utilitarian mushroom-coloured plastic, polished by countless backsides, each saw decades of service in the second-class carriages of Ghana’s railroad before Mahama shipped them here from the scrapyard. For the empty seats that was the last leg of a very long open-return journey: they were originally made in a factory either in Manchester or Leeds. The émigré “ghost parliament” they now propose in the gallery is potent with debates: between their quiet, transplanted present and their rattling, storied past, between Britain and its former Gold Coast colony, between the re

Starring in Crazy Rich Asians and Captain Marvel turned Gemma Chan into a household name. But it was not always so easy. She talks about giving up law, dealing with shyness and becoming Hollywood royalty Gemma Chan is nervous, as if she’s waiting for the dentist to perform a particularly painful extraction. We meet in a café filled with babies and tired-looking mothers, in a fancy, rich-people part of north London. The setting is appropriate, given what we’re here to talk about: I Am Hannah , the new improvised Channel 4 drama she co-created with director Dominic Savage. It tells the story of a woman in her mid-30s who dates, scattershot, via apps, while feeling the weight of the biological and social pressures to have a baby. Chan, 36, is keen to point out that it is not autobiographical. “I mean, God. I have friends who are so happily married with children, on their third, some friends who’ve done it who are struggling with elements of it, and other friends who have no interest in

Often recalled as the lonely genius of modernism, the Irish writer was also ‘Sam’, convivial friend and collaborator, who drank with Peter O’Toole, talked cricket with Harold Pinter and ‘wailed’ at Edna O’Brien’s piano “I only had a minute.” Jane Bown, the Observer ’s greatest postwar photographer, used to tell the story of the day she was sent to the Royal Court theatre to photograph Samuel Beckett, acclaimed author of Waiting For Godot . Bown was renowned for snatching photographs against the odds, but the shy, unsmiling, and nervously intense figure of Beckett, compared by one friend to an “Aztec eagle”, presented a rare challenge. “You can have a minute,” he announced, fiercely asserting the superiority of drama to journalism. He was tall and remote; she was short but dauntless. In the half-lit alleyway outside the stage door, Bown positioned her reluctant celebrity against the wall, and fired off barely a dozen shots, later remembering the arctic blue intensity of Beckett’s eyes.

Menier Chocolate Factory, London; Chichester Festival theatre; Kiln, London The Bridges of Madison County musical hits all the right notes in Trevor Nunn’s heartfelt production. Plus, an irresistible Oklahoma! – and how blue do you want your blues? Based on Robert James Waller’s bestselling novel The Bridges of Madison County , Jason Robert Brown’s musical, which had a short run on Broadway in 2014 , needed either to rise above sentimentality or to embrace it unashamedly. Trevor Nunn’s brilliant and involving production does both. I had to pinch myself to check that I was, against expectation, enjoying myself inordinately, and to accept that even the songs with the lamest lyrics were turning out to be no obstacle to a great night out (handkerchiefs are required). This is the story of a middle-aged Italian immigrant, Francesca, who lives in Iowa and is married to a former American soldier, now a farmer. Francesca is outstandingly played by Jenna Russell, who makes you sympathise with

The debut feature by Mexican Lila Avilés is a masterpiece of restraint, building a rich world within a luxury hotel So small, but so resistant. This is how 24-year-old hotel maid Eve (Gabriela Cartol) is described by her colleague Miriam (Teresa Sánchez), barely flinching as she receives a violent electric shock. Scrubbing lavatories and fluffing pillows at the glamorous Hotel Presidente in Mexico City, Eve works unsociable hours in order to pay for childcare for her four-year-old son. At lunch, she limits herself to popcorn, the cafeteria’s cheapest offering. She is stoic and hardy, resistant, if not impervious, to the job’s daily grind. As with the electric shock, she grows more powerful as she absorbs it. Lila Avilés’s droll debut feature follows Eve’s attempts to secure a promotion that would place her in charge of the hotel’s 42nd floor. There are diversions, such as an after-hours adult education programme, and a brief dalliance with a window cleaner whom she occasionally allow

Eton Shortlisted for the 2019 Stirling prize, a house at the vanguard of ‘corkitecture’ is broadening ideas of sustainable construction Fishing floats, bottle stoppers, platform soles, pinboards, coasters. The uses of cork are many and varied, but it still retains a whiff of 1970s suburbia, like avocado bathroom suites or jumbo corduroy. Yet in its way, cork is a wonder material – strong in compression (those platform soles), water-resistant and a good source of insulation. Cork is also impeccably sustainable. Bark from Quercus suber , the cork oak, is carefully stripped by hand every nine to 12 years, leaving the tree intact, unlike felling for timber. Portugal and Spain are responsible for 80% of cork production, with much of it still going to make corks for wine bottles, despite the rise of the screw top. As for cork in architecture – or “corkitecture” – the picture is more patchy. Cork has been a minor supporting player, used for flooring and wall tiles, or as an early form of i

Liz Johnson Artur’s first UK solo show is infused with the insight that comes from her commitment to candid portraiture It was nine years ago this weekend that Liz Johnson Artur took this impromptu shot of three teenage girls with a red balloon at the annual summer carnival at Burgess Park, south London. “It was my local park at the time, around the corner from my studio, so I was out and about, mingling, taking photographs of the event,” she says. Johnson Artur has made it her life’s work to take candid photographs such as this one all over the world as part of a project to document the lives of the African diaspora . Born in Bulgaria in 1964 to a Russian mother and Ghanaian father, she moved to London in her early 20s to take a master’s at the Royal College of Art and later found herself touring the world as official photographer for acts including Lady Gaga, MIA and Amy Winehouse. Still, she “had this desire to record normal black lives and culture, which I was not seeing represen

He shot to fame aged 19. Five years later, Felix Jaehn is one of the world's top DJs. His new single and recent coming-out as bisexual tell the story of a young man who fought hard to find himself. from Deutsche Welle: DW.com - Culture & Lifestyle https://ift.tt/2KlEvqP

“History is written by the victors” is a familiar refrain, but not one that takes account of historians’ power and influence at the early 19th-century Joseon court – or their voluminous, swishing silk robes and hats like semaphore signals. Yes, it’s time for another superior, splendidly costumed historical romance, with understated comedy thrown in, of the sort done so well by Korean television. Rookie Historian Goo Hae Ryung, which has just started its debut-season run on Netflix (new… from South China Morning Post https://ift.tt/2OwAepQ

from Culture - ELLE https://ift.tt/2Zedj3b

Screenwriter says he used all the material from Austen’s work in first half of first episode Jane Austen novels are not known for scenes of nude men jumping into the sea or secret sex acts between lovers in forests. But for the screenwriter Andrew Davies, who is transforming Austen’s final, incomplete novel, Sanditon , into a TV series, it would be a shame not to add them in. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/30WpRNa

The tale of a US psychologist in 1970s Montana vividly captures the unpredictability of attraction In one of his most wittily morbid lyrics, Leonard Cohen reflected on medicine’s inability to treat a particular function of the body and mind: “The doctors working day and night / But they’ll never ever find that cure for love.” In Virginia Reeves’s second novel, Dr Ed Malinowski, a behavioural psychologist in Montana in the early 1970s, is stricken with life-threatening desire while attempting a sort of cure through love. The recipient of his intense (although, he tells himself, platonic) attention is a 16-year-old girl, Penelope Gatson, a patient at Boulder River School and Hospital in Colorado, where the physician fondly known as “Dr Ed” works with the “developmentally disabled”. Most of the inmates have severe learning difficulties, but Penelope is a near-genius, detained due to severe epilepsy, which back then was often treated through institutionalisation. The enlightened doctor

Royal Albert Hall; Opera Holland Park, London; Glyndebourne, East Sussex The 125th BBC Proms get off to a flying start, Opera Holland Park is on a roll, and the Queen of the Night gets a new day job We have lift-off. Another season of the Proms, the largest and least elitist music festival in the world (more than 1,000 £6 tickets available every day) is well under way, having scorched off the launchpad with a moon-walk anniversary theme in a heady week when the operatic stage gave us triumph, tragedy – and real disappointment. Apart from a storming performance of Janáček’s Glagolitic Mass, the most significant moment in Prom 1 wasn’t a musical one. Instead, it was the warm embrace of congratulation between two super-talented women, New Yorker Karina Canellakis, the first woman to conduct the First Night in the Proms’ 125-year history, and Canadian composer Zosha Di Castri, whose Long Is the Journey – Short Is the Memory opened the festival. Slowly, men are losing their grip on the

Julia Edelman writes a humorous eulogy for a friend who just got a new boyfriend. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/32TC86T

It was the Observer’s big scoop of 2003, and as a young journalist, I was asked to type up a top-secret memo. Now my mess-up has made it to the big screen Have you ever wondered who’d play you in a film? I had, occasionally, until the day I got the answer. In spring 2018, a message pinged on to my phone via Facebook from a journalist friend. “So this is a bit weird,” it read. “A sister of a friend is playing you in a movie, apparently. You aware of this?” I wasn’t. “ Hanako Footman is playing you in the film Official Secrets . She wants to meet you, like actors do. She saw we were pals and asked if I’d ask you. What did you do in that story?” Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2YrcDKO

From a beach cafe to a social housing ziggurat: this is where it all began for Norman Foster, Asif Khan and others Amenity centre and passenger terminal for Fred Olsen, Millwall docks, London, 1969-70 I met Richard Rogers in the early 60s at Yale School of Architecture in the US, where we were both studying for our master’s. We got on well and combined forces to form Team 4, with Wendy Cheeseman and her sister Georgie Walton, who was the only registered architect at the firm. Wendy and I married and, after four years, we set up Foster Associates in her bedsit. It was 1967: there were no associates and no projects. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2Y6kyhb

Forget under-the-duvet-but-you-can-still-see-the-feet-rubbing intercourse. This year it was all about a shared, platonic romance Rare I disagree with Molly-Mae, a sort of human cherub with a sentient hair knot above her at all times – looming, glowing, doing all of her non-lizard brain thinking for her, anything beyond horniness and emotion dealt with entirely by The Knot. But during a particularly dramatic recoupling two weeks ago, I had to pause the TV and shout: “Wrong!” at it in anger. “It’s Love Island, not Friend Island,” she told good, thick Tommy Fury, as he nodded sweetly. “Yeah,” he said, “yup.” I know the man can knock me into a coma that would last two presidential terms with a single punch, so I’m loth to rile him up too much via the pages of a broadsheet supplement, but: you’re wrong, Tommy. You’re both wrong. The winner of this year’s Love Island (revealed live on Monday, ITV2, 9pm) has been not love-love – not romantic love, anyway, or anything that results in any si

While the cheongsam, also known as qipao, is no longer a common sight on the streets of Chinese cities, the form-fitting dress is still worn at Chinese weddings, important ceremonies and in films. From actress Anita Mui Yim-fong’s traditional   cheongsams with butterfly prints in the film Rouge to the exquisite cheongsams worn by Tang Wei in Oscar-winning filmmaker Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution, the garment has played a role in some of the most memorable Chinese films. Here are five roles that… from South China Morning Post https://ift.tt/2YkhOrL

From Ben Affleck angst to valley-girl cabaret, the fresh generation of standups and character acts performing at Edinburgh The misanthrope The double Edinburgh comedy award nominee returns with Dots, a show that professes to explore everything from dead German sociologists to sadness. Having appeared on Frankie Boyle’s New World Order and Have I Got News for You, his commanding presence and poise position him as the ideal candidate for panel-show prominence. Monkey Barrel Comedy, Thursday 1 to 25 August Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2YpxxpE

Jennifer Gonnerman writes about Ritchie Torres, a member of the New York City Council who, at the age of thirty-one, is campaigning to represent the Bronx in the U.S. House of Representatives. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2Ympg5J

Benjamin Wallace-Wells writes on the Republican congressman Garret Graves, from Louisiana, who wants to help the Gulf Coast adapt to sea-level rise, and on the responses by Democrats skeptical of how far he will go to address climate change. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2JVTrNe

The actor on Megan Rapinoe, aggressive relaxation, and the key to The Piano’s success Born in Canada, Anna Paquin, 37, was raised in New Zealand. Aged nine, she was cast in Jane Campion’s 1993 film The Piano , and won an Oscar for her performance. Between 2008 and 2014 she starred in the HBO series True Blood with Stephen Moyer; they married in 2010, have twins and live in Los Angeles. Paquin has a role in Martin Scorsese’s new movie The Irishman and stars in Tell It To The Bees , which is in cinemas now. When were you happiest? I don’t think there’s a single moment. Every day that you wake up and your family is healthy and OK is a daily gratitude and happiness for me. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2yiLHy0

When the writer and director arrived in Wales to shoot a new drama, she was nursing a broken heart and romantic ideas of British life. Then she discovered the reality soap opera... As I planned my summer in Wales, my head filled with visions of romance, I supposed I’d do what the heroines of novels did when they crossed the pond for a new life: go to the shore to take the healing air. Meet a man and move into his stunning manor, possibly watched over by a sinister housemaid. Scurry through cobblestoned streets and into dusty bookshops, furtively pulling up the hood of my cloak. Go to a banquet and dance to piano music in a great hall. Taste gamey meats on a date with a count, then become a countess. Shoot a bow and arrow. Develop a slight accent. Images of everything from Brighton Rock to Emma , The Woman In White to Notting Hill , filled my head. There was even a little 24 Hour Party People in there. But as it would happen, my days were long, and much more Wernham Hogg than Wuthe