Cultural News Today

Netflix royal drama and Chloe Zhao were toast of the night amid technical difficulties and against background of diversity issues Golden Globes 2021 winners – the full list The winners and their living rooms – in pictures With spotty wifi, lagging sound and Zoom chaos, the 78th Golden Globes was a half-virtual ceremony once again dominated by British stars but marred by technical difficulties and renewed scrutiny on the awards’ lack of diversity. Related: The full list of Golden Globes 2021 winners Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3r3jvsY

A feature-length film focuses on their long fight for justice. Plus: MasterChef is back. Here’s what to watch this evening Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3sAfegJ

Submit your caption. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/37ZpgAq

It’s difficult to describe anti-Asian racism when society lacks a coherent historical account of what it actually looks like. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/3e1jTod

Portrait of Lenin and spy tools among items snapped up at auction by group planning UK exhibition It depicts the Russian revolutionary leader in characteristically serious mood, staring across Red Square, perhaps, and rendered with more than a touch of kitsch. But while a Soviet-era oil painting of Vladimir Lenin, which sold for nearly $2,000 at auction in the US, might capture the man as many know him, its buyers are not exactly Bolsheviks. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2Mx6Orb

Stage musical adapted from 1985 film about two teenage highwaymen will feature music from Big Country It is a Scottish crime caper that was loved in Scotland and largely loathed by English film critics when it was released in 1985. But Restless Natives went on to become a much-loved classic with its comic story of two teenagers who become local heroes as highwaymen – Robin Hoods who rob tourists and give money to the poor. Over the years, A-list actors such as Jack Black, Gerard Butler and James McAvoy are among those who have declared it a favourite film. Now Andy Paterson, Michael Hoffman and Ninian Dunnett – its respective producer, director and writer – are collaborating on a major stage musical version. In 1985, they were novice film-makers in their 20s when they faced the harshest response to their film. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3ktfbRg

From live streams of new plays to classics from the archive, here are some of the top shows online now or coming soon – this page is updated regularly Choose your own musical theatre lineup with this neat concept by the Barn theatre’s Ryan Carter, allowing the viewer to curate a concert from a selection of showtunes sung by different performers. There are bangers and ballads from musicals including Into the Woods, Waitress and Chicago. So you might follow leather-clad Allie Daniel’s Mean Girls number with Kayla Carter’s gingham-sporting Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz. There must be a hellish spreadsheet behind it all, but the result is a breezy bit of fun for anyone missing musicals. The barnstormer is Natalie Kassanga in the role of Coco from Fame. Available until 7 March . Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2xM8NjK

Actor who played Mike Baldwin in long-running ITV soap dies after long illness The Coronation Street actor Johnny Briggs has died aged 85. He was famous for his role as Mike Baldwin in the long-running ITV soap. A statement from his family said he died after a long illness. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3e6ARl9

From The New Yorker’s archive: a selection of writing on race, civil rights, and justice. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/37V3YUq

In “Renegades,” a new Spotify podcast, the Boss and the Chief dub themselves rebellious outsiders while playing soothing hits. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/3b38Ngc

In the nineteen-seventies, social workers in several states placed queer teen-agers with queer foster parents, in discrete acts of quiet radicalism. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/37XdTbY

Arrested for jaywalking, a DACA recipient spent the pandemic in ICE detention because of what New York City officials admit was an “operational error.” He could be deported as soon as next week. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/3q2Fizm

It’s been a year of emotional ups and downs, but for now, at least, even with more variants of the virus, the ups seem to be winning. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/3qX1L2h

A free, online cryptic crossword puzzle from the New Yorker’s archive, with answers and clues that exhibit the wit and intelligence of the magazine. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/3sMIeCn

Hoteliers and distillers hope visitors will be drawn to their part of Northern Ireland by the dark drama Bloodlands Along a crooked finger-shaped peninsula between a lough created by the ice age and the Irish Sea, locals are hoping for a post-pandemic tourism boost from a dark new TV drama about a Troubles-era killer emerging again in the present day. Hoteliers, distillers, B&B owners and others living on the Ards Peninsula believe the BBC-produced Bloodlands will do for their bucolic corner of Northern Ireland what the global fantasy series Game of Thrones has done for other parts of the region. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/300WAlS

The Sussexes are the latest in a line of celebrities to try to rebuild their image by talking to the chatshow queen You could have forgiven the British royal family for giving primetime, tell-all interviews a wide berth for the foreseeable. The evisceration of Prince Andrew by the BBC’s Emily Maitlis in 2019 managed to achieve the near-impossible: making the Duke of York appear more dubious and less sympathetic. But if we have learned one thing about the Sussexes, Harry and Meghan, it’s that they are intent on doing pretty much the opposite of what the other royals want them to do. So next Sunday, 7 March, a 90-minute special, Oprah with Meghan and Harry , will air on the US network CBS. There is also understood to be a bidding war between UK broadcasters – though not the BBC – for the interview, which, it is promised, will be “intimate” and “wide-ranging”. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/37U4XEn

The actor on football drills, online gigs and overdone potatoes How do your Sundays start? They start with a run. It’s vital to get something useful under your belt early doors. I love reading Irvine Welsh at any time, but Sunday mornings are best. Coffee, Radox, Francis Begbie. Very relaxing. Football is still a tonic. We do drills. He wears shin pads. It’s pathetic, really Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3q1ElHF

The British actor on his new documentary about Covid and people of colour, his breakdown aged 23, and having days left to finish his memoir David Harewood, 55, was born in Birmingham and is an actor and broadcaster perhaps best known for playing CIA director David Estes in the Channel 4 series Homeland . He recently presented Psychosis and Me , a moving documentary about his experience of being sectioned, aged 23. His latest thought-provoking BBC One documentary, Why Is Covid Killing People of Colour? , scrutinises scandalous inequalities in the NHS and shows how every aspect of health in BAME communities can be affected by deprivation and racism. Why Is Covid Killing People of Colour? reveals health inequality on a terrifying scale. What shocked you most, personally, as you were making the film? I had no idea that women of colour are five times more likely to die in childbirth. It’s only since Black Lives Matter took off that everyone now wants to talk to Jenny Douglas [an academ...

As the blues singer, Day is magnetic in Lee Daniels’s often chaotic biopic, built around a speculative romance between Holiday and a government agent “It was called ‘the United States of America versus Billie Holiday,’” wrote the jazz legend in her 1956 autobiography, “and that’s just the way it felt.” Holiday’s 1947 conviction, when she was sentenced to a year and a day for possession of narcotics, was just one chapter in a sustained campaign against the singer, whose performances of Abel Meeropol’s anguished, anti-lynching ballad Strange Fruit had become a lightning rod for civil rights awareness and activism. Holiday’s steadfast refusal to stop singing that song was perhaps the greatest indication of her indomitable spirit, forged in the fires of a tough-as-nails upbringing that saw her survive horrific childhood abuse to become a superstar in an age of often deadly racial and sexual prejudice. Yet in Precious director Lee Daniels ’s timely but muddled biopic, which boasts a rev...

As museum prepares to celebrate Lewis Carroll’s heroine, ties to mysticism and magical societies have come to light in a new work, Through a Looking Glass Darkly Great art spawns imitation. And great weird art, it seems, spawns still weirder flights of fancy. Lewis Carroll’s twin children’s fantasies, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel, Through the Looking-Glass , and What Alice Found There have both inspired a string of adaptations, artistic and musical responses down the generations. Now, as the Victoria & Albert Museum prepares to celebrate Alice and her cultural influence in Curiouser & Curiouser , a landmark exhibition next month, a new book containing unseen original images is to expose the secrets behind the darker world of the second Alice story. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3r3RvoT

Imagination, energy and a surrealist streak have made Lakeith Stanfield one of Hollywood’s most unusual – and sought-after – stars. Here, he talks about his toughest role yet To spread the word about his anarchic, brilliantly batshit 2018 comedy Sorry to Bother You , the actor Lakeith Stanfield adopted an anarchic, brilliantly batshit strategy. He went to one of his favourite stores, Iguana Vintage Clothing, in Los Angeles, and cleared out every wig they had. Then he drove around cinemas in Hollywood, bought tickets for the film, stashed them inside the wigs, and hid them outside the cinemas. “Then people engaged in it, on a wild goose hunt,” explains Stanfield, his voice deep and languid. “There’s a lost art in being able to have fun with a film in the release. But it was a film that I thought was fun, right? So I wanted to have fun, and I wanted people to engage in that fun with me. Also I loved the movie so much, I wanted people to see it for free.” Continue reading... from Cul...

For the Observer’s cartoonist, keeping a daily pictorial record of events was the only way to make sense of last year. He tells how a new book was the result On 13 December 2019 I woke up and reached out for the “on” button of my bedside radio. I lay back and listened to the familiar voices of Radio 4’s Today programme tell me the results of the general election. As the interviews and analysis washed over me, I felt that mixture of emotions that had become all too familiar. Anger, sorrow, disbelief and helplessness. It was how I had felt when Nick Clegg became David Cameron’s useful idiot, when Boris Johnson and Michael Gove stood at the podium dumbfounded by their Brexit victory and when Donald Trump’s tiny hands grasped the reins of power and he became the leader of the free world. Now a bumbling buffoon had won a working majority and was going to “Get Brexit done”. As I shouted at the radio, I noticed the sketchbook next to it. I love drawing in sketchbooks. I have hundreds of th...

The gifted writer summons the eclectic travels of Albrecht Dürer with captivating passion, poignancy, pure wonder and a personal twist Albrecht Dürer was the first great sightseer in the history of art, travelling Europe to see conjoined twins, Aztec gold, Venetian gondolas and the bones of an 18ft giant. He crossed the Alps more than once and voyaged for six days in the freezing winter of 1520 to see a whale on a beach in Zeeland. The ship was nearly wrecked, but somehow Dürer saved the day and they eventually reached the shore. The sands were empty. The great creature had sailed away. This magnificent new book by Philip Hoare takes its title from that tale, but only as a point of departure. The narrative soon turns into a trip of another kind entirely, a captivating journey through art and life, nature and human nature, biography and personal memoir. Giants walk the earth: Dürer and Martin Luther, Shakespeare and Blake, Thomas Mann, Marianne Moore, WH Auden, David Bowie. Hoare summ...

James Nesbitt looks understandably hard-pressed in a twisting new crime drama; Unforgotten pushes all the right buttons; and Grayson Perry returns Bloodlands (BBC One) | iPlayer Unforgotten (ITV) | ITV Hub Blitz Spirit with Lucy Worsley (BBC One) | iPlayer Grayson’s Art Club (Channel 4) | All 4 Is it possible for anyone outside the confines of Northern Ireland, outside all those gaunt, dripping branches and rolling green hummocks, to cram so many vowel sounds into a single-syllable word, eg the word “now”? As in “Leave, now! Naouiheaiuughea , I tell ye!” We were reintroduced to that grand Belfast accent courtesy of BBC One’s nicely wriggly four-parter Bloodlands , and I feel I can still hear the chill tattoo of hard rain on tin roofs. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2MwhgiG

Andrew Edwards urges government in open letter to reopen talks to renegotiate an EU-wide visa system for arts workers A British opera and theatre designer has told of an “intimidating” post Brexit experience in Schiphol airport in Amsterdam which nearly cost him his first paid job since the pandemic started a year ago. Andrew Edwards says the “roadblock” he experienced is a foretaste of the “humiliation” to come once Europe reopens its borders with musicians, crews, and crafts people working in the arts now required to have paperwork to ply their trade in each country. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3q3rgxs

Campaigners will ‘shame’ mansion’s offshore owners into fully restoring national treasure or selling it on A vast architectural gem, often nicknamed “the Welsh Versailles”, is crumbling into ruin, despite its Grade-I heritage status and several unique claims to fame, much to the distress of the building’s many fans. Now the sad state of Kinmel Hall, a mansion near Rhyl in Conwy and the largest surviving country house in Wales, has prompted the launch of a campaign to shame its owners, a property company based in the British Virgin Islands, into either explaining their intentions, fully restoring it or selling it on. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3uHr8Y0

A hot air balloon crash sees the unlikely pair investigating a group of 80s stars. Plus: Attenborough’s Life in Colour begins. Here’s what to watch this evening Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3r5QT27

The creative recipes in Shannon Mustipher’s tiki-themed cocktail book provide a much-needed serotonin boost in this extremely indoor winter. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/3bLxg8Z

For decades, the Soviet regime suppressed public discussion of the bloody Novocherkassk protests, which are now dramatized in Russia’s Oscars entry. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/302ylnn

The Hungarian artist, undercover as an oligarch, infiltrated Manhattan’s ultra-luxury high-rises with her fake husband, Zoltan, for a book of intentionally unartful photos. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2NBBWXh

(Goliath/AWAL) The grief remains, but Cave’s hunger for retribution is back too, heightened at every turn by Ellis’s strings, on this wild, writerly masterpiece It’s been some time since a swaggering Nick Cave has threatened his listeners with violence. Cave’s last record, 2019’s Ghosteen , mourned the sudden loss of his teenage son Arthur with a gut-howl of grief and a parade of horses, boats, suns, young children and Buddhist folk tales, all wrapped up in violinist Warren Ellis’s keening sounds. But midway through this surprise 18th studio album – recorded last year without the majority of the Bad Seeds, but with Ellis as general vibes-bringer – Cave’s protagonist wants to “shoot you in the fuckin’ face”, repeatedly, “just for fun”. These are threats backed up by the skulk of White Elephant’s electronic bassline, the clank of its percussion and Ellis’s ever-tightening garotte of strings. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2ZTFO8f

The singer, 36, on not going raving, her inspirational mum – and being licked by David Chappelle Like most Jewish homes, ours was loud and emotional. And that was just when we were deciding what to eat. My parents separated when I was nine and my siblings, Mum and I became a team. We were protective of her. Life was brilliantly chaotic and she made sure we always experienced new things. It’s Mum’s fault I’m not a solicitor. A few weeks before I was due to start law school, my friend Jack Peñate asked if I’d do backing vocals on his tour. He couldn’t pay me, but it was six weeks in America. Mum was clear: live your life, defer your place, go otherwise you’ll regret it. I went, and signed my first record deal soon after. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2NCLDEU

The poet explains how researching her history led her to tell the story from three perspectives: the birth mother, the adoptive mother and the daughter In one way, I’d been writing the poems in The Adoption Papers for my whole life. I’d been making up an imaginary birth mother and father with my adoptive mother for years, since I was a kid. She would say of my birth father: “I’m picturing a Paul Robeson figure, Jackie, perhaps with a bit of Nelson Mandela mixed in.” In another, I started writing the book when I was pregnant. It’s difficult when your writing infiltrates your life and vice versa, difficult to work out what actually happened and what didn’t. Your imaginative life is your reality. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3qZWhUB

The Philadelphia Orchestra and Yannick Nézet-Séguin shine in the composer’s first symphony. Plus, ear-bending variations from Clare Hammond • The 1897 premiere of Rachmaninov’s Symphony No 1 is always described as “a fiasco”. Whatever the reason – one explanation is that the conductor was drunk – Rachmaninov hid it away. He quoted it at the end of his life in the Symphonic Dances (1940), dedicated to the Philadelphia Orchestra, who gave the first performance. The orchestra’s new album, Rachmaninov: Symphony No 1 and Symphonic Dances (Deutsche Grammophon), from live concerts in 2018 and 2019, pairs the two works. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3ktkRKY

The blissed-out symbol of acid house has been given a new meaning in 2021. Should ravers be up in arms? It was an emoji before emojis were born – an early viral image of the media age. The smiley can probably be traced back to 1960s US kids’ TV show The Funny Company but its paradoxical quality of simplistic ambiguity has made it endlessly adaptable. It’s been co-opted by Mad magazine , Nirvana, Talking Heads and the Watchmen comic series, but its most enduring usage surely began in the late 1980s when flyers for house pioneer Danny Rampling’s Shoom night in London featured the image. Before long, the smiley was on magazine covers and Top of the Pops; the beaming yellow face of a blissed-out era and a symbol of scandal, too – the implacable trickster facade of the latest tabloid moral panic. Related: The Guide: Staying In – sign up for our home entertainment tips Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2NB7bBN

Hit songs can be a better investment than gold – and by snapping up the rights, Merck Mercuriadis has become the most disruptive force in music Merck Mercuriadis had a good Christmas. On Christmas Day, the No 1 song in the UK was LadBaby’s Don’t Stop Me Eatin’ , a novelty cover version of Journey’s 1981 soft-rock anthem Don’t Stop Believin’ . It replaced Mariah Carey’s All I Want For Christmas Is You, which had topped the chart 26 years after its original release. Both songs are unkillable, evergreen hits, which are closing in on 1 billion Spotify streams apiece. Both songs are among the 61,000 owned, in whole or in part, by Mercuriadis’s investment company, Hipgnosis Songs Fund , and epitomise the thesis that has made the 57-year-old Canadian, in less than three years, the most disruptive force in the music business. Put simply, Hipgnosis raises money from investors and spends it on acquiring the intellectual property rights to popular songs by people like Mark Ronson , Timbaland , ...

At eighty-three, the actor says, performing is easier than it’s ever been. Every role slips into the story of life. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/3bKeezV

“Back to the Future,” “Footloose,” “Hoosiers,” and other eighties classics reimagined without the white people. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/3bLAQAc

Dogs were dropped off at a police station in Los Angeles, while dog walker shot in the attack is recovering Two French bulldogs belonging to Lady Gaga that were stolen at gunpoint earlier this week have been recovered unharmed, police in Los Angeles have said. A woman brought the dogs to the LAPD’s Olympic community police station on Friday evening, said Jonathan Tippett, commanding officer of the robbery-homicide division. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3aZTDIN

In our social media-saturated society, modern fame has become fragmented resulting in a galaxy of stars vying for our attention Modern Toss on fame Who is the most famous person in the world? According to Google – top of “1,040,000,000” answers – is Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, the wrestler turned movie star whose brand of brawny justice can be seen in Jumanji, Moana and the Fast & Furious franchise. If this doesn’t seem totally impossible, it feels muddled: why is this according to an Australian website called New Idea? Why is the accompanying picture of Michael Jackson? When you pause for a second, it becomes strangely clear. Chaotic, weirdly sourced, plain wrong in parts but somehow still making sense: this is as good a reflection of modern fame as any. Related: The Guide: Staying In – sign up for our home entertainment tips Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3sr2Y26

The end may now be in sight, but there are still frustrating months ahead. From new recipes to letter writing and Lego, writers including Matt Haig and Philippa Perry share their strategies I always think it is interesting that arguably the most hopeful song of the 20th century – “Over the Rainbow” – arrived in arguably its darkest year. The Wizard of Oz , adapted from L Frank Baum’s novel, opened in cinemas on 25 August 1939, the day Hitler sent a telegram to Mussolini to tell him he was about to invade Poland. Within a week, the second world war was under way in Europe. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2MsT68G

As I grew up, the majority of black women I saw on TV were fair skinned. Those who looked like me were never cast as the lead I’ve been building a profile as a writer and broadcaster long enough to know that there will be public storms. Some creep up on you, others you sense brewing, and some have been lingering in the background for a lifetime. A couple of weeks ago, I posted on social media about having “lost out” on hosting a documentary to a lighter-skinned black woman. The subject of the documentary was maternal mortality in the UK, and the harrowing fact that black women are five times more likely to die in childbirth than white women. This is something I have campaigned on for several years, wrote about in my book I Am Not Your Baby Mother and experienced first-hand when I almost died a few days after the birth of my first child in 2013. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3dOjllm

Comedian’s work ethic on celebrity shout-out app takes him to 10,000 videos and £300,000 - leaving global A-listers in his wake Sarah Jessica Parker will wish you a happy birthday. Jack Nicklaus will tell you golf stories. John Cleese will read out your poem. Of the thousands of stars who signed up for the celebrity shout-out app Cameo last year, though, only one was popular and industrious enough to make 10,000 videos. For a very reasonable fee, the man behind them will enthusiastically call you a “briefcase wanker”. The most prolific performer in the world on Cameo in 2020 was James Buckley, the catchphrase-happy British actor and comedian beloved by a generation for his performance as Jay Cartwright in the Inbetweeners , new figures shared with the Guardian reveal. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3r0EZ9M

This year’s virtual edition of an often overlooked festival is streaming an exceptional lineup of acclaimed movies yet to be seen in the UK While cinemas and their release calendars continue to hover uncertainly in the pandemic confusion, film festivals are adapting impressively to the home-viewing model. On the heels of Sundance’s successful virtual edition, the Berlinale begins its own next week. Closer to home, meanwhile, the hitherto low-key Glasgow film festival has, in going online, seized the opportunity to become a national cinema event. Usually outdone in publicity terms by the London and Edinburgh film festivals, Glasgow’s programmers have this year assembled a lineup that, at a time when nobody knows exactly what new films are coming out when, feels like a genuine treasure chest. In many cases, it offers British audiences their first glimpse of critically beloved films that may not be available on general release for several months yet. Continue reading... from Cultur...

12 years after the tragic death of two-year-old Tommi, his family believe they have spotted his killer in this new drama. Plus: the story of Zara and Anne. Here’s what to watch this evening Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/37UF870

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Jonathan Sutak’s documentary tells the amazing story of the lip-synching eighties star Den Harrow and the war between the two men who made up the act. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2PbE1t7

The Eurovision homage UK Hun has entered the charts ahead of Rita Ora and Pink, and leads a new wave of drag queens sashaying away from novelty pop If you’ve spent the past fortnight with the words “Bing-bang-bong sing-sang-song ding-dang-dong” reverberating around your brain, Freddy Scott would like to apologise. “To those who say they can’t sleep because they have UK Hun? stuck in your head,” the songwriter says, “I’m sorry–ish.” Scott and his co-writer Leland are the creators of the viral hit from the British edition of RuPaul’s Drag Race . Written as a homage to Eurovision and performed by the show’s drag queen contestants, UK Hun? by United Kingdolls, with its earworm chorus, entered the UK Top 40 at No 27 last week, ahead of established pop acts such as Rita Ora and Pink. It beat the reality TV show’s previous highest chart entry, Break Up Bye Bye , which peaked at No 35 in 2019. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/37Lgc1V

Will Nomadland or Promising Young Woman scoop best drama? And will Viola Davis best Vanessa Kirby to best actress? Peter Bradshaw offers his predictions and preferences The first awards season of the coronaviral era arrives in an anticlimactic world of presentations via Zoom, as if we’ve shuffled behind the curtain to see baubles handed out by the wizened wizard of Oz, minus the specialness. The prognosis for the Globes or the Oscars as live events is still uncertain. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3bEyiDX

Mark Rothko’s chapel turns 50, the British Museum examines the male and female lives of the Chevalier d’Éon and Britain’s favourite odd-couple artists capture the new normal – all in your weekly dispatch Gilbert and George: The New Normal Pictures Psychedelic hallucinations of the London streets in lockdown that capture the sheer strangeness of our time. • White Cube online from 2 March (and later at White Cube Mason’s Yard) Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/37R633D

Skrillex, Erol Alkan and those close to the French duo chart how they went from being industry outsiders to defining the trajectory of dance music Following their split this week after 28 years , Daft Punk have ascended to pop Valhalla. Perhaps they’re sitting next to Prince, whose pirouetting falsetto funk and emotional vulnerability inspired the duo’s 2001 masterpiece Discovery, and Led Zeppelin, from whom they cribbed double-necked guitars and 10-tonne drums on 2005’s Human After All. Yet those albums were met with a mixed reception – audiences and critics alike had to learn to trust Daft Punk’s vision of the future. For British producer-DJ Erol Alkan, whose fan forums were an essential incubator of the blog house movement that swept through club culture in the 2000s, the Parisians had a “deeply profound impact” on a generation, including Alkan. “They were a gateway into so much music that I love, and a big part of that admiration comes down to their position as outsiders,” he say...

Organisers say vaccine rollout and lockdown easing mean celebrations will take place in some form Coronavirus – latest updates See all our coronavirus coverage Pride festivals in Manchester and London will go ahead this year, organisers have confirmed, with Manchester Pride being an in-person event as long as the UK government’s roadmap out of lockdown for England remains on track. The two sets of organisers said the government’s plans to continue to roll out the Covid-19 vaccine and reopen hospitality venues offered certainty that the events could go ahead in some form. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3kr72g0

London and Dublin have been at odds for a century over last will of art collector Sir Hugh Lane A new chapter has been agreed between Britain and Ireland in an acrimonious century-old dispute over the ownership of 39 priceless masterpieces by artists including Manet, Monet, Degas and Renoir. In 1915 the Irish art collector Sir Hugh Lane was among nearly 1,200 people who died when the Lusitania, an ocean liner, was torpedoed by a German U-boat off the southern coast of Ireland. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3uBy0q4

Bryan Cranston plays a judge in an impossible position, while Channel 4’s German-language drama reaches the fall of the Berlin wall Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3aSqYW2

The actor, who has died aged 80 , had a thriving screen career but was also a terrific stage star and an essential member of Laurence Olivier’s National Theatre company Ronald Pickup, who has died aged 80, had the capacity to bring a gaunt gravitas to high-ranking establishment figures. It is no accident that he was cast as the archbishop of Canterbury in The Crown and Neville Chamberlain in Darkest Hour. Although Pickup had a thriving career in film and television, to people of my age he will always be remembered as part of the National Theatre company that Laurence Olivier assembled in its early days at the Old Vic. When you think that Pickup was one of a number of rising stars including Derek Jacobi, Michael Gambon and Anthony Hopkins, you realise it was a golden generation. Pickup caught the eye at the Royal Court in 1965 when he played the title role in Shelley: the first of a number of a real-life figures he was to play, including Verdi, Stravinsky and Einstein. Rejoining Olivi...

Archaeologist Gabriel Zuchtriegel takes controversy in his stride as he develops programme for site Gabriel Zuchtriegel is used to ruffling a few feathers. In 2015, the German archaeologist was hired to manage Paestum, a vast park of ancient Greek ruins in the southern Italian region of Campania. He was among the first crop of foreigners picked to direct an Italian museum or cultural site as part of what was a contentious drive to revamp the management of the country’s heritage. Not only was he foreign but he was the youngest person in charge of a major site. Six years on, Zuchtriegel, now 39, provoked a fresh quarrel last week after being appointed director of one of the world’s most treasured archaeological sites: Pompeii. Within hours, two of the park’s board members resigned, with one of them telling the press that Zuchtriegel – who was credited by the culture minister, Dario Franceschini, for having done an “incredible job” at Paestum – didn’t have enough experience to take the ...

Florian Zeller’s adaptation of his play about old age shows Hopkins at the frightening summit of his powers. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/3uzYyYQ

From Planet Earth to Springwatch and beyond, programmes about animals in the natural world can soothe the nervous system and raise the spirits Few of us would anticipate feeling an emotional connection with a swarm of ants. But in episode three of A Perfect Planet , when a colony of fire ants build a raft using their bodies to survive flooding in the Amazon, only the concrete-hearted would fail to be moved by their resilience. As the raft sailed across the water, I sobbed. Emotion is often close to the surface when watching wildlife programmes; something I do a lot. It goes hand-in-hand with my need to smell forest mulch, stare at lichen and stalk woodpeckers most days to feel alive. From being a child whose personality was rooted in The Really Wild Show and a magnifying glass, to a grown woman who will watch anything from Winterwatch to Netflix’s 72 Dangerous Animals to get a fix, these shows have always been a sanctuary: a source of wonderment and comfort. But this passion is far f...

The first digital-native superstar has far more music industry power than her pop predecessors, but she still faces toxic levels of scrutiny In a typical scene from Billie Eilish : The World’s a Little Blurry, the documentary’s pop star subject is in the back yard, surrounded by her family. She is busy filming preliminary scene sketches to show her video team what she wants from her next music video. Eilish’s mum plays the role of Billie, sitting at a precisely angled table and pretending to drink from a glass. “Don’t zoom,” Eilish orders the video team from behind the lens. “Don’t do anything like these bozo fucking film-makers do.” On the actual video shoot, for her song When the Party’s Over, Eilish is the locus of control, making the director seem like her meek deputy. When she leaves the set, she tells her mother and manager that she’s directing the rest of her videos herself. Related: The betrayal of Britney Spears: how pop culture failed a superstar Continue reading... fro...

L Ron Hubbard spent hours with us each day. I was scared the first time I met him, because I thought he could read minds In 1968, I was 23 and looking for answers. I was living in Texas, working in textiles, smoking a lot of marijuana, and exploring things such as Zen Buddhism. I was stoned when my neighbour spoke to me about Scientology and it sounded interesting; space cadets and all that. I started taking some courses. I was looking at it from more of a philosophical view but as you get into it, you become hooked. I was married, but my wife was smarter than me and didn’t care for Scientology. We moved to San Francisco, and I regret this, but I soon left her, thinking I was going to save the world. I joined the Sea Org in Los Angeles – an organisation within the church comprised of its most dedicated members. Following investigations by government agencies in the US , L Ron Hubbard bought a fleet of ships and moved operations offshore. The Sea Org was asked to crew them, so I went ...

Duke of Sussex says he is happier with series than news stories about Meghan or his family The Duke of Sussex has defended the Netflix series The Crown , and revealed the Queen sent one-year-old Archie a waffle-maker for Christmas, in an interview with James Corden for The Late Late Show. Appearing on the US TV show, Prince Harry also spoke about his life in Los Angeles, California, and his and Meghan’s hopes to change the world “in some small way” as he criticised the “toxic” British press. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3uzzpxd

Can’t get to a gig? No problem. Here’s a collection of classics that evoke the sweaty euphoria of the real thing Stepping into a venue full of sweaty strangers is still a frustratingly distant prospect, so as live music IRL continues to be benched, our only option is to dig into the giddy world of concert albums. Where better to start than with Daft Punk’s relentlessly pumping Parisian electronica party, complete with unbridled whoops of glee and synth singalongs from a rightly jazzed home-town crowd. It’s now tinged with an added wistfulness following this week’s announcement that the pair have split up after 28 years. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3bFGjse

The actor talks about the struggle for pay parity, sympathising with Britney Spears, fond memories of Chadwick Boseman – and her frustration at tabloid headlines overshadowing her work No excuses for lateness in the era of Zoom, perhaps, but cut Sienna Miller some slack. The 39-year-old has just appeared on This Morning , where she struggled valiantly to pitch her new film Wander Darkly, in which she plays a woman who may or may not have survived a car crash. (“It’s really hard to describe!”) Then she dashed to the bathroom to scrape off all that TV-friendly makeup. Now here she is in her bedroom, with her fresh, non-shiny face framed by bright blond locks. “Like a normal person again,” she says cheerfully. Yeah, right. Take her current lockdown viewing habits. In between homeschooling Marlowe, her eight-year-old daughter with her former partner Tom Sturridge, and shooting a six-part Netflix thriller, Anatomy of a Scandal , she has been watching the documentary Framing Britney Spears...

When the shock-rocker returned to the place of his birth in the 60s, he found a raw paradise of unsegregated rock’n’roll. As Cooper releases an album celebrating the city, he and his peers relive one of the US’s greatest music scenes In the beginning there was the production line; the hammering and the pumping and the noise. Always the noise. “Detroit was an industrial city,” says Alice Cooper. “It was like Newcastle. Everybody worked for Ford or Chevrolet or GMC. Everybody’s parents worked on the assembly line. The kids were street kids. I think the Detroit sound has something to do with working with big machines; it made people feel at home hearing big, loud, rock music.” Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2O20eJE

The latest in our series of writers defending maligned films is a reappraisal of Ron Howard’s starry relationship comedy When The Dilemma opened in January 2011 it was met with critical contempt and box office apathy. Audiences then and now are befuddled by it and every scathing review asks the same question: “What kind of movie is this supposed to be?” It’s too serious for a comedy but too silly for a drama. It’s too bro-tastic for a satire but too incisive for a mindless frat pack foray. It has very insightful jokes and very crass jokes. By all accounts, it’s a mess. But I argue, that while the film is messy, it’s not a mess. Related: Hear me out: why S1m0ne isn't a bad movie Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3pX0PK2

With public art collections closed, we are bringing the art to you, exploring gems from across the country in partnership with Art UK. Today’s pick: Joshua Reynolds’s Kitty Fisher as Cleopatra in Kenwood House, London Catherine Maria “Kitty” Fisher was the most celebrated courtesan in England in the 1760s and was one of the first celebrities to be famous simply for being famous. Her career as a high-class prostitute allegedly began after she was seduced then deserted by a young army officer. Using her wit, charm and beauty, she rose to fame through high-profile liaisons with wealthy and powerful men. London society was both scandalised and fascinated by her behaviour, and she cultivated her celebrity status by collaborating with writers and artists to promote her public image. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3kp5UJT

Boy George and Yinka Ilori join Grayson and Philippa in the first of a new series of last year’s lockdown hit. Plus: Gogglebox. Here’s what to watch this evening One of the TV hits of the first lockdown saw the Turner prize winner Grayson Perry and his wife, the psychotherapist Philippa, enlist celebrity pals to encourage the public to get crafting while they were at home, ultimately putting together an exhibition – yet to open in Manchester – of the series’ finest works. In the first of a new series, the pair are joined by the singer Boy George, who creates a work inspired by his family, while the artist Yinka Ilori discusses how his situational work investigates his British and Nigerian heritage. Ammar Kalia Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3pWTVo6

Welcome to Your Fantasy unearths the intrigue and murder lurking within the world of the male dance troupe. Plus: 80s love stories, and Reply All exits The Test Kitchen Welcome to Your Fantasy Oily beefcake-merchants the Chippendales don’t seem like the most likely candidates for a true crime podcast, but this is one hell of a romp. Historian and fitness instructor Natalia Petrzela set out to investigate the phenomenon of women stuffing dollar bills down the dancers’ restrictive pants, but discovered a web of intrigue and murder. Star of the show is super smart Candice, who swapped investment banking to look after tanning and chaperoning, and the way Petrzela delivers the scandal amid the screams of thousands of women is perfect. Hannah Verdier Against the Odds What happens when you’re pushed to your limits to survive? Wondery’s new podcast brings out stories of pain, starvation and sheer determination. It’s a gripping listen, presented by fearless duo Mike Corey and Cassie de Pec...

from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2ZSP3FO

How a Harvard professor’s dubious scholarship reignited a history of mistrust between South Korea and Japan. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2PdbLGJ

Can Grammer successfully reprise his role in the classic comedy as fastidious radio psychiatrist Dr Frasier Crane? Kelsey Grammer to return as Frasier in reboot of hit comedy Already standing high in the tiny line of spinoff shows that at least equal the longevity and legend of the parent, Frasier (NBC, 1993-2004) – born out of Cheers (NBC, 1982-93) – will aim for a place on an even emptier plinth: classic series successfully revived after a long gap. Arrested Development in the US, and Birds of a Feather and Open All Hours in the UK, have managed such a comeback, but those shows did not have the status of Frasier. To dust off the fastidious Seattle-based radio psychiatrist played by Kelsey Grammer entails something like the degree of risk in going back to Fawlty Towers, which its creator, John Cleese, has perhaps wisely always refused to do. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3pTd0aO

As she releases her third album, the US indie rocker reminisces about waffles, hardcore Christian punk and her terrible skateboarding Where I grew up in the Memphis suburbs was not the epitome of cool, so I didn’t know what else to be except a goth kid. When I was 13, I wore lots of safety pins in my clothing. Now, the way I form friendships and meet people is so different, but then I would just get home from school and walk around the neighbourhood, finding other kids outside. We’d hide behind the storm drain and smoke cigarettes, hide from our parents and set stuff on fire. It was Tennessee! There wasn’t a lot to do. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3kn9G6m

Drama called This Sceptred Isle on first Covid wave will air next year on Sky Atlantic and Now TV The shock of blond hair is tamer than we have seen of late, but this is unmistakable Boris Johnson, as portrayed by Sir Kenneth Branagh. Branagh’s transformation into a hunched and haunted-looking Johnson for an upcoming drama series about the coronavirus pandemic has been revealed for the first time by Sky. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2NXkVqi

The filmmaker discusses what he owes to the Black Panther Party, and to the Black directors who came before him. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/3pVGhl3

It was meant to provide theatres with a lifeline during Covid. But livestreaming is now giving them extraordinary reach. Can it be sustained – and could it turn out to be a new existential threat? As Christmas season dawned at the end of last year, two American critics had a crash course in that most British of theatre traditions, pantomime, dropping in remotely to eight shows for the New York Times. “I felt like an ethnographer studying a foreign culture’s strange ceremonies,” wrote one , while the other enjoyed the peppering of Covid-related jokes, including the insertion of “fiiiiiive toilet rolls” into The 12 Days of Christmas. The song featured in Oh Yes We Are! , Perth theatre’s four-scene mini-panto intended for small groups in a promenade performance, after the first lockdown made its Cinderella, on a conventional stage, impossible. But just as rehearsals were due to begin, new restrictions forced it online. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3q...

She blazed a trail as gangsters’ molls and slinky lounge acts, then returned from a career break to essay a variety of wicked witches, comic turns and grand dames. Next month she’ll be seen as a penniless heiress in acclaimed comedy French Exit. But which are her best roles? Kenneth Branagh’s all-star revival of the classic Agatha Christie murder mystery gives us a traditional exotic cross-section of high society (with picturesque servants and bits of rough) on board the snowed-in Orient Express, on which someone has been whacked. The film has Pfeiffer in one of her late-career grande dame roles: the manhunting American widow Mrs Hubbard, which she plays a little softer than Lauren Bacall, who had had the role in the 1974 version. Pfeiffer sang the melancholy Never Forget over the end credits, with lyrics by Branagh. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2MngJiX

The film is a laudable portrayal of Hampton, the activist killed by police in 1969. But it downplays his Marxist politics The war to own the legacy of Fred Hampton, the charismatic Black Panther leader killed in his sleep at age 21 by Chicago law enforcement agents and the FBI, has begun. Senator Cory Booker, the gentrification-loving neoliberal former mayor of Newark, New Jersey, has already staked his own claim. In an embarrassing 5 February tweet that he still somehow hasn’t deleted, he partly quoted Hampton: “We’ve got to face the fact that some people say you fight fire best with fire, but we say you put fire out best with water. We say you don’t fight racism with racism. We’re gonna fight racism with solidarity.” Fred Hampton #BlackHistoryMonth Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3ss4iC0

After the Bauer Media music title’s pandemic-triggered demise last July, Q’s former staff are launching a weekly direct-to-inbox publication The former editors of Q magazine, the British music monthly that folded in July 2020 owing to the pressures of publishing during the pandemic, have joined the growing newsletter revolution. The New Cue , a weekly publication edited by erstwhile Q editor Ted Kessler and staff members Chris Catchpole and Niall Doherty, launches on 26 February with new interviews from artists including St Vincent, Arlo Parks and Tony Visconti, along with playlists and recommendations. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2Pc3p27

The show seemed like a modern riff on a beloved poet. After two seasons, it looks more like a radical reading of the poems themselves. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/37LKpOk

Were Americans too unruly, or did elected officials expect too little of them? from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/3qTMEq9

For professional wordsmiths and those simply hoping to make their daily correspondence more polished. Also, if you’re the former, I’d love to pick your brain about career stuff. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/3srTeow

I was unmoved by the Provençal thriller when I first saw it, but it landed on All4 at a time when absurd escapism is needed It took me a while to warm to Walter Presents/All 4’s French drama Torn . I first saw it in a cinema a couple of years ago, when I was on the jury for the French television festival Series Mania. Back then, its charms were not immediately apparent. It was – is – about a woman cheating on her husband with a chef in Provence; it felt as if the story was secondary to all the nice things on display. The cast members were all attractive and the characters lived in houses so beautiful that it made me angry. “That wasn’t a drama,” sniffed one of the other jurors as we filed out of the screening. “That was a tourism advert.” Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3q1jftf

Actor is ‘gleefully anticipating’ the return of the comedy, which is being rebooted after 17 years The hit 90s TV comedy Frasier, starring Kelsey Grammer as a snobbish radio advice-show host, is to return to television nearly two decades after it last aired. Grammer said he would reprise his role in a revival of the series, which ran for 263 episodes between 1993 and 2004. Frasier, a spin-off of the TV series Cheers, was one of the most successful shows of the 90s and 00s, winning five consecutive Emmy awards for outstanding comedy series and running for 11 seasons. The series followed Grammer’s character, who returns to Seattle to care for his elderly father, with his pretentious psychiatrist brother, Niles Crane. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2ZQLPTb

Available online This superb play draws on the final hours of Christopher Alder, who died in police custody in Hull in 1998 Christopher Alder’s last moments, in April 1998, were unforgivably brutal. Injured in a fight at a nightclub, he took his final breath in police custody. It was an abject death: an unlawful killing that, for his campaigners, represented another instance of a black British man dying in a senseless way. Yet what is marked about Ryan Calais Cameron’s astounding play, written in rap-like rhyming verse and tracing the minutiae of its unnamed character’s final day, is that it bursts with life, zest, humour and hedonism even as it hurtles towards tragedy. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/37LQbPS

Dispute continues following February lawsuit against singer, whose most recent album shares its name with Utah attraction Taylor Swift ’s legal dispute with a Utah theme park that shares a name with her album Evermore has escalated, with the singer’s rights management company countersuing the park for unauthorised use of Swift’s music. In February , representatives for Evermore filed a lawsuit against Swift, arguing that her December 2020 album Evermore infringed their copyright. They said the name had confused visitors and harmed the park’s visibility in search engines. Swift’s representatives called the suit “baseless … frivolous and irresponsible”. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2ZN3wmy

With public art collections closed we are bringing the art to you, exploring highlights from across the country in partnership with Art UK. Today’s pick: Aldeburgh’s Double Concerto For more than 35 years the composer Benjamin Britten and singer Peter Pears lived together as life partners, their work together as musicians underpinned by a deep and fixed relationship that the two men described as a marriage. Although it was an open secret, for much of their lives that relationship was illegal and a plausible deniability had to be maintained at all times. For nearly 20 years the two men made their home together in The Red House in Aldeburgh , and in the hall is a painting that tells a vivid story about their lives as gay men at this time. Double Concerto was commissioned by the two in 1967, very shortly after the Sexual Offences Act made their relationship legal at last. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3sraZnL

A gleeful sense of humour powers Michael Hoffman’s 1985 crime caper, part of Scotland’s cinematic response to Thatcherism “Guns are for LASSIES! Nobody seems to put the BOOT in any more!” This rousing manifesto for muscular non-armed crime of the traditional sort comes from one of the hardened villains that surreally pop up in this intensely likable Scottish caper from 1985, with a soundtrack from Big Country. It was part of a boom in Britmovie comedy of the era when Scotland was becoming caustically alienated from Thatcherite England, and which gave us Bill Forsyth’s Gregory’s Girl , Comfort and Joy and Local Hero . The script from Ninian Dunnett was originally the winning entry of a screenwriting competition (Dunnett in fact wrote no more for the screen after this, and became an author and social historian) and it was directed by the anglophile and caledonophile American Michael Hoffman. Related: The 50 best films of 2020 in the UK: the full list Continue reading... from Cultu...

Organisers say young people are desperate for freedom – but admit they haven’t yet been able to get insurance Young people are “desperate to be released” from the tyranny of parents and Zoom, said the organisers of Reading and Leeds festival as they confirmed the event would go ahead this year. Festival Republic, organisers of the two-city weekender, one of the UK’s biggest outdoor events, said the event would go ahead following the government’s roadmap to reopening the country from Covid lockdown, tweeting : “Following the government’s recent announcement, we can’t wait to get back to the fields this summer. LET’S GO.” Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3pQXw6Y

The Lyrics, a ‘self-portrait in 154 songs’, will look at the people, places and circumstances behind songs written in boyhood, with the Beatles and beyond It will be “as close to an autobiography” as Paul McCartney “may ever come”: the former Beatle is set to publish The Lyrics, a deep dive into his life, based on conversations he had with the prize-winning poet Paul Muldoon . The Lyrics, a two-volume, 900-plus page “self-portrait in 154 songs”, will be released on 2 November. It will be “a kaleidoscopic rather than chronological account” of McCartney’s life, said publisher Allen Lane, and will cover the musician’s earliest boyhood compositions – he wrote his first song at 14 – through the Beatles catalogue to Wings, solo albums and his present life. The book will cover “the circumstances in which they were written, the people and places that inspired them, and what [McCartney] thinks of them now”. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2ZOKHPX

Artists who have been permanently resident in the UK for five years will qualify for British categories The Brit awards and the Mercury prize, the two biggest awards ceremonies in British music, have changed their eligibility criteria to allow non-British citizens who live in the UK to be nominated. To be eligible for British artist categories at the Brit awards artists must meet a minimum of one of the following criteria: Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3bDMRaz

Rev Richard Coles and other celebs are paired up with professional comics to test their comedy skills. Plus: the last of Back. Here’s what to watch this evening As part of this year’s Stand Up to Cancer campaign, five celebrities are pairing up with five comics to try their hand at writing and delivering a standup set in just two weeks. A task likely to strike fear into the hearts of most, this opening episode sees the celebs, including Rev Richard Coles, Shaun Ryder and Lady Sayeeda Warsi, all thrown in at the deep end to test their natural comedy skills. Mentors Jason Manford, David Baddiel and Zoe Lyons soon realise they have a mammoth task on their hands. Ammar Kalia Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2NthDex

Play has been the invisible casualty of the pandemic. Is it time to let children reclaim the streets? Our writer looks forward to a post-Covid world of parklets, play streets and repurposed parking spaces On the other side of a child-sized archway lies a street that has had supersized sprinkles of confetti painted across its tarmac. This leads to a surreal scene strewn with boulders, undulating benches and piles of logs. A tap emerges from one boulder, a hammock swings near a picnic table in the middle of the road, while a circle of planted willows forms a living den on the verge. When the pandemic struck last year and playgrounds were quickly sealed off with tape and metal barriers, this playful space in Hackney, London, remained open – because it’s not actually a children’s playground, but a public street. “We were trying to show that play is an essential part of civic infrastructure, just as important as pavements,” says architect Liza Fior, whose practice, Muf , conjured this per...

BlackRock’s C.E.O. says divestment from fossil-fuel stocks would be “greenwashing.” from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2P5m0wB

Pippa Evans, star of improvised musical Showstopper!, has written a self-help book based on her stage experiences. ‘Yes … and?’ asks our comedy critic Did you ever think: I wish my life was more like Whose Line Is It Anyway ? It’s not, I suspect, the first thought that strikes those in need of (self-)help. But they’re missing a trick. I practised improvisation professionally for three years , and spent much of that time telling anyone who’d listen that it makes you a better person. They didn’t seem to believe me, perhaps because hectoring my friends repeatedly about self-betterment didn’t make me seem like a very good person at all. But now along comes Pippa Evans , making a similar point with infinitely more grace and authority in Improv Your Life, the new book of a course that the Showstopper! and Radio 4 star has been teaching for seven years. This “improviser’s guide to embracing whatever life throws at you”, written under lockdown, illustrates how the building blocks of improv ...

At 83, the saxophonist has somewhat mellowed his funkily avant-garde music – but his anger at the racial injustice he has fought all his life remains undimmed One night at Five Spot Cafe in the early 1960s, two gangsters were sitting at the bar when Cecil Taylor ’s group started to play. Taylor, a pianist, poet and leading figure in the new vanguard of jazz musicians , was known for his intense sets that could – on the wrong night – clear bars completely. This particular evening on the Lower East Side, he had a small but committed crowd in, plus the two hoods, who began to talk loudly as the band struck up. Archie Shepp, who was sought out by Taylor to play saxophone alongside him, remembers a young fan confronting them. “He was accosted by one of these thugs who knocked him down,” says Shepp. “The club was just about empty, but it was quite something because this guy stood up for the music and insisted that they be quiet.” Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://i...

“How hard would it be for Hillary Clinton to put on some horns and fur pelts?” the Republican senator asked. “That is vintage Hillary.” from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/37KhgTz

A veteran war correspondent, Mogelson won the National Reporting prize for his coverage of unrest in America in 2020. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/3dIUGyI

From the dark visions in Lord of the Flies or The Beach to the gentle wit of Tove Jansson, author Lucy Clarke picks her favourites tales of survival and isolation After a long winter and lockdowns, the idea of being a castaway may seem romantic: a desert island panting beneath a high sun, nothing but endless ocean in sight. Yet peer a little closer and a harsher reality comes into view – one of extreme isolation and the brutality of survival. When I was writing The Castaways , a thriller in which a plane crash leaves a group of strangers stranded on an island in the South Pacific, I was interested in exploring who we become when no one is watching. When the thin veneer of civilisation peels back, how do we behave? What matters the most? Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2P2HQAN

Scène de rue à Montmartre has been part of same French family’s private collection for more than a century A major Paris work by Vincent van Gogh that has been part of the same French family’s private collection for more than a century is to go on public display for the first time since it was painted in the spring of 1887. Scène de rue à Montmartre is part of a very rare series depicting the celebrated Moulin de la Galette, on the hilltop overlooking the capital, painted during the two years the Dutch artist spent sharing an apartment with his brother Theo on rue Lepic. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3aRmSgZ

Already a law professor turned soul composer, Younge explains his latest project, encompassing an album, podcast and short film “I’m sacrificing myself to deliver a message,” says the composer, multi-instrumentalist and now podcast-maker Adrian Younge . “We aren’t aware enough of black history, nor of the integral role black people have played in building America. There is an educational sterilisation going on and it’s my duty to make people understand that history of racism – something America has pioneered.” With more than 400 years to cover since US slavery began, Younge’s project to educate the public is a vast and complex one. Yet, speaking on a video call surrounded by analogue recording equipment in his LA studio, it is a story Younge believes he has spent his life and career building up to. “This is my What’s Going On project, my record talking about why we are in the place that we are in,” he says. “It’s as if James Baldwin hooked up with Marvin Gaye to make a record produc...

Courses offered at no cost?: nine letters. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/3urNbSC

The only place I’ll be​ too​ famous to go will be the gym. And I’ll be sad, at first. But I’ll get over it. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/2NSVW7w

Ched Markovic and his wife, Aila, have been running a little plant shop in Manhattan for over forty years. Their plants are thriving, but is their marriage? Matthew Beck’s film “Planta Noble” explores this sometimes strained relationship. from Culture: TV, Movies, Music, Art, and Theatre News and Reviews https://ift.tt/3pMY9hN

Online cheating has become an infestation – but the idea of bending the rules has been part of gaming culture from the start Fall Guys had only been online for two days when it started. This bright, silly multiplayer game, in which rotund Day-Glo bean people race toward a finishing line avoiding giant tumbling fruit pieces – a sort of digital equivalent of a school sports day, albeit a slightly hallucinogenic one – had tens of thousands of players, but it didn’t seem like it would attract cheaters. Surely it was too frivolous, too much about the shared joy of slapstick comedy? Yet in they came: players using speed hacks (a type of cheat that increases the speed your avatar can run at) to win races against other Day-Glo bean people. A totally meaningless, seemingly reward-free victory. Why? For many, cheating utterly ruins the experience of a multiplayer video game. Even if you are not directly affected, it breaks the social contract. “When people play a competitive game together, the...

Should we expect hordes of allegorical aliens and zombies – or a soothing succession of romcoms and musicals? Cinema history offers some clues The screenwriter William Goldman cautioned against making predictions in the movie business with the line: “Nobody knows anything.” That said, there is one thing we do know: global events leave their mark on cinema – and things don’t get much bigger than a worldwide pandemic. And not always in the ways you’d expect. So, if we’re looking for clues about films that will be released in the years to come, is cinema history any help? The pandemic is the biggest global crisis since the second world war, and, if we look back to the cinema of that era, one trend in particular stands out: the arrival of film noir. Classics of the genre, such as The Postman Always Rings Twice, Double Indemnity and The Killers, were dark, cynical tales about murder plots, manipulative women and morally compromised men. Might post-Covid cinema take an equally dark turn? ...

For a teenager stifled by Welsh choir music, Michael Stipe’s kaleidoscope of artistic influences – and mega-success – were too irresistible not to follow When I first fell in love, I was 14. He was 32. I watched him being carried around on a sea of other people’s hands, holding him gently like a god, then tossing him in the air like a plaything. My REM and Michael Stipe fandom was born an ordinary Saturday morning in a living room in south Wales as the video for Drive played on the ITV Chart Show. Before REM, I was a chart music geek, devouring Now That’s What I Call Music compilations and noting down the Top 5 in my diary. After REM – or more specifically, my love of the multi-platinum-selling Automatic For the People – I burrowed into southern folklore, short stories, experimental film and chiaroscuro art, led by this new guide from Athens, Georgia, with the huge pale blue eyes. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3dDM78c

Under renewed scrutiny over diversity and ethics, the 2021 Golden Globes appears poised to reward the Netflix megahits The Queen’s Gambit and The Crown Ah, the Golden Globes. The much-mocked yet still influential show must go on, despite a pandemic delay, renewed scrutiny on its ethics , and widespread criticism of snubs for black performers (none of the four black-led ensemble films were nominated for best picture, nor was Michaela Coel’s critically beloved I May Destroy You nominated for anything). The Globes are known to be unpredictable and left-field – a strange ritual in which Hollywood kicks off awards season with trophies granted by an insular group of 87 international journalists known as the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA). This year’s TV nominees run the gamut – controversial nods to Netflix’s ambient TV hit Emily in Paris, predictable tips to the final season of Schitt’s Creek, and a host of streaming gems in between. With mega-hit favorites such as The Queen’s ...

The tiny Australian town was surprised but got into the spirit, selling daft pork sausages and random access rissoles while celebrating a dusty agricultural show it will never forget In April 2013 word got out that Daft Punk planned to launch their album Random Access Memories from a regional Australian town barely anyone had heard of. Dubbed the “cotton capital” of Australia, the small town (population 2,000) with the evocative name of Wee Waa in the Narrabri shire of New South Wales was not much known as a dance music hub. The news, which began with murmurs about Sony label reps scoping the area for locations, seemed just bizarre enough to be true. Daft Punk, after all, were never great adherents of the traditional album rollout – and, with the revered French duo announcing their split this week , it’s worth taking ourselves back to their strangest one. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3khpN5y