Cultural News Today

‘I was studying at Oxford, auditioned and they said: “You’re going to be a bouncer.” I didn’t know what it entailed – and coming out on national TV wasn’t ideal’ My job was to find characters with charisma and interesting things to say. My boss at RDF Media at the time, Stephen Lambert, was experimenting by mixing entertainment formats with documentary production. Big Brother was already on the air, but it felt like we were leading the way in this new genre of television-making. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3gMrnsX

BTS roared to the top of the Billboard Hot 100 singles charts in the US on Monday, becoming the first South Korean pop act to debut at No 1.Dynamite, the first all-English language single from the seven-member boy band, notched 33.9 million US streams and 300,000 sales in its first week, according to Nielsen Music data. The band also scored the biggest digital sales week in nearly three years since Taylor Swift’s Look What You Made Me Do in September 2017.The Billboard Hot 100 singles chart… from South China Morning Post https://ift.tt/34WRdIt

1.5/5 starsAfter rumours of reshoots, multiple delays, a studio buy-out and now a global pandemic, the fact we’re seeing Josh Boone’s The New Mutants is something of a minor miracle. Quietly ushered out by Disney, which inherited the movie during the acquisition of 20th Century Fox, Boone’s not-so-new Mutants is an anodyne X-Men spin-off with very little going for it.Marvel’s mutant hero franchise has been a patchy series at best. For every high (X2, Days of Future Past , Logan ), there’s been… from South China Morning Post https://ift.tt/34MyAqo

The Wanch, Hong Kong’s longest-running live music venue, has announced it will be suspending operations after more than three decades in business – but vows to return when the pandemic has passed.Hammered by a loss of revenue caused by the government shutdown of bars amid the coronavirus pandemic, managers of The Wanch say they failed to secure rent concessions from their landlord and have been forced to vacate the venue in Wan Chai district on Hong Kong Island.“We have decided to suspend… from South China Morning Post https://ift.tt/31Fhc51

Submit your caption. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/3jsL0I3

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Emma and Garrett Hedlund's secret is out. from Culture - ELLE https://ift.tt/2YMWkaf

The "Rain On Me" singer later added, "Wear a mask. It's a sign of respect." from Culture - ELLE https://ift.tt/3hJEjRA

The fishbowl helmet totally counts as a mask, by the way. from Culture - ELLE https://ift.tt/3hIocn7

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Taylor recorded her acceptance speech from home. from Culture - ELLE https://ift.tt/3hJL8Td

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Before announcing any nominees, Palmer took the time to draw attention to what (and who) matters. from Culture - ELLE https://ift.tt/3hJOFka

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At 80, DJ Annie Nightingale is still in awe of the young and a champion of new music. As she publishes her memoir, Hey Hi Hello, she recalls her long career in pop culture – and speaking her mind It’s an hour past midnight on a humid Wednesday in July, and a set of future rave classics is being broadcast simultaneously on Radio 1, 1Xtra and the BBC Asian Network. The choices are pulsating and fast, including a new track by producers Tiga and Hudson Mohawke, and a remix of House Arrest by Sofi Tukker and Gorgon City, a drum-and-bass-fuelled track which feels intense enough to wake the dead. Then the DJ cuts in, her voice husky and hurried, but also disarmingly polite. She has picked these tracks herself, and several include colourful language, so she needs to issue a warning, given this is the BBC. “There may be some adult themes in this show, so if you think you might be offended you can find another, I’m sure,” she explains. “You might like to hear me on Desert Island Discs on BBC

Karl Stevens’s comic tells the story of men being sexually harassed while they are trying to harass women. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2QBiLuz

The comedian and activist on the invisibility of women in the public sphere, homophobia and why it was time to leave Bake Off Broadcaster, writer, comedian and activist Sandi Toksvig, 62, has worked on stage, screen and radio for 40 years. She was born in Denmark, moved to the UK aged 14 and studied at Cambridge University. She began her TV career on children’s show No.73 , chaired Radio 4’s News Quiz for a decade, has helmed the BBC panel show QI since 2016 and stepped down as co-host of The Great British Bake Off earlier this year. She also co-founded the Women’s Equality party in 2015. Her memoir Between the Stops is out now in paperback. Your memoir is based around a bus journey through London. How did you hit upon that format? I find some memoirs a bit boring, especially the chapters about their early lives. I didn’t want to write that kind of book. To be honest, I didn’t really want to write about myself at all – I’m too self-conscious and find it all rather narcissistic

Billie Piper tears up the screen; the paedophile ring that never was; a scientist’s courageous struggle against disease; and the trouble with Andrew Davies’s Suitable Boy I Hate Suzie (Sky Atlantic) | sky.com The Unbelievable Story of Carl Beech (BBC Two) | iPlayer The Truth About Cosmetic Treatments (BBC One) | iPlayer Peter: The Human Cyborg (Channel 4) | 40D A Suitable Boy (BBC One) | iPlayer Not Billie Piper’s intent, no doubt, to outshine every other actor on screen. It just comes naturally. Her latest outing, I Hate Suzie , which she co-created with Lucy Prebble , is a humdinger, and despite genuine in-depth quality to the cast – Leila Farzad, Daniel Ings – the eyes are drawn remorselessly to Piper, even walking through a crowd or filling a glass in a corner of a vast country kitchen. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2QzDS0f

The writer’s new novel, Mayflies, is an elegy to a teenage friend. Here he talks about growing up in working-class Ayrshire, going against the grain and the spirit of 80s post-punk Every teenager, or every teenager who is lucky, has a Keith. Keith is the friend who jokes and dresses with more swagger than anyone else, who looks out for misfits and makes them feel understood, who is the scourge of bullies and bigots and the master of revels, who can conjure laughs from thin air on nights when you are bored and skint. Andrew O’Hagan met his Keith – Keith Martin – on the council estate near Irvine new town, on the coast of Ayrshire, 20 miles from Glasgow, where they both grew up. In the 1980s they went on CND protests and miners’ marches together, they were a wayward double-act chatting up girls, and while O’Hagan was still at school and Martin was working as a lathe-turner in a local factory, they formed a band. Thirty years later, with none of that history forgotten, it was O’Hagan

She was known for playing, in her own words, ‘chavs and slappers’, with much drama along the way. Now a TV film puts the actress in a new light Sheridan Smith should be a monster. By showbiz rights, the actress who has bagged two Oliviers, a Bafta, an OBE and made Dustin Hoffman cry from sheer awe at her talent, should at least have a touch of bighead-itis. So many actors with fewer accolades become ludicrously grand given half the chance, but Smith seems immune to the luvvie side of the industry. For better or worse, her success never seems to sink in. “Given that level of acclaim, it’s puzzling that she’s so down-to-earth,” says director Tanya Stephan , only half joking. “She never has to take herself down a level to talk to people. She’s just there – she is naturally warm.” Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2Dao8O0

From The New Yorker’s archive: short stories by Zadie Smith, Jennifer Egan, and Stephen King. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/34N6vPW

Eula Biss writes about the philosophical musings she experienced when she bought a house. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/3gJiJeB

Gerald Marzorati writes on Serena Williams’s recent record ahead of the U.S. Open, where she will have another chance to win her twenty-fourth major and tie the record held by Margaret Court. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/3hUGdPv

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/2EHnkkz

Trump and his supporters claimed that his opponents are seeking to deceive and subdue Americans. It’s a dangerous path, Amy Davidson Sorkin writes. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/3jsYrHU

Eliza Griswold writes about how Brenda Salter McNeil and other Christian leaders have shifted from the racial-reconciliation movement to addressing systemic racism, in the era of Black Lives Matter. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/3hCvDwa

Scrambled heads make for some of the most potent offerings when it comes to science fiction – and Dream Raider offers an eight-part menu of twisted fantasies, murderous impulses and other largely base tendencies in garnishing its near-future tale of mind mangling and psychological upheaval.Available on HBO Go and HBO (new episodes on Sundays at 9pm), Dream Raider borrows from Total Recall, The Matrix and Inception to consider the possibilities of barging in on the slumbers of the unsuspecting,… from South China Morning Post https://ift.tt/3b93zxV

Much has been written about the late actor’s appreciation of his work’s significance. But this is to underestimate both the agency and far-sighted initiative that made his short career so revolutionary Chadwick Boseman began his career playing African-American icons and pioneers; he ends it as one himself. His career has been cut tragically short, but his achievements, as an actor and as a cultural force, will surely prove to be as heroic as those of the characters he portrayed. At the very least, he leaves the film-making landscape looking very different to how it was when he entered it. Boseman’s talents extended to not only inhabiting his roles but choosing them, too. As he once put it , he had a “manifesto”. From the outset, he was aware of the kind of stories he wanted to tell, even if it took a decade of soaps and TV parts to get there. His breakthrough was the 2013 movie 42, in which he played a genuine American legend: Jackie Robinson, the first significant black player in ma

Sheelah Kolhatkar on the New York attorney general Letitia James’s announcement this week that she is investigating possible financial malfeasance by the Trump Organization, Donald Trump’s real-estate company. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/3gJmDEe

From Aleppo to Palmyra, many of the country’s architectural treasures have been reduced to rubble, but restoration has begun The centre of Aleppo was a marvel. It was a demonstration of the multiplicity of both humanity and stone. It was an embodiment of the material and cultural wealth that once made Syria one of the luckiest and most civilised places on Earth – a California of the Middle East, blessed by climate, fertile land, physical beauty and its position between the Mediterranean and the Silk Road to the east. “My beautiful province,” as the seventh-century Byzantine emperor Heraclius called Syria, while retreating from Muslim conquerors, “what a paradise you will be for the enemy!” In Aleppo there was, and mostly still is, the citadel, a mound growing upwards into improbably massive walls, a dream of castle-ness realised with crushing weight. Then there were the souks, a huge web of covered alleys and streets, spaces made of produce and transactions as much as of masonry, in

With a black belt in karate and skilled in kick boxing, ninjutsu, power lifting and Olympic weightlifting, Yoson An’s martial arts background stands him in good stead playing the romantic interest of Hua Mulan in Disney’s upcoming live-action remake of Mulan.An, who also does kayaking and rock climbing, says his sports background helps with his grasp of the fight choreography in the movie. “I actually did most of my stunts in this film, except for the really dangerous stuff which I leave to the… from South China Morning Post https://ift.tt/3jrKqKM

Ethan Hauser writes humorous descriptions of different parts of the Internet, including Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Amazon, and Google, and why they are terrible. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/3b8jdcZ

Gideon Lewis-Kraus writes about the inventor and entrepreneur Jonathan Rothberg and his work during the coronavirus pandemic toward a more convenient test for COVID-19. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2QC2Yve

Louisa Thomas writes about the battle over whether to cancel college football and the economic interests that are at stake. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/31Bs6Zx

In a rare interview, the author answers questions from booksellers and translators around the world, about everything from the coronavirus to writing as therapy Neapolitan dialect plays an important role in your novels . Could one say that you are doing a work of translation, hearing the voices of these characters in dialect and turning them into Italian? Marcello Lino, translator, Brazil Of course, but it’s a vexed, I would say unhappy, translation. To explain this I have to talk about the nature of the narrators I’ve constructed up to now. In my books, the narrator is the “voice” of a woman with Neapolitan origins, who knows dialect well, who is well educated, who has lived far from Naples for a long time, and who has serious reasons for hearing Neapolitan as the language of violence and obscenity. I’ve put “voice” in quotation marks here because it’s not at all about voice but about writing. Delia, Olga, Leda, Elena, explicitly or implicitly, are writing their story and in doin

The podcaster, comic and radio host has made a career out of his insecurities. But uncovering a family secret has helped him find peace Read an extract from Ramble Book This is the third time I’ve met Adam Buxton , but the first time I’ve met him on his own. Our first encounter was in 2001, alongside his childhood best friend and frequent comedy partner, Joe Cornish . Back then, they were making the Channel 4 comedy series The Adam And Joe Show, in which the two of them brilliantly, and with often astonishing prescience, satirised pop culture: in a segment titled The 1980s House , they sent up a then-nascent obsession with nostalgia TV (“Early mornings on television in the 80s were very different from today: there were only three and a half channels, all showing popular comedy rodents”); they recreated revered films and sitcoms with stuffed animals ( Toy tanic ! Furends! ). It was silly, smart and superbly of its time, and for a certain demographic – ie mine – The Adam And Joe Show

The Norwegian author’s powerful new novel, Unquiet, grew out of a series of conversations she recorded with the film director not long before his death When Linn Ullmann’s father was well into his 80s, he began to refer to the life that he was now experiencing as “the epilogue”. Lying in bed in the mornings, he would tot up his ailments, allowing himself one per decade: if there were fewer than eight, he would get up; if there were more, he would stay put. But these strategies denoted realism rather than appeasement, and his determination to continue work remained largely unshaken. Ullmann’s father was the great Swedish film director Ingmar Bergman , and the work that he fixed on in his last years was a collaboration with his daughter, a book that would capture something of his life and thoughts as he approached the end. Recalling the beginnings of the project as she talks to me from Oslo, Ullmann emphasises the centrality of the creative process to Bergman’s life. “When it’s work, y

Top telly to get stuck into as the nights draw in, featuring Steve McQueen, Nicole Kidman and a late start for Bake Off Fall back: how the networks ensured there would be TV this autumn Modern Toss on post-lockdown filming ... Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2QAmEQd

Virtual audiences, isolation pods – your favourite shows might look different this year, but there’s plenty of TV left in the tank From Strictly to the return of Spitting Image: the 30 shows to look forward to this autumn Modern Toss on post-lockdown filming ... Autumn is traditionally when TV unveils its lushest treats of the year. In 2020, though, you might think this can’t possibly be the case. Life has been on hold, to some extent, since March, when almost every TV show in production closed down. Surely, then, the cupboard is bare? But thanks to stockpiling of pre-lockdown footage and some clever tweaks to how shows are made, the major broadcasters and streamers have autumn slates that very nearly constitute business as usual. When Taskmaster completes its big-money transfer from Dave to Channel 4, for example, Greg Davies will have an excuse to shout at the competing comedians even more than he did before. Everyone will be sitting further away from each other, and they’ll b

This week we’ve got a post-divorce banger, some effects-drenched falsetto, and a slice of sleaze-sloshed anger Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/31yMNFu

The writer, director and Zach Galifianakis collaborator on the things that make him laugh the most I’ve seen a LOT of standup. But I still think one of my favourite sets I’ve seen is one I wasn’t there for personally: John Mulaney’s Kid Gorgeous at Radio City special. Everything is there – unique ideas, phrasing, performance. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3lrLrnN

Robert ‘JK Rowling’ Galbraith’s private detective returns, while Amazon’s anti-superheroes are back and in big trouble Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/34GJoXd

The Berlin Philharmonic has a new season, but with reduced audience attendance, normalcy is still a distant dream, says Director Andrea Zietzschmann. from Deutsche Welle: DW.com - Culture & Lifestyle https://ift.tt/31G4EdM

Chadwick Boseman, star of the ground-breaking superhero movie "Black Panther," has died after a private four-year battle with colon cancer, his publicist told AFP Friday. from https://ift.tt/3hDrQPm

The actor died at his home in Los Angeles after being diagnosed with colon cancer four years ago Actor Chadwick Boseman, who played black icons Jackie Robinson and James Brown before finding fame as the regal Black Panther in the Marvel cinematic universe, has died of cancer, his representative said. He was 43. Boseman died at his home in the Los Angeles area with his wife and family by his side, his publicist Nicki Fioravante said on Friday. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/31CGi4i

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The world's most elusive author answers questions about her new novel from readers around the world. from Culture - ELLE https://ift.tt/3jq1n8l

The iconic 'Black Panther' actor died at 43 after a four-year battle with colon cancer. from Culture - ELLE https://ift.tt/3b56lEF

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Late twist in the tale as former librarian claims titles including The Twits and The Subtle Knife were intended for management The school librarian who stacked the shelves behind Boris Johnson’s podium with titles including The Twits, Betrayed and The Subtle Knife has admitted that she never intended the message for the prime minister, but for the management of the school from which she resigned in February. Related: Books seen behind Boris Johnson tell their own story Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/34IBRqW

The renaming of a Berlin boulevard using the racist M-word to Anton Wilhelm Amo Strasse, after Germany's first African-born scholar, highlights a long struggle to erase symbols of a brutal colonial past. from Deutsche Welle: DW.com - Culture & Lifestyle https://ift.tt/32A5PKY

Writers Zukiswa Wanner, Ian McEwan, and artist Elvira Espejo Ayca are honored with the prestigious German prize. Meet them in a series of DW video profiles. from Deutsche Welle: DW.com - Culture & Lifestyle https://ift.tt/3gzZcgI

European destinations with a glamour factor - which of these international jet set haunts would you like to visit? from Deutsche Welle: DW.com - Culture & Lifestyle https://ift.tt/34EoB6w

Elaine Friedman and Claire Friedman write a humorous narrative about escaping New York City for a bucolic getaway. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2D5AYgr

The author of The Girls talks about Weinstein, weathering a plagiarism allegation and her new short story collection, Daddy In the many photos of Emma Cline that appeared in the media in 2016, when her hugely successful first book, The Girls , was published, she tended to look both severe and fragile, guarded yet also exposed. Not since the publication of Zadie Smith’s White Teeth in 2000 had a young woman made such a splash with a debut literary novel and, as with Smith, people were as fascinated by the author as they were with her book. Cline, then 27, was paid an almost unprecedented $2m advance, and the film rights sold before the book was even published. She was photographed in Vogue, interviewed by the New Yorker, feted everywhere. Yet she always looked like she was holding her breath, as if she was watching something terrible approach on the horizon. So I’m a little surprised to be greeted by a relaxed and smiling young woman on my computer screen when Cline, now 31, and I con

With her award-winning short set to become a BBC sitcom and an appearance in a big US sitcom on the way, the comedian is having a major year – and she’s only getting started On the day I speak to Gbemisola Ikumelo, it’s in the midst of the biggest fortnight of her career so far. She has just won a TV Bafta for her short Brain in Gear, had a comedy series based on said short commissioned by the BBC, and has been cast in a big US series, too. It’s also one of the hottest days of the year, so as her Zoom window pops up, she’s cheerfully licking a rocket lolly. The actor and comedian, best known for the BBC sketch show Famalam , says none of it has really sunk in. “On the day of the Bafta, I was sitting in my PJs eating Domino’s Pizza watching it, and then I saw my face come up on screen as the winner, and I mean, yeah, I screamed,” she says. “It’s weird … you spend so long hustling, then, in the course of a week, you’re handed a bunch of your dreams.” Continue reading... from Cultu

Author ‘follows my conscience’ after head of Robert F Kennedy Human Rights group says her views are transphobic JK Rowling is returning the Ripple of Hope award given to her last year by the Robert F Kennedy Human Rights (RFKHR) organisation after its president, Kennedy’s daughter, criticised her views on transgender issues. The award, which is for people who have shown a “commitment to social change”, was presented to Rowling in December for her work with her children’s charity, Lumos. On receiving the award, Rowling called it “ one of the highest honours I’ve ever been given ” and said “Robert Kennedy embodied everything I most admire in a human being”. Previous winners include Barack Obama, archbishop Desmond Tutu and Joe Biden. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/31ApqLw

Eschewing viciousness and weapons for knockabout fun, Mediatonic created a monster Fat little jelly beans playing a neon-coloured version of the cult classic gameshow Takeshi’s Castle might not sound like the British answer to the craze that is Fortnite, but tens of millions of people have downloaded the London-made hit Fall Guys in less than a month since its release. “When you’re designing games you want to give people an experience they’ve never felt before,” says its lead designer, Joe Walsh. “And for us, it was a middle-aged slightly unwieldy Japanese businessman, on the sideline of a giant obstacle course that he has absolutely no right attempting.” Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2QwUrd5

Linnea Feldman Emison writes about a video showing people talking about their experiences returning to Walt Disney World Resort during the coronavirus pandemic. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/31BzMLq

Helen Rosner writes about Nina Compton, the St. Lucian chef behind the New Orleans restaurants Compère Lapin and Bywater American Bistro; what her fame represents for the overdue recognition of Black chefs in the city; and how the coronavirus pandemic has affected New Orleans’s restaurants. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2YG3IUP

Anthony Lane reviews Armando Iannucci’s adaptation of Charles Dickens’s novel, starring Dev Patel, Tilda Swinton, and Hugh Laurie. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/3b70DSo

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/34IbWQa

Mourinho steals every scene in All Or Nothing: Tottenham Hotspur, but even Tom Hardy can’t add any drama to a gussied up end of season DVD The most revealing moment in the opening episode of All Or Nothing: Tottenham Hotspur occurs during a private meeting between the newly appointed manager, José Mourinho, and his captain, England’s star striker, Harry Kane. “The world looks to English football with respect, but they still think the movie stars of football belong to other places … I am a little bit [like] that as a coach,” says Mourinho. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3lscVd6

The television presenter and debut author on John le Carré, his favourite crime writers and the funniest book in the English language The book I am currently reading The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead . I was about to read The Underground Railroad when I noticed that The Nickel Boys was shorter, which I admire in a book. It is as extraordinary as everyone says and I’m now going to read The Underground Railroad , making the fact that The Nickel Boys was shorter annoyingly moot. The book I wish I had written When John le Carré first describes George Smiley , he does it with such economy and humanity it takes your breath away. It is all the more remarkable that this description is on the first page of his first novel, Call for the Dead . Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2EBQNfJ

The great surrealist explores trauma by painting the woods, a stand-in for wild imagination in 19th-century Romanticism A weekly Guide column in which we dissect the influences and interpretations of a work of art Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3jgmfPc

The north-west Londoner’s success offered him the chance to escape the estate he grew up on – but instead he’s trying to give something back, even after being stabbed last year ‘We’re probably the only estate left in London with a concrete pitch,” says Courtney Freckleton, better known as the rapper Nines. He is talking about Church End in Harlesden, north-west London. At the far end of the estate’s concrete sprawl of low-rise towers and terraced housing is a fading grey pitch with painted basketball and football lines, fenced in by high black railings. “We always complain, but now I’m in a position to help.” He is aiming to regenerate the local community hub, the Church End & Roundwood Unity Centre, with proposals that include converting the concrete pitches to astroturf and staging a series of career workshops about the entertainment industry, from music law to scriptwriting. The kids in the area, he says, “need to know that you can be in the music industry and you don’t need t

The Rocks writer and playwright plans to fly her guests across the London skyline to sip rum punch while watching Babymother and Bullet Boy Entry is free, but only if you can perfectly spit any verse from 21 Seconds by So Solid Crew . When I was younger, I used to watch the video on repeat, with all the cool people wearing leather and climbing over fences into no man’s land. I worked hard to memorise every lyric. Anyone who can match me deserves my respect. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3gCYLSA

It's a heated discussion in Cologne and Düsseldorf: Can carnival take place despite COVID-19? Ahead of the first set of festivities set to launch on November 11, propositions are on the table to make it possible. from Deutsche Welle: DW.com - Culture & Lifestyle https://ift.tt/3gBYQ9p

The artwork may be called "Two Laughing Boys," but police and one Dutch museum are less than amused by its third pilfering. from Deutsche Welle: DW.com - Culture & Lifestyle https://ift.tt/31BWra8

The two actors talk about their new film, Hope Gap, and along with co-star Josh O’Connor and director William Nicholson, share their thoughts on honesty, fidelity and the perils of talking at breakfast Bill Nighy would like you to know that he is not a professional agony uncle. “If I start talking as if I’m an expert on sexual relations, call a cab,” he says, down the phone, from under a tree, familiar drawl mixed with a snort. Same goes if you want to talk about faith. “I’ve had no contact with the supernatural or made any connections with other dimensions. I don’t have any answers. I don’t get out much. And, what with the pandemic, I obviously get out even less.” Trouble is, to discuss Nighy’s new film – about the abrupt end of a long marriage – is to wade immediately into Dear John territory. That is its point. “You hope it will unlock people’s lives, not to sound too grand,” says Nighy. “That it examines stuff. And there aren’t many bigger subjects than the attempt at love and

Susan Glasser writes about President Donald Trump’s speech at the 2020 Republican National Convention, delivered at the White House, in which Trump made war on Joe Biden and pretended the coronavirus pandemic is all but defeated. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2D5ptFQ

Ariana Grande co-wrote them. from Culture - ELLE https://ift.tt/2Ey9fFZ

The forgotten woman of Detroit’s soul explosion, Bettye LaVette reveals why she was too lewd for Motown, her rivalry with Aretha Franklin and why she loves Kamala Harris Bettye LaVette is talking about James Brown and liberally fire-hosing one of her favourite words down the fuzzy line from New Jersey. “That muthafucka ,” she crackles, her throaty drawl sounding like a thousand log fires. As she tells it, she had been opening for the funk taskmaster on tour in the mid-60s, but he had refused to talk to her the entire time. The only exception was when he stopped her from performing her single Let Me Down Easy at the end of her set, jealous of its rapturous reception. “He made me move it because I was on right before him,” LaVette remembers. “In the theatre, when someone else comes on stage and people are still clapping for you, they call it ‘stepping on applause’. But he would just step all over mine. He was an asshole.” Until the mid-2000s, when her career took flight once more – “my

Sean McGowan writes a humorous piece exploring the probabilities behind rolling a die, tossing a coin, and surviving some hairy situations. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/3hzG2ZC

from Culture - ELLE https://ift.tt/3b1KoWR

Before David Bowie’s “Heroes”, the German artist painted a series of the same name, taking a past tainted by Nazis and making it new. Now two exhibitions celebrate his subversive brilliance In 1977, at the Hansa studio in West Berlin, David Bowie was recording some new songs when he happened to look out of the window. The pop legend saw his musical collaborator Tony Visconti kissing his girlfriend in front of the heavily guarded concrete barrier built by communist East Germany to keep its citizens in. He wrote “Heroes” , one of his best loved songs, that contains the lines: “I, I can remember / Standing by the wall / And the guns shot above our heads / And we kissed as though nothing could fall.” But Bowie wasn’t the first person to juxtapose totalitarian brutality and the frailty of the individual in a modern masterpiece called Heroes. A decade earlier, as the cold war began to intensify, a young German artist named Hans-Georg Kern painted a series of ironic paintings also collect

(Island Records) With nightclubs closed during coronavirus, the third album from the British pop-house duo has an unwittingly mournful quality Occasionally, songs take on qualities that their authors never intended them to have. The passage of time casts different light on them; political groups and protest movements co-opt them, lending unanticipated meaning to the words; artists unexpectedly die and their final work becomes freighted with poignancy. To a roll-call that includes Martha and the Vandellas’ Dancing in the Street, John Lennon’s (Just Like) Starting Over, Bob Dylan’s Maggie’s Farm and McFadden & Whitehead’s Ain’t No Stopping Us Now, we now might add, a little unexpectedly, the third album by Surrey-born pop-house duo Disclosure, which events overtook before it was even released. There may have been less opportune moments in history to put out an album filled with songs hymning the pleasures of clubs, of dancing en masse and of fleeting eyes-meeting-across-the-dancef

The Netflix doc focuses on artists, designers and star players, with enough lively pixel animations and amusing anecdotes to show what an exciting time the 1970s to 90s was for gamers Netflix’s latest nostalgia-driven docuseries tackles the history of video games, with a focus on the 1970s, 80s and early 90s that made this 32-year-old gamer feel positively sprightly. It is pacy and wide-ranging, charting a course from early arcade culture through to modern esports, text adventures to role-playing games (RPGs), Space Invaders to Doom, enlivened by enthusiastic anecdotes from the people who were there. It hardly turns a new lens on this period, leaning heavily on the most recognisable games and stories of the era, but it does a better job than most TV at talking about video games without being either too superficial or too boring. Most of the interviewees are the familiar, male faces of early(ish) video game history: the venerable Nolan Bushnell of Atari, the endearing metalhead Doom c

Jennifer Lunn wins £2,500 prize for drama Es and Flo, whose fringe premiere was sabotaged by the Covid pandemic A drama about an ageing lesbian couple’s love, and their experience of discrimination and dementia, has won a prize for new plays that were due to be presented at this year’s Edinburgh fringe. Jennifer Lunn ’s play, Es and Flo, was set to premiere at Edinburgh’s Traverse theatre this summer before the Covid-19 pandemic led to the fringe’s cancellation. It has now beaten more than 130 other scripts to win the Popcorn Writing award 2020 for new work. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2QvEB2g

Artist Ai Weiwei created the film "Coronation" to reflect what happened in Wuhan, the first city in the world to deal with COVID-19. from Deutsche Welle: DW.com - Culture & Lifestyle https://ift.tt/2D2cIvG

China-produced World War II film The Eight Hundred has taken more than 1.2 billion yuan (US$175 million) at the box office since its release in China on August 21.That’s despite the mixed reviews for The Eight Hundred, with critics panning it for sensationalism, distorting historical facts, and its loose plot.The film, about the heroics of Nationalist Chinese troops countering Japanese forces during their invasion of Shanghai in 1937, was pulled from release last year by the government ahead of… from South China Morning Post https://ift.tt/3hxdLmw

Les Payne writes about the history of the shooting of Malcolm X, the evolution of his ideas about activism and civil rights leading up to his assassination, and the government’s botched investigation of his murder. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2EyIxgl

Andrew Marantz on the manic denialism on display at the Republican National Convention, and on “Reaganland,” a new book by the historian Rick Perlstein, who sees the appeal of reactionary politics in America as a constant, from Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2Qq8NvM

Victor Luckerson writes on Onikah Asamoa-Caesar, the owner of a new bookstore, Fulton Street Books & Coffee, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and intersections between reading and the country’s racial-justice movement. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/3hAzGJh

For German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, life was a process of constant change. The father of the "zeitgeist" was born 250 years ago. from Deutsche Welle: DW.com - Culture & Lifestyle https://ift.tt/3gzQCyg

When Mediatonic’s Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout suddenly stopped working after a successful launch, the developers were blamed. But the reasons for such outages are complex On 4 August, British game studio Mediatonic launched a colourful and self-consciously silly game entitled Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout, in which 60 players compete in zany challenges straight out of Takeshi’s Castle. After beta testing well, it attracted some online buzz, so the developer was prepared for a modestly successful opening day with maybe a couple of hundred thousand participants. Within 24 hours, more than 1.5m people attempted to play. What happened next has become a familiar story in the world of online multiplayer games: the servers collapsed, the game stopped working and Mediatonic was inundated with furious complaints. Pretty soon, Fall Guys was being review-bombed on Metacritic by petulant players accusing the team of laziness and cynicism. Didn’t they prepare properly for launch? Why didn’t they

By playing their ultra-fast footwork style in a Soviet-era Kraków suburb, the Chicago DJs opened a portal to the future Half an hour from the centre of Kraków, out past the ring road, is the Soviet-era suburb of Nowa Huta, a model city that was never finished. It has roads wide enough for tanks, trees planted with the absorption of a nuclear blast in mind, and it is shaped so that the city can lock down into a fortress in the event of an attack. It is also the location of a vast post-industrial hangar-like theatre space called Łaźnia Nowa , where, one cold Saturday night in early October 2011, a crack in time opened, and the future arrived from Chicago. With DJ Spinn and DJ Rashad at the controls, this set was one of the first times footwork – the fast ghetto-house dance music from Chicago’s South Side – had been played in Europe. Playing as part of Kraków’s experimental music festival Unsound , they took the roof off the low-ceilinged basement. Continue reading... from Culture |

Yoko Ono continues to oppose release of man who shot Lennon outside his New York apartment in 1980 Mark David Chapman, who murdered John Lennon outside his New York apartment in 1980, has been denied parole for the 11th time. A parole board at Wende correctional facility near Buffalo, New York, denied Chapman’s release, though detailed reasons have not been given. He will have to wait two years before applying for parole again. Lennon’s wife, Yoko Ono, who was with him when he was shot four times by Chapman, has long opposed parole, and submitted comments to the parole board that were “consistent with the prior letters”, according to her lawyer Jonas Herbsman. Chapman was sentenced to 20 years to life imprisonment, and first became eligible for parole in 2000. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/34Bvzcl

The Chinese artist's latest documentary, "Coronation," was filmed remotely by a team of amateur Wuhan filmmakers. Ai Weiwei spoke to DW about how an authoritarian state stopped the COVID-19 outbreak in its tracks. from Deutsche Welle: DW.com - Culture & Lifestyle https://ift.tt/2QvJZCM

For those missing the sensation of being above or amid the clouds, a trip to the Zugspitze mountain in southern Germany could be a refreshing summer escape. But COVID-19 restrictions also apply at this historic site. from Deutsche Welle: DW.com - Culture & Lifestyle https://ift.tt/3hy7yXx

Video creators are pretending to be holocaust victims on TikTok, using make-up to create bruises and simulate starvation. The Auschwitz memorial spoke out against the controversial content. from Deutsche Welle: DW.com - Culture & Lifestyle https://ift.tt/2YEOcsb

Author Marieke Lucas Rijneveld claimed to be "proud as a cow with seven udders" for winning the International Booker Prize together with translator Michaele Hutchison. At 29, Rijneveld is the youngest-ever winner. from Deutsche Welle: DW.com - Culture & Lifestyle https://ift.tt/2YG8O38

How are Swiss Toni, Ron Manager and a very drunk Rowley Birkin QC handling life in 2020? As The Fast Show returns for a special, its characters talk masks, pronouns and Meghan Markle It’s been 26 years since The Fast Show first aired. Originally running from 1994-97, the frantic sketch show’s sex-mad car showman and innuendo-crazed tailors perhaps wouldn’t find their way on to TV today. But that hasn’t stopped Charlie Higson, Paul Whitehouse , Simon Day, Arabella Weir, John Thomson and Mark Williams reuniting for a one-year-late silver anniversary special packed full of “unacceptable” 90s humour. We caught up with the show’s best-loved characters to see how they are coping with the modern world. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3gB9U6q

John Cassidy on Vice-President Mike Pence’s speech on Wednesday at the Republican National Convention, in which Pence spun a fairy tale about what a great job President Trump has done in handling the coronavirus pandemic. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/31wLbfr

Richard Brody reviews “The City,” a 1939 documentary about the ills of modern metropolises and the alleged benefits of planned communities. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/3jjMmF6

Sofia Warren’s Daily Cartoon shows two people discussing which nights each of them gets to be full of stress and anxiety. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/3b0MFkY

The photos were taken on July 26, less than two months before Gigi's September due date. from Culture - ELLE https://ift.tt/3gCtm2Y

The women's rights icon joined the Duchess of Sussex for a chat at her new Montecito home. from Culture - ELLE https://ift.tt/3aYbYEj

Christopher Nolan’s latest blockbuster creates a palindromic origami of bizarre physics inside an 007-style thriller. If you’ve seen it, what did you think? Charged with the twin missions of kickstarting cinemagoing post-lockdown (outside the US, at least) and out-Nolanning every previous Christopher Nolan movie, Tenet carries a lot on its shoulders. The fact that it made it into cinemas is an achievement, but does it deliver? The critical consensus has been a qualified, often confused, “yes”, although opinions have differed widely, even among Guardian and Observer critics . One thing all will agree: as well as a fresh jolt of spectacle to revive the flatlining movie business, Tenet provides plenty to talk about and plenty to think about. Too much? Let’s talk about that. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2Yx0EKs

38-year-old singer, who had 21 Top 10 hits with Girls Aloud, says breast cancer ‘has advanced to other parts of my body’ Sarah Harding, former member of pop group Girls Aloud, has announced that she has been diagnosed with breast cancer. In a series of tweets, she wrote: Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/32kKYeg

Author’s estate says timing wasn’t right, while scriptwriter says he is ‘mystified’ by move The estate of Iain Banks has blamed timing for the demise of a planned Amazon television adaptation of the late author’s beloved Culture series . The adaptation of the Scottish author’s sci-fi books was announced in 2018, when Amazon Prime Video acquired the global rights to a TV version of Consider Phlebas, the first Culture novel. The author’s estate was set to serve as executive producer, but in a statement to the Guardian on Wednesday, it said the “timing wasn’t quite right” for it to go ahead. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3huruKR

Can Nolan's new film turn the tide in the global film industry crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic? Cinema buffs and blockbuster-hungry teens alike have eagerly awaited it — but some release dates are still shaky. from Deutsche Welle: DW.com - Culture & Lifestyle https://ift.tt/2YwSUYU

Ginny Hogan humorously describes questions of all sorts to ask one’s doctor, without health insurance, during the coronavirus pandemic. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/3guuHJ4

Seducing writers from Boccaccio to EM Forster, this city has given us gossipy and rich histories, and a shadowy backdrop to crime ‘Florence is a very noir city,” a film-maker once told me 10 years ago, on learning that I wrote thrillers set there. (The sixth in my Florentine detective series, The Viper , is out now.) We were looking down on lovely Piazza Santa Croce, scene of a thousand years of bloody jousts and tournaments and the staggeringly violent Florentine football, Calcio Storico , and the words made perfect sense to me. For the casual visitor, Italy is Tennyson’s “lands of summer” and Florence an elegant confection of galleries and architecture, of World Heritage sites and gelato. On the ground, though, in the deep shadow of the narrow streets and austere, towering facades of the cradle of the Renaissance, there are immigrants who live six to a room behind secret doors, there are drug deals and knife fights and girls who go home with the wrong guy. You don’t have to stay fo

A theatrical reading of the children’s classic, directed by Ned Bennett, will be free online One has mouldy cereal in his beard and revoltingly hairy ears; the other has a glass eye and a possible case of the dreaded shrinks. Their domestic life involves frogs in the bedsheets, wormy spaghetti and catching birds with the world’s stickiest glue. They are, of course, The Twits. Roald Dahl’s book about the gruesome twosome, which has long delighted and disgusted kids and grownups, is to be presented as a theatrical reading online 40 years after it was first published. Aimed at children aged six to 12, the reading will be streamed for free on YouTube by London’s Unicorn theatre and available to watch on the Guardian website . Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3jeYneP

Musicians recording at different locations and times, yet forming an ensemble: Impossible? No! DW and Maestra Alondra de la Parra present "The Impossible Orchestra." from Deutsche Welle: DW.com - Culture & Lifestyle https://ift.tt/2QpYVlN