Cultural News Today

There may be no such thing as bad publicity, but the spotlight on Joker is testing the limits of that old cliché.The origin story about the classic Batman villain has inspired pieces both in defence of and against the movie. It’s been hailed as the thing that’s going to finally get Joaquin Phoenix an Oscar and also decried for being dangerous, irresponsible and even “incel-friendly”. (Incels are members of an online subculture who characterise themselves as involuntarily celibate – unable to… from South China Morning Post https://ift.tt/2mtsbg1

Saydnaya prison is a black hole of abuse where inmates are forced into silence on pain of death. The artist reveals how his library of sound effects helped survivors recount their shocking stories Three years ago, Lawrence Abu Hamdan spent a week in a room in Istanbul that would transform the way he understood the world. “The things I thought going in and coming out were completely different,” he says. “There was a radical shift. That’s why I made the works I have made.” Abu Hamdan – 34, neatly bearded, fashionably bespectacled – tells me this in Beirut, where he lives with his wife and daughter. It is a few days before he travels to the UK to install his entry in the Turner prize show in Margate, which will feature the work of three other finalists. We are in an office in the echoing, post-industrial Sfeir-Semler gallery, where many of his works, recent and not-so-recent, are on view until January . Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2o7M5gU

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Willing Davidson interviews Rion Amilcar Scott about “Shape-Ups at Delilah’s,” his short story from the October 7, 2019, issue of The New Yorker. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2owKemg

Lauren Collins on Vigdis Hjorth, who insists that her novel “Will and Testament” is not autobiography and whose work has ignited debate over the ethics of “reality literature.”  from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2mZBbd6

Thomas Joshua Cooper risks his life to document the world’s remotest places, Dana Goodyear writes. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2oyqGhp

After sixty years of writing, the poet’s latest collection has fresh urgency—the necessity of reimagining time even as time runs out, Dan Chiasson writes. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2nJo0gp

A free, twice-weekly online puzzle, with answers and clues that exhibit the wit and intelligence of the magazine. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2oskIhP

“The Dutch House,” “A Pure Heart,” “Year of the Monkey,” and “Growth.” from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2owlN8y

Alexandra Schwartz reviews Jonathan Kent’s restrained staging of Florian Zeller’s play, which plunges the audience into a fearful place where reality, memory, and imagination mingle indiscriminately. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2n3qSVt

Police departments have become more attentive to officers’ use of excessive force on the job, but that concern rarely extends to the home, Rachel Aviv writes. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2n1y8B1

Jennifer Homans on “A Quiet Evening of Dance,” in which the choreographer William Forsythe pulls ballet’s original elements through his own imagination. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2nQIHXG

The master of British folk music has weathered a second divorce and lives in the US where ‘Trump has ramped up bigotry considerably’. At least ex-wife Linda has forgiven him Richard Thompson is drinking mint tea in a Hampstead coffee shop – he doesn’t touch coffee or alcohol – and between Islam and cricket, he’s discussing the remarkable guest list for his upcoming 70th birthday celebration at the Royal Albert Hall in London. “I don’t like being the centre of attention, strange as it sounds,” he insists. “I just want to have a few friends over.” The man the LA Times once hailed as “the finest rock songwriter after Dylan” and “the best electric guitarist since Hendrix” will switch between electric and acoustic guitars, and hopes that “most guests will have time to do a couple of songs”. The 15 guests will include Pink Floyd hero David Gilmour , who has featured alongside Richard in a Rolling Stone magazine best ever guitarist list, and who, as a soloist, covered Richard’s 1975 song

The film-maker’s deal with Warner suggests further dominance – but he’s hardly an innovator It is JJ Abrams ’s multiverse; we just live in it. That’s how it’s starting to feel, at least. The prolific producer-director-writer-geek overlord has had a hand in so many pop-culture properties over the past decade, it feels like he has basically won Hollywood. Star Wars (he’s finishing off Episode IX right now), Star Trek , Mission Impossible – all have benefited from the Abrams touch. Not to mention his zeitgeisty TV series: Lost , Westworld and Alias. Unsurprisingly, everybody wants him. Last week, we found out just how much: Abrams’s company Bad Robot signed a $250m “mega-deal” to produce film, TV and digital content for WarnerMedia. Apple reportedly offered him double that but he went with Warner. This immediately lit up lightbulbs in one quadrant of the fan galaxy: Warner is the home of DC Comics ’ superheroes. For DC fans, the coming of Abrams would be like hearing your athletics

Highway 61 – immortalised by Bob Dylan – starts at the Canadian border and runs through eight US states to New Orleans. Actor Jessica Lange grew up in Minnesota, once lived in Louisiana and has travelled it countless times. She studied photography at university, and has now revisited the route’s landscape, and the people living alongside it. Highway 61 is published by powerHouse Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2nRz2A5

Orlando Figes vividly captures the 19th-century cultural blossoming of Europe in this story of a diva, her husband and her literary lover In 2016, as Theresa May sought to demonstrate her Brexit credentials, she mocked the tendency of some high-minded liberals to describe themselves as “citizens of the world”. A better description, she observed acidly, would be “citizen of nowhere”. Not long afterwards, Orlando Figes, whose mother fled Nazi Germany in 1939, tweeted that he had decided to become a German citizen “bec [sic] I don’t want to be a Brexit Brit”. Presumably, he then returned with renewed urgency to complete this impassioned 576-page account of how European culture broke down the borders of the mind in the 19th century. A project he had worked on for years had suddenly become a symbol of resistance to the new nationalism. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2ooAJW3

US companies clamour for British stars including Phoebe Waller-Bridge and David Attenborough If you’d been outside the luxurious Chateau Marmont hotel in Los Angeles in the early hours of Monday 23 September, you’d have seen Phoebe Waller-Bridge reclining in a chair, cigarette in one hand and cocktail in the other, surrounded by her many Emmy awards, enjoying her position in the vanguard of an increasingly dominant British television industry. The following day the British television industry lost control of the star they had created. Amazon Video announced they had signed an exclusive three-year deal with Waller-Bridge – speculated to be worth as much as $20m a year – to produce programmes which will launch exclusively on the internet giant’s platform. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2ooULzS

Feted for her macabre and freaky stage shows, Gisèle Vienne has created a time-bending piece of ‘physical philosophy’ inspired by her clubbing days When Gisèle Vienne was growing up in Grenoble, France, her artist mother used to say, “paintings are cheaper than wallpaper”. So that’s exactly what they had, all over their walls. Vienne’s mum is Dorli Vienne-Pollak (a former student of Oskar Kokoschka ), who made “pretty crazy, transgressive works” inspired by everything from 80s punks and strip clubs to fantasy battle scenes. It must have been quite an eyeful for a child. Today, Vienne’s Paris home is completely white. It’s a small rebellion against her upbringing, which, balanced with the influence of her “overeducated French intellectual” father, makes complete sense of the artist Vienne has become. Her works in puppetry, theatre and dance (including Jerk , Kindertotenlieder , The Ventriloquists Convention ) make headlines for their macabre obsessions: sex, violence, fantasy, serial

Peter Bowker’s second world war drama is a beautifully turned ensemble piece starring Lesley Manville and Sean Bean ... and far from standard wartime fare The subject is war and the pity of it, and it is rendered freshly and exquisitely painful in the new seven-part drama series World on Fire (BBC One). Created by Peter Bowker (The A Word, Capital, Eric and Ernie), it tracks the declaration and first year of the second world war via the intertwining stories of ordinary families trying to go about their ordinary lives in Britain and various European cities that are soon to become flashpoints. In Manchester, bright, young, middle-class Harry Chase (Jonah Hauer-King) and his bright, young, working-class girlfriend Lois Bennett (Julia Brown) protest at Blackshirt rallies until he must head to Warsaw as a translator for the British embassy. She will be kept busy with her factory work and with running the motherless Bennett household. This includes her wayward brother Tom (Ewan Mitchell) a

Many in China may prefer to forget the chaotic and bloody decades under the rule of Chairman Mao Zedong, but 70 years after he founded the People’s Republic his face is on memorabilia in shops across the country. The Great Helmsman has had a kitsch makeover, appearing on everything from posters, fans and ornaments to mugs and plates Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2mNgSQd

Visitors to Worcestershire autumn show filled more than 100 crates to mark 25th anniversary More than three tonnes of essentials and goodies ranging from tins of soup and toothbrushes to cuddly toys and sweets have been donated to one of the UK’s largest single food bank collections. Visitors to the Malvern Autumn Show in Worcestershire took along enough food, drink and toiletries to fill more than 100 crates. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2nAZkXw

Exhibition at Bonn’s House of History documents ‘unrequited love’ of all things British The strategy that Germany’s diplomatic corps proposed to keep Britain in the European community was unconventional and bold. In November 1974, the then German chancellor Helmut Schmidt was desperately searching for the right words to convince British Eurosceptics to vote to remain a member of the European Economic Community. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2mJpJCp

An academic study of the Stones is tone-deaf both to the band’s music and their mystique North American academia is currently all over pop culture. A course on Lady Gaga (Sex, Gender and Identity) offered by the University of Virginia is one example of what’s going on; another is the recent slew of tomes on the Beatles, Dylan and even the Clash emanating from campus corridors. Most shed little light on their already well-covered subjects ( Why Dylan Matters by Harvard Latin don Richard F Thomas is an exception), and this self-styled “first major academic study” of the Stones likewise comes up short. The group have had many companions down the years, but surely few as dull. The dead hand of academic prose is one problem; the assertion that the band’s assorted documentaries are “instructive in terms of demonstrating the central influence of the Stones within the world of motion pictures” is barely readable (and a clear misjudgment). Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian ht

The US writer’s meticulous eighth novel is a twisting family drama spanning five decades Chevrolets, Camelot, CinemaScope… The postwar era epitomises a boomtime optimism in American national lore. In Ann Patchett ’s eighth novel, The Dutch House , self-made property magnate Cyril Conroy can scarcely conceal his pride when he surprises his wife, Elna, with the mansion he has bought for them on the outskirts of Philadelphia. Yet this ratification of their upward mobility has a peculiar effect on Elna: overawed by the grandeur, she grows thinner and paler, rapidly “turning into a ghost”. It is only much later that the novel’s narrator, Danny, learns from his older sister Maeve how this change in their parents’ circumstances in 1946 hastened the end of their marriage: “Our father was a man who had never met his own wife.” The immense “folly” at the heart of this novel is called the Dutch House by locals because of the provenance of its original owners rather than its architectural style.

Maria Chan is the director of content partnerships at National Geographic for the Asia-Pacific and Middle East region. I like ordering a lot of things just to taste. My mom’s Thai, dad’s Chinese and growing up in Philadelphia, you’re exposed to a lot of American-Italian and Jewish delis, so those would be my top four foods. Also, I almost never have full set meals. I just like to order a drink and a dish, then go elsewhere. I have favourites for different moods. If I am eating by myself, I… from South China Morning Post https://ift.tt/2nI9dCM

Fong Kui Kong, the head of the only Chinese temple in East Timor’s capital, Dili, welcomes visitors who come seeking blessings for their children’s health or the new business they want to start up. Known as Cina Maromak, the temple is a beacon both for East Timorese of Chinese descent and citizens with no ties to China.Fong uses “fortune sticks”, similar to those used in Hong Kong’s Taoist temples, to forecast the future. The ritual of using numbered sticks, known as qiu qian in Chinese, to ask… from South China Morning Post https://ift.tt/2mevzeM

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Her plays are full of big, soulful, sexually charged parts for women. As Dirty Crusty hits Britain, the writer talks about binge-dating and casting off the shame she learned growing up Clare Barron is drinking coffee in a Brooklyn restaurant she hasn’t visited since she broke up with a boyfriend over at the window table. “We were sitting right there for, like, four hours,” she says, waving a hand toward the offending table. “It was a nightmare.” But sweet dreams have never really been her thing. Turning back to me, the 33-year-old playwright shares this advice for anyone interested in writing about girls and women: “Make it soulful. And big. Take it seriously. Don’t make it cute.” In plays such as Dance Nation , You Got Older, I’ll Never Love Again and Dirty Crusty, which is about to get its world premiere in Britain, Barron shows what it is like to live in an ungovernable (usually female) body with ungovernable (usually female) emotions. Beauty and cruelty collide, as do desire and

Peaky Blinders, Friends and Stranger Things have all been given experiential treatment TV-themed festivals, events and experiences are booming as fans of hit shows such as Friends, Peaky Blinders and Stranger Things take their living room love affair into the real world. Earlier this month, fans of Peaky Blinders were treated to the hit BBC show’s first ever official festival, Primark recently opened a Friends-themed cafe in Birmingham and later this year Netflix’s Stranger Things gets the full Secret Cinema experiential treatment. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2nAVnlF

The true story of Bryon Widner, who had his white supremacist tattoos removed and left his former life behind Can a leopard change its spots, asks Israeli film-maker Guy Nattiv in this troublingly slick drama, based on the true story of Bryon Widner, a reformed US white supremacist who had two years of painful laser treatment to remove the racist tattoos that covered his body and face. The already anxious, clattering sound design is punctuated by the violent puff of the laser gun. There are inklings that Jamie Bell’s Widner might not be like the other skinheads; he cares for his dog and plays family man to single mother Julie (Danielle Macdonald). It’s this new relationship that makes him think twice about knifing black kids and torching mosques as a member of the racist Vinlanders Social Club and so the film follows his attempts to extricate himself from his “family”. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2lZcOf1

(Sire) With Hey, I’m Just Like You , Canadian twins Tegan and Sara Quin have cultivated a fresh start. After morphing from indie-punk outcasts into purveyors of sugar-rush pop beloved of Taylor Swift on 2013’s excellent Heartthrob , they hit a wall on its follow-up, Love You to Death . A commercial flop, it felt like a box-ticking exercise, with the band’s spirit lost under the sheen. On their ninth album – a companion piece to their memoir, High School – they look back to move forward, with 12 songs reworked from demos they originally wrote when they were teenagers. The result is a clear-headed amalgamation of their two eras, veering from stomping emo (opener Hold My Breath Until I Die; I’ll Be Back Someday ’s Avril-isms) to sleek, synth-led pop (the pogoing You Go Away and I Don’t Mind). Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2mJiqdO

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From The New Yorker’s archive, personal histories by John Bayley, Ariel Levy, Daryl Pinckney, Nora Ephron, Stephen King, Colson Whitehead, Jo Ann Beard, Salman Rushdie, Oliver Sacks, and Jia Tolentino. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2om5087

Ali Fitzgerald imagines what the Statue of Liberty might say during a therapy session in this humorous comic. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2mM3kEg

Chichester Festival theatre The murderous thane faces witches, relentless video and a musical assault in this lengthy production but emerges as a figure of rare complexity Read interview with John Simm John Simm is a fine actor and gives an intelligent, well thought out performance as the Scottish thane. Paul Miller’s production, however, does nothing to alter my conviction that this work is best played in a small space sans intermission. Macbeth should hurtle to his doom rather than, as here, being part of a three-hour spectacle. Sight and sound tend to dominate. Simon Daw’s set comprises a circular glass floor and upstage screens on to which Tim Reid projects endless video images: scudding clouds, waving branches, eyeless spectres. Max Pappenheim’s music and sound design create a relentless aural background, featuring ominous percussion and trembling strings. One consequence is that the witches’ incantations are hard to hear and you have the sensation that the sound score is doi

Brighton Dome The would-be MP’s ‘last’ standup show teems with delightful animals and gobbledook but often feels in need of an edit ‘This is my last tour before politics, ” says Eddie Izzard, who plans to stand as an MP at the next election. Will comedy miss him? There are moments of vintage Izzard in Wunderbar, as tigers pause to pray before hunting their dinner, and William the Conqueror learns krav maga . But they get lost amid a superfluity of waffle. And there’s a weird dissonance between all this featherlight surrealism and Izzard’s save-the-world ambitions , which at his misjudged encore feel practically messianic. It’s not his fault that the crowd applauds his platitudes about love versus hate and improving the global population’s life chances. But his rallying cries at the curtain call want for self-irony, while his theory of the universe that precedes it is less profound than he seems to think. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2mCWwsO

The story of a British-Nigerian boy growing up in rural Lincolnshire and inner-city London is told with compassion in Shola Amoo’s profoundly moving drama Writer-director Shola Amoo ’s “semi-autobiographical” second feature is an affecting coming-of-age tale pitched somewhere between the sublime American poetry of Barry Jenkins’s Moonlight and the streetwise British grit of Noel Clarke and Menhaj Huda’s Kidulthood movies. A huge leap forward from the experimental collages of 2016’s A Moving Image (which Amoo has accurately called a “feature-length, multimedia, visual-art project”), The Last Tree bristles with film-making confidence, plunging us into the world of its young protagonist as he struggles to find his place in a strangely changing environment. Powerful performances, tactile visuals and an elegantly fluid score add to the impact of this impressively understated yet profoundly moving tale. We open in Lincolnshire, with a scene of bucolic beauty reminiscent of the dreamy f

The actor is generating awards buzz for her performance as Judy Garland. She opens up about handling fame, Harvey Weinstein and the future of Bridget Jones No one could accuse Renée Zellweger of not giving everything she’s got. Watching her portray Judy Garland in her new film, Judy , it’s as though she dissolves, molecule by molecule, into the role. Directed by the renowned British stage director Rupert Goold and adapted from the Olivier and Tony-nominated play by Peter Quilter, Judy is set in 1969, when Garland, 46, broke, fraught, separated from her children, did a run of shows at the Talk of the Town nightclub in London. Garland is depicted drinking, pill-popping, impetuously getting married, hanging out with gay fans, sometimes wowing audiences, other times getting booed. There’s Zellweger’s physical transformation with contact lenses and prosthetics, but it’s also in her insolent swagger over to the microphone when Garland is too drunk to perform. The slightly wild stare that b

The author and former model on Ali Wong’s irreverence, Claire Dederer’s wild child memoir and singing along to Hamilton Born in London in 1977 , Sophie Dahl started her career as a model, appearing in campaigns for Versace, Alexander McQueen and Yves Saint-Laurent’s Opium. In 2003, she published her first book, the bestselling illustrated novella The Man With the Dancing Eyes , followed in 2007 by Playing With the Grown-ups . She has published three cookery books and in 2010 presented BBC Two’s cookery series The Delicious Miss Dahl . Her latest children’s book, Madame Badobedah , illustrated by Lauren O’Hara , is published by Walker Books on 3 October . Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2mL7EDR

Alexandra Schwartz interviews Philip Pullman, the author of the His Dark Materials series, about the forthcoming HBO adaptation of “The Golden Compass,” his new book “The Secret Commonwealth,” and more of his past work. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2m5MMa8

Robert De Niro Sr left journals that revealed struggles with his sexuality and mental health. His son still hasn’t opened them Robert De Niro has given the authors of a book about his artist father access to intimate journals written by the painter, even though he can’t face reading them himself. The journals reveal what the Oscar-winning actor describes as his father’s “demons”, including De Niro Sr’s struggle to make enough money and to find artistic recognition, as well as his anxieties over his mental health and his homosexuality, which broke up his marriage to a fellow artist when their son was a toddler. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2odyCnT

He is a master of blending fact and fiction but, as Philip Pullman says, today’s politicians are on another level I meet Philip Pullman 24 hours after he has got into trouble for idly musing on Twitter that he would like to hang Boris Johnson. “It was a silly joke,” he admits, looking slightly embarrassed as he enters his sitting room with a plate of biscuits for us, perching them on teetering stacks of books beneath which there is said to be a coffee table. He says his publishers were a bit miffed: threatening to murder the prime minister was clearly not how they had agreed to start the publicity campaign for his forthcoming children’s novel, The Secret Commonwealth , and Pullman had to publicly retract his words after there were complaints. “But,” the 72-year-old author adds, his tone brightening, while one of his dogs clambers on to his lap and the other maintains a vigil beside the biscuits, “the upshot was I gained 2,000 followers on Twitter!” Pullman creates magical realms in

New book reveals how the artist was lampooned in a 15th-century ‘comic strip’ Far from being admired as an extraordinary genius, Leonardo da Vinci was repeatedly lampooned and teased about his unusual red hair and his unconventional sexuality by other leading artists of his day. Although the work of the great Italian was popular in his time, an extensive new study of the artist to be published this week has outlined evidence that he was the butt of gossipy jokes in Renaissance Milan. Author Simon Hewitt has unearthed a little-studied image held in Germany, a “comic strip” design made in 1495 to illustrate a poem, that showed how Leonardo was once ridiculed. In one of its colourful images, An Allegory of Justice , a ginger-haired clerk, or court lawyer, is shown seated at a desk, mesmerised by other young men, and represents Leonardo da Vinci. “The identity of Leonardo as the red-headed scribe is totally new,” Hewitt told the Observer ahead of the publication of Leonardo da Vinci a

Tom Piper and Lisa Wright mark Forestry Commission’s centenary with sculpture trail in Thetford Forest The designer behind the popular poppy installation at the Tower of London for the first world war anniversary in 2014 is creating a new and startling public artwork to mark another centenary. Designer Tom Piper is to install a series of bright and mysterious figures in dramatic settings in Thetford Forest, on the Norfolk-Suffolk border, in a collaboration with the Forestry Commission and the acclaimed sculptural artist Lisa Wright . Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2nEJvPf

A depressed agricultural engineer stalks women and rages at the world in Houellebecq’s banal and predictable latest novel For years, various men have told me I should read Michel Houellebecq’s novels – that they would give me a unique insight into masculinity, France, Islam, YouPorn, sex tourism, late capitalism, the human condition, and other things I should probably know more about. He braves subjects that British novelists would never dare to write about, they said. He has this unique gift of prophesying real-life events too: Islamic terrorism with Submission (2015); and with his latest novel, Serotonin , the gilets jaunes protests, apparently. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2ob2IZd

Royal Court, London; Curve, Leicester Caryl Churchill conjures four short, sharp, unconnected plays that add up to one remarkable whole. And a new spin on an 80s film classic What a rapt, intricate and disturbing evening. Four short dramas – the longest only an hour – by the un-United Kingdom’s most fascinating playwright, staged with delicacy and dash by her long-time collaborator. Caryl Churchill is famous for capturing new subjects for the stage in plays that are utterly unpredictable in form; plays that not only never plough the same furrow but leap each time into a new field. City traders; feminism under Margaret Thatcher; cloning. Verse drama; a two-hander in which one man plays three characters; a play made out of a multitude of flickering scenes. Back-garden chat swerving into apocalypse . Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2lZBl3C

Two books about the Windrush experience offer tales of humour, hope and shocking heartlessness West Indian homes of the kind in which cultural historian Colin Grant grew up were governed by what he calls an “omerta” – a reticence to talk about the past. This meant that he and his peers had to make do with “crumbs of information about the lives of our parents back in the cinnamon-scented past”. The dreamers and adventurers who sailed to the UK from the Caribbean after the second world war aren’t getting any younger; their memories need to be kindled and teased out. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2mJrMGr

When is a sport not a sport? Well, when it’s snooker, for a start. But how about the far greater threat to healthy, active, fresh-air (where available) outdoor pursuits posed by an entire industry?“E-sports”, or electronic sports, comprising video game contests featuring individual or team players and watched by millions of spectators, now revel in a billion-dollar market, much of that annual revenue being generated in China and South Korea. Some might say such things should be left in the… from South China Morning Post https://ift.tt/2nvEbOq

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Turner Contemporary, Margate From a wild take on feminism to a study of incarceration – this year’s shortlisted artists focus on a host of social issues It’s not usually difficult to nab a seat on the high-speed train from London to Margate. This week, though, you might have had to shove aside the stream of art critics piling into Kent for the Turner prize exhibition. To add to the congestion, shortlisted artist Oscar Murillo decided to populate his portion of the gallery with a crowd of 20 lifesize papier-mache effigies. They travelled in on the commuter train on Tuesday, each one cheerfully escorted by a volunteer. If you happened to have witnessed the scene at the station – the bedraggled puppets variously lugged and wheeled along a drizzly seafront – you’d be forgiven for mistaking the whole thing for a soggy carnival. Murillo draws from traditional Colombian festivities, where effigies are set alight to mark the new year. But here at Turner Contemporary they make for a more

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Scala, London The former dancer, poet and illustrator is now fully focused on securing his place as London’s most unique rapper The word “R.A.D.I.C.A.L.” sits at the back of the stage, each white letter punctuated by a coloured strobe lamp. The moniker chosen by the man born Kwadwo Adu Genfi Amponsah gives him a lot to live up to, but fortunately this emerging London rapper, currently winding up a sold-out UK tour, is a one-off in many ways. Few of today’s crop of UK wordsmiths started their creative lives at the London College of Fashion studying drawing, but Radical did: he got a first . He recently designed bottles for some high-end tequila brand whose previous visuals have incorporated work by Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2np0pSb

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Graham Techler imagines a humorous list of academic dissertations written by Oscar, his cat. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2o67Ain

The Lowry, Salford Following two friends over three decades, Daniel Kanaber’s play spans friendship, mental health and emotionally pent-up men ‘Take care of yourself,” one character grunts to the other as he holds him in a headlock. This image sums up Daniel Kanaber’s new play about friendship, mental health and masculinity. Affection, for these emotionally pent-up men, can only be expressed through aggression. Under Three Moons follows protagonists Mike and Paul through their teens, 20s and 30s. Three nights, three decades, two friends. On a sixth-form trip to France , the schoolmates strike up an awkward friendship; in a surf shack in Pembrokeshire , they dream of escaping to California; and at Christmas 10 years later, the estranged friends pick up the pieces. In the dim, semi-anonymity of night, the two men can talk about things that remain stifled by day. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2lQMhR3

The actor on an embarrassing wetsuit incident, an evangelical Sunday school and spontaneous combustion Born in Haverfordwest, Wales, Rhys Ifans , 52, was Bafta-nominated for the 1999 film Notting Hill . In 2005, he won a Bafta for playing Peter Cook in Not Only But Always. His other films include Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows and Mr Nice. He stars in On Bear Ridge at Cardiff’s Sherman theatre until 5 October, then at London’s Royal Court from 24 October. When were you happiest? I look at my nephew, who is five years old and in a perpetual state of bliss; I imagine that’s what I was like when I was five. That’s not to say I am unhappy now; I was on top of the world walking through a park to work this morning. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2nZUx1O

After a breakup with Robert Pattinson and emergency surgery, the queen of art pop has written her most personal album yet – and come out fighting FKA twigs lives in a real house, in the real world, though this seems hard to believe. She appears so alien, in her music and her performances, in the way she presents herself, that you’d be forgiven for believing that she lived in a cryo chamber alongside bejewelled hip-hop robots, or a martial arts monastery surrounded by an enchanted thicket of thorns. Twigs’ art is not of the stripped-back, real me, acoustics-and-grubby-jeans variety. She arrived on the scene in 2012, whispering like Tricky , clattering like the xx , romancing like Prince , singing like Kate Bush , yet not actually quite like anyone else. A polymath – she is a beautiful dancer and has directed pop videos and immersive theatre – she works in experimental hinterlands, creating atmospheres rather than singalong stories. For example: the sparse and sad track Cellophane ,

In this formulaic but transfixing show’s sub-universe the gender roles we’ve all spent years railing against are front and centre As advertisements for the heterosexual ideal of romantic love go, you have to admit Don’t Tell the Bride (Sun, 9pm, E4) is arguably the worst ever: a straight couple, almost always 24 years of age and living together in a new-build, mug at the camera on a greying rock-strewn beach, telling us the story about how their paths first crossed, hours before he starts planning to absolutely ruin their wedding, every single moment of it. “When I first met him, I hated him,” the bride will say. “When I first saw her, I thought she was fit,” the groom will reply. This is it. This is as good as it gets. They literally always have a two-year-old together, as sure as clouds and rain. In the DTTB sub-universe, the gender roles we have all spent years railing against never really moved on: the grooms, universally, are useless thick-headed morons who can’t make toast wit

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The new film from Costa-Gavras about the Greek financial crisis, 'Adults in the Room,' will celebrate its Greek premiere on September 29. The film is based on the book by former Greek finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis. from Deutsche Welle: DW.com - Culture & Lifestyle https://ift.tt/2noc2sw

Benjamin Wallace-Wells writes about Elaine Luria, Abigail Spanberger, Elissa Slotkin, Mikie Sherrill, Gil Cisneros, Jason Crow, Chrissy Houlahan, whose op-ed was crucial in Nancy Pelosi’s decision to begin an impeachment inquiry of Donald Trump. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2o6pBxb

Twenty-three years after it last aired, the puppet satire takes on Trump, Putin and Zuckerberg There was a time during its 1980s heyday when Spitting Image was watched by 15 million people each week, when it seemed as central to British political life as Margaret Thatcher’s handbag. But by the time the programme was cancelled after more than a decade, its audiences had slumped, its brand of caustic puppetry deemed dated and out of step with the national mood. There is nothing like a global political crisis, however, to prod a satirist out of semi-retirement. Twenty-three years after it was last broadcast, Roger Law, one of the co-creators of the groundbreaking comedy, has confirmed that Spitting Image is set to return to television screens – featuring an S&M-clad Vladimir Putin, Meghan Markle wearing a glittery “princess” T-shirt and a puppet of Donald Trump whose tweets are composed by his anus. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2nW0Fbn

Todd Phillips’s take has been mired in controversy, but it’s not the first time the character has reflected society Modern Toss on the new Joker ... “Is it just me or is it getting crazier out there?” Joaquin Phoenix’s proto-Joker Arthur Fleck asks his psychologist in the new Joker movie. The real answer is both. Fleck is beset with a host of personal issues, but the world “out there” is a powder keg of lawlessness, inequality, corruption, cuts and all-round despair. Joker’s story is set around the early 1980s, but it consciously chimes with our own increasingly crazy present. “These are tough times,” the psychologist acknowledges. She might as well turn and wink to the camera. It’s no surprise that 2019’s Joker – while set to be a triumph, critically and commercially – has raised concerns over its narrative. An early, leaked version of the script, plus the portrayal of Phoenix’s character as a sad young man beset by a host of personal issues (mental health problems, past trauma

Robert De Niro is a – slightly dead-eyed – whippersnapper once more in this exquisitely made, decades-spanning passion project bankrolled by Netflix For an auteur whose work has often been bridled by commercially-minded studio executives, Netflix offers something close to total creative control, a seductive if dangerous proposition. It’s how the streaming behemoth lured everyone from Alfonso Cuarón to Steven Soderbergh to the Coen brothers and it’s partly how ultimate get Martin Scorsese was gotten. Originally set at Paramount, his ambitious, decades-spanning, fact-based crime drama The Irishman was deemed too financially excessive, its budget spinning out to more than $150m. But with the ability to not only bankroll but to remove any fears of box office failure, Netflix welcomed Scorsese with open arms and a gaping chequebook. Related: J-Lo for the win? Taking an early look at Oscars 2020 frontrunners Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2lOiGry

Lawyer for man at center of Netflix documentary calls another prisoner’s claim he killed Teresa Halbach ‘ridiculous’ A new confession in the Steven Avery case has built buzz and despite questions about its credibility, the interest is a testament to the voracious appetite for a case that has for years captivated audiences and online sleuths. A Wisconsin inmate confessed in a letter sent this month to the killing of 25-year-old Teresa Halbach – the high-profile murder at the center of Netflix’s hit documentary series Making a Murderer. According to Avery’s attorney, Kathleen Zellner , the confession is probably a not-so-subtle ploy for publicity and cash. Nonetheless, it’s generating headlines and stoking conversation across the internet. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2nrhlak

Monday will mark the beginning of a new era for the City Chamber Orchestra of Hong Kong (CCOHK) – its first concert under new chief conductor Vahan Mardirossian and the first in its 20th anniversary season.Previously a guest conductor with the orchestra in Hong Kong and Shanghai, Mardirossian will conduct a programme featuring Beethoven’s Concerto for Violin with soloist Augustin Dumay, Sibelius’ Andante Festivo, and Poulenc’s Sinfonietta.“He’s the Leonard Bernstein of Armenia,” says CCOHK… from South China Morning Post https://ift.tt/2nlwhqP

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Steve Coll on the whistle-blower complaint that may help defend the process against the torrent of spin and lies that the President and his allies will surely continue to issue. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2mtGhxR

Birmingham Hippodrome Three dancers explore the harmony between music and movement in a show that flirts with parody as it unleashes joy ‘Don’t Mickey Mouse!” It’s one of the most basic rules given to beginner choreography students, an injunction against the kids’ cartoon effect produced by movement that parrots its music – and Rosie Kay is breaking it, big-time. Her Fantasia, like Disney’s , is a kind of musical adventure set to a playlist of classical music, but using plotless dance instead of animated stories; and like Disney, Kay is going the full Mickey Mouse. In the opening section, featuring much Vivaldi, the choreographic logic seems to be: if the music is classical, the dance must be, too. Shanelle Clemenson, Harriet Ellis and Carina Howard – more Amazonian in style and stance than the willowy balletic ideal, and each sporting the kind of gaudy tutu a five-year-old might choose for fancy dress – duly don the airs and graces of classical ballet: its elegant framings and fac

It's traditional fare for young and old alike: A slice of fresh bread spread with nothing but butter. Every year in late September, Germans devote a day to celebrate their beloved staple, the "Butterbrot." from Deutsche Welle: DW.com - Culture & Lifestyle https://ift.tt/2nG852i

Nicole Levin offers a humorous list of movies that are now spoiled by climate-change anxiety. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2nNsvqj

It's fall, and the grape harvest has begun in many wine growing regions across Germany. Bavaria-based Master of Wine, Romana Echensperger, explains the latest trends in German wines, from chardonnay to sparkling wines. from Deutsche Welle: DW.com - Culture & Lifestyle https://ift.tt/2neZuTX

From Man Ray to Louise Bourgeois, an astonishing range of artists have used tights and stockings to turbocharge their work. We go behind the scenes at Gossamer, a celebration of hosiery An art exhibition about tights? In Margate? It sounds very end-of-the-pier, all saucy postcards and mother-in-law jokes. There is something a bit icky about hosiery in the day-to-day. Tights are underwear, sure, but they’re more business end than babe-wear: functional, grubby, prone to tugs and bald patches. There are few words uglier in the English language than “gusset”. “Tights sit in the innermost, intimate regions of the female form,” says Zoe Bedeaux, curator of Gossamer, at Margate’s Carl Freedman Gallery. “So when one thinks about their function and then imagines them in the context of art, I guess they can conjure an element of humour.” Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2n9VaWb

Victoria Miro Mayfair, London Selling the mega wealthy crudely stereotyping scenes of their excessive lifestyles is worse than trite. But is the joke really on them? Grayson Perry bites the hands that feed him in his new exhibition Super Rich Interior Decoration. Except he doesn’t really give them a serious wound. He just titillates wealthy fingers with a sexy nibble that makes buying his babbling ceramics, ranting wall hangings and anything-but-magical carpet feel naughty and fun for the super-rich art collectors who will shortly be rolling up for London’s Frieze art fair. Yes, that’s right – Perry is showing satires on the wealthy at a commercial show in the heart of Mayfair, its streets fragrant with expensive perfume and even more expensive cigar smoke, specifically to sell to the very elite he mocks. The joke really is as trite and cynical as that. In an age when democracy itself is being chewed to pieces by ever more absurdly extreme postures, Perry may be the artist we deserv

A Renaissance masterpiece discovered in a kitchen, the Saudi women refusing to wear the abaya, a French chef sues Michelin – after being accused of using cheddar in a soufflé, and France mourns former French president Jacques Chirac. from https://ift.tt/2lEtV5Q

The journalist and campaigner on the book that made her realise she was in an abusive relationship and the comforts of Nancy Mitford The book I am currently reading Deborah Levy’s The Cost of Living . After years of reading almost exclusively men, I’m now addicted to sharp female writers like Levy who write about what it is to be a woman. I don’t think I’ll ever tire of the excitement of recognising how I see the world in a book. The book that changed my life Where There’s a Will There’s a Way or, All I Really Need to Know I Learned from Shakespeare by Laurie Maguire. Part literary analysis, part self-help book, reading this made me realise I was in an abusive relationship – which was the first step to getting out. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2mgAX0G

Curve, Leicester Adapted from Hanif Kureishi’s 1985 film, this production retains its 80s ethos while speaking to today’s world with the racial and gender politics heightened Making plays out of films is a tricky business but Hanif Kureishi has successfully adapted his landmark 1985 movie for the stage with the aid of linking music from Tennant/Lowe of the Pet Shop Boys . The production still pins down the pervasive impact of entrepreneurial Thatcherite values while charting the growth of a gay relationship. But what is fascinating is how deftly Kureishi has heightened the story’s racial and gender politics. We see a young British Pakistani man, Omar, turning a run-down laundrette into a thriving business aided by his chum, Johnny, on whom he dotes. But the muddled fascism of Johnny’s hangers-on is much clearer than in the movie, with one of them spouting toxic anti-immigrant rhetoric and another brandishing a banner proclaiming: “British jobs for British workers.” Tania, the cou

Musical freedom of expression is under fire, but artists like Iran's Farzane Zamen and Egypt's Ramy Essam refuse to be silenced. They're sharing their stories of bans, censorship and prison at the World Forum on Music. from Deutsche Welle: DW.com - Culture & Lifestyle https://ift.tt/2n6WmK4

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Françoise Mouly writes on the launch of an impeachment inquiry into President Trump and the release of an explosive whistle-blower report, which together serve as inspiration for Barry Blitt’s cover for the October 7, 2019, issue of The New Yorker. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2ndynsr

With Brexit looming, a dormant government and dissident terror on the rise, these are fertile times for Ulster bands – with Arlene Foster’s ultra-conservatives the common enemy The dark upstairs room of an old sports bar in Belfast is an unassuming venue for a revolution. Against a backdrop of silver streamers and placards from the pro-choice rally that has just taken place, a small crowd gathers as Sister Ghost blast out a rendition of Nirvana’s Love Buzz. Vocalist Shannon Delores O’Neill sings in impassioned yelps, continually falling to her knees, eyes closed, and dropping the microphone at the end of the song. Nirvana played the track at the first ever Rock for Choice benefit in Hollywood, California, in 1991. Sister Ghost are performing it at a fundraiser for the same cause. Amid the threat posed by Brexit, civil rights struggles and a paramilitary resurgence, the political situation in Northern Ireland remains fragile. The country is gasping in a political vacuum without a func

Murphy’s dazzling Netflix series plays gloriously with the inauthenticity that has become standard in the corridors of power When the history of our times comes to be written, possibly with burned stick on dried rat skins, the opening message of Ryan Murphy’s new Netflix series The Politician will demand a page of the annals to itself. “The Politician,” it says, “is a comedy about moxie, ambition and getting what you want at all costs. But for those who struggle with their mental health, some elements may be disturbing. Viewer discretion is advised.” Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2n40qdW

(Warner Records) Reworked songs of teenage travails from the Quin twins, who go back to their youth in slick, pulsating pop As tracklists go, you don’t get much more evocative than the one attached to Tegan and Sara’s ninth album, a series of furiously indignant, laughably melodramatic and stomach-churningly poignant missives from the standard-issue internal monologue of the unhappy teenager. It’s tempting to leave the likes of Hold My Breath Until I Die and Don’t Believe the Things They Tell You (They Lie) as song titles alone, imagining the contents to fit your own heady nostalgia trip. But if you do decide to dive in, you’ll discover plenty more painfully perfect evocations of adolescent angst inside. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2lwjt00

Was Hitler obsessed with destroying capitalism? Did he drive policy ‘even down to the smallest detail’? Two new biographies fall into different traps “Hitler was a socialist,” has become a mantra for the “alt-right” in the US as it seeks to discredit Democratic politicians such as Bernie Sanders and Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez. Dinesh D’Souza’s book The Big Lie: Exposing the Nazi Roots of the American Left , expounded this claim at length in 2017, comparing points of the Nazi party’s 1920 programme with policies put forward by modern Democrats. So, anyone who claims to be a socialist is really a Nazi who wants to set the country on the road to totalitarianism, war and genocide. Obamacare is only the start; enslavement and death will be the end. It’s a claim that has spread through the Republican party and has been echoed by Donald Trump. Now it has found its way across the Atlantic in the form of Brendan Simms’s new book, the central argument of which is that “Hitler’s principal preoccup

A documentary about the making of the Chinese artist’s @Large, a 2014 project set in the former penitentiary, reveals his family’s own tragedy In 2014, Chinese artist Ai Weiwei still had his passport withheld by the Beijing authorities, denying him foreign travel. While he was pondering a new exhibit about political prisoners, Ai was contacted by the San Francisco gallerist and curator Cheryl Haines with a proposal: she had the connections to provide him with a sensational site for the event – Alcatraz prison, the former US federal penitentiary, closed since 1963 and now a tourist destination. They agreed that this would be a dramatic showcase, and would relate to Alcatraz’s shabby 19th-century record of imprisoning Hopi Native Americans who refused to be “Americanised” in their education, and also honour the Native American protest-occupation of Alcatraz Island in 1969. Haines has now directed a very absorbing and valuable documentary about the creation of this artwork, which rela

The satirist’s new film was inspired by the FBI’s attempts to manufacture terrorists. He talks about the problem with white liberals – and his duty to provoke Chris Morris first saw the reports on Sky News. The FBI had arrested an army planning “full ground war” on the United States. A massive jihadi battalion, trained in Miami but backed by al-Qaida, was promising to “kill all the devils we can” – starting with Chicago’s most famous skyscraper, Sears Tower. That was in 2006. Two years later, Morris got a tipoff from someone involved in the trial that the case could be “a bit whiffy”. In fact, it was a colossal stitch-up. The bureau’s biggest counterterrorism scalp of recent times was, says Morris, “all a huge lie, before it was called fake news. Totally manufactured nonsense.” Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2m0FLrf

From his Life on Mars cop to Crime and Punishment’s Raskolnikov, Simm does a fine line in the troubled and conflicted. Next up? Macbeth John Simm doesn’t do any of that superstition nonsense. It’s not the Scottish Play – he’s in Macbeth, and he’s going to shout it from the theatre rooftop. Actually, we are in the cafe of the theatre – the Chichester Festival theatre – outside on the terrace in the late summer sunshine, drinking cappuccinos. Almond milk for Simm, he doesn’t do dairy. Is that a fashion thing? “No, it’s because it’s weird if you think about it. Why drink bovine breast milk? We don’t even drink human breast milk. It’s not for us, it’s for baby cows.” Hmmm, my bovine breast milk froth is suddenly looking less appealing. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2maFv8Y

This game-changing, risk-taking series bows out with jazzhands, hilarious show tunes and a jaw-dropping final send-off for the Pfefferman family It opens, as so many great musicals have, with a closeup of feet posing in legwarmers. A classic American number about driving down an LA boulevard, though an obscure one, Sepulveda, which sounds a lot like sepulchre. It closes, as no musical has ever done, with a jazzhands-in-the-air show tune about the Final Solution, called Joyocaust. A Jewish Make ’Em Laugh about taking “the concentration out of the camps” to concentrate “on some song and dance” that does precisely what this glorious, game-changing show has always done best: make ’em laugh, cry, cringe and think, all at the same time. Here is the Transparent: Musicale Finale (Amazon Prime) you dreamed of – heavy-going, light as a feather, uproarious and unbearably sad. Even its flaws are perfect. Thank. Non-binary. God. The stakes were nosebleed high. Fans grieved for the show and its f

Turner Contemporary showing works by four artists in running including Oscar Murillo canvas A breathtaking view of the North Sea that captivated and inspired JMW Turner and led to the creation of a contemporary art gallery in his name has been partially blacked out for reasons many people will completely understand. Fiona Parry, the senior curator at Turner Contemporary in Margate, said: “It represents the darkness of our contemporary moment. The darkness of the political moment in the UK and globally.” Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2nHSfV1

David Remnick talks to Nancy Pelosi about her decision to open an impeachment inquiry following a whistle-blower’s complaint alleging that Donald Trump abused his power in conversations with the President of Ukraine. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2nH7jSP

Bernard Avishai explains four possible scenarios now that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been given a Presidential mandate to form Israel’s next government within twenty-eight days. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2m73PIR

Was the EU referendum dreamed up by a cabal of nefarious, lie-spewing insects? McEwan’s wacky satire will invigorate remainers “That morning, Jim Sams, clever but by no means profound, woke from uneasy dreams to find himself transformed into a gigantic creature.” Ian McEwan’s enjoyable, cockeyed Brexit satire opens by tipping a gigantic wink to Kafka’s Metamorphosis , a work it in no way resembles. The set up is that a cockroach wakes up in No 10 after a big night, finds it is a hungover and very Boris-like prime minister, and, once it gets used to the unpleasant feeling of having an internal skeleton and a fleshy tongue in its mouth, sets about steering the UK into a popularly acclaimed national disaster. The bug is helped by the intuitive discovery – something to do with the pheromonal cockroach hivemind, I guess – that most of the cabinet are also now secretly cockroaches. Kafka’s opening premise looks as though it wants to be a dream-image, a metaphor or an allegory, but the stor

Hoping to emulate the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Disney have asked the Marvel president to collaborate with producer Kathleen Kennedy Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige – generally acknowledged as the driving force behind the enormously successful series of blockbusters the studio has released – is to develop a new Star Wars film, it has been announced. According to the Hollywood Reporter , the Walt Disney Company (which owns both Marvel Studios and Star Wars producers Lucasfilm) has asked Feige to work on Star Wars material with Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy. Disney co-chair Alan Horn said: “With the close of the Skywalker Saga, [Kennedy] is pursuing a new era in Star Wars storytelling, and knowing what a diehard fan Kevin [Feige] is, it made sense for these two extraordinary producers to work on a Star Wars film together.” Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2lhepMV

US rapper alleges that a photographer exposed himself and attempted to coerce her into sex US rapper Cardi B has detailed a sexual assault she experienced during a magazine photoshoot. Speaking to TV and radio host Angie Martinez, she said: “I went to shoot for this magazine and the photographer, he was trying to get close to me like, ‘Yeah, you want to get in this magazine?’ Then he pulled his dick out. I was so fucking mad … You know what’s crazy? I told the magazine owner and he just looked at me like, ‘So? And?’” Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2nriCOW

Family of Baker, who has also performed with Fela Kuti and Public Image Ltd, ask fans to ‘keep him in your prayers’ Ginger Baker, the jazz and blues drummer who co-founded the rock band Cream, has been reported critically ill. A tweet posted from his official account reads: “The Baker family are sad to announce that Ginger is critically ill in hospital. Please keep him in your prayers tonight.” Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2mPuWrQ

The Londonstani author’s latest novel features a student with multiple online identities Ever get the feeling your search engine knows your question – and its answer – before you’ve started to type? Student and serial liar Dillon Deckardas knows just how you feel, and so do his alter egos Dylan (who runs a tech startup) and Dhilan (who cares for his ill mother). Deckardas’s multiple online profiles, each with their own passwords and conversational registers, are an attempt to control a life adrift. He’s always on the move, downing Red Bull, spinning stories and trying to second-guess the world. When two men start following him, asking questions about his startup, Deckardas’s millennial tremors coalesce into a frantic quest for something real. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2mVuxUH

The filmmaker Sindha Agha explores her relationship to "stuff" and how a personal trauma led to an emotional version of the Kondo method. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2lKWzSX

The Beatles cross an intersection single file. In the background, a white Volkswagen Beetle. The photo made music history – as did the "Abbey Road" album for which it was taken, the last recorded by The Beatles. from Deutsche Welle: DW.com - Culture & Lifestyle https://ift.tt/2lWJm9B

With Labour voting for their abolition, are we finally seeing a shift in public mood against the institutions at the heart of our unjust society? “Private schools help hoard wealth, power and opportunity for the few.” This comment by an anonymous Labour party source a few weeks ago states the problem in a nutshell. Private schools are out of reach (average fees nearly £18,000 a year) for the great majority of people; their spend per pupil is at least three times more than that of state schools – a grotesque resources gap; and they constitute a highly effective service industry, which not only almost guarantees places at top universities but also provides a network of invaluable connections – together a passport to life’s glittering prizes, with two old Etonian PMs in the last three years the most visible symbol. They are indeed enablers of wealth hoarding, of power hoarding, of opportunity hoarding. They are, in short, an affront to any notion of a just or inclusive society. Such was

Extraordinary stories about the heart, lungs, genitals ... plus some anger and life advice – all delivered in the inimitable Bryson style The cartilage in your joints is smoother than glass, and has a friction coefficient five times less than ice. The more exercise we do the more our bones produce a hormone that boosts mood, fertility and memory – staving off frailty, depression and dementia. Taste receptors trigger insulin release, so that before we’ve even swallowed our bodies are preparing for a meal (there are even taste receptors in the testicles). We are made of seven billion billion billion atoms, the constituent elements of which would cost £96,546.79 on the open market (excluding VAT). A study of 60 people’s belly buttons found 2,368 species of bacteria, 1,458 of them “unknown to science”. Our ears can discern a volume range of a 1,000,000,000,000 factors of amplitude. Over a lifetime your heart performs the equivalent work to lifting a tonne weight 150 miles into the air. Th

Pitzhanger Manor and Gallery, London The artist and theatre designer has created a vast, poetic sculptural map of world history that maps time not space, where Rosa Parks’ bus sits alongside the Buddha’s fig tree The Georgian architect John Soane would have found a lot to enjoy in the curious artwork that stage and gig designer Es Devlin has created in his even more curious home. Soane started out as a bricklayer, went on to design Dulwich Picture Gallery and the Bank of England, and bequeathed Britain his delirious one-man museum on Lincoln’s Inn Fields. He also built the delightfully odd Pitzhanger Manor in west London where Devlin has installed an epic 3D map of world history. Devlin’s Memory Palace is a railway modeller’s paradise. Using cut bamboo, she has created a capacious warped pale-grey landscape that curves all around you, covered in buildings and mountains and even the sacred fig tree under which Siddhartha sat. Her sprawling diorama is ordered chronologically not top

An equal pay scandal at the BBC provides the starting point for a discussion of women at work The British would rather talk about sex and death than how much they earn, so Carrie Gracie broke taboos when she decided to go public with her battle over equal pay at the BBC, that most British of organisations. Part instruction manual, part howl of rage, Equal tells a personal story that changed the public debate. Nearly 50 years after equal pay was first enshrined in UK law, there are still too many instances where women are paid less, not just when they work flexibly or in lower paid jobs but when they do the same job. The fact that this illegal behaviour takes place at the BBC, where Gracie had worked successfully for 30 years, fuels a sense of fury. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2npN2B5

His iconic portraits of James Dean in a wintry New York won him fame. But it was his travels in the west coast that brought out his true genius, as he captured the cracks in the 60s counterculture ‘For many years California frightened me,” Dennis Stock wrote in the preface to California Trip , first published in 1970 . “ For a young man with traditional concerns for spiritual and aesthetic order, California seemed too unreal. I ran.” Stock, a naturally sceptical New Yorker who had served in the US Navy before hustling his way into the ranks of the esteemed Magnum photo agency, had instinctively picked up on the edgy undercurrents of the late 1960s Californian hippy dream. As the idealism of that decade peaked and faded, California became what Stock called a “head lab” – fomenting various radically alternative lifestyles fuelled by eastern mysticism, experiments in communal living, and all kinds of post-LSD mind expansion. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://if

Back on tour for the first time in 15 years, the trailblazing comedian has some scores to settle. How can he be a sellout, he asks, if he was never radical to begin with? They say you shouldn’t meet your heroes – but my inner 13-year-old would never forgive me if I spurned a chat with Ben Elton. The Young Ones , Blackadder and Saturday Live weren’t just a laugh for me; I constructed friendships, my sense of humour, and – let’s face it – my identity around them. Elton was the figurehead of the most exciting moment (give or take a 60s satire boom) in British comedy history, a sparkly-suited, mullet ed firebrand blazing a trail for comedy’s punk generation – the so-called “alternative comedians” – to follow. And then he wasn’t. Nowadays you can’t talk about Elton without references to selling out, and to Stewart Lee’s notorious routine comparing him with Osama bin Laden, who “at least lived his life according to a consistent set of ethical principles”. More on that later: Elton has pl