Cultural News Today

From retiring old favourites to marquee names, here’s what will keep you glued to the small screen Modern Toss on addiction to TV BBC One Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2N4NqQE

Solaris is astonishing because the book that inspired it doesn’t seem to contain Tarkovsky’s film A film that I watch at least once a year is Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris . I’ve loved all of Tarkovsky’s works, even the most difficult. Some I’ve seen in the cinema, others on television. I saw Andrei Rublev at the cinema, and on the big screen it was astonishing, its black-and-white extraordinary: I’ll probably never see it again in a cinema, but I hope that young people will have the opportunity. I also saw Solaris on the big screen – not Tarkovsky’s best film, but the one that made the greatest impression on me. I remember that it was advertised as the Soviet answer to 2001: A Space Odyssey – a completely misleading slogan. To see in it a cinematic contest between the US and the USSR was as silly as it was misleading. Kubrick’s marvellous film, with its imaginative force, would certainly win. But it doesn’t have even a hint of the desperation, of the sense of loss, that dominates Sol...

In and out of hospital, the writer felt compelled to write something new – an epic, with himself as the hero Until a few days ago, I was a patient in Addenbrooke’s hospital, here in Cambridge, while a busload of nurses and doctors strove to persuade my temperature to stop acting like a wobbling yo-yo. Or anyway I assume they arrived by bus. I myself arrived by ambulance, strapped down against any tendency to slide on to the floor like a speeding custard. It was a low moment in my recent medical history, but once again the combined efforts of my family and the Addenbrooke’s crash-cart crew dug me out of the hole, so that I have emerged in time to witness the launch of my epic poem, The River In The Sky. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2C7QUxC

A shady scalpel-for-hire takes Tye Sheridan’s grieving son on a nightmarish voyage in this hypnotic, maddening road movie There’s a strange, stark bleakness to this intriguing and perplexing film from director and co-writer Rick Alverson. It is like a disturbing dream – and certainly anything featuring Jeff Goldblum, Udo Kier and Denis Lavant is sure to offer a strong range of flavours at the very least. There are fascinating visual compositions: weird rectilinear tableaux made from the forbidding lines of hospital corridors and lonely motel balconies. Cinematographer Lorenzo Hagerman gives us colours that are bleached out and subdued, as if approximating what people with severe depression see. This is a film with an impressive, sometimes oppressive craft and technique – but it also feels unfinished. A sustained and rather brilliant conjuring of atmosphere, with some superb ambient music, finally succumbs to a rather banal inability to decide where to take the story and exactly how i...

Richard Brody recommends “Werewolf,” “Zama,” “Mrs. Hyde,” and “Tall: The American Skyscraper and Louis Sullivan” for streaming. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2MDLv6e

John Cassidy writes about President Trump’s recent attacks against the news media, and about a man who was arrested by the F.B.I. this week for making threats to the Boston Globe newsroom. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2LJqK3C

Sheelah Kolhatkar on the angst among Canadian officials over President Donald Trump’s aggressive maneuvering to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2PU2HlK

James Franco, Liam Neeson and Tom Waits traipse across the prairie in a lovingly crafted collection of vignettes spattered with bloody violence and inky humour The Coens have given us a hilarious, beautifully made, very enjoyable and rather disturbing anthology of stories from the old west, once planned for television but satisfyingly repurposed for the cinema: vignettes that switch with stunning force from picturesque sentimentality to grisly violence. There’s barely a forehead that doesn’t get a bullet in it sooner or later. One or two of the stories don’t have a satisfying twist in the tail; there is one disconcerting fade-out. The tales are prefigured with the sight of an old book, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. A hand turns the pages and we see these stories in print, themselves prefaced by an illustrated plate previewing a dramatic moment from what’s to come. Remembering this moment is a stab of audience-interest for each particular episode. One turns out to come from the very e...

On The New Yorker Radio Hour, A Palestinian community leader risks his life to run for a seat on Jerusalem’s city council. Plus: Curtis Sittenfeld at the grocery store; and Calvin Trillin, Super 8 auteur. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2PVOvcf

Marquez, who appeared on the series from 1994 to 1997, was killed during a welfare check at her home in California Vanessa Marquez, a former actor on the television show ER, was shot and killed by police during a welfare check at her home in South Pasadena, California. Marquez, 49, played nurse Wendy Goldman on the hit series from 1994 to 1997. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2ME2LYV

Ben McGrath reports on the games and equipment modifications of players in the Palisades Wiffle Ball League. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2C61YLA

Louisa Thomas writes about the American tennis plater Madison Keys and her efforts to fight cyberbullying. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2PRw8oy

Liana Finck shares illustrations from Chapter 1, “Paradise Lost,” of her forthcoming book, “Passing for Human.” from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2PSl6iZ

A popular K-pop singer was ordered to cough up 65 million won (US$58,500) in compensation to settle a dispute with a weight-loss company because he was “overweight”. The Seoul Central District Court recently ruled in favour of the Juvis firm, ordering Kim Tae-woo, a popular singer and former member of boy band g.o.d, to return half the payment he received in 2015 for promoting the company. Shinhwa, H.O.T. and other ’90s K-pop bands play comeback gigs “He neglected his... from South China Morning Post - Culture feed https://ift.tt/2PnT7Xq

Andrea K. Scott writes about the life and work of Richanda Rhoden, a painter whose work was rarely shown in her lifetime but who is having a posthumous exhibition of her work, at Soloway, in Brooklyn. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2LIR5ih

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And they’re here to remind you (Pete, Younes, Justin) of the mess you made since you went away. You, you, you oughta know. from Culture - ELLE https://ift.tt/2C4rVen

Bradley Cooper directs and co-stars in this outrageously watchable update of the love story doomed by shifting fame It’s the romantic epic of male sacrificial woundedness and it’s been regenerating like Doctor Who. We had it in 1976 with Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson , in 1954 with Judy Garland and James Mason and originally way back in 1937 with Janet Gaynor and Fred ric March . It’s even been regenerating obliquely in movies such as The Artist and La La Land . Now Bradley Cooper plays the boozy and downwardly mobile alpha-star laying his pride on the showbiz altar of the woman he loves. Cooper directs and co-stars in this outrageously watchable and colossally enjoyable new version, supercharged with dilithium crystals of pure melodrama. He appears opposite a sensationally good Lady Gaga , whose ability to be part ordinary person, part extraterrestrial celebrity empress functions at the highest level at all times. Gaga's ability to be part ordinary person, part extra...

Stevie Wonder and Ariana Grande are among those paying tribute to the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin, who died earlier this month at the age of 76 Aretha Franklin sold more than 75m records in her lifetime and won 18 Grammy awards. After signing with Atlantic in 1966 she had an extraordinary run of singles including her cover of Otis Redding’s Respect, I Say a Little Prayer and (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2PnuMRE

Major BBC and ITV dramas to compete at 9pm but catch-up means both could triumph Keeley Hawes will go head-to-head with the legacy of William Makepeace Thackeray this weekend, when the BBC puts its flagship drama Bodyguard up against ITV’s new adaptation of Vanity Fair in the peak 9pm Sunday night viewing slot. But unlike previous scheduling battles they could both end up as winners, with millions of viewers expected to watch both programmes thanks to catch-up services. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2NBwLB6

With the premiere of the new Oscar-buzzed drama from Alfonso Cuarón, the streaming giant is set to be heading to the big screen for a new releasing model At Netflix, “disruption” is everything. The streaming platform has grown into one of the largest players in the entertainment industry by zigging where all others zag: they ran Blockbuster out of town with their disc-by-mail service, they were the first ones to extract the gold from them thar internet hills, and then they remade the consumption of media in their binge-happy image. So, what’s Netflix’s latest game-changing innovation? Having purchased the rights to some of this fall’s most hotly anticipated titles, they’re now toying with the idea of releasing them in bricks-and-mortar theaters – actual buildings, in the real world! – for an interlude before adding them to the online content library. It’s a risky move, but Tinseltown experts say this whole “movies playing on screens” gambit may just be crazy enough to work. Related:...

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Yorgos Lanthimos brings scabrous energy to this dark comedy of 18th-century court intrigue and Colman excels herself Just when we thought Olivia Colman couldn’t get any better, she steps up to movie-star lead status with an uproarious performance as Britain’s needy and emotionally wounded Queen Anne in this bizarre black comedy of the 18th-century court, a souped up and sweary quasi-Restoration romp full of intrigue and plotting – with wigs, clavichords and long corridors to storm down. The drama is loosely based on the true story of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, competing with her cousin Abigail, Baroness Masham, for the monarch’s favours, and creating a horribly dysfunctional politico-sexual love triangle with mother issues. The two emotional duelists are played here by Rachel Weisz and Emma Stone, the latter with a very good Brit accent. There is a cheerfully obscene original script from Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara, directed by the Greek auteur Yorgos Lanthimos, who brings to...

A well-meaning but sometimes obtuse French drama about a seven-year-old whose mother is killed in a mass shooting The devastation and loss caused by terrorist attacks in Paris, Nice and elsewhere form the starting point for this determinedly gentle French film from director and co-writer Mikhaël Hers, about a fictionalised violent incident. It’s a calm, healing movie with a sweetly emollient musical score, and it consciously – counterintuitively – refuses to engage with the divisive political anger and revulsion that might be expected to be the focus of a film about terror victims. I sometimes wondered if it would look all that different if the character involved died of cancer, rather than in a horrendous mass shooting in a public park. There is a kind of authenticity in it. Behind the headlines, there are loved ones who have to get on with their day-to-day lives. Death is commonplace. But Amanda is sometimes obtuse, with the look of a TV-movie-of-the-week, though the performances a...

The Oscar-winning director has made his best film yet with this exquisite study of class and domestic crisis in 70s Mexico City The Mexican director Alfonso Cuarón, whose breakthrough movie Y Tu Mamá También was such a smash in Venice in 2001, and whose outer-space disaster film Gravity did the same thing in 2013, now returns to his native language in complete triumph. Roma is his best film so far: a thrilling, engrossing and moving picture with a richly personal story to tell, beautifully and dynamically shot in pellucid black and white. It is the tale of Cleo (played by Yalitza Aparicio), a young woman of Mixteco heritage working as a live-in maid for a beleaguered upper-middle class family in Mexico City. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2wsdCek

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The omnivorous and eclectic choreographer who has died aged 88 , represented the last of a historic line In the world of dance, the death of choreographer Paul Taylor marks not only the end of a long and productive career – he put together his first dance company in 1954 and his last work (147th) premiered in March 2018 – but it also feels like the end of an era. The history of American modern dance might go something like this: first came Isadora Duncan , casting off the corsetry of European ballet; then there was Martha Graham , high priestess of mythic psychodrama and female pelvic power; then Merce Cunningham rose to become the zen master of choreographic abstraction; and after that everything went postmodern and there was no centre any more. But right before that came Paul Taylor , who danced with both Graham and Cunningham before venturing forth himself – and so represents the last of a historic line. Related: Paul Taylor, celebrated dancer and choreographer, dies aged 88 Co...

Brendan Loper’s Daily Cartoon looks forward to Trump’s day in court. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2C3MtDP

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Prison camp, illness, unrequited love — music that endures over decades and centuries often emerges from difficult situations. These composers turned their personal experiences into symphonies, sonatas and concertos. from Deutsche Welle: DW.com - Culture & Lifestyle https://ift.tt/2C54yl7

What music did Beethoven play as a youth? What saved him from suicide? "Fate" is not only in the subtitle to the Fifth Symphony — it's also the motto for this year's Beethovenfest. from Deutsche Welle: DW.com - Culture & Lifestyle https://ift.tt/2IJTgSF

Before the beginning of the 2018 Beethovenfest, director Nike Wagner talks about the implications of the festival motto this year, "Schicksal" (Fate). from Deutsche Welle: DW.com - Culture & Lifestyle https://ift.tt/2NxK8SN

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When he got a surprise invite to perform for President Emmanuel Macron, the musician, DJ and dancer faced down his critics with a bold and provocative statement Kiddy Smile towers over me. I am 6ft 3in, and feel petite next to him. He is relatively svelte at the moment, having been ill during the past year with phlebitis and “the beginning of a pulmonary embolism”, but he has always been defined by being, in his own words, “fat and tall”. But this is, in part, what led Pierre Hache from being a kid from the Paris banlieues becoming a charismatic house artist, whose debut album One Trick Pony is a celebration of his identity as a black, gay man. It is enormously sexual, at times squelchingly acidic, and huge fun – energy he also parlays into his appearance in Gaspar Noé’s new dance-troupe movie, Climax . In June, Kiddy Smile was invited to DJ at an event at the Elysée. He agreed, assuming it was at Elysée Montmartre, a club everyone refers to by the first part of its name. Then his ma...

The hooks are middling and the moans at his critics get tedious – but a flurry of brutal potshots at witless SoundCloud rappers prove Eminem can still hit exhilarating heights Eminem’s 10th album arrived on streaming services, without any pre-emptory buildup, accompanied by a nonchalant tweet from the 45-year-old rapper: “I tried not 2 overthink this 1 … enjoy.” It’s a theme reiterated within the opening seconds of the album: “I’m just gonna write down my first thoughts,” he mutters, “and see where it takes me.” Not for the first time in his career, it’s easy to feel that Marshall Mathers III is being slightly disingenuous. Kamikaze is fairly obviously the product of a great deal of thinking indeed, largely of the stewing and fulminating variety. Clearly a not man at ease with the sanity-salving concept of Not Reading The Comments, virtually the entirety of its 45-minute running time is consumed with complaining about the cool reception afforded to his last album – 2017’s weak and au...

After misidentifying a body part on the Strokes’ Is This It, I realised I was the victim of the modern age where the LP sleeve has become irrelevant to most It’s the Strokes’ best album, it has been out 17 years, I could recite the track list from memory, I’m not blind and I’m practically 30 – but until Wednesday night I thought the image on the cover of Is This It showed a gloved hand resting on a knee. Yes I’ve seen a knee in real life. I’ve also seen a bare ass. Can I tell them apart? I thought so. Then I read the interview with Colin Lane on his best photograph, the cover of the Strokes’ 2001 debut. He mentioned “the ass shot” and I thought: what ass shot? Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2Pqg9wX

A plan to use ‘hostile’ music to clear the homeless from the city’s S-Bahn trains has been forced off the rails by concerned musicians When it was announced that atonal music would be played in Berlin’s S-Bahn public rail network to disperse drug users and homeless people, as it considered this form of music “hostile”, I thought it was absurd. I also thought: we can’t just leave it at that. I work at the Initiative Neue Musik – an organisation that champions contemporary music in Berlin. I knew we had to take a stand against the exploitation of this art form against vulnerable people. We wanted to do it in a humorous way, because you can’t really take the S-Bahn’s idea seriously: so we organised an atonal music concert in protest. As well as its obvious inhumanity, the plan seriously misrepresented atonal music. First invented at the beginning of the 20th century, it stands for the liberation of tonal hierarchies beyond the eight notes of the traditional octave – and is th...

From Nike hijabs to couture gowns, the show explores the diversity of Islamic style A major exhibition exploring the diverse dress codes of Muslims, and the first of its kind dedicated to displaying Islamic culture within a fashion context, is to open in September. From the launch of Vogue Arabia to Uniqlo and Dolce & Gabbana branching into modest fashion lines, Islamic style has become a burgeoning global market in recent years – and a profitable one, too. Figures from Thomson Reuters forecast that the global fashion spend by Muslims will reach $373bn (£288bn) by 2022. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2one7Ce

Edited for release 50 years after it was shot, this autobiographical satire is just as wild, dated and brilliant as you’d expect A new film by Orson Welles? Even in a vintage year like Venice 2018, that has to be something special. This is Welles’s experimental found-footage-style autobiographical movie about an unfinished movie which was ironically unfinished in Welles’s own lifetime, abandoned in financial chaos in the mid-1970s. Or perhaps this was not at all ironic. Perhaps leaving it unfinished was Welles’s ultimate, secret tribute to the central truth of The Other Side of the Wind: how the agony and the ecstasy of creative art lies in the process not the product, and how the finished work will never measure up to the ideal version in your head. Now, under the auspices of Netflix, a 122-minute film has been retrieved from more than 100 hours of raw footage by editor Bob Murawski in association with the project’s executive producers, Peter Bogdanovich and Beatrice Welles, Orson’s...

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The Queen of Soul will be laid to rest in Detroit after a star-studded tribute, filled with performances by soul and gospel legends. Thousands of fans have paid their respects to Aretha Frankin over the last week. from Deutsche Welle: DW.com - Culture & Lifestyle https://ift.tt/2C1NuMT

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Brian Phillips on the children’s-book author Joan Aiken, who wrote “The Wolves of Willoughby Chase,” and whose works are known for their ironic and enchanted atmospheres. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2PRf2Hz

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Only Michael Jackson’s eyes can be seen on the large LED screen resting on the floor. Although it is easy to discern the visage as that of the late superstar, it would take the most ardent follower to recognise the footage from the 1993 broadcast he made denying accusations of sexual molestation and forever sealing his fate as a social pariah. The video work from New York artist Jordan Wolfson was one of a number of provocative pieces in “Michael Jackson: On the Wall”, a... from South China Morning Post - Culture feed https://ift.tt/2LKhBb1

Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, London Physical gags, interactive moments and a fairytale flourish combine in this revival of Shakespeare’s early comedy When does a desire to be funny start to feel a bit fussy? Director Nick Bagnall has carefully mined Shakespeare’s early comedy Love’s Labour’s Lost for laughs. There are bawdy love scenes, physical gags aplenty and expansive performances from a chamber cast of eight. Some of the embellishments work well but it’s also a little, well, laboured. Katie Sykes ’s costume design is period dress with a fairytale flourish: soft hues, velvety suits, shiny crowns. The show starts with the Princess of France sat beside a toy music box and also features hobby horses and heart-shaped balloons. When the King of Navarre and his pals swear off women for three years, and decide to devote themselves to study, they look like school children messing around during lunch break. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2N1ck3L

As the summer blockbuster season draws to a close, it is time to read the tea leaves and try to discern what’s happening at the Chinese box office. July and August is traditionally when China’s annual Hollywood blackout takes place, and domestic productions are given a boost by the banning of big-budget foreign films – but there were a couple of exceptions this summer: Skyscraper hit Chinese screens on July 20 and The Meg was released simul­taneously in China and the... from South China Morning Post - Culture feed https://ift.tt/2CfKTiz

Although it was released a couple of decades after the genre’s heyday, 1978’s Grease went on to become one of the most popular musicals ever made. The movie consolidated the success of John Travolta, who had achieved stardom with Saturday Night Fever the year before, thrust singer Olivia Newton-John into the inter­national spotlight, and produced a hit soundtrack LP and singles. The film is based on a 1971 stage musical, although its story and some of musical numbers differ... from South China Morning Post - Culture feed https://ift.tt/2or3gae

Authors Haruki Murakami, Kim Thúy, Maryse Condé and Neil Gaiman have been nominated for an alternative Nobel Prize in Literature established by a group called the New Academy, following a sex assault-related scandal. from Deutsche Welle: DW.com - Culture & Lifestyle https://ift.tt/2CfCb3R

Hallie Cantor humorously records her calls to the vet since getting her first pet. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2MFgvmk

Prize-winning South Korean author joins Margaret Atwood and David Mitchell as a contributor to Future Library project The world’s most secretive library, currently housed only in the minds of its authors and containing books that will not be read for almost a century, has added a new writer to its glittering list of contributors: the award-winning South Korean novelist Han Kang. Han, winner of the Man Booker international prize for her novel The Vegetarian , was named on Friday as the fifth writer to be selected for the Scottish artist Katie Paterson’s Future Library project. Starting in 2014, Paterson has asked a writer a year to contribute a book to her public artwork. Riffing on themes of imagination and time, each work has been seen only by its author and will be printed in 2114, when a patch of 1,000 Norwegian spruce trees planted in 2014 in the forest that surrounds Oslo will be cut down to provide the paper for the texts. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian http...

Star Trek’s Captain Kirk voices concerns about virtual reality after simulating a walk on Mars As Captain Kirk in Star Trek, William Shatner took us to places “where no man has gone before”, with stories that foreshadowed the invention of the mobile phone and tablet computers. Now, in real life, the actor is exploring virtual reality – but he wants the entertainment industry to be aware of its potential detrimental impact on vulnerable minds. Shatner told the Guardian: “The use of technology to affect our minds is so powerful now that we need to be on guard in the future.” Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2Pnqt8R

Naomi Fry recommends “Celebrity Skin,” the first single from the band Hole’s 1999 album of the same name. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2NzTtK2

Louisa Thomas on the relationship between the tennis legend Arthur Ashe and his brother Johnnie, who in 1968 made a decision that he thought would spare Arthur from the Vietnam War. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2NBgwEg

At Alvin Cailan’s first sit-down restaurant, in the Nolitan Hotel, the Eggslut creator graduates to the full bird. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2wwEycW

Anthony Lane reviews Ethan Hawke’s elegy for Blaze Foley and Xavier Giannoli’s drama about a mystical vision investigated.  from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2C5qH2K

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In the space of a song, the London-based pop collective Superorganism often finds its way from joy to existentialist ennui and back again. The group—whose members hail from Maine (by way of Japan), New Zealand, Australia, North London, and South Korea—places bouncy rhythms, sunny backing vocals, and spongy keyboards around the deadpan delivery of its from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2wrdBra

Rapper’s second project in months attacks Harvey Weinstein, as well as Tyler, the Creator, Lil Pump and Machine Gun Kelly Eminem has released a surprise album, Kamikaze, just months after his last full-length project, Revival . “Tried not 2 overthink this 1 … enjoy,” he wrote on Twitter announcing the release. On the first track, The Ringer, the Detroit rapper claims that following his two freestyles last year in which he castigated Donald Trump, the US president “sent the Secret Service to meet in person / To see if I really think of hurtin’ him / Or ask if I’m linked to terrorists”. He also says of Trump: “I empathise with the people this evil serpent sold the dream to that he’s deserted.” Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2PrFDKr

Domino Anna Calvi’s third album is everything she has ever promised, and more: a serious-minded collection of pop songs about desire, control and gender, which are still compelling even if you choose never to listen to a single lyric. It is built around the brilliant use of contrasting moods and textures, not just between songs, but within them: Wish switches, heart-stoppingly, between elasticised propulsion and a musical dreamscape, which feels like an aural representation of that moment in films when you see, from underwater, someone suddenly immersed. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2wvP2JF

The BBC’s ambitious project promised to bring new Asian voices and stories to primetime audiences but did it really ‘create a shared cultural moment’ or help reinforce stereotypes? The BBC’s Big British Asian Summer was billed as one of the TV events of 2018. A whole month of programming dedicated to the Asian experience in the UK, and a chance for untold stories to be heard. Patrick Holland, BBC Two controller, laid out his ambitions for the season which focused around two goals: attracting new voices and creating a “cultural moment”. “Seasons like this are valuable on a number of levels: they create a shared cultural moment, they allow us to grow talent in front of the camera and also allow us to supercharge the way we commission and produce,” he said before the season kicked off. “I hope this season inspires programme makers to look at the range and depth of storytelling about British Asian culture and know that there is a home for them at the BBC.” But the season’s first program...

French police have launched a preliminary probe into a rape complaint against actor Gerard Depardieu. The 69-year-old film star was "stunned" by the complaint, his lawyer said. from Deutsche Welle: DW.com - Culture & Lifestyle https://ift.tt/2oqXupf

Only one of these two makes it past halfway in this gruelling spin on the celebrity challenge show. Plus, the Coco Chanel story is better than fiction Ben Fogle has achieved something noble and profound: he has made those series where semi-famous people sweat over contrived ordeals, such as pretending to be an Edwardian serf or going on quite a long walk, look even more trivial. In Our Everest Challenge With Ben Fogle & Victoria Pendleton (ITV), the adventurer and his Olympian pal literally try to climb Mount Everest. It’s very much the Everest of celebrity-challenge documentaries . Not that the majestic enormity of the task means we’re immune to the tropes of the form. Early on, Fogle ticks off the obligatory shot of him discussing the project with his family, to give us a sense of both the sacrifice involved and the desirability of his house: on the latter point, he has got a kitchen-diner the size of a squash court. In Kathmandu, “Vic” masters the art of banal scene-setting ...

Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PC; Konami Outgunned by FIFA’s club licensing deals and star power, PES starts a new season still on the back foot. But with silky passing and shot repertoire, its matchplay has the edge Pro Evolution Soccer (universally known as PES) has come to resemble Blackburn Rovers or Coventry: a once-great team that fell upon hard times as a result of off-field woes. Where it was once it was routinely locked in an annual battle for football-game supremacy with EA Sports’ FIFA, the latter’s much more expansive budget (and official Premier League licence) have made it the Manchester City of sports games, while PES has been demoted to the game of choice for non-conformists and football purists. But there is one area in which PES 2019 clearly has the edge on FIFA: on the pitch, PES 2019 is unassailable – deliciously silky passing and animations let you play football as it is played in real-life, rather than some barely recognisable, slightly manic, end-to-end approximati...

Twenty years on from their seminal album, Version 2.0, the band’s singer is still as driven by anxiety and anger as ever. She talks about her history of self-harm, the pressures of fame – and why she has become so vocal in the #MeToo movement ‘Cheers! Up yer bum,” says Shirley Manson raising a glass as the light fades on her rooftop home over the Hollywood Hills. Her husband, Billy, has prepared Aperol spritzes. They’re bright orange and match Manson’s hair. She chortles deeply. “I was out with my goddaughter on Saturday night. I had an orange dress on, orange hair, orange lipstick and an orange cocktail. She said: ‘Auntie Shirl! You’ve excelled yourself.’” The orange matches the sleeve of Version 2.0, the second album by Manson’s band, Garbage. In 1998, it became their first UK No 1 album and picked up four Grammy nominations, including album of the year; they are currently rehearsing a 20th-anniversary tour where they will play it in full. Continue reading... from Culture | The ...

The hit podcast is moving to HBO, while a new audio series profiles the lives of young offenders Hear Here podcast tips: sign up now for more audio delights Comedy cringe pod My Dad Wrote a Porno is coming to HBO for a one-off comedy special, which is a major coup, even for a show that’s been downloaded 100m times. “We’re over the moon and honoured that HBO has decided to help bring Rocky Flintstone’s bad dad-rotica to the world – what are they thinking?!”, asked hosts Jamie Morton, James Cooper and Alice Levine in the press release. Viewers will find out of it worked sometime in 2019 when it airs in the US. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2C2Urgn

Jason Bateman and Laura Linney are getting down with the yokels in this second-season opener – and getting shot of an inconvenient dead body Good news for fans of Jason Bateman looking scrawnier than usual while attempting to fast-talk his way out of precarious situations. Ozark – Netflix’s white-collar crime tale set against the beautiful but benighted backdrop of Missouri – has returned for a second 10-episode season and has upped the scenes of Bateman squirming through morally dubious quandaries while studiously avoiding any prolonged self-examination. The role of ethically flexible financial advisor Marty Byrde has turned out to be a great, Emmy-nominated fit for the actor; a hollowed-out, smarm-gone-sour variation of his usual harangued everyman. Marty is still marooned in the Ozarks with his peeved wife Wendy ( Laura Linney ) and kids until he can make good on an escalating money-laundering deal with a callous Mexican drug cartel. After the lethal climax of season one, season...

British band force Australian mining magnate to take down a YouTube video using their hit song Tubthumping British band Chumbawamba have forced Clive Palmer to take down a YouTube video that used their hit song Tubthumping , calling the political hopeful a “Donald Trump-lite egomaniac”. The controversial mining magnate, who recently announced a political comeback , posted a video to his personal Twitter page and to YouTube in June that showed a group of men singing the famous lines from the 1997 anthem : “I get knocked down, but I get up again.” Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2LJM49g

Taylor, a dancer who later became one of the world’s greatest choreographers, was seen as the last of the 20th century’s titans of modern dance The renowned dancer and choreographer Paul Taylor has died at the age of 88 due to renal failure, according to Lisa Labrado, a spokeswoman for the Paul Taylor Dance Company. A 1992 honoree at Kennedy Center Honors and, a year later, a recipient of the National Medal of Arts by former president Bill Clinton, Taylor was a giant of American dance, and widely considered the last of the 20th century’s titans of the form. Taylor got his start in the 1950s, when he assembled a small dance troupe that performed his own works. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2wqSKUY

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“I did all the normal Canadian kid things – you know, play sport and take trips to the mall,” says Christina Matula, of growing up in suburban Ottawa, as she settles into a chair in a coffee shop in Causeway Bay. What set her apart was her heritage – her mother is Taiwanese, her father Hungarian. “I was one of the few Asian kids in my school and my sister and I were the only mixed-race kids.” Among her fondest childhood memories are those of Mid-Autumn... from South China Morning Post - Culture feed https://ift.tt/2C3XncS

Robin Wright writes about how a resurgence of ISIS’s fighting strength has prompted the Trump Administration to reverse course on intentions to pull two thousand U.S. troops out of Syria. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2oqO2lI

Tyler Foggatt reports on watching the debate between the Governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, and his Democratic primary opponent, the actress and activist Cynthia Nixon. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2PTKp4q

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Richard Brody on Victor Levin’s “Destination Wedding,” starring Winona Ryder and Keanu Reeves, who suffer through one of the worst sex scenes in recent memory. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2ooJ5K3

Prime minister suggests show about female home secretary is not relaxing television for her Theresa May has said she did not enjoy watching the BBC drama Bodyguard, which focused on the relationship between a rightwing home secretary and her personal protection officer. The prime minister switched off after 20 minutes of the first episode and told reporters while visiting Africa that she preferred watching programmes that were not so close to home. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2C40PEt

The McElrath twins key us in on what makes them the best of the best. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2LIeUXw

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Hear Lizzo and Yaeji at MOMA PS1’s Warm Up, watch the sci-fi high-school-nerd musical “Be More Chill,” taste Malaysian breakfast food at Kopitiam, and more. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2yEWDr6

Jonathan Blitzer joins Dorothy Wickenden to discuss how partisan rivalries are playing in the run-up to the midterm elections in Arizona. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2PPtNdX

Elena Ferrante's hit novels are coming to television, thanks to HBO. from Culture - ELLE https://ift.tt/2PSw7Rx

Jay Ruttenberg and Mike Reddy write and illustrate a humorous comic about what would happen if the U.S. Open were played on the public courts of New York City. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2ontURp

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Jiayang Fan writes about the #MeToo movement, and how Lisa Halliday’s novel “Asymmetry” and a new essay by Ottessa Moshfegh portray encounters that resist easy classification and moralizing. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2NpdmmY

Carrie Battan on the Instagram sensations’ dissection of clear backpacks and fashion’s camouflage fetish on a shopping trip through SoHo.  from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2PelGGT

★★★☆☆ / ★★★★☆ A cosmic trip produced by Darren Aronofsky and an immersive Lancaster bombing raid were highlights of the film festival’s virtual reality strand The virtual reality section at Venice is growing at an almost exponential rate: two years ago it was low-key, notable mainly for a demure Sunday-school retelling of the life of Jesus. In 2018, it is a substantial exhibition featuring state-of-the-art tech and an almost overwhelming range of entries, some of them “full body” concepts in which audience members suit up for a complete immersion. Interestingly, the vocabulary is still in a state of flux: are they “projects”, “installations”, “films”? The festival has intriguingly repurposed a building on a once deserted island to house the event: the Lazzaretto Vecchio, home to a 16th-century plague hospital which has now been imaginatively converted into an exhibition space. Perhaps the biggest film in the competition is Spheres, written and directed by artist and film-maker Eliz...

Lila Ash’s Daily Cartoon waits it out in the pillow fort. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2PVO7KO

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The 90s stalwarts boast a spiky chemistry in this slight, entertaining tale of two misanthropes begrudgingly bonding while attending a wedding Much of the online excitement over the repairing of Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder has little to do with their previous onscreen couplings and more to do with what they symbolise about a decade and a half in film. Does anyone really remember Francis Ford Coppola’s opulent imagining of Dracula for their stiff, awkwardly accented, chemistry-free scenes together? Was Richard Linklater’s A Scanner Darkly known predominantly as a vehicle for the two stars to showcase their rapport? Did they even share a scene in The Private Lives of Pippa Lee? Or instead, is there just an abundance of nostalgic thirst for a film focused entirely around Veronica Sawyer/Lelaina Pierce/Lydia Deetz hanging out with Ted/Johnny Utah/Jack Traven? Related: Keanu and Winona 4ever: on-screen couples who keep getting back together Continue reading... from Culture | The Gua...

The avant-garde percussionist tells a mean anecdote and proves himself a joyfully chaotic gardener in this delightfully entertaining documentary What do you call someone who hangs around with musicians? A drummer. Except that this delightfully entertaining and idiosyncratic music documentary ought to banish the stereotype of drummers as talentless thickos. It’s also one of those films you can happily watch without having a jot of prior interest in its subject. Just as well, because few will have heard of Milford Graves , the avant-garde jazz percussionist. In archive footage of a noisy performance with other 1960s pioneers – this film is too cool for subtitles to tell you who’s who – there’s a woman in the audience with her hands clamped over her ears, face a rictus of pure agony. I’m with her on a lot of his music. But Graves, now in his 70s, is a raconteur par excellence. As well as the drumming, he’s a multi-hyphenate, dabbling in gardening, herbalism, healing and acupuncture. Oh,...

The Old Man & the Gun, The Front Runner and White Boy Rick among premieres screening at the weekend The Telluride film festival kicks off this week with a heavy dose of star power, featuring the world premieres of movies starring Robert Redford, Nicole Kidman, Hugh Jackman and Matthew McConaughey. The boutique event in the Colorado mountains, which prides itself on its lack of a red carpet and its egalitarian organisation, is sandwiched between the Venice film festival, which ends on Saturday, and its Toronto counterpart, which starts next Thursday. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2N2t3nf

Jiayang Fan writes about the photographer Christopher Anderson and his work on commission from Shenzhen’s Daken Art Organization to document life in the coastal megatropolis through unnervingly intimate portraits. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2PVM4q6

Ian Crouch reviews “Hope Never Dies,” by Andrew Shaffer, the fan-fiction-thriller mash-up that imagines Barack Obama and Joe Biden fighting crime. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2LHJqRn

Jonathan Blitzer reports from the capitol building in Phoenix, Arizona, where constituents paid their respects to Senator John McCain, who died last week. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2C2q0XN

Masha Gessen writes about the New York State Democratic gubernatorial primary debate between Cynthia Nixon and Andrew Cuomo. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2PLmBzz

And no, it's not JUST the Monster Mash. from Culture - ELLE https://ift.tt/2wyjr9w

Gerald Marzorati writes about Mate Pavić, of Croatia, who has emerged as the top men’s-doubles player of his generation. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2C2gbJp

Kathryn Frazier spent much of her career raising the profiles of clients like Justin Bieber and Miguel through publicity but now as a life coach she also helps them stay on an even keel In the last 15 months, the suicides of Chris Cornell , Chester Bennington and Avicii have reinforced the notion that talent, success, wealth and worldwide fame do not assure happiness. In the wake of these deaths, mental health in the music industry has become a white-hot issue, with a genre-spanning collection of artists coming forth to discuss their own struggles with depression, anxiety, addiction and the pressures of fame. And while her job has long been to help artists achieve such fame, Kathryn Frazier has more recently become a resource for them to figure out how to deal with it. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2PkJB7g

He no longer wants to take lead roles but the Oscar-winner’s new film, King of Thieves, sees him do just that. He talks about Brexit, Putin’s good side and lunch with Trump It is a wet and blustery August morning: perfect Michael Caine weather. When the actor returned to Britain in the 1980s after a decade in Los Angeles, he claimed it was because he missed the rain, although there was also the happy coincidence that the Conservative government (“Maggie,” he says, with inextinguishable fondness) had implemented a tax structure more favourable to those on extravagant incomes. Of which more, inevitably, later: a conversation about tax is the price you pay for the considerable pleasure of Caine’s company. On the day we meet, it is half a century almost to the month since Caine (who wasn’t a “Sir” until 2000) laid out his career plans in the Daily Express. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2wvGPob

It was a risk to put this gallery in the hands of a Turner-winning radical architecture collective – but it has paid off with a building that merges industrial heft with light-touch craft A catalogue of agricultural shed components might not be the first thing that most architects would reach for when charged with designing a contemporary art gallery in London, but then most of them don’t think like the young collective Assemble . Hearing two of its members enthuse about the limitless possibilities offered by a brochure of fibre-cement sheeting, you get a taste of the combination of poetry and pragmatism behind their new £4.2m home for Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art . “It is a very cheap material,” says Adam Willis, who led the project with Paloma Strelitz, pointing to the corrugated boards that they have used to clad part of the building. “But it also has this special handmade quality, and it comes in an amazing range of profiled ridges and flashing details.” The architects ...

This hit-and-miss documentary charting the life and career of James Lavelle feels too much like a promo The rise and fall of James Lavelle , the record label founder and DJ, is the subject of this celebratory music documentary by Matthew Jones. In the 1990s, Lavelle was music’s Damien Hirst – a cocky upstart with a genius for A&R matched only by a gift for self-promotion. At 18, he opened the hip label Mo’Wax and helped to popularise trip-hop (though signing Tricky and Portishead evaded him). Everything he touched turned to gold, until it didn’t. Ego, money, drugs: Lavelle’s story has the makings of an entertaining account of the music business. But this film feels too much like a promo for a comeback attempt. Its greatest strength is archive from the personal collections of Lavelle and Josh Davis, AKA DJ Shadow, whose groundbreaking sample album Endtroducing marked Mo’Wax’s high point. The clubbing footage brings back a chemical rush of the 90s London dance scene. Continue rea...

Pentatone Weilerstein/Trondheim Soloists At first glance, the works on cellist Alisa Weilerstein ’s new release are odd discmates: the cool classicism of Haydn’s Cello Concertos next to the feverish high romanticism of Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht, or Transfigured Night. You might expect a jarring dislocation between styles; instead, there’s a sense of balance, thanks to performances that revel in a sense of chamber-music give and take, of transparency and of natural, unforced dialogue between instruments. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2NvwMGY

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Ahead of the release of Deep Purple's Ian Gillan's album with his boyhood band The Javelins, DW discussed with him how the whole rock'n'roll myth was built. The singer also offers good advice for aspiring musicians. from Deutsche Welle: DW.com - Culture & Lifestyle https://ift.tt/2ooqfCO

Pete Postlethwaite and Freda Dowie shine in Terence Davies’s remarkable 1988 portrait of a working-class Liverpool family that is as gripping as any thriller Its austere beauty, artistry and wrenching sadness are undimmed after 30 years, and there is nothing distant or still about it. Terence Davies ’s early autobiographical masterpiece from 1988 , is now rereleased in cinemas, and for all the formal technique and the theatrically controlled tableaux, the drama is vividly present and alive. These are Davies’s scenes from the life of a white working-class family in Liverpool , during and after the second world war, scenes summoned up out of order by the family’s memories. They are ruled over by a terrifying dad. This is an impressive performance from the great Pete Postlethwaite – an abusive, violent man who might now be diagnosed with depression, but is nonetheless capable of humour and gentleness. Equally great is Freda Dowie as Mum, almost wordlessly radiating stoicism and goodnes...

A moving plea for a better and fairer society This passionate polemic on the causes of poverty by the Scottish rapper and social commentator known as Loki won this year’s Orwell prize . It is also a memoir of growing up in Pollok,Glasgow, where McGarvey was “well adjusted to the threat of violence”. Throughout his life he has struggled with drug dependency as well as the emotional and psychological scars of his dysfunctional upbringing: “Poverty is a quicksand that consumes us despite our best efforts to escape its pull.” Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2NxmCWl

As the bouffanted Brooklynite tours the UK, possibly for the last time, we cast an eye over his musical achievements Proof that every artist has a moment that might reasonably be described as Balearic: Rain features a slinky, sampler-friendly rhythm track, some glittering synth arpeggios, a hint of smooth soul about the dampened guitars and a sound that falls somewhere between quiet storm R&B and yacht rock. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2C2x9Hy

In her third film for Polish director Paweł Pawlikowski, who calls her his muse, her role as a lovelorn singer has sparked talk of an Oscar Joanna Kulig won the glitzy Polish TV talent contest Chance for Success at the age of 15 and hasn’t really stopped singing since. Now 36, each of the three films she has made with the great Polish director Paweł Pawlikowski has required her to burst into song. In the existential mystery The Woman in the Fifth , Ethan Hawke is able to resist her until the moment she starts warbling; in the Oscar-winning Ida , she has a dynamic cameo as a nightclub chanteuse. And now, in the exceptional Cold War , Pawlikowski has finally given her a leading role: she plays Zula, who joins a touring company performing folk songs in postwar Poland. Politics inevitably intrudes – the musicians are pressured to include compositions praising Stalin to the skies – but so, too, does love. Zula and the show’s conductor, Wiktor (Tomasz Kot), begin an affair that spans 15 ye...

The New Academy, founded after the 2018 prize was cancelled as a result of sexual assault scandal, announces shortlist of four While the scandal-ridden Swedish Academy searches its soul after the cancellation of this year’s Nobel prize for literature , a replacement award set up by a host of Swedish cultural figures has unveiled a shortlist that includes British fantasy novelist Neil Gaiman and Japanese literary superstar Haruki Murakami. The New Academy prize in literature was established after the scandal that rocked the Swedish Academy this year, when the husband of one of its members was accused of sexual assault and this year’s Nobel subsequently suspended due to “reduced public confidence”. The alternative Nobel follows the same schedule as the original award, but rather than a secretive and small panel selecting the winner, the New Academy – made up of more than 100 Swedish cultural figures – asked Sweden’s librarians for nominations. Continue reading... from Culture | The ...

Physical copies of games to warn parents their children can spend money while playing The Pan European Game Information system (Pegi) has announced that in future physical video game packaging will include a new warning icon if games offer in-app purchases. Showing a hand holding a credit card, the new graphic will appear alongside the existing icons that indicate a suggested age limit for players and provide a warning if games include content featuring sex, drugs, bad language, gambling, depictions of stereotypes likely to encourage hatred, or themes likely to generate fear. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2LzCpC9

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The compulsive artist became the best known figure of the underground comix movement. Robert Crumb's work is controversial, but fans love the way he targets corporate America — including Donald Trump. from Deutsche Welle: DW.com - Culture & Lifestyle https://ift.tt/2MZg7OY

Study shows train Wi-Fi is used mainly for work Commuters use train routes as a “buffer” for work, but should this count as part of their working day? 30 Aug 2018 News from Life & Culture https://ift.tt/2LEmnXz

Most pop concerts live or die on the strength of the artist’s songs plus the energy and commitment that artist invests in putting them across. Some rely heavily on technological production elements, eye-popping special effects or pure spectacle. And then there’s David Byrne. Five upcoming gigs that Hong Kong music fans can’t miss From the start, the mercurial former Talking Heads singer, songwriter, guitarist and Renaissance man has approached the concert experience as more... from South China Morning Post - Culture feed https://ift.tt/2NywFu8

Lauren Laverne will cover BBC Radio 4 show while longtime host away due to fibromyalgia Kirsty Young is to take a break from presenting the BBC Radio 4 programme Desert Island Discs for “a number of months” because she is has a form of fibromyalgia. Lauren Laverne will host the show while Young is away, the BBC said. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2wrqHEH

Portrait of South African drum majorette also on shortlist for prestigious photography award A photograph of a woman holding her baby daughter has been shortlisted for one of the world’s most prestigious photography awards along with shoppers, a drum majorette and a child from a remote village in Sierra Leone. The National Portrait Gallery in London announced the shortlist on Thursday for the Taylor Wessing photographic portrait prize – four images chosen from 4,462 submissions by 1,973 photographers from 70 countries. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2ooOdho

Sivan’s second album targets the mainstream – with songs about Grindr and post-coital languor, wrapped in goth reverb We live in a polarising era for pop. There are those who believe it is a golden age for chart music, which has expanded its horizons to fearlessly tackle the kind of topics once thought unsuitable, from feminism to mental health. Equally, there are those who aver it is a time of unprecedented musical homogeneity and everything in the Top 40 adheres to a more strictly confined set of sounds and tropes than ever before. But whichever interpretation you cleave to, perhaps we can all agree that Troye Sivan’s bid for mainstream superstardom – of the kind where millions of units are shifted, and new releases are announced via giant electronic billboards in Times Square counting down the days – is a unique one. Golden era or nadir, you just don’t get – and indeed never have got – many 23-year-old artists aiming for vast pop success by releasing singles about losing one’s virg...

The Jackass star suffers an erratic run through a slew of uneasy skits in Tim Kirkby’s underpowered comedy Still no sign of that Adventureland sequel , but this week brings us a puzzling film in which 47-year-old Johnny Knoxville , in the guise of a renegade theme-park operator, gets to rag on millennials for their observance of basic health-and-safety codes. Cinema, like life, is rarely fair. If Knoxville’s Jackass movies were, for better and frequently for worse, everything they set out to be, Action Point looks very much like the kind of PG-13 rated compromise – gooey teen coming-of-ager, with stunts attached – which studio Paramount might have imposed on the Jackass doofi had producer-director Spike Jonze not had their back. Watching it is like travelling through a wormhole to a slightly crummier version of 2004. The sense of a fading star looking over a repeatedly dislocated shoulder is underlined by the new film’s framing. Bookend scenes find Knoxville, in Bad Grandpa latex, ...

Paul McCartney wrote the Fab Four's 1968 singalong classic about John Lennon's son Julian, after Lennon left his first family for Yoko Ono. At the time it was titled Hey Jules, but it was changed to Jude because McCartney said it sounded better •  Nana na naaa! How Hey Jude became our favourite Beatles song Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2PPTXNy

Kira Garcia imagines a humorous invitation to an end-of-summer party that is also doubling as an end-of-the-world party. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2NDhO1m