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Showing posts from December, 2020

Strictly sparkle delivered direct to your ears – podcasts of the week

Claudia Winkleman and Clara Amfo, Strictly host and constestant, both continue with their successful podcast series. Plus: the New York Times struggles with its mea culpa How Did We Get Here? Claudia Winkleman and psychologist Dr Tanya Byron recently concluded the second series of their podcast, with another on the way. Focusing on aspects of parent/child relationships, Byron provides expert advice, while Winkleman ties it all together with a light touch. With recent topics including a lifelong eating disorder and a man who believed he may be autistic, this is not casual doing-the-dishes listening. Rather, it’s an empathetic look at the complexities of life that is sure to appeal to fans of Esther Perel. Hannah J Davies Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3pFh26R
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MF Doom, iconic masked hip-hop MC, dies aged 49

Rapper and producer known for multiple projects including Madvillain died in October, according to announcement by wife MF Doom, one of US hip-hop’s most distinctive and respected MCs and producers, has died aged 49. His wife Jasmine posted on his Instagram account: Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/383qvPt
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The Real Republican Radicals

The Trump movement was long understood as a populist one, but, since the election, the people at the barricades have been politicians and their lawyers. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/3nbOK2l
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Deconstructing the 2020 Latino Vote

The political preferences of white working-class voters and soccer moms have been dissected in detail—and now strategists are applying the same level of focus to Latino voters. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/3pybWck
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‘It took its toll’: the terrible legacy of Martin Luther King’s fight with the FBI

In his new film MLK/FBI, Sam Pollard lays bare the injustices the FBI heaped on the civil rights leader, but paints a picture of a complex man dealing with his personal life and its baggage alongside his political beliefs As a child in 1960s east Harlem, documentary film-maker Sam Pollard was “profoundly touched” by two events. The assassination of John F Kennedy, in 1963, when Pollard was in junior high school. Then, five years later, the murder of Martin Luther King. Yet as he grew up, Pollard found his memory of those events softening round the edges. “You think back and try to remember how you reacted to everything going on, particularly the March on Washington, and it all swirls around in your head,” he says. “Some things get lost. You think: ‘Wow, was that really happening?’ It’s history, but not so long ago that I can’t remember it.” Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/383PNwK
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Stuck at home on New Year's Eve? Here's what to watch on TV

The Thames fireworks may be off, but Jools Holland, Graham Norton and co in the UK will still be vying for your sozzled attention You might not be able to see your real friends – but there’s a gaggle of TV’s finest to keep you company with on British TV. On BBC One Paddy McGuinness kicks things off at 9pm with The Big New Year’s In , which promises a “live extravaganza” including musical guests, quizzes and a look back at 2020. (Do we really need that, Paddy?) That’s followed by a Graham Norton Show festive special at 10pm, featuring Emily Blunt, Jamie Dornan and Tom Hanks. And at 11.30pm, Alicia Keys Rocks New Year’s Eve , taking us through her hits before we cut to Big Ben for the countdown to midnight. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3b9B2uv
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Our Year in Hell

By the end of 2020, a refusal to accept things as they are and a furious attachment to ongoing life proved stronger than either detachment or resignation. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/38SP9Bk
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'All that mattered was survival': the songs that got us through 2020

Butterflies with Mariah, Bronski Beat in the Peak District, Snoop Dogg on a food delivery ad … our writers reveal the tracks that made 2020 bearable When it came to lockdown comfort listening, there was something particularly appealing about lush symphonic soul made by artists such as Teddy Pendergrass and the Delfonics. But there was one record I reached for repeatedly: Black Moses by Isaac Hayes , and particularly the tracks arranged by Dale Warren. Their version of Burt Bacharach’s (They Long to Be) Close to You is an epic, spinning the original classic into a nine-minute dose of saccharine soul. But their cover of Going in Circles, another Warren exercise in expansion, is their masterpiece, reimagining the Friends of Distinction original as a seven-minute arrangement with stirring strings and beatific backing vocals that builds into a story about lost love that transcends the genre’s usual parameters. A perfect, if slightly meta, balm for the repetitive lockdown blues. Lanre Bakar
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Selling Sunset's Christine Quinn: 'Carole Baskin and I were the TV villains of the year'

With her bitchy quips, the Hollywood realtor had viewers hooked to the Netflix reality smash this year. She talks about her own favourite TV, and the difficult world of social media What show defined 2020 for you? You know what, I hate to say it but I feel like it was Selling Sunset ! Everyone was talking about it, everyone was watching it. It was crazy. Selling Sunset was, like, 2020. What series kept you going during lockdown? I watch a lot of reality shows. I love the Kardashians , obviously. And I love 90 Day Fiancé: Before the 90 Days and Happily Ever After – I watch all those shows on TLC. 90 Day Fiancé was the best show I discovered in lockdown. I’d never watched it before and I just got so hooked. It was the first time I had ever seen a show like that. The reunion? Oh my God, girl, I was living ! I just love Larissa and Colt [from 90 Day Fiancé]. I just want to see more of them, they’re my favourite. I want a show just about them. Continue reading... from Culture | The
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Feline groovy: cats in classical music – 10 of the best

From a medieval monk’s tribute to Henze’s cat-opera and Ravel’s erotic yowling, music celebrates the feline like no other animal. Here are 10 of the best, with not even a whisker of a certain musical... Is there a choral singer anywhere who doesn’t know Christopher Smart’s cat, Jeoffry? Smart’s feline companion is the subject of 74 enchanting lines of his visionary poem Jubilate Agno (1759-63) , set to music by Benjamin Britten in his cantata Rejoice in the Lamb. Smart’s poem was written in an asylum where he had been incarcerated – for mania – with only Jeoffry for company. This real-life feline is the subject of my book, Jeoffry: The Poet’s Cat, in which I wanted to capture how a cat could be both solace and muse to the creative artist. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3mXYXzf
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Banging toons: why bands such as Bis are making soundtracks for kids' TV

The Scottish pop-punkers aren’t the only ones making the jump from 6 Music to Nickelodeon pre-school cartoons An architect cranks a lever, and suddenly Mr Salmonelli’s Leaning Tower of Pizza restaurant lurches to an angle. As pots and pans fly, a band slide into view, looking and sounding distinctly like 90s Scots disco-punks Bis . “We just can’t understand it / It’s not the way we planned it,” they trill, their colourful cartoon selves shrieking like a tartrazine-addled Dead Kennedys. Weird, yet it has become increasingly common for moderately hip acts to make the jump from Marc Riley on 6 Music to Nickelodeon pre school. Related: The Guide: Staying In – sign up for our home entertainment tips Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2JBq2KW
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Turning over a new leaf? The best books for a new year

From Agatha Christie’s Mary Westmacott novels to life lessons from a Stoic philosopher, Sophie Hannah recommends books to see in 2021 I have a suspicion about 2021. Even though it has only just started, I’m guessing it will turn out to be a year that contains joy, pain, excitement, fear and every other possible human feeling. If I’m right, then 2021 – despite being a new beginning – will be much like 2020, which also contained the full range of wonderful-to-terrible emotions. I’ve heard many say “Good riddance to 2020” and I understand why, but it also makes me want to correct the misunderstanding. A year is a moral-value-free and agenda-free unit of time. It has neither agency nor culpability. It’s merely a container inside which we have experiences. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3hxqA0T
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The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina part four review – the teenage witch bows out with a flourish

It’s spirited, supernatural fun, but with a menacing terror that echoes the last 10 months in the real world It is the end of the road for this enjoyably baroque revival of the teenage witch, as The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (Netflix) bows out with a fourth and final season. Some would argue that, like Glow , it was prematurely pulled, another victim of Netflix’s casual wave of the cancellation wand, but while it is still here, I am trying desperately to catch up with everything that has been going on. A confession: I dipped out at the end of the first season. It was fun and knowing and a touch campy but, to be brutal, there is a lot of that about, and it never quite drew me back in. Here on the last stretch, then, there are now two Sabrinas, one on Earth, one in hell, or not just in hell, but the Queen of Hell, and the two should not be meeting, because of a time paradox. But there continues to be very bad stuff in Greendale, so obviously Kiernan Shipka has plenty of opportuni
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Boris Johnson stopped me getting fit – but he couldn’t come between me and my guitar

I’m still no Jimi Hendrix, but after a year’s solid practice I have just about mastered one R&B track This year, my original new year resolution was to be a two-pronged attack on my unhealthy lifestyle in the form of restrictions on booze and food. Sadly, that was waylaid by the unavoidable catastrophe of coronavirus, paired with the wildly avoidable catastrophe of Boris Johnson being prime minister. Given that we have been trapped in our homes, I had to rapidly reimagine my ambitions. Without the assistance of chicken so deep fried it practically becomes a sedative, or the sweet embrace of red wine, I suspect I would not have been able to cope with 2020. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/34S7QUv
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'Audiences don't want white anger': how white rap grew a conscience

With Machine Gun Kelly and Post Malone swapping gold grills for guitars this year, are white rappers using Black aesthetics becoming a thing of the past? With Jack Harlow’s major label debut Thats What They All Say selling strongly alongside a bumper deluxe version of Eminem’s Music to be Murdered By , white rappers are riding unexpectedly high at the end of 2020. Harlow, a 22-year-old from Kentucky, celebrates being a dorky outsider who has somehow made it to the top of the rap game (“At 16 I never thought I would look this cute”) while using language that is usually cringeworthy coming from suburban white people. On his Grammy-nominated single What’s Poppin he makes reference to “whips” and “certified freak hoes” – but he has enough charisma to carry it off, and he has earned co-signs from Black artists such as Lil Wayne, DaBaby and Big Sean. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3aQHtSU
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Top 10 most dislikable characters in fiction

From Tom Wolfe’s ‘master of the universe’ to George Eliot’s vengeful pedant, these are some of the hardest characters in literature to love At reader events to promote my novels, I find that one question crops up more often than any other: ‘Why do you write such dislikable characters?’ Well, I usually reply, swallowing my defensiveness, don’t all novelists write characters who are dislikable to someone , given that likability is entirely subjective? If niceness is a spectrum, then we’re all on it, for better or worse. Take Kit and Melia Roper in The Other Passenger . The debt-ridden millennial friends of wealthy Gen Xers Jamie and Clare, they are envious of the older couple’s lifestyle and prepared to take all sorts of risks to raise their own status. You might be sympathetic to their plight (I know I am) or you might take a harder line, but chances are your view on their likability is far more to do with their personalities than their social standing – or even their criminal actions
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Naga Munchetty: 'My most memorable interviewee of the year? A nurse'

The broadcaster on her small-screen loves and hates of 2020, and her experience covering the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement on the BBC Have you been watching much TV away from news this year, and do you in general? Well, I don’t usually watch too much TV. My thing was always going out, playing golf and running, and the TV was on in the background. I work in television, and sometimes you need a break. But that has all changed. I’ve watched a lot in lockdown. Were there are any shows you enjoyed that you didn’t expect to? I don’t usually watch things that have loads of series, because I never believe that I’ll have time to commit to them, but Money Heist absolutely blew my mind. I’ve got into New Girl on Netflix too, which is quite funny. I’m enjoying The Undoing , I’m enjoying Roadkill … but I feel like, as soon as I start getting into something, everyone starts talking about something else. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/34Xq9I3
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'You should get one with your Covid jab': can musicals save cinema?

They led the fightback against the Great Depression. Now, after a year that left the planet in anguish and movie-going in dire straits, get ready for a joyous, high-kicking year of singing and dancing In 2020, all bets were off. When spring came and screen after screen shut its doors, a chorus line of studios scrambled to postpone prize properties until a time when it might be viable for cinema audiences to see them. But one big film did the opposite, the studio bringing forward its planned cinema release of October 2021 a full 17 months, to 3 July 2020, for a Disney+ premiere. Hamilton , Lin-Manuel Miranda’s revisionist rap-musical about the founding fathers, was already a mould-breaker. Now, its lightly styled film version can also claim to be the most-streamed movie in a year in which people did little but stream movies. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3rEkT5X
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An impossible dream? The trouble with utopian dramas

While many writers have created troubling dystopian visions, few plays have imagined better futures. But the act of theatre itself can embrace utopianism When the UK entered its first lockdown in March, there was a lot of talk about using this enforced pause as a chance to reassess and maybe even remake the world. As the months took their toll, that energy waned. But with a vaccine rollout and a man for whom empathy is not an alien concept about to take up residence in the White House, it does not seem unreasonable to start imagining a better tomorrow. In literature there have been many attempts to create utopias, other lands more golden than our own, untainted, Edenic, more equitable societies in which war and poverty are things of the past. From Thomas More’s 1516 book, which gave us the term, through the writings of William Morris and HG Wells, to the comic-book monarchies of Wakanda and Themyscria (respective homelands of Black Panther and Wonder Woman), to one of the most enduri
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Equinox review - The Da Vinci Code meets Scandi-noir

Netflix’s Danish series casts a spell of sorts – just try not to think too hard about the ludicrous plot The blackest days of winter might feel like the ideal time for another bracing shot of cool Scandi-noir, but Netflix’s Danish series Equinox has no chill. No quirky detectives in enviable knitwear here, striding through attractive low-rise cities and crisp forests to apply logic to crimes of sadness. We’re somewhere wilder and murkier. Astrid (Danica Curcic) is a 30-ish, recently separated mother of one who has been styled according to the TV drama template for a damaged soul. Her mousy hair straggles forlornly, her unwillingness to deviate from plain vests and cardigans is a blatant cry for help, and she has got exactly the job you would expect a character defined by fraught intensity to have: she’s a journalist, hosting a late-night radio phone-in that trades in feverish thoughts and liminal fears. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3mYKZgk
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Superhero sitcoms, hardcore sci-fi and Belfast noir: the must-see TV of 2021

Succession and Line of Duty are back, there’s a sex worker musical, a new take on Lord of the Rings – and Kate Winslet returns to the small screen (ITV) The first series of The Bay existed to fill the hole Broadchurch left in your life; a scenic whodunnit set in a town full of the most suspicious people imaginable. The second begins in January and has the potential to be a simple do-over. However, with Morvern Christie’s spectacularly flawed DS Lisa Armstrong at the centre, and the addition of the splendidly gruff James Cosmo to the cast, it will hopefully avoid that trap. • 13 January Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2KPx8vL
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Musician, heal thyself: how ambient music brought solace in 2020

With no clubs or gigs to go to and pandemic anxiety to quell, ambient music chimed more strongly in a year when artists reconsidered their sense of purpose “A balm to your soul” – so went the Observer review of Julianna Barwick’s album this July, which was inspired by the musician’s move from New York City to the wellbeing mecca of Los Angeles. Her one-woman choir of celestial vocals is as calming as the bit at the end of a yoga class where you get to shut your eyes and lie under a blanket, and the album, along with its title Healing Is a Miracle, had extra resonance in 2020. Music is so often a communal experience, but with those possibilities snatched away this year, many of us have looked to sounds like this to soothe us where human connection couldn’t. Another reviewer agreed , writing that Barwick’s new music was “a salve for the collective wound”. Barwick wasn’t the only one. Earlier this year, I interviewed a collection of musicians , including the pop performer Robyn, about
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The TV quiz of the year: from a Schitt’s Creek wedding to an explosive Homeland finale

How much TV did you binge on during the lockdown months? And have you retained any of it? Time to find out … It was a big year for Schitt’s Creek, which saw its sixth and final season nominated for a record 15 Emmy awards, sweeping all four in the acting categories. What did Moira wear to her son’s wedding? A clown costume An angel costume A pope costume A Mickey Mouse costume And what happened at the Crows Have Eyes 3 premiere? Everyone was attacked by crows Everyone ate crow Everyone dressed as a crow Everyone vomited In The Undoing, what does Hugh Grant do for a living? Equine veterinarian Military aviator Corporate seismologist Paediatric oncologist Inside No 9’s Psychoville crossover episode saw two characters dance to which song? Status Quo – You’re in the Army Now Soulja Boy – Crank That Madonna – Justify My Love Whigfield – Saturday Night How did the final season of Homeland end? Carrie married Saul Carrie started a foundation named after Nicholas Brody
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Stress, chess and mounting dread: how 2020 was the year of anxie-TV

As the pandemic struck and a nation retreated to its living rooms, it seemed the perfect time for light and comforting shows to boom. The reality was anything but As the reality of Covid lockdown dawned in the spring, the internet began filling up with well-meaning listicles: home-schooling tips; store-cupboard recipes; recommendations for stress-relieving TV shows (cooking, the countryside and cosy sitcoms all featured prominently). Yet as time went on, it became clear that the television that was cutting through was far from comforting. In fact, it was precisely the opposite: 2020 was the year of anxie-TV. Michaela Coel’s BBC drama I May Destroy You , the Guardian’s best show of 2020, wasn’t just groundbreaking, it was utterly gut-wrenching. An exploration of the trauma of rape – and how that trauma interacts with the other pressures in protagonist Arabella’s life (racism, book deadlines, dysfunctional family dynamics) – the show evoked her psychological fallout with imagination an
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Pieces of a Woman review – vehement but inauthentic childbirth drama

Kornél Mundruczó’s film, starring Vanessa Kirby and Shia LaBeouf as a young couple hit by tragedy, combines high trauma and horribly unconvincing stretches Hungarian director Kornél Mundruczó deserves our thanks for going somewhere very few film-makers want to go: out on a limb. Many a time, his neck has been risked and his arm has been chanced; he makes movies to challenge us. White God (2014) was a Hitchcockian nightmare about a mass uprising among all the dogs in a city, and Jupiter’s Mood (2017) was a fantasy superhero-parable about a Syrian refugee who gets the ability to fly after being shot by an immigration cop. Most of his movies have been set in Hungary, but this new drama, scripted by Kata Wéber (who also wrote White God and Jupiter’s Moon), is his first English-language film, set in an indeterminate American city (but filmed in Quebec). It’s a vehement, forthright and sometimes unwatchably painful and upsetting emotional drama about the death of a baby; his two stars,
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'Anything can happen at the seaside': the troupe who kept Britain grinning

Tony Lidington spent 30 years with the anarchic Pierrotters. He recalls trading songs for mackerel – and lifting spirits with a little lockdown flea circus Let’s start with a pierrot dangling over the waves at Brighton. “A skinhead took offence at the fact we were camping it up on Brighton Palace Pier,” says Tony Lidington, whose troupe, the Pierrotters , was a mainstay of seaside performance for almost three decades. Five men in white satin and pompoms were a tease to masculinity. “I invited him up to dance with us to The Way You Look Tonight,” Lidington remembers, “and he started getting a bit aggressive. He picked me up and ran off with me, and held me over the pier with my feet over the water. I said, ‘You’ll get the biggest laugh of the afternoon if you let me carry you back in.’ So he did, and I staggered back with him.” Even the gentlest entertainment causes a ripple. Even a fleeting moment deserves a record. Even the staid British go merrily doolally when the sun shines. And
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Sian Clifford: 'Quiz gave Charles and Diana Ingram a voice'

The star of ITV’s Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? drama on her lockdown viewing habits, helping to rehabitate the coughing major, and winning a Bafta for Fleabag Were there are any shows you enjoyed over lockdown that you didn’t expect to? The Last Dance . I had no interest in or knowledge of basketball, and I didn’t even make the connection between Michael Jordan and the sport, because I just grew up with him being so famous. I had no idea about that period of history, and I’m now obsessed with basketball. It was such a well-made documentary that showed people and their flaws, as whole humans. I found it so compelling. Who has been your TV villain of the year? Jamie from Normal People. Who by my understanding is an absolute dreamboat of a human being in real-life. The embodiment of that character was amazing. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3hrjD1k
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Patti Smith: 'As a writer, you can be a pacifist or a murderer'

As she prepares to ring in 2021 with a performance on screens at Piccadilly Circus, the punk poet explains why she’s optimistic amid the ‘debris’ of Trump’s years in office Patti Smith talks about her first poetry performance – in 1971 at St Mark’s Church in New York’s Bowery – as if it were yesterday. “I remember everything,” she says over the phone from her home in New York. Smith was in her early 20s, working at a bookshop and living in the Chelsea Hotel with her then lover, the playwright Sam Shepard. She had attended poetry readings before, most of which put her into a deep sleep. “I wanted to do something that wasn’t boring,” she recalls. “Sam said that since I sang to myself all the time, I should try singing a song, or maybe do something with a guitar.” And so she called on the musician Lenny Kaye to provide “interpretative” noises on guitar while she half-read, half-sang her poems. The show was an instant hit. “It seemed to make a big impression on people – which I really di
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The Death of Francis Bacon by Max Porter review – last rites for a great artist

A fragmentary, poetic reimagining of Bacon’s last days in Madrid reads like a private communion with the painter The facts of the death of Francis Bacon were these: in April 1992, the artist, against his doctor’s advice, took a trip to Madrid to visit his last great love, the young banker José Capelo, the subject of his final triptych of paintings. A few days after arriving in the city, Bacon, aged 82, was taken by ambulance to a convent hospital, suffering from familiar kidney and breathing problems. For six days until his death he remained in intensive care, looked after by a nun called Sister Mercedes. In those six days, the atheist Bacon received no visitors and, with limited Spanish, spoke only a few words. His body was cremated two days after his death, according to his wishes, at a municipal cemetery, without ceremony or mourners. As his biographer Michael Peppiatt noted: “A life filled with the extremes of human emotion and devoted to expressing them with utmost force had end
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Dune, Bond and Top Gun returns: Films to look out for in 2021

Daniel Craig hands in his licence to kill, Frances McDormand delivers her best ever performance, Carey Mulligan unsettles in a rape-revenge drama and Tom Cruise reaches for the skies … this year’s must-see films Paul Greengrass’s latest film is based on the western novel by Paulette Jiles, about a girl returning to her family in 1860s Texas after being kidnapped by the Kiowa tribe. Helena Zengel plays the girl, Johanna, and Tom Hanks plays the man who must look after her: Captain Kidd, an ex-army veteran who makes a living reading aloud from newspapers to illiterate townsfolk, and who is now in the middle of a very big news story. • Released in the UK on 1 January Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3aNr8OH
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'I wrote down what I was most terrified of': Lauren Mayberry on Chvrches' return

Musician spent the year sitting alone with her thoughts, hopes, dreams and self-loathing – and poured it all into song Following three top 10 albums, the Scottish synthpop trio are preparing to release their fourth this spring, and will hopefully bring their pounding live show back to the festival circuit. Frontwoman Lauren Mayberry explains how the privations of 2020 helped them get rid of their baggage, and get to the heart of who they really are. What’s the overall vibe for the album? Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2Md4Snj
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Cold comfort: what can Arctic cultures teach us for our future survival?

How do we survive in extreme climates? From sealskin boots to ‘devilish’ hats, this British Museum exhibition of stunning objects offers an answer A circular map with the North Pole at its centre details 24 different cultural groups wheeling around the Arctic circle; some 400,000 people. The groups are very diverse. Some, like the Nenets of Siberia, are traditionally reindeer herders, whereas the Inuit have long relied on sea mammals and still derive much of their nourishment and materials from life under the sea ice. No other human cultures experience such seasonality, such extremes of midsummer light and midwinter dark. No other cultures use ice in so many ways: for transport, building material, food preservation. This map makes us rethink our customary projections that locate Arctic cultures as the upper remotes of European or North American or Russian states. To Arctic peoples themselves the distances are shorter, they know their neighbours. Trade and influence around Arctic group
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Love Is Blind's Lauren and Cameron: 'Watching the show back is intense'

The reality contestants on their TV of 2020, and what it was really like to date 15 people at a time on the Netflix hit What series kept you guys going during lockdown? Cameron: We watch The Umbrella Academy , of course. We watched Emily in Paris , too. Lauren: I made him watch that. Cameron: I got into it! I liked how you could predict what was about to happen next. The best discovery we made in lockdown was Raising Dion , which was a really good superhero show with a complex narrative. It wasn’t your standard superhero show or movie. Lauren: We’ve been watching a lot of superhero shows and movies. What series are you not allowed to watch without waiting for each other? Lauren: Anything that we watch together. Once we start watching a series together, it’s like: “You continued that without me? How dare you!” That’s almost like cheating, you know? Cameron: A mild form of it. It’s a no go! Lauren: I’ve been watching a lot of Fresh Prince and [Martin Lawrence’s sitcom] M
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Wonder breaks the silence: pop, rock and classical music for 2021

Cardi B pushes into Beyoncé’s turf and Sleaford Mods tot up the cost of Covid, while UK orchestras head back to the concert hall – our critics look ahead to big music moments The title of Sleaford Mods’ sixth album is apparently an oblique reference to the fatalities in the first wave of coronavirus: “Human lives are always expendable to the elites,” in the words of vocalist Jason Williamson, “we’re in a constant state of being spare ribs.” The presence of a track called Shortcummings suggest events of the last 12 months figure heavily, although lead single Mork n Mindy offered a grim look back at 80s childhood. • Released on 15 January Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3rrbajc
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The video games you may have missed in 2020

You heard all about The Last of Us Part 2, Animal Crossing and Cyberpunk 2077. Here are the overlooked gems that kept us sane in the pandemic By Lewis Packwood, Matthew Castle, Laura Hudson, Jay Castello, James McMahon, Lewis Gordon, Keza MacDonald, Edwin Evans-Thirlwell, Tom Regan, Stacey Henley, Nic Reuben, Rick Lane and Patrick Lum Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3nTKANJ
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Beyond the silk pyjamas: the style of Noël Coward

A new exhibition is devoted to the visual flair of a debonair playwright whose tastes are almost impossible to define Noël Coward was the epitome of style. Fittingly that is the subject of a major exhibition opening at London’s Guildhall Art Gallery, containing costumes, set designs, paintings and production photos. Brad Rosenstein, its curator, says Coward is “especially celebrated for his verbal wit” but that the exhibition “will remind us that his original productions were also visual feasts for their audiences”. That sounds tempting – but it raises several questions. What, actually, do we mean by style? And how has it changed over the years? In Coward’s case, style consisted of the effortless projection of a unique personality. You see that clearly on an album cover of a 1955 LP, Noël Coward at Las Vegas , where he stands in the Nevada desert immaculately clad in dark suit and suede shoes while clutching a cup of tea. I only saw Coward once in the flesh and that was at the first
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Dylan Dog: the hit London-set Italian horror comic unknown in the UK

The Italian detective’s horror comic book adventures have sold 60m copies worldwide. So why is he not well-known in his fictional home? There is a breakfast cafe called Dylan Dog at 7 Craven Road, near Paddington station in west London. To most customers, it is simply another venue for coffee and eggs, wedged into a busy street among the area’s more elegant stucco-fronted terraces and squares. But to Italians the address is no less magical than Harry Potter’s Platform 9 and 3/4, or Sherlock Holmes’s 221b Baker Street. For No 7 Craven Road is the home of Dylan Dog himself, a fictional investigator of the paranormal, the protagonist of an Italian horror comic book series with more than 60m copies sold worldwide. And yet perhaps Dylan Dog’s biggest uncracked mystery is that, to his neighbours in London, he is almost unknown. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3aLkV5T
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The Great British Reboot review – could Brexit really give Britain a boost?

Alex Brummer’s timely book about our future correctly argues the UK must change, but for the wrong reasons The paradox of Brexit is that, if this ultra-free market project incubated by the hard right is to have any chance of success, it must trigger an unprecedented wave of economic and social activism, mobilisation and intervention. A project conceived by Thatcherite ultras who wanted to throw off the regulatory “yoke” of Brussels and sclerotic Europe can only deliver to the disillusioned, left-behind people who correctly wanted a dramatic change in the status quo by a massive state-led restructuring of the way Britain works. They did not vote Leave for an intensification of free-market globalisation and more libertarian carelessness about the condition of the country beyond London. To make a success of Brexit, Britain has to become more European. This book, arguing that Brexit requires and will cause a great, state-directed, British reboot, exemplifies the paradox. For large parts
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Substack: five of the best from the niche newsletter platform

Writers have embraced Substack to cut out the middle man. The result is an eclectic library of anything and everything Substack is best known as the newsletter platform that lured several well-known writers and journalists away from established news outlets this year. Glenn Greenwald, Matthew Yglesias and Andrew Sullivan, formerly of the Intercept, Vox Media and New York Magazine respectively, have all jumped ship to sell their work directly to subscribers via the service. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2WMpc0C
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Nonfiction to look out for in 2021

Biographies of Philip Roth and DH Lawrence, the curious death of Robert Maxwell, and dispatches from the Covid frontline Fiction to look out for in 2021 Publishing can feel slow, even stately, at times, and not only because good books take a long time to write. But in 2021, speed will be the order of the day. Whether we’re talking about Black Lives Matter or Covid-19 , a lot of the new nonfiction coming our way will speak insistently to the present moment – to the point where some readers, fighting unease, may welcome the relative tranquillity of a fat life of the artist Francis Bacon, in the form of Revelations , Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan’s 880-page biography (William Collins, January); or, rather more genteel, The Adventures of Miss Barbara Pym by Paula Byrne (William Collins, April). It will also be much more diverse – which is where we’ll begin. In January, Chatto publishes Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for Today , in which Eddie S Glaude J
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TV: Euan Ferguson's 10 best of 2020

Great drama ran the gamut from British racism to American feminism, Mike Bartlett to Michaela Coel, with David Tennant unforgettable as Dennis Nilsen Radio and podcasts: Miranda Sawyer’s 10 best of 2020 The Observer critics’ review of 2020 in full 1. The Plot Against America Sky Atlantic; July Philip Roth’s alternative history of an all too credible and brilliantly realised world, in which the bigot Charles Lindbergh won the 1940 presidential election. A direct parable of antisemitism in the 1930s, this six-part HBO adaptation by The Wire writers David Simon and Ed Burns managed much more, warning of little less than the slow “othering” of any race, or class, or creed, and the sly subtleties of culture wars. 2. Unsaid Stories ITV; August There seemed a new willingness to face up to homegrown racism, especially in the likes of Jimmy McGovern’s ambitious Anthony and Steve McQueen’s remorselessly powerful Small Axe series – but Unsaid Stories managed to first perform minor w
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'Every note pulses with life and warmth': pianist Boris Giltburg on Beethoven

Beethoven’s 250th anniversary was not the year any of us were expecting, but, as symphony cycles and opera productions were cancelled, his music spoke to us in deeper, more intimate ways. Recently, I experienced one of those moments when disparate bits of knowledge suddenly realign, and a connection appears, as glaringly obvious as it was hidden a moment ago. I was listening to Fritz Wunderlich’s glorious rendition of Beethoven’s song cycle, An die ferne Geliebte (To the distant beloved). Those six songs are an outpouring of Romantic lyrical longing felt by the protagonist, facing the unbridgeable distance between him and his beloved. If it had not been ennobled by the purity of Beethoven’s music, the cycle’s poetic imagery could have been banal. The verses speak of hillsides and valleys, birds and brooks, clouds and sunsets, all invoked as symbols of the singer’s longing, or as potential messengers from him to his beloved. Yet in the sixth and last song, a stronger link between the
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Kiley Reid: 'The premise that literary fiction has to be a drag is so silly'

The novelist’s hit debut, a witty spin on race, feminism and sex based on her time as a nanny in New York, has even won fans among her former employers… This time last year, Kiley Reid was a tantalising rumour, the truth of which was known only to her publishers and to the film company that had optioned her debut novel two years before it was ready to see the light of day. When Such a Fun Age was published – on New Year’s Eve in the US and a week later in the UK – the rumour checked out: here was a smart comedy of manners, which treated interracial relationships of the early 21st century with the sort of needling wit that Jane Austen had applied to class 200 years earlier. It was the start of a year in which Reid seems to have been travelling in the opposite direction to the rest of the world. By the time the Covid pandemic shut everything down, she had introduced the novel to 19 cities, including London. Reese Witherspoon had picked it for her book club; in July, it was longlisted
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Feed your soul: the 31-day literary diet for January

Looking for a more positive new year resolution? From a Shirley Jackson short story to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s 30-minute Ted talk, nourish your mind with our one-a-day selection of literary treats Our revels now are ended and January looms, with its exhortations to get fit, lose weight, dry out. So here’s a radical alternative diet: instead of depriving yourself, how about making it a month of treats – but feeding your brain instead of your face? Our one-a-day calendar will take you into magical realms of poetry and prose, argument and imagination. It will transport you to some places you always wanted to explore, but couldn’t find the time, and to others you never knew existed, where you will find strange and wonderful things. In fact, this calendar very nearly didn’t happen because I kept disappearing down rabbit-holes so deep and fascinating that, had I been the white rabbit himself, someone would have had to drag me out by the ears. Some entries – such as John Huston’s film of
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Architecture: Rowan Moore’s five best of 2020

Reasons to cheer include a sociable new university building, a Taiwanese shopping mall lagoon and a house extension with mountain attached Art: Laura Cumming’s 10 best of 2020 The Observer critics’ review of 2020 in full 1. Town House, Kingston University By Grafton Architects; opened in January A grown-up climbing frame for students. A three-dimensional town square for the social life that will one day return. Generous and dignified. 2. Z33, Hasselt, Belgium Francesca Torzo; opened in May The expansion of an art and architecture museum in a historic building that goes far beyond your usual thoughtful minimalism. The experience is of a series of atmospheres, created by subtle modulations of its surfaces and shadows, as much as of solid masonry. A work of pleasure and beauty. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2WLmAQT
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The week in TV: Bridgerton; Motherland; Roald & Beatrix: The Tail of the Curious Mouse and more

Netflix’s new costume drama was wonderfully preposterous. Plus, when the father of Matilda met the mother of Mrs Tiggy-Winkle Bridgerton | Netflix Motherland (BBC Two) | iPlayer Roald & Beatrix: The Tail of the Curious Mouse | Sky One BBC Sports Personality of the Year (BBC One) | iPlayer Marcus Rashford: Feeding Britain’s Children (BBC One) | iPlayer Now that my bosom has stopped heaving over the new Netflix offering, Bridgerton , I can proceed with this review. I’m not sure what I was expecting from this eight-part costume drama released on Christmas Day, but it definitely wasn’t the hero telling the heroine to “touch herself”. Later, he checked that she’d done it: “Did you touch yourself like we talked about?” (To me, this verged on nagging, but each to their own.) Add in all the other risqué scenes, including an artist’s pansexual orgy, and watching Bridgerton became less about “pearl-clutching” and more about what they were clutching. Continue reading... from C
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Dear Pepper: Sisterly Love

If I️ were a real advice columnist and not a tongue-tied dog, I️ would sum up the impossible struggles faced by working moms during this pandemic. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/37VWEbL
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Art: Laura Cumming's 10 best of 2020

Our critic’s picks of the year, from blockbuster shows to an essential virtual tour, the Arctic to artichokes… Music: Kitty Empire’s 10 best of 2020 The Observer critics’ review of 2020 in full 1. Artemisia National Gallery, London; October-24 January 2021 ( temporarily closed ) Non-stop theatre from the magnificently original and dynamic Italian baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi, who seems to live inside every role she depicts: lover, outraged victim, nation-saving heroine. 2. Titian: Love, Desire, Death National Gallery, London; March-17 January 2021 ( temporarily closed ) Golden light, flailing bodies, surging souls and skies: Titian’s transformations of mythological scenes from Ovid are some of the greatest pictures ever painted. This once-in-a-lifetime show united the whole series in one room. Even the artist himself never saw them all together. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3mTC0wO
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Fearne Cotton: ‘I have found clarity’

She was the face of popular culture, but then Fearne Cotton reached crisis point. Now she has found her voice again... Fearne Cotton keeps a pile of notebooks next to her computer, each brimming with plans for projects. Many of us have struggled to focus during the pandemic, but for Cotton, the past nine months have been among the most productive of her professional life. “I’ve found this time really creative,” she says, in that presenter voice of hers, so soothingly familiar. “It’s like when I go on holiday. In moments I’m forced to do nothing, I find this clarity.” It’s 10am on a grey December morning when we meet over Zoom and her schedule, when she takes me through it, sounds exhausting. Her lockdowns have been busy . She’s written two books since the pandemic started and has kept up her popular wellness podcast, Happy Place , alongside her weekly Radio 2 show. And though the second instalment of her annual summer wellness event, Happy Place Festival , could have become another C
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Fiction to look out for in 2021

With a host of dazzling second novels in the offing, plus the return of big hitters such as Kazuo Ishiguro and Jon McGregor, 2021 is shaping up to be a special year Nonfiction to look out for in 2021 2020 ended up being a decent year for the publishing trade, at least as far as book sales went. Perhaps we also learned to cherish our bookshops and literary festivals – vital elements of our cultural lives whose absence for much of the year was painful to endure. The loss of these forums for discovering new books caused publishers to delay the release of many titles until 2021. So it’s a massive year of fiction ahead, meaning that I’ll concentrate here on books published in the first six months (with a brief nod to autumn titles from Jonathan Franzen, Richard Powers, Jennifer Egan, Colson Whitehead and a new Sebastian Faulks novel, Snow Country (Hutchinson), coming in September). I’ll also leave first novels to the Observer New Review ’s superb debut feature. First up, I’m struck by
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Kitty Empire's best music of 2020

Our critic’s picks, from righteous old-school hip-hop via euphoric retro pop to classic American songwriting Classical music: Fiona Maddocks’s 10 best of 2020 The Observer critics’ review of 2020 in full 1. A Swayze and the Ghosts: Paid Salvation Ivy League; September The antidote to 2020 bar none: 12 tracks of guaranteed instant uplift from a bunch of righteous Tasmanian garage punks who banished boredom and torpedoed fear with their debut album. 2. Frazey Ford: U Kin B the Sun Arts & Crafts; February More music as functional medicine: Ford’s ecstatic, smeared soul vocals didn’t mask the depth of her hard-won wisdom – or her faith in progress. Equal parts country, folk and soul, this was an album about travails overcome that built its own dulcet world into the bargain. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/37PyXkZ
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The Archers at 70: so much more than an everyday tale of country folk

The Radio 4 serial is the longest-running soap opera in the world. Fans are enjoying a series of special shows to mark the anniversary For those who expend a lot of energy dodging The Archers , the task will be more difficult for a bit. The radio soap opera that genuinely divides the nation, far more alarmingly than the infamous Marmite, has reached another hefty milestone that cannot be ignored. The longest running drama in the world is 70 years old on 1 January . A series of special programmes have already begun to air, culminating in the anniversary episode itself on New Year’s Day. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3aL30ME
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Soul review – Fantasia meets A Matter of Life or Death

A jazz-loving music teacher ends up in the beforelife in this existential Pixar beauty from the director of Up and Inside Out This typically ambitious Pixar animation comes on like a fever-dream cross between Disney’s Fantasia and Powell and Pressburger’s A Matter of Life and Death , with a bizarre hint of Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones thrown in for good measure. A tale of a music teacher who loses his life but discovers his soul, it’s a visually sumptuous riot of ideas, pitched somewhere between a playful musical, a divine comedy and a metaphysical drama. Just as the Minions movie opened to the delightful helium sounds of its heroes happily “ba-ba-BA”-ing the famous Universal theme, so Soul begins with the distinctive Disney anthem being jazzily murdered by a discordant school band. If music teacher Joe Gardner (Jamie Foxx) could wish upon a star, he’d wish to be somewhere else, preferably tinkling the ivories at a swinging club. Joe’s dream comes true when he gets a late-in
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‘I’m more optimistic’: poet laureate Simon Armitage tells of Britain’s great ordeal

The writer has blended music, dance and words into a film tracing the pandemic Coronavirus – latest updates See all our coronavirus coverage How to tell millions of individual stories? Or represent the pain and anxiety of a pandemic to audiences of the future? Perhaps it takes a national poet to attempt it. Speaking exclusively to the Observer , Simon Armitage , the poet laureate, and his long-time collaborator, the award-winning British filmmaker Brian Hill , have revealed they are quietly tackling this challenge together. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3hiqFp8
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When every set looks like Contagion: inside Hollywood's pandemic year

Actors are slowly returning to work after a long shutdown caused vast economic damage: ‘How many people gave up their dreams?’ For decades, the sound stages of Hollywood have built alternate universes in the middle of Los Angeles – fictional courtrooms, hospitals, homes and offices. Today, they all resemble the set of Contagion. Make-up artists walk around in astronaut helmets. Actors take breaks inside plastic bubbles. And healthcare professionals swab everyone’s nose to test for a deadly infection before they’re allowed inside. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2KH8ddL
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Theatre: Susannah Clapp's 10 best of 2020

Our critic looks back on dazzling state-of-the-nation monologues and valiant virtual reimaginings, Ovid and Oliver Twist Dance: Sarah Crompton’s five best of 2020 The Observer critics’ review of 2020 in full 1. Uncle Vanya Filmed version of Harold Pinter theatre production; October Ian Rickson’s production was cut short when the theatres went dark. Collaborating with Ross MacGibbon, he dazzlingly reinterpreted his staging for the screen . Not a transfer but a transfiguration. The atmosphere – both torpid and tense – was of lockdown. This was the Covid Chekhov. On BBC Four, 30 December, 10pm , then on BBC iPlayer. 2. Death of England / Death of England: Delroy National Theatre, London; February/October Some of 2020’s most urgent words were written by Clint Dyer and Roy Williams, and delivered – in monologues staged nine months apart at the National – by Rafe Spall and Michael Balogun: best friends, one black, one white, fighting for survival in an angry Britain. Continue rea
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Classical music: Fiona Maddocks's 10 best of 2020

The year will be long remembered for recitals to an empty Wigmore Hall, car-park Puccini, Ravel as animation – and one man and his piano… Theatre: Susannah Clapp’s 10 best of 2020 The Observer critics’ review of 2020 in full 1. Igor Levit’s livestreamed house concerts March-May In an empty room, often in socks or slippers, the Russian-born pianist’s spontaneous response to global lockdown was to give nightly recitals – more than 50 in total – from his flat in Berlin, watched by a worldwide audience: the classical cult event of year, but incredible music-making too. 2. Wigmore Hall London; From June The revered London venue proved itself an agile pioneer in making live concerts free for all to watch online (or to hear via BBC Radio 3), with or without audiences. On 1 June the pianist Stephen Hough made headlines when he broke the 11-week lockdown silence across UK concert halls with a live lunchtime concert to an empty hall. His performance of the Bach-Busoni Chaconne felt li
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2020 visions: daily drawings of a very strange year – in pictures

Since Boris Johnson won the general election in December 2019, London-based artist Jolie Goodman has been making a daily digital drawing for her series 1872 days of Tory Government (which would be the length of a full five-year term). Depicting everything from Black Lives Matter protests to Prince Charles with the Covid-19 virus under his kilt, the images have been collected in a book to be published in January. Goodman creates the works either from memory or a photograph every morning. “Making these drawings has helped me process what is going on in the world with humour,” she says. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3nRtAYi
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Film: Mark Kermode's 10 best of 2020

Our critic chooses his highlights, from electrifying psychological horror to Bong Joon-ho’s Oscar triumph and a joyous British coming-of-age teen drama Games: Simon Parkin’s five best of 2020 The Observer critics’ review of 2020 in full 1. Saint Maud Released in October Rose Glass’s electrifying debut feature establishes the writer-director as a thrilling new voice in British cinema. Morfydd Clark is mesmerising as the newly religious nurse determined to save the soul of her patient (Jennifer Ehle – superb). Adam Janota Bzowski’s eerily prowling score and Paul Davies’s affecting sound designs add to the cinematic spell. 2. Portrait of a Lady on Fire February The French film-maker Céline Sciamma won the 2019 Cannes screenplay prize for this 18th-century story which she has called “a manifesto about the female gaze”. Filmed in painterly hues by Claire Mathon, this masterpiece seamlessly intertwines themes of love and politics, representation and reality. Continue reading...
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Luke Goss: ‘Faith gives me humility’

The singer and musician, 52, on fans, grief and building bridges with brother Matt I miss the U K deeply; walking down a London street and listening to my city alive. I miss being greeted by strangers with waves and hellos. For a time I didn’t feel that way. Now it feels like a privilege. The working-class life of my childhood was loving and tumultuous – us south Londoners know what community means. At home, though, there was acrimony, divorce and discordant energy. Traversing through that as a kid was hard work. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/351QBAz
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Dance: Sarah Crompton's five best dance of 2020

Our critic chooses her highlights, recalling inventive lockdown venues and the emotional return of the Royal Ballet Film: Mark Kermode’s 10 best of 2020 The Observer critics’ review of 2020 in full 1. Revisor Sadler’s Wells, London, March; broadcast on BBC Four in May; available on iPlayer An astonishing assertion from Crystal Pite and her Kidd Pivot company of the interpretative power of dance; a sinuous version of Gogol that combined lip-syncing to a text and visceral movement that articulated every word. Riveting. 2. Maliphantworks3 Coronet, London; February A reminder, just as theatres closed, of the atmospherics of live action, as Russell Maliphant and his dancers, including his wife, Dana Fouras, in her final performance with the company, wove magical movement under rippling light. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/37Mpb3b
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