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Showing posts from December, 2019

Mission Mangal film review: more workplace soap opera than space drama, this is no Bollywood take on The Martian

2/5 stars Created in August 1969, just weeks after the Apollo 11 moon landing, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2019. To mark the occasion, Jagan Shakti’s film Mission Mangal dramatises one of the ISRO’s most ambitious programmes to date: the launch of the unmanned Mars Orbiter Mission space probe, in 2013. Success would make India the first Asian nation to reach Mars on its maiden attempt, but failure would exacerbate the mockery from Nasa and… from South China Morning Post https://ift.tt/39u6dxb
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The Best Things I’ve Eaten This Decade

Helen Rosner writes about some of her favorite meals of the decade, including sandwiches from Domilise’s, Mission Cantina, and Sqirl; an opulent caviar dish; the perfect hamburger; and a haunting hunk of pomegranate. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/36hqSSY
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Vault festival 2020: comedy and theatre shows to see

London’s eight-week underground arts fest returns to Waterloo and the South Bank in January. Here’s a dozen picks to get started … James McNicholas: The Boxer 30-31 January The former Beasts sketch comic should have been a contender for the 2019 Edinburgh Comedy award with this tribute to his real-life boxing-champ grandad, Terry Downes. Brilliantly structured, with heartfelt laughs, it’s an hour that leaves you punchdrunk. McNicholas also tries out new material in a work-in-progress on 23 February. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2ZF7BbH
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Netflix hits of 2019: from Murder Mystery and Stranger Things 3 to The Witcher and The Irishman, the most popular shows and films

When many people think of Netflix in 2019, especially during awards season, they probably think of movies like The Irishman and Marriage Story – prestigious titles with inescapable “for your consideration” ads, ecstatic reviews and social media chatter. Or they might think of shows such as Stranger Things and Russian Doll.But according to a new ranking from Netflix, the most popular title of the year for the streaming giant’s US viewers was something completely different: the not-so-well… from South China Morning Post https://ift.tt/2teofmy
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Were you paying attention? It's the seriously tough TV quiz of the decade

Think you know everything about Don Draper and Downton Abbey? What about reality show stars from 2014? Test your telly nous with our ultimate quiz Why did Lord Grantham vomit blood everywhere on Downton Abbey? Poison Burst ulcer Gastro-oesophageal reflux disease In Line of Duty, what is Ted Hastings’ catchphrase? “Now we’re drinking Castrol” “Now we’re sucking diesel” “Now we’re necking petrol” Why did Planet Earth 2 make you hate racer snakes? Because they ate an entire sheep Because they choked a deer to death Because they chased an iguana What did the season two finale of Luther revolve around? Evil twins A toddler with a gun A spooky dice How was Andrea Riseborough brought to justice in her Black Mirror episode? An AI-assisted kettle called the police The internet grew arms and strangled her A guinea pig gave up its memories of her Who ruled Westeros at the end of Game of Thrones? Jon Snow Bran Stark Ser Pounce What was Jack Bauer’s fate at the end of 24?
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2019 in review: Protests, regime change and a world on fire

Call it the year of people power. It was hard to find a country in 2019 where people weren't massing to make their desires known; in some cases they even managed to topple governments. But there was plenty of other incendiary news, from wildfires in the arctic to the burning of the beloved French icon Notre-Dame to a showdown between a teenage environmentalist and the most powerful man in the world.  from https://ift.tt/2Fkr88d
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Bollywood star Deepika Padukone on her emotional journey filming Chhapaak, the story of a teenage acid attack survivor

It was a shocking crime: after a teenage girl resisted a man’s advances, acid was thrown onto her face, disfiguring her.How Laxmi Agarwal responded to that 2005 attack inspired Bollywood superstar Deepika Padukone and director Meghna Gulzar to make the movie Chhapaak (meaning “splash”), which opens in North America, Europe, Australia, and the Middle East on January 10.“What I needed to tell in this story was her triumph,” says Padukone. “I had the opportunity to spend a lot of time with Laxmi,… from South China Morning Post https://ift.tt/2ZBc9zZ
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Miranda Sawyer’s best radio and podcasts of 2019

The year we came close to peak podcast nonetheless saw a wealth of talent, while radio saw more upheaval In 2019, “I’m making a podcast” overtook “I’m writing a film script” as the standard media dilettante response to that ever-tricky question: “What do you do, exactly?” Every week brought a new slew of podcasts. Sue Perkins launched one. David Dimbleby, too. Dawn O’Porter, Stacey Solomon, Gemma Collins, even Robbie Williams... The BBC, in particular, seemed to go podcast bananas, desperately flinging out new shows like they were old clothes. Some were great: Tom Neenan Is Not All Men was hilarious; You’re Dead To Me hilarious and informative. There were a couple of brilliant new BBC thriller docs: Intrigue: Tunnel 29 , about a group of people who tunnelled under the Berlin Wall and The Missing Cryptoqueen , about a bitcoin con-woman. Fortunately… with Fi and Jane continued to be one of the funniest and most popular shows out there. Plus the Beeb’s chatty, inclusive sports podca
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I Am What I Am: the Jerry Herman anthem that anyone can own

With its defiant, irresistible, glitter-ball spirit, the La Cage aux Folles showstopper has been embraced at Pride marches and the Paralympics – and defined many a diva I was leaving a wedding when I heard that Broadway legend Jerry Herman had died, which feels about right. I Am What I Am, his signature anthem from La Cage aux Folles, is a song to be scaled whenever drink has been taken and identity totters: by a spangled diva in the spotlight, a club kid staking a claim, a bridesmaid clinging desperately to dignity. Anxious, defiant, you stare into the dazzle, hitch up your tits and sing . La Cage is a Feydeau farce with show tunes, pitting a cabaret queen against the moral majority, with a book by Harvey Fierstein (who later lent his gravel-pit register to the song on Broadway). When drag queen Albin is disinvited from his own son’s wedding, he refuses to shuffle out of the picture. One draft speech included the line, “I am what I am and there’s nothing I can do.” Herman’s synaps
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'It was very hurtful' – what really happens when Queer Eye comes to town?

The Fab Five gave Kathi Dooley a makeover this year. She’s thrilled to have lost her mullet – but she could never have predicted the very public attack Jonathan Van Ness was the first pom-pom boy in Quincy, Illinois. In the fourth season of Queer Eye, he, along with the rest of the show’s Fab Five, went to perform a makeover on his favourite music teacher, Kathi Dooley, a woman famed for her fiery red mullet. Van Ness bounded into his high-school gym and launched into a full cheerleading routine, hitting every high kick (in high heels) while a huge crowd cheered from the bleachers. The Queer Eye circus had sashayed into town. But in reality, the reception was far more frosty than the show made it seem. Although Dooley felt the love in that room, plenty of parents refused to allow their kids to appear on the Netflix hit, complaining that “it” – the LGBT lifestyle – should not be championed by a public school. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2tiz4ni
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Ashfall film review: Ha Jung-woo, Lee Byung-hun brave volcanic eruption in Korean disaster thriller

2.5/5 stars When a long dormant volcano threatens to destroy half of the Han Peninsula, the biggest stars in Korean cinema are assembled to save the day. Combining the collective blockbuster attractions of disaster movie, action thriller, family melodrama, and buddy comedy, Ashfall erupts in a pungent cloud of lofty ambition and epic scale. But when the ash settles, what remains on screen is the molten wreckage of a high concept crowd-pleaser that, in its efforts to be everything for everyone… from South China Morning Post https://ift.tt/2tiitQw
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Kitty Empire’s best pop and rock of 2019

Grime came of age, a different kind of female pop performer cracked the charts and Chinese video-sharing app TikTok revolutionised the way fans engaged with the stars Sometimes pop moves glacially slowly. In the early 00s, a new kind of punk emerged in London: fast, angry, uncouth – but made by black Britons, so gatekeepers didn’t recognise it as an asset. Twenty years later, in 2019, grime has come gloriously of age: Stormzy is a national treasure, with a landmark Glastonbury headline slot and great second album, just out. At least half a dozen more outstanding grime LPs were released this year, with a deserved Mercury prize win for Dave , and Kano in particular providing a novelistic, emotional, mature spin on a genre that refused to die. Sometimes, though, pop moves fast. When Billie Eilish – just 15 at the time – released her debut EP in 2017, few could have predicted that the Los Angeles teenager would end the decade slouching proprietorially over a seriously disrupted pop land
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Euan Ferguson’s best TV of 2019

From foreign thrillers to wonderful fantasies, it was a golden year for television, largely thanks to streaming and the BBC The problem, getting ever harder, is what to leave out. For those who just think I’m feeling sorry for myself, let me remind you of 1979, a year often cited as a high point in British television. Among the delights – this is not me, this is Wikipedia – were Quatermass , the finale of Fawlty Towers , and the debuts of Minder , of To the Manor Born and of Thomas & Sarah , a failed Upstairs, Downstairs spin-off. BBC2 launched an “ident” and half the televisual world was on strike. And I could have compiled a list of 10 best back then in two shakes of a damp parka. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2ZzwfKV
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Armando Iannucci: ‘I personally am not a sweary, angry man’

He’s famous for the expletive-packed political satire The Thick of It, but now the comedy guru is tackling Dickens Armando Iannucci is not someone you’d describe as having a commanding presence. He doesn’t want to consume all the oxygen in the room or, with a show of bored impatience, imply that it’s your good fortune to share his company. He may be well known, but there’s nothing of the celebrity about him. Short, balding and understated in manner, he could pass for a provincial loss adjuster come to assess your insurance claim. But he is arguably the most influential figure in British comedy of the past three decades, not to mention an accomplished film director. When I meet him at a London hotel, he is busy promoting his third feature film, The Personal History of David Copperfield , an adaptation of Charles Dickens’s eighth and most autobiographical novel. His first film, In the Loop , grew out of his seminal satirical TV comedy The Thick of It . The second, the highly acclaimed T
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Laura Cumming’s best art of 2019

A bumper year gave us Leonardo, Munch, Rembrandt and reconsideration of some brilliant artists who happened to be women. See our top 10 list below High art, low tactics: 2019 gave us plenty of both. Leonardo’s drawings in London , and now Edinburgh , were presented in all their stupendous range – from the embryo snug in its nutshell womb to the workmen struggling with a ladder like Laurel and Hardy, from imaginary dragons to the mystery of the resurrection. Nothing could bring us closer to the revelations of his mind and eye. But if this was a high point, Leonardo was also the subject of the year’s worst show. Five centuries after his death, the National Gallery’s vacuous Leonardo: Experience a Masterpiece offered three rooms of crass CGI mock-ups but only one real painting, marred by shifting projections; at £18 a ticket, an outrageous tax on knowledge. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/36bhe4n
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Mattie Do, Laos’ only female filmmaker, is making history and shaking up the country’s film industry

Mattie Do is making history. Since emigrating from the United States in 2010, she has become Laos’ only female filmmaker.Her debut, Chanthaly, was the first ever Laotian horror film, while her follow-up, Dearest Sister, became the country’s first submission to the Academy Awards. Do’s latest feature, her third, The Long Walk, is even more ambitious, blending Southeast Asian realism with time travel.Since pitching the project at the inaugural edition of the International Film Festival and Awards… from South China Morning Post https://ift.tt/2ta35WH
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Alasdair Gray, influential Scottish writer and artist, dies aged 85

The writer, artist and passionate Scottish nationalist was hailed as a ‘necessary genius’ for novels including Lanark and Poor Things The writer and artist Alasdair Gray, who blazed a trail for contemporary Scottish fiction with his experimental novels, has died aged 85. Gray’s publisher Canongate announced the news on Sunday, saying he died early in the morning after being hospitalised for a short illness in his home city of Glasgow. In a statement, Gray’s family thanked his friends and hospital staff, calling him “an extraordinary person; very talented and, even more importantly, very humane”. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/37hNeE1
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On my radar: James Norton’s cultural highlights

The actor on the visceral emotion of Sharon Van Etten, a historic New York jazz bar and a provocative Broadway sensation London-born, Yorkshire-raised actor James Norton, 34, is best known for his TV roles in Happy Valley , G rantchester , McMafia and War and Peace . He now plays Stephen Ward, a key figure in the Profumo affair, in BBC One’s new drama The Trial Of Christine Keeler , which starts on Sunday 29 December at 9pm. He also appears in Little Women , in cinemas now, and stars in Mr Jones , a film about the Welsh journalist who broke the news of the 1932 Soviet famine, released on 7 February. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2rHw8Aw
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Having a laugh: is this the end for clowning?

The massive popularity of horror films like Joker and It have been a real downer for happy, family clowns. Mark Wilding hears how the entertainers are fighting back In the corner of Matthew Indge’s kitchen is a photograph of the entertainer Kerby Drill. For many years, Drill was both a clown and a comic voice of authority. He toured the nation’s schools and appeared on television shows, often promoting road safety, until he passed away last year, aged 97. Indge describes him as his “clown hero”, but he recognises that Drill represents a very different era of clowning. “The truth is,” Indge says, “these days, I don’t know if kids are going to listen to a clown saying be careful on the road.” Indge has been clowning for 32 years, since he was eight years old. In a way that wasn’t necessary for Drill, Indge must now take steps to prove to his audiences that he doesn’t represent a dark and sinister threat. When we meet, he’s preparing for a performance as Zaz the Clown at a five-year-old
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Fiction to look out for in 2020

With new titles from the likes of Hilary Mantel, Ali Smith and Sebastian Barry , 2020 bodes well for lovers of the novel • Rachel Cooke on nonfiction highlights of 2020 This has not been a vintage year for the novel. The joint Booker winners and perhaps a handful of others aside, I’m not sure that much fiction published in 2019 will be read a decade hence. The good news is that I’ve spent the past several weeks joyfully immersed in proof copies of next year’s novels and can confirm that 2020 is shaping up to be a blinder. I’ve tried here to concentrate on the first half of the year. One of the year’s biggest novels is sure to be the final instalment of Hilary Mantel’s Thomas Cromwell trilogy, The Mirror and the Light (4th Estate, March), which is under strict embargo. Will it be great? Probably. Will it win the Booker? Possibly (although there’s serious competition). It could well be pipped to the prize by Maggie O’Farrell’s miraculous Hamnet (Tinder Press, March) – a beautiful
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Chris Packham: ‘I don’t look for conflict, but I won’t shy away’

The naturalist, 58, talks about death threats, autism, miniature poodles, his partner’s tigers and his failure as a conservationist My earliest memories all relate to animals: tadpoles, ladybirds, lizards, my pet mouse. I can remember being about four, growing up in suburban Southampton, and being fascinated by the difference between me and them. I saw perfection in all of those individual organisms. Much later I realised that the greater beauty was the way that they live together in an interconnected ecosystem – the fact that it was functional, dynamic and sustainable. My relationship with dogs – I’m not afraid to say it – borders on a dependency. They are my autism-assistant animals. Their unconditional love, dynamism and exuberance has brought me so much joy. I’ve always had black miniature poodles. I called the previous two, Itchy and Scratchy. Now I’ve got Sid and Nancy. My joy grenades. Every time I took them out, I’d pull out the pin by releasing their lead. And sometimes I
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Sue Lyon, Kubrick's Lolita, dies aged 73

Actor who starred in the controversial 1962 adaptation of Nabokov’s novel as a 14-year-old never matched its impact in her subsequent career Sue Lyon, who at age 14 played the title character in the 1962 film adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov’s controversial novel Lolita, has died at age 73. Longtime friend Phil Syracopoulos told The New York Times she died on Thursday in Los Angeles. He gave no cause of death. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2Qxg3pp
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Dozens of ‘Goyas’ are not by the master’s own hand, claims art historian

The Spaniard’s paintings sell for millions, but a British expert now claims that many pieces attributed to him were by his assistants The authenticity of dozens of Goya paintings is being questioned by a leading British art historian who claims that they are not in fact works by the Spanish master but instead created by some of the great painter’s many studio assistants. Juliet Wilson-Bareau, a Goya scholar, told the Observer that museums must re-examine their Goya holdings because there are so many “problematic” pictures. She regularly sees auction houses and dealers selling works under Goya’s name when she is convinced that they are by lesser hands. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2Zvlych
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Kelly Fraser, Inuit singer-songwriter, dies aged 26

Fraser, from Canada, gained attention for Inuit-language cover of Rihanna’s Diamonds and advocacy for indigenous culture Kelly Fraser, a Canadian pop artist who gained attention for an Inuit-language cover of Rihanna’s Diamonds, part of her advocacy efforts for her indigenous culture , has died. She was 26. Thor Simonsen, Fraser’s friend and producer, said he was told the day after Christmas by the singer-songwriter’s family that she had died. The family declined to release details, including the cause of death, Simonsen said. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2SAoYco
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Washington's Newseum nears final deadline amid crisis in US journalism

After 11 years, the museum dedicated to news has run out of steam – an obvious metaphor for the crisis facing newspapers “Joke’s on you, journalists. The only thing that ends up in museums is when there’s no use for them any more. The air and space museum is a perfect example. Once we landed on the moon, the space race was over. We may as well have Scotchgarded Neil Armstrong and hung him from the ceiling. And so, the construction of this museum fittingly marks the end of the news.” Related: 'Historic rebuke': what the US papers say about Trump's impeachment Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2SCWkqW
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Circus 1903 review – super-luxe vintage brilliance

Royal Festival Hall, London A global cast of performers let their talents do the talking in this nostalgic, high-octane circus show Roll up, roll up and lose yourself in a reverie of hipster vintage nostalgia! The delightfully enjoyable Circus 1903 professes to be a return to circus’s “golden [Victorian] age”, but is in fact a super-luxe reboot (with super-luxe ticket prices) for 21st-century tastes. The concept is simple: one by one, without a sniff of sweat or sawdust, daredevil acts from all corners of the globe – Mongolia, Brazil, Ethiopia, Russia, France – dressed in gorgeous Victoriana (ruffles, muslin, waistcoats) come on stage and do their jaw-dropping, gasp-inducing thing. All to a booming orchestral soundtrack heavy on the drum rolls. There is a whip-fast juggler, a mind-bending contortionist (the Elastic Dislocationist ) and a succession of vertiginous tumbling and balancing acts, each introduced by US master of ceremonies Willy Whipsnade (David Williamson). Continue re
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Some Other Bobas

Matthew Diffee illustrates a series of humorous alternatives to the bounty hunter Boba Fett, a character from “Star Wars.” from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2tc42O2
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Sunday Reading: The World of Dance

From The New Yorker’s archive, pieces on dance and choreography, by Joan Acocella, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Alma Guillermoprieto, Janet Flanner, Rivka Galchen, Calvin Tomkins, Angelica Gibbs, John Updike, Jonah Weiner, and John Lahr. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2QrdZPL
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Hong Kong musical greats help radio DJ ‘Uncle Ray’ celebrate his 95th birthday – and 70 years in the business

Radio DJ “Uncle Ray” Cordeiro is an institution in Hong Kong, and his comforting voice has been broadcast across the city’s airwaves for 70 years. Cordeiro’s 95th birthday came in the same year that he reached that broadcasting milestone, and he celebrated at a party with icons of the Hong Kong music scene including Maria Cordero, Teddy Robin and Danny Summer.Uncle Ray began his career with Radio Rediffusion at the age of 25 in 1949, and he joined Radio Television Hong Kong (RTHK) in 1960. Ten… from South China Morning Post https://ift.tt/364roE0
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In Netflix K-drama Crash Landing on You, the DMZ proves no barrier to love

There must be easier ways of finding a date than waiting for one drop out of the sky on a paraglider – even if you are stuck in North Korea and regrettably beyond the range of OkCupid and Tinder.And if you’re a South Korean heiress – of the ruthless, obnoxious, privileged sort that might, let’s say, complain about the serving of nuts when flying first class – there must be easier ways of finding a date than accidentally paragliding over the DMZ and into North Korea during a storm, becoming… from South China Morning Post https://ift.tt/2ZwmBZo
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Hong Kong martial arts cinema: how The Matrix’s Yuen Woo-ping shaped the trilogy with his action choreography

In this regular feature series on the best of Hong Kong martial arts cinema, we examine the legacy of classic films, re-evaluate the career of its greatest stars, and revisit some of the lesser-known aspects of the beloved genre.Hong Kong martial arts director Yuen Woo-ping’s action scenes are the defining feature of The Matrix trilogy, yet Yuen himself never sought to work in Hollywood. When the films’ sibling directors the Wachowskis were preparing the first in the trilogy, a producer for the… from South China Morning Post https://ift.tt/2ZyVmgT
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The 10 biggest K-pop stories of 2019: from BTS success to Sulli and Goo Hara deaths to Burning Sun scandal

By Jung Hae-myoungLike any year, 2019 was full of good and bad news. But when it came to K-pop, the gap between the two extremes was wider than ever before.While superstar boy band BTS continued their rise to global dominance, even performing a landmark concert in Saudi Arabia, the industry was rocked by the Burning Sun scandal and the image of K-pop was tainted by revelations of serious crimes.A vote-rigging scandal involving a music competition show cast a shadow over the scene, but a… from South China Morning Post https://ift.tt/2EXdQhF
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How social media influence art

How is the internet, how are social media changing art? A museum in the eastern German city of Leipzig explores the issue in an exhibition with a title that cleverly refers to a typical Instagram phrase — "Link in Bio." from Deutsche Welle: DW.com - Culture & Lifestyle https://ift.tt/34ZGbhH
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The story of Sony: from repair shop to revolution, how Walkman inventor changed music listening and, with PlayStation, home entertainment

Malia Verniolle was almost eight years old when her father gave her a gadget she says changed her life in a number of ways. She also recalls that the earliest incarnation of the Sony Walkman had a nasty habit of trapping her fingers in its spring-loaded door for cassette tapes.“My father gave it to me as a joint present for Christmas and my birthday, which is in early January,” said Verniolle, who grew up and still lives in southern France. “I remember being stunned and delighted to receive… from South China Morning Post https://ift.tt/37d68vQ
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Kanye West’s Sunday Service Choir: Jesus Is Born review – gospel venture tests the faith

The newly devout Christian takes you into his house of prayer in an album with some languid highs, but, ultimately this is one for believers only As 2 billion Christians the world over commemorated the birth of Jesus Christ on Wednesday, they might have missed a minor miracle – Kanye West met a deadline. Having spent the last few years botching album rollouts, cancelling projects and indulging in post-release alterations, West delivered on the planned Christmas Day release of Jesus Is Born, his second strongly Christian record of recent months and first to be credited to his Sunday Service Choir project. Jesus Is Born fully realises the ambitious Sunday Service shows the collective has been performing in churches and other venues for months now. Whatever fans make of West’s transformation into a paragon of religious devotion , they can’t accuse him of failing to put in the time. While Jesus Is King saw West absorb a heavy Christian influence into his singular hip-hop style, its fol
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Singalong or keep shtum … what's the etiquette for musicals?

As karaoke versions of musicals take off, we chat to punters at two West End shows – strictly during the interval, of course – to gauge opinion on audience participation ‘It’ll have them singing and dancing in the aisles!” That may be the kind of blurb you’d splash all over a poster for a musical, but it’s not actually what every theatre wants to happen. Back in October, a family left a production of Motown the Musical at Sunderland Empire after being asked to refrain from spiritedly singing along to its Berry Gordy hits. Your thoughts on that probably depend on whether you, too, can’t help belting out a big chorus, or whether your worst nightmare is an off-key hum coming from the seat behind you. The urge to join in is definitely getting stronger. After the success of singalong cinema events – The Sound of Music, Grease, The Greatest Showman – you can now go to special karaoke versions of hit musicals Six and Waitress , where you can sing along during the show, or get on stage af
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Better, bolder, further to go: the decade in black British theatre

The last 10 years have seen a boom for black British playwrights, actors, artistic directors and others in the industry. What has changed on and off stage – and what’s next? I left drama school at the beginning of the decade, when the the best you could hope for was “colourblind” casting. Plays written by black people, for black actors, performed on main stages, were almost exclusively written by Americans, with some South African playwrights. You did have exceptions, like Bola Agbaje, coming through telling authentic stories. This year we have seen black British playwrights really make their mark. The idea of black work being a “risk” is redundant – the numbers don’t lie. Black theatre sells, and we have shown that if the work is varied, interesting and diverse, black people will come. The excuses of “risk” and “sales” that venues have tried to fob black people off with have been proven to be nonsense, and are in fact racist. The artistic director appointments have given graduate Emm
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Jerry Herman, Broadway composer of Hello, Dolly!, dies aged 88

Writer of music and lyrics to shows such as La Cage aux Folles won two Tony awards for best musical The composer Jerry Herman, who wrote the cheerful, good-natured music and lyrics for such classic shows as Mame, Hello, Dolly! and La Cage aux Folles, has died aged 88. Herman had a direct and simple sense of melody, and his lyrics had a natural, unforced quality. He said in 1995 that over the years “critics have sort of tossed me off as the popular and not the cerebral writer, and that was fine with me. That was exactly what I aimed at.” Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/377QstI
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'Everyone loves a mushroom': London show celebrates art of the fungi

Works by 35 artists, designers and musicians feature in exhibition opening in January Aside from being one of the world’s greatest composers of experimental music, John Cage was a man obsessed with mushrooms who supplied New York restaurants with foraged fungi. Before creating Peter Rabbit, Mrs Puddle-Duck and Timmy Tiptoes, Beatrix Potter ’s big passion was looking through microscopes to investigate the germination process of fungal spores and painting mushrooms as accurately as possible. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2Zvttq4
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Riley Howell, US student who died tackling gunman in shooting, honored as Jedi

The Star Wars fan has been immortalised in a visual dictionary as Ri-Lee Howell, Jedi master and historian A college student hailed by police as a hero for preventing more injuries and deaths after a gunman opened fire in a classroom has been immortalized as a Jedi by the production company behind the Star Wars franchise. News outlets report the family of Riley Howell, the University of North Carolina at Charlotte student who is described as a huge Star Wars fan, was tipped off by Lucasfilm in May that it planned to honor him in a forthcoming book, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker - The Visual Dictionary. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2PU0JnE
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Dutch detectives turn to power of podcast to solve 1991 murder case

Netherlands detectives were inspired by Making a Murderer and other true-crime shows Dutch detectives are chasing 15 new leads on a 30-year-old murder case after being inspired by the current popularity of true crime documentaries to broadcast their own three-part podcast on the original ill-fated police investigation. Neither the identity of a murdered man found wrapped in an electric blanket by a busy motorway in August 1991 nor that of his killer have emerged in the decades since the discovery of the body despite a nationwide probe. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2ZmaXjI
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The faces of 2019 – in pictures

Dick and Dom on the decks, Skin from Skunk Anansie, Ben Stokes in the Lords pavilion, Dafne Keen from Her Dark Materials … Guardian photographers look back at their portraits of the year Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2MwPq2q
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Netflix, Marvel, Brexit – and Weinstein: how this decade radically reshaped cinema’s heroes and villains

Hollywood’s monsters were exposed, streaming services embraced auteurs and ‘motion smoothing’ made the movies look like daytime TV The long decade closes with no consensus on what we were supposed to call it (the “teens”?) nor about what ground has been gained or lost in the big cinema debates of the past 10 years. Steven Spielberg warned of a colossal evolutionary crisis in theatrical distribution, whereby the film business becomes over reliant annually on three or four big “tentpole” movies that will then crash, leaving us with the movie equivalent of 2008 or even 1929. And the tentpoles that everyone is betting on are the superhero films, which Spielberg warned will go the way of the western. Well, this hasn’t happened yet. So a new hero/villain has arisen: Marvel Studios, which has enjoyed a staggering explosion of box-office popularity, blessed by cinema chains for providing surefire hits, but increasingly loathed by cinephiles for dumbing down the movies. Martin Scorsese, in h
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Sex, Lies & Brain Scans by Barbara J Sahakian and Julia Gottwald review – thinking out of the box

A fascinating look at how neuroimaging can teach us about dreams, free will, marketing and more Many people have endured the noisy, and somewhat claustrophobic experience of a conventional MRI scan. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is very similar, except its scans reveal changes in bloodflow. When used to study the brain, it shows when an area becomes more active due to the increased flow of oxygenated blood. Once the only way scientists could study the brain was in a postmortem. Now fMRI is a key tool in neuroscience, offering an unparalleled view of the brain in action, providing insights into “our most basic emotions, motivations and behaviours”, as well as conditions such as Parkinson’s disease. This book takes us on “a whistle-stop tour through some of the most exciting scientific studies”. The science and technology are still evolving but researchers have already used fMRI scans, analysed by a computer, to reconstruct a film clip watched by subjects. It was “blurry
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'An Einstein among Neanderthals': the tragic prince of LA counterculture

David Lynch, Devo and others remember the murdered outsider Peter Ivers, who dressed in spandex, sang about frankfurters and pre-empted the pop energy of MTV When the musician and actor Peter Ivers was found dead in his apartment in downtown Los Angeles on 3 March 1983, at just 36 years old, he was not as successful as he had wanted to be. He pined for mainstream acceptance, but stayed stuck stubbornly left of the dial. With an indomitable spirit, he whirred through the worlds of comedy, film and music, able to conjure good fortune for those around him, if not always for himself. Ivers’ career highlights read like a fabrication; he acted as a talent spotter, dot joiner and circumstantial benefactor for an astrological chart of interlinked stars. Ivers was deemed “the best harp player alive” in his 20s by Muddy Waters . His music was covered by Pixies on their dealmaking first demo and Bauhaus on their farewell tour. It was through Ivers and his long-term partner, Lucy Fisher, that Da
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Order, order! How BBC Parliament became the toast of TV

Political pandemonium turned a tiny channel into the BBC’s runaway success of the year. Its controller Peter Knowles reflects on a remarkable 12 months ‘It was about half one in the morning,” says Peter Knowles, recalling the peak of his crazy year as the controller of BBC Parliament, namely the night of the failed prorogation. “Black Rod showed up and Mr Speaker stayed in his chair. It was poisonous and marked a low point between the two sides. The speaker was sticking his neck out, saying this prorogation wasn’t lawful – and it didn’t look like he’d given Black Rod any warning. This was a very vivid drama playing out in the middle of the night. In terms of what I’ll remember from the year, it’ll be hard to beat that.” Anyone pondering the state of British politics in 2019 may have reflected that every crisis is an opportunity in disguise. This year saw a brisk trade in ringtones of John Bercow, the former Speaker, bellowing “Order!” The spider brooch worn by the supreme court presi
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The God Child by Nana Oforiatta Ayim review – an ambitious debut

A restless young woman growing up in Germany with Ghanaian parents feels caught between two worlds While The God Child is a debut novel, its author is already well known in the art world. Like John Berger, to whom the book is dedicated, Nana Oforiatta Ayim is an art historian and critic unafraid of challenging the establishment. Her pioneering works range from an open-source, pan-African cultural encyclopedia project to a mobile museum and, most recently, the curation of the first ever Ghanaian pavilion at the Venice biennale. Ayim’s desire to question assumptions about African art (and the continent in general) is shared by Maya, the protagonist of her coming-of-age story set between Germany, Britain and Ghana. When the novel begins, Maya is living in Germany, the only child of Ghanaian parents. Her father is a reserved and bookish doctor, while her shopaholic mother, Yaa Agyata, is outgoing and gregarious. Yaa is Ayim’s most vividly painted character: loud and flamboyant, she is de
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The truth about Marilyn Monroe's death – podcasts of the week

Scandalous storytellers unpack the untimely ends of Hollywood icons. Plus: take a deep dive into the nefarious wellness industry Last week the Guardian counted down the top 20 podcasts of the year, from scammer sagas to the most agonising agony aunts around, Dolly Parton and Desert Island Discs for foodies. Did your favourite make the list ? Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/360Rfwx
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YouTube stars and the rise of Netflix: a decade of change in entertainment

Every year brings an avalanche of lists about pop culture – best films, best books and best albums.Attempting to define a decade in the world of entertainment is, at best, daunting.But hey, we are going to give it a try.Here are some of the key trends that emerged in the 2010s in television, film and music, from the explosion of scripted series to a new generation of divas whose empires transcend the concert stage.Generation streamingAt the start of 2010, music platform Spotify had less than… from South China Morning Post https://ift.tt/2PYY8Jd
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Taika Waititi: 'You don't want to be directing kids with a swastika on your arm'

Taika Watiti went from Flight of the Conchords to Thor Ragnarok. Now he plays the Nazi dictator as a buffoon in his new film, Jojo Rabbit. He talks fighting evil with comedy As a boy in New Zealand, Taika Waititi went through a phase of obsessively drawing swastikas all over his notebooks. He knew what Nazis were and what the symbol represented, he says. “But you tell a kid they’re not allowed to do something, that it’s the worst thing to do, and they automatically want to do it.” The transgressive thrill was usually fleeting, he admits. “I’d instantly feel really guilty and turn it into a window.” Ordinarily, it would be a matter of some concern if that swastika-fixated child grew up to cast himself as Adolf Hitler in his own movie. Jojo Rabbit is a comedy about a wartime German boy whose imaginary friend is, indeed, Hitler. But this is Taika Waititi: not only is he a self-identifying “Polynesian Jew” (his father is Maori; his mother’s father was Jewish), but one of the most likab
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The London Olympics opening ceremony: a moment of optimism that destroyed the decade

The show of humour and hope – featuring the Queen and Dizzee Rascal – lulled us into a false sense of security, ill-preparing us for the bleak years to come We are about to be expelled from the loosened sphincter of the 2010s and, quite frankly, it cannot come soon enough. This has been a terrible decade, full of fury and disaster at every turn. But where exactly did the 2010s go wrong? The most sensible answer would be 2016, a year so catastrophic that you can still smell it from here. The United States elected Donald Trump in 2016. David Cameron called the Brexit referendum in 2016. David Bowie died in 2016 , and people responded to it by singing Hey Jude in the streets. Surely, any rational mind would correctly identify this year as the moment the decade went sour. Well, you’re wrong. Because the slide began back in 2012. Because that is when the opening ceremony for the London Olympics took place. Now, bear with me. The notion that something as objectively perfect as the openi
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The most exciting movies of 2020 – crime films and thrillers

The Sopranos gets a prequel, Jennifer Lawrence jumps back into action and Jim Broadbent stars as a real-life cabbie who stole a Goya in next year’s buzziest crime capers and thrillers More of the most anticipated films of 2020 Also known as the Sopranos movie. Thirteen years after the series ended, David Chase delivers a belated prequel, set in mob-tastic 1960s and 70s New Jersey. Young Tony is played by James Gandolfini’s son, Michael, while Alessandro Nivol a, Vera Farmiga, Corey Stoll and Jon Bernthal round out the cast. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2PVfyq3
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Dancing with HAIM

Margaret Talbot on the three-sister band HAIM, whose members were raised in suburban San Fernando Valley, and their music videos, which feature the streets and landscape of L.A. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/39e3wzG
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From The Big Short to Normal People: the books that defined the decade

It began with the fallout from the global financial meltdown and ended with two women sharing the Booker. Which titles shaped the last 10 years? We entered a new decade in largely gloomy fashion, still suffering from the ramifications of the global financial crisis two years before. No surprise then that Michael Lewis’s The Big Short , which explained how America’s subprime mortgage crisis made a few people very rich and everyone else a lot poorer, struck a chord. Lewis is a literary whistleblower: a former Salomon Brothers employee who dished the dirt on his brash colleagues in 1989’s Liar’s Poker and then went on to make a career as an explainer of complex economics and organisations to mass audiences who couldn’t believe people got away with this stuff. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2MtWLzY
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The Repair Shop: ‘We can fix anything but a broken heart – and Brexit’

Stephen Fry called it the ‘best show on TV’ and Kathy Burke can’t hold back the tears. Jay Blades and his team of fixers on becoming the comfort TV smash of 2019 It is a true feat to make it through an episode of The Repair Shop without shedding a tear. While the premise of the BBC show is straightforward (members of the public bring broken, treasured items to be repaired by a team of experts), it is also the rarest of TV gems: an uplifting hour about the power of memory and how even simple belongings can become inseparable from our lives. It is also a show that has slowly but surely gained a legion of loyal fans, becoming the comfort TV smash of 2019. Regularly topping 2 million viewers, its celebrity fans include Richard Osman, Kathy Burke and Greg James. Stephen Fry called it “the best programme on British television” and a fine antidote to “the mad digital world”. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2Zplvyx
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Chances Are by Richard Russo review – the role of luck in American lives

This acute look at decisions and destiny follows three friends from the lottery of the Vietnam draft to the end of Obama’s presidency Watching the lottery on television these days may bring the minimal chance of becoming a multimillionaire, but for American men born between 1944 and 1950, the numbers that were nationally broadcast either quickened or distanced the possibility of violent death. The order in which eligible males would be conscripted to fight in the Vietnam war was decided by random picking of capsules containing all 366 possible birthdays (the army had spotted the loophole through which leap year men might have escaped). In the bravura opening scene of Richard Russo’s ninth novel, three 19-year-olds at a Connecticut arts college watch a tiny black-and-white TV in December 1969, as the first draft ballot unfolds. What steady Lincoln Moser, arty Teddy Novak and rock music-obsessed Mickey Girardi see will shape their fates. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guard
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Loop by Brenda Lozano review – a glorious tapestry of ideas

The Mexican author’s first book to be translated into English takes the form of a diary whose loose structure belies its artful unravelling Here are just a few of the threads braided across the 180 pages of Loop : dwarves, swallows, rubbish trucks, notebooks, the sea, survival, sex, friendship, corruption, the future, longing, Ovid, avian transformation, bad poetry, Coriolanus , power, meaning and triviality in art, fame, significance, gang violence, convalescence, rebirth. All these themes and more are woven into a glorious tapestry of literary enthusiasms. Brenda Lozano is among several contemporary Mexican writers whose playfully innovative work has met with acclaim in the UK. And Other Stories publishes Yuri Herrera and Cristina Rivera Garza ; Granta and 4th Estate have been publishing the unclassifiable Mexican-American novels of Booker-longlisted Valeria Luiselli . Let’s hope more of Lozano’s work will follow. The narrator loves books, all kinds of books, and one of her princi
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Call the Midwife Christmas special review – babies, it’s cold outside!

The ladies of Nonnatus House may be off to the chilly Outer Hebrides, but 90 minutes of heartfelt, high-octane drama in their company will warm you right up ‘I’m sorry but this is a completely dreadful way to convalesce,” says Trixie, wearing a dozen layers, while grimly peeling potatoes in a stone-cold, gloomy church. But the chill is shortlived – this is the Call the Midwife Christmas special (BBC One), after all, and you’re in for an hour-and-a-half of so much radiated warmth you may as well turn down the central heating. It’s 1964 and the nuns and midwives of Nonnatus House – all recovering from flu – have decamped. It’s Mother Mildred’s idea, or rather God’s. They are off to somewhere nursing is needed, with no doctor, an inhospitable climate and “fickle” running water and electricity: the Outer Hebrides. It’s beautiful, but no spa holiday. “I detect an animal odour underfoot,” says Mother Mildred (Miriam Margolyes) as they enter the cavernous church-cum-youth-hostel that is th
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An Elephant Sitting Still: filmmaker Hu Bo’s bitter indictment of contemporary China

This bitter indictment of life in contemporary China proved a tour-de-force for 28-year-old director and writer Hu Bo. Sadly, the sense of hopeless­ness that permeates the 2018 film is as much a cry for help as it is social comment­ary; Hu took his own life soon after completing it. The work went on to win the best feature film award at the prestigious Golden Horse Film Festival last year.Although An Elephant Sitting Still is not autobiographical, its depiction of existen­tial despair is… from South China Morning Post https://ift.tt/2PUNOSk
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Helen George: ‘With its female-led cast and crew, Call the Midwife was ahead of its time'

The Call the Midwife star on filming a Christmas special and her new role in My Cousin Rachel on stage Birmingham-born actor Helen George, 35, is best known as nurse Trixie Franklin in BBC One’s hit drama Call the Midwife . She is currently playing the title role in Theatre Royal Bath’s touring production of Daphne du Maurier’s My Cousin Rachel . How was filming Call the Midwife ’s festive special in the Outer Hebrides? Pretty spectacular. We shot it on the island of Lewis and Harris, which was so scenic and cinematic. We saw stags and eagles every day. Bloody freezing, though – I didn’t remove my long johns the whole time, but I’m a southern softie. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2QgUjOu
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The New Yorker’s Twenty-Five Best Poems of 2019

Hannah Aizenman writes about twenty-five of the best poems published in The New Yorker in 2019, including works by Rita Dove, Sharon Olds, Ciaran Carson, Ariel Francisco, Aria Aber, Kwame Dawes, Ilya Kaminsky, Kaveh Akbar, Eliza Griswold, and Shane McCrae. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2PVpEY8
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Netflix series The Witcher tries to match Game of Thrones success, but reactions are mixed

With fantasy drama fans still smarting from the end of HBO’s Games of Thrones and searching for a new favourite, Netflix started streaming The Witcher last week.The eight-episode series is based on the long-running string of novels and short stories by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski. It has previously been adapted into comics and video games.The Witcher follows the story of Gerald of Rivia, played by Henry Cavill, a medieval beast hunter with supernatural abilities, along with sorceress… from South China Morning Post https://ift.tt/2rn9QUi
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Allee Willis, songwriter behind Friends theme tune, dies aged 72

Willis penned hits for Earth, Wind & Fire, and wrote score for musical The Color Purple Allee Willis, the US songwriter behind the Friends theme tune as well as hits such as September by Earth, Wind & Fire, has died aged 72. She had suffered a sudden heart attack and Willis’s partner, Prudence Fenton was described as being “in total shock” over the news. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2QhUN6T
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Top 10 books about loneliness | Fay Bound Alberti

At what can be one of the loneliest times of year, a historian of emotion picks the best books about a modern malady Loneliness is everywhere. Or so it seems. It’s been described in medical terms, as an epidemic , plague and infection. It has its own minister in the UK, Baroness Barran , with indications that other countries – Switzerland, Germany, maybe even the US – may follow suit. The problem is that loneliness is seldom defined. It’s often presented as an individual, even universal, mental affliction. But loneliness is relatively new. The word comes into common usage around 1800, linked to social change – especially the secularity, alienation and competition produced by modernity. Before then it was solitude that interested writers and philosophers. Solitude could be problematic, but in a landscape forged by God, was one ever alone? Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/34R242J
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Body Tourists by Jane Rogers review – holidays for dead souls

Wealthy deceased people become short-stay ‘tourists’ in young, living bodies in this dystopic thought experiment Jane Rogers has written some highly regarded literary fiction, not least her fine historical novel Mr Wroe’s Virgins in 1991. But she’s no stranger to science fiction, either: The Testament of Jessie Lamb , about a near future in which a virus is killing off pregnant women, won the 2012 Arthur C Clarke award. Her new novel is another sci-fi dystopia, set in a Britain in which the bulk of the population are stuck in mega “estates” (“81% of children born on estates have never been off them”, we’re told; “90% have never seen the sea or a live animal”), living hardscrabble lives, addicted to immersive virtual reality games and pornography. Into this grimly plausible extrapolation from today, Rogers drops the novel’s main premise. A scientist called Luke Butler has come up with a way of uploading the consciousnesses of dead people into the bodies of the young. This technology
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The most exciting movies of 2020 – family films

Mulan fights her way out of controversy, Pixar jams with a jazz Coco and Keanu Reeves stars opposite SpongeBob Squarepants in next year’s most promising kids’ flicks More of the most anticipated films of 2020 We had a pretty good version of Roald Dahl ’s The Witches in 1990, but that was a whole generation ago. Now the story gets a redo with Anne Hathaway taking over from Anjelica Huston as the leader of the witchy cause. The whole thing has been relocated to 1960s Alabama; Robert Zemeckis directs. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2saoNK2
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Mrs Delany: A Life by Clarissa Campbell Orr review – an 18th-century late bloomer

Mary Delany found fame for her flower ‘mosaiks’ in her 70s, but this followed decades of turbulence Mary Delany didn’t experience her big breakthrough until she was 72. This would be an achievement for any artist, but for one living in the 18th century, when lives and careers generally stopped at 40, it was extraordinary. Delany had spent decades being competent at all the usual “accomplishments” required of a genteel Georgian woman: embroidering napkins, sketching landscapes and, oddest of all, sticking sea shells to mantelpieces to make them look like plaster stucco. But at some point, sitting out in the garden in the golden late summer of 1772, she felt inspired to pick up her scissors and start snipping into coloured paper to see if she could recreate the shape of the plants spread out before her. Thrilled by the results, Delany wrote cock-a-hoop to her niece a few weeks later: “I have invented a new way of imitating flowers.” Delany’s productions remain hard to place and diffic
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Motsi Mabuse: ‘People didn't expect black people in ballgowns’

Strictly’s newest judge learned to stick up for herself in apartheid-era South Africa. She talks racism, the ‘rift’ with her sister Oti – and learning to dance amid knife fights Motsi Mabuse is remembering the rough dance halls of apartheid-era South Africa and the shocking sights she would see as she took her first tentative steps across their floors. “When we had competitions,” she says, “we didn’t have security and people would be drunk and starting fights. We were just kids and we’d watch people with knives running through while we were in the middle of a routine. Compared to that, Strictly isn’t so difficult.” Mabuse, the newest judge on Strictly Come Dancing, first fell for the glitterball world at the age of nine after watching couples waltz, swing and cha-cha-cha while on holiday in Durban. “What I love about my parents is that they didn’t say: ‘Oh, you can’t do that.’ They found a way. But we had a lot of backlash, being the only black kids. People would laugh at us and call
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The Garden of Evening Mists film review: Malaysian historical drama starring Hiroshi Abe, Angelica Lee Sinje

2.5/5 starsThe struggle of a Malaysian woman to preserve the memory of her younger sister, who died at the hands of Japanese colonial forces, propels Zinnia Flower director Tom Lin Shu-yu’s lavish drama covering three dramatic decades of Malaysia’s history.Adapted from Tan Twan Eng’s Man Asian Literary Prize winning novel, The Garden of Evening Mists won the 2019 Golden Horse Award for best make-up and costume design, and weaves a complex tapestry of grief, prejudice, romance and artistic… from South China Morning Post https://ift.tt/2PWGupw
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