Cultural News Today

Burma’s Voices of Freedom by Alan Clements and Fergus Harlow World Dharma Publications 3/5 stars Aung San Suu Kyi’s precipitous fall from grace reached its nadir last December, in the Netherlands. Myanmar’s leader appeared in front of the International Court of Justice, in The Hague, to answer allegations that her government had committed genocide against the Rohingya Muslim minority. Just four years earlier, the Nobel Peace Prize winner had led the National League for Democracy (NLD) party… from South China Morning Post https://ift.tt/33ltWz7

Richard Brody reviews “Toe Tag Parole” and “Hard Times at Douglass High,” by the documentary filmmakers Alan and Susan Raymond. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/3k07m4L

Lester Fabian Brathwaite writes a humorous breakup narrative for the coronavirus era. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2Ew0Z92

On Saturday, venues in the UK are allowed to open their doors again. But as owners from arenas to tiny clubs explain, the danger is far from over Live music is in crisis. With no gigs since lockdown began on 23 March, most venues have seen their income drop to almost zero. The live music industry added £4.5bn to the UK economy last year, and provides 210,000 jobs, but with stages silent, up to 50% of the workforce are facing unemployment, a loss of skills the Music Venue Trust (MVT) describes as “catastrophic”. In June , 1,500 stars ranging from Sir Paul McCartney to Dua Lipa launched the #LetTheMusicPlay campaign, calling for the government to rescue live music. Finally, on 5 July, the government announced a £1.57bn rescue package for the entire arts sector. An initial £2.25m was later distributed to 150 grassroots venues at imminent risk ( MVT had asked for a £50m fund ) and yesterday, Arts Council England announced a grants programme to distribute further funds from the overall

With echoes of The Wizard of Oz and Carry On movies, Mike Hodges’ vintage intergalactic fable delivers mayhem, madness and eye-frazzling colour ‘This place is a lunatic asylum!” says the square-jawed, peroxide-blond hero of Mike Hodges’ bizarre LSD pantomime Flash Gordon, adapted by Lorenzo Semple Jr and Michael Allin from the 1930s comic-strip serial – now rereleased on streaming platforms for its 40th anniversary. It now looks even madder and more expressionist than ever, with an operatic theme from Queen, bizarre 2D studio sets for alien planets and the kind of eyeball-frazzling colour scheme that generally only existed on old TVs of the era before you had to thump them. Sam J Jones plays the Earthling American football star Flash Gordon (“Flash” appears to be his actual name, rather than nickname) who finds himself caught up in an intergalactic war when the evil Ming the Merciless (a dapper, derisive and weirdly ageless performance from Max von Sydow ) launches an attack on Plane

Singer claims vaccine is being concealed in latest example of celebrities spreading myths Coronavirus – latest updates See all our coronavirus coverage Dancer, singer, songwriter, actor, director – Madonna has had quite the career. But the queen of pop’s latest reinvention came this week in the form of a video posted on Instagram that shared a coronavirus conspiracy theory with her 15 million followers. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2EDlAIH

This week FRANCE 24 talked to astronaut Thomas Pesquet about getting ready to ride the SpaceX Dragon 2 and musician Keith Urban on his latest release, "The Speed of Now". We also explored Egyptian singer Umm Kulthoum's legacy of stirring up passions, the plight of French midwives and an unusual Hajj for the lucky few, downsized amid the coronavirus pandemic. from https://ift.tt/2XfdFaX

Hartley Lin’s Daily Cartoon depicts a woman reading a book that catches on fire to symbolize the current series of crises in the country. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/3i5Qrw7

A free online puzzle published Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, 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/2ECM6C0

As her bestselling Murder Most Unladylike series ends, the children’s author talks about cosy crime, gay characters and watching her schoolgirl detectives grow up Warning: when tween readers get their hands on the final book in the Murder Most Unladylike series, published next week, they may well burst into tears on the very first page. Fans have been devouring the adventures of 1930s schoolgirl detectives Daisy Wells and Hazel Wong since 2014, but have been tipped off that in the ninth book, Death Sets Sail – a romp through Egypt inspired by Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile – only one of the girls makes it home alive. “I’m getting 20 emails a week reasoning with me, saying ‘Please don’t kill one of them! Please!’” laughs Robin Stevens over the phone from Oxford. For this last book, though, she “wanted to go big. I have kids who started reading when they were 10, they’re now 16, so for the final one I wanted something that you’re desperate to know about – something exciting an

The Manchester rapper imagines 48 hours in Ibiza surrounded by Black Coffee, Megan Thee Stallion and her own octopus recipe Definitely Ibiza. The beaches, weather, vibe and people are just so correct. People need to experience a hot country that has the energy that Ibiza has. It’s my favourite place in the world – I’ve spent holidays there raving, and it’s beautiful. I’d make it a 48-hour festival that doesn’t stop; I feel like people don’t really rave like that any more. Just imagine: 48 hours of it just being dirty and people catching a vibe, acts just one after the other. It would be crazy! Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3k03X5S

Available online Paul Lightfoot and Sol León bow out with two pieces, Standby and She Remembers, bringing dancers out of lockdown Hottest front-room seats: the best theatre and dance to watch online Here are two rare pieces of lockdown dance that wouldn’t look out of place in normal times. The secret to effortless social distancing, it turns out, is an enormous stage (in this case The Hague’s Lucent Danstheater) and a significant number of couples and housemates among your company who can dance together. It helps, too, to have the never less than pristine production values of Nederlands Dans Theater, and some smart choreographic ideas. The pandemic came as NDT was in the midst of its 60th anniversary season and about to bid farewell to artistic director Paul Lightfoot and artistic advisor Sol León , leaving the company after more than 30 years as dancers and choreographers. Lightfoot and León were not about to let this significant moment fizzle away under lockdown, so they have m

The novelist and film-maker on her love for vampires, laughing at David Sedaris and crying over Joan Didion The book I am currently reading Jean Rhys ’s Good Morning, Midnight . I am reading everything she wrote. The book that changed my life The Autobiography of Malcolm X . I read it when I was 20 – around the time of Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing . I realised once I’d read it that a life can be made up of different chapters – and that I was not obliged to follow a particular path based on the first chapter of my life. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3feiW8P

A drama in which the spirit of Jonathan Swift haunts a seance and an astonishingly brief update of the Oresteia confirm the poet’s remarkable skills as a playwright Few plays are more forgotten than those of WB Yeats . Revered as a poet, he’s ignored as a dramatist yet he deserves to be remembered for a number of reasons. He cofounded the Abbey theatre in 1904, he put Irish legend and history on stage, and he sought to create a drama “close to pure music”. His output was huge – his Collected Plays runs to more than 700 pages – and I’ve plucked out two of his works that, while vastly different in style, show his fixation with death, expiation and eternal recurrence. The Words Upon the Window-Pane (1930) is in many ways exceptional: it is Yeats’s only play with a realistic modern setting. Its subject is a seance held by the Dublin Spiritualist Association in rooms once occupied by Jonathan Swift’s Stella. Yeats has much fun at the expense of the visitors – one of whom wants advice abou

Fans will have chance to join one-to-one signings with writers such as Ian Rankin and Ali Smith It is the bane of the book festival: a long, slow queue to get a book signed by a favourite author, perched in the corner of a warm and stuffy tent. But this year’s Edinburgh international book festival is offering something far more intimate: the chance of a one-to-one signing with a famous writer from the comfort of your armchair. After the cancellation of all the city’s major summer festivals due to the coronavirus pandemic, the book festival has moved entirely online, hosting 140 book readings and, for the first time, online book signings. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3fhAtgu

2.5/5 stars Packed to the rafters with rugged heroes, duplicitous villains, terrifying monsters and relentless action, Double World has all the trappings of an epic adventure. So why is the Hong Kong filmmaker Teddy Chan Tak-sum’s first directing effort since 2014’s Donnie Yen vehicle Kung Fu Jungle such a chore to watch? Now streaming on iQiyi in mainland China and Netflix in the rest of the world, this effects-laden adaptation of online video game Zhengtu features so many characters, each… from South China Morning Post https://ift.tt/2D3mwWc

From eco fantasies to dystopian nightmares, cinema has long explored how life might be different. Our post-lockdown existence could look to them for pointers As we emerge blinking into the sunlight after lockdown, many of us will be daring to dream of a more harmonious, ecological future. It’s what the subjects of Spaceship Earth were hoping to create when they locked down voluntarily for two years as part of an experiment around communal, self-sufficient living. The new documentary tells the story of Biosphere 2, an Earth system science research facility located in the Arizona desert. Back in 1991, eight people moved into the huge vivarium as a dress rehearsal in case humans had to repopulate to Mars. Matt Wolf’s film is a fascinating watch that vividly recalls classic sci-fi cinema: the “biospherians” wear designer space suits and their mission references 1972’s Silent Running , in which a botanist astronaut tries to save a biosystem orbiting in space. It begs the question: what o

Brighton Museums set today’s quiz, which enables you to explore the art collection of British museums closed due to Covid-19 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 Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton & Hove. The Brighton Museums collection ranges from late 15th-century European woodcuts and old master paintings to modern British paintings and 20th-century abstract expressionist works. It contains nearly 1,500 oil paintings, 4,000 watercolours and drawings, and more than 10,000 prints. It also includes topographical material on the history of Brighton and Hove, and prized Chinese export watercolours and oil paintings. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2D8mb4y

The latest in our series of writers recommending underseen films is a shout-out for an eerie 2013 science fiction puzzle It’s a fearful thought for fans of jagged-edged futurism, but Netflix’s Black Mirror might be just one of those things that never quite becomes part of the post-Covid “new normal”. Creator Charlie Brooker has been quite clear that the last thing on his mind in the current climate is “stories about societies falling apart”, which pretty much rules out 50% of the finest sci-fi anthology show since The Outer Limits. Fortunately all is not lost, for James Ward Byrkit’s Coherence is here to tide you over. Related: My streaming gem: why you should watch Happy as Lazzaro Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3jXr6pF

The Pin, AKA Alex Owen and Ben Ashenden, lead a starry mockumentary about deluded comics taking on America. Plus: what makes people do things they shouldn’t? The Special Relationship (from 4 Aug) The Pin (Alex Owen and Ben Ashenden) are perfect mockumentary fodder in Audible’s new podcast about a pair of delusional comedians on a mission to break America. Their stand-up routine is interspersed with documentary-style footage as an investigative reporter reluctantly follows their every move with disappointment dripping from every sentence she utters. Meanwhile, Americans make jokes about “British banter”, Harry Potter and Monty Python. Stath Lets Flats’ Jamie Demetriou, Veep’s Sally Phillips, Saturday Night Live’s Cecily Strong, Fred Armisen and more also pop up in the cast. Hannah Verdier Bad People Why do people do bad things, and why do so many people want to hear all about them on podcasts? Sofie Hagen (The Guilty Feminist, Made of Human) is out to find the answer, and as a self-

Mica Paris on story of a music genre, plus Richard Ayoade and Miriam Margolyes are on the road (although, sadly, not together). Here’s what to watch tonight Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3gemDg0

The Tottenham rapper is UK drill’s biggest star – and counts Drake as a fan. He talks about how his music gave him a way out of crime, and the difficulty of leaving his old life behind The north London district of Tottenham seems to offer up a rap icon for every generation. Hip-hop group Demon Boyz were among the first to shed American accents in the 1980s; in the late 00s, 16-year-old MC Chip declared himself a “grime scene saviour”, and cracked the glass ceiling of a resistant music industry. More recently, Skepta has led British rap into the mainstream, winning the Mercury prize in 2016 . The district where riots blazed in 1985 and 2011 is now soundtracked by UK drill, a rap subgenre that found its way to the country from the South Side of Chicago, with MCs riding like dirt bikes over revving, lurching bass to punctuate sometimes bleak accounts of life on the roads. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3jYDMfR

3.5/5 stars This is an interesting time in the career of Russell Crowe. Once Hollywood’s go-to guy for macho heroes – in films such as L.A. Confidential and Gladiator, for which he won an Oscar – the Antipodean star has recently taken to playing juicy supporting roles. Think of his profane mentor in True History of the Kelly Gang or his pastor in Boy Erased who sends his gay son for conversion therapy. In Unhinged, he’s a very different kind of monster. When we meet Crowe’s character – just… from South China Morning Post https://ift.tt/3fdNKGL

Susan Glasser writes about Donald Trump’s insistence that the Presidential election, in November, should be delayed, and about the contrast between the President and John Lewis, the congressman and civil-rights icon who died earlier this month. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/3k0zIMu

Amy Davidson Sorkin writes about President Donald Trump’s continued touting of hydroxychloroquine as a miracle cure for the coronavirus, despite a lack of supporting medical evidence, and his suggestion that the 2020 election should be postponed until the pandemic is brought under control. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/3jPUBts

As Back in Black turns 40, we run down the Australian hard rockers’ best numbers – full of double entendres, massive choruses and surging, strutting riffs In their infancy, AC/DC weren’t tied to one style. Their first Australian album even featured this intriguing example of a kind of troglodytic hard-rock funk, with cowbells and bongos, neither of which were to become staples of the Akker Dakker sound. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3fbBqXx

A teenager encounters ghostly goings-on and sexual intrigue at an out-of-season caravan park in a stylish psychological drama The out-of-season holiday resort, like the abandoned city or ruined temple, has something fascinating and even erotic in its emptiness. Writer-director Claire Oakley taps into this mood for her debut feature, a psychological drama-thriller set in a wintry caravan park in St Ives, Cornwall. She has taken the template of arthouse Brit realism and audaciously spiked it with some genre thrills, as if Ken Loach collaborated with Brian De Palma or Nicolas Roeg. With cinematographer Nick Cooke, Oakley finds the bracingly different aspects of the Cornish landscape: ominous in the darkness, wild in the sunshine and menacing in the cold, as distant sea spray mixes with the cloud cover. Molly Windsor (whom I last saw 10 years ago as a child actor in Samantha Morton’s The Unloved ) plays Ruth, a teenager who shows up after dark at what looks like an utterly deserted carav

No camping, no costumes, no glitter or dancing: Despite postponements due to the coronavirus, some live festivals across Europe and beyond are finding creative solutions, from the digital to the DIY. from Deutsche Welle: DW.com - Culture & Lifestyle https://ift.tt/3feWaxI

With farewell bows from Fleabag and Catastrophe, plus some landmark political and sporting events, the panels face some knotty decisions The awards given by the British Academy of Film and Television Awards (Baftas) for excellence in TV are a fixture in the cultural calendar, awarded in some form for the past 65 years. But the presentation on Friday will be unusual. Although this is an annual ceremony, it is 16 months since the last one, due to the disruption of life by the coronavirus. The pandemic also means that all of the nominees and winners who attend the ceremony, hosted remotely by Richard Ayoade, will be on video link. Yet, as the eligibility period was 1 Jan 2019 to 21 Dec 2019, Covid-19, which dominates our existence at the moment, was not directly reflected in any contending content. And the other most generally influential public event – the killing of George Floyd – occurred after the votes were cast, so jurors will not have been affected by the Black Lives Matter prote

A new film traces the Scream star’s journey from acting prodigy to indie-circuit fighter. Could his career rise from the canvas? In terms of cinematic output, David Arquette hasn’t enjoyed the most successful career. After promising beginnings, when he appeared on the cover of the Vanity fair Hollywood edition alongside Leonardo DiCaprio and Will Smith , his profile has been fading steadily for the last two decades. In 2001 he appeared opposite a dog in See Spot Run . In 2004 he billed below DMX in Never Die Alone. Since 2018, the majority of his films haven’t even managed to earn their own Wikipedia pages. There are many potential explanations for this. Bad decisions, sobriety struggles, the fickle nature of the Hollywood machine. However, a new documentary claims a different reason for Arquette’s unfulfilled potential: professional wrestling. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2XaD2e9

Sally Rooney is the latest in a long line of Irish women writers tackling weighty subjects – the difference now is that the world is finally taking them seriously Grandmother did most of her work in bed. She had a special tray with folding legs that served as a desk. She would sit up against a stack of pillows, with a cashmere cardigan over her nightdress, and write longhand on loose sheets of foolscap. Pots of tea were ferried to her by my grandfather, who would have been fully dressed in a tweed jacket and tie and working from his study downstairs. All the men in my family had a study or office, and worked jobs with regular hours; unlike Grandmother, who would break off from her writing to dig in the garden or peel the spuds for dinner. I never remember, as a child, being told to shush because Grandmother was working. The only indication of her status as a writer was the piles of New Yorker magazines scattered around the house. She published 15 stories in the New Yorker between 1959

Tristram Kenton’s photographs have accompanied reviews in the Guardian for more than 30 years. Ahead of a series of themed galleries, we open up his archive with 40 fabulous shots Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/39DrRj5

The Dublin band deliver a difficult but powerful second album full of songwriting that stares life in the face Do bands have a “difficult second album” or a “difficult third album”? The myth seems to vary. You could argue it’s the fourth or fifth you’ve got to worry about in our attention-deficit culture. Maybe they’re all difficult right now: impossible to tour, marketed in disappearing magazines , played to a world deafened by anger. Whatever way you look at it, the second album from Dublin band Fontaines DC is full of difficulties. This may be surprising. The songs on their 2019 debut Dogrel were populated by characters as vivid as those on the Arctic Monkeys’ debut, and were so good that they reset the bar for mainstream indie-rock bands. The quintet ran up the stairs of a career two at a time, quickly playing pubs, clubs then theatres; London’s vast Alexandra Palace awaits them in 2021. Dogrel was nominated for the Mercury prize, and its songs were improbably added to Radio 1’s

Heather Phillipson’s The End monument in Trafalgar Square is plinth’s 13th commission On one level it is an absurdly large swirl of whipped cream with a cherry, a fly and a drone on top. On another it is the end of everything as we know it. Visitors to Trafalgar Square in central London have the next nine months to come to their own conclusions about the vast new artwork by Heather Phillipson , the 13th contemporary art commission to fill the fourth plinth . Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3geyDhG

From the expansion of the Umayyad Empire in the seventh century until the fall of the Ottomans in the early 20th century, Muslim artists produced a stream of masterpieces that circulated across the globe – adorning places of worship, royal courts and the grand residences of the nobility. FRANCE 24 takes a closer look at some of the treasures of Islamic art. from https://ift.tt/39HxSeI

Victoria Edel humorously imagines usually mundane scenarios that seem extravagant and appealing during coronavirus quarantine. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/30hf4zT

Many pilgrims and tourists visit Mount Tabor, a holy biblical site. Nearby, archaeologists have unearthed the remains of a church that is around 1,300 years old. from Deutsche Welle: DW.com - Culture & Lifestyle https://ift.tt/3gcD5gZ

Twenty-year-old Indonesian singer Stephanie Poetri has had quite a year. In the past 12 months, her original track I Love You 3000 went viral, she clinched an award at the Mnet Asian Music Awards, signed with powerhouse Asian label 88rising, performed at the Heads in the Clouds music festival in Los Angeles, and collaborated with a K-pop star. I Love You 3000, a love song about a movie-like romance, became an instant hit when it was released in June 2019 and got close to 70 million views on… from South China Morning Post https://ift.tt/2PaXbvX

Patricia Marx writes about bras that she and a group of friends tested from the e-commerce lingerie startups CUUP, Adore Me, True & Company, Third Love, KIT Undergarments, Negative Underwear, Nuudii System, Harper Wilde, and Soma. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/3gbOVaY

Lila Ash’s Daily Cartoon depicts a woman working out at the gym while wearing a hazardous-materials suit during the coronavirus pandemic. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2BHsueO

This horror yarn has an authentically Jewish setting and an expressive central performance from Dave Davis, guarding a corpse from evil Jewishness – especially its historical traumas – has flowed freely into the DNA of horror, from the German expressionists to Roman Polanski and William Friedkin, even Darren Aronofsky. But there have been relatively few culturally specific Jewish horror films, and this is where Blumhouse Productions, with its eye for a canny hook, comes in. The Vigil, by debut writer-director Keith Thomas, doesn’t examine rising antisemitism, so it doesn’t have the same contemporary punch as Get Out had regarding Black Lives Matter , or The Invisible Man for #MeToo . But, set mostly in one house in the Orthodox community of Boro Park, Brooklyn , with reams of Yiddish dialogue, it is all the same an authentically Jewish and reasonably competent chiller. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/39ExugQ

For decades, heavy metal terrified the masses. Today, gatherings like the Wacken Open Air festival attract people of all classes and ages. Here's a look at what makes the music so compelling. from Deutsche Welle: DW.com - Culture & Lifestyle https://ift.tt/2EyKHMN

The first retrospective show since the death of the celebrated photographer is full of striking shots of performers at their most outrageous Terry O’Neill: Every Picture Tells a Story is at Maddox Gallery, Gstaad, Switzerland, until 29 August Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2Dddc1P

The artist talks about the Black Lives Matter movement, his latest timely sculpture and why it’s more important than ever for artists to use their voices to challenge power In Atlanta, the BeltLine Eastside Trail recently saw a new addition to its landscape: a new public artwork by the Historic Fourth Ward Park, close to the birthplace of Dr Martin Luther King Jr. Until 11 August, pedestrians will see a 28ft tall, 7,000lb Afro pick. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2DeL7XY

With its stunningly realistic visuals and cutting-edge use of geographic and weather data, this flight sim offers a virtual chance to travel freely once more For a few seconds, it seems real. A Cessna 172 Skyhawk flying low over a rural landscape dotted with fields and farmhouses, a copse of tall trees casting shadows over the swaying grass, a winding country lane. Then, on the horizon, the landscape gives way to rugged coastline, and, as the plane flies closer, we glimpse the rippling waves glinting in the evening sun. In real life, I have not seen the ocean for five months and, although I’m just sitting in my kitchen watching a virtual presentation of a video game, I feel a surge of emotion. When the latest instalment in Microsoft’s decades-old Flight Simulator series was first shown at the E3 video game event last year, it drew gasps from the audience. Using two petabytes of geographic data culled from Bing Maps, together with cutting-edge, machine learning algorithms running on t

First No 10 favoured herd immunity, now it has been accused of making up its response ‘on the hoof’. Are we being led by donkeys? The public accounts committee has accused the government of failing to make economic plans for a pandemic, and instead making up its response “on the hoof”. But what do hoofs have to do with frantic improvisation? Do horses like jazz? “Hoof” is an old Germanic word for the horny sheath on the feet of ungulates (“ungula”, in turn, being the Latin for “hoof”). Originally, “on the hoof” described a live animal (one that was standing up) rather than a slaughtered one. The first use of the modern sense – presumably implying instead “at a canter” or “while running” – might have been by Rudyard Kipling. In Something of Myself (1936), he explained how, when editing fiction at a magazine, he decided to write it himself: “Why buy Bret Harte [a popular American humorist], I asked, when I was prepared to supply home-grown fiction on the hoof? And I did.” Continue re

‘His stoic expression took me back to my own childhood when I had diphtheria. It made me weep’ I was five when diphtheria visited us in Mansfield. I remember lying on a sofa sweating as a doctor swabbed the back of my throat, my parents’ anxious faces looking down at me. There had been thousands of deaths from the disease – this was before a vaccination, before the NHS . I was taken to the local isolation hospital. My parents had no phone: a friend of theirs would cycle up to the hospital gates and read the daily bulletin board, which gave the condition of patients. Eventually, my parents were allowed to come into the hospital grounds and I was taken to a window on the second-floor ward to wave to them. I was lucky and recovered, and was able to come home just before my sixth birthday. Years later, I came across the letter my parents were sent by the hospital when I was discharged: “The child should sleep in a room not occupied by other children … the towels, cups, spoons, forks used

Nathan Bryon and Dapo Adeola’s picture book about a science-mad young black girl trying to distract her brother from his phone takes £5,000 award Nathan Bryon and Dapo Adeola have won the Waterstones children’s book prize for their “utterly joyful” picture book about a science-loving black girl, Look Up!, at a time when only 4% of British children’s books contain a black or minority ethnic main character . Following the adventures of Rocket, a little girl who is trying to convince her phone-obsessed teenage brother to look up at a meteor shower, Look Up! was named winner of the £5,000 award, chosen by Waterstones booksellers, on Thursday night. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2P52exV

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TV critic Dheepthika Laurent and Clovis Casali look at new releases ahead of the European summer. They discuss the harrowing asylum seeker detention drama "Stateless", co-produced by Cate Blanchett, plus "P-Valley", a drama about strippers in the heart of the African American community in the US. They also chat about shows from NBC’s new streaming platform "Peacock", including a modern adaptation of "Brave New World". Finally, they look at Netflix's breezy new dating reality shows! from https://ift.tt/2CYbSjD

Tired of being stuck in one place and longing for release? These films about the quest for freedom will match your mood. 1. The Great Escape (1963) The grandaddy of the genre, John Sturges’ World War II drama tells the extraordinary true story of a mass 1944 breakout from the German prisoner-of-war camp Stalag Luft III. Sturges specialised in ensemble adventures such as The Magnificent Seven (1960) and The Eagle Has Landed (1976), so he knew how to make the most of a heavyweight cast … from South China Morning Post https://ift.tt/3jR9Nqk

Conceived on a massive scale, Gustav Mahler’s seismic symphonies draw on the folk poetry of his native Bohemia and include the longest ever written by a major composer During his lifetime and in the decades after his death, Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) was primarily regarded as an outstanding conductor. It has only been in the last 60 years or so that his significance as a composer has been fully appreciated. Now, his symphonies are seen as perhaps the most important since Beethoven’s, linking the romanticism of the 19th century with the modernism of the 20th, and only rivalled for originality among his contemporaries by those of Sibelius . Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3faLYGc

The singer claimed a vaccine had been found but was being concealed to ‘let the rich get richer’ Instagram has censured a post by Madonna in which the pop star shared a coronavirus conspiracy theory with her 15 million followers. She captioned the video with claims that a vaccine for Covid-19 has “been found and proven and has been available for months”. She continued: “They would rather let fear control the people and let the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.” Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/30Qv9eA

George Herriman's legendary comic strip is an absurdist animal love triangle that has become a cult classic. Now the complete collection of the celebrated strip originally published in 1914-44 has won a 'comic Oscar.' from Deutsche Welle: DW.com - Culture & Lifestyle https://ift.tt/336bYjG

Jonathan Zeller humorously imagines unnaturally positive spins on an apocalyptic world resulting from lasting effects of the coronavirus pandemic. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/3hHcBUU

The Muppets star on his favourite TV and who would win in a fight between Michael Caine and Ricky Gervais Oh, you know, like everybody else, just kind of hanging out inside. I do take some walks and hang out at the swamp and play my banjo. And you know the Muppets and I, we get together for video chats all the time. So that’s nice. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3f7mrh9

Han Zhang writes about “My First Sessions,” a short animated documentary by Wendy Cong Zhao, which tells the story of how a Chinese student in America, Fan Jiang, found her way to therapy as she sought to cope with depression. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/335gXkU

Katy Waldman writes about “Memorial Drive,” a new memoir by the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Natasha Trethewey, who pieces together memories of her mother, who was murdered by Trethewey’s stepfather. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/3gbmoCi

A free online puzzle published Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, 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/2DbUW94

Maddie Dai’s Daily Cartoon depicts a green room for a talk show about 2020 that contains a variety of disasters, plagues, and other awful news. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/3gbClIK

A Chinese student is hesitant about the idea of therapy, but she finds that the experience starts to change her life and relationship to the world in ways she hadn’t imagined. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/3jJvnwO

The musician, 77, exiled to London under Brazil’s military dictatorship says he fears the president’s ‘ultra-reactionary bunch’ will not let go of power easily Half a century has passed since agents of the Brazilian dictatorship appeared on the doorstep of the music legend Caetano Veloso and announced: “You’d better bring your toothbrush.” Six months of detention and confinement later he was forced into European exile, spending the next two and a half years as a resident of Chelsea, West Kensington and Golders Green, where he would rehearse what remains his most celebrated album , Transa, in the vestry of a local church. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3fdWYTf

Brandenburg boasts magnificent palaces, medieval town centers and plenty for nature-lovers. from Deutsche Welle: DW.com - Culture & Lifestyle https://ift.tt/3f8W0b7

Fed up of brightly-coloured shootouts against teenagers dressed as bananas? These games will test your teamwork, planning and accuracy in tense, real-world scenarios Two years after its release, Fortnite still dominates the online gaming space, sucking all the air out of the room with its 350 million players, massive celebrity endorsements and ruthlessly compelling dance routines. But, far away from that game’s rainbow-coloured cartoon scapes, there are team-based shooters requiring patience, strategy and cooperation; where real-world physics, weapons and environments replace laser pistols and super powers, and where a single wrong move can blow the whole operation. If you’re looking for a tactical step up from run-and-gun blasters, here are seven of the best examples. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3faS3m2

The National Portrait Gallery set today’s quiz, which enables you to explore the art collection of British museums closed due to Covid-19 – while answering some brainteasers 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 National Portrait Gallery in London, which holds the most extensive collection of portraits in the world. Search more than 215,000 works in the collection online, 150,000 of which, from the 16th century to the present day, are illustrated. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3jN1Wdj

Circa’s Leviathan brings together 36 performers for the biggest in-theatre show of a scaled-back Brisbane festival This Sunday 36 acrobatic performers and dancers will come together for the first time at the Circa Contemporary Circus’s rehearsal studio in Brisbane’s Fortitude Valley. They will tumble, balance and soar together in testament to the communal human spirit’s power to overcome adversity as part of Brisbane festival’s biggest in-theatre show this September. Related: 'It's been deeply odd': how NIDA, Australia's most prestigious acting school, is managing the pandemic Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2P6S8gi

Move comes following criticism from Priti Patel and UK’s chief rabbi over social media companies’ inaction Facebook has announced that it has deactivated Wiley’s Facebook and Instagram accounts, after the grime MC posted a series of antisemitic comments on his social media accounts. “There is no place for hate speech on Facebook and Instagram,” a company spokesperson said. “After initially placing Wiley’s accounts in a seven day block, we have now removed both his Facebook and Instagram accounts for repeated violations of our policies.” Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3jLvS9H

Producers welcome scheme offering support if productions incur losses due to Covid-19 Coronavirus – latest updates See all our coronavirus coverage A £500m scheme to jumpstart the UK’s battered film and television industries has been welcomed by producers. On Tuesday, the culture secretary, Oliver Dowden, announced a scheme in which the government effectively takes on the role of a commercial insurer by offering to support productions if they incur losses because of coronavirus. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3jMZSlF

Drug deals, hook-ups, break-ups and secret code – Jeff Mermelstein’s snatched photographs of New Yorkers’ texts reveal that the city still has its wild side In 2017, the street photographer Jeff Mermelstein took a shot in midtown Manhattan. “I saw a woman sitting outside a cafe on her phone; I was just curious and I made a picture of her screen, of her hand on it.” After Mermelstein had captured the image on his iPhone – which he now favours over Leicas and Canon SLRs – he zoomed in on her phone screen. She had been searching for information about wills. “I remember a line about her father having left $6,000 in in attic,” he says. “It was this little short story. That brought my attention into a new territory.” Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/31aZsx5

Crime, Justice and Punishment in Colonial Hong Kong: Central Police Station, Central Magistracy and Victoria Gaol, by May Holdsworth and Christopher Munn. Published by Hong Kong University Press. 4/5 stars The story of the site from which justice was administered for most of Hong Kong’s colonial history, Crime, Justice and Punishment in Colonial Hong Kong is divided into sections covering the Central Police Station, Central Magistracy and Victoria Prison, recounting the overlapping histories… from South China Morning Post https://ift.tt/3f7d7dh

Her venomous debut novel about a fraught mother/daughter relationship shocked India – and now it’s challenging Hilary Mantel A vni Doshi did not have children when she started writing what would become her debut novel, Burnt Sugar – in fact, she was deeply unsure about whether she wanted them. Over eight drafts in almost as many years, Doshi wrote through her indecision, telling the story of a difficult mother-daughter relationship that is defined by ambivalence on both sides. After submitting her final manuscript in 2018, she gave birth to a baby boy. When her novel – which was nominated for this year’s Booker prize on Tuesday – was first published in India last year, under the title Girl in White Cotton, Doshi was nervous about revisiting her visions of parenthood. But she was pleased by her own accuracy, even a bit unsettled by it. Her main character, Antara, experiences postpartum depression, as Doshi did. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3394m

Nineties bands in need of rave vocals looked to the late Johnson, whose rich, fiery voice alchemised their music into something else entirely News: Denise Johnson dies aged 56 Manchester’s nostalgia industrial complex tends to privilege its white men: Joy Division and Tony Wilson are the ones to have had biopics made about them, with another about Shaun Ryder on the way. But these rightful remembrances can crowd out figures such as Barry Adamson and Rowetta: black, genre-fluid pioneers amid the city’s wildly exciting music scene in the 1980s and early 90s. Vocalist Denise Johnson, who died this week aged 56 , was another of them at the vanguard. “Even though she was a mate,” remembers Johnny Marr, “you felt it was a privilege her being on your song. She kind of gold-plated songs – you knew that the track was going to acquire a few extra gold stars.” Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/306NsgH

Festival reveals 2020 line-up, with Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland one of eight films by female directors to compete for the Golden Lion Helen Mirren , Shia LaBeouf and Greta Thunberg are among the big names due to be on display at the 2020 Venice film festival, as it gears up to be the first major festival to stage a physical event in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. Inevitably the lineup has a slimmed-down feel, with many films delayed or held back, meaning there is little in the way of Venice’s traditional dose of Hollywood glamour. Festival director Alberto Barbera announced the main list of titles on Tuesday, which drew together films by the likes of Alex Gibney , Chloé Zhao and Luca Guadagnino . Zhao’s film, Nomadland, is arguably the most prized: following her indie hit The Rider , Zhao has adapted Jessica Bruder’s non-fiction account of older Americans forced on to the road by economic crisis, with Frances McDormand acting as producer as well as taking the lead role. In a s

New York governor says event featuring Goldman Sachs CEO and Chainsmokers breached Covid-19 rules Coronavirus – latest updates See all our coronavirus coverage New York health authorities will investigate a charity concert in the Hamptons, which included performances by the Goldman Sachs chief, David Solomon, and DJ duo the Chainsmokers, over what Governor Andrew Cuomo called “egregious” social distancing violations. The drive-in event, Safe & Sound, had space for about 600 cars and was held in Southampton village on Saturday. It was the first in a series of concerts planned for the US, according to the organisers’ website . Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2CKCdli

French hillside scene in Tree Roots may have been painted hours before artist’s death The exact location from where Vincent van Gogh is likely to have painted his final masterpiece, perhaps just hours before his death, has been discovered with the help of a postcard. The scene in Tree Roots , a painting of trunks and roots growing on a hillside near the French village of Auvers-sur-Oise near Paris was first spotted on a card dating from 1900 to 1910 by Wouter van der Veen, the scientific director of the Institut Van Gogh. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/318FP8T

World-record-holding sand sculptor Ted Siebert gives some tips for amateur builders looking to hone their skills this summer from Arts & Culture | Smithsonian Magazine https://ift.tt/3f7G1Kv

Ai Weiwei’s mother is visibly pained recalling her son’s life as a newborn.“He was born at his father’s darkest time,” says Gao Ying in the new documentary, Ai Weiwei: Yours Truly, released earlier this month from First Run Features.The film, directed by Cheryl Haines, co-directed by Gina Leibrecht and available to stream through select cinema websites in the US, explores the Chinese artist and human rights activist’s 2014 public art intervention, @Large: Ai Weiwei on Alcatraz. And it has much… from South China Morning Post https://ift.tt/2P0Nsbs

In a parody of an instruction manual, Maeve Dunigan comically explains how to install an air-conditioning unit. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2X3ulCm

Famous for her vocals on Screamadelica, the Manchester-born singer was due to release her debut solo album this year Denise Johnson, the Manchester-born singer best known for her vocals on Primal Scream ’s 1991 album Screamadelica, has died aged 56. A friend of Johnson’s confirmed the news on Twitter. No cause of death has been shared. Johnson’s lead vocals featured on Don’t Fight It, Feel It, and she performed with the band from 1990-1995. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3hJ3d3a

2.5/5 starsIn Japanese cinema, sex dolls are surprisingly prolific. Whether employed as crutches for social recluses, as in Torso (2009) and Body Temperature (2011), or as magical avatars through which to examine urban alienation, like in Hirokazu Koreeda’s Air Doll (2009), they are almost exclusively inanimate companions for the emotionally isolated.In Yuki Tanada’s Romance Doll, now streaming on Netflix, sex doll owners barely feature at all. Instead, the film marries a pair of evergreen… from South China Morning Post https://ift.tt/2P0G7Zs

Amanda Petrusich writes about Neil Young’s newly released album, “Homegrown,” which was recorded in the nineteen-seventies, and about listening to the music on a streaming service. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2D9zpOr

On the “Writer’s Voice” podcast, Deborah Treisman hosts the author Bryan Washington, who reads his story “Heirlooms,” from the August 3 & 10, 2020, issue of The New Yorker. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2Ei734T

Sara Lautman’s Daily Cartoon depicts the Cocoa Puffs mascot contemplating the madness of isolation during the coronavirus pandemic. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/338uKqC

Bill McKibben writes about Vermont’s success combatting the coronavirus, the statements of its Republican governor, Phil Scott, and a coöperative spirit of mask-wearing. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/30Todxt

The 83-year-old is heralded by everyone from Bono to Basquiat for his ‘fourth world’ vision for music – and pop has caught up with him Crackling down a phone line from Los Angeles, Jon Hassell apologises in advance. Now 83, the multi-instrumentalist and composer – a hero of Brian Eno, Björk, Bono, Jean-Michel Basquiat and others – fell in his recording studio earlier this year, breaking his leg. The subsequent recuperation in a convalescent hospital went on for four months. He had no visitors, due to the coronavirus pandemic, “so I only had my cell phone to maintain contact with the outside world”. It is an experience that has had after-effects. “I’m feeling a little bird-out-of-cage-like,” he says. “I’ve just got a new apartment and I’m sitting here looking at all the things I’ve brought out of storage yesterday. The place is full of stuff and I have to dig through a lot of things now. And that kind of includes my memory,” he adds, referring to our conversation. “You might hear me s

Canadian rapper’s two new tracks with DJ Khaled push his tally of US Top 10 hits to 40 and his Hot 100 hits to 224 Drake has beaten Madonna’s record for the highest number of Top 10 hits in US chart history. The Canadian rapper has two tracks in this week’s chart in collaboration with DJ Khaled, Popstar at No 3 and Greece at No 8, bringing his total Top 10 hits to 40 and beating Madonna’s record of 38. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3f1lC9K

The US comic on his acclaimed series Ramy, why fiction is the best place to explore sin and his encounter with comedy’s most famous atheist at the Golden Globes It is 8.45am in Los Angeles and Ramy Youssef is at his freshest on what will be a long day full of press interviews. “This is just one of those days of like 30 questions in a row of ‘How is real-life Ramy different from TV Ramy?’” he laughs. Nuanced, funny and humanising, Youssef’s eponymous TV show , Ramy, gets under the skin of his internal struggles as a young, second-generation Egyptian American, as he navigates what it means to be a good person and a good Muslim. It calls to mind series such as Dave , I May Destroy You or Fleabag – shows based on flawed but likable protagonists, addressing questions of morality for a millennial audience with humour and darkness. As it’s currently tricky to stream in the UK (it is available on Amazon’s StarzPlay channel here), you may not have heard of it. But, with a Golden Globe win e

UCL Art Museum set today’s quiz, which enables you to explore the art collection of British museums closed during the coronavirus outbreak – all while answering some fiendish 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 University College London . UCL Art Museum’s collection of about 12,000 artworks has its origins as a teaching and research resource tied to the history of the university’s Slade School of Art. Work by prize-winning artists emerging from the Slade over 150 years sits alongside art spanning five centuries that informed their studies. Forty five per cent of the Slade Collections is work by women artists. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2P2D1Ep

She stole the show in Orange Is the New Black. Now the actor is playing the first black woman to seek the US presidency – and rejecting suggestions she gets a ‘Hollywood smile’ Shirley Chisholm was a woman of many firsts. She was the first black woman elected to Congress, the first black candidate to seek the presidency, and the first woman, full-stop, to participate in a US presidential debate. She introduced more than 50 pieces of legislation, most championing racial, economic and gender equality, and is often credited as paving the way for Barack Obama. In doing so, she occupied a space that many black women recognise: the solitary seat as the only such face at the table. Uzo Aduba, who plays Chisholm in the acclaimed new FX series Mrs America , says that this was a key factor in bringing this formidable politician to life. “That feeling of being the ‘only’,” she says, speaking via Zoom with a warm smile on her face. “It was important to get that right.” Continue reading... fro

When you’ve shared jokes since childhood, you can be brutally honest with each other. Flo & Joan and Ruby Wax’s daughters, Maddy and Marina Bye, on becoming family double acts They’ve been described as “the other popular comedy duo” from TV’s golden age, second only to Morecambe and Wise. But double-act life was not kind to Mike and Bernie Winters . They were together, they split up, they reunited. They agreed to separate for good, but set the date five years into the future. This, wrote one chronicler of comedy, was to “discover ever more rancorous ways to despise each other”. When they finally parted in 1978, it was only because their father had died: he had, Mike reported ruefully, “always wanted us to be together”. After that, Bernie replaced Mike with a St Bernard dog that became more popular than either of them. The Winters – born the Weinsteins – were brothers, of course, posing the question: who, knowing the fraught history of the comedy double act, would enter into such

Following a similar strategy to their sports output, the broadcaster plans to make Sky Arts available to all - a move which may worry their rivals When histories of British television record the impact of coronavirus, the headlines will be cut budgets, lost jobs, suspended projects and filming restrictions. A footnote, though, will be the virus’s subtle impact on the relationship between subscription and paid TV. Earlier this summer, Sky TV agreed with the government – as part of the mid-Covid return of live sport – to make some Premiership football matches available on its free channel Pick (including, as it turned out, the astonishing 5-3 match between Liverpool and Chelsea). Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2P5fB12

Rachel Syme writes on the life and legacy of Olivia de Havilland, who starred in the films “Gone with the Wind” and “The Heiress,” and who died at the age of a hundred and four, on Sunday. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/3f837k1

Author of the Thomas Cromwell trilogy vies with 12 other contenders in a field marked by a high number of debuts Hilary Mantel’s “masterful” conclusion to her Thomas Cromwell trilogy, The Mirror and the Light , has been longlisted for the Booker prize, putting the British novelist in the running to win for an unprecedented third time. Mantel’s 900-page novel, which opens after Anne Boleyn has been beheaded in 1536, and traces the final years of Cromwell, is one of 13 novels in the running for this year’s £50,000 prize. Judges chaired by publisher Margaret Busby said that Mantel’s “masterful exhibition of sly dialogue and exquisite description brings the Tudor world alive”. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/30PDJKR

The German electronic music pioneers’ first festival set was a pivotal moment, one that showed just how profound their influence was while acknowledging their influences Read all of the pieces in the 20 iconic festival sets series One night in 1997, in the grounds of a country house just off the M1, I watched Kraftwerk , the enigmatic Mensch-Maschine, successfully evolve. Their appearance at the dance music one-dayer Tribal Gathering was the group’s first ever festival set. To be there was to witness Kraftwerk in the context of the black dance music they had inspired and were inspired by. Related: Kraftwerk: where to start in their back catalogue Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3jJ28u9

The probably most famous classical music composer has spurred numerous biographies and has many fans around the world. Yet little is known about Johann Sebastian Bach as a person. from Deutsche Welle: DW.com - Culture & Lifestyle https://www.dw.com/en/why bach-is-still-germany-s-star-composer 270-years-after-his-death /a-54329958?maca=en-rss-en-cul-2090-rdf

Willing Davidson interviews the author Bryan Washington about his short story “Heirlooms,” from the August 3, 2020, issue of The New Yorker. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/3hGg5al

Françoise Mouly interviews the artist Grace Lynne Haynes about her cover for the August 3, 2020, issue of The New Yorker, a portrait of the nineteenth-century suffragist Sojourner Truth. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/3g6Z5tt

New cartoons from the magazine. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/3jIuV1Y

Poem by David Baker: “Listen, the years are short. They are nothing.” from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/3f59gNY

Brooke Jarvis on the question of what all the scrubbing, soaping, moisturizing, and deodorizing is really doing for the body’s largest organ. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/3jIo4FJ

An eccentric Dutchman began living in a giant underground facility built by the German military—and ran a server farm beloved by cybercriminals, Ed Caesar writes. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/3jIYK2p

Charles Bethea on the residents of Cody, Wyoming—where Kanye West has a ranch—who compare notes on Michelle Tidball, the local mystic who works in a dentist’s office and says she can communicate with God. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/3hyIjDQ

Enough of Trump is a new initiative involving a collection of artists who aim to inspire US voters to make an informed decision this November In 2008, the Los Angeles artist Shepard Fairey created a political poster for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, depicting a graphic portrait of the candidate with the word “ Hope ”. It would soon become an iconic symbol, signaling a new America, and it gave renewed faith to a nation – and the world. Ever since, there hasn’t really been a viral political poster that has had the same cultural impact. But that could change as Fairey and a group of artists are fusing forces for Enough of Trump , a new art advocacy campaign that aims to inspire voters for the November election. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3jKLlqH

The two-time Oscar winner, best known for a supporting role in "Gone with the Wind," has died. During a career that spanned six decades, the actress starred in a series of dramas, Westerns and period pieces. from Deutsche Welle: DW.com - Culture & Lifestyle https://ift.tt/2D9eXgq

Lynyrd Skynyrd flew it, Ludacris stamped on it and Spike Lee compared it to a swastika. In the era of Black Lives Matter, what do these battles reveal about the American South’s Confederate flag? John Schneider, AKA Bo Duke from the TV show The Dukes of Hazzard, recently asked his fans a question via YouTube : “Was The Dukes of Hazzard a racially charged show? Was the intention of the paint scheme on the General Lee a white supremacist statement in any way? And if you think it was, I wanna know.” For the uninitiated, the General Lee was the Duke brothers’ 1969 Dodge Charger, which outperformed the cop cars of rural Georgia week after week from 1979 to 1985. Bo and Luke’s car was named after a Confederate civil war hero; its horn played the opening bars of Dixie ; and, as for its paint scheme, it sported a giant Confederate flag on its roof. It was basically the South on wheels. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/300he6A

The Gone With the Wind star, known for her lifelong feud with her sister as much as the bewitching brilliance of her acting, and the last link to Hollywood’s golden age Olivia de Havilland established herself for ever in the film world’s collective memory at the age of 22, as the wise, gentle and beautiful Melanie Hamilton in the colossal epic Gone With the Wind. The film appeared in 1939 as war was breaking out in Europe: the mighty theme of old orders being swept away was especially potent. De Havilland was an exemplar of radiant womanly calmness, a polar opposite to the capricious sexiness of Vivien Leigh’s bewitching belle Scarlett O’Hara. The role probably encumbered her with something stately and reserved, which she never entirely lost – though with a hint of mystery and suppressed emotional tumult, on screen and off. Because, however sedate her image, De Havilland was the subject of two of the juiciest scandals of Hollywood’s golden age: her relationship with longtime co-star E

It is beautiful, expensive and groundbreaking in its casting, yet Andrew Davies’s adaptation of Vikram Seth’s tome still feels uncomfortably old-school There is a lot riding on A Suitable Boy (BBC One), which is a fate that befalls pioneering and overdue series such as this. It is the BBC’s first period drama – in more than half a century of forays into the past in horse and carriage, from where you get a rather restricted view of history – with an entirely south Asian cast and no white characters. No, not even one cantankerous dame protecting her fortune from her deathbed. So, this six-episode distillation of Vikram Seth ’s 1,300-page panorama of post-partition India has to do everything, at once, in multiple territories. It is a tall order, especially when some were unhappy with aspects of the adaptation before the opening credits rolled. Does A Suitable Boy succeed? Could anything on such challenging terms? Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2OVGnZJ

The girl social services called ‘the most difficult child in Westminster’ is now up for a Bafta. She talks about Star Wars, her foster mother and working in the Heathrow Wetherspoons When the casting director asked Jasmine Jobson to lose her temper, she wasn’t sure how far to take it. “I was like, ‘I can hit the roof or I could hold back a bit.’ He was like, ‘No, go nuts.” Jobson picked up a chair and “threw it clean across the room”, hitting a wall and narrowly missing a window. A week later, she was told she’d got the job, a part in Netflix’s reboot of the hit gang drama Top Boy , resurrected by Drake . A fearsome presence, and one of few female leads in a very male series, her character Jaq turns the younger kids on the fictional London estate on to dealing drugs – and even beats her own sister, viciously. “I think I accidentally took the wardrobe door off the hinges in the kerfuffle,” Jobson says. “And it was really really hot. I was there in this big Moncler jacket, pouring wit

A drama in which the spirit of Jonathan Swift haunts a seance and an astonishingly brief update of the Oresteia confirm the poet’s remarkable skills as a playwright Few plays are more forgotten than those of WB Yeats . Revered as a poet, he’s ignored as a dramatist yet he deserves to be remembered for a number of reasons. He cofounded the Abbey theatre in 1904, he put Irish legend and history on stage, and he sought to create a drama “close to pure music”. His output was huge – his Collected Plays runs to more than 700 pages – and I’ve plucked out two of his works that, while vastly different in style, show his fixation with death, expiation and eternal recurrence. The Words Upon the Window-Pane (1930) is in many ways exceptional: it is Yeats’s only play with a realistic modern setting. Its subject is a seance held by the Dublin Spiritualist Association in rooms once occupied by Jonathan Swift’s Stella. Yeats has much fun at the expense of the visitors – one of whom wants advice abou

Whether it is the blitz or an earthquake, riots or pandemics, our collective bonds are often forged in disasters, writes John Drury Our experience of the coronavirus pandemic has been shaped by collective behaviour. As one we followed the advice to stay at home, together we clapped for carers. Many crowded on to beaches and many more marched for Black Lives Matter. And, as physical separation continues, we long for the return of nightclubs, gigs and religious ceremonies. New bonds of community are often created by disaster, as Rebecca Solnit charts in A Paradise Built in Hell . The shanty town built by survivors of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, and the self-organised evacuations New Yorkers arranged with strangers after 9/11, show how people facing a common fate can see themselves as belonging to a single group. Like the Covid-19 mutual aid groups we see today, these altruistic communities provide glimpses of an alternative world. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guard

The latest in our series of writers highlighting underseen gems to stream is a recommendation for a surprising and magical Italian drama The Italian hills have never looked less bucolic than in this strange, melancholy film. The terrain is harsh and unyielding; the sun unrelenting; the bone-dry ground dissolves into clouds of dust. A wolf stalks the land as darkness falls, and the local farmers scramble for the few available comforts to get them through the night: a functioning lightbulb, some anchovies, the final sips of wine left in the house. Related: My streaming gem: why you should watch Let There Be Light Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/32VLWQ6

The Hepworth Wakefield set today’s quiz, in our series that explores the collections of British museums closed due to Covid-19 This quiz is brought to you in collaboration with Art UK , the online home of the UK’s public art collections, showing art from more than 3,000 venues, by 45,000 artists. Each day, a different collection on Art UK sets the questions. Today, our questions are set by the Hepworth Wakefield, the collection established in 1923 with a collecting policy to “nurture a public understanding of contemporary art and its relations to modern life”. Works were acquired by the up-and-coming artists of the day, including local heroes Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore. Today the collection is celebrated for its holdings of 20th-century and contemporary art. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/300e6HT

Former NME and Guardian journalist was known for championing underdogs The former NME and Guardian journalist Daniel Martin has died aged 41 at his home in Salford on 25 July. The cause of death is unknown. Martin – known to all as Dan – was a man of passionate enthusiasms ranging from Doctor Who to Biffy Clyro, with an urge to share them as widely as possible. Born in Birkenhead, he wrote for the Mancunion student paper at the University of Manchester, then quickly became one of the youngest writers at City Life, the arts and listings magazine. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2EmJzM8

Mediterranean Sea View 2017 donated by artist to raise money for Bethlehem hospital A triptych of what seem to be tempestuous 19th century seascapes but are actually politically charged works by Banksy is to appear at auction to raise money for a hospital in Bethlehem. The artist himself has donated the three paintings, which will be sold by Sotheby’s in London with an estimate of £800,000-£1.2m. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2WWcpth

Submit your caption. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2WXZVRP

The rapidly changing and unpredictable environment created by Covid-19is taking a toll on mental health, according to experts. Pandemic anxiety and boredom blues, side effects of people spending more time at home, are real, with students particularly hard hit.Hongkonger Jeremy Hung Hei-chun hopes his project, Film Stylo, can provide an escape.Launched amid the pandemic, Film Stylo allows secondary students worldwide to document through short films the effects Covid-19 is having on their lives,… from South China Morning Post https://ift.tt/2WVeDZB

A new excerpt from Finding Freedom details just how distant Meghan and Kate were as colleagues and family outside work. from Culture - ELLE https://ift.tt/3f3ipqi

As the court case between the actor and his ex-wife nears its conclusion, an even nastier battle is taking place in public By now those who actually wished to follow the libel war being waged by Johnny Depp against the Sun newspaper will know exactly who is said to have thrown what and who claims they didn’t do the appalling things others said they did. In truth, even readers who did not want to follow the ghastly twists and turns of the row between Depp and his former wife, Amber Heard, will also know more than they ever thought they would about an undisputedly miserable round of drug-taking, alcohol, rampant paranoia and wanton expenditure that took place five years ago. Evidence in the four-week trial at the Royal Courts of Justice in The Strand has now all been laid before the judge. The Pirates of the Caribbean superstar, Depp, 57, has called witnesses in support of his claim against the publishers, News Group Newspapers, and the paper’s executive editor, Dan Wootton, over an

His grandparents had to sell their paintings for a pittance – and then were killed. Simon Goodman on why the recovery of one means so much A masterpiece by the Italian Renaissance artist Paolo Uccello, which disappeared after the Nazis forced its owner to sell it for a pittance before sending him and his wife to their deaths, is to be sold this week after its current owners discovered its shocking past. The painting, Battle on the Banks of a River , had belonged to Friedrich “Fritz” Gutmann, who was murdered at the Theresienstadt concentration camp in 1944, shortly before his wife, Louise, was gassed at Auschwitz. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3g21RQN