Cultural News Today

Instagram is like frozen pizza, exhibitions are noisy – but a photobook is an act of analogue rebellion in an obnoxiously digital world Swiss bliss: Teju Cole’s Alpine wanderlust – in pictures Where can one find temporary help in this hectic world? People go on retreats, join religions, cushion themselves in headphones or lose themselves in novels. We counter the rush-hour stampede with a walk in the park, and against the public squall of political debate we set the private consolation of poetry. In an age of mayhem, everyone needs ballast and, for most people, I would guess, that ballast is made of several different things. Near the top of my personal list: photobooks. I take a photobook off the shelf and spend 20 or 30 minutes with it, and this brief immersion provisionally repairs the world. It might be a book I’ve already looked at many times – which is even better. I’m not talking about simply looking at photographs. There are photos everywhere, and most of them are like empt...

The Welsh actor, star of ITV’s Liar, reflects on Hollywood, sexual oppression, and the perils and pleasures of full-time parenting Before Ioan Gruffudd’s first day at drama school, he had been told to wear something comfortable. He recalls walking towards the entrance of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (Rada), where his fellow students were waiting, “looking like Marlon Brando” in white T-shirts, cool jeans and leather jackets. Gruffudd was wearing a shellsuit. A Welsh football association shellsuit. “And I was a very young-looking 18-year-old,” he says. “Very patriotic, very fervently Welsh. I was a virgin as well. All the girls were like: ‘No, we’re not going to be the first, we can’t have this young kid falling in love with us.’” He laughs. “This is who I am.” This was also the unworldly, naive boy who almost joined a fundamentalist church around the same time, but more of that later. The man who sits opposite me in a central London restaurant – despite being a successful, handso...

The dating show proved harder and harder to watch as it progressed, and not only because of the tragedy of 15 February Emotions were high during the Love Island final on Sunday, and the overwhelming one for many viewers was relief. For the past few weeks, fans have eagerly anticipated the show’s end, less out of excitement to see which of the couples would be awarded the grand prize of £50,000 than to mark the finish of what has been something of an ordeal. When the franchise’s winter edition started in January, it was uncharacteristically chilly, both in terms of the unseasonably cool South African climate and the lack of heat between contestants. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/37MaNos

The long-awaited final part of the Booker-winning trilogy is a masterpiece that will keep yielding its riches So the trilogy is complete, and it is magnificent. The portrait of Thomas Cromwell that began with Wolf Hall (2009) and continued with Bring Up the Bodies (2012) now concludes with a novel of epic proportions, every bit as thrilling, propulsive, darkly comic and stupendously intelligent as its predecessors. “Concludes” is perhaps not the word, for there is no tone of finality. Cromwell, Lord Privy Seal, deputy head of the church in England, chief minister, second man of the realm, Cremuel, my Lord Cromell, Crumb to friends, has a great deal of business to do, through 900 pages, before we contemplate endings. The heights of his power are all before us, and though he likes ladders he prefers to think of wings. Bring Up the Bodies closed with bloodshed and wreckage. “But it’s useful wreckage, isn’t it?” and now Cromwell uses it, strenuously remodelling catastrophes as oppor...

A French street artist’s interpretation of the Mona Lisa made of 330 Rubik’s Cubes sold for 480,200 euros ($520,680) on Sunday at a modern art auction in Paris, well above presale estimates of up to 150,000 euros, organisers Artcurial said. from https://ift.tt/37RKf5k

4/5 stars A conventional sports drama elevated by strong performances and its compelling central relationship, We Are Champions is proof that you do not need to rewrite the rule book to create entertaining cinema. Fandy Fan Shao-hsun and Berant Zhu are wholly convincing as basketball-loving half-brothers, who find themselves on rival high school teams competing in Taiwan’s national championships. Director Chang Jung-chi ( Partners in Crime , Touch of the Light ) further enhances his well-worn… from South China Morning Post https://ift.tt/3c2cNfs

If there’s a digital-age equivalent to camping outside a record store waiting for a new album to drop, it’s what BTS fans did in the lead-up to the release of Map of the Soul: 7 – hovering over Spotify or Apple Music, pouring some very strong coffee and waiting for the upload to be available so they could finally stream the album when it landed.The new release from the biggest K-pop group in the world is a global record biz event like no other. It is a comprehensive 20-song collection that… from South China Morning Post https://ift.tt/2TmGNdN