Cultural News Today

How does it feel to see a show you’ve spent years working on being pulled? From Love Islanders to Foals, Laura Wade and Wayne McGregor, artists reveal their darkest days – and deepest worries Iain Stirling, voice of Love Island , standup comedian Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2XlvTrS

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Emily Witt on confrontations between New York City police officers and protesters during rallies and marches following the killing of George Floyd, in Minneapolis. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2XjWrJL

Luke Mogelson reports from the scene of George Floyd’s killing, where protesters have spread through the city to battle law enforcement, chastise looters, and fight to be heard. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2XiIqMw

Bleak, bulky yet strangely beautiful, village halls are the beating heart of rural Britain, where great events happen for £8 an hour. We meet a photographer celebrating these harmonious hubs A row of karate kids are performing mawashi geri kicks in unison to the cries of their teacher. Coincidentally, in the room next door, the Brownies are learning first aid. The next morning, a gaggle of pensioners arrive and are soon waltzing to wartime classics. Then, by the afternoon, a jumble sale is in full swing. One week later, dozens of people are queuing up to vote, hot on the heels of a neighbourhood forum discussing a contentious planning application. These are just a few moments in the life of a humble village hall. More than any other building type, the village hall represents the ultimate multifunctional democratic space. It is a forum for raffles, cake sales, birthday parties, fitness classes, political meetings and more – a witness, as Jethro Marshall puts it, “to great human event

Available online Anna Tsygankova is utterly graceful as the exotic dancer in Ted Brandsen’s fine ballet for Dutch National Ballet Hottest front-room seats: the best theatre and dance to watch online Oh, to have been in Paris in the belle époque. As dance reinvented itself – from the Folies Bergère to the Ballets Russes, Loie Fuller to Isadora Duncan – it’s where a young woman also might choose to reinvent herself. Like 26-year-old Dutch divorcee Margaretha Zelle, who became the exotic dancer Mata Hari . Dutch National Ballet’s artistic director Ted Brandsen explores the misunderstood Mata Hari in a very fine ballet that is a window on a moment of dance history as well as the plight of a woman trying to survive outside society’s norms. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2yLX1Xk

Rachel Ang illustrates a humorous list of acts that have become newly patriotic. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/36NFb32

Audience numbers for live radio have soared. Presenters from the national to the local talk about the medium’s unique way of connecting There was a moment, in early lockdown, when everything “live” seemed to stop. No gigs, no plays, no clubs, no classes, no festivals. Nothing happening right now, no moments that brought you closer to strangers, nothing spontaneous and fun and immediate. Nothing, except radio. Radio gives us, as it always has, a constantly live event, familiar but ever changing. Whether you’re a news junkie, a music fiend, or you just like silly chat, there are stations for you. There are phone-ins if you want to vent, pop quizzes for distraction, sing-alongs, help with schoolwork. Plus, if you find a show you like, a DJ can become a replacement friend – a warm presence chuntering in the kitchen corner, cracking quips over your headphones, blasting tunes out of speakers you’ve put on the window ledge. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3

The Australian standup feared she would spook audiences with her frank examination of trauma, but it made her a star. With new show Douglas on Netflix, she’s taking risks of a different kind Soon after she opens her new standup comedy show, Douglas , the Australian comedian Hannah Gadsby challenges the audience by asking: “If you’re here because of Nanette , why? What the fuck are you expecting of this show? I’m sorry, but, if it’s more trauma, I’m fresh out.” Douglas , now available on Netflix, is Gadsby’s follow up to her global standup phenomenon, Nanette . Nanette was a scream of visceral soul-baring, with Gadsby venting her rage and pain about being a woman, being gay, about homophobia (recounting how she’d been beaten up in the street), institutionalised misogyny, and more, all the while deconstructing comedy itself. By the time Nanette aired on Netflix in 2018, Gadsby, now 42, had been performing standup for more than a decade, as well as acting and writing, but her blisteri

Tests your arts knowledge with these questions from the Observer’s critics Francis Ford Coppola was given his middle name in honour of who or what? The Ford motor company Michigan congressman Gerald Ford (later President Ford) Film director John Ford Which painter impressed a pope by drawing a perfect circle? Michelangelo Giotto Leonardo da Vinci Which TV anthology series did Lady Gaga join in 2015? American Horror Story True Detective Unsolved Which of the following did not happen to Brian De Palma? He stole a motorbike and was shot in the leg following a police chase He crashed a motorbike and lost one testicle and most of the skin from his buttock As a child, he stalked his father with a camera, hoping to find proof of his infidelity The Danish composer Carl Nielsen’s Symphony No 4 (1916) is also known as: The Inexhaustible The Indistinguishable The Inextinguishable The Bangladeshi film Amra Ekta Cinema Banabo (The Innocence) was released in Bangladeshi cinemas

Hats off to Headlong’s cracking series of short lockdown dramas. Elsewhere, Steve Carell fails to take off but Janelle Monáe enthrals Unprecedented (BBC Four) | BBC iPlayer A House Through Time (BBC Two) | BBC iPlayer The First Team (BBC Two) | BBC iPlayer Space Force ( Netflix ) Upload ( Amazon ) Homecoming ( Amazon ) If one thing’s been travelling faster than this tawdry wee breathsucker of a virus it’s our social attitudes to it; from semi-amused incomprehension a mere nine weeks ago to a sudden month of truly healthy and inventive stoicism; then after one mid-May week of blitheringly mixed messaging, the inevitable collapse of kind cohesion, and Britain’s apparent default setting of twitchy partisanship, blame-gaming and whataboutery. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2TS4xHK

The Observer’s critics recommend the best new arts shows to enjoy on TV and online Nicola Benedetti’s Virtual Sessions Star violinist Nicola Benedetti’s mass online tutorials , for players of every age and level, culminate in a grand finale performance of the Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis by Vaughan Williams, with Karina Canellakis conducting. Today at 4pm on Nicola Benedetti’s YouTube channel ; details at benedettifoundation.org Fiona Maddocks Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2ZTeU1u

Some are now shops, some are churches – but each had a role in musical history. Photographer Paul Talling has documented the story of 150 of them When they were in their prime, these places saw it all: the Who smashing their guitars on stage; the debut of a 16-year-old Amy Winehouse; the arrival of 60s rhythm and blues, 70s punk, 80s pop and 90s rock. But some of the venues that helped launch musical careers from Status Quo to the Sex Pistols are now far from the spotlight, languishing in corners of London as laundrettes, fried chicken joints and even police stations. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3gDi8MK

Taste of America comes to Britain this summer, as events planners adapt to post-lockdown life A distinctive slice of Americana will descend on the British countryside this summer as medieval castles and stately homes swap landscaped lawns for drive-in movie theatres. Giant screens showing nostalgic singalongs including Grease and The Blues Brothers will be beamed across the night sky while roller-skating waiters deliver burgers, fries and chocolate to moviegoers cocooned in their own cars. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2MdUCrN

From The New Yorker’s archive: stories about higher education and school life in transition, by Masha Gessen, Dan Chiasson, Hua Hsu, Mary McCarthy, and David Sedaris. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/3gDgPgB

Anna Altman writes about Lisa Sorgini’s new photo series, which offers ethereal portraits of parenting in isolation during the coronavirus pandemic. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/3cieip0

A free, online cryptic crossword puzzle from the New Yorker’s archive, 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/2MhmgnM

The pianist played Erik Satie’s “Vexations,” one of the longest compositions in the classical-music canon, to raise awareness for the plight of artists and performers during the coronavirus pandemic. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/3erQGQa

Much fanfare accompanied the global debut of Netflix’s recent star signing, South Korea’s The King: Eternal Monarch. As series one nears the climax of its 16-show run, has the dimension-busting, science-fiction fantasy romance fulfilled its early promise?Going straight into many a first-choice viewing line-up, The King arrived with a bloody flourish, the monarch being cut down by his envious half-brotherin a burst of Hamlet-inspired regicide.Next came parallel worlds thrown open by demons, a… from South China Morning Post https://ift.tt/2XmcFT3

Kathryn Kvas and Irving Ruan imagine a humorous list of recent Google searches while in quarantine owing to the coronavirus. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2XeBiRp

For the Bridesmaids star, playing Gloria Steinem in her 1970s battle for women’s rights has been a reminder that the same arguments are raging today A few days before New York locked down and Broadway closed indefinitely, Rose Byrne was on stage in Brooklyn, doing Medea. It was a sold-out run, co-starring her husband, Bobby Cannavale, in an updated version of the Euripides classic. Already, in that first week of March, people were starting to not show up, and those who did were in an odd mood. “There was something subdued about the audience,” says Byrne. “I mean, it’s Medea – and not Tyler Perry ’s version – so it’s not full of laughs.” Still, she says, “the last week was strange. You could feel a tension.” The show closed on 8 March, one of the few in the city to finish its run. Four days later, the theatres went dark. Since then, the 40-year-old actor, along with Cannavale and their two kids, both under five, have been in their home in Brooklyn. Byrne peers into the camera from a

Jelani Cobb writes that, like the coronavirus crisis, the riots following George Floyd’s death stemmed not from treacherous unknowns but from the Trump Administration’s failure to learn from even the most recent past. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2zBD5XT

Steve Coll writes about President Donald Trump’s attacks on the process of voting by mail, and the funding and logistical shortcomings that will make it a challenge this fall. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2TShgtE

The musician will perform "Vexations," by Erik Satie, one of the longest pieces in the history of music. Levit wants to raise awareness of the struggles musicians are enduring amid lockdown. from Deutsche Welle: DW.com - Culture & Lifestyle https://ift.tt/3expNu1

The pandemic has unleashed a series of earnest, grating TV ads, from grandiose tinfoil-hattery to a chilling Maltesers mystery Modern Toss on cheesy lockdown adverts You have to pity British Airways. The airline has always sold itself to us with a simple deal: we give it money, and it flies us somewhere nice. But now that Covid-19 has robbed us of the latter, BA has been forced to come up with a brand new USP. And what it has landed on is this: British Airways loves you more than the other boys do. No, really. Its Covid ad is formed of an open letter to the country, in which various socially distanced members of staff say how proud they are of us. We’re coping well with lockdown, they say, and they’ll be waiting to take us on holiday again soon. And then, as a weird final flourish, they literally say: “We love you Britain”, three times in a row. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2XMZWaI

As lockdown is relaxed, many in the NHS are left reeling. Palliative care doctor Rachel Clarke shares her experience working with coronavirus patients, and her fears of a second wave It is mid-April. Death has been headline news for so long now, I am beginning to feel like a plague doctor. My next patient, an 89-year-old from a care home, is perilously ill. Despite the highest flow of oxygen we can deliver through his face mask, he is gasping for air at a rate of 40 breaths per minute, two or three times the norm. Swiftly, I search his hospital record for a glimpse of the man he used to be before coronavirus so violently reduced him. In my mind, the voices from this morning’s car radio linger. Listening to the politicians and journalists talk – loftily, from afar, an Olympian perspective – coronavirus can feel like a mathematical abstraction, an intellectual exercise played out in curves and peaks and troughs and modelling. But here in the hospital, the pandemic is a matter of flesh

With fans including Cardi B, Jay-Z and, er, Piers Morgan, Kehlani is the most in-demand name in R&B. She reflects on online abuse, motherhood and her love of Star Wars Just before lockdown, Kehlani had a meeting with the head of her label. Her second album, It Was Good Until It Wasn’t , was pretty much finished, she just needed the green light. Instead, it was decided to scrap the music videos she’d already planned, delay the album and play the waiting game (a stadium support slot with Justin Bieber was cancelled, too). “I was pretty bummed, but they’re the label, I can’t fight that,” she says from her home in LA. Talking via Zoom, the 25-year-old is propped up against the headboard of her kingsized bed and dressed down in a baggy T-shirt that reveals a Technicolor tapestry of tattoos on both arms. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2zJitge

Ten years ago the novelist created slogans that captured the isolated nature of contemporary life. But when Covid-19 hit, his artworks began to feel eerily prescient I was in Toronto for both waves of Sars in 2003. You didn’t quibble with the disease. Globally, it killed one in 10 of its victims. Toronto had 44 deaths. The Toronto Sars experience was similar to, but different from, Covid. One huge difference is that in 2003, the internet and smartphones were still in semi-infancy. There was a crazy deadly virus out there and like now, people wore masks and stayed inside. But importantly, they weren’t spending all their waking hours terrifying themselves with dire forecasts, quack statistical modelling, blatant misinformation and political toxic waste – and the Sars experience was clearly, distinctly, far less scary than Covid-19. There’s a lesson there. Eight years later in Vancouver – and this will ultimately connect up – I hosted a “YouTube Night” at a friend’s nightclub. My MacBoo

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Marella Gayla writes about the photographer Chris Facey and the photos he captured at a May 28th protest, in New York City’s Union Square, of the police killing of George Floyd, in Minneapolis. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/3gBVPXK

Benjamin Wallace-Wells writes about the killing of George Floyd, in Minneapolis, and how the gap between the liberal mayors who run many big cities and the officers who help police them seems especially pronounced now. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/3chQnWq

Isaac Chotiner interviews Omar Wasow, a politics professor at Princeton, about violent and nonviolent protest tactics, and what they can tell us about the demonstrations after the death of George Floyd, in Minneapolis. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/3ey2Re6

The show brands itself "occasionally true" but keeps the essence of Catherine intact. from Culture - ELLE https://ift.tt/2AjypWo

Drum set-like disinfectant dispensers, singers behind plexiglass and a mascot from a parallel universe: The Moers Festival is dealing with its first audience-free edition imaginatively. from Deutsche Welle: DW.com - Culture & Lifestyle https://ift.tt/3euDpGp

Hannah Goldfield on Astoria’s Bel Aire Diner, which has adapted to the pandemic by hosting drive-in movies in its parking lot. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/3euvdWF

Diane Lane, Blair Underwood, and Phillipa Soo are some of the stars appearing in new short plays that will stream online. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2XF9QeC

Booze-fuelled noir, monsters in girls’ schools and Christian propaganda are all on the Drive director’s lockdown viewing roster Read all the other Lockdown watch choices Read all the What I’m really watching choices Read the other classic missed films choices I’ve been asked to report on what I’ve been watching during quarantine. Mostly, it’s the news – who can top that these days – but when I want to savour that ancient art form called the motion picture, I go to the best joint in town, which happens to be my own website, byNWR.com . Allow me to list a few favourites for your viewing pleasure … Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2M5YPgW

Ahead of her final kitchen disco livestream, the singer has been listening to Prince’s rudest hits and doing Lion King numbers with her kids Time alone has been in short supply. In the mornings, when I get up with Mickey, my youngest, we’ve been watching Grayson Perry’s Art Club and Celebrity SAS. When I put the kids to bed, I quite often take a glass of wine and do some Lego. I got this massive Ninjago City set for Christmas, and I just finished it. That’s been really good for my head. Doing the kitchen discos has meant an incredible amount to us. It’s been an anchor for each week, but also escapism. I’ve been singing songs I haven’t sung for years. It’s a portal – suddenly you’re 17 and in an indie club. I discovered disco in my early 20s once I started listening to dance music. As someone who sings along to stuff, I like stories, and disco is the first place that dance music told stories. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2XEqCKR

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time author on discovering Germaine Greer, his dislike of Stieg Larsson and the comforts of reading The Wind in the Willows The book I am currently reading Homie by Danez Smith, Rusty Brown by Chris Ware and Ice by Anna Kavan, to name only the top three on the pile. The book that changed my life The Ascent of Man by Jacob Bronowski. Technically, it’s the book of a TV series about the role of science in the development of human society. I was 11 when I first saw it, and I can still feel the thrill of watching a great door swing open on to a world of ideas. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2MaIwzG

Ahead of Friday night’s season 12 finale, past victors including Jinkx Monsoon, Alaska and Sasha Velour look back at what the crown meant for them An hour before the first episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race season three aired on US cable network Logo TV, Raja turned up for her gig at Micky’s, a popular gay bar in West Hollywood. Months had passed since filming had finished on the series, and despite knowing she was the winner, baby, little else in her life had changed.  It was January 2011, and the US reality competition was still very much in its infancy. While today (global pandemics aside) queens are booked up for a whirlwind of international tours as soon as their casting on the show is announced – global rights deals giving the cultural phenomena a vast and lucrative international audience – back then, things were more low key. She might have pocketed $75,000 in prize money, but after filming finished, Raja went back to working as a makeup artist, doing drag on the side as before. 

Falmouth Art Gallery in Cornwall set today’s quiz, which lets you explore the art collections of museums around the UK closed due to coronavirus – while answering some difficult questions This quiz is brought to you in collaboration with Art UK , the online home for the UK’s public art collections, showing art from more than 3,000 venues and by 45,000 artists. Each day, a different collection on Art UK will set the questions. Today, our questions are set by Falmouth Art Gallery. The award-winning gallery houses one of the most important art collections in Cornwall, featuring works by major artists from Sir Edward Burne-Jones and Thomas Gainsborough to Tacita Dean, Grace Gardner, Ben Nicholson and George Frederic Watts. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3gvMBw1

Despite his downfall, certain of his songs have been deemed too good to lose, and Billie Jean tops the list Read our 100 greatest list as it counts down Billie Jean is not cancelled. Whatever personal arrangement you may have come to regarding the life and music of Michael Jackson , the culture at large has made its decision. In radio stations, gyms, cafes and wedding dancefloors (at least when they were open) certain of his songs have been deemed too good to lose, and Billie Jean tops the list. On one level that makes sense: it’s Jackson’s biggest-selling solo single, and one of the biggest hits by anyone ever. Yet it remains a thoroughly bizarre record, spawned in the darker precincts of Jackson’s imagination. Billie Jean was his Rubicon. From the Jackson 5’ s first singles through to Off the Wall’s hymns to the weekend, Jackson had a preternatural gift for making people feel good. Billie Jean, however, reeks with the paranoia that came to dominate Jackson’s career. It is a hunt

Continuing our series of writers recommending underappreciated films is a shoutout for one of Troma’s most gonzo B-movies A film about a series of hilariously grotesque murders on a B-movie film set certainly isn’t going to be to everyone’s taste. But if you’ve ever enjoyed the gross-out stylings of early Peter Jackson or the whack-a-mole, no-holds-barred comedy of South Park then this is a good jumping on point to embrace the long, storied history of Troma Entertainment. Related: My streaming gem: why you should watch The President's Barber Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2BdprKQ

The New York rapper has been revisiting the sweet R&B sounds that dominated her city at the turn of the millennium The situation is giving me a lot of anxiety, but other than that I can’t begin to tell you how lazy I am sometimes and how much I just love being home. I’ve been spending the time doing what I always do, honestly: cooking, cleaning, choring at home. I don’t live this ostentatious life. TV is my guiltiest pleasure, it’s the best way I like to enjoy my time. I’ve watched all of #blackAF and Never Have I Ever . I do and don’t miss performing. It takes a lot out of me, so if I can be home I actually prefer it. It’s always a little unnatural, and the only thing I really love about tour is being on stage and connecting with people. I don’t like travelling and sleeping in hotels. But I’ve been working quite a lot. I’ve been in a really creative space, and it’s been really wonderful to actually be able to work, to have the privilege of making new music which I’m really exci

Tired of high-res graphics and cinematic story arcs? Here are some of the best old-school video games you can play today In difficult times, nostalgia can be a balm, and sometimes you want your games to be totally uncomplicated. Currently celebrating its 40th anniversary, the original iteration of Pac-Man still rules. It is a simple game – gobble the dots, avoid the ghosts – but the genius is in the details: did you know that each ghost behaves slightly differently according to their personality? Smartphones and consoles Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2Mbz1Ae

The COVID-19 pandemic has helped congeal numerous fringe conspiracy theories that tend to rise up from the internet's darkest corners. But such paranoia has been around for centuries, and once was much more prevalent. from Deutsche Welle: DW.com - Culture & Lifestyle https://ift.tt/3gAoT1G

The 1992 accusation that the film-maker sexually assaulted his young daughter has made him a pariah, yet he was never charged. In this exclusive interview, he explains why he is done with treading carefully When Woody Allen was 20, the writer Danny Simon taught him a few rules about comedy, the most important of which was this: always trust your own judgment, because external opinion is meaningless. Allen recounts this tale in his recently published memoir, Apropos of Nothing . That this book exists at all is proof that he still adheres to that rule. These days, Allen’s name is mud, a fact made clear by the critics, who wrote their reviews with one hand while holding their noses with the other. The New York Times’ critic wrote : “Volunteering to review [this book], in our moral climate, is akin to volunteering for the 2021 Olympic javelin-catching team.” Another publication’s headline was: “I Read Woody Allen’s Memoir So You Don’t Have To.” Continue reading... from Culture | The

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Susan Glasser writes about the misinformation, disinformation, and outright lies emanating from President Donald Trump, largely via his tweeting, which in recent months has taken a darker and more manic turn. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/3gtR2Yt

What is a martial arts film? Hong Kong martial arts films fall broadly into two categories, wuxia and kung fu. Wuxia films feature armed combat, usually swordplay, while kung fu films mainly feature unarmed combat. The two types of film are quite distinct, although kung fu films will sometimes feature a scene that includes fighting with poles (also called staffs), the favoured weapon of Shaolin monks, and the villains will often use weaponry.The word wuxia translates roughly as “martial heroes”… from South China Morning Post https://ift.tt/2X8U78l

Kerry Elson jokes about the reactions of people who, now that the coronavirus pandemic has caused widespread lockdowns and restaurant closures, find themselves bewildered by recipes and by the concept of basic ingredients. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2X7jPKG

Dominik Moll’s thriller charts an unhappily married woman’s terrifying fate and her mysterious connections to five other people Twenty years ago, director Dominik Moll made a splash at Cannes with his black-comic psychological shocker Harry, Un Ami Qui Vous Veut Du Bien , starring the incomparably disturbing Sergi López – a film with the kind of delicious cruelty and sophistication that somehow only the French can produce. Its title over here was inelegantly rendered Harry, He’s Here to Help, although I made a doomed attempt to popularise my own version: Harry Wants to Be Your Friend. After that, Moll had a number of credits, but nothing to live up to that picture, which promised us a film-maker with the style of Claude Chabrol. But now Moll has given us this audacious, witty and absorbing mystery thriller, a tale of adultery and amour fou with a gamey touch of the macabre – adapted by Moll and his longtime collaborator Gilles Marchand from the novel, Seules Les Bêtes by Colin Niel.

Naomi Fry writes about a new video documentary, “Dating in Place,” by the filmmaker Simon Mendes, which lets viewers listen in as couples navigate a new world of virtual-only first dates via Zoom. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2zD8Pf2

Broadcaster and historian says A Life on Our Planet book will record ‘dreadful damage wrought by mankind’ and propose solutions David Attenborough is to publish his “vision for the future” of Earth this autumn, laying out “the dreadful damage” done by humanity, and the ways “we can begin to turn things round”. A Life on Our Planet, which the 94-year-old has described as his “witness statement”, will cover his career documenting the natural world and his first-hand observations of the decline of the planet’s environment and biodiversity, as well as possible solutions. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2M6VVsg

Venues will enforce physical distancing and hygiene rules if lockdown is further eased Coronavirus – latest updates See all our coronavirus coverage Cineworld is planning to reopen all its UK cinemas in July as the government eases coronavirus lockdown measures. The world’s second-largest cinema chain, which operates 128 venues in the UK and Ireland, is hoping to reopen in time for Christopher Nolan’s Tenet, scheduled for release on 17 July, followed by the Disney blockbuster Mulan . Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3caIylF

Phil Oakey might have hated it, but his hook-laden hit about sexual power politics brought synth-pop in from the cold Read our 100 greatest list as it counts down Sometimes you can’t quite trust artists to tell the truth about their best work. Speaking to Smash Hits around the time of Don’t You Want Me’s release and subsequent rise to the top of the charts in 1981, Human League singer Phil Oakey enthused: “It’s the best song I’ve ever written. It’s a proper song like the kind that Earth, Wind and Fire or Abba would write.” Producer Martin Rushent claimed that Oakey actually hated the eventual hit so much that he tried to stop it being released. Whatever the truth of the matter, Oakey’s public pronouncements were correct – this is aspirational music that chimed with the times yet had none of the ruthless, cynical avarice of the decade, and pop, to come. Don’t You Want Me was to crown the breakout year for electronic pop music – Soft Cell had hit the top of the charts in the same y

Whether hiking on the mudflats of the North Sea coast or horse riding in the Lüneburger Heide heath — Lower Saxony's landscape is diverse. Here are some travel tips for the time after the coronavirus crisis. from Deutsche Welle: DW.com - Culture & Lifestyle https://ift.tt/3gocqOy

The award-winning writer of The Inheritance pays tribute to the life and works of the acclaimed author and activist who died at the age of 84 Larry Kramer, groundbreaking author and Aids activist, dies aged 84 Larry Kramer: a pioneering life in pictures The first time many Americans heard about Larry Kramer was from an interview he gave to NBC News in 1983, in which he spelled out for journalist Jane Pauley what, exactly, was happening to the gay community. Pauley asked him how many friends he had lost to Aids. Kramer’s reply: 20. Pauley seemed genuinely shocked at that number and repeated it back to him, as if to make sure she wasn’t mis-hearing. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2yEaIaN

The star of Big Wednesday and Point Break on being the hardest-partying man in Hollywood, the motorbike accident that changed his life – and his new reality show, Pet Judge Gary Busey promises I won’t have come across anything like his new show, Pet Judge. He’s right; I haven’t. But, to be fair, I’ve never come across anybody like Gary Busey. He really is a one-off – Hollywood legend, coke fiend, brain-damage survivor, sobriety champion, spiritualist and reality-show winner. When he was a contestant on The Celebrity Apprentice in the US, Donald Trump concluded: “He’s either a genius or a moron and I can’t figure it out.” Well, I know which side I come down on. Pet Judge is a new Amazon Prime series, with Busey playing himself – only this Busey is presiding over a court in which litigants resolve quarrels about their pets. One couple are in dispute over the death of their cat; the wife wants it buried in the family mausoleum and the husband wants a Viking funeral, with the cat sent ou

Riot Games’ new shooter is already being hailed as a threat to Fortnite, Counter-Strike and Overwatch – and barely anyone has played it yet 25 best video games to help you socialise while self-isolating On a Tuesday in early April, viewers around the globe watched streamers on Twitch play one particular game for a combined 34m hours, smashing established live-streaming viewership records. The game in question, Valorant by Riot Games, has been averaging hundreds of thousands of daily spectators ever since, quickly displacing Twitch stalwarts such as League of Legends and Fortnite . Valorant is a ready-baked esport: a competitive shooter designed to be watched as well as played. After a few weeks with Valorant, I’ve found it to be a careful mix of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive’s meticulous but rewarding gunplay and Overwatch ’s characters and soft-edged charm. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3dmq0Al

The hip-hop legend has been winding back the clock to Vietnam and Michael Jordan’s heyday while working on a lockdown beard Read all the other Lockdown watch choices Read all the What I’m really watching choices Read the other classic missed films choices I’m with my wife, my son, Shareef, and my daughter, Karima, so there’s four in the house. We’ve got plenty of room to get away from each other, but enough common areas to hang out. How many TVs do we have? Too many. I’ve been all over the place when it comes to films. I still love Devil in a Blue Dress with Denzel Washington and Se7en with Brad Pitt. I’m watching a lot of documentaries. I saw one on the Vietnam war. I was young when that war was going on, so I never understood the ins and outs and the pros and cons. I’ve watched a lot of sports documentaries. The Last Dance with Michael Jordan on Netflix is great. He’s one of my heroes. It’s inspirational to watch an athlete at his highest level. It’s cool to see what wa

He roomed with a New York Doll and photographed the seedy clubs where Manhattan’s misfits, outsiders and famous faces went out to experience a thrilling new sound In early 1976 Gary Green, aged 22 and not long out of college, was living with his parents in the suburbs of Long Island. On weekends he would travel into Manhattan to watch shows by the likes of glam-rock veterans the New York Dolls and aspiring punk poet Patti Smith. That summer, he rented an apartment in the West Village and began working as an assistant to a commercial photographer, a job that allowed him to “go out every night and take photographs”. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2AjJpTu

The Pier Arts Centre in Orkney sets today’s quiz – which enables you to explore the art collections of museums closed due to Covid-19 while answering a few brain-teasers This quiz is brought to you in collaboration with Art UK , the online home for the UK’s public art collections, showing art from over 3,000 venues and by 45,000 artists. Each day, a different collection on Art UK will set the questions. Today, our questions are set by the Pier Arts Centre, Orkney. The centre, in Stromness, is home to a fine-art collection donated by the author, peace activist and philanthropist Margaret Gardiner (1904–2005). Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2ZJ7cqP

World’s biggest classical music festival hopes to offer some live concerts at Royal Albert Hall Comment: The proms needs is audience just as we need the proms Coronavirus – latest updates See all our coronavirus coverage There will be Prom concerts this summer but not as we know them and, given there may well be no live audiences and no full orchestras, they are the great Proms gamble. The organisers of the world’s biggest classical music festival have revealed details of their 2020 plans, which will consist of six weeks of concerts from the archives. They hope to follow this with a fortnight of live music and “a rousing last night” from the Royal Albert Hall in London. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3dl9ZKA

Lachlan Mackinnon evokes the power of music to strengthen faith, in the last of Carol Ann Duffy’s comforting picks from her poetry bookshelves The poet Lachlan Mackinnon lives in Ely, and is also a distinguished critic and former teacher. Music, of all kinds, has always been important to his poetry, alongside a healing journeying towards faith. A psalmist (notably David in the Old Testament) is a composer of sacred lyrics, and sometimes poems can share this territory. The writer’s epiphany in this poem answers our own need for such moments of consolation. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2yIU75Q

3.5/5 starsIn Suk Suk, two closeted gay men on the verge of their twilight years cross paths and start a clandestine extramarital affair behind the backs of their conservative families – with quietly poignant results. Inspired by the 2014 non-fiction book Oral History of Older Gay Men in Hong Kong, this gentle and melancholic romance drama is the Chinese-language debut, and third feature overall, of writer-director Ray Yeung ( Front Cover ).Winner of the awards for best actor (Tai Bo) and best… from South China Morning Post https://ift.tt/2TImUOX

Jelani Cobb on the death of George Floyd, a forty-six-year-old African-American man, at the hands of Minneapolis police officers this week and on how policing in the United States is mediated by race. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2zAhcYE

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Scottish novelists from William McIlvanney and Ian Rankin to Denise Mina deliver all the gut-punch thrills of crime without forgetting its human cost Many crime novels end with a confession but I should start with one: whisper the heresy, but I’m not a big fan of tartan noir as a label for Scottish crime fiction. It works as an advertising slogan but doesn’t capture what the broad church of Scottish crime fiction is all about. There are so many fine novels within the canon that are either not tartan – with the archaic and cliched connotations that word can offer – or aren’t noir. My new book, Watch Him Die , is half set in Glasgow and half in Los Angeles, so its shortbread credentials are hanging by a thread. It does, however, fit into a tradition of Scottish crime novels driven by issues of duality, redemption, the nature of good and evil, and a dark, dark, humour. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2M02kFx

The Dracula star talks about filming on Zoom, if he could play Bond and the only Kubrick film he’s never seen Read all the other Lockdown watch choices Read all the What I’m really watching choices Read the other classic missed films choices I’m with my wife in the countryside, just north of Copenhagen. It’s not been as harsh here in Denmark. Everything is practically back to normal. Kids are in school, restaurants and bars are open. The only difference is the queueing outside the shops, which makes it look a bit like the Soviet Union in the 1970s. We’ve watched some old Hitchcock things like Vertigo and North By Northwest. I’ve seen almost every Stanley Kubrick film, apart from Eyes Wide Shut, which I can’t find anywhere. I’ve been watching a great Danish thing… what the fuck was that called? We’ve turned out some quite good ones like The Killing, The Bridge and Borgen. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3c9FNRk

Doug Liman on board as director of Nasa- and Elon Musk-backed movie to be shot aboard International Space Station The projected Tom Cruise space movie that became headline news after both Nasa and Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted about it in early May appears to be becoming closer to reality after film-maker Doug Liman was reported to be on board as director. Deadline reported that Liman, who has worked with Cruise on action thrillers Edge of Tomorrow and American Made, has written a script and is on the production team as well as directing. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3esNXWJ

Tickets will soon go on sale for a ‘socially distanced’ version of 2019 sellout to shore up theatre’s ‘seriously perilous’ finances due to the coronavirus pandemic Claire Foy and Matt Smith are to return to the stage in June for a series of “socially distanced performances” of the hit play Lungs. The two-hander is returning to the Old Vic theatre in London, where it had a sellout run in 2019 . This time, however, it will be performed to an empty auditorium and streamed to audiences. On stage, Foy and Smith will be observing the two-metre rule to which we have all become accustomed in public. It is the first major initiative of its kind in the UK since the coronavirus pandemic closed theatres in mid-March. Each performance of Duncan Macmillan’s play will be available for up to 1,000 people to watch online, replicating the theatre’s usual capacity. There will be matinee and evening performances, and although all audience members will have the same view, tickets will be priced from £10–

With cinemas shuttered, productions halted and film festivals cancelled, the Covid-19 pandemic has decimated the movie industry. So there’s something truly heartening about We Are One: A Global Film Festival. Beginning on Friday, this unique online event features presentations from 21 of the most prestigious film festivals around the world, including Cannes, Venice and Toronto. Best of all, it’s streaming on YouTube for free. Just like a real festival, each film, talk or performance is… from South China Morning Post https://ift.tt/2zp9yAx

Clayton Dalton writes about the psychological costs of coping techniques that have been employed by doctors and other medical personnel who treat COVID-19 patients. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2XwsdlX

Victor Luckerson writes on mask ordinances and the general coronavirus response implemented by local mayors and city councils in rural Oklahoma, where the Republican governor, Kevin Stitt, is presiding over one of the country’s fastest reopening plans. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2zC6SPT

Available online Forest Fringe release a jolly bunch of downloadable plays, games and diversions to inject some performance into lockdown life F orest Fringe have never been one for convention. The risk-taking trio of Andy Field, Ira Brand and Deborah Pearson run the organisation, best loved for a decade of generous, sky-cracking experimental shows made and programmed during Edinburgh fringe. In true fashion, their latest festival evades regular theatrical labelling. Paper Stages is a collection of written propositions and performances. Made by 10 artists for audiences to engage with and act out at home, it comes in the form of a free download and reads like a jazzed-up instruction manual. Toying with how we define performance on paper, these works encourage reflection, pre-lockdown nostalgia and a vivid sense of playfulness. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3es8z11

The combination of cookery and snooping has revealed Brits at their best and worst: generous and gracious – or sneering and judgmental If we have learned anything from 15 years of Come Dine With Me, it’s this: never buy shop-bought pastry if you want to impress four strangers with your culinary skills. This year celebrates the 15th anniversary of the show in which five people in one city invite a group of strangers to have a dinner party for five nights. Afterwards, they rate their hosts (usually in the back of a taxi) and scores are tallied to crown a winner of £1,000 at the end of the week. It swiftly became a cult hit. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3gqW1c6

An uneven collection about marital discord and middle-aged disappointment from one of the grand figures of contemporary American fiction The final story in Richard Ford ’s new collection is a tale of a marriage gone wrong – though something, we know, is salvaged from the wreckage. “Jonathan and Charlotte were divorced but had stayed friends,” “Second Language” begins. The marriage is a second attempt for both of them. Jonathan is a widower; Charlotte’s husband went off for a sailing trip and ended up making a new life without her. Confident Charlotte wasn’t too cut up; she meets Jonathan, who is pleasingly wealthy, when she’s selling him a fancy loft apartment. The people in these stories seem imprisoned by a judgmental authorial voice Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2M7ywa1

A surreal and terrifying mix of big-beat pyrotechnics, lyrical vitriol and tabloid outrage. ‘Ban This Sick Fire Record,’ squawked the Mail on Sunday – but it was much too late Read our 100 greatest list as it counts down It starts with a riff: not a distorted guitar but a contorted squeal from a twisted fairground. It’s a riff nonetheless, the instantly sticky sign of an unstoppable hit single. Firestarter was one of the biggest pop-cultural events of 1996 and by the end of the year the Prodigy were one of the world’s biggest bands. The Essex four-piece’s first No 1 was a flashpoint of teen angst, TV infamy, moral panic and tabloid outrage, carried aloft by big-beat pyrotechnics and a lethal barrage of lyrical vitriol. “Ban This Sick Fire Record,” squawked the Mail on Sunday – but it was much too late. The Prodigy were already a dominant force in pop. All but one of their singles since 1991 had made the Top 15, including 1991’s Charly, the cartoon-sampling hit that famously “kill

A new BBC film, Sitting in Limbo, recounts the story of Anthony Bryan, who was sacked, arrested, detained and threatened with deportation, before the government apologised. The reporter who broke the original story talks to his family and friends about the years of misery they endured A fantasy preview screening of the BBC’s powerful new drama Sitting in Limbo would have a handful of home secretaries lined up in the front row: Theresa May, Amber Rudd, Sajid Javid and Priti Patel – with David Cameron invited to sit alongside them. Further back, there would be places for the civil servants who devised immigration policy over the past decade, senior immigration enforcement officers and the governors of Britain’s immigration detention centres. This memorable evening will, of course, never happen because of lockdown, and possibly also because this isn’t how the BBC organises its screenings. But I hope that these politicians and officials force themselves to watch the one-off drama at home

The fascinating story of a fraud that took place in the 1990s, plus the lemurs of Madagascar that give Gangs of London a run for its money. Here’s what to watch this evening 9pm, Sky Documentaries Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2yztS1u

From documentaries about neo-Nazis to soul-searching mea culpas, you can gain a lot from concentrated time with a master Louis Theroux’s first series for television, in 1998, was a series of documentaries called Weird Weekends. The central conceit was that Theroux, an innocent abroad, would spend time in a community that was considered fringe, and tell us their stories. Since the series first aired, there is now enough Louis Theroux available on streaming services that it is possible to spend a weird weekend entirely with him. So that is what I did. I sat inside and watched nothing but Louis Theroux films for a whole, weird weekend. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3d4ctNq

In the shadow of plot devices like destiny and impending doom, moments of kindness give journeys emotional power It is a narrative standard in role-playing adventure games: the hero is pitted against a Big Evil, who has a strategic or chaotic hunger to destroy the world we know. From Shinra’s greedy harvesting of the planet’s resources in Final Fantasy VII Remake to Ganondorf’s quest for power and destruction across more than 30 years of Legend of Zelda games, the stakes are always astronomically high. But what really makes these fictional realms worth saving? Role-playing games need to offer more than a sequence of linked events toward a monumental finale. A world is made of people, not just objectives. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2TJDAWt

The Potteries Museum and Art Gallery set today’s quiz, which enables you to explore the art collection of British museums closed due to Covid-19 – while answering some fiendish questions along the way This quiz is brought to you in collaboration with Art UK , the online home for the UK’s public art collections, showing art from more than 3,000 venues and by 45,000 artists. Each day, a different collection on Art UK will set the questions. Today, our questions are set by the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery in Stoke-on-Trent. The Potteries Museum and Art Gallery has one of the largest and most diverse regional collections outside of London, holding almost one million objects across its six outstanding collections, comprising of fine and decorative art, ceramics, local history, natural sciences and archaeology. Its fine art collection, established in the 1920s, is distinguished by early- mid-20th-century art. You can see art from the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery on Art UK here ,

Farvardin Daliri built the 750kg sculpture, which laughs, to bring joy to the community An Australian man has used his time in lockdown to create a 750kg sculpture of a laughing kookaburra that he says will bring joy to the community in bleak times. Dr Farvardin Daliri, an academic and artist, debuted the huge bird this week on the streets of Brisbane, and will soon take it north to the Townsville Cultural Festival. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3gomtDj

Late-night host said he ‘made a terrible decision’ after clip of him impersonating Chris Rock in 2000 went viral Late-night TV host and comedian Jimmy Fallon has apologized for appearing in blackface during a Saturday Night Live sketch two decades ago after a clip went viral on social media and triggered a storm of protest. In the sketch, broadcast in 2000, Fallon, who now hosts The Tonight Show, was impersonating the black comedian Chris Rock and wearing heavy makeup. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3c8Yh4u

Jessica Chiccehitto Hindman spent years touring America in an orchestra of gifted players who mimed to CDs. She relives their bizarre performances – and her eventual collapse A young violinist joins an award-winning ensemble led by a famous composer, only to find out that all of the musicians aren’t actually playing their instruments but are simply miming along to a CD instead. It is an incredible premise for a memoir, and might even make a great Coen brothers film, but Jessica Chiccehitto Hindman says this astonishing story happened to her. At 21, she found herself alone in New York, working two jobs and selling her own eggs to fund her way through Columbia University, where she was studying to be a war correspondent. Hindman finally caught a break in 2002, one that allowed her to monetise her talent as a violinist. She was hired to play in an orchestra by a man she calls only The Composer. But she says she quickly realised the truth: she was to “play” in front of a dead microphone

Tate Britain says timetable to prepare autumn exhibition not achievable during pandemic Organisers of the Turner prize have cancelled this year’s edition and will instead award 10 bursaries of £10,000 to deserving artists. In a normal year, judges would this month have announced a shortlist for the prize, inviting those artists to make work for an exhibition opening in the autumn. The £25,000 winner would have been revealed in December. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2zlbYjD

As he releases Quickies, an LP of minature gems, the master songwriter contemplates a pop song’s perfect length – and whether Covd-19 has ended his career Stephin Merritt has just spent six weeks confined to his Manhattan apartment after contracting coronavirus. He was ill for 10 days, then recovered. He’s usually a crazily prolific songwriter – two of his band’s most celebrated albums, 50 Song Memoir and 69 Love Songs , obviously contain 119 songs between them – but he hasn’t come up with any new numbers for Magnetic Fields since he got ill. The problem is that he can only write songs in bars. And not just any bar – it needs to be “one-third full of cranky old gay men gossiping over thumping disco music”. Plus he needs a glass of cognac, to be slowly sipped, and a corner with a light so he can see his notebook. Fortunately, before the outbreak, he was able to find a place that fulfilled these conditions and the result is the Magnetic Fields’ latest album. Like most of Merritt’s rec

Beauty, strength and bags of energy: BBC Four’s Men at the Barre documentary gets up close and personal with the Royal Ballet dancers on the rise ‘It’s a golden era of male ballet dancers.” So says Emma Cahusac, the commissioning editor behind a new documentary, Men at the Barre, part of BBC Four’s dance season. It’s not just hyperbole. The young men rising up at the Royal Ballet are some of the most exciting in dance right now: principals Matthew Ball and Marcelino Sambé, first soloists Cesar Corrales and William Bracewell, and first artist Joseph Sissens all feature in Men at the Barre. With the majority of them British or UK-trained, it’s a giant leap from the grumblings of a decade ago about the lack of local dancers making it to the top. I spoke to Ball, Corrales and Sambé by phone, all staying resolutely positive during this enforced break from their intensive dancing lives, but all desperate to get back to work with colleagues they’re certain are something special. “I see so m

With its moments of low-key culinary joy, the Danish gem offers a vital recipe for unity in times of austere hardship At a time when basic grocery shopping is a military operation and many people’s incomes have been cut, an invitation to watch others eat a seven-course meal including caviar, foie gras and truffles might seem a bit rich, in more than one sense of the word. However, despite the incongruous luxuriousness of its eponymous climatic meal, Gabriel Axel’s 1987 masterpiece Babette’s Feast is the ideal lockdown movie. Most of the film shows how the puritanical Danish Lutherans in the film lived before they sat down to turtle soup, blinis and quail in puff pastry. Life for them is a lot more austere than it is for most of us now. Many depend on the local equivalent of food banks: the meal delivery service provided by the two devout sisters Martine and Filippa. Pasta, tinned meat and UHT milk is manna from heaven compared with the stale bread porridge they gratefully wolf down.

The star of Chewing Gum and Year of the Rabbit on bingeing HBO’s delectable yet disturbing hit, and the show she regrets watching in quarantine A little while before lockdown started, I was in a play called Teenage Dick at the Donmar, which was a retelling of Richard III as a high-school drama. The theatre posted a picture of the big dance sequence from the end of the play on social media recently. It was my favourite bit of the show, and probably the best bit of theatre I’d ever seen. I saw that picture and thought: wow, we had no clue back when it finished in February that everything would change so much. I miss it a lot, and theatre in general. Key workers are the most important people in all of this, but the entertainment industry also contributes so much to society and needs to be protected. I find watching things really helps with my own writing – it’s all intertwined with work. Succession (HBO/Sky Atlantic) was the show I’d been most keen to watch; 10 minutes in, I was like

2/5 starsEnglish and Chinese are not the only murder victims in this second feature by emerging Hong Kong filmmaker Lee Cheuk-pan. Visually striking yet narratively inept, The Fallen is a twisted and flagrantly unrealistic tale of sex, drugs and gratuitous violence, set around the mayhem engulfing leaders of a powerful international criminal syndicate.The film’s style echoes that of its director’s promising debut, G Affairs ; its manipulation of colour tones, incongruous use of classical music… from South China Morning Post https://ift.tt/2zleXbP

Cal Newport writes about the history of remote office work, and how it is being reconsidered as people work from home during the coronavirus pandemic. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2M0WjbG

Deborah Treisman hosts the author David Means, who reads his story “Two Nurses, Smoking,” from the June 1, 2020, issue of The New Yorker, on the Writer’s Voice podcast. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2yx5EVB

The “Queer Eye” grooming expert speaks with Rachel Syme about how to take care of yourself while you’re stuck in the house. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2LVKeEV

US writer Joyce Carol Oates, so often a bridesmaid for the Nobel literature prize, won France's richest books prize Monday. from https://ift.tt/3cYYs3D

This glittering pop track, laced with nostalgia, yearning harmonies and a glorious piano line, has inspired many imitators – and some covers during lockdown Read our 100 greatest list as it counts down It takes 18 seconds for Dancing Queen to drop into one of the greatest moments in pop. It speaks volumes that the 18 seconds preceding it are pretty wonderful too: that song bursting into life on that impossibly joyous piano glissando, before eight bars of sparkling, effortless mid-tempo pop. Then Agnetha Fältskog and Frida Lyngstad start to sing, effectively bringing us into the middle of a chorus. Their lyrics should scan as simple, bouncy instructions (“You can dance / You can jive / Having the time of your life”) but the women’s longing harmonies transform them. Stretched over two yearning notes, the word “you” is delivered to the listener as if Agnetha and Frida are trying desperately to fill them with confidence. As they sing “having the time of your life”, the melody takes a

The Swedish actor on her infamous marriage with Peter Sellers, being stuck in London under lockdown – and why there will be no more Bond girls like her Two days after their first date – which was also their first meeting – the comedian Peter Sellers gave Britt Ekland a dachshund puppy called Pepper. Ekland had just arrived in London from Sweden to be 20th Century Fox’s next big star. She was 21 years old and living at the Dorchester hotel; a dog was a ridiculous gift, she says. So was Sellers’ previous largesse – every bloom in the hotel’s flower shop. “That was the way he wooed me.” Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3ehi82U

Quirky flatmates, terrible catchphrases: the inspiration you need to pen an award-winning TV show is all around you Not Going Out? Stuck indoors with the same old people every day, life under corona lockdown probably already feels like a perpetual – albeit rather dark – sitcom. So what better time to try to actually turn it into one? But how do you ensure you’re a Royle Family and not a Mrs Brown’s Boys? We grabbed Iain Morris, co-creator of The Inbetweeners and brand new football-based sitcom The First Team , for some handy dos and don’ts of penning the perfect laughfest during lockdown. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3grFDbE

As coronavirus derails plans for a concert to celebrate the centenary of Lee’s birth, Kevin EG Perry looks back on a singer whose seductive style masked rejection and pain In September 1968, songwriting titans Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller were on the hunt for a singer for their curious new composition Is That All There Is? The song was something of a departure for the writers of Hound Dog and Jailhouse Rock. It had been inspired by Thomas Mann’s 1896 short story Disillusionment , which deals with what Leiber called “the existential hole that sits in the centre of our souls”. The fatalistic spoken-word verses describe the narrator watching their house burn down, losing their first love, and even facing death, “that final disappointment”, with sanguine grace. The pair felt the song needed an actress to sell it so offered it to Marlene Dietrich and Barbra Streisand before thinking of Peggy Lee. After catching her show at the Copacabana in New York, they handed Lee a demo. She called

From care work to shelf-stacking, many standups have taken up jobs to survive lockdown – highlighting how privilege has created a two-tier system in comedy On 16 March, when Boris Johnson advised people to avoid pubs and theatres, the effect on live comedy was instant. “That night was like Take Me Out when all the lights go off, but with my diary,” says standup Lauren Pattison. “The first month of work went in the space of a couple of days.” In 2017, Pattison finally became a full-time comedian after years of working in restaurants, shops and bars to support her standup career. Soon after, she was nominated for best newcomer at the Edinburgh Comedy awards. Now, she’s working in a supermarket. Pattison had moved back to Newcastle upon Tyne a few weeks before lockdown to save money for the Edinburgh fringe while living with her parents. Like many standups, she relies on live comedy for the bulk of her income, gigging most nights of the week. Some gigs are rescheduled for later this ye

The historian examines the city’s former role as a human trafficking hub. Plus: pastry pros face off in Bake Off. Here’s what to watch this evening Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3eiQtP3

Feren’s Art Gallery in Hull set today’s edition of our quiz, which enables you to explore the collections of British galleries closed due to coronavirus – while answering some tricky questions This quiz is brought to you in collaboration with Art UK , the online home for the UK’s public art collections, showing art from over 3,000 venues and by 45,000 artists. Each day, a different collection on Art UK will set the questions. Today, our questions are set by Ferens Art Gallery, Hull. The Ferens Art Gallery has one of the finest regional art collections in the country. Opened in 1927, the Ferens is one of eight sites that comprise Hull Museums, operated by Hull Culture and Leisure Limited since 2014. Collection strengths include European old masters from the 14th century onwards – especially Netherlandish 17th century, maritime painting and 20th century British art. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2znW6gi

British environmental photographer’s copyright claim prompts website to remove film that has been condemned by climate scientists YouTube has taken down the controversial Michael Moore-produced documentary Planet of the Humans in response to a copyright infringement claim by a British environmental photographer. The movie, which has been condemned as inaccurate and misleading by climate scientists and activists, allegedly includes a clip used without the permission of the owner Toby Smith, who does not approve of the context in which his material is being used. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3ejWlYy